Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Monday, December 24, 2007
Oh, Those Wacky Cash Registers
The cash registers at the GameStop where I work on holidays, like all last week, are a vicious lot. Some of you may think, "But they're just cash registers, no brains in their heads, no heads even, only slightly more intelligent than Scientologists! How can they possibly possess such a personified quirk as viciousness?" Well, I highly doubt any of you actually thought that. I've yet to meet a person who speaks and writes the way I do, and I guess the thought process engenders the writing process. You probably thought something more along the lines of "Cash registers? Vicious? How?" or "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
Nevertheless. They hate me. Nobody else seems to have a problem with them, except for me, and I will mention why: They like to shoot out their drawers and hit me in a certain area of my body which I will genteely avoid mentioning by name, and instead I will refer to with popular brands of farm equipment. Why I chose farm equipment, I couldn't say. It just seemed like a good idea at the time.
So basically this is the situation. We have three cash registers at the store - normally we have two, but this time of year we have three, to handle the increased customer load caused by the holiday season. Let me intrude slightly onto my narrative, which I haven't even really begun yet, to mention that I really, really wish people would not go into the store without even the first inkling of an idea of what they're going to get. I understand that not everybody knows games, and I'm okay with that. Nobody's perfect, after all. But if you get the idea into your head that you're going to buy a game for your son or nephew or boyfriend (the girlfriends are usually better at this, it's probably the generation gap that has the older folks floundering), at least attempt to establish a vague idea of what you're doing.
At least once or twice a day, someone will point into the PS2 or Xbox or PSP or whatever section and say "I want a Mario game for that." Usually, they will understand when I tell them that Mario games are only on certain consoles. But I get the occasional "I'm older than you, you're just a kid, therefore I am always right and you are always wrong" person who insists that in fact, there are Mario games on that system, and I am wrong - or worse, deliberately lying to them, in order to...I don't know, make my store lose business or something. These people make me want to gnaw my own ears off in rage.
A few other things that annoy me about working there:
- People who get offended when I don't know every feature of every game, ever. No amount of saying "I don't play sports games at all" will divert some people from grilling me on every aspect of a six-year-old hockey game for a system I never owned.
- People who are infuriatingly vague about a game they want, that may not even technically exist. One gentleman asked me for the game "where you were a cat, and ran through the jungle...can't you look it up?" I now sympathize with librarians everywhere.
- People who barely speak English. This isn't a complaint unique to game stores, but come on, at least bring someone with you who knows a semi-decent amount of English.
- People who are convinced I'm trying to scam them when I offer discount cards and pre-orders of games. The discount cards may or may not be a scam, but honestly, if you're going to buy a game, there's no real reason not to reserve it. Not like it costs anything or puts you under any obligation - you can cancel at any time. Besides, it's my job to ask if you want these things.
- People who bring in an opened Xbox that they purchased thirteen months ago, sans extended warranty, but bearing a tattered and stained receipt, that turns out to be from a store two states away, and scream that I'm robbing them when I point out our return policy - the one that is printed on the very receipt they are brandishing - clearly states that they can in no way do what they are trying to do; who then go on to demand to speak to my manager, the result of which is that he staggers into the back room fifteen minutes later and puts his face in his hands, a broken shell of a man. (Well, this isn't really "people" so much as it is "one jerk," but at least he didn't get his refund. I would have never forgiven my boss if he had given in.)
- Et cetera.
Let me note that these people represent but a small fraction of the customers I deal with daily. Most of the people I serve are in fact decent human beings who either know enough about games to get by or, failing that, are willing to admit their game-related ignorance so that I might aid them. But the idiots stand out, I've always believed.
Well, that's that. Now to my main story.
There are three cash registers in the shop. One's just for the holiday season. The other two, well, they're malevolent year-round. One of them I have nicknamed The Tyson, because that's how it hits - fast, hard, and without mercy. The first time I was naive enough to stand directly against the countertop when the drawer popped open, it erupted from the register like a Polaris missile and slammed into my John Deere so hard that my eyebrows burst into flames. After a few more painful experiences, I learned to dodge away before the drawer began its dynamic entry. I swear, the first time I managed to evade its onslaught, I heard the drawer grumble to itself in disappointment as I shut it. Occasionally I slip, though, and during the busy periods I must grit my teeth and power through the pain, but when the store is relatively empty, my coworkers can always be counted on to offer a humorous quip as to why I am on the floor in a fetal position, tears streaming from my eyes, frozen in an agonizing self-embrace that makes me look like a prolapsed question mark.
The second one seems much less threatening, at first. This one I have called The Juggernaut. It does not move quickly like The Tyson does; to the contrary, it grinds out of its drawer slowly and ponderously. When I first jumped ship to the second register, after being thoroughly soured on the first, I realized with glee that I could easily avoid the register. No more shots to the ol' Masey-Ferguson for me, I declared. But, unfortunately, this caused complacence. Despite the wide breadth of time I had to escape the groin-crushing doom, I would frequently slip out of the way with only a fraction of a second to spare. I naively assumed that there would be no trouble at all - even if it did hit me, what damage could it do? So once, I didn't even bother dodging.
Big. Mistake.
It was precisely then that I realized that the drawer possessed the quality that made me liken it to the famous X-Men villain: It is absolutely unstoppable. It moves slowly, but no object can check its momentum. The inexorable force of its impact left me reeling, and I staggered back only just in time. Had I been a moment too late, it would have pushed my pelvis out through my spinal column. I theorize that I could break into bank vaults by pushing my way through the heavy steel doors, a little at a time, with this register as my only tool.
The third register is only a seasonal offender, and for that I have christened it The Kringle. It does not move fast like The Tyson, or unstoppably like The Juggernaut. Instead, its weapon is the element of surprise. For you see, this register is several inches higher up than the other two. Upon glimpsing the placement of this register for the first time, I smiled in delight: no matter its impact, it hitting my stomach was preferable to it crashing into my Caterpillar. I still dodged its attack, out of sheer habit, but one day I was busy and neglected to make the necessary defensive maneuvers. Even as a small corner of my brain shrieked in alarm at the advancing drawer, the rest of my brain shrugged it off. We can take a hit to the belly, it said. No biggie.
Yes, biggie. I had neglected to examine the precise placement of both this register and the other two. For you see, the other two registers hit me with the top edge of their drawers, adding semi-sharpness to their already formidable arsenals. Apparently, the gap was just enough that the bottom part of the third drawer still managed to score a direct hit on my Tonka. (All right, I don't know that many farm equipment brands. Tonka makes tractors and trucks, just tiny ones.) One might think that this would only be a problem once, and as this drawer lacks the special properties of the other two, I would be in the clear. If one would think that, it would only serve to prove that one does not know me very well. I'm constantly forgetting stuff like that. So without fail, every few minutes, the memory fades like a cheap pair of jeans, and once more I sink to the floor, cursing profusely.
If a crook were to come in and rob the store, I would endeavor to have him stand in front of the register when I opened it. That way, while he was curled up and weeping on the floor, I could call the police or simply stroll to the station down the road and find a cop - he's not going anywhere. Even if he tries to stand up, he'll bang his head on the open drawer, and then down he goes again.
The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is this little ditty: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFOz-hLhpsU In the game Guitar Hero II, there exists a song of legendary difficulty known as "Jordan." This game was the first to ever feature a recording of this song, which is extraordinarily hard to play. The person who plays this song does not get it perfect, but he 5-stars it with 88% notes hit, and this is the best-quality high-score video I could find of it. Enjoy, and revel in its difficulty.
REPLIES.
Mom: Yes, that would have been awkward. I couldn't exactly ask for a trash can and conceal my trash from him.
Jake: Well, good. At least if I'm not persuading or informing, I'm entertaining, and that's the third legitimate usage of communication. One out of three ain't bad, says I. And you kind of went off on a weird tangent with the end of that.
Michelle: Awesomesauce. Love you too.
To the person who I know only as Anonymous: Feel free to email me at gthunder@ufl.edu, and I will be willing to speak with you on this in a less public manner. My only real comment is: Yes, I know, we know, we've known for years, we do give a damn, but remind us exactly what it is we can do about it that we haven't tried? (To anyone who doesn't know what this is about: It's better that way.)
Steve: A fine line that I walk daily. And I wouldn't consider an exploding star on wheat bread to be a normal breakfast.
Dad: Maybe not only me, but I'm certainly one of a select few.
Travis: Yes, my purist ways save me in an unexpected fashion. You'll have to show me how to embed images like that.
I'm out.
Nevertheless. They hate me. Nobody else seems to have a problem with them, except for me, and I will mention why: They like to shoot out their drawers and hit me in a certain area of my body which I will genteely avoid mentioning by name, and instead I will refer to with popular brands of farm equipment. Why I chose farm equipment, I couldn't say. It just seemed like a good idea at the time.
So basically this is the situation. We have three cash registers at the store - normally we have two, but this time of year we have three, to handle the increased customer load caused by the holiday season. Let me intrude slightly onto my narrative, which I haven't even really begun yet, to mention that I really, really wish people would not go into the store without even the first inkling of an idea of what they're going to get. I understand that not everybody knows games, and I'm okay with that. Nobody's perfect, after all. But if you get the idea into your head that you're going to buy a game for your son or nephew or boyfriend (the girlfriends are usually better at this, it's probably the generation gap that has the older folks floundering), at least attempt to establish a vague idea of what you're doing.
At least once or twice a day, someone will point into the PS2 or Xbox or PSP or whatever section and say "I want a Mario game for that." Usually, they will understand when I tell them that Mario games are only on certain consoles. But I get the occasional "I'm older than you, you're just a kid, therefore I am always right and you are always wrong" person who insists that in fact, there are Mario games on that system, and I am wrong - or worse, deliberately lying to them, in order to...I don't know, make my store lose business or something. These people make me want to gnaw my own ears off in rage.
A few other things that annoy me about working there:
- People who get offended when I don't know every feature of every game, ever. No amount of saying "I don't play sports games at all" will divert some people from grilling me on every aspect of a six-year-old hockey game for a system I never owned.
- People who are infuriatingly vague about a game they want, that may not even technically exist. One gentleman asked me for the game "where you were a cat, and ran through the jungle...can't you look it up?" I now sympathize with librarians everywhere.
- People who barely speak English. This isn't a complaint unique to game stores, but come on, at least bring someone with you who knows a semi-decent amount of English.
- People who are convinced I'm trying to scam them when I offer discount cards and pre-orders of games. The discount cards may or may not be a scam, but honestly, if you're going to buy a game, there's no real reason not to reserve it. Not like it costs anything or puts you under any obligation - you can cancel at any time. Besides, it's my job to ask if you want these things.
- People who bring in an opened Xbox that they purchased thirteen months ago, sans extended warranty, but bearing a tattered and stained receipt, that turns out to be from a store two states away, and scream that I'm robbing them when I point out our return policy - the one that is printed on the very receipt they are brandishing - clearly states that they can in no way do what they are trying to do; who then go on to demand to speak to my manager, the result of which is that he staggers into the back room fifteen minutes later and puts his face in his hands, a broken shell of a man. (Well, this isn't really "people" so much as it is "one jerk," but at least he didn't get his refund. I would have never forgiven my boss if he had given in.)
- Et cetera.
Let me note that these people represent but a small fraction of the customers I deal with daily. Most of the people I serve are in fact decent human beings who either know enough about games to get by or, failing that, are willing to admit their game-related ignorance so that I might aid them. But the idiots stand out, I've always believed.
Well, that's that. Now to my main story.
There are three cash registers in the shop. One's just for the holiday season. The other two, well, they're malevolent year-round. One of them I have nicknamed The Tyson, because that's how it hits - fast, hard, and without mercy. The first time I was naive enough to stand directly against the countertop when the drawer popped open, it erupted from the register like a Polaris missile and slammed into my John Deere so hard that my eyebrows burst into flames. After a few more painful experiences, I learned to dodge away before the drawer began its dynamic entry. I swear, the first time I managed to evade its onslaught, I heard the drawer grumble to itself in disappointment as I shut it. Occasionally I slip, though, and during the busy periods I must grit my teeth and power through the pain, but when the store is relatively empty, my coworkers can always be counted on to offer a humorous quip as to why I am on the floor in a fetal position, tears streaming from my eyes, frozen in an agonizing self-embrace that makes me look like a prolapsed question mark.
The second one seems much less threatening, at first. This one I have called The Juggernaut. It does not move quickly like The Tyson does; to the contrary, it grinds out of its drawer slowly and ponderously. When I first jumped ship to the second register, after being thoroughly soured on the first, I realized with glee that I could easily avoid the register. No more shots to the ol' Masey-Ferguson for me, I declared. But, unfortunately, this caused complacence. Despite the wide breadth of time I had to escape the groin-crushing doom, I would frequently slip out of the way with only a fraction of a second to spare. I naively assumed that there would be no trouble at all - even if it did hit me, what damage could it do? So once, I didn't even bother dodging.
Big. Mistake.
It was precisely then that I realized that the drawer possessed the quality that made me liken it to the famous X-Men villain: It is absolutely unstoppable. It moves slowly, but no object can check its momentum. The inexorable force of its impact left me reeling, and I staggered back only just in time. Had I been a moment too late, it would have pushed my pelvis out through my spinal column. I theorize that I could break into bank vaults by pushing my way through the heavy steel doors, a little at a time, with this register as my only tool.
The third register is only a seasonal offender, and for that I have christened it The Kringle. It does not move fast like The Tyson, or unstoppably like The Juggernaut. Instead, its weapon is the element of surprise. For you see, this register is several inches higher up than the other two. Upon glimpsing the placement of this register for the first time, I smiled in delight: no matter its impact, it hitting my stomach was preferable to it crashing into my Caterpillar. I still dodged its attack, out of sheer habit, but one day I was busy and neglected to make the necessary defensive maneuvers. Even as a small corner of my brain shrieked in alarm at the advancing drawer, the rest of my brain shrugged it off. We can take a hit to the belly, it said. No biggie.
Yes, biggie. I had neglected to examine the precise placement of both this register and the other two. For you see, the other two registers hit me with the top edge of their drawers, adding semi-sharpness to their already formidable arsenals. Apparently, the gap was just enough that the bottom part of the third drawer still managed to score a direct hit on my Tonka. (All right, I don't know that many farm equipment brands. Tonka makes tractors and trucks, just tiny ones.) One might think that this would only be a problem once, and as this drawer lacks the special properties of the other two, I would be in the clear. If one would think that, it would only serve to prove that one does not know me very well. I'm constantly forgetting stuff like that. So without fail, every few minutes, the memory fades like a cheap pair of jeans, and once more I sink to the floor, cursing profusely.
If a crook were to come in and rob the store, I would endeavor to have him stand in front of the register when I opened it. That way, while he was curled up and weeping on the floor, I could call the police or simply stroll to the station down the road and find a cop - he's not going anywhere. Even if he tries to stand up, he'll bang his head on the open drawer, and then down he goes again.
The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is this little ditty: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFOz-hLhpsU In the game Guitar Hero II, there exists a song of legendary difficulty known as "Jordan." This game was the first to ever feature a recording of this song, which is extraordinarily hard to play. The person who plays this song does not get it perfect, but he 5-stars it with 88% notes hit, and this is the best-quality high-score video I could find of it. Enjoy, and revel in its difficulty.
REPLIES.
Mom: Yes, that would have been awkward. I couldn't exactly ask for a trash can and conceal my trash from him.
Jake: Well, good. At least if I'm not persuading or informing, I'm entertaining, and that's the third legitimate usage of communication. One out of three ain't bad, says I. And you kind of went off on a weird tangent with the end of that.
Michelle: Awesomesauce. Love you too.
To the person who I know only as Anonymous: Feel free to email me at gthunder@ufl.edu, and I will be willing to speak with you on this in a less public manner. My only real comment is: Yes, I know, we know, we've known for years, we do give a damn, but remind us exactly what it is we can do about it that we haven't tried? (To anyone who doesn't know what this is about: It's better that way.)
Steve: A fine line that I walk daily. And I wouldn't consider an exploding star on wheat bread to be a normal breakfast.
Dad: Maybe not only me, but I'm certainly one of a select few.
Travis: Yes, my purist ways save me in an unexpected fashion. You'll have to show me how to embed images like that.
I'm out.
Friday, December 21, 2007
In Which Toast Can Be Found In My Pants
The title is not a lie. Nor is it an exaggeration. This is seriously what happened to me this morning.
I decided to go see my financial advisor, Dood Theodore, at the bank this morning, to figure out some problems I had been having with my account and to set up auto-payment of my credit card to my checking account. But I was hungry, and I wouldn't have time to pick up something on the way - plus, I don't like spending money if I can get something just as good for free at home - so I made a couple of pieces of toast to eat on the way. I devoured one on the way to the bank, but when I pulled into the parking lot, I still had a slice left. No biggie, I figured, I'd eat it later. But I didn't want to let it get cold in the car...so I brought it with me.
As I walked into the bank, I was kind of palming the toast, so that the bank people wouldn't see it. I imagine they take a dim view to those who bring food into the lobby. I fully expected Dood to be busy and to be able to see me later - this is usually what happens when I come to see him, the receptionist tells me "Mr. Theodore will be available in just a minute," so I thought I would go outside and eat it while I waited. Unusually, though, the receptionist greeted me with a smile and said "Mr. Theodore is available now. I'll get him."
I was stuck. I couldn't very well leave if Dood was on his way, and I wasn't about to walk into his office - a serious office, computers and file cabinets and all the trappings - with a slice of toast in my hand. I had to find a way to get rid of this toast. For what couldn't have been more than a second or two, but what felt like a frozen eternity, my mind was wracked with anguish. I couldn't shove the whole thing down my throat, unless I wanted to speak to Dood with a mouth full of toast, and that wasn't happening. There were no trash cans in sight, and besides, I still wanted to eat that toast. The toast seemed to mock me with a keening croon, its sonorous medley promising naught but ruin. It appeared to me as a lode-stone, an object unable to be gotten rid of, one that would surely bring me to disaster. Maybe it was because I was still half-asleep, but this toast at the moment seemed like it was sure to bring me financial self-destruction and complete catastrophe. I never loathed an inanimate object in my life like I loathed this piece of toast at that very second. (Well, except for that chair leg I nearly broke my toe on once. Ooh, I hated that chair.)
Dood was approaching. I was still half-hidden by the large receptionist's desk, but I panicked. Any second now, he would smile and extend his hand, and that would be it. I was out of options. And then, a flash of inspiration. I had a natural hiding place the whole time. Quickly, I stuffed the toast into my left pocket and brushed the crumbs from my hand, emerging from behind the desk to return Dood's warm smile and hearty handshake. He brought me into his office, and I began to discuss the business that had brought me there that morning, but all I could think was "There's toast in my pocket! Why did I do that? Couldn't I have found a better way of solving this problem?"
It nagged at me. The most annoying part of the whole debacle was that there was no visible clock in Dood's office, and yet I had no way to check the time - my cell phone, which I use as a timepiece, was in the pocket that the toast was in, and I couldn't bring out the phone without spilling crumbs everywhere, and I couldn't do that in Dood's nice clean office. Maybe, when next we speak, I'll tell him about this. He'll probably laugh about it. He has a good sense of humor, he does.
And, surprisingly, when I spoke of buying a lottery ticket, he said that he had bought one too. "I know it's all luck-based," he told me, "but I've found that the harder you work, the more lucky you are. Besides, it's fun." He shrugged. "If you don't see me here on Monday morning, you'll know why." (Oh, and Dan, he said he would take the lump sum as well. So bite me.) Later, I found this whole scenario amusing, and let me tell you that it was hell keeping a straight face every time my mind wandered to the toast in my pocket. But it had stayed relatively intact, and after I left the bank, I still ate it. Why not? I had to empty my pocket and turn it inside out to get the crumbs out, but I'm not wasting a perfectly good piece of toast just because it's been in my pocket.
Work was kind of boring. Daniel showed up, and that was sort of interesting. We had an amusing incident...An attractive girl walked in and picked up off the shelf a copy of Super Mario Galaxy, or as I've grown to call it, Ur Mr Gay (inside joke). Daniel pointed out her attractiveness and suggested that I be the one to check her out. I tried to call her over - in my defense, I was trying to keep the customers cycling nicely through the store, and she was relatively near the register - but she would not heed my calls. This led to the following exchange:
Daniel: "She's not paying attention to you."
Me: "I know."
Daniel: "Maybe she thinks you're ugly, or not worth her time?" [or words to this effect]
Me: "Well, I am just the stooge behind the counter. At this point, I'm officially classified in her mind as furniture."
Well, he thought it was funny.
The next three days promise to be drudgery. 10:00-6:30 tomorrow, 10:45-7:00 the next day, and 11:30-close on Monday, which is also Christmas friggin' Eve. I had to close on Christmas Eve. I complained to my boss, but he rightly pointed out that I would have three other people helping me, and that even at the store's worst there was no way I would get out after 7:00.
Oh, and one more thing. Yesterday morning, we were going to have a big shipment of Nintendo Wiis in, 24 of them. This is the biggest shipment we've ever had, and we had been hyping it up to the customers for over a week, the result being that there were people waiting for several hours previous to our shipping time to get in line for a console. One ambitious fellow was in the store as soon as it opened. I hope you'll forgive me, if you're reading this (I gave him a link to my blog), but you never told me how to spell your name. He said it was pronounced "Che," but "with two I's." I do not know how to spell that. Perhaps "Chii"? Sorry. If you comment and leave your real name, I'll mention it on Monday's post.
But he was a real fun guy. We spoke on a variety of subjects, from amusing things we had seen on the Internet to horrible things we had seen on the Internet, to stories both of us had written. He got a Wii, and ended up leaving about the same time I did, around 1:00. Lots of fun to be around. He made the morning pass by quickly. If you're reading this, man, comment on it.
That's all I've got. On Monday, I'll tell you the horror of my last three days of work (and tell the story of last year's Christmas Eve working, the nightmare that it was). As for the Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day, it's got to be the one my father recommended to me, which is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK90Ys2LhSo also known as Wizards of Winter. Some people expended the incredible amount of time and effort required to sync up their Christmas lights with music, and, well, this is the result. Entertaining.
REPLIES.
Mom: 10% sounds about right. If I win $20 million in the lottery, I can donate $2 million. That allows for plenty of investment moneys and spending cash. And yes, my dear old Mom will get some money as well.
Steve: I really didn't expect anything different from you. I'll ignore the first part of your plan, but I'm right alongside all the other parts.
Vic: If I win, we'll have a nice long talk about what to do with it. (Perhaps I'll say that I'll give $2 million combined to you and charity, and it's up to you to decide what percentage goes where?) And I suppose Huckabee is the least controversial of the Republican candidates, plus, he has a wonky name. I'd vote for him.
Later.
I decided to go see my financial advisor, Dood Theodore, at the bank this morning, to figure out some problems I had been having with my account and to set up auto-payment of my credit card to my checking account. But I was hungry, and I wouldn't have time to pick up something on the way - plus, I don't like spending money if I can get something just as good for free at home - so I made a couple of pieces of toast to eat on the way. I devoured one on the way to the bank, but when I pulled into the parking lot, I still had a slice left. No biggie, I figured, I'd eat it later. But I didn't want to let it get cold in the car...so I brought it with me.
As I walked into the bank, I was kind of palming the toast, so that the bank people wouldn't see it. I imagine they take a dim view to those who bring food into the lobby. I fully expected Dood to be busy and to be able to see me later - this is usually what happens when I come to see him, the receptionist tells me "Mr. Theodore will be available in just a minute," so I thought I would go outside and eat it while I waited. Unusually, though, the receptionist greeted me with a smile and said "Mr. Theodore is available now. I'll get him."
I was stuck. I couldn't very well leave if Dood was on his way, and I wasn't about to walk into his office - a serious office, computers and file cabinets and all the trappings - with a slice of toast in my hand. I had to find a way to get rid of this toast. For what couldn't have been more than a second or two, but what felt like a frozen eternity, my mind was wracked with anguish. I couldn't shove the whole thing down my throat, unless I wanted to speak to Dood with a mouth full of toast, and that wasn't happening. There were no trash cans in sight, and besides, I still wanted to eat that toast. The toast seemed to mock me with a keening croon, its sonorous medley promising naught but ruin. It appeared to me as a lode-stone, an object unable to be gotten rid of, one that would surely bring me to disaster. Maybe it was because I was still half-asleep, but this toast at the moment seemed like it was sure to bring me financial self-destruction and complete catastrophe. I never loathed an inanimate object in my life like I loathed this piece of toast at that very second. (Well, except for that chair leg I nearly broke my toe on once. Ooh, I hated that chair.)
Dood was approaching. I was still half-hidden by the large receptionist's desk, but I panicked. Any second now, he would smile and extend his hand, and that would be it. I was out of options. And then, a flash of inspiration. I had a natural hiding place the whole time. Quickly, I stuffed the toast into my left pocket and brushed the crumbs from my hand, emerging from behind the desk to return Dood's warm smile and hearty handshake. He brought me into his office, and I began to discuss the business that had brought me there that morning, but all I could think was "There's toast in my pocket! Why did I do that? Couldn't I have found a better way of solving this problem?"
It nagged at me. The most annoying part of the whole debacle was that there was no visible clock in Dood's office, and yet I had no way to check the time - my cell phone, which I use as a timepiece, was in the pocket that the toast was in, and I couldn't bring out the phone without spilling crumbs everywhere, and I couldn't do that in Dood's nice clean office. Maybe, when next we speak, I'll tell him about this. He'll probably laugh about it. He has a good sense of humor, he does.
And, surprisingly, when I spoke of buying a lottery ticket, he said that he had bought one too. "I know it's all luck-based," he told me, "but I've found that the harder you work, the more lucky you are. Besides, it's fun." He shrugged. "If you don't see me here on Monday morning, you'll know why." (Oh, and Dan, he said he would take the lump sum as well. So bite me.) Later, I found this whole scenario amusing, and let me tell you that it was hell keeping a straight face every time my mind wandered to the toast in my pocket. But it had stayed relatively intact, and after I left the bank, I still ate it. Why not? I had to empty my pocket and turn it inside out to get the crumbs out, but I'm not wasting a perfectly good piece of toast just because it's been in my pocket.
Work was kind of boring. Daniel showed up, and that was sort of interesting. We had an amusing incident...An attractive girl walked in and picked up off the shelf a copy of Super Mario Galaxy, or as I've grown to call it, Ur Mr Gay (inside joke). Daniel pointed out her attractiveness and suggested that I be the one to check her out. I tried to call her over - in my defense, I was trying to keep the customers cycling nicely through the store, and she was relatively near the register - but she would not heed my calls. This led to the following exchange:
Daniel: "She's not paying attention to you."
Me: "I know."
Daniel: "Maybe she thinks you're ugly, or not worth her time?" [or words to this effect]
Me: "Well, I am just the stooge behind the counter. At this point, I'm officially classified in her mind as furniture."
Well, he thought it was funny.
The next three days promise to be drudgery. 10:00-6:30 tomorrow, 10:45-7:00 the next day, and 11:30-close on Monday, which is also Christmas friggin' Eve. I had to close on Christmas Eve. I complained to my boss, but he rightly pointed out that I would have three other people helping me, and that even at the store's worst there was no way I would get out after 7:00.
Oh, and one more thing. Yesterday morning, we were going to have a big shipment of Nintendo Wiis in, 24 of them. This is the biggest shipment we've ever had, and we had been hyping it up to the customers for over a week, the result being that there were people waiting for several hours previous to our shipping time to get in line for a console. One ambitious fellow was in the store as soon as it opened. I hope you'll forgive me, if you're reading this (I gave him a link to my blog), but you never told me how to spell your name. He said it was pronounced "Che," but "with two I's." I do not know how to spell that. Perhaps "Chii"? Sorry. If you comment and leave your real name, I'll mention it on Monday's post.
But he was a real fun guy. We spoke on a variety of subjects, from amusing things we had seen on the Internet to horrible things we had seen on the Internet, to stories both of us had written. He got a Wii, and ended up leaving about the same time I did, around 1:00. Lots of fun to be around. He made the morning pass by quickly. If you're reading this, man, comment on it.
That's all I've got. On Monday, I'll tell you the horror of my last three days of work (and tell the story of last year's Christmas Eve working, the nightmare that it was). As for the Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day, it's got to be the one my father recommended to me, which is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK90Ys2LhSo also known as Wizards of Winter. Some people expended the incredible amount of time and effort required to sync up their Christmas lights with music, and, well, this is the result. Entertaining.
REPLIES.
Mom: 10% sounds about right. If I win $20 million in the lottery, I can donate $2 million. That allows for plenty of investment moneys and spending cash. And yes, my dear old Mom will get some money as well.
Steve: I really didn't expect anything different from you. I'll ignore the first part of your plan, but I'm right alongside all the other parts.
Vic: If I win, we'll have a nice long talk about what to do with it. (Perhaps I'll say that I'll give $2 million combined to you and charity, and it's up to you to decide what percentage goes where?) And I suppose Huckabee is the least controversial of the Republican candidates, plus, he has a wonky name. I'd vote for him.
Later.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Not Really Much To Say...
It's true. I don't really have much to say. I'd write a short story - I have a few more ideas floating around in my head - but I just really don't have any creative inspiration at the moment. Anyone who writes will know what I mean.
I worked all day, from noon to 8:30. I ran into a friend of mine I knew from work, Larry, and we reminisced in the back until pangs of conscience reminded me that I was in fact getting paid for this malarkey. So I went back to work. I was in the zone today...I did quite well, in terms of selling Edge cards and reserves of video games. So, good news there.
Vic believes that if I won tonight's lottery - at $38 million, if I took the lump sum as I planned, I would receive roughly $12 million - and did not give away at least 20%-25% of my money to charity, that I was a horrible person. I maintained that there was no imperative, legal, moral, or otherwise, to compel me to give away one dang cent of my imagined winnings, and it was entirely my choice...and not giving away $3 million did not make me a terrible person. I don't think I could bring myself to part with $3 million all at once anyway. I had trouble enough parting with 5,000 World of WarCraft gold to buy my epic flying mount. I would no doubt give hundreds of thousands away - perhaps even a million - but it's my danged imaginary winnings, and I'll do with it as I please. I'm under no obligation to do otherwise. (Besides, as I plan to invest in the stock market, I'll be helping companies grow and creating jobs, which is charitable enough in and of itself, even if it's done with the aim of making me moneys.) I will buy you a new car though, Dan, even though you took my money at poker.
That's about it.
The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uSlqI1AVUk It's a parody of the rather more famous Nickelback song, Rock Star, which you can find here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrcTz5XRtN8 If you don't know the video, watch the real one first, and the parody second. It's quite amusing.
REPLIES.
Steven: I know, I know, it's not supposed to be for my personal enjoyment, but it's still boring. A GPS? Fascinating. Are you going to circle around in your driveway and marvel at how you know exactly where you are?
Jake: Yeah, tell me about it. And Daniel summed it up pretty well in his comment, so go back and read it.
Daniel: Pretty much. Er, bye.
The end.
I worked all day, from noon to 8:30. I ran into a friend of mine I knew from work, Larry, and we reminisced in the back until pangs of conscience reminded me that I was in fact getting paid for this malarkey. So I went back to work. I was in the zone today...I did quite well, in terms of selling Edge cards and reserves of video games. So, good news there.
Vic believes that if I won tonight's lottery - at $38 million, if I took the lump sum as I planned, I would receive roughly $12 million - and did not give away at least 20%-25% of my money to charity, that I was a horrible person. I maintained that there was no imperative, legal, moral, or otherwise, to compel me to give away one dang cent of my imagined winnings, and it was entirely my choice...and not giving away $3 million did not make me a terrible person. I don't think I could bring myself to part with $3 million all at once anyway. I had trouble enough parting with 5,000 World of WarCraft gold to buy my epic flying mount. I would no doubt give hundreds of thousands away - perhaps even a million - but it's my danged imaginary winnings, and I'll do with it as I please. I'm under no obligation to do otherwise. (Besides, as I plan to invest in the stock market, I'll be helping companies grow and creating jobs, which is charitable enough in and of itself, even if it's done with the aim of making me moneys.) I will buy you a new car though, Dan, even though you took my money at poker.
That's about it.
The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uSlqI1AVUk It's a parody of the rather more famous Nickelback song, Rock Star, which you can find here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrcTz5XRtN8 If you don't know the video, watch the real one first, and the parody second. It's quite amusing.
REPLIES.
Steven: I know, I know, it's not supposed to be for my personal enjoyment, but it's still boring. A GPS? Fascinating. Are you going to circle around in your driveway and marvel at how you know exactly where you are?
Jake: Yeah, tell me about it. And Daniel summed it up pretty well in his comment, so go back and read it.
Daniel: Pretty much. Er, bye.
The end.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
This One's The Real Post
Yeah, these posts as long as I am at home, they're probably going to be a lot shorter than my normal posts. Couple of reasons why.
1. Not nearly as much happens when I'm at home, just going to work and hanging out with friends, and...
2. What does happen while I'm at work is almost never worth mentioning, and what happens while I'm with friends, pretty much my entire potential audience is already there for it.
Last night was fairly worth mentioning, though. We played poker for a while, Texas Hold 'Em. I organized a game with Daniel, Dan, Steven, and myself. We figured it would be a friendly game, and I didn't go into it thinking I would win money, but instead would just have had fun with friends for a while in a slightly more high-stakes environment than usual.
I ended up losing $15, from an original stake of $10. (When I went bankrupt, the others convinced me to buy back in with $5 more. Then I lost all of that.) I wish Dan had told me beforehand that he had become extremely able at poker from his youth in Puerto Rico. He ended up with $14 of my dollars, Steven taking the last one. Daniel broke even. I hate everything. I suggested later that we could try blackjack at another point, but Dan pointed out that, in the interest of fairness, he would have to tell me that he was adept at blackjack as well. And he did. So I think I won't be gambling against him for money anymore.
Then came the games of pool. I would have beaten Steven if we had stopped at best out of three, best out of five, or even best out of seven, but nooo...I had to go for best out of nine. He won two games in a row to win, 5-4. He lost the first two games by pocketing the 8-ball by accident, one of them in a quite spectacular way that he in no way could have ever done intentionally. You know what I mean. I had a few shots that way myself, but fortunately none of them resulted in me losing a game.
Work today was rather bland and uninteresting. It was aggravating in that the flow of customers was directly proportionate to the rate at which I worked. When I was slow and getting caught up in the problems, there would be a slow trickle. Then, just as I cleared through the backlogs and started to rampage through customers, the trickle would become a geyser and we'd be up to our eyeballs in customers. The problem was that the flow was constant. Whether there was one more customer in line or fifty, there was always one to replace the one that just left. I saw the store nearly empty, two customers in line, and cherished the thought of a sweet, two-minute break. By the time I dealt with the two, two more arrived. When those two had been served, three more were there. And by the time those three were finished, four dozen had lined up. This kind of got really old, really fast, as one might imagine. So there was a never-ending stream of customers. And I know for a cold frozen fact that it's only going to get worse as the days pass. At least I'm making money. I pay money to not enjoy myself in some classes, at least for this lack of enjoyment I'm getting paid.
So, that's about it. Today's Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is a special seven-parter (Gasp!). I say seven parts because just one could not fully capture the scope of this marvel. Apparently, this guy "jinja" made a program that converts MIDI files into graphical representations, and jiggered up some songs that looked really keen when fed into said representation machine. He did seven of them:
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASXnFRYf6LI&NR The Retro Gaming Medley.
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdTdsn5G8L8 Cheetahmen 2, a highly forgettable NES game, but one that had some wicked music.
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7S20zH7iDU Kirby "Madley" (medley).
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF_1eyn25eA Mega Man, Dr. Wily, Stage 2.
5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz6djgwjjco Final Fantasy IV.
6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4DjC0BdKt4 Chrono Trigger, an awesome old RPG.
7. And finally, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wkI7hg65F0 also known as Super Mario Bros.
Enjoy 'em.
REPLIES.
Mom: Yes, yes. Don't overexert yourself.
Dad: Well, we can be a bit loud at times. It's part of our, er, charm. And I understand that all mortal lives are but fragments of a second to the hyper-extended life of a figure such as the devil, but true immortality means you never die, ever, which is darn inconvenient to a being that cashes in his check, so to speak, after you die. Not even when the sun burns out and the planet falls into molten slag. Hmm...but...that may just give me a story idea.
Vic: Well, here you are. Enjoy it. No more pouting, no matter how cute you may be when you do so.
Mike: That seems about par for the course, if Matt was running the Tomb to Gygax's standards. You'd think some GM in one of the groups would have fudged the dice to let at least one of his players live, but such a thing would have been contrary to the spirit of the exercise, I suppose.
Jake: Dude. Fine. Gawd. Jeez. Dude.
Bye.
1. Not nearly as much happens when I'm at home, just going to work and hanging out with friends, and...
2. What does happen while I'm at work is almost never worth mentioning, and what happens while I'm with friends, pretty much my entire potential audience is already there for it.
Last night was fairly worth mentioning, though. We played poker for a while, Texas Hold 'Em. I organized a game with Daniel, Dan, Steven, and myself. We figured it would be a friendly game, and I didn't go into it thinking I would win money, but instead would just have had fun with friends for a while in a slightly more high-stakes environment than usual.
I ended up losing $15, from an original stake of $10. (When I went bankrupt, the others convinced me to buy back in with $5 more. Then I lost all of that.) I wish Dan had told me beforehand that he had become extremely able at poker from his youth in Puerto Rico. He ended up with $14 of my dollars, Steven taking the last one. Daniel broke even. I hate everything. I suggested later that we could try blackjack at another point, but Dan pointed out that, in the interest of fairness, he would have to tell me that he was adept at blackjack as well. And he did. So I think I won't be gambling against him for money anymore.
Then came the games of pool. I would have beaten Steven if we had stopped at best out of three, best out of five, or even best out of seven, but nooo...I had to go for best out of nine. He won two games in a row to win, 5-4. He lost the first two games by pocketing the 8-ball by accident, one of them in a quite spectacular way that he in no way could have ever done intentionally. You know what I mean. I had a few shots that way myself, but fortunately none of them resulted in me losing a game.
Work today was rather bland and uninteresting. It was aggravating in that the flow of customers was directly proportionate to the rate at which I worked. When I was slow and getting caught up in the problems, there would be a slow trickle. Then, just as I cleared through the backlogs and started to rampage through customers, the trickle would become a geyser and we'd be up to our eyeballs in customers. The problem was that the flow was constant. Whether there was one more customer in line or fifty, there was always one to replace the one that just left. I saw the store nearly empty, two customers in line, and cherished the thought of a sweet, two-minute break. By the time I dealt with the two, two more arrived. When those two had been served, three more were there. And by the time those three were finished, four dozen had lined up. This kind of got really old, really fast, as one might imagine. So there was a never-ending stream of customers. And I know for a cold frozen fact that it's only going to get worse as the days pass. At least I'm making money. I pay money to not enjoy myself in some classes, at least for this lack of enjoyment I'm getting paid.
So, that's about it. Today's Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is a special seven-parter (Gasp!). I say seven parts because just one could not fully capture the scope of this marvel. Apparently, this guy "jinja" made a program that converts MIDI files into graphical representations, and jiggered up some songs that looked really keen when fed into said representation machine. He did seven of them:
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASXnFRYf6LI&NR The Retro Gaming Medley.
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdTdsn5G8L8 Cheetahmen 2, a highly forgettable NES game, but one that had some wicked music.
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7S20zH7iDU Kirby "Madley" (medley).
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF_1eyn25eA Mega Man, Dr. Wily, Stage 2.
5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz6djgwjjco Final Fantasy IV.
6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4DjC0BdKt4 Chrono Trigger, an awesome old RPG.
7. And finally, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wkI7hg65F0 also known as Super Mario Bros.
Enjoy 'em.
REPLIES.
Mom: Yes, yes. Don't overexert yourself.
Dad: Well, we can be a bit loud at times. It's part of our, er, charm. And I understand that all mortal lives are but fragments of a second to the hyper-extended life of a figure such as the devil, but true immortality means you never die, ever, which is darn inconvenient to a being that cashes in his check, so to speak, after you die. Not even when the sun burns out and the planet falls into molten slag. Hmm...but...that may just give me a story idea.
Vic: Well, here you are. Enjoy it. No more pouting, no matter how cute you may be when you do so.
Mike: That seems about par for the course, if Matt was running the Tomb to Gygax's standards. You'd think some GM in one of the groups would have fudged the dice to let at least one of his players live, but such a thing would have been contrary to the spirit of the exercise, I suppose.
Jake: Dude. Fine. Gawd. Jeez. Dude.
Bye.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Friday, December 14, 2007
Home Again, Home Again, Whoopity Whoop
I just arrived home. I don't have that much time to write...but I have a decent amount. But...y'know...I don't have much to talk about, either.
Okay. I'm talking to TJ right now. He's asking about my breakup with Victoria. I thought, y'know, he actually cared about our mental and emotional well-being, that he wanted to be sure that we were doing well in the wake of one of the most catastrophic emotional events in either of our lifetimes (well, in my lifetime, anyway), that he wanted to be a good friend and support me and/or her in our time of need. But no, he just wanted to know if she was coming down and bringing the Magic card she promised him for Christmas. That fatso.
I made a couple of new friends yesterday. One of them is Jen, a girl who had heretofore lived just down the hall from me, but we had never really met. She, like me, is a writer, and she read my devil story with great interest. She showed me her blog, and an old essay she had written that was based on a Mark Twain quote: "I wonder how much it would take to buy a soap bubble, if there were only one in the world." It was neat. As soon as I remember what her blog was titled, I'll link to it. She's nice.
The other one was a guy named Joey, whom I met while I was wandering around a dark campus at 3:00 AM last night. I couldn't sleep. I encountered him near the student union, and he said he was on his way back from a friend's house. I offered to walk him back; I had nothing better to do with my time. We ended up talking. He's a freshman and a journalism student like myself, so I told him to take classes with a certain professor who was awesome. We spoke of sports and the merits of joining marching band, the various strategies one should undergo while in early years of college, and other such things.
I friended both of them on Facebook. Though I'm not the biggest fan of Facebook as it relates to a lot of people obsessing over it constantly, it is the most useful tool for finding and keeping track of people that I have ever seen. So, that's awesome.
Now I'm home. Which is likewise awesome. So, er, that's it. No YouTube link today, I'll save it for Monday and a more substantive post. It's short, but, well, I'll have more time later. All my friends are over. I'll have either a McMillan installment or another short story on Monday.
REPLIES.
Steve: So do I, frankly. And, again, knowing rules is one thing, but there's no call to be a jerk just because you know how to respond to a fast effect or know what gets past a split second or something. Shmovacs acted just like I thought he would.
Dad: I have a hard time believing that the devil would give someone immortality. It seems, er, kind of contrary to the point of getting someone's soul if he'll never die. And maybe this dorm battle is supposed to increase my resilience to annoying coworkers later in life. Perhaps this was intended in the design of dormitories...
Mom: It's sad, but true. I never win, except when I'm in the many in a many-on-one game like Fury of Dracula. As for the devil, the classical interpretation of him is someone who tells the truth, but warps and twists and distorts it beyond all recognition - yet, it's still technically the truth. I think of him as the ultimate wish corruptor. I don't know why the hotel blew up, frankly.
Travis: Good to see you, finally. Your attempt was successful. And, er, this was the story. There's not going to be a sequel. It's left as an exercise to the reader to wonder whether the devil eventually wore the guy down, although frankly I doubt it. We do combine the two - people from any group join any game - but we're still formally two groups. They don't want to go under my banner, as they've been operating for some time, and...I like having my own group. It makes me feel special.
Climate wars are always a difficulty. But I didn't know Kelli liked it so hot. I'd figure her for the sort who was always burning up and wanted the AC on. I gave the name of the book in the original post, but here it is again: Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain! by Scott Adams. And in case people didn't read Travis's comment, here is his blog:
www.travis-is-bored.blogspot.com
There, that was easy.
Bye.
Okay. I'm talking to TJ right now. He's asking about my breakup with Victoria. I thought, y'know, he actually cared about our mental and emotional well-being, that he wanted to be sure that we were doing well in the wake of one of the most catastrophic emotional events in either of our lifetimes (well, in my lifetime, anyway), that he wanted to be a good friend and support me and/or her in our time of need. But no, he just wanted to know if she was coming down and bringing the Magic card she promised him for Christmas. That fatso.
I made a couple of new friends yesterday. One of them is Jen, a girl who had heretofore lived just down the hall from me, but we had never really met. She, like me, is a writer, and she read my devil story with great interest. She showed me her blog, and an old essay she had written that was based on a Mark Twain quote: "I wonder how much it would take to buy a soap bubble, if there were only one in the world." It was neat. As soon as I remember what her blog was titled, I'll link to it. She's nice.
The other one was a guy named Joey, whom I met while I was wandering around a dark campus at 3:00 AM last night. I couldn't sleep. I encountered him near the student union, and he said he was on his way back from a friend's house. I offered to walk him back; I had nothing better to do with my time. We ended up talking. He's a freshman and a journalism student like myself, so I told him to take classes with a certain professor who was awesome. We spoke of sports and the merits of joining marching band, the various strategies one should undergo while in early years of college, and other such things.
I friended both of them on Facebook. Though I'm not the biggest fan of Facebook as it relates to a lot of people obsessing over it constantly, it is the most useful tool for finding and keeping track of people that I have ever seen. So, that's awesome.
Now I'm home. Which is likewise awesome. So, er, that's it. No YouTube link today, I'll save it for Monday and a more substantive post. It's short, but, well, I'll have more time later. All my friends are over. I'll have either a McMillan installment or another short story on Monday.
REPLIES.
Steve: So do I, frankly. And, again, knowing rules is one thing, but there's no call to be a jerk just because you know how to respond to a fast effect or know what gets past a split second or something. Shmovacs acted just like I thought he would.
Dad: I have a hard time believing that the devil would give someone immortality. It seems, er, kind of contrary to the point of getting someone's soul if he'll never die. And maybe this dorm battle is supposed to increase my resilience to annoying coworkers later in life. Perhaps this was intended in the design of dormitories...
Mom: It's sad, but true. I never win, except when I'm in the many in a many-on-one game like Fury of Dracula. As for the devil, the classical interpretation of him is someone who tells the truth, but warps and twists and distorts it beyond all recognition - yet, it's still technically the truth. I think of him as the ultimate wish corruptor. I don't know why the hotel blew up, frankly.
Travis: Good to see you, finally. Your attempt was successful. And, er, this was the story. There's not going to be a sequel. It's left as an exercise to the reader to wonder whether the devil eventually wore the guy down, although frankly I doubt it. We do combine the two - people from any group join any game - but we're still formally two groups. They don't want to go under my banner, as they've been operating for some time, and...I like having my own group. It makes me feel special.
Climate wars are always a difficulty. But I didn't know Kelli liked it so hot. I'd figure her for the sort who was always burning up and wanted the AC on. I gave the name of the book in the original post, but here it is again: Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain! by Scott Adams. And in case people didn't read Travis's comment, here is his blog:
www.travis-is-bored.blogspot.com
There, that was easy.
Bye.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Instead Of One Big Post, How About Several Small Ones?
I read the new book out by Scott Adams, called Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain! It's a non-Dilbert book, which is peculiar for the man, but he made it work. His style is writing many, many one- or two-page short essays on various things that happen in his life. I loved it. One of my favorite bits from it was when he was talking about how people annoy him by asking him how to overcome writer's block (I'm paraphrasing here, but I'm trying to get as close to his original words as possible):
"People seem to think that if they can just get around their writer's block, then an endless fountain of creativity will spring forth. Some people just don't have that much creativity to begin with. It would be like me asking a pro basketball player how to overcome my jumper's block, so that instead of driving places I could just jump everywhere, like the Hulk, only less angry."
Brilliant. I love it. I'm buying the book for my father for Christmas. Yes, Dad, I know you read this blog, but I've already told you about this, so it should come as no surprise. I know how you hate surprises so, anyway. So I thought, why not steal - I mean, borrow that particular style? He doesn't exactly have a copyright on it. Millions of blog-writers the world over do it. I just got used to the long and overarching post that meanders, and never got a chance to try the short, sharp, and punchy essay style practiced by many others. So, uh, I'm going to give that a try.
*
*
*
The Temperature in My Room
---------------------------------------
This is a constant bone of contention between my roommate Walter and me. The way I see it, I like to have the air conditioning set to at least marginally within the temperature boundaries of human survival. Walter, meanwhile, was apparently tasked with reaching absolute zero by his physics professor, and chose our room to be his experimental playground. This, as can be imagined, leads to quite a bit of conflict between us. Of course, to hear him tell it, he’s just trying to stop his internal organs from liquefying in the heat, whereas I like it set so high that his computer melts and microwave dinner is done before he takes it out of the package. Some people just exaggerate far too much, I believe.
I don’t feel I demand much as a roommate from Walter. I let him do what he wants, and I don’t get in his way. When he brings over his friend Jess (his friend who sleeps in his bed overnight sometimes and with whom he does unspeakable things while I’m not there, yet who he steadfastly maintains is not his girlfriend, just a friend of his, not that I’m bitter) to spend the night or to hang out and listen to music, I don’t complain. I just put on my headphones. But these climate wars have got to cease at some point.
This temperature battle is further complicated by the fact that Walter likes to leave our window open. I have nothing against an open window, except when it’s forty degrees out and the wind is blowing. When it gets to where I have to wear a sweater and a hat just to be comfortable while playing Team Fortress 2, things have gone too far by half. We have to share this room, and his climate-related tyranny cannot go on any further. Perhaps we can have a logical, earnest, and reasoned debate in which we calmly resolve our differences and work out a scenario that is mutually satisfying.
Or maybe I’ll just leave his pajamas in the Micro-Kelvin Low-Temperature Generator we’ve got down in the Physics building for a few hours so they shatter when he tries to put them on. That’ll learn 'im.
*
*
*
Not Enough People Come to My Game Club
----------------------------------------------------------
There are the regulars: Matt, Steve, John, and occasionally Kevin; there’s Vic, who really only used to come because I made her, and will keep coming because I’m there; there are the various hangers-on who show up once every so often, but not with any kind of regularity, Chris, Mike, Patrice; and there are all those people whose names I don’t know. This is not nearly enough. Basically, though there are a good number of people there, most of them usually break off to the other game club in progress (we meet at the same time, useful because some of their members bring enormous duffel bags full of games which they let us borrow) or just sit around playing Magic.
I mean, yes, it’s a fairly narrow specialization in terms of people who are willing to attend, and most of our games are five or six players maximum, but I would like to see some new faces every so often. It gets to the point where I know how to play the games we play because I can psychologically “read” the other people, since I’ve played against them so many times. Then again, my uninterrupted string of losses in pretty much every game we play seems to put a crimp in that theory.
What really irks me is when I think I have some new blood, it always slips away from me. I met a guy named Harry in the study room when I was supposed to be studying for my physics test, and we ended up talking for two hours instead of studying or reading. (I still got an A on the test, because my class is incredibly easy.) So I invited him to my game club. Sure, he said, he would come. He would enjoy such an opportunity. And sure enough, like clockwork, he did not come.
A female friend of mine, Alyx, I wanted to bring to my club? Indeed she would come, she claimed. She got off work an hour before and she had nothing else for the evening. A quick inquiry around 5:00 today revealed that something had come up, and she was not arriving. Story of my freakin’ life. I’m seriously considering drugging people and abducting them to the student union. I can just see the exchange:
Him: “Whu...where am I?”
Me: “Game Night.”
Him: “Why am I tied up?”
Me: “So you don’t miss out on a moment of the festivities.”
Him: “And why is this sword above my head?”
Me: “That’s to ensure you stay in the proper exhilarated gaming spirit.”
Him: “And why are my pants missing?”
Me: “Your pants are missing?”
Or something like that. It’s beginning to look like the only option.
*
*
*
The third is a short story. I know, terribly bad form to start one story with another unfinished, but I just felt that this one needed writing. I'll get back to McMillan soon, I promise.
*
*
*
I was sitting in my favorite seat at the steakhouse on the corner, the one near the window, when the devil came in and sat opposite me. I wrinkled my eyebrows at his arrival. It was the third time this week he had come, and I was beginning to get annoyed.
"Shall we get started?" he said. His voice was a pleasant tenor, with just the faintest hiss on the edge of hearing. I suppose he couldn't fully suppress his true nature. Or maybe he just liked messing with me. Screw that, I know he liked messing with me. Why else would he keep showing up?
"I'm still not entirely convinced you're real, you know," I said, stirring my coffee and adding another sugar packet. "Nobody else ever sees you."
"The only one I want to see me is you, for the moment," the devil said. "And if I wasn't real, could I do...this?" He extended a white-gloved finger and shot a bolt of flame at my steak, turning it in an instant from a medium-rare to a blackened rectangle.
I was cool as steel. "I could have ordered it well-done and simply forgotten about it," I said. I picked up my knife and fork and began to eat. The steak seemed a lost cause, so I started on the potatoes instead.
The devil waved a hand impatiently. "Leaving aside our existential debates for the moment," he said, "I want to know if you've reconsidered my proposal."
"Uh huhh ruhcuuhsuhuh," I mumbled through a mouthful of potatoes.
"What was that?" said the devil brightly. "You know it's not polite to eat with your mouth full."
I swallowed and picked a stray bit of potato skin off my lip. "I said, I have reconsidered," I remarked. "But the answer is still no. Tempting as your offer is, it's simply not worth my eternal soul."
"What's a soul worth these days?" the devil countered. "How often do you use it, anyway? And think carefully on what I'm offering you. The ability to -"
"To see into anyone's mind and determine their innermost secrets," I said wearily. "I'm the one who came up with that, you hardly need to remind me." At that point, my waitress came over. She frowned in confusion at my incinerated steak. "I guess it was a bit overdone," I said. "I'll have another, medium rare."
"And a bowl of chili," said the devil absently. He was amusing himself by heating up the silverware to a glowing cherry-red and sticking them together.
"And I'll also have a bowl of chili," I said to the waitress.
"As spicy as they'll make it," the devil added.
"As spicy as you'll make it," I repeated resignedly. The waitress wrote it down, gave a confused glance at the seat opposite me, and wandered back to the kitchen. Just before she walked in, she looked back at our table, then shook her head and entered.
"We're getting sidetracked," said the devil. "Now, I've tried bargaining, and let me just say that you're a tough nut to crack. But I despair at the thought of you slipping through my fingers..." Smoke rose from the tip of the index finger on his right-hand glove, followed by a tiny little jet of flame. Without looking, he dunked it in my coffee and continued. "So I'm going to do something for you I rarely have cause to resort to."
He grinned. This was never a good sign.
"I'm going to give you a free sample," he said. His grin grew wider. "I'm going to give you just a taste of the power you've always wanted. Maybe then you'll change your mind."
I raised an eyebrow. If I knew anything about the devil, it was that if you gave him an inch, he'd take a mile. "What's the catch?" I asked.
"No catch," he said. "Just a quick look at what you could have, if you make the right decision. Like..." His grin faded somewhat as his gaze swept the room. "Her," he said finally. "The girl in the corner, in the blue dress."
"The one sitting next to the old guy with a dusty suit?" I asked.
"That's the one," the devil said. "She...hmm..." He lapsed into thought. He had an irritating tendency to do that, just when he was about to get to a point. Idly, I considered leaving some money and walking out, but I had to admit, the devil had me intrigued.
At last, he looked up and smiled. It was a real smile, showing his teeth. That always slightly unnerved me. When I first met the devil, I expected glistening fangs or charred gnashers, but he simply had a row of normal-looking teeth, white as anything. The kind of white that was only found in toothpaste commercials. Somehow, I had expected better...or maybe it was worse, from him.
Just then, a thought echoed in my mind. That man isn't her husband...she's having an affair. As soon as the words passed behind my eyes, the devil nodded slowly as if he'd known all along. And as if satisfied with a job done well, he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. I knew what would happen when the devil started acting self-satisfied. Soon he would start humming, and I just couldn't deal with that. I had had a headache since noon.
"Not impressed," I said shortly.
The devil cracked one eye open. His smile diminished. "Well, I wanted to give you a free sample, not give away the farm," he said. He sounded peeved. "Besides, that's not exactly something you could have figured out on your own."
"Untrue," I countered. "There are plenty of signs. See the table they're at?" The devil nodded shortly, as if this exchange wasn't worth his time. "It's right in the corner, behind the short wall. A person sitting there could get a good view of the entrance, but someone at the entrance couldn't see there unless he was looking right at that table - and she's positioned herself so that she's behind her companion, shielding her from sight. She wants to see whoever comes in, without being seen herself."
The devil snorted. "Coincidence," he said. "That hardly means anything."
I took a sip of my coffee. It tasted faintly of sulfur. Putting down the cup, I continued, "Not by itself, no. But look at the man's suit. He's wearing a flower in his buttonhole."
"So?" said the devil. "Romance isn't entirely dead, or so I've heard."
"So married couples generally don't bother with cutesy stuff like flowers in their buttonhole," I added mildly. I reached for a dinner roll, only to find that the devil had taken the one I had been saving for later in the meal, and was in fact buttering it as I spoke. I suppose the devil really is in the details. "People on a daring jaunt like an affair might, though. It adds to the mystique. But the real kicker comes from looking at their ring fingers."
"What about them?" the devil said. He was sounding less and less pleased by the minute.
"The wedding rings have different designs. His is a twisty silver, and hers is straight gold. People don't get mismatched wedding rings."
The devil had lost any trace of his grin. He looked like a kid for whom Christmas had been delayed six months. "Way to go, Sherlock," he said sarcastically. "You've cracked the case."
I nodded. "Plus, on the subject of you not existing, this doesn't lend any credence to your side of the argument," I said. "I could have figured all that out on my own."
The devil flushed red and opened his mouth as if to shout, but after a second or two, settled back into his seat and visibly - it seemed forcibly - relaxed. "I suppose I'll just have to try harder next time," he said jauntily. His voice had regained its earlier jocularity. "I always knew you weren't going to be easy. From the day I met you, I knew."
At that moment, the waitress arrived with my new steak and the devil's chili. He smiled politely at her, but she returned him only with a puzzled glance in my direction. "I have quite the appetite tonight," I said, by way of explanation.
"I hate to eat and run, but I really must be going," the devil said calmly as the waitress walked away. "Pressing business. You can imagine." He picked up the bowl and a spoon, and - well, he must have eaten it, because a few seconds later, he put down the bowl and it was empty. I don't quite recall what happened in the meanwhile. All I know is, later that night I had a bad case of heartburn.
He stood up and pushed in his chair. "Until next time," he said lightly, and left.
I sat in silence for a minute or two, then took another sip of my coffee. I grimaced. I was going to have to get a new cup as well.
*
*
*
There. The first paragraph just popped into my mind earlier tonight, and, well, it's one of those things where you just have to write it. It's like I wasn't even creating it...like I was just putting to text the words that were already there and fully formed. It's a good feeling, but uncommon.
My Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gn7VmFTLOY It's the ending to Casino Royale, the old 1967 version instead of the new Daniel Craig version. It was such a weird thing...I just had to share it with everyone. I really can't explain it, you have to watch.
REPLIES.
Mike: That was all genuine?! My word, I didn't know Gygax hated the players that much. And yes, the Chairleg of Truth was quite the awesome moment. Fury of Dracula seems to me unwinnable because of my bad luck with the dice, and I was watching you and my tokens. The GM is frequently distracted.
Michelle: That wasn't you? And you're replying now...
Steve: Yes, but there's a difference between knowing the rules of a game and actively disparaging anyone who doesn't as less than you. It seems silly. And no, they don't get it, they'd prefer to copy the Pro Tour Top 8 decks.
Dad: I really pulled out the stops for that description. And I mentioned to Matt the story of your Pinto, to further justify my Gauss-rifle-wielding credibility.
Dan: Good. Read more.
Mom: I liked it. As I say, I went all out for that one.
And the few that were put up tonight...
Mike: I don't see you as a hanger-on per se and as such. It's just that you're not a fixture like John and Matt and Steve and such are. Maybe "hanger-on" was too harsh a term, maybe I should say "infrequent attender" instead. Lateness is fine, since we go all night anyway. Their game club came first, is what I mean to say.
Steve: Fine. You'll have to agree that the wait was worth it.
Vic: Again I say, "hanger-on" is too harsh. I know all the people, just not their names. And there's a difference between "cold" and, well, "****ing freezing."
Bye.
"People seem to think that if they can just get around their writer's block, then an endless fountain of creativity will spring forth. Some people just don't have that much creativity to begin with. It would be like me asking a pro basketball player how to overcome my jumper's block, so that instead of driving places I could just jump everywhere, like the Hulk, only less angry."
Brilliant. I love it. I'm buying the book for my father for Christmas. Yes, Dad, I know you read this blog, but I've already told you about this, so it should come as no surprise. I know how you hate surprises so, anyway. So I thought, why not steal - I mean, borrow that particular style? He doesn't exactly have a copyright on it. Millions of blog-writers the world over do it. I just got used to the long and overarching post that meanders, and never got a chance to try the short, sharp, and punchy essay style practiced by many others. So, uh, I'm going to give that a try.
*
*
*
The Temperature in My Room
---------------------------------------
This is a constant bone of contention between my roommate Walter and me. The way I see it, I like to have the air conditioning set to at least marginally within the temperature boundaries of human survival. Walter, meanwhile, was apparently tasked with reaching absolute zero by his physics professor, and chose our room to be his experimental playground. This, as can be imagined, leads to quite a bit of conflict between us. Of course, to hear him tell it, he’s just trying to stop his internal organs from liquefying in the heat, whereas I like it set so high that his computer melts and microwave dinner is done before he takes it out of the package. Some people just exaggerate far too much, I believe.
I don’t feel I demand much as a roommate from Walter. I let him do what he wants, and I don’t get in his way. When he brings over his friend Jess (his friend who sleeps in his bed overnight sometimes and with whom he does unspeakable things while I’m not there, yet who he steadfastly maintains is not his girlfriend, just a friend of his, not that I’m bitter) to spend the night or to hang out and listen to music, I don’t complain. I just put on my headphones. But these climate wars have got to cease at some point.
This temperature battle is further complicated by the fact that Walter likes to leave our window open. I have nothing against an open window, except when it’s forty degrees out and the wind is blowing. When it gets to where I have to wear a sweater and a hat just to be comfortable while playing Team Fortress 2, things have gone too far by half. We have to share this room, and his climate-related tyranny cannot go on any further. Perhaps we can have a logical, earnest, and reasoned debate in which we calmly resolve our differences and work out a scenario that is mutually satisfying.
Or maybe I’ll just leave his pajamas in the Micro-Kelvin Low-Temperature Generator we’ve got down in the Physics building for a few hours so they shatter when he tries to put them on. That’ll learn 'im.
*
*
*
Not Enough People Come to My Game Club
----------------------------------------------------------
There are the regulars: Matt, Steve, John, and occasionally Kevin; there’s Vic, who really only used to come because I made her, and will keep coming because I’m there; there are the various hangers-on who show up once every so often, but not with any kind of regularity, Chris, Mike, Patrice; and there are all those people whose names I don’t know. This is not nearly enough. Basically, though there are a good number of people there, most of them usually break off to the other game club in progress (we meet at the same time, useful because some of their members bring enormous duffel bags full of games which they let us borrow) or just sit around playing Magic.
I mean, yes, it’s a fairly narrow specialization in terms of people who are willing to attend, and most of our games are five or six players maximum, but I would like to see some new faces every so often. It gets to the point where I know how to play the games we play because I can psychologically “read” the other people, since I’ve played against them so many times. Then again, my uninterrupted string of losses in pretty much every game we play seems to put a crimp in that theory.
What really irks me is when I think I have some new blood, it always slips away from me. I met a guy named Harry in the study room when I was supposed to be studying for my physics test, and we ended up talking for two hours instead of studying or reading. (I still got an A on the test, because my class is incredibly easy.) So I invited him to my game club. Sure, he said, he would come. He would enjoy such an opportunity. And sure enough, like clockwork, he did not come.
A female friend of mine, Alyx, I wanted to bring to my club? Indeed she would come, she claimed. She got off work an hour before and she had nothing else for the evening. A quick inquiry around 5:00 today revealed that something had come up, and she was not arriving. Story of my freakin’ life. I’m seriously considering drugging people and abducting them to the student union. I can just see the exchange:
Him: “Whu...where am I?”
Me: “Game Night.”
Him: “Why am I tied up?”
Me: “So you don’t miss out on a moment of the festivities.”
Him: “And why is this sword above my head?”
Me: “That’s to ensure you stay in the proper exhilarated gaming spirit.”
Him: “And why are my pants missing?”
Me: “Your pants are missing?”
Or something like that. It’s beginning to look like the only option.
*
*
*
The third is a short story. I know, terribly bad form to start one story with another unfinished, but I just felt that this one needed writing. I'll get back to McMillan soon, I promise.
*
*
*
I was sitting in my favorite seat at the steakhouse on the corner, the one near the window, when the devil came in and sat opposite me. I wrinkled my eyebrows at his arrival. It was the third time this week he had come, and I was beginning to get annoyed.
"Shall we get started?" he said. His voice was a pleasant tenor, with just the faintest hiss on the edge of hearing. I suppose he couldn't fully suppress his true nature. Or maybe he just liked messing with me. Screw that, I know he liked messing with me. Why else would he keep showing up?
"I'm still not entirely convinced you're real, you know," I said, stirring my coffee and adding another sugar packet. "Nobody else ever sees you."
"The only one I want to see me is you, for the moment," the devil said. "And if I wasn't real, could I do...this?" He extended a white-gloved finger and shot a bolt of flame at my steak, turning it in an instant from a medium-rare to a blackened rectangle.
I was cool as steel. "I could have ordered it well-done and simply forgotten about it," I said. I picked up my knife and fork and began to eat. The steak seemed a lost cause, so I started on the potatoes instead.
The devil waved a hand impatiently. "Leaving aside our existential debates for the moment," he said, "I want to know if you've reconsidered my proposal."
"Uh huhh ruhcuuhsuhuh," I mumbled through a mouthful of potatoes.
"What was that?" said the devil brightly. "You know it's not polite to eat with your mouth full."
I swallowed and picked a stray bit of potato skin off my lip. "I said, I have reconsidered," I remarked. "But the answer is still no. Tempting as your offer is, it's simply not worth my eternal soul."
"What's a soul worth these days?" the devil countered. "How often do you use it, anyway? And think carefully on what I'm offering you. The ability to -"
"To see into anyone's mind and determine their innermost secrets," I said wearily. "I'm the one who came up with that, you hardly need to remind me." At that point, my waitress came over. She frowned in confusion at my incinerated steak. "I guess it was a bit overdone," I said. "I'll have another, medium rare."
"And a bowl of chili," said the devil absently. He was amusing himself by heating up the silverware to a glowing cherry-red and sticking them together.
"And I'll also have a bowl of chili," I said to the waitress.
"As spicy as they'll make it," the devil added.
"As spicy as you'll make it," I repeated resignedly. The waitress wrote it down, gave a confused glance at the seat opposite me, and wandered back to the kitchen. Just before she walked in, she looked back at our table, then shook her head and entered.
"We're getting sidetracked," said the devil. "Now, I've tried bargaining, and let me just say that you're a tough nut to crack. But I despair at the thought of you slipping through my fingers..." Smoke rose from the tip of the index finger on his right-hand glove, followed by a tiny little jet of flame. Without looking, he dunked it in my coffee and continued. "So I'm going to do something for you I rarely have cause to resort to."
He grinned. This was never a good sign.
"I'm going to give you a free sample," he said. His grin grew wider. "I'm going to give you just a taste of the power you've always wanted. Maybe then you'll change your mind."
I raised an eyebrow. If I knew anything about the devil, it was that if you gave him an inch, he'd take a mile. "What's the catch?" I asked.
"No catch," he said. "Just a quick look at what you could have, if you make the right decision. Like..." His grin faded somewhat as his gaze swept the room. "Her," he said finally. "The girl in the corner, in the blue dress."
"The one sitting next to the old guy with a dusty suit?" I asked.
"That's the one," the devil said. "She...hmm..." He lapsed into thought. He had an irritating tendency to do that, just when he was about to get to a point. Idly, I considered leaving some money and walking out, but I had to admit, the devil had me intrigued.
At last, he looked up and smiled. It was a real smile, showing his teeth. That always slightly unnerved me. When I first met the devil, I expected glistening fangs or charred gnashers, but he simply had a row of normal-looking teeth, white as anything. The kind of white that was only found in toothpaste commercials. Somehow, I had expected better...or maybe it was worse, from him.
Just then, a thought echoed in my mind. That man isn't her husband...she's having an affair. As soon as the words passed behind my eyes, the devil nodded slowly as if he'd known all along. And as if satisfied with a job done well, he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. I knew what would happen when the devil started acting self-satisfied. Soon he would start humming, and I just couldn't deal with that. I had had a headache since noon.
"Not impressed," I said shortly.
The devil cracked one eye open. His smile diminished. "Well, I wanted to give you a free sample, not give away the farm," he said. He sounded peeved. "Besides, that's not exactly something you could have figured out on your own."
"Untrue," I countered. "There are plenty of signs. See the table they're at?" The devil nodded shortly, as if this exchange wasn't worth his time. "It's right in the corner, behind the short wall. A person sitting there could get a good view of the entrance, but someone at the entrance couldn't see there unless he was looking right at that table - and she's positioned herself so that she's behind her companion, shielding her from sight. She wants to see whoever comes in, without being seen herself."
The devil snorted. "Coincidence," he said. "That hardly means anything."
I took a sip of my coffee. It tasted faintly of sulfur. Putting down the cup, I continued, "Not by itself, no. But look at the man's suit. He's wearing a flower in his buttonhole."
"So?" said the devil. "Romance isn't entirely dead, or so I've heard."
"So married couples generally don't bother with cutesy stuff like flowers in their buttonhole," I added mildly. I reached for a dinner roll, only to find that the devil had taken the one I had been saving for later in the meal, and was in fact buttering it as I spoke. I suppose the devil really is in the details. "People on a daring jaunt like an affair might, though. It adds to the mystique. But the real kicker comes from looking at their ring fingers."
"What about them?" the devil said. He was sounding less and less pleased by the minute.
"The wedding rings have different designs. His is a twisty silver, and hers is straight gold. People don't get mismatched wedding rings."
The devil had lost any trace of his grin. He looked like a kid for whom Christmas had been delayed six months. "Way to go, Sherlock," he said sarcastically. "You've cracked the case."
I nodded. "Plus, on the subject of you not existing, this doesn't lend any credence to your side of the argument," I said. "I could have figured all that out on my own."
The devil flushed red and opened his mouth as if to shout, but after a second or two, settled back into his seat and visibly - it seemed forcibly - relaxed. "I suppose I'll just have to try harder next time," he said jauntily. His voice had regained its earlier jocularity. "I always knew you weren't going to be easy. From the day I met you, I knew."
At that moment, the waitress arrived with my new steak and the devil's chili. He smiled politely at her, but she returned him only with a puzzled glance in my direction. "I have quite the appetite tonight," I said, by way of explanation.
"I hate to eat and run, but I really must be going," the devil said calmly as the waitress walked away. "Pressing business. You can imagine." He picked up the bowl and a spoon, and - well, he must have eaten it, because a few seconds later, he put down the bowl and it was empty. I don't quite recall what happened in the meanwhile. All I know is, later that night I had a bad case of heartburn.
He stood up and pushed in his chair. "Until next time," he said lightly, and left.
I sat in silence for a minute or two, then took another sip of my coffee. I grimaced. I was going to have to get a new cup as well.
*
*
*
There. The first paragraph just popped into my mind earlier tonight, and, well, it's one of those things where you just have to write it. It's like I wasn't even creating it...like I was just putting to text the words that were already there and fully formed. It's a good feeling, but uncommon.
My Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gn7VmFTLOY It's the ending to Casino Royale, the old 1967 version instead of the new Daniel Craig version. It was such a weird thing...I just had to share it with everyone. I really can't explain it, you have to watch.
REPLIES.
Mike: That was all genuine?! My word, I didn't know Gygax hated the players that much. And yes, the Chairleg of Truth was quite the awesome moment. Fury of Dracula seems to me unwinnable because of my bad luck with the dice, and I was watching you and my tokens. The GM is frequently distracted.
Michelle: That wasn't you? And you're replying now...
Steve: Yes, but there's a difference between knowing the rules of a game and actively disparaging anyone who doesn't as less than you. It seems silly. And no, they don't get it, they'd prefer to copy the Pro Tour Top 8 decks.
Dad: I really pulled out the stops for that description. And I mentioned to Matt the story of your Pinto, to further justify my Gauss-rifle-wielding credibility.
Dan: Good. Read more.
Mom: I liked it. As I say, I went all out for that one.
And the few that were put up tonight...
Mike: I don't see you as a hanger-on per se and as such. It's just that you're not a fixture like John and Matt and Steve and such are. Maybe "hanger-on" was too harsh a term, maybe I should say "infrequent attender" instead. Lateness is fine, since we go all night anyway. Their game club came first, is what I mean to say.
Steve: Fine. You'll have to agree that the wait was worth it.
Vic: Again I say, "hanger-on" is too harsh. I know all the people, just not their names. And there's a difference between "cold" and, well, "****ing freezing."
Bye.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Game Night Is Fun...Game-All-Nighter Is More Fun
Let me just open with this. The fact that during the all-night gaming marathon on Thursday I and my friends talked too loudly and covered up the movies Vic was trying to watch was one of the factors, a "last-straw" factor, in our breakup. It in and of itself was not a major sin (well, it was pretty bad), but it contributed. So I'm sorry, Vic, if you still read and comment. And now I will speak no more of it, focusing instead on the good that came from that evening.
Oh my. We have to do this again sometime. It was originally supposed to be a Lord of the Rings marathon movie watching experience for Ricky, my RA (residential advisor), who recently vouchsafed to me that he had never seen any of the LotR movies. Scarcely restraining my impulse to burn him as a heretic on the spot, I instead invited him to an all-night movie marathon. I would also invite several of my Game Night friends, which was especially important, seeing as one of them actually owned the movies and I did not. We figured we'd bring some games along, during the dull parts, maybe just as a sideline.
Imagine our surprise when, the day of the event, Ricky cancelled on us. He said he was busy. No biggie, we figured, we can do this without the guest of honor, eh? Not like all of us have pressing social engagements that we're skipping for this. So we arrived, around 7:00, and set up a game of Citadels while we waited for everyone else to show up. All told, there were seven of us.
Citadels was entertaining. We switched around a lot of the profession cards, and changed the rules somewhat so one card was no longer randomly thrown out. Instead, the last two cards were discarded after everyone chose theirs. It made things somewhat easier, and prevented people from getting stuck with the Queen constantly. It was just as well, really, since there was no King card. There was an Emperor card in its place; the Emperor could crown anyone on the board King, and then the new King would have to give the Emperor a gold piece. So, of course, this was less a blessing than a really aggravating occurrence for most of the game, being able to choose first notwithstanding.
After Citadels, we started a game of Paranoia. For anyone who's never played, Paranoia is the RPG for reckless and suicidal players. It takes place far in the nuclear-scarred future, where the remnants of humanity live underground in a massive complex dominated by a psychotic and homicidal AI called Friend Computer. (The Computer is your Friend. Not feeling friendly enough is treason, punishable by summary execution.) There is technically a system in place that allows for wounds and hit point damage, but nobody ever uses it. The slightest damage is generally enough to completely annihilate a PC. But that's why we're clones: we can jump into a new clone body when ours is destroyed. True, we have to ration them somewhat (we only get so many), but it allows for interesting plays that quite often result in a Total Party Kill, or TPK for short. One example: Thermonuclear hand grenades. You get the picture.
Normally we traipse around Alpha Complex and perform various errands for the Computer while trying to avoid anything that smacks of treason, which includes but is not limited to: disrespecting the Computer; disrespecting a citizen of higher rank; interacting with an object beyond your security clearance; catching an object thrown at you that is beyond your security clearance; dropping an object thrown at you that is beyond your security clearance (That's a waste of Computer resources!); saying the wrong things in earshot of the Computer or one of its agents (read: anyone); being a communist or a mutant; not killing communists or mutants on sight; being suspected of sympathizing with communists or mutants; having the Computer think, just in passing, that you are a communist or a mutant (note: everyone in this game is a mutant and probably a communist); leaving your shoelaces untied; standing in the wrong place; breathing too loud; and failing to love the Computer for its infinite sense of justice, kindness, and mercy. You get the idea.
But this time, Matt (the Game Master) decided to take things in a different direction. Yea, for today, Paranoia and D&D would clash mightily. We entered the Tomb of Horrors, a Dungeons & Dragons scenario, one that is designed to inflict TPK as often as possible. We were free from the capricious whims of the computer, but every action we took, if it was the wrong one, ended with "You fall into a pit trap and die." This seems somewhat excessive for a D&D adventure, where players get precisely one life, but I suspect Matt was scattering pit traps in the manner that a boxer being battered by Mike Tyson might scatter teeth: randomly, painfully, and with a lot of blood.
We were aided in this endeavor by being able to choose a pair of mutant powers from a list beforehand. I picked Transmutation, shaping matter, and Electroshock, which is self-explanatory. Others picked such combinations as Energy Shield and Regeneration, and one adventurous spirit, Kevin, chose Matter Eating and another I can't recall because he never used it. His response to any situation was "eat it." This vexed Matt, as he tended to wax eloquent when describing the various deadly rooms we were entering:
Matt: "You come across a large room full of ornate furniture, dust on every surface. Elaborate tapestries cover the walls, and intricate carvings festoon the uncovered portions of the walls and ceiling. The room has a baroque feel to it, and you can sense in the musty air a definite feeling of foreboding. In the shadows, you spot a flicker of -"
Kevin: "I eat it."
Matt: "What?"
Kevin: "I eat it."
Matt: "Eat what?"
Kevin: "Whatever."
Kevin used up all his clones fairly quickly. An irritated GM can kill you quicker than, well, Mike Tyson. One among our number had Desolidify, useful for avoiding the various pit traps and other such hazards, but every time he went ethereal, if he fumbled the roll, he would get molested by an incubus (male version of a succubus, known for haunting the ethereal plane). This became something of a running joke, as he rolled notoriously poorly throughout the adventure. Fortunately, those among us who rolled poorly could fix these problems with Perversity tokens, small black glass tokens, a set number of which were distributed by Matt at the beginning of the adventure. They were essentially a means of bribing the GM into fudging the die roll in your favor. Occasionally he would declare "Perversity for everyone!" and scatter them around the table. This would cause a frenetic grab-fest for the tokens that resembled a demented version of Hungry Hungry Hippos. But the main means of acquiring more tokens was to steal them from the GM when he wasn't looking. And thus, the cycle continued.
With my powers of Transmutation, I would often transmute obstacles from our path. After turning three successive things into doors (a pile of rubble, a trapdoor-floor, and a less impressive-looking door), I became known as the master of creating doors. Electroshock was used far more conventionally. In one memorable instance, in order to destroy a skeleton that was menacing me with a large sword, I tried the following tactic. It is important to know that we were allowed ad hoc "narrow specializations," skills we could make up on the fly, if they were deemed sufficiently narrow.
Me: "I take an ad hoc skill."
Matt: "Which?"
Me: "Gauss rifle design."
Matt: "...What?"
Me: "You heard me. Can I have it?"
Matt: "Sure, I guess."
Me: "Ok. I take all the metal within my reach and transmute it into a Gauss rifle."
Matt: "Now hold on a second..."
Me: "Can I try?"
Matt: "Eh, sure. Roll it."
Me: *rolls* *succeeds* "Woot."
Matt: "Great. Now what?"
Me: "I use my Electroshock to energize it."
Matt: "Oookay. Roll it."
Me: *rolls* *succeeds again* "Awesome."
Matt: "You fire the Gauss rifle. The skeleton is obliterated into pieces too small to be detected with the naked eye. You have blown a hole in the walls that leads all the way to the entrance. Then the Gauss rifle crumbles to dust and you can never make another one."
Me: "That's fair."
This caused one of us, I forget who, to relate the story of the time one of their characters, a mage, had to deal with a seemingly invulnerable demon that was terrorizing a city. He had a couple of portal gates that were linked to each other, but not much else. He aligned them in such a way that an object could fall through them endlessly, acquired a boulder, and let it fall through the portals until it accelerated to roughly 0.7 times the speed of light. (It's magic, it doesn't have to make sense.) Then he realigned one portal and aimed at the demon. The GM's memorable phrase was "Okay. It takes 82,000 damage. But it can save for half." It wasn't quite as invulnerable as it had boasted, it happened.
Lots more stuff happened in Paranoia, but I don't really remember it. We did manage to survive the Tomb of Horrors, but only with a lot of help from the GM. (He "reloaded from save" once and allowed me to take back a situation that would have ended the encounter when I rolled a natural 20 for retroactive continuity.) We played Fury of Dracula, which I'm convinced I've written about before. I was Dracula this time, and instead of putzing around at sea (which makes one very easy to find), I putzed around in Eastern Europe. They did find me, but at night, and I was more than ready for them.
...Or so I thought. To do battle, the duelists roll opposed 6-sided dice. Out of probably 15 die rolls, I won...one. Lost the rest. Lost the game because of it. I'm bringing my own dice next time. Bugger it.
We stayed, playing games and occasionally glancing over at the movies that were playing, until about 7:15 AM. A memorable experience, and one I'd quite like to repeat, in all aspects but one which I have previously described.
So, there's that. Then there was Saturday. I played many games on Saturday, but the one that stuck in my mind was the Grand-Prix simulator. We had little cars which we raced around a little track, rolling dice to determine our speed. These were quite unusual dice, mind. Which dice we rolled was determined by which gear we were in, from 1-2 (first), 2-4 (second), 4-8 (third), 7-12 (fourth), 11-20 (fifth), and 21-30 (sixth). We had a four-sided die for first gear, which had only 1s and 2s on it. We had a six-sided die for second, which had only 2 through 4...you get the idea. Why we need a 30-sided die for sixth gear and 21-30, I don't quite understand, but I suppose it made things more interesting.
The game was slightly realistic, in that it tracked tires, brakes, gas, body damage, and engine damage. Through turns, you had to stop a certain number of times, which symbolized taking them more slowly than straightaways. I goofed up badly on the first turn, which resulted in me having to slow down to 1st gear to make it out intact. This caused me to be very far behind everyone else. To explain this, I suddenly realized my car driver's identity: he was Jebediah, the world's first Amish race-car driver. Or should I say, race-cart-and-horses. This was seen as extremely amusing by the others. When I flubbed a roll in fourth gear, the remark was heard "This is God punishing you for going too fast! And wearing buttons!" Accelerating, I commented "We have to increase our speed! Fetch the caffeinated oats!" Roaring along in sixth gear, someone said "You're going so fast, your horseshoes are melting." When I made a pit stop, I rolled badly and was forced to remain still for a turn. Someone said "Of course it's going to take a long time. Your mechanic is a friggin' BLACKSMITH."
Whereas others used a pole to determine their position, I used a pole to churn butter as I raced.
So. Great fun there. All sorts.
And as for the Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day, huh. I wonder. I'm kind of running out of entertaining links, here. Ooh, here's one: http://youtube.com/watch?v=epKpY2BHEp8 It's from the game Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. It features the totally awesome Cyborg Ninja battling various foes, from Snake himself (a master fighter) to a variety of nameless goons to a two-hundred-foot-tall nuclear deathtank. Quite bloody, but very very awesome.
REPLIES.
Wednesday's first (I have got to stop doing this):
Matt: Well, I suppose. But anyone who pulls out Ego Erasure with Elvish Harbinger instead of one of the more potent elves (Priestess of Titania, Wren's Run Packmaster, Immaculate Magistrate, Jagged-Scar Archers) doesn't deserve to run a proper Elf deck.
Steve: Not hypocritical at all: I didn't say any of it. And plus, I just love jerking around Magic players who take it too seriously. It's a game, I say, you shouldn't consider yourself better than someone else because you memorized the rules and they didn't. I was speaking to a less insane player about how one of the "serious" players scorned me for not knowing a specific and old card. His response? "They have to make themselves feel superior for knowing more about Magic than you, since they have absolutely nothing else to feel superior about. These people are nerds to the bone." That cheered me some. I can endure Shmovacs, and I prefer Corn Flakes or Reese's Puffs.
Vic: You know, even though you explained it, it still doesn't make absolutely any sense.
...
Dad: I doubt I'll ever truly understand. Even if things had gone differently, some things are just meant to be eternal mysteries. It's not that baffling, I tried to explain it as best I could.
Dad: I doubt I'll ever truly understand. Even if things had gone differently, some things are just meant to be eternal mysteries. It's not that baffling, I tried to explain it as best I could.
Mom: It does? I'll have to go back and listen to it again, then. She is quite clever, and you can visit the library when you drive me back in January. Think on that for a minute. While Jesus was under orders, he still had a great deal of power.
Mike: Good on yer, Queenie. And yes, I think they could have just said "embedded in his brain" and it would have been better for all concerned. Just like the Uruk-Hai saying "Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!" despite having never been near a restaurant in his life.
Now Friday's.
Mike: Not your fault. It had been coming for a while. Don't blame yourself.
Mom: I am too.
Michelle: Doubtful. Highly doubtful. I'm convinced that ending it was the best possible result. If we got back together, it would probably just be for a few weeks, limping along, then it would crash and we'd be in a worse position than we are now.
Steve: I'm slogging through. Not like I have any tough finals left, anyway.
Dad: We worked things out as best we could. We're in the best possible position at the moment, I believe. And I can't believe Steve has any kind of good advice. Will wonders never cease.
Jake: Tag. It works. For a while, anyway. FCATs are like the anti-Tag, it seems. I'll get over it. In time.
The end.
Oh my. We have to do this again sometime. It was originally supposed to be a Lord of the Rings marathon movie watching experience for Ricky, my RA (residential advisor), who recently vouchsafed to me that he had never seen any of the LotR movies. Scarcely restraining my impulse to burn him as a heretic on the spot, I instead invited him to an all-night movie marathon. I would also invite several of my Game Night friends, which was especially important, seeing as one of them actually owned the movies and I did not. We figured we'd bring some games along, during the dull parts, maybe just as a sideline.
Imagine our surprise when, the day of the event, Ricky cancelled on us. He said he was busy. No biggie, we figured, we can do this without the guest of honor, eh? Not like all of us have pressing social engagements that we're skipping for this. So we arrived, around 7:00, and set up a game of Citadels while we waited for everyone else to show up. All told, there were seven of us.
Citadels was entertaining. We switched around a lot of the profession cards, and changed the rules somewhat so one card was no longer randomly thrown out. Instead, the last two cards were discarded after everyone chose theirs. It made things somewhat easier, and prevented people from getting stuck with the Queen constantly. It was just as well, really, since there was no King card. There was an Emperor card in its place; the Emperor could crown anyone on the board King, and then the new King would have to give the Emperor a gold piece. So, of course, this was less a blessing than a really aggravating occurrence for most of the game, being able to choose first notwithstanding.
After Citadels, we started a game of Paranoia. For anyone who's never played, Paranoia is the RPG for reckless and suicidal players. It takes place far in the nuclear-scarred future, where the remnants of humanity live underground in a massive complex dominated by a psychotic and homicidal AI called Friend Computer. (The Computer is your Friend. Not feeling friendly enough is treason, punishable by summary execution.) There is technically a system in place that allows for wounds and hit point damage, but nobody ever uses it. The slightest damage is generally enough to completely annihilate a PC. But that's why we're clones: we can jump into a new clone body when ours is destroyed. True, we have to ration them somewhat (we only get so many), but it allows for interesting plays that quite often result in a Total Party Kill, or TPK for short. One example: Thermonuclear hand grenades. You get the picture.
Normally we traipse around Alpha Complex and perform various errands for the Computer while trying to avoid anything that smacks of treason, which includes but is not limited to: disrespecting the Computer; disrespecting a citizen of higher rank; interacting with an object beyond your security clearance; catching an object thrown at you that is beyond your security clearance; dropping an object thrown at you that is beyond your security clearance (That's a waste of Computer resources!); saying the wrong things in earshot of the Computer or one of its agents (read: anyone); being a communist or a mutant; not killing communists or mutants on sight; being suspected of sympathizing with communists or mutants; having the Computer think, just in passing, that you are a communist or a mutant (note: everyone in this game is a mutant and probably a communist); leaving your shoelaces untied; standing in the wrong place; breathing too loud; and failing to love the Computer for its infinite sense of justice, kindness, and mercy. You get the idea.
But this time, Matt (the Game Master) decided to take things in a different direction. Yea, for today, Paranoia and D&D would clash mightily. We entered the Tomb of Horrors, a Dungeons & Dragons scenario, one that is designed to inflict TPK as often as possible. We were free from the capricious whims of the computer, but every action we took, if it was the wrong one, ended with "You fall into a pit trap and die." This seems somewhat excessive for a D&D adventure, where players get precisely one life, but I suspect Matt was scattering pit traps in the manner that a boxer being battered by Mike Tyson might scatter teeth: randomly, painfully, and with a lot of blood.
We were aided in this endeavor by being able to choose a pair of mutant powers from a list beforehand. I picked Transmutation, shaping matter, and Electroshock, which is self-explanatory. Others picked such combinations as Energy Shield and Regeneration, and one adventurous spirit, Kevin, chose Matter Eating and another I can't recall because he never used it. His response to any situation was "eat it." This vexed Matt, as he tended to wax eloquent when describing the various deadly rooms we were entering:
Matt: "You come across a large room full of ornate furniture, dust on every surface. Elaborate tapestries cover the walls, and intricate carvings festoon the uncovered portions of the walls and ceiling. The room has a baroque feel to it, and you can sense in the musty air a definite feeling of foreboding. In the shadows, you spot a flicker of -"
Kevin: "I eat it."
Matt: "What?"
Kevin: "I eat it."
Matt: "Eat what?"
Kevin: "Whatever."
Kevin used up all his clones fairly quickly. An irritated GM can kill you quicker than, well, Mike Tyson. One among our number had Desolidify, useful for avoiding the various pit traps and other such hazards, but every time he went ethereal, if he fumbled the roll, he would get molested by an incubus (male version of a succubus, known for haunting the ethereal plane). This became something of a running joke, as he rolled notoriously poorly throughout the adventure. Fortunately, those among us who rolled poorly could fix these problems with Perversity tokens, small black glass tokens, a set number of which were distributed by Matt at the beginning of the adventure. They were essentially a means of bribing the GM into fudging the die roll in your favor. Occasionally he would declare "Perversity for everyone!" and scatter them around the table. This would cause a frenetic grab-fest for the tokens that resembled a demented version of Hungry Hungry Hippos. But the main means of acquiring more tokens was to steal them from the GM when he wasn't looking. And thus, the cycle continued.
With my powers of Transmutation, I would often transmute obstacles from our path. After turning three successive things into doors (a pile of rubble, a trapdoor-floor, and a less impressive-looking door), I became known as the master of creating doors. Electroshock was used far more conventionally. In one memorable instance, in order to destroy a skeleton that was menacing me with a large sword, I tried the following tactic. It is important to know that we were allowed ad hoc "narrow specializations," skills we could make up on the fly, if they were deemed sufficiently narrow.
Me: "I take an ad hoc skill."
Matt: "Which?"
Me: "Gauss rifle design."
Matt: "...What?"
Me: "You heard me. Can I have it?"
Matt: "Sure, I guess."
Me: "Ok. I take all the metal within my reach and transmute it into a Gauss rifle."
Matt: "Now hold on a second..."
Me: "Can I try?"
Matt: "Eh, sure. Roll it."
Me: *rolls* *succeeds* "Woot."
Matt: "Great. Now what?"
Me: "I use my Electroshock to energize it."
Matt: "Oookay. Roll it."
Me: *rolls* *succeeds again* "Awesome."
Matt: "You fire the Gauss rifle. The skeleton is obliterated into pieces too small to be detected with the naked eye. You have blown a hole in the walls that leads all the way to the entrance. Then the Gauss rifle crumbles to dust and you can never make another one."
Me: "That's fair."
This caused one of us, I forget who, to relate the story of the time one of their characters, a mage, had to deal with a seemingly invulnerable demon that was terrorizing a city. He had a couple of portal gates that were linked to each other, but not much else. He aligned them in such a way that an object could fall through them endlessly, acquired a boulder, and let it fall through the portals until it accelerated to roughly 0.7 times the speed of light. (It's magic, it doesn't have to make sense.) Then he realigned one portal and aimed at the demon. The GM's memorable phrase was "Okay. It takes 82,000 damage. But it can save for half." It wasn't quite as invulnerable as it had boasted, it happened.
Lots more stuff happened in Paranoia, but I don't really remember it. We did manage to survive the Tomb of Horrors, but only with a lot of help from the GM. (He "reloaded from save" once and allowed me to take back a situation that would have ended the encounter when I rolled a natural 20 for retroactive continuity.) We played Fury of Dracula, which I'm convinced I've written about before. I was Dracula this time, and instead of putzing around at sea (which makes one very easy to find), I putzed around in Eastern Europe. They did find me, but at night, and I was more than ready for them.
...Or so I thought. To do battle, the duelists roll opposed 6-sided dice. Out of probably 15 die rolls, I won...one. Lost the rest. Lost the game because of it. I'm bringing my own dice next time. Bugger it.
We stayed, playing games and occasionally glancing over at the movies that were playing, until about 7:15 AM. A memorable experience, and one I'd quite like to repeat, in all aspects but one which I have previously described.
So, there's that. Then there was Saturday. I played many games on Saturday, but the one that stuck in my mind was the Grand-Prix simulator. We had little cars which we raced around a little track, rolling dice to determine our speed. These were quite unusual dice, mind. Which dice we rolled was determined by which gear we were in, from 1-2 (first), 2-4 (second), 4-8 (third), 7-12 (fourth), 11-20 (fifth), and 21-30 (sixth). We had a four-sided die for first gear, which had only 1s and 2s on it. We had a six-sided die for second, which had only 2 through 4...you get the idea. Why we need a 30-sided die for sixth gear and 21-30, I don't quite understand, but I suppose it made things more interesting.
The game was slightly realistic, in that it tracked tires, brakes, gas, body damage, and engine damage. Through turns, you had to stop a certain number of times, which symbolized taking them more slowly than straightaways. I goofed up badly on the first turn, which resulted in me having to slow down to 1st gear to make it out intact. This caused me to be very far behind everyone else. To explain this, I suddenly realized my car driver's identity: he was Jebediah, the world's first Amish race-car driver. Or should I say, race-cart-and-horses. This was seen as extremely amusing by the others. When I flubbed a roll in fourth gear, the remark was heard "This is God punishing you for going too fast! And wearing buttons!" Accelerating, I commented "We have to increase our speed! Fetch the caffeinated oats!" Roaring along in sixth gear, someone said "You're going so fast, your horseshoes are melting." When I made a pit stop, I rolled badly and was forced to remain still for a turn. Someone said "Of course it's going to take a long time. Your mechanic is a friggin' BLACKSMITH."
Whereas others used a pole to determine their position, I used a pole to churn butter as I raced.
So. Great fun there. All sorts.
And as for the Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day, huh. I wonder. I'm kind of running out of entertaining links, here. Ooh, here's one: http://youtube.com/watch?v=epKpY2BHEp8 It's from the game Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. It features the totally awesome Cyborg Ninja battling various foes, from Snake himself (a master fighter) to a variety of nameless goons to a two-hundred-foot-tall nuclear deathtank. Quite bloody, but very very awesome.
REPLIES.
Wednesday's first (I have got to stop doing this):
Matt: Well, I suppose. But anyone who pulls out Ego Erasure with Elvish Harbinger instead of one of the more potent elves (Priestess of Titania, Wren's Run Packmaster, Immaculate Magistrate, Jagged-Scar Archers) doesn't deserve to run a proper Elf deck.
Steve: Not hypocritical at all: I didn't say any of it. And plus, I just love jerking around Magic players who take it too seriously. It's a game, I say, you shouldn't consider yourself better than someone else because you memorized the rules and they didn't. I was speaking to a less insane player about how one of the "serious" players scorned me for not knowing a specific and old card. His response? "They have to make themselves feel superior for knowing more about Magic than you, since they have absolutely nothing else to feel superior about. These people are nerds to the bone." That cheered me some. I can endure Shmovacs, and I prefer Corn Flakes or Reese's Puffs.
Vic: You know, even though you explained it, it still doesn't make absolutely any sense.
...
Dad: I doubt I'll ever truly understand. Even if things had gone differently, some things are just meant to be eternal mysteries. It's not that baffling, I tried to explain it as best I could.
Dad: I doubt I'll ever truly understand. Even if things had gone differently, some things are just meant to be eternal mysteries. It's not that baffling, I tried to explain it as best I could.
Mom: It does? I'll have to go back and listen to it again, then. She is quite clever, and you can visit the library when you drive me back in January. Think on that for a minute. While Jesus was under orders, he still had a great deal of power.
Mike: Good on yer, Queenie. And yes, I think they could have just said "embedded in his brain" and it would have been better for all concerned. Just like the Uruk-Hai saying "Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!" despite having never been near a restaurant in his life.
Now Friday's.
Mike: Not your fault. It had been coming for a while. Don't blame yourself.
Mom: I am too.
Michelle: Doubtful. Highly doubtful. I'm convinced that ending it was the best possible result. If we got back together, it would probably just be for a few weeks, limping along, then it would crash and we'd be in a worse position than we are now.
Steve: I'm slogging through. Not like I have any tough finals left, anyway.
Dad: We worked things out as best we could. We're in the best possible position at the moment, I believe. And I can't believe Steve has any kind of good advice. Will wonders never cease.
Jake: Tag. It works. For a while, anyway. FCATs are like the anti-Tag, it seems. I'll get over it. In time.
The end.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Deep, Deep, Deep Sigh
My girlfriend Victoria and I broke up tonight. We had been going out just about three years. 1/22/05 - 12/7/07. And because I know people will ask these questions, here are the answers.
It was mutual, eventually. We plan to still be friends, but there'll have to be an adjustment period. Neither of us have any plans to start dating again. It happened because we realized I'm actually a lot more immature than I thought, and couldn't satisfy her needs in an emotional relationship - I continually placed my friends above her. There was other stuff, too, but that's personal.
On Saturday night or Sunday morning I'll describe the events of Game All-Nighter that took place last night and this morning, and Game All-Day that'll take place tomorrow.
I don't want to write any more.
It was mutual, eventually. We plan to still be friends, but there'll have to be an adjustment period. Neither of us have any plans to start dating again. It happened because we realized I'm actually a lot more immature than I thought, and couldn't satisfy her needs in an emotional relationship - I continually placed my friends above her. There was other stuff, too, but that's personal.
On Saturday night or Sunday morning I'll describe the events of Game All-Nighter that took place last night and this morning, and Game All-Day that'll take place tomorrow.
I don't want to write any more.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Update Finished. Game Night = Awesome.
So, yeah. Game Night with my sister. That's a new experience.
We started with a game of Flux, as I have previously enumerated. Cards went flying, rules were questioned and questioned again, and there always seemed to be a Rules Reset (that brought it back to the basic "draw 1, play 1" mechanic) RIGHT BEFORE MY DANGED TURN. Maybe I wanted to draw 5 or play 3, eh? No, drawing and playing extra is too good for the likes o' me. I have to be boring and traditional.
Anyway. Michelle won the first one due to a grievous misplay on my part. (I had forgotten she could play multiple cards, and had both Keepers she needed to win in her hand! Pardon me!) The second one took much longer, and technically nobody won, as the card Zombie Apocalypse was played, ending the game instantly if there are more than five zombies out and everyone has at least one...but by dint of the fact that through considerable effort, Michelle had acquired seventeen zombies by game's end, she was declared the winner again, if for no other reason than she was the leader of the biggest zombie cult ever.
So we went on to play another game called Citadels. This was an intriguing game where the object was to build a city from the ground up, and there were a variety of roles - Assassin, Wizard, Warlord, Bishop, Architect, Merchant, even King - that had special powers and swapped places every turn. The Assassin always went first and named a character to be "assassinated." I say named a character, because the choosing of characters was a secret process, and thus the Assassin couldn't deliberately target a player without outside information. Nevertheless, due to a combination of astounding bad luck and probably a little malice on the part of some of our co-players, my girlfriend was assassinated I believe six times over the course of the game. This was probably about half to one-third of the amount of rounds we played, so she spent a lot of time sitting out. It was all in good humor, anyway.
But this predicament was nothing compared to the saga of the Queen. See, there were eight players and nine profession cards. At the beginning of each round, the keeper of the Crown (not necessarily the King - it's complicated) would pick out one card at random that would not be available for selection. He would then pick one and pass left, and so on and so forth. It was considered highly disadvantageous to be sitting to the right of the Crowned person, as that meant you had last pick, and that would almost certainly be the Queen, the most useless character. (Her special power was dependent on her sitting next to the King, which pretty much never happened.) But due to the random nature of the game, the spot to the right of the Crown never remained in one place for long, right?
Wrong. One among us got the Crown early on, and through a series of random incidents (I don't believe he's skilled enough to fake this) managed to pick out the King to be removed from play that round every round for a good long while. If nobody chose the King, then the Crown remained in one place. This caused a great deal of consternation to the person sitting on the Crowned person's right, as he was always stuck with the Queen. It became a kind of running gag, as he would bemoan his fate each time the King card was revealed to be removed. We called him "Queen-Boy," just to twist the knife. Fun fun.
Despite having never played the game before, and never having played a similar game before, and having no idea what was actually going on most of the time, my sister Michelle managed to win by a single point. Dumb beginner's luck. I wasn't even close; my problem with those sorts of games is I always get stuck on the track to victory and never actually manage to achieve, y'know, victory. A good example is another game, Pirate's Cove. The way to win in that game is to accumulate Victory Points, which you can get from defeating other players or special cards, but which you mainly get from burying treasure at Treasure Island. If you can manage to build a strong ship early on, you can dominate all others and take all the treasure for yourself, as nobody else can possibly stand up to you. My problem was that I always got hung up on the "build a strong ship" phase and never quite got around to the "bury treasures to actually freaking win" phase. So I ended the game with a powerful ship, but many points behind the actual winner. Always happens.
That game was piles of fun. Lots of laughs all around. When we were finished with that, some of us regrouped for another game called...well, I don't remember, it was a complicated name. The gist of it was that we were all goblins running around the study room of a powerful undead wizard called Rigor Mortis. We created mischief and teleported around and smacked into each other. If we incurred Mortis's wrath, he'd slap us with a Withering Look which resulted in a curse - a physical curse. Say, you could not say three words that were chosen by the other players. Or you had to keep your teeth clenched while talking. Or you had to stand on one foot with your other knee bent. And so on, and so forth. There was an object to the game, and a way to win, but frankly, I don't remember what it was. None of us cared. It was more fun messing with the other players and digging up interesting curses. Some of these had quite entertaining combinations.
Near the end of a particular game, Vic had to keep a card balanced on her head (someone else let her borrow a hat, which sort of ruined the point) and had to keep her chin pinning a curse card card to the table, Michelle couldn't say three chosen words; all of them, unfortunately, unprintable in this rather sanitized blog. No, wait, one of them was "cute." One among our number...I believe his name was Chris...had to keep a curse card pinned between his forearms, mostly immobilizing his arms. Two among us had curses that forced them to shout an embarrassing phrase whenever a certain action occurred; being as we were near a table of hostile Magic players, these phrases were "I hate Magic players!" and the second, when we got more bold, were "Magic players are flaming homos!" The first passed among the gamers without a flicker, the second at least turned some heads. When their game had finished, they made several disparaging comments about our loudness, to which we returned that that was how the game was played, thank you very much, we were here first, and if they didn't like it they could move.
As for myself? Not too hard. I had to thump the table with my elbow whenever anyone said "screwed," I had to keep a curse card pinned between my knees while seated (not as hard as you might think), and I had to keep my mouth open at all times. This makes it hard to talk, as well as swallow. I had to talk with a thumb between my teeth to enunciate properly, or else gargle my words out like a walrus on Novocaine. And you have no idea how dry your lips get after a while of not closing your mouth. Sticking my tongue out and closing my lips around it was deemed an acceptable solution, but it caused Michelle to laugh uncontrollably and take pictures with her cell phone camera. Damn everything.
After a few rounds of that, some of us got started playing Fury of Dracula. That's a cool game based off of the original Bram Stoker novel that pits the four characters (Van Helsing, Lord Godalming, Mina Harker, and Dr. Seward) against Dracula himself, attempting to track him down among the many cities of Europe. Gameplay progressed with time, the times of night and day marking the turns (three turns each for day and night). The hunters would go from city to city and try and find Dracula. He would try to evade us. He did leave a trail, but he was a slippery devil, he was. Requires a lot of complex thought and intrigue.
The dark, thoughtful tenor of the game was rather ruined when we began to realize the inherent difficulties with the gameplay. For one thing, since night and day were each three sections, each one logically took four hours. A character could conceivably take a train from Madrid to Paris, and have time to search the City of Lights by himself for any trace of Dracula's presence or even trail, in a single four-hour chunk of time. And now that I think about it, since our characters moved every turn, when did they sleep? Moving like Wally West* on a caffeine bender around the cities of Europe and searching entire cities faster than a team of investigators could search a large building is implausible enough, but doing it all while sleep-deprived? It's a good thing for the population of late-nineteenth-century Europe that we turned our amazing powers towards the eradication of evil. We could conceivably have darted around the continent, deposing rulers at lightning speeds, and named ourselves kings and queen within, oh, two or three days at the most.
So, this has gone on long enough. And that was the last game we played anyway. I'm tired, and I'm sorry it's so late, but...I'm tired.
And the Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day? Well, lessee what we got here, eh...*rummages* Ok. Here we go. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pje1Ebc5v0 It's an old Chuck Jones short called Now Hear This, no doubt one of the oddest pieces of animation ever conceived. It's especially odd in that it contains one spoken word ("QUIET!!!"), and the rest is all clever sound effects and music. I can't do it justice. You'll just have to watch it.
*Wally West being, of course, The Flash.
REPLIES.
Steve: Thank you. And we do mesh well. It helps, y'know, having known each other for nearly two decades. We know how to interact correctly. Yes, the twist in Futurama was somewhat predictable, but what's this about Kovacs? Him? Coming with us? I can't stand for this calumny. You know my feelings about Kovacs. I'll fling him onto the highway at eighty miles an hour and double back just to run him over three or four times, thou knowest I will.
Matt: Certainly an option, althought not a tenable one in our Elf vs. Goblin matchup, being as it's blue and that's not in either of our colors.
Vic: Well, I get caught up in my narratives. What's that, wark? I can't dignify that seahorse comment with a serious answer (how does breathing underwater help me conquer Mexico?!?), and, well, extenuating circumstances. <3
Daniel: Suuuure you did. Yeah, that's not totally covering for not thinking of anything witty at all, nope, not in the slightest. j/k
Steve: Quiet, you.
Mom: It's because I've barely used the capabilities of Library West before now, so I felt no need to mention it. And it's perfectly open to the public, you just need an ID to check stuff out. Also, I'm kind of behind on my New Testament readings...but I get what you're saying. I don't think I was being flippant, just assuming that his powers extended as far as he wished.
???: Who exactly are you? Are you my mother again, continuing her previous comment? Or...what? I'm confused.
Bye.
We started with a game of Flux, as I have previously enumerated. Cards went flying, rules were questioned and questioned again, and there always seemed to be a Rules Reset (that brought it back to the basic "draw 1, play 1" mechanic) RIGHT BEFORE MY DANGED TURN. Maybe I wanted to draw 5 or play 3, eh? No, drawing and playing extra is too good for the likes o' me. I have to be boring and traditional.
Anyway. Michelle won the first one due to a grievous misplay on my part. (I had forgotten she could play multiple cards, and had both Keepers she needed to win in her hand! Pardon me!) The second one took much longer, and technically nobody won, as the card Zombie Apocalypse was played, ending the game instantly if there are more than five zombies out and everyone has at least one...but by dint of the fact that through considerable effort, Michelle had acquired seventeen zombies by game's end, she was declared the winner again, if for no other reason than she was the leader of the biggest zombie cult ever.
So we went on to play another game called Citadels. This was an intriguing game where the object was to build a city from the ground up, and there were a variety of roles - Assassin, Wizard, Warlord, Bishop, Architect, Merchant, even King - that had special powers and swapped places every turn. The Assassin always went first and named a character to be "assassinated." I say named a character, because the choosing of characters was a secret process, and thus the Assassin couldn't deliberately target a player without outside information. Nevertheless, due to a combination of astounding bad luck and probably a little malice on the part of some of our co-players, my girlfriend was assassinated I believe six times over the course of the game. This was probably about half to one-third of the amount of rounds we played, so she spent a lot of time sitting out. It was all in good humor, anyway.
But this predicament was nothing compared to the saga of the Queen. See, there were eight players and nine profession cards. At the beginning of each round, the keeper of the Crown (not necessarily the King - it's complicated) would pick out one card at random that would not be available for selection. He would then pick one and pass left, and so on and so forth. It was considered highly disadvantageous to be sitting to the right of the Crowned person, as that meant you had last pick, and that would almost certainly be the Queen, the most useless character. (Her special power was dependent on her sitting next to the King, which pretty much never happened.) But due to the random nature of the game, the spot to the right of the Crown never remained in one place for long, right?
Wrong. One among us got the Crown early on, and through a series of random incidents (I don't believe he's skilled enough to fake this) managed to pick out the King to be removed from play that round every round for a good long while. If nobody chose the King, then the Crown remained in one place. This caused a great deal of consternation to the person sitting on the Crowned person's right, as he was always stuck with the Queen. It became a kind of running gag, as he would bemoan his fate each time the King card was revealed to be removed. We called him "Queen-Boy," just to twist the knife. Fun fun.
Despite having never played the game before, and never having played a similar game before, and having no idea what was actually going on most of the time, my sister Michelle managed to win by a single point. Dumb beginner's luck. I wasn't even close; my problem with those sorts of games is I always get stuck on the track to victory and never actually manage to achieve, y'know, victory. A good example is another game, Pirate's Cove. The way to win in that game is to accumulate Victory Points, which you can get from defeating other players or special cards, but which you mainly get from burying treasure at Treasure Island. If you can manage to build a strong ship early on, you can dominate all others and take all the treasure for yourself, as nobody else can possibly stand up to you. My problem was that I always got hung up on the "build a strong ship" phase and never quite got around to the "bury treasures to actually freaking win" phase. So I ended the game with a powerful ship, but many points behind the actual winner. Always happens.
That game was piles of fun. Lots of laughs all around. When we were finished with that, some of us regrouped for another game called...well, I don't remember, it was a complicated name. The gist of it was that we were all goblins running around the study room of a powerful undead wizard called Rigor Mortis. We created mischief and teleported around and smacked into each other. If we incurred Mortis's wrath, he'd slap us with a Withering Look which resulted in a curse - a physical curse. Say, you could not say three words that were chosen by the other players. Or you had to keep your teeth clenched while talking. Or you had to stand on one foot with your other knee bent. And so on, and so forth. There was an object to the game, and a way to win, but frankly, I don't remember what it was. None of us cared. It was more fun messing with the other players and digging up interesting curses. Some of these had quite entertaining combinations.
Near the end of a particular game, Vic had to keep a card balanced on her head (someone else let her borrow a hat, which sort of ruined the point) and had to keep her chin pinning a curse card card to the table, Michelle couldn't say three chosen words; all of them, unfortunately, unprintable in this rather sanitized blog. No, wait, one of them was "cute." One among our number...I believe his name was Chris...had to keep a curse card pinned between his forearms, mostly immobilizing his arms. Two among us had curses that forced them to shout an embarrassing phrase whenever a certain action occurred; being as we were near a table of hostile Magic players, these phrases were "I hate Magic players!" and the second, when we got more bold, were "Magic players are flaming homos!" The first passed among the gamers without a flicker, the second at least turned some heads. When their game had finished, they made several disparaging comments about our loudness, to which we returned that that was how the game was played, thank you very much, we were here first, and if they didn't like it they could move.
As for myself? Not too hard. I had to thump the table with my elbow whenever anyone said "screwed," I had to keep a curse card pinned between my knees while seated (not as hard as you might think), and I had to keep my mouth open at all times. This makes it hard to talk, as well as swallow. I had to talk with a thumb between my teeth to enunciate properly, or else gargle my words out like a walrus on Novocaine. And you have no idea how dry your lips get after a while of not closing your mouth. Sticking my tongue out and closing my lips around it was deemed an acceptable solution, but it caused Michelle to laugh uncontrollably and take pictures with her cell phone camera. Damn everything.
After a few rounds of that, some of us got started playing Fury of Dracula. That's a cool game based off of the original Bram Stoker novel that pits the four characters (Van Helsing, Lord Godalming, Mina Harker, and Dr. Seward) against Dracula himself, attempting to track him down among the many cities of Europe. Gameplay progressed with time, the times of night and day marking the turns (three turns each for day and night). The hunters would go from city to city and try and find Dracula. He would try to evade us. He did leave a trail, but he was a slippery devil, he was. Requires a lot of complex thought and intrigue.
The dark, thoughtful tenor of the game was rather ruined when we began to realize the inherent difficulties with the gameplay. For one thing, since night and day were each three sections, each one logically took four hours. A character could conceivably take a train from Madrid to Paris, and have time to search the City of Lights by himself for any trace of Dracula's presence or even trail, in a single four-hour chunk of time. And now that I think about it, since our characters moved every turn, when did they sleep? Moving like Wally West* on a caffeine bender around the cities of Europe and searching entire cities faster than a team of investigators could search a large building is implausible enough, but doing it all while sleep-deprived? It's a good thing for the population of late-nineteenth-century Europe that we turned our amazing powers towards the eradication of evil. We could conceivably have darted around the continent, deposing rulers at lightning speeds, and named ourselves kings and queen within, oh, two or three days at the most.
So, this has gone on long enough. And that was the last game we played anyway. I'm tired, and I'm sorry it's so late, but...I'm tired.
And the Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day? Well, lessee what we got here, eh...*rummages* Ok. Here we go. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pje1Ebc5v0 It's an old Chuck Jones short called Now Hear This, no doubt one of the oddest pieces of animation ever conceived. It's especially odd in that it contains one spoken word ("QUIET!!!"), and the rest is all clever sound effects and music. I can't do it justice. You'll just have to watch it.
*Wally West being, of course, The Flash.
REPLIES.
Steve: Thank you. And we do mesh well. It helps, y'know, having known each other for nearly two decades. We know how to interact correctly. Yes, the twist in Futurama was somewhat predictable, but what's this about Kovacs? Him? Coming with us? I can't stand for this calumny. You know my feelings about Kovacs. I'll fling him onto the highway at eighty miles an hour and double back just to run him over three or four times, thou knowest I will.
Matt: Certainly an option, althought not a tenable one in our Elf vs. Goblin matchup, being as it's blue and that's not in either of our colors.
Vic: Well, I get caught up in my narratives. What's that, wark? I can't dignify that seahorse comment with a serious answer (how does breathing underwater help me conquer Mexico?!?), and, well, extenuating circumstances. <3
Daniel: Suuuure you did. Yeah, that's not totally covering for not thinking of anything witty at all, nope, not in the slightest. j/k
Steve: Quiet, you.
Mom: It's because I've barely used the capabilities of Library West before now, so I felt no need to mention it. And it's perfectly open to the public, you just need an ID to check stuff out. Also, I'm kind of behind on my New Testament readings...but I get what you're saying. I don't think I was being flippant, just assuming that his powers extended as far as he wished.
???: Who exactly are you? Are you my mother again, continuing her previous comment? Or...what? I'm confused.
Bye.
Monday, December 3, 2007
I Wasn't Sick, But I WAS Busy. Chronicles of My Sister
I had a 20-page paper to write in one evening. It ended up being 15 pages, 17 with illustrations. I turned it in on time...it kicks behind. I'm certain of it. It's about the popular perception of crime during the Great Depression and the causes thereof, with a sideline towards analyzing two popular movies of the time and how they relate to the main topic. Great stuff. Here's an excerpt:
Comics, it must be said, were nowhere near to being the only agents of change in the Depression-era values regarding crime. Popular opinion was turning for a number of reasons, as has been previously stated, and those reasons often had to do with the very reasons that popular sentiment extended towards mobsters in the first place. Criminals such as Babyface Nelson, Clyde Barrow, and Pretty Boy Floyd committed wide and public antics, reveling in the attention they got from friends and foes alike. While initially people cheered for these gangsters, the sheer scope of their exploits soon began to unnerve people. If people like these could not only get away with the crimes they did – robbery, murder, arson – but withstand widespread publication of their antics and even be gleeful in the attention they garnered, people began to believe, then the line was beginning to be crossed from entertainment to horror.
If all the policemen were powerless to stop Al Capone, people believed, what was to prevent him from walking into their very homes and robbing or killing them? No doubt his famous invulnerability to the law would protect him. The cheering for criminals diminished to grumbling, then eventually widespread fear. People felt powerless and unprotected by the government. Disenfranchised though they were, hatred of the government as popular as it seemed to be, people had counted on law enforcement to stop criminals and protect innocents. If this could no longer be done, the famous criminals ceased to be popular and soon sank to the level of terror.
Bit of going on and on, but I like it. It'll be sure to score me points with the teacher, no doubt. She likes me, anyway. I'd stay after class and talk to her on various subjects. (Note to anyone who isn't yet in college: Do this with your professors. Even in huge lecture classes. Especially in huge lecture classes. Nothing makes a professor like you more than you showing signs of genuinely caring about the subject. And a professor who likes you may be more lenient when it's time to grade that big project or term paper you maybe could have done better on.)
I had asked for an extension on account of Michelle (my sister) coming up from Wellington to throw my schedule into havoc and confusion, and she (Mrs. Van Damme, the professor) had granted it, but I thought of a couple of things.
1. I should have had it done before, and
2. All the stuff I did with my sister was really just recreation and procrastinating on my part. Granted, it's good to keep her entertained, because if I don't keep her entertained, she finds her own kind of entertainment, but still.
So I promised myself I'd stick to the original deadline. And I did. Fifteen pages, one evening. I couldn't rock any harder without actually being made of stone. And even then, if I was one of those soft sedimentary rocks, I'd still be rocking harder now. Eh, this metaphor's dead. So on to the description of the weekend. But we need to go a bit further back.
On Wednesday, Michelle gave me a call saying that the man she was living with currently, who had bailed her out of jail, was using this as leverage to try and control her life. He wouldn't let her go out, made her change her phone number, etc. What a jerk. And what an idiot, thinking he can control Michelle. She's about as easy to grab ahold of as a lightning bolt, and about as easy to pin down as fire. So I made some hasty arrangements, called up a friend of mine to get her a room to stay in while she found a job and more permanent sleeping arrangements, and bought her a bus ticket. It seemed like it would work fairly well.
Flash forward to Friday, many (MANY) phone conversations later. She says she has no place to sleep tonight. "Well, you can sleep here," I said gruffly, "but only for one night. Tomorrow you'll be at Stephanie's [my friend]." She agreed. Since it was pretty late, about 11:00, she went to bed on the floor almost immediately, and took my blanket. Of course, my roommate Walter had chosen that exact time to crank the thermostat down to Purely Theoretical Temperatures. (On a side note, even as I write this, he lurches over to the air-conditioning and cranks it up. Ice crystals are forming in my breath and my frozen blood is vainly trying to flow through my veins, and yet he claims he's hot. I think he's not human.) Sleeping wasn't going to be easy, but I wasn't sure at all how I was going to get up in the morning, being frozen to the sheets as I was. Fortunately, my sister wakes up much earlier than I do, and tossed me the blanket when she did so. I thus had a handful of hours of relative comfort.
When I finally did drag myself out of bed, we went to lunch. I showed her briefly around campus; I believed that since she was going to be staying near here, I might as well show her the place. We went to Taco Bell for lunch. Taco Bell...I hadn't eaten there in years. Always I had had some kind of prejudice against the place, some inborn hatred that was reinforced both by my parents' dislike for it and my sister's favor of it (for a while, I hated everything my sister liked. I was dumb as a young teenager). But I figured, what the heck. It can't be that bad. It's tacos, after all, I like tacos, just get some with only meat and cheese. Besides, it's college, time to try new things. So I got some tacos. I had a seat, I unwrapped one, I took a bite.
I hadn't eaten there in years, I recalled. And as soon as I took that first bite, I suddenly remembered why. The shells, somehow managing to be limp and stale at the same time. The cheese, ice-cold, even the melted parts. (Still don't understand that.) The meat, clearly not from an animal higher up on the food chain than, say, an armadillo. If this meat had ever seen a cow, it was as it was being loaded into a truck, from boxes that once said "Grade F Meat" but there was a line on the right side of the F so it looked like a boxy A. From a distance.
Sigh. But we soldiered on. Having glanced around campus a little more, we retired to the room, where I took my VHS copy of Little Caesar (the first movie starring Edward G. Robinson in his famous "Nyah, see?!" archetype, instrumental for my paper) and walked to Library West. It is interesting to note that when I originally found the tape in the bowels of the library, I made it all the way home before I remembered: I don't have a VHS player. But I recalled that they had some at the library, so off I strolled.
Side note: The way Library West works is awesome. They have way, way too many books and not enough space for true aisles, so all the aisles are on rails connected to the ceiling, and they're all jammed up tight together. When you want to get into a certain aisle, you press a button on the side, and a mechanical apparatus grinds the aisles apart so you can get in and retrieve a book. No matter how many times I do this, it's still the coolest thing ever. I believed an epic action-movie duel could be fought down there, with people ducking between the aisles and having to slip out or risk being crushed to death. My friend, another friend, thinks it's more suited to a Legend of Zelda-style puzzle, in which you have to align the aisles in a certain way to proceed. I like my interpretation better.
I arrived at the library, only to react in dismay. All six VHS viewing stations were occupied. As I had no choice, I patiently waited for one to become free. This was not an encouraging task. Only two people of the six were actually watching movies on the televisions, the rest were either studying alone, or studying together and talking animatedly, seemingly ignoring the TV sets before them. And yet, inquiries as to when they might be finished produced various reactions from "We're waiting for a friend" to "We're getting around to it," and even one "Oh, right, we have to watch the movie!" and chuckles all round as they popped in the tape. Demoralized, I sat nearby.
After twenty minutes, luckily, a station became available. I sat down, unsheathed my tape from its plastic box, and smacked myself in the head for incompetence. I had forgotten to bring headphones to plug into the television. There were no speakers, those sort of being contrary to the whole concept behind a library in the first place. So I trudged home, much to the dismay of Michelle, who had wanted to mess around on my computer for a few hours more. She had just discovered YouTube, you see. And, well, you know how that is. No end to the entertainment possibilities there, as we all well know.
Saturday night was entertainment itself. My girlfriend Vic picked us up (she's the only one of the three of us who actually has a car), and we went to CiCi's Pizza for dinner. I thought I could pack away the slices, but compared to her I'm an ascetic monk with a toothache. Food just vanishes when she's around. Michelle is always hungry. Always. She's like a bottomless pit, it seems. I really don't know where she puts it all. Then we went to Publix where we all picked out groceries and I was harangued for not caring enough about what scent of Old Spice bodywash I was supposed to be buying. As if I can smell anything anyway.
I remember we were choosing, in turn, our favorite songs and playing them on YouTube. She has no taste in music, that girl. I'm at least fairly confident that I tried to start writing my paper, but in a room with Michelle, trying to concentrate on work is impossible. She slept in my bed, but so did I, because I'm not giving up my bed to any interloper who thinks she can stay in my room. Blanket hog. We resolved to call Stephanie in the morning, because all three of us have the annoying habit of forgetting to return calls.
So, Sunday. The day I resolved to actually start working on my paper. Yeah, that didn't work out so well. We went to breakfast at the dining hall, and checked out the Reitz Union game room. And we had to walk all the way to a far-away gas station to purchase her cigarettes, which Michelle cannot live without for any kind of extended period of time. Given what else she's put into her body, cigarettes are pretty much the least of all evils. Beyond that, though, I don't remember much until the afternoon.
I think I know why I don't remember specifically what we did. It's because spending time with Michelle isn't like spending time with anyone else. The things we do are sort of just sidelines to...well, being in her presence for an extended period of time. She, like me, never stops talking - not ever. But that's good. She tells me all sorts of stories from her past, even those from just a few days ago. Mere events like meals and excursions pale in comparison to just listening to her for a few hours. Memory of events erodes in favor of memory of tales told. Her unique view of the world makes for an endless amount of interesting conversations, let me tell you what. Lots of fun.
I went to the library, movie in hand, headphones in, er, other hand, and finally watched Little Caesar. Good movie. I like Eddie G. On my way back, I called Stephanie as to finally getting Michelle moved out of my room and into hers. Guess what, she changed her mind, Michelle no longer had a place there. Deep, deep sigh. I waited a long time to go up and tell her about it, figuring she'd either explode with fury or burst into tears, but again I underestimated my crafty sibling. "I know," she said flippantly when I broke the news. "I knew when I talked to her this morning. I know when someone's shady and when someone's going to renege on a deal. I saw it coming." After much havoc, it was arranged that she would stay in a motel from Monday onward and take the bus back to Wellington on Thursday. I really wish this whole "keep her in Gainesville where I can at least have my eye on her" thing had worked out, but the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, as they say.
Though I can't really see how the best laid plans of mice often go awry. I mean, what kind of planning do mice do? Mice have simple goals: 1. Get the cheese 2. Avoid cats and other such predators 3. Make more mice. Not exactly room in there for long-term scheduling and such. You don't clear out a mousehole and find a tiny Day Planner, every page filled with "squeak." Amusing as such a concept would be, nevertheless. I suppose you could consider plan 1 going awry, if you believe "decapitation via mousetrap" to be "going awry."
That evening we watched the Futurama movie, and she guessed the shocking plot twist at exactly the same point in the movie - the same line, even - that I did when I first saw it. After that, we started to watch Manhattan Melodrama (another movie for my project, this only took place after a spirited search of the room finally revealed the disk under some papers), but she got tired halfway through and went to bed. I followed soon after, uncharacteristically. I mean, it wasn't even 1:00 in the morning when I was asleep. How odd of me.
Monday, I went to class, after shooting some pool with Michelle in the student union game room. She claimes she used to be good, but hasn't played in years. I shellacked her first game, and the second was called on account of time. After my classes, I showed her the rest of the movie, when Vic came to pick her up and check her into her hotel room. After that, we all went out to Olive Garden (where lots more entertaining conversation was had), and then we dropped her off. I'll see her again tomorrow, she promised to take a bus down to campus for Game Night. I wonder what my gaming friends will think of her...
...Dang, did that really happen yesterday? It feels like weeks ago. Days with Michelle in them are action-packed, even considering the incredible surge of writing I undertook to get the paper done that evening. This morning, I woke up with difficulty breathing, itchy skin, and incredible pain in my stomach (for some reason, that's one symptom of my allergic reactions). I fled the room and managed to recover outside before anything majorly bad could happen. I could have taken Benadryl, I suppose, but I could NOT miss my presentation (oh yeah, in addition to the paper, I had to give a 20-minute presentation, but that was easy cheese compared to writing) AND the last band practice of the season. I have too many "absences" already.
I gave my speech, it was a hoot, I went to band practice, it was boring, I came back here, made dinner, helped Vic with some World of WarCraft stuff, and eventually sat here writing this. A little light on the humor, but I'm still kind of drained from dealing with Michelle for so long. She made the point during lunch at Olive Garden that I hadn't spent such a long time with her since 2000. That's...that's annoying. I should like to spend time with her more often. I love her, and I hardly ever see her.
As for my Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day, I say to you...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD-d8_DTrJE It's from an old and creepy light-gun arcade game called CarnEvil. Traditional Circus of Fear stuff, but this level takes the cake. Watch all the way through it if you have the stomach, I cut out around thirty seconds in. Something about human-faced maggots and flies attacking you that just puts me right off, you know?
All right, for those who don't want to infiltrate a carnival of horrors, here's my Slightly Less Terrifying Alternate But Still Luke-Approved Other YouTube Link of the Day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkCCCUSw7gU It's Aerosmith's "Rag Doll." Michelle showed it to me. I like it.
Anyway. REPLIES.
Wednesday first.
Mom: I surely know how that bleed-it-out style of writing takes place. I do it sometimes, even for this here blog. And if Jesus wanted to sweat blood, just to prove a point, I bet he could have pulled it off. According to you, he rose from the freakin' dead, I think he could bleed a little on command. That bit about knowing things versus not knowing things just completely confused the heck out of me. I guess I just don't know anything. North Carolina rocks. But not as hard as me.
Jake: I can't tell whether or not you're being serious there. I'll choose to believe you're not...why thank you, I am that awesome, aren't I. And yes, a blank screen is like nails scraping down the blackboard of my soul.
Dad: Really? I'll have to see this movie. It sounds like fun. That whole Megacon/skiing plan sounds convoluted, but if we can make it work, it sounds great. I do want to do both...don't want to miss out on either.
Steve: I only replied twice because I was correcting myself the first time. And I'm GLAD the fruit spamming is over. By the love of all that's good and holy, you have no idea how glad I am at the end of the cantaloupe tyranny. I'll be with you on December 14th. Certainly. See you then.
Vic: Again, I was just correcting myself. And I like to condense my responses, generally. How often SHOULD we talk about penguins? I'm not splicing my DNA. And a sherwani looks like any dang dress I've ever seen.
Now Friday's.
Vic: <3 to you too.
Steve: As it happened, I wasn't sick. I was just feeling under the weather. It's actually kind of interesting...it's as if my body thought "No, no, this isn't going to work, I can't be sick now. Far too much to do," and suppressed it. And OJ does help...it increases my deliciousness factor by a great deal.
Dad: Zycam, eh? I'll give it a look-see.
Steve: I was busy. As I have previously enumerated.
Mom: Zycam again. And congratulations on the purchase.
Now Monday's (geez, I have to got to stop letting these pile up on me).
Mom: Why? Because I am foolish, is why. And perhaps "sordid" was too strong a word. I should be more careful with my word choice, when speaking of Michelle's actions. >_>
Vic: I appreciate your silence on this matter. <3
Steve: I was starting on it. I got the research done a week ago, so at least I wasn't totally in the dark regarding the paper. And you ARE bad at procrastinating, it's just that I'm worse.
Later.
Comics, it must be said, were nowhere near to being the only agents of change in the Depression-era values regarding crime. Popular opinion was turning for a number of reasons, as has been previously stated, and those reasons often had to do with the very reasons that popular sentiment extended towards mobsters in the first place. Criminals such as Babyface Nelson, Clyde Barrow, and Pretty Boy Floyd committed wide and public antics, reveling in the attention they got from friends and foes alike. While initially people cheered for these gangsters, the sheer scope of their exploits soon began to unnerve people. If people like these could not only get away with the crimes they did – robbery, murder, arson – but withstand widespread publication of their antics and even be gleeful in the attention they garnered, people began to believe, then the line was beginning to be crossed from entertainment to horror.
If all the policemen were powerless to stop Al Capone, people believed, what was to prevent him from walking into their very homes and robbing or killing them? No doubt his famous invulnerability to the law would protect him. The cheering for criminals diminished to grumbling, then eventually widespread fear. People felt powerless and unprotected by the government. Disenfranchised though they were, hatred of the government as popular as it seemed to be, people had counted on law enforcement to stop criminals and protect innocents. If this could no longer be done, the famous criminals ceased to be popular and soon sank to the level of terror.
Bit of going on and on, but I like it. It'll be sure to score me points with the teacher, no doubt. She likes me, anyway. I'd stay after class and talk to her on various subjects. (Note to anyone who isn't yet in college: Do this with your professors. Even in huge lecture classes. Especially in huge lecture classes. Nothing makes a professor like you more than you showing signs of genuinely caring about the subject. And a professor who likes you may be more lenient when it's time to grade that big project or term paper you maybe could have done better on.)
I had asked for an extension on account of Michelle (my sister) coming up from Wellington to throw my schedule into havoc and confusion, and she (Mrs. Van Damme, the professor) had granted it, but I thought of a couple of things.
1. I should have had it done before, and
2. All the stuff I did with my sister was really just recreation and procrastinating on my part. Granted, it's good to keep her entertained, because if I don't keep her entertained, she finds her own kind of entertainment, but still.
So I promised myself I'd stick to the original deadline. And I did. Fifteen pages, one evening. I couldn't rock any harder without actually being made of stone. And even then, if I was one of those soft sedimentary rocks, I'd still be rocking harder now. Eh, this metaphor's dead. So on to the description of the weekend. But we need to go a bit further back.
On Wednesday, Michelle gave me a call saying that the man she was living with currently, who had bailed her out of jail, was using this as leverage to try and control her life. He wouldn't let her go out, made her change her phone number, etc. What a jerk. And what an idiot, thinking he can control Michelle. She's about as easy to grab ahold of as a lightning bolt, and about as easy to pin down as fire. So I made some hasty arrangements, called up a friend of mine to get her a room to stay in while she found a job and more permanent sleeping arrangements, and bought her a bus ticket. It seemed like it would work fairly well.
Flash forward to Friday, many (MANY) phone conversations later. She says she has no place to sleep tonight. "Well, you can sleep here," I said gruffly, "but only for one night. Tomorrow you'll be at Stephanie's [my friend]." She agreed. Since it was pretty late, about 11:00, she went to bed on the floor almost immediately, and took my blanket. Of course, my roommate Walter had chosen that exact time to crank the thermostat down to Purely Theoretical Temperatures. (On a side note, even as I write this, he lurches over to the air-conditioning and cranks it up. Ice crystals are forming in my breath and my frozen blood is vainly trying to flow through my veins, and yet he claims he's hot. I think he's not human.) Sleeping wasn't going to be easy, but I wasn't sure at all how I was going to get up in the morning, being frozen to the sheets as I was. Fortunately, my sister wakes up much earlier than I do, and tossed me the blanket when she did so. I thus had a handful of hours of relative comfort.
When I finally did drag myself out of bed, we went to lunch. I showed her briefly around campus; I believed that since she was going to be staying near here, I might as well show her the place. We went to Taco Bell for lunch. Taco Bell...I hadn't eaten there in years. Always I had had some kind of prejudice against the place, some inborn hatred that was reinforced both by my parents' dislike for it and my sister's favor of it (for a while, I hated everything my sister liked. I was dumb as a young teenager). But I figured, what the heck. It can't be that bad. It's tacos, after all, I like tacos, just get some with only meat and cheese. Besides, it's college, time to try new things. So I got some tacos. I had a seat, I unwrapped one, I took a bite.
I hadn't eaten there in years, I recalled. And as soon as I took that first bite, I suddenly remembered why. The shells, somehow managing to be limp and stale at the same time. The cheese, ice-cold, even the melted parts. (Still don't understand that.) The meat, clearly not from an animal higher up on the food chain than, say, an armadillo. If this meat had ever seen a cow, it was as it was being loaded into a truck, from boxes that once said "Grade F Meat" but there was a line on the right side of the F so it looked like a boxy A. From a distance.
Sigh. But we soldiered on. Having glanced around campus a little more, we retired to the room, where I took my VHS copy of Little Caesar (the first movie starring Edward G. Robinson in his famous "Nyah, see?!" archetype, instrumental for my paper) and walked to Library West. It is interesting to note that when I originally found the tape in the bowels of the library, I made it all the way home before I remembered: I don't have a VHS player. But I recalled that they had some at the library, so off I strolled.
Side note: The way Library West works is awesome. They have way, way too many books and not enough space for true aisles, so all the aisles are on rails connected to the ceiling, and they're all jammed up tight together. When you want to get into a certain aisle, you press a button on the side, and a mechanical apparatus grinds the aisles apart so you can get in and retrieve a book. No matter how many times I do this, it's still the coolest thing ever. I believed an epic action-movie duel could be fought down there, with people ducking between the aisles and having to slip out or risk being crushed to death. My friend, another friend, thinks it's more suited to a Legend of Zelda-style puzzle, in which you have to align the aisles in a certain way to proceed. I like my interpretation better.
I arrived at the library, only to react in dismay. All six VHS viewing stations were occupied. As I had no choice, I patiently waited for one to become free. This was not an encouraging task. Only two people of the six were actually watching movies on the televisions, the rest were either studying alone, or studying together and talking animatedly, seemingly ignoring the TV sets before them. And yet, inquiries as to when they might be finished produced various reactions from "We're waiting for a friend" to "We're getting around to it," and even one "Oh, right, we have to watch the movie!" and chuckles all round as they popped in the tape. Demoralized, I sat nearby.
After twenty minutes, luckily, a station became available. I sat down, unsheathed my tape from its plastic box, and smacked myself in the head for incompetence. I had forgotten to bring headphones to plug into the television. There were no speakers, those sort of being contrary to the whole concept behind a library in the first place. So I trudged home, much to the dismay of Michelle, who had wanted to mess around on my computer for a few hours more. She had just discovered YouTube, you see. And, well, you know how that is. No end to the entertainment possibilities there, as we all well know.
Saturday night was entertainment itself. My girlfriend Vic picked us up (she's the only one of the three of us who actually has a car), and we went to CiCi's Pizza for dinner. I thought I could pack away the slices, but compared to her I'm an ascetic monk with a toothache. Food just vanishes when she's around. Michelle is always hungry. Always. She's like a bottomless pit, it seems. I really don't know where she puts it all. Then we went to Publix where we all picked out groceries and I was harangued for not caring enough about what scent of Old Spice bodywash I was supposed to be buying. As if I can smell anything anyway.
I remember we were choosing, in turn, our favorite songs and playing them on YouTube. She has no taste in music, that girl. I'm at least fairly confident that I tried to start writing my paper, but in a room with Michelle, trying to concentrate on work is impossible. She slept in my bed, but so did I, because I'm not giving up my bed to any interloper who thinks she can stay in my room. Blanket hog. We resolved to call Stephanie in the morning, because all three of us have the annoying habit of forgetting to return calls.
So, Sunday. The day I resolved to actually start working on my paper. Yeah, that didn't work out so well. We went to breakfast at the dining hall, and checked out the Reitz Union game room. And we had to walk all the way to a far-away gas station to purchase her cigarettes, which Michelle cannot live without for any kind of extended period of time. Given what else she's put into her body, cigarettes are pretty much the least of all evils. Beyond that, though, I don't remember much until the afternoon.
I think I know why I don't remember specifically what we did. It's because spending time with Michelle isn't like spending time with anyone else. The things we do are sort of just sidelines to...well, being in her presence for an extended period of time. She, like me, never stops talking - not ever. But that's good. She tells me all sorts of stories from her past, even those from just a few days ago. Mere events like meals and excursions pale in comparison to just listening to her for a few hours. Memory of events erodes in favor of memory of tales told. Her unique view of the world makes for an endless amount of interesting conversations, let me tell you what. Lots of fun.
I went to the library, movie in hand, headphones in, er, other hand, and finally watched Little Caesar. Good movie. I like Eddie G. On my way back, I called Stephanie as to finally getting Michelle moved out of my room and into hers. Guess what, she changed her mind, Michelle no longer had a place there. Deep, deep sigh. I waited a long time to go up and tell her about it, figuring she'd either explode with fury or burst into tears, but again I underestimated my crafty sibling. "I know," she said flippantly when I broke the news. "I knew when I talked to her this morning. I know when someone's shady and when someone's going to renege on a deal. I saw it coming." After much havoc, it was arranged that she would stay in a motel from Monday onward and take the bus back to Wellington on Thursday. I really wish this whole "keep her in Gainesville where I can at least have my eye on her" thing had worked out, but the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, as they say.
Though I can't really see how the best laid plans of mice often go awry. I mean, what kind of planning do mice do? Mice have simple goals: 1. Get the cheese 2. Avoid cats and other such predators 3. Make more mice. Not exactly room in there for long-term scheduling and such. You don't clear out a mousehole and find a tiny Day Planner, every page filled with "squeak." Amusing as such a concept would be, nevertheless. I suppose you could consider plan 1 going awry, if you believe "decapitation via mousetrap" to be "going awry."
That evening we watched the Futurama movie, and she guessed the shocking plot twist at exactly the same point in the movie - the same line, even - that I did when I first saw it. After that, we started to watch Manhattan Melodrama (another movie for my project, this only took place after a spirited search of the room finally revealed the disk under some papers), but she got tired halfway through and went to bed. I followed soon after, uncharacteristically. I mean, it wasn't even 1:00 in the morning when I was asleep. How odd of me.
Monday, I went to class, after shooting some pool with Michelle in the student union game room. She claimes she used to be good, but hasn't played in years. I shellacked her first game, and the second was called on account of time. After my classes, I showed her the rest of the movie, when Vic came to pick her up and check her into her hotel room. After that, we all went out to Olive Garden (where lots more entertaining conversation was had), and then we dropped her off. I'll see her again tomorrow, she promised to take a bus down to campus for Game Night. I wonder what my gaming friends will think of her...
...Dang, did that really happen yesterday? It feels like weeks ago. Days with Michelle in them are action-packed, even considering the incredible surge of writing I undertook to get the paper done that evening. This morning, I woke up with difficulty breathing, itchy skin, and incredible pain in my stomach (for some reason, that's one symptom of my allergic reactions). I fled the room and managed to recover outside before anything majorly bad could happen. I could have taken Benadryl, I suppose, but I could NOT miss my presentation (oh yeah, in addition to the paper, I had to give a 20-minute presentation, but that was easy cheese compared to writing) AND the last band practice of the season. I have too many "absences" already.
I gave my speech, it was a hoot, I went to band practice, it was boring, I came back here, made dinner, helped Vic with some World of WarCraft stuff, and eventually sat here writing this. A little light on the humor, but I'm still kind of drained from dealing with Michelle for so long. She made the point during lunch at Olive Garden that I hadn't spent such a long time with her since 2000. That's...that's annoying. I should like to spend time with her more often. I love her, and I hardly ever see her.
As for my Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day, I say to you...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD-d8_DTrJE It's from an old and creepy light-gun arcade game called CarnEvil. Traditional Circus of Fear stuff, but this level takes the cake. Watch all the way through it if you have the stomach, I cut out around thirty seconds in. Something about human-faced maggots and flies attacking you that just puts me right off, you know?
All right, for those who don't want to infiltrate a carnival of horrors, here's my Slightly Less Terrifying Alternate But Still Luke-Approved Other YouTube Link of the Day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkCCCUSw7gU It's Aerosmith's "Rag Doll." Michelle showed it to me. I like it.
Anyway. REPLIES.
Wednesday first.
Mom: I surely know how that bleed-it-out style of writing takes place. I do it sometimes, even for this here blog. And if Jesus wanted to sweat blood, just to prove a point, I bet he could have pulled it off. According to you, he rose from the freakin' dead, I think he could bleed a little on command. That bit about knowing things versus not knowing things just completely confused the heck out of me. I guess I just don't know anything. North Carolina rocks. But not as hard as me.
Jake: I can't tell whether or not you're being serious there. I'll choose to believe you're not...why thank you, I am that awesome, aren't I. And yes, a blank screen is like nails scraping down the blackboard of my soul.
Dad: Really? I'll have to see this movie. It sounds like fun. That whole Megacon/skiing plan sounds convoluted, but if we can make it work, it sounds great. I do want to do both...don't want to miss out on either.
Steve: I only replied twice because I was correcting myself the first time. And I'm GLAD the fruit spamming is over. By the love of all that's good and holy, you have no idea how glad I am at the end of the cantaloupe tyranny. I'll be with you on December 14th. Certainly. See you then.
Vic: Again, I was just correcting myself. And I like to condense my responses, generally. How often SHOULD we talk about penguins? I'm not splicing my DNA. And a sherwani looks like any dang dress I've ever seen.
Now Friday's.
Vic: <3 to you too.
Steve: As it happened, I wasn't sick. I was just feeling under the weather. It's actually kind of interesting...it's as if my body thought "No, no, this isn't going to work, I can't be sick now. Far too much to do," and suppressed it. And OJ does help...it increases my deliciousness factor by a great deal.
Dad: Zycam, eh? I'll give it a look-see.
Steve: I was busy. As I have previously enumerated.
Mom: Zycam again. And congratulations on the purchase.
Now Monday's (geez, I have to got to stop letting these pile up on me).
Mom: Why? Because I am foolish, is why. And perhaps "sordid" was too strong a word. I should be more careful with my word choice, when speaking of Michelle's actions. >_>
Vic: I appreciate your silence on this matter. <3
Steve: I was starting on it. I got the research done a week ago, so at least I wasn't totally in the dark regarding the paper. And you ARE bad at procrastinating, it's just that I'm worse.
Later.
Friday, November 30, 2007
A Slight Delay - Real Post Tomorrow, Maybe Sunday
I'm sorry. I'm just exhausted for some reason. I think I may be coming down with something...I have that feeling you get just when you start getting sick, a kind of heaviness in your limbs, like your bones are going hollow...that sort of feeling. I hope it passes. If it doesn't, I am prepared to consume massive amounts of DayQuil, so help me.
So, uh. Yeah. I'll update for real tomorrow, or maybe Sunday. Sorry.
So, uh. Yeah. I'll update for real tomorrow, or maybe Sunday. Sorry.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Short Story: Writing A Blog Entry
The process goes mostly like this.
I am playing World of WarCraft or goofing off on the Internet or similar, and then it hits me: Today is either Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. That means blog day to me. So I open Internet Explorer (no, I don't use Firefox, and y'all elitists can go away) and surf over to http://ramblings-of-luke.blogspot.com where I am at currently. I check out my comments; a few more since last I checked. I read them approvingly (or disapprovingly in the case of Stephen's endless cantaloupe rants), and click "New Post." The empty white box fills the screen.
I must disclose something here. An empty text box, a blank white page, a Microsoft Word document open with only a single blinking cursor on the screen, these are both a writer's deadliest enemies and his worst nightmares. The blankness mocks him, taunting him about the quality of his work. How easy it would be, the emptiness seems to say to him, to just walk away and not even try. Your writing is garbage anyway. Blankness is an improvement from what you usually put here. To fill the blank space is a writer's joy; not just in having written something good, but in having conquered the emptiness and proved to the void that he is able and willing to create.
So I stare at the empty box. It intimidates me. To get my mind off it, I surf over to LUElinks, a forum-based website where I spend far too much time these days. I check out a few topics. See what people have to say about events of the day. Sometimes I get caught up in a political dialogue that generally goes like this:
Moron 1: "George W. Bush is the worst president ever! He should be convicted of war crimes and then shot. AMERICA SUCKS. Unless Hillary Clinton is elected in 2008, I'm moving to Canada."
Moron 2: "No, you jerk, George W. Bush is the Messiah, descended unto us in the form of a word-garbling Texan! Clearly there can be no fault whatsoever with the Mighty United States of America, the only country in the world where everything is perfect and everyone is happy."
Moron 3: "Yeah, if you like the oppressive social and economic construct that is capitalism. The fat-cat CEOs run the country behind the scenes and have secret ranches where they hunt their entry-level employees with high-powered rifles! If we were all socialist, there would be no violence or pain."
Moron 1: "As long as America exists, everything is violence and pain."
Moron 3: "That's because of the capitalist hegemony [note: people like to use words like "hegemony" without having the slightest clue what they actually mean.] that dominates the-"
Moron 4: "THE GOVERNMENT PLANNED 9/11! I HAVE HERE EVIDENCE [note: a picture taken by a blind and insane hobo six years before 9/11, badly retouched in Paint] THAT CLEARLY SHOWS THE MISSILE IMPACT MARKINGS ON THE SIDE OF THE WTC!"
Moron 5: "I voted for Nader. I hate everyone."
And so on. I really don't know why I spend so much time there. It's just a bunch of 15-19 year olds who think they're smarter than they are and believe they know enough about anything to engage in high-level debates. Hmm. Maybe I do know why I spend so much time there.
So I'll bumble around there for a while. Then I'll head back to the screen. It will continue to taunt me with its whiteness, its...formlessness. So I'll try to think of a topic. Random thoughts flash through my mind, and I rattle my memory for something, anything, interesting that happened since last I posted.
This rattling causes me to remember to call my girlfriend. So I do, and we spend a long time talking about penguins, seahorse DNA, and the finer points of why I should wear what is basically a dress to my wedding. (The last one is her favorite subject.) Yes, it's some Indian robe, but tuxedos were invented for a reason: They look slick.
So I'll burn up some more time speaking to her. With a "Love you, bye," I'll conclude our conversation. This only serves to bring my attention back to the still-unfilled text box. Frantically, I'll mentally dig through all the events of the last few days, hoping to find something noteworthy enough I can dress it with a few stupid metaphors and slap it on the Internet.
Then I remember that Catherine, a girl that lives down the hall from me, stopped by earlier and requested I stop by her room when I wasn't doing anything. Well, I think, I'm not doing much of anything at the moment, why not use this time before the memory is lost to the chaotic agglomeration of thoughts in my head forever. So I shamble over to her room, only to discover that the door is locked and no amount of knocking is budging anyone from inside. It's only then that I recall she also said she'd be gone until later tonight, as she had a test. Huh.
So I go back to my room. I've just sat down, when I think...Gosh, I'm thirsty. Luckily, there's a water fountain just outside my room and down the hall. So I get back up and walk down the hall a piece, drink my fill, walk back. I shut the door and sit down, and think. I think and I think, I think until I can't possibly think anymore.
All this thinking causes my thoughts to lead back to World of WarCraft, as they occasionally turn to, and that reminds me: I'm only four bars away from leveling. I got a few hours to spare, I reason. That's plenty of time. So I log on and start plugging away. At the moment, I'm leveling Devoutone, a shadow priest, and I'm currently stymied at level 33. So I run around, my little cartoony digital avatar in the little cartoony digital world, looking for monsters to slay and rights to wrong, occasionally getting killed over and over again by a grotesquely higher-level-than-me Horde player who apparently has nothing better to do than to follow around mid-level players and annoy them to the point of brain hemmorhage.
Eventually, WoW bores me. I log off. Again I am confronted with the blank screen. You know what? I think to myself. I'm kind of hungry. So I roll back my chair and mosey down the street to the Graham Oasis convenience store, where I pick up a snack. A stick of string cheese features prominently in these outings, but I'm not disinclined to pick up a bag of Goldfish crackers or a candy bar. Starburst is my favorite, and Skittles and Butterfinger follow closely.
Munching, I return home. I've barely sat down at the computer when it occurs to me...all this eating has made me thirsty. So back to the water fountain I go, for another sip. There's a small nagging in my brain that my time is beginning to tick down, but I ignore it. Plenty of time, I reason. I've got plenty of time. Besides, I'm just about to start. Hey ho. I pull out my chair and am seated once more.
The blank screen fills my eyes. I am hit with a sudden wave of demoralization. Just as I reel from this, an entirely different sensation grips me. Oh... I think. I guess I can't go to the water fountain so many times and not have to use the bathroom at some point. Nature calls, and none may not heed the call when it comes, so away I go, for a brief and mercifully undescribed period of time. That taken care of, I return to my seat. The jaunt has invigorated me. Truly now I will produce something worth reading, something that will last the ages...something new, fresh, and entertaining that'll take my audience (all six or seven of them) by storm.
I realize that I have to find a YouTube link. I leap onto YouTube and immediately get sidetracked by all the various "new links" that appear on the front page. Much later, as I'm watching episodes of obscure anime that I just happened to be linked to, I realize even more time had been wasted. Not entirely wasted, though, as today's Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qCEyJ98QIU It's a modification of the Mario game series known as "Perpetual Mario," in which the level starts and finishes without the slightest input of the player. Not really a game, more like a movie, it makes great YouTube fodder. Especially when they sync it to music like they did here. They cheated a little, messing around with sprites and adding arrow blocks that fling Mario in their direction, but it makes for a good show nonetheless.
But first, I decide to go get a bite to eat. The snack didn't really fill me up, I muse. And it's getting on dinner time anyway. I wander over to one of the many restaurants on campus, depending on my mood. Today it's Subway, where I get a foot-long turkey and mozzarella on Italian Herbs and Cheese. Just like every time.
That's an interesting thing to note about me. I don't think of restaurants I've been to several times as restaurants, I think of them as individual dishes. I don't think of going to Wendy's, I think Hmm, maybe I want ten chicken nuggets, medium fries, and a Mountain Dew. Going to Checkers registers in my mind as Perhaps two Champ-burgers and a large Hi-C Fruit Punch would hit the spot right now. Even for non fast-food restaurants, this sort of thing occurs. Olive Garden? More like Cheese ravioli and about half a dozen of those garlic breadsticks. Mmm-mmm, breadsticks. I'd have some now, but I just ate and I'm not all that hungry. Shouldn't eat just because I'm bored.
At long last I am back at my computer. I crack my knuckles, blink several times, and generally make ready. Here we go. And it's okay, I still have plenty of time to...It's 11:37?!? I have to update by midnight!
So I panic and throw a bunch of random sentences onto the screen, make my replies to comments, and fling it onto the Internet.
My creative process. Enjoy it.
REPLIES.
Stephen: Well, I - wait a minute, you just switched from cantaloupe to kiwi! That's it. You've forced me to use force.
Steve: Well, my paper is quite difficult. I guess I should start it, y'know? Oh, not like that...I've done lots of the research and suchlike, but I haven't actually started writing. That's what this weekend is for. And yes, the better team won.
Vic: Far as I know, the game is about rescuing people from a burning building and finding your own way out through a series of mazes. And there's a difference between being boisterous and deliberately, if metaphorically, spitting in peoples' eyes like those chumps did.
Mom: I don't take it personally, but it kind of stings on the inside. Yes, I'm glad I joined the band, but not all the time. I generally wait until I'm posting the new post before I bemoan the number of comments. You don't have to comment same day, just before I post the next installment. That's neat, about the bats. Enjoy North Carolina, I guess.
Michelle: Good to see you. And I'm glad you prevail. I'll email you very shortly, and if I forget, my email address is gthunder@ufl.edu I'll comment on your blog soon. See you soon, I guess.
The end.
I am playing World of WarCraft or goofing off on the Internet or similar, and then it hits me: Today is either Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. That means blog day to me. So I open Internet Explorer (no, I don't use Firefox, and y'all elitists can go away) and surf over to http://ramblings-of-luke.blogspot.com where I am at currently. I check out my comments; a few more since last I checked. I read them approvingly (or disapprovingly in the case of Stephen's endless cantaloupe rants), and click "New Post." The empty white box fills the screen.
I must disclose something here. An empty text box, a blank white page, a Microsoft Word document open with only a single blinking cursor on the screen, these are both a writer's deadliest enemies and his worst nightmares. The blankness mocks him, taunting him about the quality of his work. How easy it would be, the emptiness seems to say to him, to just walk away and not even try. Your writing is garbage anyway. Blankness is an improvement from what you usually put here. To fill the blank space is a writer's joy; not just in having written something good, but in having conquered the emptiness and proved to the void that he is able and willing to create.
So I stare at the empty box. It intimidates me. To get my mind off it, I surf over to LUElinks, a forum-based website where I spend far too much time these days. I check out a few topics. See what people have to say about events of the day. Sometimes I get caught up in a political dialogue that generally goes like this:
Moron 1: "George W. Bush is the worst president ever! He should be convicted of war crimes and then shot. AMERICA SUCKS. Unless Hillary Clinton is elected in 2008, I'm moving to Canada."
Moron 2: "No, you jerk, George W. Bush is the Messiah, descended unto us in the form of a word-garbling Texan! Clearly there can be no fault whatsoever with the Mighty United States of America, the only country in the world where everything is perfect and everyone is happy."
Moron 3: "Yeah, if you like the oppressive social and economic construct that is capitalism. The fat-cat CEOs run the country behind the scenes and have secret ranches where they hunt their entry-level employees with high-powered rifles! If we were all socialist, there would be no violence or pain."
Moron 1: "As long as America exists, everything is violence and pain."
Moron 3: "That's because of the capitalist hegemony [note: people like to use words like "hegemony" without having the slightest clue what they actually mean.] that dominates the-"
Moron 4: "THE GOVERNMENT PLANNED 9/11! I HAVE HERE EVIDENCE [note: a picture taken by a blind and insane hobo six years before 9/11, badly retouched in Paint] THAT CLEARLY SHOWS THE MISSILE IMPACT MARKINGS ON THE SIDE OF THE WTC!"
Moron 5: "I voted for Nader. I hate everyone."
And so on. I really don't know why I spend so much time there. It's just a bunch of 15-19 year olds who think they're smarter than they are and believe they know enough about anything to engage in high-level debates. Hmm. Maybe I do know why I spend so much time there.
So I'll bumble around there for a while. Then I'll head back to the screen. It will continue to taunt me with its whiteness, its...formlessness. So I'll try to think of a topic. Random thoughts flash through my mind, and I rattle my memory for something, anything, interesting that happened since last I posted.
This rattling causes me to remember to call my girlfriend. So I do, and we spend a long time talking about penguins, seahorse DNA, and the finer points of why I should wear what is basically a dress to my wedding. (The last one is her favorite subject.) Yes, it's some Indian robe, but tuxedos were invented for a reason: They look slick.
So I'll burn up some more time speaking to her. With a "Love you, bye," I'll conclude our conversation. This only serves to bring my attention back to the still-unfilled text box. Frantically, I'll mentally dig through all the events of the last few days, hoping to find something noteworthy enough I can dress it with a few stupid metaphors and slap it on the Internet.
Then I remember that Catherine, a girl that lives down the hall from me, stopped by earlier and requested I stop by her room when I wasn't doing anything. Well, I think, I'm not doing much of anything at the moment, why not use this time before the memory is lost to the chaotic agglomeration of thoughts in my head forever. So I shamble over to her room, only to discover that the door is locked and no amount of knocking is budging anyone from inside. It's only then that I recall she also said she'd be gone until later tonight, as she had a test. Huh.
So I go back to my room. I've just sat down, when I think...Gosh, I'm thirsty. Luckily, there's a water fountain just outside my room and down the hall. So I get back up and walk down the hall a piece, drink my fill, walk back. I shut the door and sit down, and think. I think and I think, I think until I can't possibly think anymore.
All this thinking causes my thoughts to lead back to World of WarCraft, as they occasionally turn to, and that reminds me: I'm only four bars away from leveling. I got a few hours to spare, I reason. That's plenty of time. So I log on and start plugging away. At the moment, I'm leveling Devoutone, a shadow priest, and I'm currently stymied at level 33. So I run around, my little cartoony digital avatar in the little cartoony digital world, looking for monsters to slay and rights to wrong, occasionally getting killed over and over again by a grotesquely higher-level-than-me Horde player who apparently has nothing better to do than to follow around mid-level players and annoy them to the point of brain hemmorhage.
Eventually, WoW bores me. I log off. Again I am confronted with the blank screen. You know what? I think to myself. I'm kind of hungry. So I roll back my chair and mosey down the street to the Graham Oasis convenience store, where I pick up a snack. A stick of string cheese features prominently in these outings, but I'm not disinclined to pick up a bag of Goldfish crackers or a candy bar. Starburst is my favorite, and Skittles and Butterfinger follow closely.
Munching, I return home. I've barely sat down at the computer when it occurs to me...all this eating has made me thirsty. So back to the water fountain I go, for another sip. There's a small nagging in my brain that my time is beginning to tick down, but I ignore it. Plenty of time, I reason. I've got plenty of time. Besides, I'm just about to start. Hey ho. I pull out my chair and am seated once more.
The blank screen fills my eyes. I am hit with a sudden wave of demoralization. Just as I reel from this, an entirely different sensation grips me. Oh... I think. I guess I can't go to the water fountain so many times and not have to use the bathroom at some point. Nature calls, and none may not heed the call when it comes, so away I go, for a brief and mercifully undescribed period of time. That taken care of, I return to my seat. The jaunt has invigorated me. Truly now I will produce something worth reading, something that will last the ages...something new, fresh, and entertaining that'll take my audience (all six or seven of them) by storm.
I realize that I have to find a YouTube link. I leap onto YouTube and immediately get sidetracked by all the various "new links" that appear on the front page. Much later, as I'm watching episodes of obscure anime that I just happened to be linked to, I realize even more time had been wasted. Not entirely wasted, though, as today's Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qCEyJ98QIU It's a modification of the Mario game series known as "Perpetual Mario," in which the level starts and finishes without the slightest input of the player. Not really a game, more like a movie, it makes great YouTube fodder. Especially when they sync it to music like they did here. They cheated a little, messing around with sprites and adding arrow blocks that fling Mario in their direction, but it makes for a good show nonetheless.
But first, I decide to go get a bite to eat. The snack didn't really fill me up, I muse. And it's getting on dinner time anyway. I wander over to one of the many restaurants on campus, depending on my mood. Today it's Subway, where I get a foot-long turkey and mozzarella on Italian Herbs and Cheese. Just like every time.
That's an interesting thing to note about me. I don't think of restaurants I've been to several times as restaurants, I think of them as individual dishes. I don't think of going to Wendy's, I think Hmm, maybe I want ten chicken nuggets, medium fries, and a Mountain Dew. Going to Checkers registers in my mind as Perhaps two Champ-burgers and a large Hi-C Fruit Punch would hit the spot right now. Even for non fast-food restaurants, this sort of thing occurs. Olive Garden? More like Cheese ravioli and about half a dozen of those garlic breadsticks. Mmm-mmm, breadsticks. I'd have some now, but I just ate and I'm not all that hungry. Shouldn't eat just because I'm bored.
At long last I am back at my computer. I crack my knuckles, blink several times, and generally make ready. Here we go. And it's okay, I still have plenty of time to...It's 11:37?!? I have to update by midnight!
So I panic and throw a bunch of random sentences onto the screen, make my replies to comments, and fling it onto the Internet.
My creative process. Enjoy it.
REPLIES.
Stephen: Well, I - wait a minute, you just switched from cantaloupe to kiwi! That's it. You've forced me to use force.
Steve: Well, my paper is quite difficult. I guess I should start it, y'know? Oh, not like that...I've done lots of the research and suchlike, but I haven't actually started writing. That's what this weekend is for. And yes, the better team won.
Vic: Far as I know, the game is about rescuing people from a burning building and finding your own way out through a series of mazes. And there's a difference between being boisterous and deliberately, if metaphorically, spitting in peoples' eyes like those chumps did.
Mom: I don't take it personally, but it kind of stings on the inside. Yes, I'm glad I joined the band, but not all the time. I generally wait until I'm posting the new post before I bemoan the number of comments. You don't have to comment same day, just before I post the next installment. That's neat, about the bats. Enjoy North Carolina, I guess.
Michelle: Good to see you. And I'm glad you prevail. I'll email you very shortly, and if I forget, my email address is gthunder@ufl.edu I'll comment on your blog soon. See you soon, I guess.
The end.
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