The Last Storyteller's Playbook Post

Yup.  This is the end.

I decided to start a new blog, called Danno's Lair.  I did it because, bottom line, I think this blog's name is a little confusing and more than a little off-topic.  So if you want to see what's new with me, head over to the Lair and check it out.  There won't be any more posts here, so there's no need to come back... unless you absolutely want to.

See ya in the next life!

First Ever Storyteller's Playbook Contest!

Okay, so here's the deal: we had a tag sale today, and one of the things I realized was that I have WAY TOO MANY paperbacks.  Way, way too many.  I mean, I sold some books today--mostly review copies of comics I'd had left over from when I used to review for Paperback Reader--but... I still have WAY TOO MUCH.

What I need to do, I think, is have a little contest to get rid of some of this stuff.  So, first off, here is what you will win:

1.  An autographed copy of Bronx Angel: Politics By Another Method.  BA: PBAM is my original graphic novel.  I thought all the old copies were destroyed in our basement flood a few years ago, but I just found a little stash, and I'll send you one if you win this contest.  A real life, genuine rare book!

2.  A grab bag of paperbacks from my library--as many as I can fit in a large Priority Mail envelope.  Mostly fantasy novels, but if you can name a specific author or genre, I'll make sure to include whatever I can that's appropriate.  I read A LOT.

3.  At least one random comic trade paperback.

So, what do you have to do?  Honestly, I'm not sure yet.  Anybody got any suggestions?

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!

Tuesday News Tidbits

Some stuff I thought was interesting today:

·         Hamid Karzai’s brother got whacked.  And from what I’d read about the guy before he was killed, it sounds like he was a corrupt bastard who probably had it coming.

·         It doesn’t seem like the Republicans want a long-term answer to the public debt, probably because that would kill their primary issue in 2012.  The open question is whether they’re willing to wreck the country just to maintain a talking point for the coming election.

·         President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to a soldier who lost his hand.

·         Netflix is raising their prices.  Apparently, they’ve either had too much success or not quite enough.  At any rate, their digital subscription arm has outrun their deal with Sony, so they either need to raise more revenue to renegotiate and offer a better service OR get some folks off the digital subscriber band and double down on DVD-by-mail.  My money’s on the former, and I’ll tell you right now that I’ll pay more if the streaming service offers more and better titles.

·         The new Harry Potter is almost out, and the studio has (smartly) decided to market Hermione Granger as the star.  Related: when did Emma Watson get so hot?!

The Army's Next Big Fight?

I don’t know if anybody who’s still in the Army ever reads this blog, but if you do, I’d be curious to get your thoughts on an article from Slate, The Army's Next Big Fight: Protecting its Own Budget from Panetta and the Pols. 

Personally, I find myself more than a little split on the issue.  On the one hand, the Army has been ridiculously over-extended these past ten years or more, and that needs to stop.  I have little doubt that some serious rest, reorganization, and planning for the future are in order if our Army is to survive and succeed in the foreseeable future.  But then again, the country is broke.  I mean, really broke.  So broke that a few more years like this will see in a potential Greek-style debt crisis, and I don’t think anybody wants that.  We’re already laying off teachers and cops left and right, and that’s bad enough, but trust me, it can still get a lot worse.

What’s difficult, I think, is that there’s no clear focus for the Army going forward.  Fighting terrorism?  I mean, as a New Yorker I’m all for it, but doing it with tanks doesn’t look like it works very well.  Frankly, fighting terrorism seems like a mission you give to the CIA and then let them task the Army for help on a case-by-case basis.  And what’s more, we might get in some place with the Army and stabilize the situation, but what we’re not doing well is then setting the conditions for success and/or withdrawal.  From the outside, the Army looks like a medical first responder.  Yeah, we can get in there and stop the bleeding and get the patient stabilized initially, but that’s only a temporary fix.  We still need to get the surgeon to come in and make permanent repairs before closing up the wound with sutures so that the patient can actually heal.  Right now, it looks like the best we’ve done is to stick on band-aids and then train replacement paramedics in how to hold them in place without actually addressing the causes of the bleeding.

I don’t say that this is the Army’s fault, but as a national security apparatus, the track record just isn’t there.  Korea?  Yeah, there’s still a Korea.  But then, we still have troops there, too.  Vietnam?  We won every battle, but the country fell anyway because the government was corrupt.  Nobody wants to die for a corrupt government.  Iraq?  Yeah, the situation has improved, but I don’t think you can make the case that it’s actually better than it would have been had we merely continued the 90’s policy of Containment.  And in any event, the Arab Spring might make the point moot.  Afghanistan?  Well, the good news is that we got the bad guy.  The bad news is that I’m not sure how much that has to do with the effort to stabilize the Karzai government, which at this point looks a lot like the old government of South Vietnam, at least in terms of efficacy and corruption.  Hell, you’ve even got Pakistan there as a modern day Laos, giving shelter to the enemy as he invades on mountainous goat trails.  If there’s any good news, it’s that we’ve at least now got a leader with the balls to bomb across the border, even if it risks the feelings of our so-called allies.

None of which answers the question of what the Army’s role is going to be after the wars end.  It seems clear that the country is headed for more engagement, but with that said, I cannot fathom that the electorate would vote for another war unless something really unexpected happens.  And maybe that’s what the Army’s role is—to be prepared for the unexpected.  But what does that look like?  And what can we afford for it to look like?

I guess my real question is this: is there an understanding in the Army that the current way of things is unsustainable, or are we committed to going the distance regardless of the country’s current realities, no matter what?

We Walk the Same Line

By request, and because I've had a Hell of a long day.

A Quick Rant About Statistics and Reality

Slate carried a real gem today: You Can't Measure America's Grit: Hatred of sabermetrics comes to business and politics.  There were several great quotes, but my favorite is reprinted below.

KFC president Roger Eaton is lashing out at New York City regulations that require restaurants to post calorie counts on their menus. "KFC's Famous Bowls and Big Box Meals are so much more than the sum of their ample calories and saturated fats," Eaton explained in an impromptu speech at one of the chain's Manhattan locations. New York's disclosure laws, the fast-food executive continued, ignore more subtle health factors, such as the impact of saying grace before you dig in and the salutary effect of eating in a booth.

—New York Post, July 6, 2011, as quoted by Slate.com.

I’m not usually much of a stats-guy when it comes to sports, but these guys have pretty much proved to me that you can tell almost everything you need to know about anything from statistics.  You might hate it, but the truth is that the numbers don’t lie.

When did America become so anti-intellectual, anyway?  I swear, ever since George W. Bush refused to stop saying “nuke-u-ler” instead of nuclear, it’s like I don’t have a country anymore.  Have I changed that much, or have people just stopped caring about facts and instead started buying wholesale into their own personal delusions?  Even my church has been off on a rant lately about “new Earth creationism” and how there couldn’t ever have been any real dinosaurs because there aren’t any dinosaurs mentioned in the Bible.  Ugh.  Try explaining that one to a six-year-old would-be paleontologist. 

Honestly, it’s crap like that that’s been destroying my faith these last few months.  And I don’t mean my faith in America; I mean my actual, spiritual faith.  I want to believe, but it’s just so damned hard when you have these guys who refuse to believe in something as simple, mundane, and obviously factual as the existence of dinosaurs.  We found the bones!  How is this even a question anymore? 

Enough. 

Today’s gonna be one of those days when I’m glad my neighbors don’t read this blog.  It’s Wednesday afternoon, and here I am wrestling with my faith.  What’s the world coming to?

Requests for... Requests

Okay, so I've noticed that traffic has picked up a bit.  Over on Facebook, my friend Niki asked me if I could maybe film myself swimming and post a swimming workout or something, and she asked what supplements I'm taking.  That's good because it gives me something to write about, although to be honest, I'm not sure I'm gonna film myself.  Still, it's good to have something to write about that folks'll actually want to read.


So.  Requests?  Anybody got another topic you want me to cover here?  Movie reviews?  Comics?  I'm easy, but it'd be nice to get some more comments and more discussion around here.

Friday Mad Science, D&D Style

Over at The Sellswords of Luskan, we’re running a little side-quest for our primary characters’ apprentices.  I set the side-quest up to give my Players a chance to step outside their regular roles, providing the following basic guidelines for the Apprentices’ creation:

1.       Each Player had to create an Apprentice.

2.       Each new Apprentice had to be in training with a different PC from the Player’s primary Character.

3.       Apprentices had to be of a different race and role than their primary character, and each had to have a different power source.

4.       Apprentices started at 2^nd Level.  Our primary characters are 12^th Level.

With that, we got some different stuff than I’d been anticipating.  For one thing, we came out with three girl PCs for a group that only includes one actual female Player.  And then, too, I’d been figuring we’d get at least one divine character, especially since we don’t have any in our primary group.

Instead we got:

-          HFLep, our primary physicist, normally plays Jaeron, an axe-wielding human fighter.  For his Apprentice, he chose to play Jarl, a half-orc monk in the training of Amata, the primary group’s psionicist.

-          TheHumanDynamo, our resident MMA fighter and all-around gaming badass, normally plays Ginagel, an undead dwarven barbarian who was cast out of his clan and raised by orcs.  He decided to playShai’uri, a sexy tiefling warlock (fey pact) who’s apprenticed to… geez, I can’t remember who Shai’uri’s apprenticed to.  Amata again?  I’m honestly not sure.

-           Foucault, our secondary physicist (i.e. physics post-graduate student), normally plays Vurkle, a goblin shaman.  His apprentice is Mikail the Wavemaster, a human wizard who again I can’t seem to place in terms of master-student relationship.  And I gotta say that I was surprised when we came up with a wizard in this group.

-          Relekorlagunis, our international mystery man, normally plays Amata the shardmind psionist.  For his Apprentice, he’s playing Doreen, a human druid with a pet black bear named Blackie.  The interesting thing about Doreen, at least to me, is that Relekorlagunis used the new Essentials ruleset to build Doreen as a Leader rather than a Controller, and most of his attacks actually go through Blackie.

-          Tila, our resident girl librarian, normally plays Miri, a human wizard/assassin hybrid.  Quite an interesting build, that.  For her Apprentice, Tila made up a character sheet for one of our longstanding NPCs, the heretofore homeless shifter waif Dewa.  Tila set Dewa up as a fighter/rogue hybrid and then broke my rules by apprenticing Dewa to her own Miri.  Eh.  What are you gonna do?  Still, it’s nice to have someone actually running Dewa now.  I’ve struggled for years to make her voice consistent.

I bring all of this up because our apprentice heroes are chasing a rogue goblin back to his hideout in the shallows of the Underdark, but the trail led them to a polluted and foul-smelling river teaming with dead bodies and human waste.  So they used a ritual to send Jarl across the water with a rope, built a rope-bridge, and now they’re trying to cross.  But then a giant tentacled river monster appeared beneath their bridge.

Can I just tell you how much I hope somebody falls into the water?

Diary of an Insomniac

It's 4:30 am.  Or, to put it another way, it won't even be The Butt Crack of Dawn for another half hour or so.  I've been up for about a quarter-hour or so.  It wasn't my plan to get up quite this early, but I woke up, made the mistake of looking at my watch and thinking a little about what all I have to do today, and then started tossing and turning.  Pretty soon, I realized I was gonna wake up Sally if I wasn't careful.  So I got up.

Eh.  I'll be out on my bike in an hour or so.  In the meantime, it's quite in the house right now.  Everyone's asleep, even the dog.  There's a reason why this is my favorite part of the day.

***

The Towers of Terror made a surprise appearance over at Rival Angels last week:

The Towers of Terror at RivalAngels.com

I created the Towers of Terror with Rival Angels' creator Alan Evans a couple of years ago for the now infamous Rival Angels Halloween Special.  The girl in green is Lover Lola, and the taller girl is Zombie Luna.  Their manager is Johann the Zombie Potentate of Doom, who was originally created (by me) as a villain for Awesome Storm Justice 41 webisode #40.  But when production stopped over at ASJ, I re-purposed Johann for Alan, and now here he is.

It's awesome when your creations take on a life of their own.  Alan tells me that the Towers of Terror figure prominently in Rival Angels' fan fiction.  Which is unbelievable to me on a lot of levels.  In any event, Rival Angels has been really successful for Alan.  He tells me that he'd like to sell more books--an who wouldn't--but the series itself and it's ancillary revenue streams are strong, and he's apparently touring quite a bit--doing comic book shows all over the place--to support it.  Nice, huh?

Some Light Reading for You Thursday Morning...

Here's what I read yesterday that I thought was worth sharing:

Over A Quarter Of The Field From Wrestlemania 7 Is Dead.

Robert Gates is leaving the Defense Department, and in leaving, he’s begging Americans to have an honest debate about defense spending.

Paul Ryan—and by extension, the entire Republican Party—is pretty much dead in the water.

I'm still working on The Way of Kings but so far it's real good.

And finally, my group is looking for a new Senior Engineer.  Given the qualifications, I'm thinking that the search might take awhile, so if you know anyone looking for a job, let me know.

How Do You Promote Women in Sports?

Past the link below, you’ll find a short post on SB*Nation’s pro-cycling blog written by a female pro cyclist, along with a bunch of pics of various women of pro cycling in various states of undress (all quite safe for work).  Sure you can enjoy the pics—and to be clear, everyone involved in the discussion past the link seems to take pleasure in doing so—but the issue at hand is a little more interesting.  The writer asks whether the girls taking these pics are basically doing a disservice to the seriousness of their sport by selling themselves as sex symbols instead of as professional athletes.  The issue comes up because the writer herself was asked to do a pin-up shoot, and while she was happy to be sexy enough to be asked, she ultimately wanted to sell herself as an athlete first—albeit one with a drool-worthy body.

Thus the question, which I think is a fine topic for the football offseason: What do you think?  Can women athletes who sell themselves primarily with their physical attractiveness still be taken seriously as athletes, or do they at that point become little more than highly skilled fitness models?  I mean, can you even imagine Tom Brady or someone of his caliber posing for Playgirl?

Here’s the link, titled “The Elephant in the Room”.

For the curious, my answer is different depending on whose benefit we’re worried about.  If you’re a female pro-cyclist (or triathlete or bobsledder or whatever), and you want to make a living from your sport, then I think, yeah, you have to do whatever you have to in order to put food on your table and pay your mortgage.  Pro-sports people are basically entertainers, they get paid to a large extent according to the amount of interest and publicity—and thus sponsorship—they generate, and that’s just the way it is.  You don’t like it?  Go sell insurance for a living. 

I mean, I’m not saying that every female athlete—or every male athlete, for that matter—ought to basically pose nude, but I do think that athletes are like any other celebrity, and that they’re therefore justified in doing whatever will keep their names and faces in the papers so long as they’re comfortable with it.  Bottom line, that’s how they make their money. 

Does it help if they can get on the podium occasionally?  Of course it does.  That’s the object of the sport, and then, too, there’s the prize money to consider.  I think winning should always be the primary objective of any professional athlete.  My only point here is that if you’re struggling to make a living as a professional athlete in a small market sport—and there are lots of sports out there with athletes that fit that description—then you’re justified in doing whatever you can to make your living.  Beyond that, you can only hope that your success on the field (or the track or the pool or wherever) is enough that folks see you as an athlete first and not just as a sex symbol.

The other side of the equation, then, is what’s best for the sport.

Here, I gotta say that I think all those glamour shots are poison.  Lindsey Vonn is one of the most successful skiers in American history, but then she posed in Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition, and even her fellow competitors wondered if she was still taking the sport seriously.  But while I think the move was a no-brainer in terms of Vonn’s personal finances and her personal ability to attract sponsorship, I think that the real damage those shots did was to the sport as a whole.  I mean, why take any of it seriously when the best woman is the world is better known for what she looks like in a bikini than she is for her actual skiing?  Because look, regardless of the quality of the athletes involved, there’s a reason why folks don’t watch the Lingerie Bowl to see quality football.  Bottom line, football isn’t fundamentally what’s on display there.  In marketing terms, the football isn’t where the Value Proposition is most closely focused.  And if that’s maybe not such a big deal to specific individuals participating in sport, I think it’s an absolute deal-breaker for the sports themselves.  People go to a bike race to see bike racing.  If what you’re really selling is boobs, then that’s a problem.  There are lots of other, better places to see boobs than at a bike race, even a bike race with a lot of hot female racers.

These sports need to know what their value propositions are, and they need to sell on them rather than the sex appeal of their stars.  The sex appeal is just a bonus.  It doesn’t hurt, but if it becomes the point, it actually damages the value of the brand.  That’s as true in bike racing as it is in anything else.

Of Gods and Presidents...

Before I go any further, let me just say one thing: the whole death-industrial-complex is a fucking jobs program.  It’s unbelievable.  Seriously.  I literally cannot believe the amount of technical, legalistic bullshit that goes into trying to put somebody’s final affairs in order.  Shit, she’s dead, she left everything to me.  It’s not that she liked me so much, but I was her only son, practically her only living relation.  How fucking hard is that to understand?  Look, there is no valid reason why I have should have to fill out all these damned TPS Reports in triplicate.  Except to keep a lot of lawyers, accountants, bankers, pimps and prostitutes in fat cash, homey.  It’s driving me stark raving crazy.

Yuck.   

Alright, so I haven’t done a lot of politics lately, but I gotta say that I’m pleased to see that Donald Trump’s would-be presidential campaign finally seems to have flamed out.  It bothers me the way that all of this year’s would-be Republican candidates are basically just reality TV stars.  Even Newt Gingrich, a formerly serious guy, seems like he’s just in it at this point so he can sell some T-Shirts, grab a spot on Fox News after it’s over, and maybe write another book.  He must know he can’t actually win the election.  Not only is he short and dumpy compared to the president, he’s also perhaps the second most polarizing figure in recent American political history (behind Hilary Clinton), and he’s got an extensive and well-documented history of cheating on his wives.  This is not the way presidents are made.  And Gingrich is smart enough to know it. 

Bottom line, besides Mitt Romney, there’s not a single serious candidate in the Republican race.  And what’s even worse, Romney has to run away from his strengths in order to appeal to the Republican base!  Ugh.  I mean, I don’t love Romney or anything, but I can at least admit that he’s a smart guy who came up with a smart health care system, and that he’s a successful-enough business man to maybe make a serious effort at intelligently balancing the budget.  But right now he can’t run away from his own record fast enough, especially on health care, which is arguably his greatest success.  Hell, even the fact that he’s an upstanding Mormon family man is gonna hurt him with the Birther/Wingnut faction of the GOP, let alone the fact that he was governor of Massachusetts.  Y’know, the Republican base will in no way vote from some Yankee businessman from Massachusetts.  It just ain’t gonna happen.  Which leaves us with Trump and Palin and Bachman and whoever the Hell else wants to get out there and rouse the rabble in some hopelessly quixotic campaign to confuse the issues and scare the Hell out of everyone with a bunch of talk about gay marriage.

*groan*  Those guys are all so scared of the gays.  I just don’t get it.  Like it’s catching or something.  Look, I don’t actually know all that many gay people—and I work in Manhattan!—but the ones I do know are totally NOT scary.  Not scary at all.

Still, I get it.  The current president looks utterly indestructible, and so all best Republicans are simply holding their fire this time around.  And that leaves us with the wackadoos.  But still…  it’d be nice if the GOP could at least put up the appearance of a serious fight.  I mean, it’s not a done deal or anything.  We are actually going to have an election.  It’d be cool if we could get a candidate or two to at least discuss the issues.  Somebody who doesn’t have to “phone a friend” in order to come up with a list of the last few books she’s read or the newspapers she reads regularly.

*sigh*

On the brighter side, I saw Thor last night, and it was totally better than I thought it was gonna be.  I blame that entirely on the screenplay.  I noticed in the credits that the movie was actually written byBabylon 5 creator J. Michael Stracyznski, and I hope like Hell that means he’s gonna put another series on TV.  Babylon 5 was awesome, and the major networks are very obviously searching for something they can put out there that’s both good and relevant to pop culture and comic books.  Stracyznski’s probably the right guy to go to for that.  Still, I’m not holding out too much hope.  I mean, I’d like to see that long anticipated HBO long-form series of the Bendis/Maleev run on Daredevil but I don’t actually think it’s coming.  But who knows?  Maybe something good will show up.

Of course, if it does, they’ll probably just cancel it after half a season.  Like they canceled The Chicago Code.  Fuckers.  America can’t get enough of Bob’s Burger’s, but no one wants to watch the Chicago Code?  What the Hell is wrong with this country?

Eh.  That wasn’t really the brighter side, was it?

Anywho, Free Comic Book day was last Saturday, and I gotta say that I LOVED the thing that Robert Kirkman put out, Super-Dinosaur.  An obvious concept, maybe, but very well crafted, and my kids loved it.  I’m putting it on my Pull List.  And seriously, I can’t wait to see what Kirkman does with it.  What an awesome book!

Now if they could only write Batgirl for actual pre-teen girls, it’d be all good.

And finally: Triathlon.  Where I’m tired of being tired. 

It’s now that part of the season where the early aerobic prep is hitting hot and heavy, and none of the big races are close enough to justify resting or attempting to round into form just yet.  So I’m basically hammering myself into hamburger every weekend, and right now, it feels like it’s been a month since my quads started hurting.  Just walking around takes a conscious effort of will.  Seriously, not to pimp Kirkman again, but I feel like the walking dead, and it’s getting old. 

Thankfully, I’ve got my first actual triathlon of the season in about 10 days, meaning that I’m four days and an afternoon away from starting a Rest Week, and I cannot fucking wait.  Granted, this isn’t one of the bigger races, and I’ve got to do at least one long bike ride with intervals between now and then, but still… It’s an excuse to back off, and I’m taking it.  Plus, I won my age group at this race last year, meaning that this year I need to defend the championship belt. 

Hey, it’s something, right?  Maybe not as good as being WCW’s European Champion, but y’know, it’s nice to actually win every once in a while.

Well, I think it is.

Traffic

I was looking at the traffic on the old blog today.  Because none of you EVER comment, but I know folks are reading because I get a fairly steady stream of emails and in-person comments about stuff you read here.

So, here are today's stats:

United States 14 Croatia 3 Philippines 2 Denmark 1

Question: Can I get our readers from Denmark and Croatia to comment?  That'd be cool.

No news is, well, no news...

In the absence of something to write, here's a picture from Christmas.

And here are a couple of pictures from my game.  First, the guy my Players are fighting, Obsen, the evil swordmage and leader of the chaotic Cult of Fire!

And finally, our current combat map:

Been a pretty interesting fight so far.  I think I might actually KILL THEM this time.  Mwhahahahaha!

If you're wondering, I play with not one but TWO professional physicists, a semi-pro MMA fighter, and a professional librarian.  And one other guy whose occupation I just realized that don't know. 

Hmmm...  What are you hiding Relek?

Sunday Afternoon Thoughts...

Starting to feel better, both in the water and in general.  I put on maybe five or so pounds in the offseason--over the late Fall--and with all this snow since then, it's been really hard to do, well, anything.  But like I've said here over the past few days, I've finally gotten back into the water, and with the new knee brace, I can even run.  I feel good.  Swam 15 x 100 in descending sets of 5, on 1:30, 1:25, and then 1:20, and I actually felt good the whole way.  On the first 100 at1:25, I even managed to get in at about 1:05.  That's almost respectable!  After that, I did about 40-minutes of yoga and then ran 3 miles, pain free.  Life is good.

By the way, can I just mention that all the folks in their cars were giving me dirty, hateful looks while I was running?  It's true.  It's like they've never seen a guy jogging before.  Ugh.  It's always got to be some 50-something-year-old beer belly driving a mid-70's vintage Oldsmobile.  *sigh*   But seriously... I hate those guys.

On the gaming side, I put together a concept for a game that folks seem to like called Minions of Evil.  Considering the response in just a single day, I really wish I had the time to actually put the game together and run it, but unfortunately, I don't see that happening.

On the downside, when we woke up this morning, we had yellow water.  Turns out that there was a fire down the street, and it stirred up the sediment and rust in the water main.  It took a few hours, but the crud finally settled out, and now we're more-or-less back to normal.

And that's about all I got.  I wish I had more time and energy for writing and/or for running some more online games, but as much as I might want to, the simple reality is that the time just doesn't exist.  Maybe one of these days...

Update: Knees and Storytelling

Alright, so I finally got out to see the knee doc yesterday.  I have what's called a Plica, which is apparently a fold in the cartilage in the inside of my knee.  It's causing the clicking and the pain, but it's not too serious, and unless I'm a maniac, I can probably get away without surgery.  He prescribed a brace and told me to keep running but to take it easy until it finally calms down.  He also told me to use an over-the-counter anti-inflammatory (i.e. Advil) before I run.  So I tried that yesterday, and it was awesome.  I made about 2 and a half miles, pain-free, and I felt fucking GREAT afterward.   Hooray!

On the writing front, I think I'm finally starting to get this opening together.  The issue, if you're wondering, is that my last (first) book went off the rails in the first chapter.  I set up the wrong story questions early, and that informed the rest of the story, throwing the whole thing off a little.  It wasn't necessarily a disaster--I mean, I could fix it--but looking back, it was a serious pain in the ass, and without a good reason for fixing it, I can't see the point in dumping probably two or three months into a project who's future is to sit unread on my hard drive. 

Look, I don't think that the book was terrible--I mean, I'm pretty sure that it's at least readable--but it isn't all that it could be.  I didn't sort of explore the world that I built it in adequately because a good bit of the attitude is just... off.  But that's what happens when you start out with the wrong basic story question.  All of which means that I'm trying to pay a bit more attention to my opening questions this time.  And then, too, this new story is a lot more complex, which is to say that there are more characters and more viewpoints, and I'm trying to use a lot more attitude in the writing.

Eh.  Again, it's not like I'm gonna send this thing to a bunch of publishers, and that's even if I actually buckle down and write the whole thing.  With that in mind, I've been thinking about just finishing the sci fi novella I started for my girls over the summer.  They'd probably like that, and at least it'd get read.

Anyway, now it's Sunday, and I'm amazingly excited about the Jets game.  Who'd'a thunk it?

Chapter 1: Still Searching for Motivation

Here's what I've got so far for Chapter 1.  I'm posting it now because I can't figure out if I need to stop here and switch the scene or keep going and work through to the scene where we introduce Modor.  The problem with the next scene is that I can't figure out what the point is.  I mean, I know that we need to introduce the characters, but within that obvious context, the characters need some kind of goal--and some kind of disaster to end the scene and keep the tension high.

I also need to introduce our some of our other characters, like the bladedancer Araviss and the necromancer Talisa and her goblin priest Vilavarex.  And I don't want to spend 10,000 words introducing shit.  So... your thoughts here?  Is this a first chapter, a first scene, or do I need to finish through and develop the rest of this idea?

***

“Let me get this straight,” Gaibel said, “you want to go to Caer Lucan?  On purpose?”

“Yeah,” Kel replied.  “And so do you.”  He held out the Commission Sheet he’d taken off the bulletin board back at the Guild Hall.  “Look.  Fifty golden eagles.  Fifty!  And that’s just for making the meeting.”

Out in the street a crier called to the passersby.  “Hear me!  Hear me!  Men of the Free Cities, the Lord Commander calls all true patriots to arms.  The Legions of the Shellantyr Empire are marching, and only the men of the Free Cities can—“

Kel and Gaibel both stood, trying not to listen.  Behind them, old Bruno laughed.  His fat belly jiggled, and the brandy in his bottle sloshed in time.  “You think you can just walk into Caer Lucan?  Fifty eagles ain’t no bargain for a suicide mission, pup.  Should’a saved yer coin like old Bruno ‘stead’a spendin’ it on them fancy knives.  Then you could’a spent the winter sittin’ on yer fat arse and drinkin’ like I plan to.  Now look at ye.  Scramblin’ around like a rat in an empty larder.”  Bruno shook his head.  “Guild’s goin’ to the Hells these days.  Guess they’ll just take any old fool anymore, right Gaibel?”

“Shut yer hole, Bruno,” Gaibel snapped.  He turned to Kel.  “Fat bastard’s got a point though, kid.  Caer Lucan ain’t no vacation spot.  And fifty eagles ain’t exactly a fortune.”  He pointed at the crier.  “Ain’t’cha gonna sign up with the Lord Commander?  ‘Men of the free Cities’ and all that? ”

“—nly the courage of the Men of the Free Cities can stop the invasion,” the crier called.  “Hear me!  Hear me!  Men of the Free Cities—“

“’Men of the Free Cities’ my arse,” Kel said.  “You think just goin’ to Caer Lucan is a suicide mission?  Going up against Imperial Legions is suicide, Gaibel.  Everyone knows that.  That’s why no one wants to join up.” 

Kel sighed.  Gaibel was a dwarf.  Four feet tall, maybe sixteen stone.  Stout even by dwarven standards.  Round belly—Hells, his belly was almost as big around as Bruno’s—and nigh-on perpetually drunk.  But strong as any pair of oxen, and a berserker in a fight.  Kel looked down at his friend.  What did Gaibel care about the odds of surviving the war?  Long as there was a bit a brandy and a few poxy whores following the camp, Gaibel’d be happy as he could be.   Still, Kel had to try.  Gaibel was practically Kel’s only friend in the Warmaster’s Guild, and Kel didn’t want to head to Caer Lucan with just himself and Modor.  That was like to be as suicidal as taking on the Imperial Legions.

“Look,” Kel said, “it ain’t that I’m not a patriot, but seriously?  The Lord Commander’s got no chance.  He’s gonna raise what?  A few thousand men?  Modor says it’ll be five at most, and they’ll be militia, maybe leavened by a couple companies of mercenaries.  Yeah, he’ll take the Warmasters and a few others.  So what?  It ain’t gonna matter when the Imperials show up with twelve full legions of professional soldiers.  And you know it. 

“Truth?” Kel said.  “The fifty eagles is just a bonus.  Right now I’m figuring that Caer Lucan’s where we go to lay low while the Shellantyr are busy burnin’ the Free Cities down to the ground.  Least that’s what Modor says.”  Kel shrugged.  “After that we can come back and maybe make some money.  Who knows?  I’m sure there’ll be plenty of work for a couple sellswords after the city’s been burnt down.”

“So yer crazy and a coward?” Bruno asked, laughing.  The laugh was ugly, and his breath smelled like stale whiskey.  “Kid, you are one strange puppy.  No wonder yer momma put you out when you was a babe.  She pro’ly dropped you on yer stupid head one too many times and decided to give it up as a bad job.  Can’t say I blame ‘er, though.  Ugly git like you?  Hell, I’d’a sold yer arse to the Shellantyr and been done with it, myself.  But hey, a gutter whore ain’t always got that kind’a options, ye know what I’m sayin’?”

Suddenly Kel’s knife was in his hand, the tip of the blade resting lightly against the corner of Bruno’s right eye.  Kel didn’t remember drawing it, didn’t remember deciding to draw it.  Bruno blinked, clearly caught off guard—Hells, Kel was caught off guard—but this time it was Kel who laughed.  “Say it again, fat man, and I’ll feed one’a yer peepers to Gaibel’s dog.  What?  Can’t find yer tongue now?  And you were so funny just a second ago.  What do you think, Gaibel?  Vixen wanna eat this bastard’s eyeball?”

“Ah, put the knife away, kid,” Gaibel said.  “Bruno might be an arse, but this ain’t the time nor the place, and you know it.”

Bruno took a judicious step back, lifting his hands in mock surrender.  “Listen to yer friend, kid.  You might be fast with them blades, but there’s more to it than just slicin’ up the other guy.  You live long enough, might be you’ll learn that.”

“What’d’you know about it?” Kel snapped.  “You’re just some shambling old has-been Bruno, and everybody in the Guild knows it.  What d’you care if I go to Caer Lucan or not?”

“Care?”  Bruno laughed.  “Listen puppy, the beautiful thing about bein’ a ‘shamblin’ old has-been’ is that I don’t have to care.  Hells, kid, I made my rep ten years before you even heard o’ the Warmasters’ Guild.  I been livin’ on a pension practically longer than you been alive.”  Bruno stepped out into the street, got ready to walk away.  “Look.  You wanna go to Caer Lucan, I say ‘Salut!’  The Lord Commander could use you, but what do I care?  Like you said, it’s probably a lost cause anyway.  But if you think Caer Lucan is gonna be better, then kid, you really are out of your mind.  Least the Lord Commander’s goin’ in for a straight-up fight.  I mean, they call Caer Lucan ‘The Damned City’ fer a reason.  Ain’t nobody hardly never come back from that place, and that was even before the fire and the damned plague.”  Bruno shrugged and started to walk away.  “But hey, maybe you’ll make it back and prove me wrong.  What do I know?  In the meantime, enjoy those fifty eagles, kid.  Yer gonna earn ‘em, trust me.”

Kel watched him walk away, feeling more than a little helpless.  What did Bruno know?  The guy was a certified horse’s arse, and everyone knew it.  Eventually Kel slid his knife back into its sheath.  “Bastard.”

“Eh.  You got that right, kid.”

A beat passed, and Kel watched the people.  With the invasion, there was a fear, a tension in the air.  On the streets.  Even in the streets of Jakara, the greatest city in the world, you could feel it.  You could see it in the way the men carried themselves, the way the women bargained at the marketplaces.  It was a bad scene, and they all knew it.  Folks were scared, and they had reason to be.  Personally, Kel didn’t want to be in town when the Imperials came and burned it all down.  And the Plague had been ten years ago.  Surely things must have gotten better since then. 

Hells, Kel thought, somebody must’ve survived.  Else, how’d they post that commission sheet in the Guild Hall?    At length, he said, “Come on, Gaibel, what d’you say?  Fifty golds, and we ride out the invasion in some hole up north.  That’s not too crazy.  Is it?”

“And you say this was Modor’s idea?” Gaibel asked.

“Yeah.”

Gaibel shook his head.  “Kid, I think I’m too sober to be havin’ this conversation.  Come on.  Buy me a drink, and then let’s find us some whores.  This’ll make more sense once I’m half off my rocker.”

 Kel laughed.  “Bel’s tits, Gaibel.  Always you and the whores.  What is that?”

“Yer talkin’ about headin to Caer Lucan and don’t even wanna get yer ashes hauled first?  Hells, I don’t think I’m the one what’s got the problem here, kid.”

“Whatever you say, old man,” Kel said.  He smiled.  Gaibel was going to say yes.  “I’m s’pposed to meet Modor at the Bloody Mermaid at sundown anyway.  Knowin’ him, he’ll already have a bottle of the good stuff open on the table.”

“Should’a opened with that, kid.  Could’a saved us some time and heartache.”

“Just wanted to be honest with you, Gaibel.”

“Shite.  Honesty’s overrated.  Like, you’ll learn that in Caer Lucan, though.”

“Long as you’re there to teach me,” Kel replied.

At that, Gaibel stopped dead in his tracks.  The street was crowded, and passersby jostled both he and Kel relentlessly as they passed.  More than a few stared.  Kel stared back.  Gaibel ignored them, staring instead at Kel.

“What?” Kel said.  “I thought you wanted a drink.”

Gaibel shook his head.  “What’ve I gotten myself into with you?”

“Nothing you’ll regret, I expect,” Kel said.  “Unless you’d rather fight the Imperial Legions in some hopeless battle out in the Borderlands.”

“Nah.  I expect you’re right about that.”

“Then come on,” Kel said.  “Modor’s waiting.”

Kel and Gaibel walked down towards the docks district and the Bloody Mermaid.  It wasn’t a long walk, but the streets were crowded with wagons.  Looking around, it seemed to Kel like every farmer on the Great Southern Plain had decided to harvest early and bring whatever he could sell into the city while some sense of normalcy remained.  Most of the wagons were one-horse affairs piled high with half-ripe produce or other goods, and the air itself was thick with the squawks of chickens and the squeal of pigs.  As he passed, Kel saw everything from old furniture to ornate, doubtless handmade quilts piled high in the various carts that trundled down the city’s roughly cobbled streets.  The farmers themselves were uniformly dirty, rural-looking clods who either stared openly at Kel and Gaibel or else pointedly ignored them.  Well, Kel supposed, a hick farmer from the middle of nowhere probably didn’t see regular soldiers every day, much less freeman sellswords. 

That’d likely change, though.

Eventually, they came to a wagon with not only a farmer, but also a couple of maybe ten-year-old boys and a beautiful blonde-headed girl of perhaps fourteen winters.  The farmer wasn’t old, but he looked tired, beaten down from years of laboring in the fields.  Like the rest, his wagon was piled high with grain stocks and corn, but under that was a layer of hard-used furniture, and a pair of large wooden trunks.  Behind the wagon, the farmer had tied a skinny-looking cow, and each of the boys held a pig in his arms.  The girl rode behind the boys and their father ostensibly darning a shirt, but where the farmer and the boys looked at everything suspiciously, the girl stared in wonder at the great city around her, her work practically ignored.  When she looked at Kel, she smiled.

Kel smiled back, touching the brim of his slouch hat and dipping his head in a parody of a bow.  “M’lady.”

The girl giggled, but up at the front of the wagon, her father scowled. 

Kel ignored the farmer, sliding up to the wagon and leaning in close to the girl.  “New to the city, yeah?” he said.  “Might be, you’d like a friend?  Someone what knew his way around a bit?”

At that, the girl’s eyes grew wide as saucers.  She pulled away a bit from Kel, but she kept looking at him, obviously curious.  Up front, her father was more direct.  He put his hand to a nearby pitchfork.  “Ain’t nothin’ fer you here, son.  Best ye be on yer way.”

Kel lifted his hands in mock surrender.  “Was merely admiring your wares, good sir.  Tryin’ to be friendly.  No offense was meant.”

“I know what was meant,” the old man said.  “We don’t want none.  Go on with ye now, and leave my girl alone.”

“But papa—“ the girl began.

Her father cut her off.  “Shut yer mouth, girl.  That shirt best be finished by the time we get to the inn.”

The girl lowered her eyes.  “Yes papa.”

Kel laughed.  “I bow to your ferocity, sir.” He looked at the girl.  “Perhaps another time, m’lady.” 

Kel had to hurry to catch up with Gaibel.

“Pretty girl,” Gaibel said.  “But I guess her da’s got too much sense to let her be talkin’ to the likes of you.”

“Eh.  He can try, but this ain’t the farmstead.  Pretty girl like that?  Like to be somebody’ll turn her out.  Might as well be me.”

“Refugees, kid.  They ain’t here ‘cause they want to be.”  Gaibel shrugged.  “That old man’s got everything he owns piled up in that wagon, girl included.  It’s bad enough he’s got to leave his home and come hide in this no-good, stinkin’ Hell of a city, but then, first thing, some dandy starts chattin’ up his girl.  How you s’ppose he ought to react to that?”

“Shite.  He don’t let he off the chain a little, she’s like to run away.  An then where will she be?  There’s worse than me around here, and you know it.  All I’m sayin’, he ought to let her make up her own mind while he’s still got some influence.”

“Hells, kid.  Your armor’s probably worth more than that wagon.  You said it was alligator hide?  Dumbass girl like that’ll call it dragonscale.  And you want her to choose?  She’ll think you’re some lord who’s gonna make her a lady in a castle.” Gaibel shook his head.  “That ain’t no basis for choice.  We probably made more on our last job than that poor farmer made in the last full year.”

Kel sighed.  Gaibel was right, of course.  His armor really was alligator hide, reinforced with a layer of ringmail over the chest piece.  If Kel had had to buy it, he doubted seriously that he could’ve afforded it, even after having spent three full years as a guild jouneyman.  Fortunately, Kel hadn’t needed to buy it.  At least, not with gold.  He’d taken it off a slaver who hadn’t needed it—on account of his being dead from where Kel’s knife was stuck through his throat. 

Still, the armor wouldn’t have fetched what Kel’s short swords would fetch.  Each sword was a standard-issue Shellantyr gladius, but both had been edged in silver, and the one on Kel’s right hip bore an elven sigil that Kel had had etched right after their last job.  He wasn’t sure that the sigil worked, but it had seemed a bargain at the time he’d had the work done—back when Kel had been flush with coin.  Since then, well… coin was a hard thing for Kel to hold.  They were talking about going to Caer Lucan, after all.  That wasn’t necessarily desperation, but Kel knew it wasn’t the first option of a rich man, either.

At length, Kel and Gaibel turned off the main road towards the docks district.  To Kel’s right, he could see the Green and what looked like a company or more of raw recruits drilling with spears and small wooden shields.  A handful of experienced City Guardsmen barked instructions at the recruits, but the scene was still a disorganized mess that left Kel feeling worse than ever about the coming war.  City Guardsmen were not the same as trained soldiers, and even if they were, the militia’s arms and armor just weren’t equal to the task required.  Even experienced pikemen would struggle mightily against the sheer strength and discipline of the Shellantyr shield wall.  In the hands of half-trained militia, those spears and shields would be little better than rocks and bare fists.

Kel was relieved when they finally turned the corner, and the Green faded from view.  Ahead, the bloody Mermaid rose on a bluff above the docks.  Below, the docks themselves spread out for nearly a mile in either direction.  The place was thick with a forest of masts and furled sails, and a thousand, thousand voices rose out as teamsters, dock masters, ship’s captains, and trading factors all fought to make space, make way, or just make a living out of the chaos of the late afternoon.  It seemed as though five hundred ships had made their way to Jakara for the trading season—likely the last normal such season for quite some time.  As such, the snarl of loading and unloading freight had almost completely overwhelmed even Jakara’s massive capacity for trade. 

Above the docks and beside the district’s main access road, the Bloody Mermaid was a massive two-story timber structure with a wide porch, great swinging double doors, and huge, inviting windows made from finely blown glass plate.  Normally open and inviting, today the Mermaid was thronged with people—mostly roughly-looking sailors or off-duty guardsmen or militia recruits, along with a generous handful of sharp featured whores in low cut, threadbare evening ware.  Evenings in late summer Jakara tended to be at least warm, and this one was no exception.  In deference to the heat, and perhaps the atmosphere in general, the Mermaid had its doors open.  Even from the street, Kel could hear the lilting notes of a well-played harp, accompanied by the voice of what he thought must be an angel.

“You hear that?” Kel said.

“Aye,” Gaibel replied.  “Tavern singer.  Well, don’t just stand there gapin’.  Let’s get inside and see what’s what.”

***