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.
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The Temperature in My Room
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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.
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Not Enough People Come to My Game Club
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.