Aug. 31, 2011: A Few Notes

·         I’m back in the office today after being out in the field helping (a little) with restoration work after Hurricane Irene.  If you’re wondering, there were 850+ folks out of lights in Scarsdale yesterday at lunch.  By the time I left last night, we’d cut that to just over 250, and we’d (finally) managed to open all the roads—even the back streets.  This morning, there was something like 180 folks out, and the official projection has everyone back in service by midnight tomorrow.  I understand that folks get frustrated with being out of power, but all things considered, I think the response to this storm has been pretty good.  Considering that Westchester County got hit by an actual hurricane, it’s incredible to think that everyone in the county will have their power back in less than a week.

·         I get depressed about the Republican Party from time to time, especially when they let the fringe wackos take the lead.  The parts that I like the least are the nativist parts, the parts that want to go back to the “good old days”, especially when you consider the specific parts of the way-back-when that they want to bring back.  I hate it when they pine for segregation, look for ways to screw the little guy, and bottom line, protect the interests of those that don’t need protecting.  Do we need to make some hard choices?  Yes.  Of course we do.  But I don’t think it’s too much to ask for shared sacrifice, and I think it’s idiotic to have the desire to dismantle government as a platform for seeking higher office.  “We promise to do less for you” is not a compelling slogan. 

I bring all this up because I think it’s worth asking who Republican voters are.  Because right now, the country is quickly trending away from being majority white.  So with a little simple math, we can see that the Republican Party will probably cease to exist as a viable national entity some time within the next twenty years if it can’t find a way to appeal to folks besides upper class white folks, southern white folks, and evangelical white folks.  And right now I don’t see it.

Folks (of all kinds) will eventually vote themselves unlimited amounts of bread and circuses if you let them.  To avoid that, what you have to do is to find some way to include them in your vision for the future; you have to give them a stake in the continuation of the status quo.  You have to find some way to spread prosperity around—proactively—rather than simply offering a message that says, “We’re gonna step back and hope for the best.”  That message, that, “we’re gonna do less so our affluent constituents don’t have to pay as much in taxes,” that message right there is poison.  Maybe not at the party primary level.  But compared to the rest of the country, compared to the way the country as a whole is actually trending… that message is a slow, creeping death that only lacks time and patience from the opposition in order to ensure their rivals’ complete destruction.

It makes me sad that there’s no vision at the national level besides, “Fuck you, we’re gonna keep what we have.”  I think you’re going to find that, nationally speaking, that doesn’t have much resonance.

·         It felt good to ride into work this morning.  The upside of being forced off the bike for a few days was that I had fresh legs.  I kept wanting to get up and climb out of the saddle.  That was nice.  Tonight I’m hoping to go for a little run and basically start getting back into the swing of exercising.  It probably sounds stupid to say this, but I’m insanely excited about it.

·         Also back in full swing after a few months of low-ebb?  My D&D game, The Sellswords of Luskan. 

If you’re wondering, the Sellswords are currently down in the depths of the Underdark, fighting the lichdrow Asterlix and his hordes of undead minions.  See, Asterlix sold his soul to Asmodeus, the King of Hell, for an insane amount of arcane power.  But then he used a ritual to turn himself into a lich, thereby denying the devil his due.  So now Asmodeus wants revenge.  Only problem?  Glasya, Asmodeus’s daughter, hired the Sellswords to fetch Asterlix’s soul before Asmodeus’s own agents had a chance to collect on their master’s debt.  Got it?  So if the Sellswords collect the soul, then they’re making an enemy of the King of Hell.  Not generally a healthy think to do.  On the other hand, if they don’t deliver on their promise to Glasya, then their leader Jaeron loses his own soul to Glasya.  That’s the price of failure when you make deals with the Devil.

Bottom line, my Players are Damned if they do, and they’re Damned if they don’t.  Either way, it think they’re screwed.  Bwhahahahahaha!

·         For the curious: I use the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for SoL, and the reason is that it saves time.  Wizards of the Coast (WotC) publishes several pre-generated campaign setting for exactly this reason.   I mean, yeah, I do like the FR novels.  They are by far and away my favorite vice.  But even more importantly than that, using an established setting saves me having to explain the obvious to my Players.  And it saves time in world-building, which you lets me focus more on things that are actually important—like story and plot.  Every minute I can avoid spending on some meaningless triviality (i.e. “What’s the name of the King of Hell?”) is a minute I can spend worrying about the next complication my Players will have to deal with in the story.  And bottom line, I think that plot complications are a lot more important than coming up with weird names for widgets, especially since the term “widgets” is already perfectly acceptable, and we all already know what it means.

·         My friend Alan Evans is working on a new story, and frankly, I envy his motivation.  I really do.  But I can’t seem to write anything that isn’t Sellswords-related, and that Sellswords stuff seems to be enough to keep my creative side at bay.  I don’t know what that says about me besides maybe that my writing doesn’t have any potential commercial applications, and that the condition seems to be terminal.

*sigh*

I wrote a novel for the same reason that I run Olympic triathlons:  I wanted to prove to myself that I could.  But now, having done it, I have little or no interest in doing it again.  What else can I say?  I guess I just don’t have the Great American Novel in me.  All my mother’s hopes and dreams for one are gonna come to nothing.

·         Last thing: I’m taking Friday off, so that Sally and the girls and I can head back to Six Flags.  You may remember that we’d planned to go on Sunday, but (obviously) we had to postpone because of the hurricane.  Well, now we’re back on , and if luck is on our side, this time it’ll be even better than it would have been last weekend!