ironSoap

This weekend was KublaCon. Non-geeks may want to skip this part. Actually, non-geeks may want to skip this site, but if you insist on staying the best I can offer is fair warning.

I only have two anecdotes of a non-game-geek variety which I will share now, at the top of the post, so those who don’t care about the specifics of Type-P Magic: The Gathering tournaments or comparisons between Settlers of Catan and Catan The Card Game can get to the stuff they might be able to stomach and leave the rest to those who care about such things. Or at least those who don’t need help sleeping.

Nik and I had been at the con for less than ten minutes, checking in and parking and so forth. The electric buzz that only the hardest core geek will ever get from merely being in the vicinity of dozens of games had started to sizzle my bones and I was getting eager to wander the Dealer’s room and start some kind of game. As we stepped into the elevator from the atrium level a thin brunette wheeling an oversized suitcase pinned the doors from closing completely and bustled in, a flurry of nervous energy and caffienated exhuberance.

“Oh my gosh!” she gushed. “Are you two here for the thing?” I was perfectly clear as to what she was referring to: It isn’t exactly as if KublaCon’s presence in the hotel is particularly subtle. Even if they didn’t plaster posters and flyers and advertisements all over the lobby and atrium levels, there is something decidedly unusual about a cluser of over one hundred readily identifiable geeks hunched over tables, scowling in intense concentration at a plastic soldier and a vinyl wipe-off mat covered in hexagonal lines. It’s something you can’t readily dismiss, at any rate.

But Nikki misunderstood the woman. We hadn’t checked into the con yet so we were lacking the lanyard name badges and bright pink wristbands that would mark us as one of “them” for the duration of the con, that made Nikki’s reply completely believable. “Uh, no,” she said.

Immediately I knew what was about to happen. I suppose the right thing to do would have been to stop the whole conversation there and correct Nik’s mistake and prevent the inevitable. But instead I let the woman’s bullish conversation style have its way and sat silently with a half bemused, half agitated smile on my face while she ploughed on.

“I saw all these guys with ponytails, and I didn’t know what was going on! So I asked the hotel desk and they said it was some kind of—” her voice lowered to a conspiratorial stage whisper “—Dungeons and Dragons? A convention! I guess they all get around and just… play these games! Oh my goodness, can you imagine? All these old guys acting out sword fights all weekend long?” She laughed then, a breezy and genuinely amused laughter. I stood against the cool elevator glass and regarded her as one might a gnat that you’ve intercepted trying to make a beeline for your ear canal. I wondered briefly if I should spare her embarrassment and try to get off the elevator with a minimum of fuss. What harm could it be? She had her laugh—she would have anyway, with or without our presence.

I wasn’t personally offended. You can’t engage in a hobby or activity the likes of role-playing or video gaming or computer programming or even rock climbing, motorcycle riding or scrapbooking without enduring a certain set of preconceptions which may or may not directly apply. It comes with the territory, and you can either let it get to you and ruin your enjoyment or you can learn to let it roll off of you and ignore what may in fact be an outright negative perception. Since to me, gaming is all about having fun, I do so in spite of the perhaps strange looks or naive questions. People can even be downright insulting but you know, that’s fine. I don’t play role-playing games or Warhammer to fit in with the cool kids, I do it because it’s a hoot and a holler. You spend your life trying to impress everyone and you end up hating yourself so my attitude is whatever, man.

But at the same time I don’t want to push my opinions on how awesome the newest GURPS sourcebook is or try to drum up a conversation with a random person on the bus about whether the new dual lands that hit you for a point of damage in Magic are a fair trade-off for the imbalance of the old-school Beta-era dual lands. I can enjoy my pastimes in relative peace so long as I’m not acting like some kind of geek recruiter. My philosophy, such that it is, basically dictates that people who are interested in games of this nature will drift to them naturally and trying to evangelize on their behalf is good for nothing more than some awkwardness at best or downright hostility in the worst case.

I had just made up my mind to stay quiet and let her get off the elevator when Nik piped up, “Oh, yeah! We are here for that!”

The woman’s expression was almost amusing. It lasted for only the briefest of moments but it summed up the essence of social agony, noting that she had firmly planted her foot in her throat and that she had been mocking the very event that had brought us to that very elevator. It is good for her, then, that she seemed to be a breezy and generally care-free person because she bounced back with impressive quickness. She touched my arm in a gesture of—I’m presuming—apology and reassurance as she laughed, hysterical anew. “Where’s your ponytail?” she giggled. I fought the urge to whip off my hat and point out that I was currently incapable of growing such a follicular delight and assuring her that were I able to, I probably would indeed have long hair. Most likely pulled back into a ponytail for convenience’s sake. I also bit my tongue to refrain from expressing how much I detest being touched by people I don’t know. My social discomfort grows, not unlike the Nothing from the Neverending Story, with each passing day and at this point the best I can do to contain it requires that I suffer in silence lest I become some caricature where my personal quirks are broadcast to the populace at large and illuminate a beacon whose light reaches the corners of the Earth declaring me a Freak for all to see. Unlike currently where the light is relegated to a small flare or a dim flashlight.

As the woman exited the elevator one floor below ours, she did so with a casual wave and a “Have fun!” cry that really could have been mistaken for nothing but sincere. Nik and I exchanged glances and burst into laughter of our own.

Later, after long blocks of gaming sessions interrupted only by trips to the con snackbar for $1.50 canned sodas and cold corn dogs we decided to try and get a Real Meal. Unfortunately, unlike DunDraCon where the hotel is located in close proximity to a sprawling strip mall, Kubla’s host hotel has only a Mongolian BBQ joint and a Sizzler in reasonable walking distance. Lacking better options, we (somewhat reluctantly in my case) decided to hike to the Sizz.

Sizzler is the lowest of the low-rent steak places. Even the buffet-style Golden Corral offers a better selection of steak and salad options (and at better prices) and I would classify the average clientele of GC as “questionable.” Take that how you like. Sizzler isn’t exactly bad, but calling it good without irony or referring to something other than its food offerings is a long stretch. But when your other option is a hamburger from room service for $18.47 plus 20% gratuity and $2.50 service fee, well, sometimes you have to take what you can get.

The rest of our little group was all about the steak and all you can eat shrimp. Having had a hamburger for lunch the thought of another slab of overcooked red meat wasn’t appealing to me so I opted for a Cajun chicken sandwich that was perfectly edible and in some ways tasty although I felt the use of the word “Cajun” in the title was stretching the application of that particular word. Nikki, on the other hand, wanted the shrimp but not the steak and wasn’t really that excited about the all you can eat prospect. To put it into perspective, all Nikki can eat, on a typical day, is less than one-third of a normal restaurant portion. Even a skimpy restaurant’s portions can be enough to overwhelm her so the prospect of all you can eat is of dubious economic value in her case. The only other option that seemed like what she was looking for was found on the kid’s menu. I told her to just order that but she was nervous about it because they have big notices everywhere saying “Under 10 Only.”

The specialty menus at restaurants kind of baffle me. I’m talking about the Kid’s and Senior’s menus. They seem to make a big deal out of the age restrictions and yet the food isn’t really any differently priced if you look closely enough at it. The kid’s menu is often undigestable sludge but it is priced, in a volume to dollar sense, roughly the same as the adult menu. The prices are only lower because there is less of it. The same holds true for the senior menu at most restaurants and while a few may actually offer legitimate senior discounts that doesn’t really make that much sense to me because if you were to give older adults a discount (say 5% or whatever) why would they need their own special menu? Just give them the savings from whatever they order (I’m sure some restrictions would apply). So whenever I see seperate menus I have to really question why those things are cheaper and the only thing I can come up with is (ready for a shock?) they actually cost the restaurant less.

That being the case, why anyone wouldn’t be able to order those items is beyond me. If I just want a small snack at an eating establishment, why should I have to pay for the larger plate and be stuck with leftovers? The same holds true for the lunch menus: Offering lesser portions for lower price should be a universal option, not limited to age or time restrictions. It’s stupid.

But in this case I was pretty confident that they wouldn’t make a big deal out of Nik ordering from the kid’s menu. Why would they? And true to form they didn’t seem to really bat an eye at the register when two adults ordered one adult item and one kid’s item. Obviously one person was ordering out of the age bracket, but so what? Money is money, and the cashier gladly took ours.

Of course when we got to the table we were required to present one of our reciepts to the server, a distracted-looking middle aged woman with a lilting Spanish accent and a constantly harried demeanor. She snatched the tab off the table as she came by with the stalwart Sizzler Toast and glanced at it quickly. Then she did a double take and regarded Nik like a specimen in a petri dish. “Oh,” she said disdainfully, “You’re too… big!” The implication was that Nik was not deserving of a child’s entree since she was too grown up. I steeled myself for a confrontation but the constant pressure of a half-full section proved too much for her will to resist and she bustled off instead of continuing the thought. It was just as well but as she left Nik seemed a bit put off by the remark. There may have been under-the-breath grumbling, but Lister was talking too loud to hear it.

That may have been the end of the intrigue, but then Nik started watching our friends mow through plates piled high with vegetable delights from the neverending salad bar. She started wondering out loud if she shouldn’t have opted for the salad instead of the kid’s shrimp. I told her she could go order a salad bar if she wanted but she stressed that she only wanted a single trip. I didn’t recall such an option so I offered to return to the front counter area and investigate.

The only thing the menu listed as even close to what Nik was looking for was a “Side Salad” which, lacking a description, may or may not have been remotely close to what she was looking for. So I identified a managerial-type employee and approached him in what I hoped was a friendly manner. “Are the ‘Side Salads’ a single trip to the salad bar or are they pre-made?” I asked. The manager looked at me with confusion and asked for clarification. “What I’m saying is that my wife wants just one trip to the salad bar, do you have something like that?” The manager responded by reaching beneath the counter and pulling out a salad plate and handing it to me.

“Here you go,” he said, “it’s no problem.”

“Are you sure?” I was skeptical. “I’m fine with paying for it.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it.”

I gave him my most sincere smile and thanked him profusely. As I walked back toward our table I was thinking that maybe I was wrong about Sizzler. Their food may occasionally be a touch on the cheap side but at least the service was turning out to be pretty decent. Giving Nik a free single trip to the salad bar certainly constituded going above and beyond the call of customer service in my book. As I approached the table to give Nik her plate I noticed that our server was back and handing out refills and plates of food ordered by some of our dining companions, who had placed their orders earlier than we had. But as I approached and tried to hand the plate to Nik so she could get her salad before the entrees arrived, the server intercepted me.

“You need ticket for this.”

“No,” I started to explain, “I got it from the guy at the front.”

“I have to get a ticket.” She wouldn’t let go of the plate and we had started a kind of subtle tug of war with it. I surrendered the plate and pressed my point.

“Listen, I got this from the manager, he just gave it to me. He said it would be cool.”

“That’s not the way it works,” she stressed, a firm believer in order and structure.

I was trying not to get worked up because I knew I had gotten away with a coup by getting the free salad in the first place so losing it now wouldn’t be a great human tragedy or anything but I was so close to succeeding in my mission only to be hijacked by this wage slave with no real stake in whether or not I got free salad. “No, I’m just saying I got it from the manag—”

She interrupted, “You come with me,” and she began marching, plate in hand, toward the register. I followed, unwilling to concede defeat just yet. As she approached I noticed with disappointment that the manager was no longer milling around the cashier’s stand. A setback. The server approached the youthful-looking alternate cashier and started to thrust the plate under his nose, accusingly.

“No!” I said again, “It wasn’t that guy. It was the manager, the one with the black shirt.” Finally I seemed to say something that registered with her.

“Oh,” she said, now a bit dejected. “I’ll go find him.”

A few moments later she reappeared with the black-shirted manager guy who apologized and said, “I knew that was going to happen. But don’t worry, it’s taken care of now.”

I thanked him again and the server offered a mumbled and insincere apology and then bustled off to some other steak-related catastrophe while I wandered back to our table and finally delivered Nik’s long-awaited ticket to salad bliss. Our friends expressed their disbelief in the extreme tactics employed by the server we shared a good laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation. Eventually our food came and we ate; it turns out that Nikki was unable to even consume as much as a ten-year old as she left a few assorted shrimp on her plate as we patted our bellies and began the trek back across the street for more gaming.

On the way out I left our server a decent-sized tip.

For the entertainment.

Magic in the Air

Here are the games I played at this year’s Kublacon:

• DungeonQuest
• Fluxx v3.1
• Settlers of Catan: Travel Edition
• Ticket to Ride: Märklin Edition
• Catan Card Game
• Magic: The Gathering

You may notice a couple of things about this list: One is that it isn’t, generally speaking, the most intensely geeky list ever. Aside from DungeonQuest and Magic, any of these games could be played at your average family game night.

And that’s okay. It may have been nice to play something a bit more gamer-y but we did that last year; one of the things about hard core games is that they tend to take up huge blocks of time. When a single game of Warhammer can last up to four hours and your average dungeon crawl in D&D takes five hours at least, you’re looking at a whole lot of time burnt on something that you could play on any random weekend. In my case at least I don’t go to cons looking for a bunch of new people to play with and while I don’t necessarily mind playing with strangers, unless I’m in a tournament or something there isn’t much I couldn’t do any other time except play a whole bunch of different games. So that’s what we did.

The other thing you may note is that I have Magic up there.

This is significant because it marks the first time I’ve picked up the game or spent money on the cards in over eight years. The last time I tapped a land for some mana was when I was 19 or 20… but back then it was on. I calculated my deck in those days to be worth upwards of $200, and that was when cards that are nearly unheard of today (Moxes, Black Lotus) were the hot commodities. Current drool-inducing cards (some would say the ones that broke the game) like dual lands were certainly not commonplace but were more or less readily available for the right price. I did a lot of trading and single-card buying to build my deck into the library-crushing machine that I wanted it to be.

It was fun but let me tell you a simple, perhaps obvious fact: It was darned expensive. And it was relentlessly expensive. Each new set that came out offered a new opportunity for deck tweaking and scavenger hunts to find the perfect rare card to squeeze into a deck. It was neverending and after a while my wallet and my patience were stretched so thin that I couldn’t stomach it any more. As fun as playing Magic was, it didn’t work on a casual level. So I made the decision to stop and when I stopped, it was for good.

Sorta.

What drew me back to the game was basically an idea that had been around for a long time but had at some point evolved into a type of game that gave the flavor of playing Magic including deck construction and actual facing off versus an opponent but without the massive financial committment to building the best deck ever. And it even introduced some of the stakes that were originally designed into the game that had been all but cast aside during my deck-obsessed heyday: The ante.

The structure is called Type-P or Permanent Sealed Deck. Sealed deck tournaments have been around for a long time and usually involve each player grabbing a starter pack and any assortment of booster pack combinations the tournament coordinators wish to grant. Each player opens their new card packages at the same time and is given a finite amount of time to use the cards they got to build a competitive deck. Sometimes a trading option is introduced, sometimes not, but the end result is that it tests your ability to identify quality cards and puts your deck-building skills on display since you have to sometimes get creative in order to make a reasonable deck when the pool of cards to draw from is severely limited.

What Type-P does is try to take the flavor of the sealed deck and use it for longer than a single-sitting tourney. So there are standard Type-P decks which consist of an initial pool (or “universe”) of cards that is applied to all of these types of decks. There are of course certain rules and restrictions about what kinds of cards and how many of certain types are allowed but generally speaking the idea is to create a deck from a smallish number of initial cards and then play that deck against other similarly constructed decks for ante.

Each time you win, your universe or pool increases by one. When you lose, your overall universe decreases. You track your decks’ total cards which works to create handicaps for the games. For example if the initial universe for a P-Deck is 98 cards and you win twice your universe should be at 100. If you play your 100 card P-Deck (which doesn’t mean the actual playable deck has to contain 100 cards, only that you have 100 cards with which to build that deck) against a P-Deck that has lost a bunch of matches in a row and is pulling from a universe of maybe 89 cards, you theoretically have a significant advantage and therefore handicap rules apply (usually to the manner in which ante is settled at the end of the game).

This works brilliantly for people like me who enjoy the gameplay and the deck construction but don’t want to be involved in the collection aspect which is what generally drives the expense. And in a way using Type-P rules you get most of the flavor of Magic without all the headache of trying to either luck out and open a pack with just what you needed or going out and spending as much money on a single deck addition as you might on dozens of randomly packaged cards. Plus there is enough flexibility to the Type-P rules that as long as you have a pool of potential opponents who all agree on the base universe size you can expand the play style into any realm you want.

For example we all created standard Type-P decks for a registered game we played in for several hours. But that required that seven of the cards we had just purchased had to be randomly taken out of our pool to level the playing field for other P-Decks that used different types of starter and booster packs as the base. Those cards then became essentially useless unless we decided to start collecting again which I had no interest in doing. So instead we went out and each purchased a Fat Pack which included about 130 cards instead of the normal 98 and added our seven pulled from the original P-Decks for a starting universe of 137. So long as we play against other people with 137 card starting universes, it remains equal.

I spent a weekend playing Magic in a way that was far more enjoyable than I ever remember it being during the years I played it in high school and immediately after. I didn’t worry about mint conditions and relative card values, I didn’t fret over losing cards in ante (which actually makes the game a lot more fun) and I spent less than $30 total on a relative boatload of cards that I can continue to use as long as I like just as long as I find other players with compatible decks.

Viva Type-P.

Anyway, aside from a lot of Magic we also played the new version of Ticket to Ride, Märklin. If you’ve never played TTR, it’s a great European-style game with pretty simple but elegant gameplay that works well for all types of gamers. It’s basically non-competitive since for the most part you aren’t really given much opportunity to mess with other player’s strategies although you do keep score and there is a winner, during the game it’s mostly a series of strategic moves against luck, opportunity and your own gameplan.

Märklin introduces a few new twists from the previous games. For one it fixes the Ticket mechanic from TTR and TTR:Europe where once you completed your initial Ticket requirements, the relative risk versus reward for choosing new Ticket goals to complete was pretty minimal. You were usually much better off trying to get the longest track which kind of defeated the point of the game in a way. Märklin eliminates the longest track bonus and instead gives extra points to the player who completes the most Tickets, which I think is as it should be.

Märklin also adds a twist on the wild Loco cards by introducing Locos that can only be used to assist with long tracks (four or more spaces) and country-specific destinations that can be met as Ticket conditions with more than one completely separate track. But the most obvious new twist is the Passengers.

Each city on the map (Germany in this case) has anywhere from one to several numbered tokens which stack in order from highest on top to lowest on bottom. As you place your tracks you can choose to park one of your three passenger pieces on one of the connected cities and at any point in the game you can move them along your track (or hitch a ride on other players’ tracks with the help of special Passenger cards), collecting the topmost token on every city stop along the way. You can only use each Passenger once and the challenge is to get your Passengers into positions where they can collect the most points on their journey without waiting too long for some other player to come by and swoop on your high-point tokens.

I liked everything about the game except the Passengers which I felt were more of an annoyance than really anything else and didn’t add nearly as much to the game as the stations from Europe did. The fact that the Passenger cards are mixed in with the color-coded track cards also frustrated since at times (especially near the end of the game) you can be desperately searching for a specific card color and drawing a stupid Passenger card (of practically zero value near the end of the game when all the good routes have been well traveled) can mean the difference between a big points jump and no jump at all. Still, overall the Ticket to Ride games continue to be well executed and fun to play. I fully expect an Ultimate Ticket to Ride game eventually which incorporates all the best mechanics from previous editions on a truly massive map. Maybe TTR: Russia or something.

I want to make special mention of the Catan card game which was my favorite new game of the con by far, despite being only two player. It truly captures the essence of Settlers and, I think, in some ways surpasses the original board game in terms of strategic opportunity since a lot of success in Settlers stems from fortunate die rolls to collect the resources you need and starting locations play a big role in how well you have the opportunity to play throughout the rest of the game. Since those factors are eliminated in the card game (every turn yeilds some resource for all players in the card game and each player starts off on exactly even ground) it makes your execution completely paramount.

The Catan card game rules are a bit dense and after two games Nik and I are still finding new little gotchas and allowances we didn’t know about before but it’s worth the effort and completely engrossing, especially if you’re a fan of the original Settlers board game.

Finally I need to discuss DungeonQuest, the out-of-print favorite that I have played before but was only able to truly appreciate this time around since I didn’t have to spend the first forty minutes of the game trying to wrap my head around the various scenarios and rules lookup phases. This is in my top ten games of all time, easily. It is the ultimate “You Got Moded” game. Any board game where you can literally lose (as one of our players can readily attest to) on the first turn has got to be awesome. Our hapless compadre even started a new character because he died so quickly and a mere three turns after the first trap claimed his life he lost yet again on a freak Ruth-pointing-to-the-fence style call of his forthcoming die roll. That he didn’t know he was trying to roll anything other than the number he called only made it that much funnier.

I decided that I must own this game, but the fact that it is no longer in print, is pretty popular to begin with and was pricey even when it was sold in stores makes it an expensive proposition. I’m not quite sure I’m ready to drop $65 minimum on a game at this time. Still, if you want to get me something for my Birthday (in six months…), there you go. Perfect idea. Good luck finding it, though.

I’m serious. Good luck.

What Might Have Been

As fun as the con was, it wasn’t what it was supposed to be. One of our players had a registered Blood Bowl tournament that had no one show up so we abandoned the game. I was supposed to finish my Warmaster army so we could try that and I dropped the ball hard so that didn’t materialize. I was also planning on having a Shadowrun 4th Edition adventure ready to go but I got bogged down with so much other stuff to do that it floundered in the back of my mind until it got way too complex to be realistic, especially considering how much has changed from my familiar 2nd Edition rules: Trying to build a campaign around an unfamiliar system is pretty rough. I made some progress on a quickie intro adventure, more of a one-shot deal than anything else, but I never got around to creating any characters and it didn’t seem like the rest of the group was that into the idea of sitting around doing the pre-adventure stage thing so it fell through.

To an extent that means that the best laid plans were more or less ruined by my procrastination but I think we ended up with plenty to do so maybe next time. The key, I’m realizing, is not to have 600 things you want to do in the pipeline, but to choose one thing you absolutely want to get done and focus on that until it is finished. Then, if there is time left, you can move on to something else. When my pre-con to-do list included a GURPS campaign setting, a Shadowrun adventure, a whole Warmaster army painted, finishing touches on Warhammer 40K armies, a Blood Bowl team to paint and a prototype of a game idea I have to construct… well, the mere thought of all that was too crushingly impossible of a feat and so I did what all procrastinators do when presented with a mountain of tasks: I did something else entirely.

Live and learn.

There’s a meme floating around Livejournal (maybe you don’t ask what I was doing over there, kay?) that I can’t track down the original source of since the attribution stops at a “friends only” page, but whatever. It’s clever so I’m jacking it.

I’m also adapting it a bit for my purposes, because I’m like that. A tinkerer. Anyway it works like this, you have eighteen “scenes” in your movie. Set up an iTunes playlist that has no unplayed tracks (you could use something other than iTunes but, I mean, why?) and make sure it’s on shuffle. Hit play and for each song that comes up, associate it with that scene. Then hit next and the next random song gets associated with the next scene and so on. The rules are that you only get one skip for the whole list (so use it wisely!) unless you get an artist repeat in which case you can skip again. I suppose if you don’t mind having more than one song from the same band you can ignore that rule, but I like having a big mix. Personal preference. The last rule is that you can swap two scenes at the end if you like, but no more. No cheating. The scenes are identical to the ones in my list below. Ready? Here goes:

Opening Credits: Too Little, Too Late – Barenaked Ladies (meh, not what I would have prefered but could have been worse… this is more of an near-the-end-of-the-movie track)

Waking Up: The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy) – Simon and Garfunkel (a decent fit here I think, but would have been much better for Life’s Okay scene)

Average Day: Crosstown Traffic – Jimi Hendrix (I can see this totally working here)

First Date: Help! – The Beatles (this was my switch, I had I Get a Kick Out of You here first and this one below… this way is so much better)

Falling in Love: I Get a Kick Out of You – Frank Sinatra (not bad considering that my switch was only one slot off)

Fight Scene: Secretarial – A.C. Newman (one of my bigger disappointments; I have a lot of heavy stuff in my list and this doesn’t quite work, even on an ironic level)

Breaking Up: Escape – Metallica (heh, I skipped over Jerry Was a Race Car Driver by Primus to get to this one. A good use of the skip I think)

Getting Back Together: My Favorite Mistake – Sheryl Crow (almost couldn’t have picked a better song here)

Life’s Okay: Transparent – In Flames (clearly the worst of the bunch since this song is basically about the opposite of life being okay)

Mental Breakdown: Welcome to This World – Primus (you know, this works)

Driving: Riders on the Storm – The Doors (I swear I didn’t cheat to get this one here)

Flashback: Disillusion – Badly Drawn Boy (sorta okay, more of breakup song really but it doesn’t say what the flashback has to be about so I guess it’s acceptable)

Partying: Unsung – Helmet (could be better, could be worse)

Dance Sequence: Cave – Muse (far from the greatest dance song in my list)

Regretting: The Good Times are Killing Me – Modest Mouse (appropriate)

Long Night Alone: Pretty Babies – Dishwalla (this one sucks not just because it doesn’t really work but also because I hate this song, by far the worst from the Pet Your Friends album; can you think of a worse lyric than “Why the need to eroticize our children”? Gah)

Death Scene: No More Tears – Ozzy Osbourne (I was kinda disappointed by this one at first but the more I think about it, it’s actually pretty good here)

End Credits: Go – Pearl Jam (ill-fitting if you try to sort of loosely visualize the movie; a better opening credits or fight scene song, but I was out of swaps… in fact, had I one more exchange to make I would switch the Opening Credits track with this one)

Overall not too bad. The playlist with unplayed tracks is because you don’t want to put something on there you’ve never heard before as I learned when trying to do this with my iPod. Also I should maybe point out that the playlist my iPod pulls from when updating is focused on having more unplayed or infrequently played stuff on it rather than songs I listen to all the time, so I did a lot of skipping over assorted techno tracks I’ve never heard and rare deep album tracks that I couldn’t place. This might have been better (or at least quite a bit different) if I was doing it from home with my actual iTunes Library. Still, a fun way to waste five minutes.

Try it. It’s fun.

Watched the Lost season finale last night. Compared with the ending of Alias we’re talking about the difference between six weeks’ all-expense paid vacation in a tropical paradise with a supermodel of your choice versus getting kicked in the crotch and shot in the kneecap. Or, put another way, there is no comparison.

Caution: Spoilers may follow.

The return of Desmond was no great surprise, but the faith/doubt rollercoaster that Locke had been on all season was neatly tied by bringing back the catalyst (so to speak) and having them work it out. I agree with some of the rumblings on the webs that Desmond might have mentioned to Locke that he had almost let the Bad Thing happen by not pressing the button a couple of months earlier and could pretty much verify that it was not a hoax and you didn’t want that to happen. I could see him being upset after having perhaps seen the Pearl orientation video, but just hearing about it doesn’t seem like it would have made him just kind of go along with whatever Locke wanted.

The open-ended fate of Locke and Eko was mildly alarming, although I’m willing to bet that the writers/producers felt they had met their Shocking Character DeathTM quota for the season and Locke and Eko seem too integral/symbolic to the direction of the show to be cast aside without much fanfare. As much as I liked the Desmond character and was glad to see him back, I’m hoping they don’t try to say he survived the explosion/magnetic discharge/key turning and bring him back. I sort of liked the concept of the hatch and the button, but I’m certainly not sorry they didn’t drag it on forever… a glimmer of hope there that they know better than to draw from the same well too often.

My biggest eyebrow-raising moment was when the rest of the Others seemed to kind of defer to Henry Gale as a leader of sorts, this has made for rampant speculation that Gale actually is the “Him” he whimpered about during his incarceration in the hatch. I’m not a fan of this theory as it seems to suggest that he would have orchestrated his own capture (that or he is especially careless, which does not bode well for someone we have been thus far lead to believe is rather feaed). If he is “Him,” that seems like a very risky move to make, considering how hostile and frightened of his group the Losties were at that point. Heck, even Rousseau—who ostensibly did the original capturing—would have had a pretty compelling reason to just flat out kill him (They did, after all, kidnap her daughter). That he managed to make it out alive can only be attributed to fortune (no one could have successfully orchestrated that series of near-deaths) which means that either Gale isn’t “Him,” or that he is in which case I would say that’s pretty disappointing since “He” is sort of a lucky dweeb and not some legendary Kaiser Soze-style uber-villain.

Some people grumbled that Claire’s kissing Charlie was out of character for her, but I think they set the stage for that already with the hand grab during the funeral in a previous episode. Still, I’d agree that her wishy-washy attitude toward him wasn’t handled quite as well as it maybe should have been (for all she knew he really did try to drown Aaron less than two weeks ago), unless they plan to set the stage for a plotline where Claire is a very poor judge of character/doesn’t learn from past mistakes very well. I hope with most of the key characters otherwise occupied in various high drama situations that we actually get some real storylines with Claire and/or Charlie next season.

I’m essentially opinionless about the cliffhanger ending since it involved plot elements that are nearly 100% new at this point in the show. Nice touch, though.

A Brief Meta Comment

If you stopped by the site sometime after about 11:00 pm PDT until around 9:00 am PDT you may have seen the site lookin’ all busted. I think I’ve fixed the Netflix feeds so they won’t break the site when they don’t work now but if you see the site acting goofy like that I wouldn’t mind a quick email letting me know. I suppose that goes for general site weirdness evident since the server switch.

Giggiddy Game Weekend

Tomorrow we head out for Kublacon. I had grand intentions of getting a bunch of my painting projects done but instead I fell into a spiral of video game resurgence, Netflix queue burning, lazy TV watching and irregular work hours. As such, my wonderful armies will not see the honor of battle this con. It’s really not a huge deal since there will be a slew of other stuff to do and more than enough games to play. I am still going to run a short Shadowrun 4th Edition adventure tomorrow night so at least I don’t feel like I did nothing to prepare for this anticipated event, but I had grand schemes of Warmaster battles that will have to wait for some arbitrary weekend in the future.

The only bad thing about the con is that in order to get a decent room and have a chance to get settled in and play a few pick up games before the festivities kick into full gear I need to get off work earlier than usual which naturally means getting to work earlier than usual. I’m still not exactly sure how that’s even going to work but considering that Friday nights at a con are historically rather sleep deprived, that strongly suggests that tomorrow may be in the running for Longest Day Ever.

Enjoy your lengthy weekend, Internet.

Two quick things that made me laugh recently. One was during the abyssmal Alias finale when one of the characters said in typical overly dramatic fashion regarding the whereabouts of the wily villains:

It gets worse. We tracked their location to… Mongolia.

Nik turned to me and said, “‘It gets worse’? Why, do they not have enough frequent flier miles to cover the trip?”

I LOL’d.

Also, the most brilliant one-word website ever.

We caught up with the Series Finale of Alias last night.

In case you don’t recall, I had stopped watching the show after this season’s opener because… well, because it had gotten criminally stupid. When I heard that they were coming back for a last push to the series finale I decided that I was going to watch and see how it turned out, just to find out if J.J. Abrams was going to be able to salvage the series that got away. The idea was that if he could, I might have less apprehension toward Lost. So I watched.

At first the new episodes were as bad as I remembered. But then a couple of weeks ago they had an episode that I felt was very much in tune with the golden era of Alias and I started to build a little hope. Maybe—just maybe—they could actually pull this off. There were a lot of semi-spoilers about guest stars and body counts floating around the Internets leading up to the two-hour finale and I started thinking that this just might make up, if only a little, for the torture (how apropos) of the last few seasons.

In typical Alias fashion, my hopes were built up only to be utterly decimated. They hooked me just enough to add one more scar to my already blackly ravaged faith in pop culture.

The finale was, hyperbole aside, an utter failure on every single level. The pacing, despite the two hour time allotment, was atrocious as they tried to cram what could have been a whole season’s worth of plot resolution into two episodes’ worth. The acting was inexplicably off kilter and drab, possibly because of exhaustion but probably because of the dismal dialogue. The details behind the show’s bizarre mystical Da Vinci-like prophet Rambaldi were never revealed, the fate of the villians from this season (Prophet-5) was laughably anticlimactic and the conclusion of the principal villians’ arcs were almost universally incomprehensible. There were pointless guest appearances, huge blocks of time devoted to disposable secondary characters, cheap and hackish writing tricks which ignored the entire history of the series and even plot points from only a couple of episodes ago! They devoted a lot of time to a series of flashbacks which served absolutely no purpose in developing story, characters or parallels to current events. The epilogue was jarring and unsentimental even in its inanity.

So no, I wasn’t a fan. What kills me about this show is the unrealized potential. The Rambaldi thing could have been phenomenal. Instead it was so painfully clear that the writers had no idea what they wanted to do with it and so they let it drift into this retarded grey area of repetition and casual dismissal because they clearly couldn’t come up with any decent explanations for what it all meant. For all the talk of “Rambaldi’s End Game,” what exactly that meant or what it was would never be explained. As a serial spy drama it could have been extremely cool as well, witness the first two seasons. But the stupid TV myth that one actor makes or breaks a show ruined the chances the writers had to stay fresh and interesting, choosing instead to stretch viewer’s credibility until it broke and snapped back into their eye.

The only thing that I can take away from the wretched train wreck the show ultimately became is that near the end (and specifically in the finale) I didn’t see J.J. Abrams’ name anywhere on the credits except in the “Created By” line. So all I can hope that means is that he had nothing to do with the assault on my brain I experienced last night and that when it comes to Lost he’ll do the right thing and see it through to the end and make sure not to allow anyone who was even remotely associated with Alias’ denouement to come within 50 miles of it.

I use the phrase “in terms of…” way too much. I think when you get right down to it I have a handful of phrases that I just destroy with overuse.

See? Right there I originally typed that as “…that I just destroy in terms of usage.”

What’s wrong with me?

First up I figured what with yesterday’s babbling about video games and then a mention of the Da Vinci Code at the end, this comic was appropriately timely. Also, clever! I do so love the clever.

Secondly, it seems like Scott is up to no good over on his site, swapping servers and taking the plunge into Wordpress 2.0. This is not his fault, mind, since he is tied to me in terms of site hosts (unless he were to, like, pay for his own hosting instead of mooching off of me all the time… that kid. He is a moocher. Because he mooches). Still, shennanigans are afoot and I have no control over their outcome. At least not so you’d notice.

Third, I was informed yesterday that Dr. Mac has expressed interest in aquiring his own DS. So much so that I believe he even parted with a holding deposit in the manner commonly referred to as “Pre-ordering” but which is actually more like “Shady Accounting Practices.” I have no proof that this is the case, but I’m betting that EB Games and GameStop get to claim the accumulated monies gathered by suckers gamers who are just so hyped to get their hands on the newest game/gizmo/system that they will pay for a product they cannot take home for weeks or even months. Sure, they don’t have to pay for the whole thing, but they pay for nothing and that has to look good on a quarterly report. I imagine a spreadsheet somewhere with a column for “Cash Tendered” and an adjacent column titled “Merchandise Expenses.” A casual accountant unfamiliar with the rabid slavering generated by our hobby’s marketing machines might look at those columns and go, “Huh?” EB Games’ CEO Jeff Griffiths just grins, flashing his platinum and diamond-crusted Grillz from a cozy position in his swirling hot tub filled with the tears of 500 virgins.

I mean, if you want to figure out why Duke Nukem Forever has never been released, take a cue from Veronica Mars and follow the money. Ask yourself how many people may have, over the last decade, plunked down their pre-order deposit in hopes of playing this game. Who has most to gain? If you think 3D Realms’ CEO Scott Miller does not occasionally join Griffiths in aforementioned hot tub, you haven’t watched nearly enough X-Files episodes.

I’m just saying.

Wait, what was I saying? Ah yes, pre-ordered DSes. So Dr. Mac and I will be acquiring our devices in the next twenty days or so. What annoys is that our only options are white. Oh sure, if we hang back for a bit we can probably get a navy blue one or even a black one, but really. If I was planning on being all lacksidaisical on this I wouldn’t have lined GameStop’s coffers for something that isn’t even available in my country yet. Patience, in this regard, is not an option. So white will have to suffice. I already have machinations of hooking Nikki so on games such as Animal Crossing and Puyo Pop Fever that she requests—nay demands—her own DS. If I time it right I may be able to “begrudgingly” part with the pre-ordered Lite just in time to pick up a newly released unit of a less iPod-like hue.

Not that it truly matters. I’m sure with a bit of ingenuity and a few Google searches I could put together something to improve the aesthetic qualities. Such things already exist en masse for the DS Phat, so I have a certain degree of faith in my Internet cohorts that their lack of lives can even exceed my own.

What does matter is the manner with which I will be able to obtain the requisite games to make the purchase of such a device worthwhile. Observe the list of games I feel necessitate actual purchase:

1. Mario Kart DS
2. Advance Wars DS
3. Age of Empires II

Of course then there are the games that have me on the fence in terms of purchase but which I certainly want to play at some point:

1. Meteos
2. New Super Mario Bros.
3. Metroid Prime: Hunters
4. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
5. Resident Evil: Deadly Silence
6. Trauma Center: Under the Knife

None of which even touches on the forthcoming games like Final Fantasy III, The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass, Children of Mana or even the games that seem like they may be worth a purchase for various reasons (multiplayer, primarily) like Animal Crossing, Tetris DS, Puyo Pop Fever and such and so forth.

What is even more unfortunate than the original letdown of not being able to get a launch day navy blue DS Lite is that, if I’m understanding correctly, there are far fewer DS games that can be used with Internet-based multiplayer than I originally thought. As near as I can tell only Animal Crossing, Tetris DS, Metroid Prime: Hunters and Mario Kart DS from the above list are WiFi enabled while the rest require… proximity? I’m not sure how it all works, although there is a lot of information over on Wikipedia. For what that’s worth. That seems to suggest that I’m right and Meteos or Advance Wars would not be compatible with the country-wide separation Dr. Mac and I suffer from (in terms of offline gaming and general fellowship; in terms of my odor, the separation is, I imagine, much more readily defined as “welcome”).

Regardless, what can you do? Take what you can get, that’s what. Until the time when physical divides are rendered meaningless by pervasive and reliable global wireless Internet and appropriately enabled devices, we must revel in the few small taste-tests of the future that we currently have access to.

As the song says, pardon me while I burst… into discussion. Or whatever.

I spent some time this weekend holed up in shower-less squallor as the rank stench of geek wafted ’round the apartment. My wife was spared only by her hasty retreat into lands untold with aspirations of “fixing” her “hair” into some complex structure of waves and flow which my mind could neither comprehend nor even process into appropriate visual imagery. The corrent response to such stimuli, I have learned, is: “It looks very nice, honey.” Venturing far beyond the script leads only to heartache and, should your other of significance be the type, possibly physical aching as well.

The aspiration of the stench-wallowing was a day of co-operative XBox Live play with one Doctor of Macintoshology in the latest chapter of our previously conquered Full Spectrum Warrior, in this case mysteriously titled Ten Hammers. I certainly didn’t see any hammer power-ups or collectible items, much less ten of them, but then again our progress in the game was—I’m being careful with my words here—limited.

Ten Hammers’ is very much like the first Full Spectrum Warrior: You have a fire squad of four soldiers called Alpha Squadron, whom to pass orders to and with appropriate realism they carry them out. Move here, set up a fire zone over there, suppress the enemy behind that car, toss a grenade into this vicinity, and so on. In the single-player mode you get a second team (wait for it: “Bravo”) which you control to try and outflank opponents or bail the other team(s) out of trouble. The minor enhancements of Ten Hammers are welcome, especially the ability to use Riflemen and Team Leaders to target enemies behind light cover with a sort of “aim and fire” order which sometimes prevents having to execute flanking maneuvers.

Still, the best part of FSW was the co-op, by far. The game was only so-so except that in this age of woefully lacking co-op gaming it was very welcome to be able to complete the entire game with one player acting as Alpha Squad and the other issuing orders (I hesitate to use the word “control”) to Bravo. And while there were quibbles to be made, for the most part it was an enjoyable experience. Far more enjoyable than, say, wading through the flood of ignoramuses packing the Halo 2 servers.

So we (Dr. Mac and I) greeted the arrival of Ten Hammers with a sort of contented sadness: Would that other games allowed such co-operative fun, but at least we could take advantage where it was offered.

It is for that false sense of happy expectation and misguided faith put in a franchise we had successfully gambled on in the past which raised our hopes only to squash them like one might a particularly repulsive insect that I curse the names of Pandemic and THQ.

In truth there is very little difference between what was available in FSW and Ten Hammers’ offerings. Many people have pointed to the versus mode in Ten Hammers as a welcome addition. Fine. Compete as you might with your cursing ten-year old opponents and your team killers and what not. My threshold for such tomfoolery has been met for this gaming generation/cycle and I will not be swayed. There is no multiplayer joy for me to have when facing Dr. Mac in versus battles where our amused banter falls on the apathetic ears of our collective pets, lounging in nap-time at our respective feet since the voice chat feature of Live works only on a teammate basis for most games. No, I come to share the experience and work through loss and victory together rather than revel in it at a friend’s expense.

What does differ is that levels available in co-operative mode are “unlocked” via completion in single-player mode. Which means that at least one of us (Dr. Mac or myself) needed to play the level solo and then we could host the co-op game with that particular mission. And the interface to access this is less than friendly to boot. Still, quibbling again. The concern for poor UI design is storied in video games and computerized entertainment. If it is simply unable to be cracked as by an ill-prepared theif versus a state-of-the-art safe, you move on. We managed to muddle through and execute the game start. What we found there was the real showstopper.

As you play through the levels in single-player mode, you reach various locations where the medical truck moves up to your current position or you clear out enough real estate behind you that the game notes significant progress has been made and auto-saves from that spot so that new and unexpected enounters just up ahead don’t grind you into needless frustration by sending you back to before you had achieved a modicum of victory; rather you start from that very spot and try until you reach the next checkpoint. This, as far as my gaming experience (it is considerable—belie’ dat) has shown is standard operating procedure. To be perfectly lucid: This was the way it was with the original Full Spectrum Warrior. Even in co-op, as you moved from one insurgent-infested location to a point of relative calm you were saved from having to repeat, ad infinitum, past victories/defeats.

Now let me continue my lucidity and get right to the point: This feature is either broken or missing from Ten Hammers. That means that no matter how close you get to the end of a level on a single try, if you fail you must go back to the beginning. All. The. Way. Back. Frustration is too kind of a word to describe what we felt after several hours of this. When you add to the equation the fact that Ten Hammers is somewhat more challenging than FSW was (even on the easiest setting) since there seem to be fewer absolutes (as covered foes are not invincible as they once may have been, so too are your teams at risk even when otherwise acceptably covered), you end up with portions where Doc and I would die at very early stages of the mission ten, twelve times in a row only to finally succeed and get to the next segment where we were unprepared and failed soon after having just recently tapped our tongues against the sweet morsel of success.

The disappointment was harsh and embittering. What should have been a fun (if somewhat smelly) afternoon of time-killing bliss was marred by a poor showing/showstopper bug.

Additional Linkage

Some things to pass your time:

• Sigh. Some doofus from Minnesota (State Query: “What’s up with our Canadian border? Who put that little hump there? Is that the ten thousandth lake or something?”) is trying to introduce legislation that will fine the consumer for purchasing M or AO rated games if they are not of age. My question is, how is this even going to work? Like some kid is going to get away with buying Grand Theft Auto and then turn himself in? If the retailer was savvy enough to realize the kid was breaking the rules (laws?), why wouldn’t they just not sell it to them in the first place? Unenforceable and misguided equals utterly retarded. Yay lawmakers!
• Apparently Nintendo hasn’t decided what product they’re trying to sell with their new European DS campaign, but they know one thing: It’s gotta be teh sexy. Because you know, all the people I know who want a DS look like Gap models and not pencil necks. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.</pot att=”black”>
• Whoa. Check out this crazy Russian dude acting like Jackie Chan/Sam Fisher. I don’t know what’s up with the bizarre Russian rap on the soundtrack, but it’s just as good with the mute button engaged. Courtesy of the sharp-eyed Dr. Mac.
• Also, the latest rant on Penny Arcade is less profanity-riddled than usual but well written as always discussing why the PS3 fails (yet again); this time with regards to online play. It’s true that they might come up with some midnight hour Live-like service but let’s face it, Microsoft has had several years to get this right and if you think Sony is going to learn from MS’ mistakes, you apparently forgot about how badly they mocked the 360’s two-tiered pricing plan only to introduce one of their own which made the 360’s look downright reasonable. All I’m saying is that you have to work pretty hard to make Microsoft look like they really have the customers in mind, you know?

Da Vinci Had a Code

We checked out The Da Vinci Code last night. I read the book and while I understand why some people were a bit perturbed by it (particularly the little blurb in the front of the book that suggested, perhaps surreptitiously, that the contents within were factual) but it was no more offensive to me than Indiana Jones’ quest for the Holy Grail. I mean, in all honesty I don’t even find mention of the Holy Grail in the bible in terms of it being some mystical artifact so if someone wants to write a story about it… you know. Whatever.

The movie actually tells the story better than the book does (and without as much pretension at that) but it skims over some of the more interesting art history aspects. In general it was pretty good although maybe not worth the opening weekend crowd hassles. I’d say if you had an interest in it you’d be better served catching a matinee or waiting for the DVD.

I don’t want to dwell on the fact that the Sharks picked the worst possible time to go ice cold. It’s not my intention to bemoan the fact that they had every single opportunity imaginable to put the series away and couldn’t put it together. I’m just not compelled to pour salt in the wound of unrealized potential.

Instead I merely want to say that the Sharks had an amazing season. From the acquisition of Joe Thornton to the emrgence of Jonathan Cheechoo to the inspired and finally consistent play of Captain Patrick Marleau all the way up to the fabulous end of the season win streak that put the team higher in the playoff seeds than anyone expected and gave hope to fans who as recently as December had all but written them completely off (guilty as charged). To that, I tip my hat. Here’s to next year.

Also, I wish they were still in the playoffs but I was kinda glad to shave the playoff beard. Itchy!

• I’m happy to see the new MacBooks popup. I’m glad they’re offering a black model. I’m not happy to see that they’re charging a $200 premium for the black case. Lame.
• When I first saw the story about the teacher that had his students write about how they would carry out a murder I was underwhelmed: Just one more idiot who shouldn’t be in charge of children. Then I saw this quote from the article: “But [St. Joseph School District spokesman Steve Huff] said the incident probably isn’t serious enough to cost Maxwell his job.” Excuse me? What sort of incident would be serious enough to cause a lunatic like that to lose their job? Out of character or not, this is a firing offense in my book. Don’t get me wrong, I think teachers are valuable assets, but that sentiment only applies to good teachers. The problem with teachers’ unions is that they operate under the mistaken assumption that anyone who is enough of a “martyr” to decide to persue teaching is automatically a good teacher. There are so many flaws in that ideology I can’t even begin to pick them apart but the end result is crap like this where teachers who display a severe lack of judgement don’t get what they deserve.
• The more I see Sony react to their almost unanimously poor showing at E3, the more I’m inclined to agree with opinions like the latest micro-rant over on Joystiq. It’s been obvious for a long time that Sony would always, always rather push a proprietary format that they can control and scrape stupid profits from than go with something universal where they have to rely on difficult things like content to sell merchandise. And the history (especially recent history) backs that up: I explained already that I have been flat-out disappointed by PS2 exclusives by and large where XBox and GameCube-only titles that I’ve played have been stellar. The PSP (other than the recently announced Silent Hill Origins) has nearly no games available I’m interested in and my desire to purchase movies in more than one format is less than nil. Technically, it’s a superior device to the DS, but I’m a couple weeks away from purchasing a DS because I like it’s content. Sony has yet to learn that technological superiority holds exactly zero water outside of marketing conventions and it seems that they are poised to have this lesson (which, to be fair, they’ve had ample opportunity to learn) drummed into their heads yet again.

Over on Curmudgeon Gamer they have a graph showing the relative prices of consoles for the last thirty years, adjusted for inflation.

A couple of things are interesting here. For one, there are a lot of consoles represented here that were commerical failures or trivial in terms of market/mind share. Vectrex? CD-i? Please. But if you go with what I would consider to be the prime examples of the console wars (starting with the Sega Master System and including primarily Sega, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft entries) you can see that up to the current/next generation the average price point has been about $305.80. Compare that to the current or forthcoming systems (which woefully doesn’t include the Wii since it hasn’t announced a pricepoint) which has launched up to $454.03 (and that’s if you generously include the nerfed systems like the XBox 360 Core). If you factor in the expected price for the Wii (expectations coming from wild speculation and wishful thinking, respectively) which is said to be around $250, you still get $413.23 average price.

The other interesting thing is that if you exclude only the Neo Geo and 3DO from the equation going back to 1986, the average price for any system is $369.84. That means that the non-nerfed PlayStation 3 is, on average, the most expensive system in relative terms by almost 40% in the last twenty years. Even if you factor in the stupidly overpriced 3DO and Neo Geo systems, the PS3 is still overpriced by roughly 30%. You can even average that with the nerfed PS3 (overpriced by 12%) and figure that generally speaking Sony is asking its customers to spend 20% more for the privilege of owning their console this time ’round.

Anyone else think Sony will see the light sometime between now and November?

Funniest thing on the Internet today:

During a lighthearted discussion of some Transformers CGI test footage, an individual gripes about the coloration on the truck, prompting this reply:

I’m beginning to think Jesus isn’t going to have His Second Coming because even He won’t be able to live up to the fanboy hype.

It’s a little intimidating: Walking into the gargantuan building that makes the little mom and pop equivalents we’ve been visiting look like cramped strip mall cell phone booths. The place has its own attached parking garage, although curiously the concrete structure seems to waste a lot of space with no parking zones and unexpected loading bays that look rather unused. Still, any place where you can enter from a front door on the second story and requires gigantic signage to instruct you how to shop is going to create an atmosphere that is a bit overwhelming for your Standard Earth Guy.

The place is Ikea, the pseudo-discount home decorating/furniture store that has a somewhat unusual series of reputations. On one hand I think most people are familiar with the self-assemby meme that runs through the store’s merchandise. This seems to be okay with most folks because the prices do seem to be a bit more reasonable than places that offer a lot of free delivery, no down payment, no interest for a year financing and pre-built furniture so in general you’re doing a trade off between convenient sucker buying or hassled commonality.

And make no mistake, Ikea’s popularity is one of its detriments. Perhaps it’s just me, but the thought of that many people with that much interest in the same kinds of products I was looking at (don’t let the size of the physical Ikea stores fool you; there are only a few dozen varieties of any given item type) wasn’t too thrilling. Not that I am so obsessed with appearances that if I went to someone else’s house and found they had the same chair as I did I would die of some sort of social embarassment, but I do like to think that the stuff I might pick out would be unique enough to not have to look at the same stuff on every TV show set and magazine pictoral for the next seven years. You’re not going to get that with Ikea.

But for every bad part of Ikea there is a corresponding good and in this case they mostly get away with their popularity/ubiquity by having several basic styles of their key products and then going above and beyond to make them modular and customizable. For example their primary line of shelving units (”Billy,” they have weird names for stuff) is pretty standard and were in just about every showcase on the upper floor of the store. But it didn’t really get tiring or overwhelming seeing all those roughly identical shelves because they have dozens of variants from height expanders to corner units to glass doors and when you assemble them in various different ways you end up with something that has enough uniqueness to it so you aren’t thinking, “Everyone else in the world has this exact same thing in their den.” Plus we’re talking about wooden boxes that hold books, so individuality is probably going to come from what you put in and on it.

In any case my overall impression was favorable; in this case we’re primarily looking for a couch and though we’ve been to about eight different stores, Ikea was the first place where we actually sat on a few couches and went, “Man, this is comfortable.” I don’t know when comfortable couches went out of vogue, but I’d like to humbly request that we bring them back. Most of the other small furniture stores we’ve visited have offered a wide array of what I call “Gradma Couches” which are ornate and perhaps well crafted but were never designed to accept human buttocks and their associated weight. They seem designed for their appearance alone and honestly that appearance is some gross hybrid between classic elegance and modern ugliness which results in things like dark stained heavy oak frames with far eastern print fabrics and floral pastel throw pillows. Looking upon such monstrosities can kill a man dead, such is the affront to good taste, and while my taste is somewhat questionable to begin with I manage to escape with only a mild headache.

In the end we found a few options we’re considering for our purchase at Ikea. I still want to investigate further since we’ve only been shopping for a week or so (the time spent doing price comparisons I believe to be proportional to the amount of money one intends to spend; Nikki likes to tease me that when we start looking for a house we ought to be “looking” for roughly six and a half years which means what we should have been doing from the moment we got married was price shopping homes so that at this juncture I might just now be ready to buy). Still, it was a trip I didn’t mind making, although I’m glad we brought the Honda: Nikki’s earnest insistence that an unassembled bookshelf which in all reality could crush our Civic like a stepped-on soda can just might fit in the trunk suggested that the Swedish consumer magicks running through that place had captured her very soul.

Bah

HB was in rare form last night as we watched the Sharks play their latest home game versus a surging Edmonton team. He griped and predicted the end to the Sharks playoff run, which honestly irritated me more than it really had a right to. Our collective frustration with our favorite team culminated in a brief and not necessarily unfriendly exchange of grouchy banter. I think what annoyed me the most was that I knew he was right.

The Sharks can’t score on the power play. They can barely score five-on-five. They miss little details. Toskala is slipping. They don’t shoot nearly enough. Now I hear that the San Jose fans booed the Canadian national anthem. I’m ashamed at the moment to be a Sharks fan.

They could be a Cup-contending team. They aren’t at the moment. They’ve showed it before and maybe being on the verge of playoff extinction will spark them back into gear. I sure hope they make Wednesday’s game in Edmonton more than just a win but a statement that they aren’t going to go out like chumps and that they can actually step above the abysmal officiating this series and the cheap shots by a dirty team to, if not win, at least go out with dignity.

But when their fans can’t even separate the Oh, Canada! sung by probably half their team and coaches from their frustration with the opponent, I fear the worst.

I think I’ve gotten most of the bugs ironed out here. An unexpected bonus: I saved the archives! Anyway, it’s not the prettiest site on the net (like it ever was), but it’ll get the job done. Hopefully I’ll get some improvements made over the weekend and we’ll be all shiny and new come Monday.

If you see anything truly wonky happening, drop me a line, but use my alternate email address because I think paul@ironsoap.org is still non-functional.

Just a quick note to say that we’re about to have some changes ’round here. After years of being hosted by the kind folks at eggsites, we’re moving on. This means I need to switch webhosts and I’ve selected (with a quality recommendation from Ryan) Dreamhost.

Here’s what this means:

• I’ll probably be upgrading WordPress to 2.x, which means (if you recall last year’s switch from self-hosting to managed hosting via 888.net) probably some growing pains and/or archive loss. To me, losing the archives isn’t that big of a deal but some people have griped about the loss of previous entries so I’ll do what I can. And I do retain all the old data, even if it isn’t really accessible and I have Big Plans for that data down the road which I’m sure I’ll talk about later on.
• There may be, as part of the growing pains, some outages. I like to pretend I know what I’m doing when it comes to managing websites, but the truth is I’m pretty clueless so if you come to ironSoap one day and it is gone, rest assured it will be back at some juncture as soon as I figure out how to cover up my stupid blundering.
• When I come back online we’ll probably be using a new site design, probably something similar to this.
• I have the following domains registered: ironsoap.org, ironsoap.com, ironsoap.net, irnsoap.info and ironsoap.info. They will all work even after the move, but they should all redirect to ironsoap.org (which is the one I prefer) so you’ll no longer see the others in your address bar, no matter what you type in or have bookmarked.
• There are two other sites that are inexorably linked to ironSoap: eFaithFarm.com (my brother’s site) and Anthrocide.com (my dad’s site). Those will be moving with me, so if you’re a fan of those sites (and why wouldn’t you be?) they may be experiencing some weirdness as well. Most of what applies above for ironSoap probably applies in turn for those sites except I don’t think eFF will be upgrading its WordPress so it should look and work identically and lose no archived content.
• Speaking of Anthrocide.com, once the moves have been made you should be seeing new content on that site (I’ve been sitting on it for way too long being a general slacker) including a couple of new books.
• I use the word “probably” too much.