LifeBox

Bernie has this way of talking to customer service people that is simultaneously very polite, and completely terrifying. We call this “The Voice”. It makes telemarketers curl up under their desks and cry, it makes the phone company give us the absolute lowes rates possible, and, most recently, it made Home Depot grovel and apologize profusely for being dicks about not letting us return a stove. So, yay Bernie.

Aunt Dineen and unle Larry are coming on down to take us out to lunch in a little bit. Good thing I went to bed early – 5am – and got myself a good four hours of sleep before the socializing…

Headed out to Wimberly yesterday, to pick up some plants and stuff from Silverleaf, my aunt Kathy’s nursery. Bernie and I hung out with cousin Alex (minding the store) and Nick (studying for a statistics exam) for a while, then got our purchases together and headed home. We wound up with a bunch of tall canna lillies and african irises for the front fence, and a bunch of smaller plants, rasberries and herbs, for here and there. I also made sure to pick up some of that thai basil, so I can make my stir-fried goodies taste exactly like my favorite, #21 with chicken from King of Thai on clement street, back in SF. That’s some tasty stuff.

So, today was all about digging holes, planting plants, and tilling the earth. While unloading the lillies from the car, I got a big handful of fire ants, and they got a pretty good number of bites on me before I realized that my HAND WAS ON FIRE and washed ‘em all off. I’m all puffed up, and my whole arm is turning black and green, but it should be fine after the swelling and itching goes away. My injuries didn’t stop me from putting a bunch of holes in the ground, though, and tearing up as much of the back yard as possible with the roto-tiller before it ran out of gas. Man, that little sucker gets everything – bamboo runners, gravel, cement blocks that have been buried there for god knows how long, everything. I also spent a good amount of time pulling this vicious little vine off of some of the bushes along the side fence. They were looking pretty yellow and sparse, and it turns out that there was pretty much a solid blanket of this junk on top of them, choking them all the way out. So, off come all of those pernicious little vampire-weeds, and out comes all the dead wood, and hopefully now, with some sun and hasta-grow, they’ll be all green again, and blocking the delicate eyes of the world from my pasty white ass when I forget to close the curtains when I go to get coffee after stumbling out of bed in the morning.

Speaking of which, I only have one pair of shorts. They’re really dirty now. I had to go outside again, and I’ve got to tell you, it’s sort of weird wearing long pants now. Weird, and really hot. I’ve got to get myself down to Work Clothes and More and pick myself up some more of these cargo shorts, or, as the tree guy called them, “cop shorts”.

Other things in the hopper: See if I can cancel my membership to my overpriced yuppie gym early, seein’s how my income for this year so far is just a bit under the year’s membership, and I haven’t been going that often, anyway. I’ve also got to get that sorry-ass compost heap they left us moved around, rearranged, and turned over once I figure out what all to to with it and where. Plus, more Flash toys.
So much to do, so much time that I’m not doing it in…

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world – a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us … No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we’ll kill you.

Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?

They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us – they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis.

And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck Them.

Hunter S. Thompson.

Lord, how I love that man.

Game/Issue Tracker Update: I have done exactly jack today.

I tried out the demo of Galactic Civilization – good, if not entirely original. I may wind up buying that sometime later on in life. Also fired up a copy of Postal 2 that I, uh, borrowed from someone. Pretty entertaining, but I must be getting soft in my old age, as I was crippled with motion sickness after an hour or so. Like, nauseous, splitting headache, flushed, sweating, curled up on the beanbag sick. Maybe it’s from lazing around too much, or not sleeping right. But man, did that suck.

Big day today. I found a new kickass comic to read every day. Very exciting. I also did a mess of work for the rollergirl site this afternoon. There’s still more to do, but I think I need to let that sit for a few days.

There was also a smart mob this afternoon. The idea is, a bunch of people get organized via email or whatever, and at the last minute, they decide where to go. They all show up at the exact same time, do something meaningless for ten minutes or so, and then all vanish at once. Sounds like fun. We met up at the magazine rack of a 7-11 in town, about twenty or thirty maybe, and it was all well and good. Could have been a better location, but it’s nice to see that many people will do something like that just for fun.

Afterwards, Bernie and I had a little coffee date (more like an interview) down at the Spider House Cafe with someone that I might be practicing my barbaric brand of photography on sometime soon. We’ll see how that goes. Then, after that, we hooked up with Dave and Mel and headed up to the Alamo North to catch the opening of the new Charlie’s Angels movie with all the rollergirls. Man, that was a super fun movie. Almost surreal in its lack of plot or coherence, but that stuff is for squares, anyway.

And then, sleep.

So, we’ve been having guys from various tree trimming outfits around town come over and give us their take on our three big old trees in the yard. They all need a good bit of work, and at least one of them is bound to come down while we’re living here. The guy who came out today, Marcus, was not only the most knowledgeable-sounding, and the cheapest, but he also hung out for a while, and gave us a ton of great advice on all sorts of things, from how to do yard stuff, to investing in real estate.

Bernie was taking notes the whole time (five hours of porch sitting and chatting), and came out with great stuff on how to get our house all set up to be more energy-efficient (get a free run-through from American Conservation and Air), where to buy organic gardening supplies (Callahan’s General Store) and what to buy there, how to counteract the high pH of Austin city water for the plants, how to get the soil tested for various stuff (call the County Agrigultural Extension Office), how to take care of our ant and bug problems without killing everything else (Demon WP pyrethrin and boric acid), where to get the best beef in Texas (Bubba K, at the Meat Shop on Peyton Gin Road), the best place to get plumbing supplies here (Krump), the best way to fix up the roof to get ready to do water collection, and, you know, all sorts of stuff. He also invited us out to his ranch for his wife’s birthday around the fourth of july, and said he might know a couple guys that can use a computer-type guy, for contract jobs.

I really hope he’s not just another crazy person.

Scott has never seen Episode II. I bought a copy for fifteen bucks at Target, but never opened it. Scott’s tivo caught it tonight, and I told him that I would “sponsor” him, and watch it (here in Austin) at the same time he did (there in San Francisco), to help ease him through this trying experience. I think I have signed both our death warrants. It burns us. IT BURNS! JESUS CHRIST, MY EYES!

Went to see Jerm at the Carousel Lounge again last night. Jerm was in fine form, but he also had another performer (who I won’t name) doing a set in between his. Oh, jesus. I was convinced that we had died in a car crash on the way over, and we were in Hell, listening to this terrible parody of a folk singer do the same song over and over again. I wasn’t planning on drinking much that night – the Carousel only serves beer, but you can bring your own liquor – but, damn, was I happy that Dave had brought a bottle of Bushmills. A big bottle. By the end of the night, an empty bottle.

After the show, we consoled ourselves with some warm glazed donuts from Mrs. Johnson’s, went home and zonked right out. This morning, so hurting. Pretty useless all day today; I tried plunking away at w3x (my little web-based issue tracker), worked on a little web scam, and watched some Zatoichi, which rules. Also tried to figure out what we’re doing with the back yard, which is turning out to be a larger debate than I had expected. Maybe we should just turn it all over and let what grows there, grow. Bah.

My legs are sore, my finger hurts, and it’s getting really hot. Bitch, bitch, bitch.

On the upside, I went shopping for bathroom tile today, and picked up some cheap woodcarving tools at the Hobby Lobby. My friend Scott got it into my head to try building a chess set. Will laziness win over our hero again? Tune in next week!

I need to get back to work on some games. I’ve obviously got an overstuffed queue of stuff to work on, since I’ve done approximately jack shit in the last long while; the problem is deciding on what to do, and doing it. I think I’m going to start on something easy, sort of a space trading/exploration/combat game in the spirit of Elite or Galtrader. We’ll see how that goes. But first, I’ve got to get my bug tracking system back up and running… It also sounds like a good idea to me to put together a brief “ludology” of the games I’ve written in the past, as most of them are gone, daddy, gone. Yeah, I’ll get right on that.

I’ve been reading a bunch lately in various places about game design, and how games (and “video games”, in particular) should be considered an art as much as anything else. I tend to agree with that. Sure, there’s a lot of crappy art, but that doesn’t make it something else. I also like how that little semantic dodge lets me work on games, and call myself an “artist”, as I generally don’t think that I have a creative bone in my body. So, does that mean that playing games all day is the equivalent of spending time in a museum? Who would complain to an artist that they spend all day inside, working on their work? Except their landlord, when the rent comes due, that is…

I’m also re-reading Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, which is an excellent primer on the form for those who are unfamiliar with it, and a deeper look at sequential visual art for those who have enjoyed it for years. There’s an interesting section near the beginning where he proposes that, because some comic characters lack detail, they provide a nice, generic, “iconic” medium for the reader to identify with, thus immersing them in the story more fully. As characters, or objects in the comic, become more realistic, they are seen more as external, more visual objects, and the reader becomes an outside viewer, looking in. While reading, I would occasionally substitute the word “video game” for “comic” in my head. There is much lamentation for the “good old days” of video games, when pretty graphics didn’t matter as much as gameplay. Perhaps it is that, as games become more realistic, the player sees it more as a “show”, and doesn’t identify with the characters or avatars in the game as much. In the classic Atari 2600 game Adventure, the player is represented only by a small square which moves around the screen. I remember playing this game for hours and days and weeks and months, never getting bored. Compare with something like, say, Dungeon Siege, which had excellent graphics, and okay gameplay, but didn’t nearly grab me as much, for some reason. Of course, there is the inevitable comparison to Nethack