raphael.longbournprods.com

(An odds and ends post of fragmented thoughts. Apologies if this is hopelessly scattered)

I mentioned I’d been listening to some podcasts lately, so I’ve added a little “podroll” in the sidebar. At the moment most of these (well, all of these) are either gaming or geeky sci-fi type podcasts. Hey, they were there. These links will take you to the homepage of the podcast, rather than to the RSS feed, which I think is a more useful link.

Something has struck me about the gaming podcasts — these guys have way more time to play boardgames than I do. Forget roleplaying games; I haven’t had the opportunity to play one in years. I’m really envious actually. I’m embarrassed to admit how many boardgames I actually own that I haven’t gotten to play yet, let alone those I don’t own. Yeesh.

I’ve grown very fond of Fuller’s ESB beer lately. It’s not my favorite beer of all time, but it’s rock-solid and I find its dependability reassuring. The London Porter is also a fave of mine, but my local Whole Foods has a nasty tendency to run out all the time.

Of late I’ve been sorting through all the junk that’s accumulated over the years. There’s something liberating, freeing, about sorting through what you have, weeding it out, giving bits away, selling other bits; it’s like lightening a load you’ve been lugging around on your back. There can be a bittersweet edge to it, though; sorting through bits from your past, even your recent past, can remind you of things about yourself that you’d forgotten, that you’d laid aside. Being suddenly reconnected with these things can be overwhelming, force you to see all the different divergent paths and decisions you’ve made over the years about when and how you’ve spent your time.

At least, this bittersweet quality always happens to me when I weed through stuff I’ve stored away for any length of time. But working through this bittersweetness, and divesting yourself of bits and pieces representing paths perhaps you chose not to take, can also be liberating and freeing, because it reminds you why you’ve chosen to spend your time the way you have, and why you’ve made the decisions you did. By tossing out all the junk moldering in closets and in boxes in the garage, you’re also cleaning out junk in your head.

Whatever anonymous poster has been putting the archived series of Family Ties up on the Usenet — thanks, mate! One of my very favorite shows as a kid, despite the fact that it was not the most even of sitcoms in terms of quality, and despite its occasional foray into trite “issue” episodes, this show still means a great deal to me. The different characters in the family mirrored personality traits in families in my real life more than any other show of the time, and it’s been a real treat to be able to go back and see them again, many for the first time in well over a decade. I was stupid and lazy when TV Land broadcast them a few years ago, and didn’t tape them for myself. I’m glad that someone who did bother to tape them has had the graciousness to put them up on the newsgroups to share with people like me.

As a kind of exercise, I’ve been writing super-short stories lately, like 2000 words or less. These post an interesting challenge, because you cannot rely on the more conventional narrative structuring of a tale with a beginning, middle, and end as you can with short stories of 6000-7000 words (let alone novels and screenplays). At least, most super-short stories are more experimental in structure. What I’ve been trying to do is devise different tactics to tell more conventional beginning-middle-end stories in very brief lengths, and still make it work; for example, starting the story right in the middle of the action and using clues to key the reader in on what’s happened before, even as we’re racing toward the conclusion.

It’s really been quite fun. And it’s a good exercise, because short stories in general, and super-short stories in particular, have never been a field of great experience with me. I’d much rather be writing longform works with complex plots and strong structures. It’s what I’ve taught myself to do, and it’s what I think I’m best at. So stretching myself into territories where I feel less comfortable would seem to be a healthy exercise. There’s also something satisfying about completing a writing project so damned quickly — sometimes, in just an hour. Compared with the thousands of hours that can often be put into a script, this is like nothing. It’s quite refreshing to work with material which is so compact and easily handled, like working with a novel in microcosm.

I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll market these to buyers, or just keep them as exercises. Either way, I won’t feel like I’ve wasted my time.

A couple weeks ago the BBC announced the cancellation of the long-running BBC1 comedy quiz show They Think It’s All Over.

All Over was one of my first favorites when I began my longstanding TV exchange with my friend Danny, back in 1999. And it remained an eagerly-anticipated highlight through the following years.

For those of you unfamiliar with the quiz comedy format, it’s like this: there’s a captain who asks questions and sets challenges of a small panel of two teams, each chaired by a permanent team captain, and one or more guests. Every quiz comedy show is built around a consistent theme; in All Over’s case, it’s the theme of sports. The guest teammates are invariably plucked from the UK sporting world, and have included some big names over the years. Anyway, these two teams “compete” against each other to incur the most points and be declared winner for the episode. It’s all a bit like a themed game show, only it isn’t.

In truth, it’s a farce. There are no prizes. The two teams compete against one another for nothing at all. Oftentimes, they’re so busy developing elaborate jokes that they forget the question they were asked in the first place. The whole quiz format is an elaborate set-up for everyone involved to simply create comedy, a hoax game show whose only purpose is to laugh.

The whole concept is inimitably British. No other country could produce such an oddball and seemingly pointless program[me], where the entire point of the game is absolutely nothing at all. The structure leads nowhere, or rather to nothing more fulfilling than to receive meaningless points (in some of the other quiz comedy shows, like Never Mind the Buzzcocks, points are given or taken away sometimes on a whim just for amusement). All they care about is being funny — the format is merely a framework in which to work their delirium.

All Over was perhaps my favo[u]rite in the quiz comedy lineup in the beginning. Some episodes … I don’t know if I’ve ever laughed so hard. Sometimes I was convulsing so badly that I feared I might rupture something, genuinely feared that I was going to harm myself. One of the most famous “challenges” in the show was the Feel the Sportsman challenge, where two members from a team were blindfolded, and then had to guess the name of the sports personality by touch alone; by pawing at them.

Just consider the comic possibilities of that challenge for a moment.

And tiebreakers — oh, boy did I hope for a tiebreaker episode, because in the event of a tie there was always some ridiculous physical challenge the two captains had to compete in to break the tie. Once — I nearly wet myself — the two captains were put in these inflatable Sumo wrestler costumes and made to wrestle. But since the costume was really just a giant skin-colo[u]red balloon surrounding them, every time they collided they would bounce off each other like helium balloons. Okay, maybe it sounds stupid, but it was hugely funny, dangerously and lethally funny.

Then things began to unravel. First one, then the other of the longtime team captains left the show. Ultimately, for the season last fall, host Nick Hancock left to be replaced by Lee Mack.

I didn’t like Lee Mack. And when you don’t like the host, things start to take a nosedive.

So the show I loved so much started to kind of stumble and lose ground. And then, a couple weeks ago, the axe fell. Which, actually, I think is a bit harsh. Couldn’t they have moved it to BBC2, gotten rid of Mack, and started afresh, perhaps tweaked the format a bit? Did they really have to kill and bury the thing altogether? Guess they thought they did. It makes me a bit melancholy.

So much laughter, so much absurdity. So many fabulous episodes.

They think it’s all over … it is now.

I’m getting back into the swing of blogging after a kinda-mandatory hiatus which wasn’t really my intent (there’s a handful of half-finished posts in my drafts which probably will never see the light of day). To make it simple, I’ll start with one of those lame, hey-I-just-saw-this-so-check-it-out kind of posts.

Of late I’ve found myself doing a variety of jobs on this remodel project of mine which are very quiet and lonely, like painting for hours on end. Usually I stick some music on and listen with headphones, but lately I’ve been really enjoying exploring a variety of podcasts out there in the interocean.

Podcasts are somewhat new for me, at least as a regular experience. It can be tricky to find uninterrupted blocks of time long enough to focus my attention fully on what’s being said. And unlike music, it doesn’t work terribly well as background sound when I’ve got to have my mental focus — such as it is — directed at a task, like web design.

But lots of my remodeling work is the perfect opportunity to listen, because jobs like painting and so forth don’t require much mental concentration. It’s kind of like my personal version of the morning commute.

Anyway. Most of the podcasts I’ve been listening to lately have been of the gaming and geeking variety. I’ve always been a fan of games, and it’s been really enjoyable to hear what others have been playing, or seeing, or discovering. And I’m always game for geek. These include:

Kick Ass Mystic Ninjas — this show seems quite popular, and I’ve heard quite a few of them by this point. Each show, Summer, Joe, and David pick a relatively vintage book or movie of the sci-fi/fantasy ilk and basically just blab about it. The show takes on the format of a review and essay, like old Siskel and Ebert. The shows I’ve heard recently cover Logan’s Run, Dune, Flash Gordon, and Ladyhawke. And while generally I’m not a huge fan of having to endure a half-hour of someone else’s critical opinion (I don’t really read reviews or even necessarily condone the whole critics industry), the fact that KAMN takes on more of the tone of a discussion makes it interesting, and generally pretty enjoyable. It doesn’t hurt that I tend to agree with at least one of them most of the time.

Boardgame Speak (aka Geek Speak) — seemingly on hiatus, this show by Derk and Aldie of boardgamegeek.com interviews the really big names in the board game world. And they’re monstrous, both in terms of size and detail. The episode in which they interviewed über-designer Reiner Knizia weighed in at over two hours, and the interview with Fantasy Flight Games founder Christian T. Peterson was so immense that they divided it into three episodes. Derk and Aldie make for odd interviewers, with their very loose, off-the-cuff style; Derk’s laconic, occasionally nasty delivery, and Aldie’s sort of wandering, half-there interjections. For such a strange duo, it comes as something of a surprise that the interviews are so meaty and rewarding, and that — even more bizarrely — the show comes across as a kind of professional leading podcast in its field. If you have any interest in board games, this podcast is almost required listening.

The Vintage Gamer — I like the concept behind this one, in which modern computer game designer Jim Van Verth picks a classic board, computer, or video game from the rosy past to discuss in detail. Obviously pre-scripted, Jim sort of drones on in this monotone that comes across as listless, but it’s fun to be reminded of these oft-forgotten classics from the past.

Slice of Sci-Fi — Michael and Evo seem to be everywhere, with about four hundred thirty three trillion different podcast series to their credit. I would suppose this is their flagship, an attempt at a more full-rounded radio show, with news, interviews, and so on. Summer from KAMN usually joins them as well, and … I don’t know. Something about the format doesn’t really grab me. The interview, for example, with Wil Wheaton back in February felt rushed and thin, like a distracted Jay Leno. There’s some great names who participate, though, including Shawn Piller in the most recent installment.

Radio Free Burrito — maddeningly sporadic, Wil Wheaton has been really just doing RFB as an experiment, feeling his way into a format. He spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about show length, but really, the longer episodes were his best. He probably found his best structure when he lay back and did a straight question-and-answer episode, creating a sort of virtual dialogue with his listeners. Very entertaining. And those episodes (#4 and #5 I believe) in which he took his iRiver out on the road to his auditions, roving reporter style, were also great fun. Regrettably, technical problems killed his most recent attempt at an episode, the one I probably was looking forward to the most: an all-geek q&a. If Wil can get into a routine of regularly producing episodes, and just toss aside all his worry and concern over a format and length and all that nonsense, RFB could really grow into something fun.

Does My Geek Look Big In This — a very silly title for a show I just discovered a couple days ago. Sarah and Nev, from Blighty, discuss three of the most important things in life: beer, gaming, and movies. This one came as a hugely pleasant surprise, and after just one episode has become something of a favourite. Sarah and Nev have a great rapport, their dialogue rolling smoothly together, and they’re terribly relaxed and cheerful (starting the show by cracking open a pub ale can’t hurt). They really seem to enjoy making their podcasts, and that enjoyment rubs off onto the listener. I feel cheerful after listening.

There have been others as well, such as the Official Lost Podcast, Roll 2D6, Have Games Will Travel …. there’s a huge world of stuff out there. Way too many to ever get to. But I’ve found the exploration very rewarding.

Every once in a while I stumble on something that produces a swell of long-forgotten memory inside me. It’s like a long laid-aside bit of my past is brought back into sharp focus by whatever it is I’ve stumbled upon.

It was this sensation that assailed me when I visited Demian’s Gamebooks site (go here) yesterday.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, “gamebooks” refers loosely to any book which has interactive or roleplaying elements in it (as opposed to a normal novel, which you simply read from beginning to end, noninteractively). The most famous example of these types of books is probably the childrens’ Choose Your Own Adventure series, where the reader has to make decisions at different points in the narrative, causing the plot to branch. These books were rudimentary versions of gamebooks — others, such as the Fighting Fantasy series, were much more complicated and involved, requiring the use of dice and numerical statistics, much like Dungeons & Dragons. They were also known as solitaire adventures, since the player didn’t need other players in order to enjoy the game. The book itself became the opponent.

I had completely forgotten about these gamebooks, or the fact that they had been greatly enjoyable to me during their heyday in the mid-80s. Stumbling on Gamebooks.org, which is a database of all known interactive books complete with photos, powerfully reminded me of days long gone, holed up in my room, rolling dice while I struggled through one grand adventure or another. And, because the game is played alone, the experience is much like that of reading: the quiet, the stillness, the insularity of experiencing something that lives only inside your imagination.

Steve Jackson’s Car Wars series of books: “Oh my god, I played those!” The Fighting Fantasy series from the other (UK-based) Steve Jackson: “That book was awesome!” Stumbling onto the lists and pictures of these old series brought back fabulous memories: Be An Interplanetary Spy, others.

Of course, remembering one aspect of that era brought a flood of other memories from the time back; those were my skater years, when finding a new bank parking lot with a cool concrete curb where I could perfect my ollie-180 grinds was a momentous event. A time when I must have watched The Search for Animal Chin like a hundred and fifty times.

And in between the skating were the games: Car Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer. Trips to the gaming store to drool over all those metal miniatures arrayed like so many commemorative statues beneath the glass counters, which were always warm and a little greasy. And those weekend games of Shogun (later renamed Samurai Swords), from the Milton-Bradley Gamesmaster series, with my brothers, which sometimes lasted six hours, but were worth every minute. I still remember the thrill of a successful ninja assassination strike, crippling my opponent by robbing him of his daimyo.

Then weekend family trips to Carmel, or Mendocino, or Point Reyes. The smell of restaurant grills mixed with the ocean air, and then devouring awesome science fiction and fantasy in the motel rooms — The Foundation Series, the Han Solo Adventures, Eddings. Walking the forest trails along the coastline, imagining I was in one of those wondrous fantasy settings.

It can be dangerous to live in the past. But every once in a while, letting a wave of memories overwhelm you, to just let go and allow yourself to be transported back to another time, with its own cornucopia of scents and experiences, and places.

All of this triggered by a little, low-res photo of an old and forgotten gamebook at a site accidentally discovered. How amazing is that?

Some part of me is convinced that somewhere, hidden from the public, The Powers That Be have the solutions to all the resource problems the human race needs to flourish. They have free zero-point energy; they have high-performance cars which run on Nitrogen fuel charged from the aforementioned zero-point energy; water which purifies itself; computers which never crash ….

But I think our most precious resource of all is the one they don’t have the solution to: time (unless they’ve got time travel figured out, which is too scary to even consider).

Take this weekend, for instance. I had so many ambitious plans. I had remodeling work to do. I had gardening to do. I was going to rewrite that scene in my screenplay which has been nagging at me. I was going to finally get around to playing X-Men Legends II for the first time since I bought it last December. I was going to get together with my brothers and play Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition, which I’ve owned for a while and haven’t played and yet been dying to play. I had shopping to do. An interview to finish transcribing. A site I was building for a friend for free to finish. I was going to catch up on some of the DVDs of UK TV that Danny has sent me.

On Friday night, I was convinced I could do all these things and more. I had the whole weekend ahead of me — why not?

By Sunday afternoon, while digging up mature weeds in a patch in the backyard, it dawned on me that I had hardly gotten to any of them.

This happens to me every weekend. “The weekend’s coming — I’ve got tons of stuff I want to do. Make it happen.” I’m always shocked that everything seems to take twice as long as expected, that each hour lasts half as long as expected. And yet I never seem to learn. I still grossly underestimate the time needed to do what I want to do, overestimate the time I have in which to do it. Every weekend. It’s kind of become a tradition.

The ability to manage time well may be the greatest skill you can have. Let’s face it: all the technology and automation which we were told would give us loads of free time, just didn’t. Life moves faster, is more complicated, more demanding, than it ever was before, and the technology is only propelling it forward harder. It seems like the more speed and responsiveness we imbue in our tools (airplanes, computers, cars) the faster we must go to keep up.

There’s a wonderful scene in the Cary Grant and Myrna Loy film Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. Grant’s character has just learned that he’s going to have to take a train from their new Connecticut home into New York an hour earlier than he expected each morning. Melvyn Douglas, playing the old friend and lawyer, stands ready for one of his witty quips.

GRANT
That’s fine. For the rest of my life, I’ll have to get up at 5 in the morning to catch the 6:15 train to get to my office at 8. It doesn’t even open until 9, and I never get there until 10!

LOY
Well, maybe if you start earlier, you can leave the office earlier.

GRANT
To get home earlier, to get to bed earlier, to get up earlier, I suppose.

DOUGLAS
Maybe you can get the railroad to push the train up to 4:15. Then you won’t have to go to bed at all.

This dialogue always resonated with me, even as a kid, because I could appreciate the frustration of trying to wrestle with time, particularly with the circularity of the work week. Does starting an hour earlier one morning gain you an extra hour that day, or does it cause a ripple in all your other days, moving forward to accommodate? That brief scene always made me ponder that thought.

There are some out there who seem to have solved the riddle of time management. People like, say, Steven Spielberg seem to have gotten it. Spielberg directs his films, but he also produces others’, is involved in Dreamworks SKG, pursues his own interests, has a family. Now, with someone as diversified as Spielberg, delegating responsibility is crucial. But I’m not just talking about his business day. With his family and his friends and his work, does he find the time to pursue his own interests, his own hobbies? Does he find time to kick back and read up on the latest Craftsman Style book or whatever? From my vantage point, he looks like he’s got the time management thing licked. Looks like that to me; I could be wrong.

In the last couple of years particularly, I’ve been painfully aware that I’ve diversified too much, tried to take on too much. Now I’ve got this web design thing going on — nothing’s been set aside to accommodate it, I’m just trying to cram it in. Worse yet, I seem to be the type to micro-manage, to insist on doing everything myself. I build my own computers. On this remodel insanity, I basically do it all myself, only very rarely bringing in help (largely for money reasons). With the web design, it’s going solo once again, building entire sites entirely on my own. If I’m deficient in one area of expertise, I burden my schedule even more by trying to cram to increase my knowledge in that field.

I dream of letting go. Of backing away. Of delegating. Of simplifying. But I also know that I would regret no longer pursuing one of my projects, or interests. I like to be very diverse, even though I’m aware of the risks that arise from spreading yourself too thin. But, while we all struggle to utilize our time wisely, it’s much, much more important when you’re like I am, trying to do too many different things. Jack of all trades, they say ….

It also makes it hard to just relax and unwind. When I do finally sit back to do nothing (usually out of exhaustion) I feel guilty, like the time really ought to be spent on one or another of the things that are screaming to me to be done. Yet I know that quiet moments — of doing “nothing” — are important, because they are the moments when we sit back, gain perspective, and reflect. Without those moments of relfection, you can really lose your awareness of yourself and your direction amid the frenetic activity.

Time. Our most precious resource. I’m trying to figure out how to use it wisely, efficiently. I’ve got a long way to go to get a handle on it. Hopefully all of you are better at it than I am.

A few weeks or so ago, I sent a letter to my local elected Representative in the House, David Dreier (Republican — what a surprise) urging him strongly to support Network Neutrality.

Yesterday, he voted against Network Neutrality in the House, participating willingly in the passing of a telecommunications bill which would take Neutrality away, and put discretionary power over their customers in the hands of huge companies like AT&T.

I sent him a little email, which reads as follows:

On Thursday, June 8, instead of complying with the wishes of those whom you ostensibly represent, you voted for a telecommunications law which could remove American citizens’ rights to Network Neutrality. I had sent you a letter strongly urging you to support Network Neutrality. You chose to ignore me.

Instead of supporting the individual American citizen, you decided it would be better to give enormous corporations the right and power to dictate whether or not their customers will be subjected to a tiered system or some other method of censorship whereby they dictate or affect free access to information through the Internet.

As my alleged representative in the House, I am insulted that you decided to vote in a manner opposed to my strongly-voiced recommendations, and outraged that you decided the needs of huge telecommunications corporations were more valuable than the needs of the individual American citizen.

Prick. I love living in America in a time when the Republicans are doing everything they can to reduce this country to a pile of ashes and cinder, and the Democrats quail in the corner wondering where their fucking bollocks are.

(I damaged my left pointing finger today and am doing my damnedest to type this without its use, which makes the “f” and “g” keys miss it terribly)

Sometimes you read statistics and factoids which make you expel the breath in your lungs with the force of an explosion, accompanied by the words “holy fuck”!

Okay. We all know that transportation pollution is usually the big offender when it comes to dirty air. Here in pristine, unspoilt Los Angeles, transportation-based pollution (read: cars) is over 50% of the contributor to air pollution. It’s as much as 70% of the air polluter in many cities. Fine, that’s to be expected.

But lawnmowers?

Listen to this statistic:

In a single day, Southern California’s lawn tools spew out more pollution than all the aircraft in the Los Angeles area. A single mower puts out more pollution than 73 new cars.

Waitaminnit. More pollution than all the aircraft in LA?! More pollution than the fucking aircraft flying out of LAX?

Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, said “In California, lawn mowers put out as much pollution today as about 25 percent of the cars combined,” meaning that a quarter of California’s air pollution is as a result of gas-powered lawnmowers. A quarter.

Also, here’s where the dumbass contribution really comes into play:

… garden equipment users spill 17 million gallons of fuel each year … more petroleum than spilled by the Exxon Valdez in the Gulf of Alaska.

Sweet mother of god. That either means that Americans are the sloppiest sons of bitches in the world, or they don’t care about poisoning the planet, or both.

Dudes, do us all a favor. Use an electric of push mower. Please. These statistics are just grotesque.

By the way, California is trying to pass legislature to force all gas-powered mowers in California to be rigged with a catalytic converter, which is one of the main instruments to reduce emissions in vehicles, introduced in the 70s. But Briggs and Stratton, the largest mower manufacturer in America, is exercising supreme interest group power to stall that legislature by introducing stumbling blocks and throwing money around. They don’t want the extra expense or inconvenience, you see.

Ain’t Corporate America wonderful?

Sources and quotes from CBS News, peoplepoweredmachines.com, and the EPA

After a hell of a scorching weekend, Los Angeles’ unique phenomenon known as the June Gloom has settled in.

I have mixed feelings about the June Gloom. On the one hand, it offers relief from intense heat. That’s a good thing. I hate intense heat (which makes me question my sanity about moving to an LA valley, but that’s another story for another time). Sorta on the same hand, it makes me a bit nostalgic for the San Fran Bay Area, where I was born and spent many years of my youth. Ocean fog is a unique trait of the Bay Area, and a feature of it I love. Though in recent years there was less of it (global warming, perhaps? I hope not).

On the other hand it fulfills its title — gloom — quite nicely. I wrote a rant a few weeks back about how the gloomy weather had really induced depression, not just in me, but in some other locals. And this gloom we have today is very similar. If today is anything to go by, the weather helps to fuel my constant feelings of depression, worthlessness, and general loseraucity (I do apologize, this post will be all about inventing stupid new words).

A quick trip to the Weather Underground confirms that the week will roll out with more of the same, possibly burning to some hazy sunshine in the afternoon, possibly not, while the highs taper off out of the 80s and into the upper 70s. Again, that’s a good and bad thing, all at the same time.

Anyway, this week I haven’t posted anything new to this lame blog, because I really haven’t known what to say. Truth be told, I’m in something of a blog crisis. I’m very new to this blog trick, and I really don’t feel I’ve found my right path yet, both in writing the entries, and in figuring out what this blog is supposed to be about.

Of the blogs and podcasts I visit/hear on a regular basis, all of them can be separated into one of two categories:

1. personal blogs
2. topic blogs

By which I mean that personal blogs are an open journal or diary of their author, writing about whatever the author wishes to, and reflecting that author’s personality and life. They are often fiercely honest. Among these are some of the local Los Angeles-based blogs I read, including Shane Nickerson, Wil Wheaton, Liz Rizzo, and so on. These blogs are reflections of their authors’ personalities and thoughts, on whatever topic those thoughts might happen to dwell at that particular point. What gives these blogs coherency and direction is that they’re always a reflection of the author’s persona, despite the variation in subject matter.

The topic blogs, as I call them, are not an online diary but rather more like a newsletter or zine done by one or more authors on a particular topic. Although they certainly reflect the attitudes and opinions of their authors, they are usually limited entirely to one subject or topic. Most professional blogs fall into this category, including many of the web design blogs I visit, such as Eric Meyer, Dave Shea, and Jason Santa Maria. Similarly, some of the gaming blogs I read do the same thing, with posts pretty much sticking to the topic at hand. Many of these blogs will occasionally see unrelated posts or personal posts pop in, but only occasionally and often with apologies for straying off-topic.

Of these two categories, it was the former — the personal blog — which I wanted mine to fall into. But as I cast back over the handful of posts I’ve written since launching this site in early April, I see that very, very few of the posts are very personal at all. Some of them are downright inane. When I first launched I was interested in writing on a variety of fun topics that were of interest to me: a bit of science fiction, a bit of gaming, a smattering of heavy metal. And, pretty much, that’s what I did.

It wasn’t the right way to go. It’s not that I don’t like to write on these subjects. It’s that they really don’t mesh together very well to form any sort of coherency. Actually, it’s entirely possible that I’m the only person on the entire Internetsphere who actually likes all those subjects, at the same time. It’s my belief that the scattered nature of my posts make for a scattered, unfocused blog.

On the 16th, Shane Nickerson is going to throw this get-together with a hand-selected group of local bloggers reading their best selections on-stage. I wager that, in addition to those up on the stage, many of the audience will themselves be bloggers (including me). This idea of forming a community out of geographically-close blog people is really exciting to me. I personally can’t wait to go.

Yet. The one sort of sour side of it to me is that makes me see that my own blog hasn’t really been the success I want it to be. It makes me compare their blogs to mine, and I find mine wanting. Looking over my posts, I realized there really wasn’t anything I had ever written that was stage-worthy. For some of those guys who will appear, they have an embarrassment of riches. Of course, some of them have been blogging for years and years, but still.

I realize that I lack the courage and perspective to write the fiercely personal blog I wish to. In order to make it that which I want it to be, I must somehow find that courage, and that perspective on myself.

This post itself is somewhat unfocused. There’s no solution or goal I seek in writing this. It is observation, and disposition. Nothing more. I’ll still keep plugging away, writing my silly things. Evolution, improvement may come. Or it may not. We’ll see. Hope I’ll have some people join me for the ride. I’ve only been blogging for two months. I’m a first level rogue still struggling to pick those super-easy locks, to build the experience to make it to level two.

And for those of you who are interested in web design, but hate heavy metal, or those of you interested in heavy metal but hate Star Wars: sorry. I’m a weird guy; I have weird combinations of interests.

Negativity ain’t a great disposition. I blame it on the weather. I blame it on the June Bloggoom.

The power of smell is an extraordinary thing. Sometimes the memory of fragrances and scents once tasted are our most powerful, our most intense.

One fragrance I will never forget, because it bore upon it such a momentous and complex mixture of emotions and meanings. Although I inhaled this fragrance many times, and my memories are peppered over with specific remembrances of it, one particular moment is more powerfully associated with it than any other.

I was six. We were living in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood in a suburban valley town near the San Francisco Bay Area. Summers were hot, winters mild. As my mother drove me home from school, she casually let slip that a little surprise awaited me, somewhere in my parents’ bedroom.

Racing inside, I lighted upon a neat little pile of perhaps six pristine, gorgeous Star Wars action figure packages, laid out in a little pile on my parents’ tidy, well-made bed. I can still remember the puzzlement mixed with the utter delight as I groped for the packages. It was not my birthday. I had not performed any particularly saintly act recently of which I was aware. Why the surprising act of generosity? I would ask my mom years later, and she could only shrug; she can’t remember.

Cracking the plastic shell off the cardboard backing: that waft of fresh plastic, sealed inside at the factory, like so much perfume for 3.5-inch sized people. I drank that smell in, sweet and fresh — it seemed to be the smell of wondrous imagination, of family, of comfort, of moving generosity. That fragrance seemed to punctuate, personify the excitement and the pleasure of these wondrous gifts, to tantalize with the promise of all the adventures to come.

Thereafter, drinking in the fresh smell would become an integral part of the ritual of a new toy for me, an important part of the thrill of its newness. But it was that one occasion, that sleepy day and the surprise which awaited me at home, with which I most associate the fragrance.

Of course, plastic fumes are probably toxic, and the fragrance was probably equal parts plastic outgassing and chemical paints, but it’s hard for me to look at it negatively, not through the prism of my scent memories.

Recently I learned, via Neil Gaiman’s blog, that Cody’s Books, a longtime fixture of my birthtown Berkeley, is closing their Telegraph Ave. store, due to mounting competition from online booksellers (read: Amazon).

This unhappy news got me to thinking about how many of my regular shopping visits are to chains and not independent/locally-owned shops:

office supplies: Staples or Office Depot
books: Borders (usually)
groceries: Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s
DVD rentals: Blockbuster
DVD purchases: Best Buy, online superstores

I find myself frequently shopping for whatever reason at: Target, OSH, Home Depot. All national chains. Hell, even my lunchtime stops are often at chains: Baja Fresh, In-n-Out Burger, Panda Express. Computer stuff? It seems to be often PC Club, or online giants (who so often coincidentally ship from the San Gabriel Valley anyway) — forget CompUSA, which I despise.

I’m not suggesting that Pasadena (or Los Angeles in general) is lacking in independent shops where I could make my purchases. Indeed, Vromans Books in Pasadena is a fabulous and venerable bookshop. And I can nip across the street to the well-stocked Bungalow News. I’m afraid the reasons are more mercenary: I get all these coupons all the time from Borders, which offer enough of a discount that I can actually afford to buy books on occasion. I simply couldn’t afford to pay the full cover price that Vromans charges.

And that’s where the chains have us, or the online people. Look at Amazon, which often has discounts on merchandise ranging from 25 to as much 40 percent off list. For someone like me, with a tight budget, this knocks pricey stuff like computer books from “impossibly expensive” down to at least “barely affordable”. I just can’t afford to pay $45 for a computer book at Vroman’s.

It doesn’t make me feel any less guilty. It’s for this reasoning that the owners of Cody’s had to recently close their Telegraph Ave. location (they’ve still kept the Fourth Street location open). I would be gutted to learn that Vromans had to close their Colorado Ave. location here in Pasadena. I’d feel that, at least in part, it was my fault. Horrible thought.

America is a land seized in the iron grip of national or international chains, squeezing out independent and locally-owned businesses in every imaginable sphere of our economy. Banks: chains. Grocery stores: chains. Pharmacies: chains. And on and on.

This ongoing battle about Network Neutrality, with companies like AT&T throwing money around to seize control of the Internet, is one battle in millions that corporations have waged on the populace since the corporate world took off well over a hundred years ago. The corporate mentality dictates that it’s not enough to be a successful company yourself, you must also strive to destroy your competition.

Let’s not even get started with Starbucks, shall we?

It was singularly unpleasant to realize just how much a proportion of my shopping is conducted at chains. I like neither how it changes my perception of myself, nor what it implies for our economy in general. I like the notion of businesses owned and conducted by their operators. The lazy indolence of people such as myself, to not demand the way of life with their buying dollars that they wish around them, depresses me.

Oh, gotta run. I’ve got to pick up lumber at Home Depot, swing by Trader Joe’s for some groceries, return my DVDs to Blockbuster, get a bite to eat at Baja Fresh, get some new printer cartridges at Staples, get a couple shirts at Target … and bemoan the fate of the mom-and-pop shop.