I’ve been a full-time freelance writer for four months now, and I enjoy the work I do. I write for Village Voice Media’s blog Heartless Doll, I have my weekly column Click Me, I do translations for Tom’s Guide, and I contribute to publications like The Economist, Playboy, Forbes.com, and Wired. I get to write about the things that interest me — sex, gender, technology, and video games — and I do it on my own schedule. My gig, in theory, is great.

Trouble is, this is the first time I’ve worked day in and day out on the internet. While I’ve freelanced in some form for almost four years, it’s always been while doing other things: going to school, teaching, traveling. Now that I’m settled here in San Francisco, there’s something sort of anti-climatic about waking up every morning, walking ten feet to my desk, and spending eight hours on the internet. Despite the fact that I enjoy my work, the whole experience leaves me kind of bummed.

Does anyone else out there work full-time online? Anyone have any suggestions for how to stay happy while staring at a laptop screen? My doctor, funny little man that he is, has told me to stop eating lunch at my desk and start stretching my neck throughout the day. Penny Arcade injects thirty seconds of cheer into my life three times a week. Really, it’s not all that bad. Still, I’ll take any and all tips!

This week for DS.about.com I got to review at least one good game — which was a marked improvement over last week’s three hunks of angering plastic. Here’s the latest installment of my honest, uncensored thoughts on the titles I actually have to review evenhandedly for About:

Kirby Super Star Ultra, Nintendo, E
I like Kirby games. I do. And I vaguely enjoy the mini games in Super Star Ultra. But the basic, enemy-sucking, float-fighting fun I’m getting out of this title doesn’t feel different enough from, say, Nightmare in Dreamland to make me particularly excited. That doesn’t make it bad. It just hardly blew me away — or sucked me in, whichever the more apt Kirby metaphor may be.

Shaun the Sheep, D3 Publisher, E
I love that this game is rated E for “comic mischief.” That’s about all I love about it. In fact, this sheep-finding title was so forgettable I actively had to think hard over the last two minutes to remember what it was about. Like, I could feel my brain working.

Spore Creatures, EA, E
Yes, the Spore craze is over and I’m still stuck reviewing Spore Creatures. It seems every other platform got a decent Spore game — since all systems in the known universe have been Spored in some way or another — whereas DS lovers are stuck with this excuse for a story. Aside from the endearing art, this awkward, stilted version of the huge universe-maker is just plain old sad.

More DS reviews to come. In the meantime, I’m psyched for my copies of Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2. Don’t tell my 360 I suck at first-person shooters, k?

Ah, Friday…

- “Ten Social Networking Terms You Should Know,” in which I talk about the advantage for small business owners of using sites like Twitter and Facebook (Forbes.com).

- “Apparently I’m a cybersex tease,” in which I ponder what not to include in a sex blog and how not to lead on readers (The Clickable Clit).

- “10 Social Networks and What They Say About the People That Use Them,” in which I call Facebook users obsessive, MySpace users creepy, and generally piss people off (Heartless Doll lists).

- “5 Justification for Why I (and a Disturbing Number of Fellow Intelligent Adults) Love Gossip Girl,” in which I explain away my soulless addiction with societal blathering (Heartless Doll lists).

- Reviews: Dream Pinball, Ferrari Challenge, and USA Today Crossword Challenge, in which I bash all three and secretly pine for better review games (DS.about.com).

Happy weekend, Heroine Sheik readers. My plan: take a pumpkin and use it like a fondue pot. We’ll see how that one goes!

Yes, the most wonderful day of the entire year is little more than a week away, and you know what means: pumpkins carved into game-themed jack-o-lanterns. Joystick Division, Heartless Doll’s sister site, is running a jack-o-lantern contest, so if you’ve got yours ready send it in today. I know personally I’m holding off until its closer to the big day itself. Plus I always feel way bad about cutting up the pumpkins I’ve picked out with so much love.

It occurred to me I haven’t been ranting about my hearts for Halloween here at Heroine Sheik, only over at Heartless Doll. So I wanted to share with you my thought process over the last few weeks. It includes must excited obsessiveness:
- “Inappropriate Halloween ecards for ‘when you care enough to hit send’”
- “Boats made out of giant pumpkins (random wonderful internet thing)”
- “Slutty Pacman Halloween costumes: who actually wears this stuff?”
- “Dress up as Sarah Palin for Halloween”
- “Pumpkins prove Heartless Dolls have hearts”

What am I doing for Halloween, you ask? I’m headed to Rock Horror at midnight on the 31st, but I still haven’t decided on my evening plans — plus I’m definitely costume-less. Any suggestions? What will you be up to, Heroine Sheik readers?

At least, that is, according to a new study that links orgasming too soon during sex with a gene that regulates serotonin. Reports the BBC, men who come early also have a higher instance of this genetic defect, which slows the hormone interaction between nerves. Said sexual psychotherapist Paula Hall,

Men with primary premature ejaculation tended to be fast reactors generally. “These men have very quick reflexes. They may be excellent at playing tennis or computer games, for example.”

There you have it: a scientific link between premature ejaculation and video game playing. Well, kind of. I’m not the first to the table on this story, and I know I should have something interesting to say here about men who feel inadequate in the bedroom making up for it with their energy for violence and homophobia when it comes to gaming. Instead, I’m busy feeling smug.

I’ve long envied boys who can button mash with the greatest of speed. As someone who didn’t start gaming until she was twelve, I’ll never have the same dexterity with a controller my male friends do. Apparently, it turns out, that dexterity come with a price. And I’d rather be good in bed but lose at Soul Calibur than the other way around — even if the button mashing is getting done on some hot girl’s chest.

There is a glut of virtual worlds available today. As of May there were over 100 kid-oriented worlds alone out there. Even in a normal market, we’d have to ask, “How many worlds can the economy sustain?” Not only is there a limit to what internet goers can actively make use of, there’s also a limit to the number of dollars that can go into building these games.

Then we have the economic crisis. Where will that leave virtual world development? Will we start to see numbers grow at a slower pace? Or will existing virtual worlds begin to shut their doors? For that matter, does a world ever really need to shut its doors once its initial start-up costs have been taken care of? Maintenance aside, could it run forever?

That brings us to a larger question about what strikes me as the Web 2.0 bubble. Sure, virtual worlds fall somewhat outside that model, but it just seems the current wave of social network start-ups has a lot of parallels with what happened in the 90’s. Does that mean we’re headed for a crash, for a moment when the bubble bursts? As someone who works in San Francisco and gets paid to write about new online projects, I sure hope not, but I guess we’ll have to see…

Sorry for all the questions, folks. Anyone think they have answers?