My urge of the moment…

I really have the urge to say the following at work:

“Good day, Sir. I said good day!”

Hmmm…I wonder if I could pull that off?

I’m ready to go home

PICT0108

Originally uploaded by iago18335

Despite his best efforts, Shiloh is starting to show his age. After an exhausting weekend of sitting in front of the fireplace at the Chateau d’Iago he gave me a not so subtle message that he was ready to go home.

We’re fast approaching Shiloh’s eleventh birthday. He still tries to act like he’s a perpetual frisbee catching machine but I know the truth.

To you scattered bodies go.

I seem to be going through a phase where I am listening to audio versions of books that I enjoyed as a teenager. My latest foray down memory lane is the Riverworld series by Philip Jose Farmer. The first book of the series, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, sets the stage with a world in which everyone who has ever lived being resurrected along a 10 million mile river. The concept certainly gives an author tons of possibilities (what would happen if Elvis met Ghengis Khan?). Farmer focuses on some neat historical figures (notably Sir Richard Francis Burton in the first book) and meshes them well with his fictional ones.

The book holds up quite well over time and contains a good mix of action with the mundane needed to flesh out the details to make the world seem ‘real’ and carry the story over three more novels. The series actually consists of five books but the story arc really concludes at the end of the forth (if I remember correctly) and the last book felt a bit forced.

As I was listening to the story, it occurred to me that Riverworld might just be a superb setting for an RPG campaign. It appears that I was a bit too late to profit from that idea myself (Steve Jackson Games beat me to it) but that’s probably for the best (left up to me it probably never would have seen daylight). I’m still convinced it could give you some fascinating genre bending opportunities and the age of the series (it was written 30 years ago) means that most gamers will be totally unfamiliar with the stories allowing you to lift entire plot lines from the story when developing initial campaigns. I found this forum post from several years ago that describes the opening sessions of a campaign did just that and it sounds like a lot of fun.

A mission for my readers

In an earlier post, a reader emailed me and called me out on my poor punctuation skills, particularly my seeming compulsion to insert an apostrophe every time I see the word “its”. I’m thinking of just claiming that it’s part of my unique, quirky and endearing writing style and be done with it. Of course, for that to really work the general public will have to recognize and acknowledge my genius which will make my grammatical errors acceptable.

So here’s your chance dear reader. As a reader of this blog you’ve demonstrated your membership among the intellectual elite of Western civilization so you can now start dropping my name and references to this blog in any number of circumstances. Dinner parties, doctoral thesis, television interviews, op-ed columns, or political reeducation camps are all appropriate forums to declare the brilliance of this blog and why everyone should revel in my grammatical ‘eccentricities’.

I don’t just ask this for me, dear reader. Think of the children! With me in the mix, parents of scholastically challenged children will no longer have to resort to that worn out story about how Einstein failed math when he was a child (I have no idea if that’s true, by the way). Why should our children have to listen to 20th century tales to boost their self esteem. Let’s give them something current (and born in the good ol’ U.S. of A. I might add) that they can relate to. After all, I’m a hell of a lot more ‘hip’, ‘with it’ and ‘tuned in’ to the young generation than that Einstein dude (note my use of ’slang’ terms designed to endear me to the young people). I’ve gotten ‘jiggy’ with it (I think)!

I can’t help myself

While getting myself ready for this military training I had to get a new helmet band for my helmet.

Now, we were told that we could get our names and blood types sewn onto the helmet bands as well. If they left it at that everything would be fine. Unfortunately, they just couldn’t leave well enough alone.

“Under no circumstances is anything else authorized to be put on the band.”

Within an hour I was down at the alterations place trying to figure out what I should get sewn onto my band. I knew it was petty but I really couldn’t help myself. It was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. I was compelled to non-conformity.  What’s wrong with me?!

Oh well, hopefully I at least non-conformed in a cool way…

Break out the camo…

I’m getting ready to do a three week stint of military duty so after next week I expect posting to get real sparse (that’s an optimistic prediction…I’m expecting to not have enough time to even check back here).  I’ll be training soldiers to fire the M-240B machine gun…

I have to admit, I’m not really a gun nut but the M-240B is pretty nice.  Easy to take apart, put back together, use and clear.  I could probably teach a ten year old to use one in short order…

Oh, wait.  I guess that’s not a good thing, is it?

I’ll definitely need to get one once the zombie uprising begins though.  Or when our evil alien overlords decide the time is ripe to strike.  Or when robots become sentient and decide to take over the earth.

Anyway, I’m hoping the experience will enable to take some good photos.  I’ve been neglecting my camera and I’ll need something to jar me out of the bone numbing dullness of three weeks of watching guys spend all day shooting thousands of rounds at paper targets.

There will be bud!

This is only funny if you’ve seen the real movie but if you have, it’s brilliant.

Great…first zombies, now this!

You’ve got to be kidding me.  Oh yeah, I can hear it now.  “They’ll make our lives easier.  Let the robots do all the work.  Of course they’re totally safe.  What could go wrong?  Let’s try to mount a machine gun on one!”

Somebody better find Sarah Conner quick and get her to safety.

Still life in a car dealership

A couple of weeks ago I bought a 2005 Toyota Carolla to replace my Chevy Cavalier. That car had been purchased out of necessity when its predecessor was gasping its last breath and needed to be replaced immediately. Given my haste and lack of available funds and availability on the lot, the Chevy was on a short list of possibilities and while it hasn’t exactly wowed me over the years it has proved to be a reliable steed. Determined not to be forced into a similar predicament this time around my wife took the initiative to do some research and found a good deal in the previously mentioned Toyota. As I examined and considered the car I could only find two serious defects with it:

1. It looked remarkably like my Chevy in both color and style
2. It only came with one key (which, given my tendency to lose and forget things could be a serious problem)

Neither of these were critical concerns as far as I was concerned and we quickly decided to make the purchase.

This past Friday I went to the local Toyota dealer to get a replacement key made. I didn’t think it would be a very involved or time consuming process. After all, I’m just getting a key made, right? That takes about 30 seconds at the local hardware store. Now, I was told when I bought the car that Toyotas have some sort of super secure keys that prevent nefarious types from hot wiring the car or making duplicates at those hardware stores and driving away with your faithful steed. No problem, I figured, this should take maybe 5 minutes. This is the 21^st century after all.

I should have known that it would take a bit longer when I saw the waiting area of the dealership. It had a common area (with three TVs all going at once) with laptop and wi-fi hookups, a ‘theater’ room with a huge screen TV playing what appeared to be non-stop episodes of ‘Friends’, a ‘quiet room’ for reading or whatever, a playroom for kids (“No adult supervision provided!” warned the sign) a gift shop and a cafe.

It had been a long time since I had been in a car dealership so I felt a bit like Rip Van Winkle waking up after a century of sleep. Anyway, it occurred to me that this could be an effort to make customers more comfortable or there could be a more sinister motive behind all this. It occurs to me that when people (is it just Americans or is the trend more widespread?) are forced to sit and wait for long enough periods of time and then offered the opportunity to buy stuff (even stuff they don’t need) they will jump at the opportunity as a way to fight off boredom. Heck, I do it myself. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been stuck at an airport (“Please arrive 12-18 months early in case of security delays”) with hours of time on my hands. Even if I have a good book handy the bustle going on around me makes it hard to concentrate and gets me antsy as well. Before I know it, I’m buying snacks at 300% of retail price and giving serious consideration to the sweatshirt that says “Greetings from Newark Airport!” for $75.

I work my way to the service desk and explain that I need a new key made and they tell me that I need to go to the parts department. After finding my way there (I really could have used a kiosk with a map that told me ‘You are here’ the place was so big) I told the guy behind the counter that I needed a key and he responded with body language that clearly stated that making a key was the last thing he wanted to do at that particular time.

“A new key will cost $50.” He told me.

“Ok.” What the heck am I going to do? I need a key because it’s only a matter of time before I lock the one I have in my car.

“And it’ll be another $50 to program it.”

Now, why didn’t he just tell me it was going to be $100 for the key? I can’t imagine there are a lot of people out there that buy unprogramed Toyota keys. Is there a burgeoning D-I-Y movement for people to program their own keys? I certainly hope not since it would make this whole idea of have secure keys seem a bit silly.

Let’s face it. I need a key and it appears there’s only one place to get it. If the guy tells me it’s double the price I still need it, right? So I tell him to go ahead and make it for me.

So I hang around the counter and read my book (A lesson hard learned from the Army. Never, ever go anywhere without reading material close by. I’m convinced that’s why army uniforms have so many pockets in them, so I can carry multiple books.). About ten or fifteen minutes later he comes out with my key and tells me that if I want it programmed I need to take it over to the service desk and they can do that for me.

I schlep over to the service desk and tell the woman there that I need to get my key programmed. Now it’s her turn to look like working with keys is the last thing she wants to do (I guess key work is particularly onerous) and tells me:

“I’m not sure we can do this, we might have to make an appointment.”

An appointment? To get a key made? It appears there are some kinks in the Toyota key making flow chart. After a short wait she determines that she can, in fact, get the key programmed and hands me a vibrating pager and tells me it’ll go off when my key is ready. So I go to the ‘quiet room’ and read some more.

I finally roll out of the place after more than an hour. The people were generally nice (except for their initial response when they found out I needed something done regarding a key) and the facilities were comfortable but I don’t think I’ll be hanging out there anytime soon.

Even if they do put in a Starbucks.

Elric lives!

I just finished listening to an audiobook version of Elric of Melnibone. I first read the book in my teens and was written just a couple of years after I was born (1972) and really enjoyed the whole series (there were six books when I read them). When I first hit play on my mp3 player to listen to the book however I was a bit hesitant. What I thought of as incredibly cool at 16 might not hold up particularly well after 23 years, I thought and I wasn’t sure I wanted my fond memories dashed upon finding out I had listened to some sort of tripe.

Well, I’m glad to say I apparently had great taste as a teenager. The book was done by Audio Realms which, in addition to a brilliant reading by Jeff West, they added a great soundtrack and prologue by the author Michael Moorcock (a name which I’m sure resulted in childhood taunting). I’ve listened to quite a few audiobooks over the years and this, more than any other, made me feel like I was experiencing an ‘audio movie’ experience.

I enjoyed the book so much I quickly ordered the second in the series. After not receiving a response within a couple of weeks I called the company and was surprised to get a call back from the guy who runs the place (it’s a small company) who apologized and told me that my order would ship out in a week or so.

I got to talk to the guy (I think his name was Fred…I don’t remember now) for a bit and had a really interesting conversation. My impression was that this was a guy who really loved his work and the books he’s getting into audio format.

I’ve also listened to some of the H.P. Lovecraft audio recordings they’ve done and they are, likewise, of extraordinary quality.

So, here’s a chance to do a couple of good things at one time. Enjoy some great stories and support a small business!