Post of the day...no way

I've been feeling trampled upon by life lately. Everywhere I turn there's strife and hardship. Nothing new. I'm usually the first person to tell someone, "Welcome to life bub. Now it's time to stop whining and put on your big girl panties." But dang, every segment of my life is throwing flack at me right now.

Then yesterday I decided that I'd had enough glum and it was time to find the glory. I want to start writing down the single thing that makes every day unique or special, whatever that thing might be. I'm calling it "my daily neato." And then I thought, wow, what a great way to give me something to blog about! Besides all the other things I want to blog about but usually ending up ranting about in emails to friends (hi Curtis).

And then I realized who I was talking about...me. While I am going to keep a journal about these bits of subjective singularity, I don't know if I'll be able to catalog them all here. That's really asking a lot of myself, but I'll do my best to make a quick post as often as I can.

But really, in only two days of paying attention, I've experienced several things to post about. The world and Life are out there, I just have to pay attention when it happens. When I had this thought, I of course said, well hey, that's my first post! And I bore witness to some really cool stuff in just the 45 minutes of my sons' karate class.

First, during class they practiced their version of a kata, and I got to see my son perform it flawlessly. It was very cool to see him demonstrate that much focus and precision.

At the beginning of class, while I was trying to read a short story by Jim Butcher, a mother walked through trailing three young kids in tow. One was a newborn, 2-months tops. The other two were roughly 4 and 10. Plus, she had a child in the class, probably filling that gap between the other two. Wow. Four kids, three sitting with her. That meant that either there's no husband or that he works evenings or nights. Yet she cares enough to get one of her kids to karate. Then I saw that she was studying a psychology text book, looked like an Intro text.

And that was my Daily Neato for yesterday: A harried mom who had a good parental-grip (at that time, at least) on the three of her four children and was taking notes on her college class in those few moments of peace that I'm sure are so infrequent in her day. It gave me a warm fuzzy and would make a great observed scene in a story, much like I've used it here.

My Neato for today is a page on Edutopia (a website for teachers) that showcases several videos about how to use technology in the classroom. Not just the usual stuff like SmartBoards and music, but how teachers can use Twitter, YouTube, and even the Nintendo Wii in the classroom. Very cool and future-thinking. I mean, how quickly would you bond with your students if they knew that YOU know what YouTube is and even show videos from it in the class or as homework?



Reading: Invincible, Vol. 9 by Robert Kirkman

Bookshelf self defense

Well, here's the update on my attempts at overpowering my reading list.

I finished the one story in the Elric collection. Would've liked to read more, but I had to move on. I read four stories in the horror collection and was bored by all four, even the story by Robert Bloch. They just weren't of a vein that I like. Next came four of the five volumes of Green Lantern comics. These were great, thank you Jeph Loeb!

Currently I'm halfway through Stranger in a Strange Land. What a great book! My wife is also reading it and of course she's ahead of me, but that's normal. I'm pushing through the "extended version" not only because it's so good, but I really want to get to Watchmen.

Just when I thought I was doing well, TBR blind-sided me yesterday. I picked up and read the first page of Warren Ellis's Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. trade paperback. Now I really want to re-read that. The 2-volume work is an irreverent collection of forgotten Marvel Comics characters who are thrown together as a covert ops team by an evil version of SHIELD (Marvel's 'big brother' version of the CIA). Well, since they're heroes, even forgotten, 2-bit heroes, they turn on their keepers and commit themselves to bringing down the organization or at the very least, being a pain in its beauracratic bum. It's humorous AND fun, written as only Warren Ellis can write (no one mocks the establishment like that grizzled prat!) and drawn perfectly by Stuart Immonen (a danged find draw-er in his own right).

Listening to: Clutch "Robot Hive/Exodus"

XM go bye-bye

Lately I've been contemplating a shift in my existential paradigm. I've been thinking about canceling my subscription to XM. It's not that I'm unhappy with the service. Quite the opposite, actually, as I mentioned in a recent blog comment at work, the merger of XM and Sirius satellite radio companies worked out well for me. I'm now able to get the best of both satellite radio worlds.

But these days, I find myself listening to my subscription less and less. In the car, where I do the bulk of my music listening, I've been listening to podcasts (more on those in an upcoming post) and my CDs. At home, I still listen to satellite radio, but since I get my TV programming from Dish Network, I also have access to satellite radio programming through that. And there's really no sense in me paying for the same content twice (theoretically, part of my Dish Network fees cover that music programming).

All of the above leaves me wondering why I'm spending $13 a month for a service I'm not using. Do I believe in what satellite radio has to offer, namely unparalleled music offerings? Hell yes. Do I enjoy access to 120-ish channels of music, news, sports and entertainment? Well, hell yes. Would I give $13 a month to some grimy dude on the street just because he asked for it? That depends on whether he could appeal to one of my geek interests (I'm already doing that at the comic book store), but likely, no. Yet that's what I'm doing, letting some grimy, corporate bum hit my Visa card for a baker's-dozen-bucks every month for something that I'm not using. It's time to drop a dime and cut off that needle in my arm.

Thanks for listening; I have a phone call to make.

Playing on XM: um, that's my point. I don't know. I guess it's time to change my sig line too.

What I'm (not yet) reading

Lately I'm being haunted by one of my old enemies, a bully who was hounded me since high school, always lurking over my shoulder, gaining strength while I'm relaxing. Yes, my greatest nemesis, TBR. The To Be Read pile.

I thought I had vanquished the TBR over the summer by reading most of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. Yesterday I finished the most recent book in the series, Small Favor, and looked at my night stand to see what was next. That's when I got hit with the panic attack. My night stand runneth over.

TBR is back. Here are the options piled before me, in no particular order:

Stranger in a Strange Land - I started this one once before but didn't get quite half-way through it. This is one of the books that I really want to read but keep putting off. It's one of the greatest books ever written. One of my favorite and oft misunderstood comic book characters is based on the book's central character. It's the favorite book of one of my closest friends. But I can never fit it into my reading schedule. Bottom Line - It's an immortal work. It'll always be available should that rainy day ever come.

Watchmen - One of the greatest comic book stories ever told. The movie is finally (after DECADES of waiting) coming out next month. I've wanted my own copy of this book for a long time and my wife gave it to last month for my birthday. Bottom Line - I've read it twice before and will again. Just not yet.

Elric The Stealer of Souls (Chronicles of the Last Emperor of Melnibone: Vol 1) - One of my favorite fantasy sagas, and in my opinion, one of the earliest dark fantasies. The forlorn story of Elric of Melnibone, the Sailor on the Seas of Fate, is presented in this first volume of an apparently ongoing collection of the older stories. The best part is that the back cover of the book promises an upcoming motion picture. Rock! Hopefully they'll get Hawkwind to do the soundtrack (see one of my previous posts). Bottom Line - Here again, I've read most of these stories before and will again. I started the first story last night, so I might continue with this one.

2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl - I picked up this book at the Green Valley Book Fair. It's a New Age treatise on the upcoming end of the world. According to the ancient Mayan calendar, the world will end on December 21, 2012. I've read the intro and first chapter, and skimmed a lot of the rest (the professional term is "gutting" the book). The author suggests that, rather than an apocolypse, the date will instead bring a cosmic paradigm shift resulting in a higher level of consciousness for mankind. That is, if we prepare ourselves by cleaning out our emotional and karmic closets, renewing our environment and opening ourselves to the Universe. He promises us telepathy!

Now trust me when I say that I've read my share of New Age books. I'm all over that stuff. If you want a good book about self actualization, read Dan Millman, James Redfield, or Wade Davis (one of my favorite books). Those guys write good stories and deliver a positive, emotional message. THIS book is more academic, by which I mean that it's obtuse and belongs in a college classroom. The book is 400 pages long and has a 5-page bibliography listing over 170 sources. With that much depth and documentation, I have no choice but to deduce that the author's theory is true. Even if it's not, he deserves a PhD solely from the amount of research and synthesis exercised here. Bottom Line - While I like the message and am very interested in really grokking his theory, the book is just too dense. The author needs to write a new version of it that is more obtainable. I don't plan to read this one.

Great Tales of Madness & the Macabre - Next on the shelf is a short story collection from 1990. Those who know me know that short horror fiction is my meat and potatoes. I think that short fiction is the best form for good horror. I picked this one up from the library because it contains stories I've never heard of, including ones by Robert Bloch, Jack London, and an early tale from Nancy Kress. Okay, truthfully, I picked it up just for the Robert Bloch story. Next to Old Man Lovecraft, Bloch is easily one of my top tier writers of weird horror. Bottom Line - I'll read at least some of the stories in this one. But it's over 500 pages of sweet, sweet horror. I don't know if I can read the whole thing before the other denizens of TBR haunt my dreams.

Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War - This is a series of trade paperbacks on loan from a friend. (These are published in hardback more frequently these days...does the industry have a new term for them?) This saga is the story of how other emotions suddenly have their own armies of ring bearers. Afterall, why should Willpower and Do-Goodery be the only characteristics to merit power rings? Hopefully my friend Rich won't mind that it might take me longer than usual to get through these five volumes. Bottom Line - I'm definitely reading these. I'm just not sure when. I mean, they're sitting right next to Watchmen. What am I supposed to do, huh?

Weird Tales magazine - I'm somehow two or three issues behind in reading my subscription to Weird Tales and its companion magazine, H.P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror. I'm not sure how this happened, but that's how TBR works to corrupt your sanity. Bottom Line - Of course I'll read these, but I'll have to work them in between other things.

So what's my next move against the big bully? Looking back over this list, I'm going with the book of short stories. I'll read the ones I'm most interested in, and probably a few more. After that, I think I'll dive into Watchmen; I mean, there's the movie coming up after all. I'll keep you posted, assuming I actually get around to more blogging. Hey hey, my my.


What I'm listening to: Lucinda Williams "Little Honey" - easily her best album since "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road."

Zombie Cinema

Last weekend, some friends came over to try out the newest addition to my gaming shelf: Zombie Cinema. Zombie Cinema is a cooperative storytelling game that is part board game and part roleplaying game. The board game aspect sets the pace of the story, but the action and fun are all in the roleplaying.

The premise is simple: each player plays the role of a character in a zombie movie. The objective is to survive and not get eaten by the advancing zombie hoard. I know, your first question is: Which kind of zombies are we fighting? Traditional Romero zombies that are slow and mindless, or modern, over-caffeinated zombies that are fast, intelligent predators? Well, that's part of the fun. It's up to the group playing the game.

The group decides on setting, type of zombies, and everything else about the game. Since this was our first time playing, our group decided to go very traditional. I was pushing for something different, like setting the game in the Star Wars or Star Trek universes. Maybe next time. As it turns out, we brought in a good amount of campiness without having to resort to scifi geekiness.

Characters are created by drawing a few cards to help derive vocation, motivation, and personality. Card drawing is optional, but none of us could resist the randomness factor, so we pulled cards until we each got an assortment we could work with. Once we had characters and setting in mind, the story fell right into place.

The game started in a hospital in the middle of downtown Chicago-type city in the 1920's. The characters are described below and now that the game is over, I realize that we were all playing very iconic roles that lend themselves to celebrity photos:

• a mad scientist who had been experimenting on recently dead and nearly dead patients in the hospital basement. Naturally these experiments reanimated and thus kicked off our game.


• an ethnic minority who's wife had recently died at the hospital. He was sure there was foul play involved and had just arrived to take names and kick ass.


• a dock hand who was delivering mis-labeled supplies to the hospital. This player revealed that his foreman had been changing labels to smuggle mysterious chemicals to the hospital...the very chemicals being used by the mad scientist.


• an angry teen who was currently locked up in the hospital's mental ward. He was waiting for any opportunity to get out of the locked ward. He didn't really want to cause trouble, he's just misunderstood.
  


• and a macho, ne'er-do-well guy who had recently taken a job as a hospital orderly. Given all of the stereotypes present, it was clear to me that this character was going to be the hero of the movie (the fact that it happened to be MY character had absolutely nothing to do with it).
  

The game started like any good movie should, as a slow-boiling pot on the verge of bubbling over. On each player's turn, he or she is the narrator of the story and describes the current scene. The other players then decide if and how their characters fit into the scene and describe what they are doing. Then the narrator closes the scene and control passes to the next player.

This was also the first time we've played a free-form storytelling RPG, so we got off to a slow start, all of us doing our best to contribute. It didn't take us long to find our rhythm. As the story unfolded, we learned a lot about our zombies. The only thing we decided at the outset was that these were slow-moving, unintelligent zombies. Next we learned that the chemicals used in their initial creation were highly flammable, which contributed to the burning down of the hospital and zombies walking around on fire.

In their attempt to escape the burning building, the characters got tense and the ethnic minority saw his wife, now a zombie, shambling around in the alley below, got angry and pushed the scientist off of the third story fire escape. Luckily he didn't land amidst the flaming zombies on the ground, but was able to grab the second story fire escape. That was our first instance of one character trying to kill another. Sure, there had been lots of minor, impersonal acts of violence prior to this. In fact, the scientist had already been knocked unconscious twice.

When the story moved to the docks and onto a yacht, we learned that the zombies also combusted in the water, so now they were on fire while underwater.

Only one of our characters actually survived the zombie horde: The dock worker who just got involved in the story because he needed a signature on a delivery invoice. He ended up somewhere in the Canadian wilderness. In a last-ditch attempt to kill him, I tried to have him attacked by the polar bear from Lost, but I got voted down.

Zombie Cinema is a fun game and I'm eager to play it again. The mechanics and board elements serve to keep the story moving forward without getting in the way of the storytelling. The zombies could easily be replaced by aliens, vampires, or even furry little gremlins...whatever your group wants to have invade their home town.

Rockin' the homefront

I got to do something this weekend that for some reason I haven't been able to do in a long time: play loud music. First, let me qualify that. The windows didn't rattle, the dog didn't flee in pain. My kickin' AR speakers barely broke a sweat. But the music was much louder than I usually get to listen to it. And that brought me great joy.

Maybe it's the busy modern-day, semi-respectable lifestyle, maybe I just don't have have the house to myself very often. But I rarely get to turn up the stereo to levels I can enjoy from any room in the house. A friend of mine once called it "house cleaning music." Being able to sit at home and write, do chores, or anything is just more fun when the music is cranked up. I know there are a lot of you out there who understand what I mean. Some say "if it's too loud, you're too old," but I disagree. If the music stinks, then any volume is too loud.

Best part: the music I chose. An old favorite of mine. It's a 2-disc set from Hawkwind called Live Chronicles. It's from their "Chronicles of the Black Sword Tour" in ages past (1985). The music is based on the writings of Michael Moorecock, a favorite and good friend of the band.

Another thing I've been doing lately is writing more, which is kind of indicated by my posting here. If I'm updating my blog, I'm usually also writing other things. This afternoon I wrote a piece that'll probably end up being sent to the local newspaper editor. Hopefully I can expand it and turn it into a real article to submit to a few heritage magazines.

I'm also working on two different short stories and a different essay. The reason I mention them here is to keep me motivated toward finishing them. I don't want to have to come back here and tell all of you that I never did.

Got to go eat dinner now. It's my youngest's birthday and we're going out for Mexican food!


Playing on XM: Don't know because I'm listening to Hawkwind!

The Night of the Slug Rave

That's what I'm calling last night. It was a Friday, after a long, hard week. My wife and I decided to sit out on the front porch with a bottle of wine and some cheese and crackers. Little did we know that we were crashing a party. It began just after dark as we were in the middle of talking about our respective days. That's when we noticed the first arrivals. The air was cool and damp with impending rain. A pair of slugs were climbing up one of the columns on our porch. They were right in front of us. We acknowledged their slimy presence and I refilled our wine glasses.

A few minutes later, we noticed that the slugs had apparently reached their target height on the column and began, um, partying. They climbed over one another, intertwining their bodies, and...forming letters. We felt like we were about to be swept up in some kind of Charlotte's Web situation as the slugs formed O-S-A-O in sequence. We might have missed a letter or two, but that's probably just as well. I'm afraid to know what they were trying to communicate to us.

Their little party kicked into high gear, and the two bodies, which were both easily four inches long, began writhing and undulating very spasmodically. They seemed to have no concern for their personal safety as they began sliding down the column as a single, orgiastic mass of slug-flesh. The downward sliding didn't distract them from their gyrations at all. Slime practically poured off of them. It was only a matter of time, as my wife predicted, before one of the fell, plummeting two feet to the concrete below. That has to be a long distance when you're a slug, even in the throes of mind-numbing passion. It just lay there for a while and eventually started moving again, but not very far. The other also held its ground up on the column, its energy and strength clearly spent.

My wife and I toasted our guests and thought that our slug adventures were over for the night. We were wrong. Within minutes a third slug entered the scene. This one climbed onto our small porch from the side and was moving like greased lightning straight toward me. I was already a little disturbed by what we'd witnessed and this was more than I could take. I moved my chair out of the slug's path. It eventually slowed down to a normal slug's pace and seemed to relax.

Meanwhile, the slug on the column craned its head around the corner of the square column to see where I had gone! It looked right at me and I could see its head and elongated antennae silhouetted in the dim light provided by a nearby streetlamp. It was very creepy to be sought out by these overly friendly animals. When we saw the fourth giant slug approaching from the sidewalk, we decided that it was time for us to head inside for the night.
As we took our leave, we couldn't help but feel that for the slugs, the night - and the rave - were just starting.

Currently reading: White Night by Jim Butcher