Style vs. Substance (Style, Part Trois)

   There's not a lot to say on this that hasn't already been said. So, here's a basic rundown (that's a thing, right?):  style is fine, as long as it is not utilized like it can be some kind of replacement for substance. Style and substance can never be mutually exclusive: either the candy bar is hollow or the inside, or there's actually something to bite into. Style is just the tropes and tableaus and set pieces used to get at the meat. For example, in keeping with the realism of  Artificial Winter, a lot of exposition is made using intertitles, when having expository dialog would be unrealistic (it's a well-known trope of cop shows to have the results come back in right as they finish discussing the updated situation and how they need to run a DNA scan or whatever.)

   Anyway, I guess I talked about this in this previously unpublished Thespis, the webcomic I did in high school for my Thespian troupe starring anthropomorphized versions of the Thalia and Melpomene happy and sad comedy and tragedy masks (I did this one a while ago; I really gotta update those archives one of these days.) Here it is. Enjoy.

Thumbnail, click to embiggen.

Substance (Style, Part Deux)

   Since the first post of this series was called style, I'm calling this post substance. Though the first post was more on substance, and this one is more about style. Huh. Oh, I know.

STYLE PART II: SUBSTANCE.

   Style is a tool to get to substance. Too often do people try to teach voice, or "learn" it, when it is by definition unteachable and unlearn-able, because it is a personal thing that comes naturally with how you take your approach. Note, though, that's how you take the approach, the approach itself being completely learn-able, though fairly intuitive: use slang to express an informal voice, for instance. That's different from style, though, to an extent: everyone has their own patterns of speech, and it's possible to analyse a text to tell who wrote it by how often they use pronouns and articles.

   Your own personal style is just something you can never escape. Style can't be taught, only learned.

   My own style... I don't know. It's hard to look at your own style, isn't it? It's just one of those unquestioned things. All I can really do is compare my own style with those of others, which I've already done regarding my artwork. I think I need to improve my line work, I think I need to learn to color more evenly (I apparently already am like super good at knowing where light and shadows hit a three-dimensional subject, and I think I should just color on a different layer or within a selection or something. Really the inhibition to color inside the lines is what messes you up.)

   I guess I should actually talk some about substance here, but as I said above, so I'll say below: this one is more on style and the first one was more on substance but it's too late to go back and change the name now even though I did anticipate this happening since I had written most of this one before I had the other one and I had already entitled it "Substance" so why not go for a theme name and this is all very pointless anyway isn't it so I'll stop. So, I guess I'll just say this: remember there is a difference between style and substance, and you shouldn't criticize one when you mean the other, etc.

   Maybe I have more to say on the subject, maybe I don't. We'll see where the wind takes us tomorrow.

Style

   Style, no matter how good it is, cannot overcome flawed substance. I always knew this, but only today did I realized to how large an extent substance extended. I always thought that substance was only the core idea at the center of a story, and the style how the core is exposed. But there's a reason why amateur high school video productions of Beowulf are often hilarious and professional productions designed solely to grub money from children are often a mixed bag.

   The best thing to do, of course, would be to start with the seed, the core idea, and expand on it from there, flesh it out, explore the ramifications of the milieu. We see style and substance become one, at this level. At the core, the message must be the messenger. I always knew this, as well. Bottom line, though, style is that which you can see, substance is the thing that's being told by the style.

   It's always best to build up a good substance, the thing to be told, before working on how to tell it. Everyone has their own approach, a topic that maybe I'll elaborate on later, so style comes naturally, and substance must be worked on. If you throw together a crap world even the highest production value to bring this world to life won't hide the unevenness underneath. Not that production value can't also kill a good core, but that's something other, because it chiefly has to do with whether people take it seriously as it's meant to be taken. The production value has to be high and professional-looking for people to take it seriously. (Getting back to the high school English class example, this is why you don't see many of those in theaters, though they're often better than many of Hollywood's own interpretation of these events.)

   I suppose that's a good place to leave off. We'll return to these tomorrow, eh?

My First Blog

   For those of my readers who live in the world of my dreams, remember to check out the astonishing data dump that is the other blog that I used to keep there. I bring this up now because I just remembered that I even have it. And, don't confuse that dream blog with my other other dream blog that isn't this one. You know, the one with the long and pointless name which I don't even bother to remember in the real world, something like, thingsthatdontevencomebackaround.blogspot.com or something, but it's not quite that, so you don't have to bother taking that domain name up. It's not that one.

   This one, which I restumbled across poking around the dream internet last night, is hosted by like a wiki or something instead of a server specifically for blogs. It didn't even start out as my own. I just "borrowed" it from some other guy. The details are a little sketchy as of yet, as I am remembering them from a memory of a dream from a dream (make your own Inception reference here), but they are coming to me. I think there was some Comrade Helicopter stuff, along with some Star Wars RPG stuff maybe, which would make sense as I was interested in that elsewhere in my dreamspace. I'm also getting Barney. The dinosaur. And some school stuff, but, not like that: from what I can tell, it's like some fictional school?

   I'm seeing a black background, right formatted, the text is in a box to the right. You know what? It'd be easiest if I just project the image of it from my imagination onto real life. I had to extrapolate some stuff, but here you go:

   Funnily enough, the story of how I got the blog in my dreams mirrors the story of how I'm trying to hijack the domain artificial.wikispaces.com from the elusive jennyzb for my Artificial Winter wiki. There's stuff there, just it's not very good without being able to personalize the wiki. As hard as I try to contact her, I see only one way in. Does anyone know what some statistically common passwords are for a female teenage Hispanic? 

   Well, I guess that's it. Be sure to visit it if you're ever in my dreams sometime. I'm not sure what the domain name is, but I'm sure you can link to it from my wiki stuff. Seriously, it's the getting into another person's dream that's the hard part. It's a cakewalk after that. Before that, though... Well, I'm sure they've got some kind of technology like that in heaven. You'd just have to die to get to it.

Do Not Follow in the Footsteps of the Old Poets, Seek What They Sought

Is there any good in saying everything?

-Bashō

How Best to Eat a Hot Dog

   I had a very good day today, thank you very much. I ate a sandwich, and went to the movies, and got a good grade on my test. So. Anyway, I had this thought, while eating my sandwich, at the movies. I know what you're thinking, and no. My grade was not with me.

   So, I was eating my sandwich, and I noticed how the flat bread was all chewy while the spinach was all crunchy. Such textures ran wildly against each other. Some bites I regretted ordering mustard on it, others not so much. It took me around fifteen minutes to eat the first half, cursing my instinct to swallow after only a few chews. Then, I realized the reason why I hog everything down, not just "why" but the underlying reason of that. I realized this:

   There's more than one way to savor something. In fact, I would like to say that I dislike savoring, insofar as it means to chew slowly, sucking as much of the flavor as you can out of your food. I'd rather have an explosion of taste in my mouth. That's still enjoying your food, in a sense. It is better to relish than to savor. To savor reflects a bittersweetness, while relishing, not necessarily so. If you savor every morsel, you eat it slowly, remembering that there is only so much cake to be eaten. If you scarf it down with gusto, however, you are getting your kicks out of it unhampered by the idea that it will be gone in a few minutes. At the end, when you are finished with it, then maybe you'll be a little saddened that it's over, but that's better, I think, than to know it will be over the whole time you are eating. You're going to finish it eventually anyway, so why prolong the inevitable?

   I guess it says something about how I experience the passage of time, how I notice it. Once, this blog post was only a vague plan in my head when I realized my realization would make a perfect post, and now it is no longer just a plan and you are in fact reading it, or at least remembering reading it. We could get a lot into that, like, what happens when you're not reading it or remembering it but it is still existing? But, whatever. It's getting away from me now (or what to you would be in the past, since this has already been written.) Like I said, let's not get into those questions. It's like where your lap goes when you stand up.

   Oh, and speaking of dumb childhood questions. The best way to eat a hot dog, what this post was about? With relish. You eat it with relish.

   Ha ha ha.

This is What Not Missing a Post Looks Like

   I'd rub it in with a link to your non-existent post, but, alas, it does not exist. What is that called? Irony? Anyway, I've got nothing to say today really, and I feel that I've earned a few short posts, so, here, have some high jinks from those wacky Floridians (at least I think this sign is from Florida): 

Post THE NINTENDOth, In Which I Essay on an Essay (Using the Word Anyway a Lot in the Process)

   I wrote this essay yesterday for my mythology class. The specific question prompt, number four of six, was on whether I believe in some kind of system of fate or free will that guides our destinies. I think I brought up some good points (of course I'd think that) and the only reason I'm bringing this essay up is because some of them deal directly with things I've discussed previously and I'd like to delve more into the issues in this essay here. Well, not the only reason. I'm also bringing it up because for some reason I feel really guilty for posting short posts ever since I posted I Knew It! and The Moral Dilemma, two shortish posts, back to back, so I feel that making a long post would somehow alleviate that.

   Anyway, here it is, and remember its about fate versus free will, and the Forces Beyond Our Control (which should totally be the name of a band, but, anyway.)

   Somewhat fittingly, I once again rolled a die to decide from amongst all of the options. There are six of them, so it's practically perfect. So, we can see how my selection of this question to answer was governed by chance. 

   Of course the vast course of history is balancing on the blade of a knife, with any small change in the past altering the future radically. For want of a nail, the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe, the horse was lost, et cetera, until the battle is lost which leads to the kingdom being lost, all for the want of a nail. Nothing about where we are now was inevitable, unless of course you believe in an entirely deterministic view of the universe, with no room for free will. Everything in this world would just be pool balls striking off of each other at precise angles; there's only one way it can turn out mathematically. Even random number generators don't yield precisely random numbers, and there are patterns behind them, which hackers can and will exploit when trying to hack a system based around random-number passcode security. 

   I did, however, read a story in a magazine once, I think it was mental_floss magazine, of which I have an issue in front of me right now, where it said that they discovered how to generate truly random numbers using quantum generation, which is not based off of any perceivable patterns. This is where I believe free will comes from, as even mentally we are controlled by chemicals in the brain. I think that the soul of sorts is quantum linked, somehow put inside our brains to give us a will over all of these chemicals. I read elsewhere, in Popular Science magazine I believe, or maybe Discover, that scientists are coming closer than ever to discovering the origins of human consciousness. I do not know what they will find at the core of our wills, but I think it might be this. 

   It could also be said that I believe in a fate of sorts, outside of that. When I was in Junior High, I was fascinated with chaos theory. Even in entropy, complete chaos, patterns emerge. This shows that the universe has at least some structure to it, encoded into the fabric of reality itself. In connecting this with the rest of the class, this might explain, on a level deeper than just a psychological one, why we are attracted to the monomyth of the archetypal hero's journey. The heroes here are guided by a fate of sorts, but fate is no more fateful than complete entropy. Somehow these patterns always come up. 

   Sorry about the kind of long response this week. I could write more, but none of it really has to deal directly with the subject of conversation. It's a dear topic to me, and witing the third essay really got my inkwell flowing.

   That thing I mentioned at the end, the third essay I did for the class, is a five-page essay which maybe I'll post it up here later. It's about thematic similarities between the Odyssey and O Brother, Where Art Thou? which was based off of it.

   Anyway. I deal with a lot of the mathematical themes discussed here in a lot of my fiction. Complex, for instance, has the idea of determinism vs. free will at its core. The science of Other//half is based entirely around the way the soul works on a quantum level here. Invictus, an episode of the Artefact, deals with a mathematical genius terrorist, driven by the idea of using free will to create entropy (in order to create quantum parallel realities,) who has our heroes hack a random number generator for him. In Artificial Winter, the cop show I'm developing, there's a villain who was a school teacher who went insane after studying statistical mechanics for too long.

   Anyway, outside of those themes, in the essay I talked at some length about how order coming out of chaos creates archetypes for us on levels other than psychological. I do, however, have my own theory about the archetypal hero's journey on a psychological level. I think it goes back to the whole "bricks we use to build our lives" thing from earlier. We choose our own architecture, but our architecture always follows the same basic patterns, for we choose to remember the more significant events rather than the day-to-day minutiae. The hero's quest feels true to us because it speaks to us on how we live our own lives. Other things happened to the hero, of course, beside descending into the underworld and receiving council from a mysterious sage, but these things are among the most salient. We ignore all else, that which does not fit the narrative.

   (This also is a major theme in Artificial Winter, which focuses a lot on a lot of not-very-cop stuff that the characters do, illustrating I guess how being all heroic is just another part of life for them. (Another big theme on the show is ultrarealism, showing the reality of being a police officer instead of the fantasy version presented in a lot of shows. Being so true to life really subverts a lot of what we expect from television, actually making the realism DOUBLE AROUND into the surreal. The difference between what we expect from television and real life is discussed heavily, in the least lamp-shady way possible because it's a theme rather than just a one-off thing. But anyway.))

   Chaos and complexity theories are crazy. Also, game theory, though that one's slightly out of my depths. Statistics are fun. And you can never have too much logic. But anyway.

   All in all, I guess this post was sort of like my fifteenth, where I connect my thoughts to my projects, only combined with just another essay post. Only that essay is actually another one of my projects, and I connect those ones to this one. Rad. I like that. I think I'll do that more sometime.

The Newest Idea

   The objective of any game is to win. The way any game differs from any other is through the rules followed in order to do so. I've an idea for a brand new game, which game's only rule is "win." If you follow the rules of this game, you win, meaning that I win and you win just because we're playing it and it's impossible not to win. Thus, those who know they're playing it win. The best thing about this is, every time you remember the existence of this game, you get a warm and fuzzy feeling for knowing how you're winning at it. As any self-respecting game needs a name, and this game is game play at its most simple, let's just call this game, "the game."

   So, congratulations, you just won the game.

My Own View on Werewolves

Hint: it's not that.

   I have my own idea for how werewolves function in my own fictional universe, which I am conceiving as a trilogy set hundreds of years after the werepocalypse. I'm not sure what even happens in them, but their names are to be Hic Cenocephali Nascuntur, Homo Homini Lupus, and Cave Canem. In the future, there is a lunar eclipse. During this eclipse, something fundamentally changes in the core of the sun, or there is some kind of solar burst. Everyone not behind the moon or on the other side of the world while this happens gets doused with incredible amounts of radiation, enough to permanently alter their DNA. The moon takes the brunt of the radiation, leaving it so that every time the moon is full the earth gets doused in the radiation again somehow. This monthly douse of radiation changes the body chemistry of those mutated, so that they transform into loup-garous again.

   No, I'm really not sure why there's so much Latin. It's cool, I guess.

   The main locale for the story is an old Boy Scout camp, where the eclipse occurred, that has been converted into a fortress to defend against the waves of wolves that come crashing in every month. The characters are the descendants of the scientists and Boy Scouts who got to observe the original eclipse. Naturally, they are a hardy, intelligent breed, bred and trained for survival. When they are not fighting the werewolves every full moon, their lifestyle is surprisingly laid back. They take their time to do things, such as think and do DIY projects. Society for them is based around the lunar month as the basic unit of time (a new loup-garou wave every unit, baby born after nine units, female fertility cycle one unit long, etc.) so their age is gauged by months instead of years.

  That's the stuff I'm sure about. Stuff I'm not sure about: what actually happens in it.

  Other ideas: Maybe in keeping with the theme of the antiquities, the characters should be named in homage to mythology. Like, Lycaon, Autolycus, stuff like that. And I'm not sure how it would fit in with the science, but maybe there should be vampires in this, too. Vampires and werewolves go together like peanut butter and chocolate. There's even a Count Chocula and a Werenut Butter (or at least there should be.)

   So, uh, yeah, that's about it. Werewolves, and, maybe vampires. Or at least some kind of mutant  bat. Like this:

People in the past were messed up, dude.

Fardels the Bear

   Trying to improve my skunk-drawing skills, I accidentally drew a bear instead. Whatever. I still think it's one of the greatest things I've ever drawn. I am calling it Fardels.

   ...You know. Fardels the bear. Get it?

   ...'Cos, you know. Shakespeare.

   ...Hamlet, Act III, scene one. Hamlet's famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy. "Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life," etc.

   Oh, man, now I'm all depressed. Not really, but, gee, thanks for taking this awesome pun and making it all depressing. I thought we were getting away from that again. Well. Here it is anyway:

More Morbidity, Huzzah!

   I've been dreaming an awful lot about Pokémon lately. And by awful lot, I mean like twice. No, wait, once, as the first time merely inspired a Pokémon-based pun, but did not have any Pokémon in it. As for the second dream, well... I don't think that Dewlap is a real Pokémon. Seeing how it means like wattle. Dewlap. Like, a cross between Dewgong (or maybe, for you black/white fans, Dewott) and, um... "L"apidash. I don't know.

  Anyway, uh...

   So, uh, Levon Helm died. In completely unrelated news, Tom Jones the astronaut not the singer is part of a secretive private sector race into space. Don't, uh- don't get those two news stories mixed up like I did yesterday. I assure you, Tom Jones the singer not the astronaut is alive and well, though the astronaut is alive and well, too, though that's beside the point.

   It reminds me of February 29 of this year (since this year is a leap year, right?) when Davy Jones (the singer not the locker owner (and not David "David 'Ziggy "Thin White Duke" Stardust' Bowie" Jones the singer either, who is also still alive and well) died on the same day as Andrew Breitbart. At least, I think that was the same day. While I did not get those two news events mixed up, I was a great deal more shocked at Andrew Breitbart's death. Since, you know, Davy Jones was all old and stuff. Ah, well. It's not like I knew any of them personally.

   Though that would have been awesome, wouldn't it?

   (Though come to think of it I did dream not that long ago that I did know Davy Jones, and he complimented me on my skills as a singer. Alright, I think it might have been Bob Dylan or something instead. That means more from him as a musician than as a singer, but, shut up, it's Bob Dylan. Maybe it was Eric Clapton? I don't think it was Paul McCartney... Hold on, I'll think of it. Maybe.)

   (Though anyway to answer the question. Yes. It really would have been awesome.)

   EDIT: Apparently Breitbart died on March 1, one day after Davy Jones. I think it must have been on the east coast or something, because I'm pretty sure I read about his death on February 29. Or I'm just wrong about that. Anyway, in the dream it was Eric Clapton on tour, in my yard. So, Eric Clapton.

   I am not sure which is more surreal: the fact that I actually went through with my last post (do I really need to link to that, since it's just my last post?), the fact that I only posted it yesterday, or the fact that no-one's concerned about me that I did post my post.

   When I was in high school, I attended this leadership conference, and I practically got put on suicide watch because I drew a picture of a spider with a human head which I suppose must have looked like me hanging myself at first, when there was only the head and one spider leg sticking out directly behind it looking oh so much like a noose.

   So, thank you all for being courteous and in general non-paranoid. The idea was really just another one from the dream that inspired the game where you gradually lose all of your senses. Like I said, it was a nightmare.

The Moral Dilemma

   If I ever find myself handcuffed to you and we are both to be executed, I give you my permission to kill me if it helps you escape. It is better that one of us should escape alive than for both of us to die.

   That's really depressing and stuff though, so I only give you my permission to kill me if you do awesome things with my body. It's kind of hard to explain what I mean, so I whipped up this comic:

(Thumbnail. Click on it to make it big. It looks good big.)

  Also use it to like zip line and stuff.

  Morbid? Tsch, I don't think so... Okay, maybe just a little.

I Knew It!

   Here's a screencap of my blogger home page:

Click to embiggen.

   Look familiar?

   Like I said, the number is calibrated from what others think of me (in this case, with their pageviews.) Yeah, I know I could say something here about how the mind is wired for pattern analysis and recognition, it's just a coincidence and one that's practically not even coincidental with anything at that, and even if it did coincide with anything it wouldn't make sense, but shut up it's cool.

If Heath Ledger Were a Raccoon

   Not only did I do some of the art for "The Princess Bride," as I said last time, primarily I played the part of the Albino. This role imaginably required a lot of makeup. Like, a lot a lot. At the end of the night, for every production, I had to kill myself with baby wipes to get it all off. Even then I couldn't get too near my eyes, requiring me to take a bath to remove the rest of it. Here's a pic of me Thursday:

I look like Nightwing. Or the late Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker, as a raccoon. The Jokoon! Right? No?

   But, anyway, tangentially, speaking of the Joker as a raccoon, I think he was actually a dog. Symbolically. In The Dark Knight, dogs as a symbol were prevalent throughout, from the actual physical dogs who like to eat dudes alive to the discussion of Caesar becoming dictator-for-life (recalling the whole "cry 'havoc' and release the hounds of war" bit from Shakespeare's play (that was from Julius Caesar, right?)) to the way the Joker himself sticks his head out of the window and lolls around as he takes a joyride in the police car. Dogs symbolize chaos, and the Joker is a wild card- chaos introduced into a deck of cards. In the first film, bats were a symbol for fear (natch,) so I'm guessing that cats will somehow play an important symbolic role in Dark Knight Rises, as it's got Catwoman in it. If they don't, you're ruining a great theme you had going, Chris.

Conceiving the *Inconceivable!*

   ...In another sense.

   In case you did not know, today was the final performance of a more-legal-than-it-sounds theatrical production of William Goldman's The Princess Bride, and I was tapped to design the figures for the special effects for the Cliffs of Insanity. The way we achieved this particular effect was through a back lit piece of scrim with the figures silhouetted against it, using a pulley system on the figures to do the climbing effect. Originally going to be Barbie dolls, shadow puppets were settled on after a brief moment's thought about how Barbie dolls would swing around like crazy. And I designed those:

Fezzik, Vizzini, Inigo, the captured Buttercup.

The Man in Black, hot on their tails.

   They look much better backlit, believe you me.

IrMhae

   Alright, old "new" twist on Perfect Sense: you don't use safety goggles to protect your vision, but rather a blindfold. I had that originally, till I realized that there are other ways of protecting your eyes and switched to safety goggles. Goggles still don't protect your eyes from laser pointers and stuff, so I knew there was a reason I had blindfolds originally. Protecting a sense takes that sense away from you, here now, as with the clothespin and earplugs from earlier.

   But anyway, what this post is really about. The board for Perfect Sense kind of resembled that of a different game I've been working on (because grammatically "on which I've been working" means that I have been actually working on top of it), and apparently I'm not the only one to notice. It's called IrMhae, and it's a game somewhat popular in the 'verse of the Artefact, which is my primary television sci-fi setting. It's kind of like chess, or better yet chaturanga, as there are four players, two to each side. Each piece is comprised of eight towers, and although the pieces start off squarely on the spaces they may move sideways so that they sit partially on more than one space. Maybe that would make more sense if you saw the actual board:


Alright, maybe this looks more like a target. It should be checkered. That'd get the point across easier. (But do alien cultures checker their boards? Maybe this is just the un-anglicized (terracized?) board, but all the ones we see on the show do have checkers.)

   Each of the towers, the sub-units of the basic piece, is on the red-lined mini spaces, and the main larger piece uses the larger black-lined spaces. The pieces don't have to stay perfectly on the larger spaces, and can avoid some attacks by moving partially off of them. That's how the pieces move horizontally, i.e. sideways along their own rings. I'm not sure how the pieces could move vertically between the smaller inner and larger outer spaces, though. The pieces would obviously have to be smaller on the inner spaces, since the inner spaces are smaller than the outer ones. Maybe it's magnets that can expand and contract the pieces but still keep them together. Maybe the pieces can't even move vertically. I'm not a fan of that option, because it does take away some of the strategy, even if the rules would allow for the use of ranged vertical attacks. Nesting the towers sounds like it might work, with smaller pieces inside the larger ones that can be sent inward. It would add a layer of strategy, since moving inward pieces outwardly would instantly move the other larger pieces from where they were parked to meet them so that the smaller piece would fit on the outer row, and you wouldn't be able to move outward or inward if that size of the piece had already been captured. It's a possibility, at least.

   Anyway, it's not like you see the game in motion that much in the show, so the rules don't matter that much. It's just more of a set piece than anything else. It's important that these universes feel real and lived in. Though I suppose coming up with these kinds of rules helps with that. Ah, well. Even if the audience never sees all the hard work we put into these, they can allegedly sense it, and at least it's still fun for us.

The Game of Perfect Sense

   Well, I certain enjoyed my own nightmares last night. How about you?

   ...

   So, I've got a new idea for a board game. It's like Sorry, or Mousetrap, I guess. The winner is the one who doesn't get poisoned. Game play occurs on a circular board. This board is split into five sections, each a different color. You navigate these sections using your senses for each of the colors, and attacks by other players in these sections take your senses for that section away. There are three senses to lose: your sight, your hearing, and your smell. I left out taste and touch because I really can't think of any way to guard against attacks to those. As for assaults against the other senses, there's a deck of cards which has protections against those: safety goggles to avoid attacks to the eyes, earplugs to avoid attacks to the ears, and a clothespin to avoid attacks to the nose. These defense cards only work against one attack and are then discarded, and that's too bad if the attack is against a sense you didn't guard. You lose when all three of the senses of any one of your five colors are gone. Maybe that would make the game too short, but I really don't know how many people can play, or how easy it is to attack other players' senses. Really I just wrote it down here so that I could forget about it. It sounded just as lame in my head. Actually, it sounded lamer, because in my head there was no penalty (losing your senses) to losing your senses, and I thought of it while I was writing this.

   I have a mock-up of what the game basically looks like. This is just to illustrate the levels of the board (you can only attack those on lower levels, perhaps?) Note that the entire thing is subject to change, and there's really no visible mechanism to lose your senses as of yet. (How exactly does smell factor into this? How can smell factor into it?) No matter:

(I made it small so that you can't read the rules written down there very well. Remember, these things are still subject to change.)

Scary

   I am pretty sure that this is just an early scan of my Miss Kitty drawing that went terribly wrong, but maybe not. Either way, it's insanely frightening, so enjoy your nightmares tonight. 

Post THE FIFTY-FIRST, In Which I Speak of Hardly Working

   I really don't know the meaning of hard work. Work, to me, is work. Take lifting. Either you can lift something, or you'd rip your arms out attempting it. At the end of it, the box (or whatever) is either lifted or not lifted. Either you can cut it or you can't, if you're actually trying. There is a difference between taking your time on a project and just phoning it in (or even, to extend the metaphor, scribbling down the vague gist of it on a Post-it and faxing it over,) but I really don't know what else you can do about it other than that. They say to pour blood, sweat, and tears into the things you are doing. But is caring about your job the same as hard work?

   Actors, for instance, sometimes speak of difficult acting, of having difficulties envisioning their roles. I really don't see how hard acting can get exactly. Do they mean that you have to make more decisions on what your character would do and whether or not that would conflict with the overall direction of the film/play/whatever? That's not harder work, it's just more of it.

   I come from the school of all you can do is all you can do, but all those others could be of the same school and I wouldn't know it. How could I really know if mine isn't even the only school? It's my school, so of course I can't see outside of it, at least not enough to know if the people who speak of working harder are part of it (albeit with some communications issues on what constitutes hard work,) or if they're of a different school altogether that actually believes there's a difference in grades of work.

   Some things do just take longer, but that's more dedication than exertion. If it's all at the same time, then it would be "hard" because it that takes a lot of skill to do. What matters here is if you already have the skill required to do it. I just don't understand it.

   But then again, I've never understood people who've never understood people who've never understood people who don't put a lot of stock in good looks because it's something you can't control- the people who say, if you're ugly that's because you were born ugly, and if you're handsome that's because you're born handsome, so, why put stock in good looks? That, to me, is like saying if you're smart it's because you were born smart. Obviously true to some extent, but if you're ugly it's nothing that can't be fixed with a good haircut and the right amount of makeup (not too much, of course- an incredibly high percentage of ugly people are that way because they wear too much makeup.) And if you're dumb, you can make it through dedication and hard wor-- er...

  Well, "hard work" here meaning not so much that the work is hard but that you actually do the points listed above. Like, actually trying. Which is pretty much all it is, really. Hard work is just trying. So I guess the answer to the question posed in the first paragraph is, "yes, caring about your job is the same as hard work." Apparently.

Oranges

"That's the thing about oranges. No matter who you are or where you come from, they hold a special, almost symbolic place in your life."

- Desmond, in Other//half.

"Still Life with One Orange."

Greetings (No, Seriously- Greetings)

   Greetings, like, the greetings themselves. You know, like, Hello, Salutations, Felicitations, Heil Hitler, that kind of thing. First of all, they're kind of a pointless part of conversation, other than a bit we're going to get on in a minute (depending on how fast you read, of course.) I mean, do we really need to say, "I acknowledge that you are there. Shall we converse?" And half the time people don't even mean it to mean the shall-we-converse bit, either, anyway. They just acknowledge the other's presence, and then move on. Even waving as a form of greeting has the advantage of attracting the attention of the other in the first place, because our eyes are drawn to movement. People saying hello, except on the telephone and such, are already fully aware of the other's presence. But I suppose we have the ritually meaningful but otherwise pointless customs of congratulating people or wishing them good luck.

   When something of a short conversation is meant to be initiated, however, people generally like to start the conversation off with a question. Like, you know, a "what's up?" kind of thing. I am not the biggest fan of this approach, though it does actually have any literal meaning.

   It really bugs me when people greet me with a "how are you" type deal, like, "how have you been?" or "how's it going?". I am how I am, and I was how I was, and if you really want to know what's been going on in my life you should have been paying more attention to it earlier. Why should I tell you how I am? Unless I'm really super duper fantastic or ultra down in the dumps, of course, but there's no reason to report on what amounts to be an average day for me. Instead of saying, "how are you," I have a new greeting for everyone to use. Starting now.

   "A penny for your thoughts."

   Not nearly enough people say this anymore, if anyone actually said it in the first place. For those of us who think great thoughts, it gives us an excuse to share them, and for those of us who want to know how other people are doing, it has them share what they're doing at the moment if they're thinking about what they're doing at the moment. Everyone's happy.

  There could be some kind of entire mini-economy of pennies based around this, if everyone does use it. Maybe it could be the hallmark of some kind of brand new subculture. Or maybe it could be adapted into an old subculture. Like libertarians or something. Yeah, libertarians would eat that crap up. But, I stress to stress, you don't have to be a libertarian to do it; they'd just be one of the groups who do do it.

  A penny for my thoughts, right now? I should really get a PayPal or something, so people can ask me that over the intertubes.

The Con Digest

   New idea for a book: an almanac, published yearly, that details the panels and workshops that went on at all the major nerdystyle conventions of that year, all the tech and anime and comic conventions, from GenCon to DEFCON to BronyCon and everything in between (BronyCon is major, isn't it?) Maybe this idea could also work as a website, or even a magazine, but I'm trying to get away from newsletters here. I just like the idea of these big thick almanacs, just actual books you can hold in your hands that have heft to them, giving the publishing industry some cred back. There's something satisfying about actual physical almanacs.

   So, the Con Digest. It's all (or some) of the goodness of attending an actual convention without the embarrassment of showing your geek face in public. If you really did get to attend the con, then it allows you to go over the panels you missed. And if you didn't, same deal. I mean, sure, this information probably is available elsewhere, but in one centralized location? I think not.

   Or maybe this is already a real thing. Please tell me it's already a real thing. Probably just as a website. If you are a real website, expand your business into making almanacs. Please and thank you.

Profession

   "Profession" is a funny word. To be pro, to be a professional, you have something as your job- rather, your profession. Obvious, right? But profess also means to tell, or even to admit. If you're a professional, you admit that you're good at this one small area of expertise, and that you might not be at other areas. If that's what professional means, I'd rather be an amateur.

   Jack of all trades, Renaissance Man of none.

Well, I Suppose it Fits the Theme

   I saw this the other day and said to myself, hey, why not. It fits the theme of the blog and there's really nothing better to post today. So here it is.

http://animaltracks.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/30/10940980-hakuna-matata-real-life-timon-and-pumbaa-hang-out

Humans, As Promised...

   ...I really agree with should stop, too. For now. Really, the only reason I brought it up in the first place is because I already had a post scheduled about being inspired by the sandy weather, which happened to be Exuviae's subject of the day. I had to post my own post soon, and I would have posted it the day it happened to me, but the post before that day deserved immediate follow-up. 

   So anyway.

   Apparently Adobe Illustrator CS5 (and maybe some earlier versions, too, who knows) has this thing called Live Trace, which allows you to convert bitmap images to vector images. I had great fun with this today, using them to sharpen up some movie poster ideas I had. I kind of intended them both to be rom coms, but I was new to the technology on the first one, making it look more stylized like some kind of a '50s-style heist flick, and the second one came out looking way too serious (apparently neither Michael Cera nor Emma Watson take funny photos, and the subject matter doesn't really scream "chick flick.")

  Here they are.

   Veni Vidi Vici: Why no one has yet made a romantic comedy by this name is beyond me. Its name is perfectly suited for a chick-flick type logo, what with the three short words just begging to be stacked. I deliberately swapped the names on the poster, with Amy Adam's name above Gerard Butler's figure and vice versa (hey more Latin), as an appeal to trope. The posing of Gerry's figure is far too serious for some kind of romantic comedy poster, however, and I didn't really make his hair in its signature stick-uppy style, so it looks slicked back Sinatra-like. And the way they're looking at each other suggests not romance, but something more mischievous, like they're casing the joint or something. I couldn't make the film's tagline "When in Rome" as that's already the name of a rom com, so I switched it to "Do as the Romans Do," which also makes it sound like a heist film. So, why not. It's a heist film. A romantic comedy heist film. Which is better than my original idea of not having a single clue as to what the actual plot would be.

 

   In Passing: This one was originally going to be posed with them holding each other's hands, only with Emma's character being see-through because she is a ghost (the male of the relationship being the ghost is apparently already like a Patrick Swayze film.) But it was running too late to have the figures for the bodies be separate models from the heads for posing purposes, so I had to use what I had. I tried to make the film's tagline some sort of cross between "go back to the beginning" and "death is only the beginning." And I got slightly more creative with the logo on this one as well, the only reason my having of the first idea of course being because I could make the logo so cliché. This film looks like some kind of serious romantic thing that is almost as intelligent as it seems to think it is.

   But, anyway, I notice how Exuviae doesn't really refute my claim that he has more talent than I do.

You Asked for It

   Point well made, Exuviae. Point well made. I had forgotten to factor in such things as, like, altruism and stuff. Or maybe you hang out with someone less cool than you because you think they're "cute" or funny, or... Well, you know. A friend. So he has a point there.

   Alright, maybe he has all the points. That's why I have these theories. I said that friendship is driven by feelings of inadequacy, and that's really just because I feel that he's got so much more talent than I do. Yet he deigns to be my friend. Which is why I'm willing to let being called only "pretty" cool slide.

   But not all of his post was directly in response to my own. He really just kind of shoehorned that last bit in there. So perhaps this continuation of the crossover will tie it all together:

      I should really do some humans one of these days, shouldn't I? Tomorrow, then. I do it tomorrow.

Friendship is Driven by Feelings of Inadequacy

   My theory on friendship is: you are friends with those whom you perceive to be cooler than you. Why would you want to hang out with losers? Thus the adulation makes you humble, rather than proud. That is, after all, why we bow to applause. The praise of someone cooler than you actually means something.

   It's one of those "legendary" situations: the immovable object's immovability does not subtract from the fact that the unstoppable force is unstoppable. Your friends are not suddenly losers because they elect to hang out with you, a loser. It's just really rather sweet of them. You do all you can to live up to their expectations whenever they're around you, so what they perceive to be the normal "you" is someone actually cooler than the real you. Even if you feel like you can be yourself around your friends, to them your own loser habits are just a sign that you're fearless of what others think, and thus still cool.

   Since it works both ways, with both in a relationship thinking the other better than they, people's estimations of others are generally way higher than reality, even in completely honest relationships. Freaky, huh?

Yes, the Band

   I guess the windy weather is making me just as pensive as Exuviae over there.

   In a long and twisting and somewhat arbitrary but ultimately fitting events, yesterday I found myself at Harmon School, a historical stone brick building built in 1915. There were a team of Boy Scouts there doing a restoration of sorts to (her?). I was wary of going outside the relative safety of the car, as the wind was blowing sand like crazy, which caused some eye irritation last time I worked in similar conditions.

  But I felt I had to get out.

   On the stage in the building there, there is a really old beat-up piano there that produces the most beautifully heartbreaking sound. It's in this old echoing wooden gallery, the acoustics of which magnify the effect. It is this specific sound that is the piano in Wrong of Me, from Comrade Helicopter's latest album Birds Cracking Foxy. Really complements the melancholy minimalism of the song.

   It was on this piano that I played with the weather raging around me outside. I played it...

   And then I got to go home. There's only so many haunting melodies you can play on a half-destroyed pianoforte.