Shorthand for Nothing

Summer always reminds me that I prefer the winter. Of course, I prefer the springtime and the autumn even more, each for its own reasons, but I never feel as if I get used to the heat so much as I feel that it just goes away eventually. The humidity over here does not make things easier.

That said, this summer continues the long tradition of Seattle being afflicted with freakish weather while I am away. Heatocalypse ’09! Who knew? You see, I bear a good weather curse. Everywhere I go the weather is tamer than usual, nicer than usual, not as bad as expected. Meanwhile, wherever I used to be is plagued with storms and death from the skies. I am being spared the possibility of a freakish death in the weather, no doubt for some other grim fate.

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You guys, I am going to make a podcast and it’s going to be awesome. I’m going to probably record this weekend and then find a place to upload it, which will probably be pretty easy, given my expected bandwidth use (very little!). It will be called Rob Mason Tells You What To Think, I will post them here when they happen, and it will be the greatest thing ever. I will basically talk about whatever in a rambling and digressive fashion, because oral storytelling is fun, and sometimes you just need to hear my voice when you’re walking to work or whatever, talking about something useless. It’ll be great, probably!

Or maybe it won’t be, but even if it’s not, it will be awesome, because terrible things are just as awesome as awesome things, in the end.

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The absolute worst part about walking to the subway for a mile and a half is you have twenty minutes of your mind going into overdrive and imagining things that, it turns out, are just in your imagination. It’s weird, the scenarios that play out in your head when your mind is left to wander. Most of them have little to do with reality, and only slightly more to do with your thoughts at the time. The weirdest part, though, is how, as you run these scenarios through your head, you come to expect them, however implausible or unrealistic. The whole night ends up being judged based on these weird expectations, however implausible or undesirable they may be. You come home with the weird feeling that, despite having a great time, you didn’t live up to some impossible, bizarre measure you had set for yourself.

Is that so weird? Is it just because I’m a writer, or a romantic, or something? I come up with these involved scenarios in my head, good and bad, and then everything is based on those. They are never accurate predictions. Is that getting in the way? Or am I just paving the way for one of the times all this weird imaginative preparation pays off?

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Today at Davis Square, there was a girl with a Pocky handbag. This sort of thing is legitimately awesome, and there ought to be more of it. Without, you know, it becoming all the same thing all of everywhere. It, and the Awesome Foundation mixer this evening, have had me contemplating what the function of awesome is. Specifically, for some reason, when it comes to fashion.

I’ve got a collection of t-shirts that I happen to think are pretty great. People occasionally comment on them and it makes for good conversation; I’ve also had at least one random street person approach me and actually buy me a cup of coffee because of one of them. It’s easy to say I wear them because I like them, but there’s always a little something there. I want people to see these shirts and appreciate that they are awesome, and in many ways it has nothing to do with me. I just picked it out. It means I’ve got an eye for awesome.

Pocky handbags, for instance. I bet there’s a fair amount of them out there. (Maybe she designed it, I don’t know. In which case, awesome?) Nevertheless, there’s something awesome about that. It’s the sort of thing you want to acknowledge. “You have an awesome handbag. Can I give you a high five?” Maybe that’s weird. But I think that’s the point. We want to share what we think is awesome with other people, and it’s always nice when we get someone else who thinks it’s great, too. It’s a cryptocompliment! You are vicariously saying “oh man, you have good taste.” Positivity!

(Once, I walked up to someone and told him he had an excellent shirt. He was not awesome about it. I think he does not deserve to wear excellent clothing if he cannot be awesome about it.)

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On a whim today, I downloaded and installed ADOM and started playing it again. I’d forgotten how much fun it is.

Despite being a Roguelike, it is very dissimilar to Nethack–whereas Nethack, in many ways, is as simple as it is complex, with straightforward objectives and an open source so there are no secrets, ADOM is complicated and closed-source. Many, if not most, of the game’s mechanics, are hidden, and any comprehensive data about the game has been gathered through rigorous testing and observation. There is also an involved story, and one that comes into contact with gameplay.

To use a terrible analogy: if Nethack is a more intelligent Diablo, ADOM is a more intelligent Dungeon Siege. Nethack is a straightforward descent through randomly generated dungeons. You can essentially mindlessly bash everything that you encounter and win the game in this fashion. There are definite winning formulae, and eventually judiciously applied patience will win the day. In contrast, ADOM has a static wilderness (but random dungeons, still) and a story where killing everything you encounter will end badly for you. There are frequent quests, which reward paying attention to the game. There are very definite goals at multiple points, beyond general “bash these monsters in this part of the dungeon.” You feel like you’re part of an evolving story.

A story of a Nethack game is very frequently a story of items or dungeon features found, with the occasional stories about monsters or bones files (something ADOM lacks, and one of my favorite features of Nethack, by the way) adding some flair. In ADOM, there’s an unfolding narrative to any given game. There are multiple endings possible, and multiple towns from which to receive quests. The environment is rich and detailed. Admittedly, the plot is pretty much a generic “save the world from the evil” story that you would expect from most D&D campaigns. But those provide the sort of backdrop for more interesting character narratives. In contrast, Nethack features the generic “let’s loot this dungeon for stuff” plot that makes Undermountain and The World’s Largest Dungeon etc. so popular.

I still love Nethack, of course. But it’s a very different game to ADOM.

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I was going to write something on Dreamers today, but then the evening took a turn for the frustrating.

The inestimable Mac Cowell was hosting an America Day barbecue party etc. at his house. It was going rather well, I was talking to interesting people, et cetera, Rock Band was played, burgers had, and so forth. At probably around 9:30 or so we took off to head to the Charles via the T, to watch the fireworks. On the way there I continue a conversation with someone whose name I never quite caught, and was generally enjoying the presence of our troupe. Upon arrival at the Davis Square T station, Dave Fisher and myself both had to purchase T passes.

Now, as this is America Day, everyone is heading into the city to watch the fireworks at this point in time, so the station is, predictably, pretty crowded. And there was a train arriving just as we erached the station. By the time Dave and I had purchased our passes, the train had left.

So, too, had our party.

Figuring we could simply call to meet up with them upon arrival, and having no real other option anyway, we continue to Kendall station and depart, attempting to call Mac. No such luck, it seems! His phone appears to not function terribly well. We try a few more times to no avail; we try Seth, who answers his phone! But he is, unfortunately, not with the group. He joins us, and we realize that collectively, none of us have any of the phone numbers of anyone in the group, with the exception of Mac. We proceed to where we believe the party was supposed to be; they are not there (though, in fairness, we may have gotten the wrong place, due to not being able to contact anyone and all).

We had lost the party.

The fireworks from the 10th floor at 1cc were suitably awesome. But as the evening continued to wear, the expected inertia of the evening caught up to me. It wasn’t happening. It was just such an abrupt ending.

(I blame no one for this; it happens, there were a lot of us, etc., but man, what a weird way to end the evening.)

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I have been rather lax in my writing for the past week or so, which has a lot to do with the fact that I really just feel drained lately, in more or less every imaginable way. Normally I would wax eloquent about this subject, but there is nothing poetic about this level of ennui. Most things are going wrong in just about every imaginable way. And the projects I have been working on have either had nothing to show for them, or I can’t link to for various other reasons which I’m not going to go into.

I’m working on finding something actually interesting to work on but it is hard to work on a project when everything you do or say turns out lifeless and uninteresting.

(This is really more intended as a “why I have not posted anything in a while” than anything else. I’m sure at least one person out there was wondering.)

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When the sun is out, there’s a tree outside my window that looks like it’s been photoshopped. Everything about it just looks wrong somehow, and it really bothers me. I’ll see if I can’t get a picture one of these days or something (apparently not this week, though, because I guess it’s going to be raining constantly and forever this week). It is still weird that we live in a world where we can have this problem. Sometimes reality doesn’t look sufficiently real. Sometimes this is because it’s been ruined by media; that’s what hyperreality is all about. So what do you call it when something looks fake because it looks like a poorly done fake on the internet? Is that hyperreality, too?

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I have finally rediscovered the joy that is Nethack. Sadly, there is still no new version available, but I’ve gotten back into the swing of things, remembering some old tricks, trying out a few new ones, sending tourists down to their deaths. It’s fun, simple, and while it is a great way to kill time it is also easy to leave and forget about. Perfect for killing time before some sort of event later in the day, for a mindless activity whilst suffering from insomnia, or for just having fun, because it is the best game ever made.

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Though Mac OS continues to resist being installed on my Macbook (sigh), I have installed Ubuntu on it now, which is less likely to make me go insane than the XO, since the screen is not tiny and not designed for human eyes and the hardware can actually run more than one tab in Firefox at a time, without crashing horribly. I might even be able to run music!

I still have a ways to go before functionality is fully restored, of course, but I am reasonably confident I’ll do fine more or less indefinitely now. If you have any suggestions for optimizing Ubuntu please send them my way!

But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the tacos the talented Rachel Mercer made this evening (they were pretty much wonderful and there is not a lot else to say about them, because I am not a food person, but man I have missed eating good tacos), and the board and card games we played. It was Settlers of Catan, which I have previously discussed (I won) and a game called BurnRate, in which you are a company in the .com boom, trying to hemorrhage money slower than everyone else, which is ridiculously fun. We won, but relatively narrowly, and I credit it to everyone not knowing the rules more than skill.

Catan was all skill, of course.

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