Truth in Fiction

Someone I'm too lazy to look up once said "Writers don't like to write, writers like to have written." And after careful consideration, I have something to say in response.

That crap is TRUE.

"Having written" something that's good, or even worthwhile, is great fun. You get to be proud of it, hear people talk about it, and enjoy the incredible satisfaction of completing something that you didn't just build, you crafted.

And if a piece turns out really, really well, sometimes it's even good enough to make you forget that actual writing is like pulling teeth. Like pulling your own teeth.

You agonize over wordings. You kick yourself for repetition mistakes. You rewrite sentences over and over, sometimes breaking your constructions with over editing-and all the while you wonder if you should just scrap it and start over.

Someone else once said, "Do something you love and you'll never work a day in your life." And after careful consideration, whoever said that is a LIAR. Work is always work. Loving what you do just means you get to feel good about it when it's done.*

*I could have phrased that better.

You Again.

Oh, by the way, I'm taking last week off.

Wait . . . lets see, present progressive tense . . . but the adjective refers to a previous . . . mmmmm.

Oh well!

Moving on.

When you work or live in a place where you share a bathroom with lots of other people, you sometimes find a strange symmetry in your day. We might call this phenomenon the "pee buddy," were that phrase not entirely vile and prone to misinterpretation.

So let me be perfectly clear on what I mean. As you go through your day, and (hopefully) going to the bathroom a few times, you occasionally find that someone else is in there. The same someone else. Every time.

And while you're standing/sitting there reflecting (because what else do you do with that time), you begin to wonder why this individual always seems to be there when you are. Without fail, you come to exactly two possible explanations:

1. Due to an odd coincidence of personal biology, dietary habits, and discomfort endurance, you and this person have become perfectly in sync.*

2. This person is always here when you are because he/she uses the bathroom like 200 times per day, and there's got to be something wrong with him/her.

But how can you ever know? If there's some problem your buddy is aware of, you don't want to bring it up. And it's not like you can ask, anyway? "Maybe you should get that checked out" is not going to make the public bathroom experience any less awkward.

*The interesting thing about theory 1 is that it comes with the corollary: This person may be thinking theory 2 is true, and that there's something wrong with you.

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oooooooo, burn!

I'm sure that fire code is important, and that it saves many lives. But on behalf of everyone who uses public buildings: Come the hell on.

Based on what I've been told over the years, I'm pretty sure that according to full fire code, no space anywhere ever is allowed to have anything in it. Or anyone. The preferred fire marshal design seems to be a metal frame with no walls or ceiling.

And no one should enter these structures. Or get too close to a tree.

Because in the event of a fire, every person in a hallway is going to immediately freak out and start tackling anyone nearby.

Go team

Dear Fanboy,

Can I ask you a question? Do you honestly think that Microsoft/Apple/Google/Mozilla/Sony/Nintendo/Republican Party/Democratic Party/any sports team/Amazon/Barnes and Noble gives a crap about you? Do you honestly believe that that institution is the "good guy," while all competitors represent some kind of evil empire that only a stupid, gullible person would buy into? Are you under the impression that you'll get some kind of prize when your side emerges victorious?

Allow me to educate you.

No one who wants your money is really on your side. When they play as though they are, it's in the hope that you'll give them money/more money than you already have, and not because they have good hearts. They see you as a money piñata, and language is their stick.

And it's ok to have favorites, we all do. But you are serving no one by defending your champion to the bitter end. The one any only reason your guy does anything good is because he has to, his competition forces his hand.  If you like Playstation so much, you'd better hope Microsoft has a good quarter. If you use Firefox, cross your fingers that Chrome gains market share. Because a clear winner doesn't have to try very hard, does he?

In short, if you want good products, make the relevant parties fight for every last dollar you give them. Make them scrape and refine and innovate ways to get their money, and don't credit them any previous victories.

That's the only way we win.

Sincerely,

Sam*

*Who wrote this in Google Blogger, using Google Chrome, running on the Chrome OS laptop that Google sent him.

Soda Jerks

I get it.

I understand that restaurants need drink sales to make money. They represent a very high profit margin in an business where success is tricky. And I know that they can't afford to have people ordering water, then sneaking some coke into their cup. It's perfectly reasonable that water cups should be different from the other cups.

But do they have to be the size of a thimble?

Really Panera?

I don't think it's just a "making sure you don't get soda" thing, either. No, at this point you're making a joke. I've got to either buy a real drink, or suffer your water shotglass of shame. I can almost hear them laughing each time I go for a refill*, drinking a full glass at the dispenser so I can get enough.

*Oh yeah? Well in addition to the calories I'm saving, I'm also getting exercize from walking so much, so joke's on . . . still me, somehow.

Presents of mind

Gift giving is something of a fine art, and there are a lot of ways to get it wrong.

Even when you've known someone for a long time, and feel you have a fairly comprehensive model of his psyche, choosing something he'll like can be tricky. Of course, that's why nature produced the Amazon universal wish list and other such gift registries—For the long-distance relative who needs to just pick something, you can't do much better.

But the best gifts follow the desire/impractical measure, where the item is both A) something the person will want and B) something the person would never buy for himself.* If you can hit that target, you'll find the receiver in a particular state of joy, delighting in an item that for him represents true luxury.

Alternatively, you can also buy something incredibly weird, and send it with no explanation of what it's for, or why you chose it. Then you've provided on of the oldest gifts of them all, the gift of a new story.

*Example

Refried Beans-Salsa-tomatoes-Sour Cream-Cheese-Olives-Green Onion Day

I'm not really a fan of the Superbowl, just a fan of 7 Layer Dip.But as it happens, one of those seems to inspire the making of the other, so vicariously I guess I really like football.

Who's playing this year, anyway? I honestly don't know. Go whichever-team-the-guy-who-made-the-dip-likes!

And I think it's clear from the ratings that there are a lot of people like me. It's not like all those viewers didn't care that about football through the season, then suddenly it's the biggest thing in their world. No, most of them still don't care . . . but hot dogs are delicious, and by the middle of winter you probably haven't had one in months, so "WOOOO, SUPERBOWL!"*

So let's just put the whole thing on a Monday afternoon and declare it a national holiday. We could even call it something else, like "Family Day," so people wouldn't complain about it being just for football.

*(Psst, I think the actual sports fans know we're faking. They kept talking about stats, and I'm pretty sure they made a few of them up to see if I'd notice.)

write blog post

This week I posted a funny status update which, normally, would get a few "likes" and fade into the constant chatter of the Internet. But because my friends are often as-geeky or far-more-geeky than myself, something else entirely happened: an old school text based adventure began in the comment thread.

http://d.pr/IXAz

Now, most anyone who knows me and has even a drop of nerdy tendency is transfixed, checking back multiple times each day to watch the narrative unfold. Meanwhile, I'm looking at the list of releases planned for 2011 and wondering if any one of them could come close to stealing the "game of the year" crown from this crazy social network experience.

But then I have a different criteria than most. GOTY awards usually go to highly polished experiences where the perceived value of the product was high. And that's fine. I like polished experiences. Yet I wonder if that's really the best methodology when selecting a year's highlights.

Cause I have news for you. When we look back in twenty years at the games which shaped the medium, no one is going to be talking about Red Dead Redemption.*

*Mass Effect 2, maybe. But it's a more polished iteration of what was so remarkable in ME 1.

Blanket Statement

Sharing a bed with someone can be one of life's great little pleasures. It's a constant comfort, and reminder of the intimacy and trust you have with another person.

It is also a logistical nightmare.

You've got different sleeping positions, light-level preferences, pillow arrangements—not to mention temperature needs. Thermal distribution in a two-person bed is a study unto itself, in fact. Some people want the room to be ice cold, while they are baked alive beneath a pile of covers. Other people require that a fan blows air across them all night, which they then counter by using an extra blanket. And I'm not calling out anyone, anywhere for being weird—by default I sleep with both feet outside the covers (because, for some reason, bed makes the bottoms of my feet go thermonuclear with heat) and a secondary pillow tucked under my right shoulder, taking a bit of my weight so I can breath easier.

Combining two of these weird sleep combination locks is an interesting process, requiring a lot of real time and dedication.*

*Pro-tip: Develop an automatic "anchor response," where you hold down your side of the covers whenever you feel the other person move.

A place in the sun where it's nice and warm

Songs like Gnarls Barkley's "Going On"* are, to me, in a class of their own.


It's a class I like to refer to as "music that I don't have to be ashamed that I'm listening to."

In addition to being catchy, Going On carries a really nice little message: Put more focus on others, less on yourself, and don't put up with people who won't do the same. That may not seem like such a big deal, but remember that a large amount of music:

1. Contains no redeeming values
2. Actively promotes really terrible lifestyles
3. Is so very funky, you just can't stop singing it

And that's the baffling part. Since most music is sold by including awesome beats and incredible hooks, and the lyrics are often nearly indecipherable, why bother to focus on negative ideas at all? Just make all your music about solid moral values, autotune it into an electronic paste, and make it sound like it's about partying. Most people won't know the difference, and I'll feel better about having your song in my subconscious.

*One note: the line in the second verse is: And to do what I want/and to do what I please/Is first *off* my to-do list. For some reason no one bothers to check the official lyrics, and puts it as either "first *of* my to-do" list (which makes no sense) or worse "first *on* my to-do list" (which is counter to the rest of the song.)