Big Trip

Bags are (mostly) packed. Online check in completed. Coffee ingested. Cigarettes smoked.

I feel like everything is ready. I feel like I am ready.

I'm heading out to see my family out in Portland. See, when we first found out my mom was sick, Dad and I tried to figure out a way I could visit. You know, raise the spirits and give hugs and all that. But then he died so suddenly. He was arranging places we could sleep, things we could do.

Before he died, one of the greatest guys in the world offered to fly my family over there for free. He takes tons of business flights and has amassed more points than Kim Khardashian. I really don't think it's possible for me to repay this act of kindness and compassion, but I'm gonna try to find one (or more).

This past week has been really hectic at work, so I haven't been able to get into the travel groove at all. Haven't been a help to the wife, haven't been able to give advice to the kids, haven't been able to plan anything... Even now, I'm sitting here at work waiting for them to give me the go-ahead so I can race home and check bags and print out maps and all that.

I feel like I'm going to forget something.

I talked with my sister briefly last night, just to get a lay of the land and determine what I had to do immediately getting off the plane. She said I'll have to rent a car. Okay, no problem. But where am I driving?

I'll get off the plane, hopefully safe and secure, walk to the car rental place, get the keys, and then realize I have no idea where I am or where I should be. There is talk from the crazy guy about the world ending today, maybe I'm worrying over nothing, and in a deep slumber everything will be over as I'm hovering more than thirty thousand feet in the air.

I feel like I'm never going to be ready.

Attack the Darkness!

It's hard to define and describe exactly what playing RPGs with friends while growing up was all about. It was partially building my own personality, learning coping mechanisms, trying out hero capes, being able to play the villain without the moral implications... It was a lot like being in an editor group of a Choose Your Own Adventure book with six or seven other people, all vying for attention and praise while still allowing everyone easy access to the spot reserved for doing the right thing.

Not to say it was all selfish, nor was it always non-selfish, either.

Like I said, it's hard to define, but the point here is that I did it. I was in the same gaming group for, geez, twelve years? Longer? Most of that time was in one campaign?

Anyway, at this point in our lives, we're all older, we have more responsibilities. A lot of us have kids, ya know? We can't just set aside all that every Friday night to go hang out at someone's house for eight hours and have a group hallucination of elves and swords and magic spells.

But I think back quite often to the times when the dice would roll favorably and everyone would cheer. Sometimes it was almost better when something catastrophic would happen: the dragon won the day, the evil wizard would escape, or the gate to the underworld could not be locked. Sometimes having bad stuff happen meant that there was some sort of equality, some scales of justice that would tip to both sides. Also, it gave us something to do the following week.

Anyway, what got me thinking, and what got me writing: a bunch of us that played together in that same epic group were all at a wedding this past week, and someone said I should take over the role of our GM (the guy that makes the world go round in the game). I was equal parts flattered, thrilled, and scared to death.

A good game makes memories. A good game keeps the players awake at night thinking about strategy or methods to success. A good game makes the time spent worth it.

A bad game is just horrible and awkward and should not be spoken of.

So I've been thinking about it all this past week, dreaming up a world where there is a need for a group of would be heroes. I've been taking ideas from the stories that I've watched, read, and listened to. I'm trying to decide if I could pull it off, but more than that, if I could make a good game of it.

Anal Selection

People are like machines: we require fuel, we produce some sort of waste, we move around and do stuff; occasionally, we break and need maintenance.

I have a family history of cancer. Typically for the males of my lineage, colon cancer appears around age 30, and certain death occurs around 55. I don't know why, but there it is. It's odd, really, until about ten years ago, my own dad didn't know who his real father was. He found out about five years too late, his real dad died without really getting to hug his son as his son.

Anyway, the good thing that came out from learning the truth of his real blood line was the warning that came from all the women (who were still alive): get yer butt checked for cancer. Do it now.

So I did. I discussed the process with my doctor, he said I was too young. I insisted. He referred me to the local brilliant butt doctor who went in for the scope. Turns out, three polyps were removed, and all three were precancerous. Another few years, and I would have probably been doomed to repeat my genetic disposition.

The reason I'm sharing all this is that this morning, I got a call from that specialist's office. They informed me that my three year follow-up was due in January, but the brilliant butt doctor I saw before had retired. So I have to pick a new one. They rattled off like thirty names, all probably equally skilled doctors that can probe butts just the same as any other proctologist, but I don't know about picking one over the phone.

It's hell getting old.

Today and Forever

I'm confused. You see, for a long time now, I've been trying to figure out what life is really all about.

I've thought at times that life was just a joke. Some random set of chemicals and atoms got together and just started a chain reaction. Many many many years later, here we are, and some people try to put a label on it-- try to put rules against it.

Other periods of life made me imagine some crazy huge formula, as if everything was preplanned, predestined. There may be free will, but in the long run it doesn't really matter. Everything that happened to me was supposed to happen, and if there was a string of really bad shit, well, I was just supposed to have bad things happen to me.

Now, well, I still don't really know. I don't think anybody really knows, either. But something I'm going to try to do is to be mindful about what is happening. Knowing the reality of a situation and approaching each moment as it happens seems like a good way of handling life. Similar to the concept of one day at a time, but instead, I want to try one moment at a time.

So for right now, I am trying to focus on what I am typing. The feel of the keys beneath my fingers, the noise of my coworkers on the phone, the traffic from the highway muffled by the windows and walls of this building. The  thoughts roll through me (I don't even think about which key is the letter E anymore, it's like talking?), and they enter this blank white space. They take up virtual space, but they carry very very little physical mass. They may not matter in the long run, but for right now, they are the moment. They are the thing that is happening to me and through me right now.

Smoking Buddha

I tried it this weekend, I really did. I was standing outside smoking late on Friday night, and I really tried my best.

I started by closing my eyes and reflecting on my own physical presence. I blocked out everything but my own breathing and heartbeat for sound. I concentrated on my pulse, the in and out of air, the weight of my body pushing down on my legs: knees, feet, and all. I tried to think of nothing, and what that nothing meant. I felt the slight pain in my lower back from some strain now forgotten. I felt the power in my muscles and tendons. I felt the way my jaw wanted to hang loose from the rest of my head. The way my fingertips tingled slightly as my arms fell heavily against my sides.

I stretched out my conscience slightly, realizing and reality-izing things within twelve inches from my body. The front door holding the cold outside air out of my house behind me. The old wooden chairs sitting to my left. The ceiling of the porch above me.

Further out, five feet away, I could sense the plants around me, and all manner of tiny bugs crawling around the branches and leaves, some making a bed for the night, others just awakening to hunt in the darkness. A slow irregular dripping from days-ago rain falling from the roof into the roots of the yew to my right.

Ten and twenty feet away, higher and lower and farther out, even more insects and spiders creeped and plotted. Wind currents taking spores and scents away and closer. The trees in the front yard completing another ring in their inner-trunks, marking another year and preparing for a harsh winter.

Further away now (perhaps a mile?) I can hear the traffic from the closest busy street. The crickets, my god, they sounded like billions and billions of legs screeching against each other. A plane rocketed across the sky above me, unknown distance but moving fast. Inside the metal tube sat at least fifty beings, each with their own goals and fears and dislikes and secrets. All the people in all the houses around me, all of them preparing for rest, or perhaps preparing for a hunt of their own?

Even farther out, past the reach of life-providing air and water, past the magnetic shielding of the Earth and into the rocks silently plodding along in space. Out past the gas giants and stars and ice and gas and all manner of things out there. Out where it is silent. Cold and lonely, surely, but quiet and peaceful.

Then I opened my eyes and realized I was still here. But for a brief moment, I felt everything.

Electric Sheep

When I first learned how to read I had very little idea of how to write. I learned like many others in my generation: by having my parents read to me. They would read the same thing to me several times over. As I started to really pay attention, I would realize the correlation between what they were saying and the symbols and weird signs on the paper in front of us.

Later, I think, I would have supplemental experience in reading added to me by Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and other awesome educational shows made available by the Public Broadcast System. I also started school at age 4, which helped immensely with learning how to communicate not only via text, but also to other human beings in a live setting.

Learning to write is a funny thing. Handwriting is something so personalized and unique that sometimes it can be used as identification. However, it is also something that has to be universal enough so that other people can actually read what is written, to glean the things you have passed along in written form. Early on, writing is typically just clerical copy work, and depending on who teaches the writer, what is written could pass as chicken scratch, or it may be circa 1870 perfect print.

But I don't really want to write about writing. What I want to write about is how we need to get away from writing.

I don't mean to get away from authoring, or from sharing our ideas; what I mean is that we need a better way of passing information on. We need something better suited to where we are going as a culture other than a keyboard or a pencil.

Tablets are the latest craze, apparently. They let us drag along a clipboard sized computer with us wherever we go. Problem is, they're a consumption device, not really a creation device. Older tablets included a keyboard under the screen, or perhaps on the screen itself. This is stupid. It adds weight, adds mechanical parts that could break down, and just perpetuates the insanity of requiring a physical input medium to pass information on.

We are a lazy race.

Some people have likened tablets to the handheld computers in Star Trek:The Next Generation. Indeed, I can see similarities in many of our personal computer and accessories that we consider daily use items with what was shown in the series. However, the striking difference for me is how they put information in.

You didn't see any of the characters typing away on a keyboard, or swiping a single finger around a keyboard on a screen. You saw them talking to the computer. You saw them directly connecting to the computer (in the case of Data, the android). Hell, you even saw them physically interacting with the computer in the Holodeck at times. No keyboards, no weird archaic gestures. It was intuitive, it was rugged, and it was lightweight.

This last point is key. Business people now, as always, are very concerned with weight. They need to get on airplanes, they need to carry stuff around. The last thing they need is an additional few ounces made up by peripherals. They don't need extra cords (or god forbid batteries for wireless peripherals) bogging them down. What they need is a lightweight, small sized, familiar shaped product that will let them gaze into the crystal ball that is the internet and get shit done.

They need to be able to speak to the computer, and have the computer speak back to them. They need to be able to gesture to a whole wall and have the information they're after come to life and show them what is important. They need to be able to pinpoint where and when and all that in very little time, and with very little weight added to their carry-on.

Gamers need this too. Why compress all our being into thumbs and index fingers? Why not give us the awesomeness of the Kinect in every game? And extend that to every application? When it doesn't make sense to have a whole body be the controller, just code the thing to watch for my facial expressions, or hand gestures (like ASL).

I may be an old grey-beard in the corner. I may remember what it was to set up message netting between BBSs that would send emails out at scheduled times really late in the night. I may even scoff at things that sales and marketing dream up (you mean you can't get this done in an hour? I'm just asking for the whole world's data to be cross indexed with the whole galaxy's data). But I think that in order for things to really move to the next level, we need to drop some of this old-timey crap and move forward.

Either that, or destroy civilization as we know it so I can farm and live out my post-apocalyptic dreams for real real.

These Look Like Big, Strong Hands, Don't They?

I had a very hard decision to make. The car was not moving. The car was old, rusted, rotted, and just generally falling apart at the seams. More than 200k miles, the tires were falling apart, the sunroof leaked rain, the seats were uncomfy, and the whole thing just screamed shoot me.

But I still owe some money against it on a loan.

So I could let it sit out on the street until it was paid off. I could ride the bus a little longer. I could even buy another cheap car that would probably break down in a year or two but get me through.

But I decided to let the local shop take a look-see just to see, you know, if it could be brought back out of retirement for a little while longer.

So I had the beast towed to the shop. I waited patiently for a day to let them have at it. Open her up, figure out what was broken and how much it would cost me to fix.

But after day one, they hadn't gotten to it. "No problem," I stated, "I've been taking the bus this long, I can wait another day or so."

Day two, today, I waited until the tail end of the day to call for some sort of status.

It still hasn't gone up on the lift.

I'm not terribly pressed, you know, it's not like I have anywhere to go or anything. It isn't like my job pretty much demands me to drive all over the city when stuff breaks.

But it would be nice to have someone extend the same amount of controlled urgency surrounding something I have entrusted them with.

It would also be different if they worked on the weekends.