El Burro Volador

Well, I took it easy this last week, blog-wise, and now I guess I’m ready to start working a little harder on this thing again.

Meanwhile, dimly glimpsed through murky water, leviathan shapes move beneath our tiny, fragile craft.

Big changes are coming again.  Rebekah and I are in for another tumultuous ride, I guess, and while there will likely be plenty of anxiety and unpleasantness in the short/medium-range forecast, this most recent shake-up looks like it might bring with it some long-lasting changes for the better.  If I’m being vague it is in an attempt to avoid speaking too soon – I’d like to see these things a little more clearly before I shoot my mouth off.  I realize this is a departure from my normal modus operandi.

On to the typical Monday Preview:

Tuesday – St. Valentine’s Day

Wednesday – Cacophony

Thursday – Smoke Signals

Friday – The Shackled City

Saturday – Sundown

Sunday – Overheard

A while back I mentioned that I was working on a big project that was occupying most of my creative faculties.  Well, I’ve recovered a little bit from the launch of this behemoth on Tuesday, and I’d like to talk a little bit about it.

I’ve mentioned before in this space that I play tabletop roleplaying games with my group of friends every Tuesday.  Well, I know that the readership here is mixed company, some of whom have had no exposure to roleplaying games, so I’d like to explain a couple of fundamental concepts.

First, the way that I like to think of it is that my friends and I get together each week to cooperate in the telling of a story.  So far, this particular group has told classic fantasy stories – a quest to steal a magical apple from some wicked goblins, the exploration of a fallen dwarven hold, etc.  We have also told a gothic tale about a journey through haunted woods to the castle of a strange conjurer.  We have told a superhero story, and we have even told a story set in the dark future where an act of chemical terrorism traps a small band of assorted lowlifes in a bar while tensions between them mount.

Now, perhaps the most basic structure that needs explaining in order to understand how these games work is the basic division between the “actors” and the “director”.  Y’see, all but one of the people in the group are what is called “players” and each take on the role of one of the main characters in the story, creating this persona more or less from scratch, determining the character’s actions, and even speaking for/as the character.  The remaining member of the group is responsible for creating the underlying situations, playing all of the supporting characters, and adjudicating the rules.  Each different roleplaying game gives this person a different title – in Dungeons & Dragons this person is called the “Dungeon Master”, in Mutants & Masterminds this person is called the “Mastermind”, in Cyberpunk 2020 it’s “Referee”, while in White Wolf’s line of games it’s “Storyteller”.

Anyhow, that’s me this time around, and I have decided to try and make this story the best one we’ve ever told, so I’m putting in tons of work – including writing nearly 20 pages of fiction last week as a “preface” to set the tone.  In theory this story will run for most of 2009, with occasional breaks to keep things fresh.  I’ll keep you posted.

Yeah, I decided to actually write something instead of just pasting some quotes in.

As my sister mentioned in her comment to yesterday’s post, Mom also sang to us when we were kids.  She didn’t sing to us at bedtime, like Pop, but just at random times, whenever the mood struck her, I guess.  Like Dad, her taste seemed to run toward songs with a strong narrative, but whereas his tastes ran to historical sagas and cowboy ballads, Mom went in for tearjerkers like B.J. Thomas’ “Billy and Sue”, and, of course, “Mama”.

Judging from Sarah’s comment, though, the song that has stuck with us the best is the utterly creepy “Laurie (Strange Things Happen in This World)”, a hit for Dickey Lee back in the 196o’s that was still more than capable of chilling me and Sarah every time Mom sang it to us.  I still shiver thinking about that song.

A slight change from my intended topic, but my old man seems to be making an effort to be extra nice to me lately, and I’m trying to do my part to think about him in a more friendly way, so I thought I’d talk about a really good memory I have of him.

I’m sure I listened to those insipid tapes of “children’s music” when I was a kid, but my parents didn’t make a big deal out of them (I was from a “pre-Raffi-lite” generation) and they more or less slid right off without making an impression, thank heaven.

No, the first songs I really remember are the songs my father sang when he sang my sister and I to sleep.  The best part about these songs is that they were all basically stories.  There were no love songs, or catchy dance hits.  No, my pop sang old Johnny Horton numbers like “The Battle of New Orleans” and “Sink the Bismark”, or Marty Robbins tunes like “Big Iron”, “El Paso”, or “Streets of Laredo” (one notable omission from his selection of cowboy ballads was this song, which is a favorite of my other dad).   He even sang “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”.

I’m not sure how fondly Sarah remembers these selections, but I loved them, the cowboy ballads in particular – it was like getting a whole western movie right before you went to sleep, so you could dream that a big handsome cowboy rode into town to save you from the villainous Black Bart.  Or something like that.  I’m not sure, I wasn’t very good at being a little boy.

The last couple days at work have amounted to a mental and emotional beating, as well as an unusually high degree of physical punishment.  One of the worst things about working with family is that a bad day at work can turn into a fight with a family member, which stays with you a bit longer than most job hassles.

I have also not been getting along with Rebekah, who accuses me of over-indulging in self-pity.  I accuse her of being an unsupportive shrew, and my home life pretty much goes to hell as well.  If it wasn’t the weekend I think I would just get in my car and drive ’til I ran out of gas, then abandon it and walk ’til I ran out of strength, then lie down to die in some strange place where no one knows my name.  That actually sounds pretty good.

Instead, I’ll do a lot of writing, drink myself to sleep tonight, clean the house tomorrow, and go back to work on Monday.  Hopefully somewhere in there ‘Bekah and I will make up.

Every week, usually on Tuesday night, I travel to Greeley to engage in one of the nerdiest pursuits available to someone without an advanced degree in a hard science.

My three best friends and I play roleplaying games.  I suppose I should really say “Tabletop Roleplaying Games” to distinguish them from the computer/video variety that are increasingly accepted in a society where thirty-, forty- and even a few fifty-somethings play video games.  No, this variety relies on player knowledge of the elaborate rules which a computer keeps track of in the electronic version, and uses rolling dice to manage the elements of randomness and probability.  Not regular dice, either.  Dice with 4, 8, 10, 12, and 20 sides that look like polyhedron models from a geometry class.

In addition to strange dice and esoteric rules systems which make players seem like oddballs, there is the perception that the whole exercise is somewhat juvenile, involving as it does each player pretending to be someone else, often a character in a fantastic story.

And yet somehow those “superfans” who go to football games wearing little more than paint in “their” team’s colors avoid similar scorn…

Anyhow, I’m not really an apologist for roleplaying games.  Yeah, it’s weird and pretty nerdy, but I have a hell of a good time doing it, and I plan to keep on doing it as long as I’m lucky enough to have a group of like-minded eccentrics who’ll join me.  In my personal value schedule normality isn’t a terribly precious commodity.

Tuesday night, we were finishing a three-part story entitled Siege of Kratys Freehold.  It is set in a tolkienesque fantasy milieu, with marauding orcs, powerful magicians, etc.  The story follows a small group of wandering adventurers and soldiers-of-fortune who arrive at a fort on the frontier of civilized lands just before the fort is beset by the savage orc hordes it was built to defy.  Over two weeks, we played out a siege scenario, standing watch, bolstering the fort’s defense, getting to know the fort’s other defenders, even dashing outside the walls on a quick foray into enemy territory.  This last Tuesday was the third and final session, wherein the enemy hit the walls and the issue was decided in desperate battle.  Good times.

It occurs to me, as it probably has to either of my readers, that although this version of the tale is set in a fantasy milieu, it is just as suited to a wild west game, turning it into an Alamo, or perhaps something more akin to Zulu (Africa was kind of Britain’s wild west).  It could even work in a more modern-day context ala Assault on Precinct 13, or in a sci-fi future, where the heroes are interstellar explorers trapped in an isolated way station which they must defend from hostile aliens.

Alright, enough nerding-out for this week.  Tomorrow we’ll unearth some more treasures from the ipod playlist.

Another weekend has raced by, leaving us stranded here on Monday.    Guess there’s nothing to do but start walkin’.

Didn’t watch the “big game” yesterday, though I would’ve liked to have seen the half-time show.  ‘Bekah and I wound up watching the “Puppy Bowl” on Animal Planet while knitting and reading, respectively.

Anyhow, I suppose it is time for another schedule – last week’s iteration didn’t do too badly.

Tuesday – Seven Things

Wednesday – High Nerdery

Thursday – Olden Goldies

Friday – Video Killed the Radio Star

Saturday – In the Evening

Sunday – Miscellany

As usual, I will probably crash somewhere toward the end of the work week and swap my “Miscellany” post in early…

Guitar Hero may have been one of the best ideas for a game that anyone ever had.  I have been absolutely floored by how fun this game is.  So far, I have been cruising along on Easy, and I have played 19 of the game’s 30 songs, recording “perfect” (100% notes hit) scores on 16 of those.  One of the coolest parts, for me, has been combining the thrill of playing/overcoming challenges with the thrill of discovering new music.  Looking over the list of the songs I’ve played, I can easily separate out the ones that I knew and loved from the ones I was seriously listening to for the first time.  Some old friends rose in my estimation, some new songs became new favorites.  Some thoughts:

“I Love Rock and Roll” – What a great first song!  It felt so cool to be “playing” a classic rock anthem.

“I Wanna Be Sedated” – I forgot how much fun the Ramones could be!

“Thunder Kiss 65″ – A new one to me.  I liked this okay, but probably won’t track it down to add to the ipod.

“Smoke on the Water” – The first time I played the opening guitar vamp (whomp,whomp, whomp, whomp, whomp, whomp-whomp) became my new favorite moment in the game.

“Infected” – Back in high school I knew a guy who was a big Bad Religion fan, and also kind of a jerk.  I think he played me this song once, but I wasn’t paying attention.  Turns out it’s not bad at all.  Kinda wishing I’d gotten to know that guy better, instead of just pantsing him in front of the girls volleyball team.

“Iron Man” – Like “Smoke on the Water”, this is just one of those classic riffs.  It was so good to play this.

“More Than A Feeling” – I underrate Boston.  As I played through this song a few times, I really began to appreciate what a beautiful piece of rock it really is.

“You’ve got Another Thing Comin’” – Alright, I guess.  Not a must-listen for me, at any rate.

“Take Me Out” – Oh, man, this song got its hooks in me bad.  I hadn’t heard it before, and now I can’t hear it enough.

“Sharp-Dressed Man” – This game seems to have more of a metal sensibility than I do, and I figured that I would not get the chance to do much bluesy work.  This is pretty much it for me at this stage in the game (though I understand that “Texas Flood” awaits somewhere down the line…).  When I take a run at the two solos on this thing, I am in Guitar Hero heaven.

“Killer Queen” – I also underrate Queen.  Their stuff just has so much going on musically that I tend to overlook Brian May’s guitar work.  At least until I’m forcibly dragged through it like a luckless greenhorn with his foot caught in the stirrup of a runaway horse.

“Hey You” – A new one to me.  Meh.  Seemed pretty easy to play.

“Stellar” – Probably the first song on the list that I don’t really like.  Blew through it quickly, at least, ’cause it’s right at that sweet spot where my skills have slightly exceeded the difficulty of the game.

“Heart Full of Black” – Another new one that I am mildly pleased by.  I’m not sure I can handle the super-fast shredding passage in this one.

“Symphony of Destruction” – I am a bit alarmed by the way this one is set up on easy.  I played the solo effortlessly, but each time I strummed I could hear it unleash this torrent of notes, and I’m guessing that at higher difficulty levels I will be responsible for all of those…

“Ziggy Stardust” – I dislike David Bowie, but with his vocal replaced in this song, I actually find I like it more than I thought.

“Fat Lip” – Meh.  I guess they needed more punk on the soundtrack.

“Cochise” – I never got into Audioslave, probably because of their awful band name.  This song, however, is real damn good.  I bet it’s even better when Chris Cornell is singing it, I’ve heard him do some good stuff.

“Take It Off” – I feel like I shouldn’t enjoy this song, but I can’t lie: I liked it immediately upon hearing it, and this has been undiminished in subsequent listens.

Well, my quest continues – I hope to unlock 5 more songs today.

One of the helpful side effects of spending a fairly long period of time in freezing temperatures working with snow is that it serves as a kind of diagnostic for one’s body, especially as one ages.  On Monday when I was slinging snow off of cars for a couple of hours while the temperature plunged down through the teens, I found out that my left knee was the latest part of my body to give up the fight.  It stiffened really badly – I was practically hobbling by the time I came in.

My esteemed employers thought a little heavy lifting might be just the thing to limber me up again, with the end result that my lower back has joined my knee on the disabled list.

I may also have crippled my left hand playing too much pretend guitar in the evenings.  Y’see, Guitar Hero places high demands upon your left hand, so it gets sore.  It especially gets sore when your wife who hates Guitar Hero keeps accidentally slamming drawers and cupboards and car doors on it.

For the last couple of days I have been shuffling around like a geriatric version of myself.  Enthusiasm is low.  Energy is low.  Urge to lay down and die is strong.  Stubbornness is stronger, at least for the present.

Be back tomorrow to discuss one of my absolute favorite things…

I have managed to break free from the mania that has gripped my blog all week, upsetting my nice little schedule.  I am so fatigued from the end of the work week and four straight light-bulb saga posts that I am begging off for today, and promise to bring the saga to a conclusion tomorrow, after which regularly scheduled programming will resume.

I would also like to take a brief moment to talk about personal stuff.  I have been fighting off fugue states again all this week, and for a while now I’ve felt like I am just trying to get to each weekend so I can curl up into a little ball for two days and rest and try to reestablish my equilibrium.  My life isn’t so hard, and although there have been a number of sad times lately, I feel like I should be able to cope with things if I could just stop feeling so depressed and bewildered for no apparent reason.  I mean, sometimes it will just descend on me out of a blue sky.

Anyhow, those that read, thanks for reading, and I promise to wrap things up in grand style tomorrow, with a little help from a good friend who has been absent from this space for too long.