Them's The Breaks

Well, dumbass that I am, I managed to injure myself something fierce last night, spoiling what was a great night with my fiancee. I had taken Becky to the University of Portland Pilots women's playoff game against Arizona (literally world-class soccer - this team pkays against national teams like Mexico in exhibitions - and wins) and we had a great time.

When we got home, we decided to have a drink. I was going down to the basement to fetch a celebratory Mike's Hard Limeade, when I stepped on a patton-leather work shoe I whad left on the steps to dry (I knew it had been a bad idea to leave them there, but that never stopped me before...). Anyway, I end up surfing the shoe about halfway down the stairs at breakneck speed - before I can even comprehend anything beyond 'oh, shit, this is going to be bad.'

I catch myself with my left arm and hear a loud crack in my shoulder before being blinded with pain. I did remain true to form and get some good blasphemy before really realizing what trouble I was in :) I got a similar injury at Gencon 2002 the night before the show started when fooling around with friends, but this hurt *much* worse. As in, worse than the time when I broke my arm while writing Faceman/Snoop sorta bad - the most intense pain I've ever felt in my life sort of bad.

Becky was shaken, not surprisingly, but she holds it together and we decide to go to the hospital. Sitting in Emergency waiting for the triage nurse seemed like time had crawled to a standstill. The slightest movement of my torso drove iron nails of pain into my shoulder, down my bicep and behind my eyes. I drifted through a sea of nausea, staring at the floor to keep from hurling all over the sick toddlers filling the room. All I could do was curl around my arm, crdling it gingerly and keep breathing while cursing the mothers of the morons that conceived the modern emegency room.

Finally, I get triage and the send me into the e-room for another 30 minutes of waiting. The mobility tests reveal I'm swollen pretty badly, and pinpoint the injury at the place where my pectoralis meets my left deltoid and my rotator cuff (the muscle that lets you pull your arms up and out from your body, even with the shoulders). They give me a gigantic shot of anti-inflammatory, which helps the pain like you wouldn't believe (as someone who's had a lingering shoulder injury for 3 years, i can tell you that swelling is your enemy - just a little bit of irritation in the shoulder socket causes muscles to get pinched between your shoulder joint and collar bone cAusing lots of soreness). They x-ray me and I get the first good news of the night - nothing is broken or dislocated. They give me a raft of vicodin, a sling, and tell me to ice a lot, then send us home.

So, the moral of the story is, I'm going to be dow for a while. I've only got my right hand to use now, which will make business stuff an 10kB writing interesting :) But I'll manage. Needless to say, I'm happy that some drugs and physical therapy are going to be all I need to get better. Too bad the game industry doesn't give hazard pay...

And Somewhere in Heaven, An Angel Just Died of Laughter

Well, I had been excited to see that R. Talisorian was finally releasing a third edition of Cyberpunk. Then I saw the preview.

I'm crying inside.

And as a dyed-in-the-wool Cyberpunk fanboy, all I can say is I'll take Shadowrun 4e over this game anyday. And that's a sad, sad thing.

And Now, A Satire

Classic. An condensed script reading of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (20 MB .mp3). Weepingly funny.

Meow.

Well, you can't keep a feline in a handheld conveyance forever. Yesterday, AEG revealed that Patrick Kapera, Scott Gearin, and myself are taking over Spycraft. The new structure is a little bit different from the old - we're all partners this time around. This prospect has got me excited as all get out - we've got some very cool things planned for the line, and you'll know when you see them that we've been listening to what you the fans want. I have seen the future of Spycraft, and it is rosy. More news on that in the upcoming weeks.

If I Were a Doctor...

Today I realized that if I were actually interested in postgraduate study, I would get my degree in semiotics, the study of signs and how they transmit meaning. I became fascinated with this field as soon as I learned the definitions of the words "denotative" and "connoative" meaning back in middle school - that everything you say carries 2 meanings, the dictionary definition and the definition that comes from history, culture, and employment by the populace at large.* My fascination with semiotics (though I didn't really know it by that name) lead me to become interested in social anthropology in high school, which in college lead me to study sociology. I even wrote my sociology thesis on consumer marketing strategies in televangelism - in essence, a study of symbolic exchange of religious images and how it connects to American consumer culture. I went on to become a writer and poet - again, playing with language and meaning casually - and do my day job in a public relations firm, where I have to question interpretion of words and meaning every single day.

A particular object of my fascination with semiotics and sociology is the concept of hyperreality. This theory was pioneered by philosophers such as Umberto Eco and Jean Baudrillard, both of whose writings questioning the nature of reality and perception fed popular entertainment such as The Matrix movies. Essentially, this theory says that as we place more meaning on ordinary things (such as in a consumer culture, where we assign emotional or fiscal value to things all the time through marketing and advertisment), the reality of the thing itself matters less and less - all that's important is perception. Thus, all the sodas we drink may be made in the same factory, but when one is marked "Pepsi" and the other is marked "Generic Brand", we automatically assign more value to the Pepsi label - regardless of the fact that it is literally taken from the same tap. The reality of the thing ceases to matter when it comes to actual value. This eventually starts to infect life to the point where simulation - the trumped up version of the "desert of the real" (a line shamelessly stolen by the Matrix series) - becomes the ideal, even if in reality it is unattainable.

RPGs fit squarely into the hyperreal framework. As a game of imagination, they're nothing more than entertainment, but they are all based on hyperreal simulation - in Spycraft, you're a world-saving spy who's sexier, stronger, and smarter than anyone ever could be. With your friends, you have adventures where to travel the globe for free, slaying dozens of faceless mooks who will not be missed, and committing dozens of crimes that in real life would get you a life sentence or the death penalty - without collateral damage or being caught. Yet when we walk away from that game table, we carry part of that game experience with us - the memories of playing with our friends, and the infamous "character moments" that we recant to people not in the game to show how cool our characters (or ourselves as players) really are. The hyperreal experience has floated over to and developed symbolic exchange value in our real world relationships.

Hyperreality even fits in with things we gamers think are cool - the Internet (we place immense value on exchanges done here - flame wars and friendships - even more than those with family or friends, though we actually gain nothing "real"), cybernetics (metal is better than flesh), movies, video games (simulated life that's larger than life), and yes, even porn (sexier than sex itself). These things become proxies for life as it is - not necessarily a bad thing, but definately an interesting take. Because the hyperreal philosophers contend that American consumerism is a major driving force in hyperreality's spread, is it any wonder that 85% of the RPG players in the world are located in America?

But I digress. I just think it's cool. What I can say is you should expect to see somew new stuff from me exploring the concept of hyperreality and semiotics in relation to a new project I am working on. That's all :)

* For example, to call someone "dick" whose denotative meaining could be referring to them as a nickname for Richard, or I am referring to a vulgar slang for a penis, which itself carries the connotative meaning of filth, excretion, aggressiveness or masculinity.

Deja Vu

Smiling pirates with RPGs attack a luxury cruise liner, sending fans of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash into a tizzy.

It begins...

A Week of Geeky Revelations

And now, the Geek Heirarchy Chart.

Classic. Now I wonder, where do RPG writers fit in - at the amateur writers or slashfic writers level? God I hope we're not in the furry slashfic category...

Battlestar Galactica
Once again, I must eat crow with regards to my TV watching snobbishness; while I thought nothing could stop the original BSG series of my youth, I was wrong. The new incarnation is REALLY GODDAMN GOOD. I'm mighty impressed with the direction the series creators have taken the original vision and incorporated it into what could have been a very generic military sci-fi show. Like Firefly, the characters are well-rendered and interesting (though not nearly as entertaining), the action exciting and well-balanced with the drama, and the metaplot is even stronger. Truly, this is an excellent TV series and worth your time.

Nuptuals Update
Progress on that front is strong - site's reserved, dress is purchased, wedding party and deacon chosen, save the date cards are out, we just saved $750 on invitations with our new vendor, and we've booked our photographer. I have to give much props to my lovely fiancee for all her hard work (and her family for all their investment) in getting this done - now there's only like 30 things on our list left to do :) It boggles the mind how complicated these things get - and we have one of the simpler weddings I've ever seen.

Oh, and guys, when you decide to get married? My advice is to figure out what your spouse-to-be really wants out of the wedding and do that. Every guy I've known has wanted exactly the same thing out of his wedding - to be married the day afterwards. But she'll have a vision, even if she didn't start with one, and it's your job to make sure she gets it within reason. Of course, if you believe strongly in something you should say so, but at the same time you need to play her right hand man and affirm her decisions without acting bored or pissed off (all mistakes I have made). You need to be open with her and keep her from turning into Bridezilla, because even though she may act that way, she really doesn't want to BE that way. If you can't do those things, or they just don't seem to be working out, I don't think you have much business being married.

I find that weddings become a litmus test of how well the couple works together - they apply the right level of stress to test communication, teamwork, money management and affection. I think Becky and I are doing pretty damn well - we're getting our processes straight, things are getting done, and we're working better as a team. Now to decide where in NZ and Australia we should be going for the honeymoon...

I Wonder if They Take Credit...

Best. Auction. Ever.

Be sure to check out those detailed photographs. Gotta love that Kiwi ingenuity!

Best. Character. Ever.

With a shameless yoink from over at RPG.net, I present my favorite non-personal character description of all time (following my original HoL character, Shlongor the Uncouth).

"Dr. Arka

What do you get if you add a Son of Ether to Hubert Farnsworth, ADD, mix in a bit of Casey and Andy, and add a pathological fixation with Oreos? That would be Dr. Arka. What's his first name? No one, his player included, has any inclination to find out.

Dr. Arka owns a massive tower on the edge of the stating town which may or may not be a "huge fuckin' laser". He owns a swarm of robots that are equiped with anti gravity generators in their insect wings, a design flaw so obvious that he nearly reconsidered before he remembered his maxed out defect of "impulsive", which, incidently, is shared by the entire cast. Despite the robo-bugs tendacny to explode, he has the six most stable as a bodyguard that also functions to deliver messages to the psychopathic robot guardian he assigned to the tower, which, amongst other things, attempted to fix broken equipment with lightsaber chainsaws.

Created the atomic toast monster, and a remarkable number of Oreo powered miracles of engineering. Is currently pursued by Duracell hitmen because he invented an infinite-energy battery.

Has killed Bill Twice as many times as the other characters.

Has a massive solar-powered plasma cannon. Screams "Taiyoh!" Whenever he fires it."

Sheer genius. The rest of the cast can be found at "[Actual Play] OVA: Twelve hours of "WTF?"

That is all.