Some updates

Just a few things regarding me, and things I may or may not make for the Internet.

Real Life^TM

I can report that work hasn't killed me yet, and I still kind of enjoy it most of the time.

I've saved up enough money to completely pay off my remaining student loan balance from one of the two services I've used, and possibly close out one of the loan groups from the other one. The larger of the two providers shows a balance that is still largely unchanged, but the point is I'll be able to whittle my sizable debt down to just one manageable monthly payment, rather than having it spread across three.

Speaking of that, I'm not sure why the larger one wants me to pay one of the loans on a different day of the month. I assume they're trying to make it harder for me to keep track of the due dates and stay current on my payments, because they're a miserable band of sadistic psychopaths who derive a sick pleasure from human suffering.

Anyway, once I've reigned in that loan debt a bit, the next step is to look at apartments in the city. I'm not too picky; a studio is fine if it's got heat in the winter and Internet access year round. Living within walking distance of my workplace would be ideal, and is probably one of the biggest deciding factors at this point. Why? Because hell is a 45 minute commute on a busy highway where people will spontaneously crash their vehicles and create massive delays simply because their level of driving skill has not adequately prepared them to be able to drive safely when it's fucking sunny out and there's not one cloud in the god damn sky.

Gun to my head, I might be willing to take a bus to work. And given I'm talking about living in downtown Albany, I can only assume there will in fact be a gun to my head at some point. It's a shame because I don't really carry cash on me anymore, and I have an old phone that isn't worth anything. It's just a waste of time for them, really.

This might be a podcast:

Being pretty busy at work and easily distracted in my free time, I haven't made much progress on the podcast I promised a little while ago. However, I have written up most of my monologue for the first (possibly only) episode, having changed the topic at least once. I've downloaded some software to facilitate discussions over Skype/Tinychat/whatever if need be. At this point I just need to record the monologue, get a few people with less obnoxious voices than mine to sit down for the discussion portion, write up and record a final segment, and edit it all together.

So basically, just 90% of the actual work remains to be done. I'm obviously not foolish enough to offer you a projected release date at this time, but I think I can say with some reasonable certainty that this will happen at some point.

Regarding the extended cut I was promising, that may not happen since Soundcloud places limits on their free accounts and I can't really justify paying for a subscription to a service I barely use. I will keep the extended cut on hand, though, and if there happens to be a massive demand for it from my adoring fans, I'll somehow make it work, presumably by selling the tears from my unicorn to get money to hire Bigfoot to maintain a web server for me. These are all things of equal likelihood, after all.

Things to do with Dark Souls:

I've continued to slack off on the Dark Souls challenge thing. I've technically stuck to the parameters of the challenge, and even kept up the daily mini-workouts more than I ever would have expected, but the number of play sessions I've had is embarrassingly low, to the point that even a monthly highlight reel isn't much to talk about, and even when it is, there's just something lost in translation going from the original experience to a written chronicle, and as much as I was enjoying the direction I tried to take it recently, I'm not sure I'm talented enough to consistently find the funny side of Dark Souls lore.

To my mind, the most noteworthy thing that's happened recently on that front involved falling off the catwalks in Blightown and landing on the water wheel, then trying frantically to run on top of the spinning wooden wheel while being shot at with toxin darts and realizing to my great dismay that there was absolutely nowhere safe to land. This would be one of those events that lends itself so much better to a Let's Play video than to written word, because the humor there stems largely from the visual of my grisly wanderer being turned into a hamster on a wheel, and partly from the stream of panicked nonsense that sputtered out of my mouth while trying to extricate myself from the situation.

All this is to say that while I'll keep my personal challenge going in private, I won't keep logging it or doing write-ups here. If time allows, I will see about getting some decent video capture hardware for a real Let's Play. It'll have to be live commentary or not at all. As much as I like my dry wit that comes with revisiting the events, I think there is a lot more comedy gold to be found in my less calm and collected moments.

Also, I have bought Dark Souls II, and by pure luck got a hold of one of the day-one special editions in the bad-ass looking tin case. If I do get the necessary accouterments for a Let's Play, I may skip recording my completion of Dark Souls and go straight to the sequel. We'll see how I feel. I kind of doubt anyone wants to see just the latter part of a game that's been out several years, and I don't really want to start another play-through at this point.

Okay, I guess that's all for tonight. I should really be sleeping now. Peace and love, you crazy kids.

Defending Forrest Gump

I've heard Greg Proops express scorn for the film Forrest Gump on several occasions on his podcast. I can't understand where that level of animosity comes from. It's not my favorite film by any means, but it always strikes me odd when he lashes out at it, when practically everyone else on earth seemed to like it. Well, it turns out this year marks the 20th anniversary of the film's release, so I figured I would try to offer sound rationale for what makes it a good, or at least memorable, film.

More Adventures in Social Awkwardness

My quest on this day should have been a fairly simple one. I needed $5 to contribute to my office water club, but I only had a $20 bill. No one I knew could break a twenty, so it seemed my final recourse was to buy something to get change. This in itself is a notion that bothers me because I already dislike spending money, never mind spending money on things I don't need. I'd essentially be paying for smaller bills; it's silly.

This is why I want to do away with paper money altogether and work exclusively in debit and paypal transactions. Granted, the ease and speed of digital transactions of currency are at least partly to blame for how utterly broken our economy is and how shamefully rich some people on Wall Street have gotten, but that's neither here nor there.

I walked down to the little convenience store located conveniently in the basement floor of the building. As I walked in, I noticed a display of birthday cards. My mother's birthday is coming up and I hadn't gotten a card yet. So now the money being spent wouldn't be totally pointless. In fact, I'd be making progress on two quests at once. Gotta love that kind of efficiency. I picked up a card, and a fig newton too, because screw it, I like food.

As I walked up to the checkout, a delivery guy came in with a pallet of stuff for the store. He shouted his business to the older man behind the counter, who acknowledged him and got out a record book. I assumed they had some business to conduct, so I waited by the counter, items placed in front of me and wallet in hand, prepared to carry out my transaction afterward.

The trouble is, no business was being conducted. The man who came in began stocking shelves, and the gentleman behind the counter seemed to just be waiting with the book. I grew a little impatient, but not wanting to be rude, I just waited quietly, again assuming that he would get to me when he was ready.

This went on for a couple of minutes. The man behind the counter didn't acknowledge me or make eye contact with me. I started to wonder whether he was the one being rude, and then whether he had seen me waiting at all. Then, a thought occurred to me. Sheepishly, I muttered, "I'm about ready to check out." The gentleman stepped up to the register and asked, "What have you got?"

Yup. He was blind.

I was thoroughly embarrassed that I hadn't realized sooner, that I'd been standing there like a dope for a good two minutes. I was also relieved he couldn't see the look on my face. I proceeded to tell him what I had. He asked that I read the price on the birthday card, which he punched in to the register. The price of the fig newtons he had memorized. He gave me my total, $3.72, and I gave him the $20, stating it was a $20 bill.

It occurred to me that a worse person could likely have taken advantage of this man at this moment. I could have, for instance, handed him a one and claimed it was a twenty. No items were being scanned, and I didn't see a security camera (not that I look for them), so it would not have been difficult to get away with scamming him. The fact that I even thought of this kind of bothers me, but that's just how my mind works.

The gentleman proceeded to count out my change for me. I don't know how common this is where you live, but I've seen it a lot and totally appreciate it. There are enough cashiers who make mistakes, and enough obnoxious customers who insist they've been shortchanged because they don't know how to count, that this practice is often necessary for business owners to avoid incidents and losses. Nobody wants to have an excruciating 5-minute argument with a complete stranger over how to perform simple math, but it does happen, and more often than you'd think.

Have I mentioned how much I pity people who work in retail? I really do, and I admire your intestinal fortitude. I couldn't handle your job.

So, as he hands me my change, this is how he does it: he hands me the loose coins first, a quarter and three pennies. "There's one," he says. He hands me a one. "And one is five." He hands me a five. "And five is ten." He hands me a ten. "And ten is twenty."

Now, I'm not normally mathematically challenged, but the way in which he phrased that process left me cross-eyed and confused. Wait, he said one is five? And five is ten? No, one is one, five is five, and ten is ten. That's why they're different numbers. For a moment, I really thought he might have been way off, but I didn't want to drag out our interaction any further, so rather than question his unorthodox methods of addition where numbers are other numbers, I just said, "Okay, thank you. Have a nice day."

It wasn't until I was walking away that it dawned on me. Wait... this is correct change. He didn't make a mistake. I'm just stupid.

From there, I went back to my desk, somehow not feeling like I'd made progress on two quests at once so much as feeling like an awkward doofus who has trouble functioning like a normal adult. To top things off, the person I was supposed to give $5 to wasn't in the office, so I didn't even get the satisfaction of being able to check that item off my task list.

Yes, I literally have a task list. Organization is hard.

Random religion rant

I stepped into a tired, circular conversation about the existence of God online. This is what I had to say about it.

You know, I've spent many an hour pondering the big mysteries, on whether we have a creator or not, about whether there is a life after this one, and so on. This is what I've most recently concluded: I don't care.

How the universe came to be is fun to think about, sure, but now that it's here, it doesn't really matter. I think there might be some kind of divine power beyond our understanding, and even some form of life after death, but neither of those things have too much bearing on this life and this world. All a person should need to live this life well is the understanding that what they do affects other people, and their lives are no less important than your own.

Those big questions don't have much effect on this world. What does is the distance people will go to and the depths they'll sink to in order to rationalize their most hard-fought deeply-ingrained beliefs. If beliefs were valued simply as ideas like they should be, they could be shared more freely and with a lot less grief. What's more, if people didn't cherish their own beliefs so much more than the next person's, maybe they wouldn't be so slow to empathize with and respect them.

All that's required to commit an evil act is to diminish someone enough to convince yourself that hurting them is acceptable. If you don't respect their ideas, that's very easy to do.

My point is, have fun thinking and talking about the possibilities, just don't take it too seriously. We've all got to die someday. Until then, we should try to be tolerable to be around.

That's it. Thanks for reading, and thanks even more for listening. Peace and love, Internetizens.

Podcast?

Podcast. This pretty much speaks for itself, because it's a recording of me speaking. Enjoy.

Who controls the Internet, and who is going to

I already posted this and my following comments on Facebook, but it got long enough that I thought it warranted a post here, and I know not everybody follows me there. You can also read the NTIA announcement here.

Dark Souls Dec 2013 Update

In an attempt to make these more interesting, both for me and for you, I'm going to try to strip out more of the blow-by-blow of the journey and focus on the highlights (or low-lights) from each month.

Not sure what possessed me to write a poem

I mostly write fiction, occasional memoir, and whatever this is. Poetry was never something I felt like I had a talent for, even though I tried writing a few poems or songs ages ago. After having been involved with the writer's workshop for a while though, I have developed more respect for the art of poetry, and I wanted to take another shot at it someday. Someday came one night this past week, when for whatever reason, I sat down and made an attempt at poetry writing.

Re: Memoirs

Completely by accident, I stumbled upon the VHS tape that I referenced in this previous post. It had apparently not been lost after all. I had an urge to take a nostalgia trip with my old Gameboy games, and while looking for them, I discovered the tape buried in a corner in the cabinet under my bookcase, on the bottom shelf beneath the Seinfeld DVDs and next to the old NES games. And there was much rejoicing.

Now, if I can just convince the Smithsonian Institute to grant me access to their VHS player, which I assume to be the last surviving one in existence, there might yet be a chance to view this old treasure. I should really get it converted to a digital format. There are still places that do that, right?

Anyway, it's good to know it wasn't completely lost. There might still be hope for a high school reunion viewing.

Memoirs

I have something different for you today. I've been working on some memoir-like things and thought I'd give you a preview. This is a first draft, so the final product may look a little different. Also, this is a rather long piece of prose by my standards, so if you don't have ten minutes to kill, you might just want to skip this, or else bookmark it for later.

Dark Souls Nov 2013 Update

Better late than never? Sure, let's go with that. Anyway, I still enjoy doing these gaming/workout write-ups, so the madness continues:

Something I wrote on a whim

The weak shout into the abyss and hope the noise will echo into the ages, outliving their own fleeting existence, validating them and giving them purpose. But the abyss doesn't care about our insignificant hopes and wishes, our thoughts and fears. Our vain cries drown in the endless silence.

The brave know there is no point in screaming and struggling. They swallow their pride and let themselves be swept into the eye of the storm, where all the rest end up no matter what, and sometimes, if they're lucky enough, a few float to the top. They don't ask for this privilege; they are hurled into it, ready or not. Still fewer remain there. Most lose their way and fall, ending in obscurity with the rest of us.

But those few, those precious few, they swirl above it all in eternity, tiny pinpoints of hope and inspiration for the rest of us. They guide us, drive us, and above all serve as a reminder that in the depths of that crushing black void, we are never truly alone.

Peace and love, readerlings.

An update on the trash bags

So, I did finally break down and ask my nearest desk neighbor about the trash bags. It's no wonder I was confused. Evidently new bags are supposed to be put out for everyone by sanitation staff every week, but they never are. Sanitation folk are fickle beings, I suppose. Anyone needing more bags has to go and consult the trash bag guru, whose job has nothing to do with trash but his office is being used to store the extra bags for some mysterious reason.

Considering that I don't even know this person, I don't anticipate consulting the trash bag guru anytime soon. I think I'll just try to make my remaining bags last another month or so, and hopefully the coming spring thaw with warm the hearts of the sanitation folk enough that they'll take pity on us, the humble cube-dwellers, and share their bounty of refuse-catching receptacle liners. Here's hoping.

Peace and love, readers.

Socially Challenged

Let me give you an idea of how my brain works. When I started working, I had several plastic bags with which to line the trash can at my desk. I wasn't sure where they came from but was happy to have them. However, if I used one a week, I was going to run out of them fairly quickly.

At that point, any normal human being would have casually asked any nearby coworker where the extra trash bags were. In all, it's a fairly trivial and innocent request. It's not like I'd be asking for the blood of their first-born child. Even so, for some reason, my brain decided it would make more sense to sit and wait, hope that whoever had left some bags there in the first place would keep replacing them, and if they didn't (which they did not), simply avoid throwing trash in my own trash can to avoid using up the bags. This, in my mind, was a less stressful plan than approaching someone and asking where the bags are.

Now, some of you know I've dealt with social anxiety in the past. I've largely overcome it in recent years and function normally for the most part, but anyone possessing some illusion that I have somehow eradicated the anxiety altogether need only look at the following two sentences:

I've worked in my current office setting for eight months.

I still have no idea where the trash bags are.

Dark Souls Oct 2013 Update

Yes, you read that right. I'm way behind on these. Anyway, here are the highlights.

Of Vitriol and Malcontent

I'm no stranger to coarse language nor indignant rage, but I make an effort these days to control both, (hopefully not at the expense of entertainment value). I'd like to explain why I worry about the digital aether being over-saturated with outrage, and why maybe we all need to cool our heads a bit even when our anger feels justified.

Clearly, I'm no stranger to outrage. For years, the better portion of what I did here was complain passionately about random topics and hope it was vaguely funny to somebody. It's not hard to see why I did it; I enjoyed it. An acquaintance on a forum once said,

Being angry is fun. And it's so easy.

That phrase has been in my signature ever since. It's funny because it's true.

In contrast, let's consider what a close friend I've known in person for several years said about me recently. I'm paraphrasing slightly, but the gist of her comment was,

Dan, you don't get angry. You only have two settings: unperturbed, and slightly less unperturbed.

It's easy for people who know me to get this impression. I am by no means a Zen master, unwavering in placidity, but that is definitely what I strive for now. I am a paragon of restraint. If I ever have an unkind word for anyone, it should never be delivered in anger, only a firm tone with a calculated disregard for their feelings. If push comes to shove, I'd rather come off in a verbal fight as a heartless bastard than a raging maniac.

Now, to be fair, anger in the right person fosters passion, and passion is the seed of motivation and ambition. So, I can't say that negative feelings never yield something positive. The point is just that I'm extremely cautious and distrustful of my anger, and I think I have good reason for being so. It basically comes down to what that person said online:

Being angry is fun, and it's easy. That's why it's dangerous.

Raging out is fun. Being angry or upset triggers a heightened mental state, the effects of which can actually feel pleasurable. It's that Fight-or-Flight response we've heard so much about. It's like the adrenaline rush you get from watching scary movies, or taking part in dangerous sports and activities like skydiving, snowboarding, or injecting methamphetamine into your bloodstream. At least with the meth you're kind of aware of what it's doing to you. Even if you aren't consciously aware of it, your brain likes being in that dramatic elevated state, and if you experience it often enough, it's easy to become addicted.

Now, couple that with the fact that getting angry is easy. Finding your fix takes no effort these days. If you don't have anybody in the immediate vicinity to bother you, you're not stuck in traffic, no Jehovah's Witnesses knocked on your door this evening, it's not 2012 and the Obama campaign didn't send you another god damn email, you're still ready to rage. All you have to do is turn on the TV news (or what passes for news on TV), or log onto your favorite Internet-enabled device, and you'll be readily bombarded with hate-porn. Look, all around you! Bad people are being wrong and doing and saying wrong things! Be mad about it!

The great thing about being addicted to rage is that, unlike traditional feel-good drugs, there are no real side-effects to speak of. I mean sure, there's the embarrassment from when you got into a shouting match with your brother-in-law at Thanksgiving, the monetary cost you were charged to fix the display you overturned while screeching at a cashier at Wal-mart about expired coupons, the damage you've done to your career after that ugly hate-speech you put on after getting drunk at the office holiday party, and the untold emotional damage you've done to your friends, your spouse or significant other, and any kids who might have the great misfortune of calling you a parent, but those things tend not to slow a true addict down.

Oh, did I mention that being addicted to rage means you get mad more easily? Well, it does. Like any addiction, you develop a tolerance, and so need a bigger fix to get the same high. Luckily, in the case of rage, your brain handles this for you by gradually trimming all those pesky connections to empathy and logic that you weren't using, and strengthening the paths that trigger an anger response, thus allowing you to get much angrier much faster with much less prodding. Isn't that convenient? And it explains why that lady in the grocery store is able to go from perfectly calm and pleasant to livid and violent at the mere sight of two guys holding hands or a teenage girl holding a baby.

So clearly, there are a lot of things that make rage an easy and tempting pass-time, but I just don't want to be that kind of person. I don't want to use my ego, my sense of personal entitlement and superiority, or my political, social or spiritual beliefs as some kind of excuse to justify my selfish desire to feel good, to fill my communications with others with violent obscenity, and my brain with delicious rage-juice. If I allow myself to indulge too much, I'm afraid a day will come when I can't stop it.

Besides, I know this is a big leap in logic, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that of all the people who have ever thrown a rock through a window, caved in someone's eye socket with their fist, set someone's house on fire, shot somebody in the chest seven times, hung someone by the throat from a tree, or killed crowds of complete strangers with an improvised explosive device, very few of those people could be described as "slightly less unperturbed." The less I have in common with those people, the better.

So, that's the long and short of it. I hope that made some kind of sense. I feel a bit bad that I don't have any scholarly sources to back up my bullshit about the science behind addiction. If anyone knows of papers or articles that back up my observations, please do send them along so I can include them. If you have any material that could disprove me, kindly keep it to yourself; that's not what science is for. It's to make me sound smart, nothing more.

Thanks for listening. Peace and love, gentle readerlings.

On Various Things

I haven't updated here in a while, so I thought I'd knock out something quickly tonight. If any of these topics are worth expanding, I'll see about giving them a proper post tomorrow.

Dark Souls Update 3

I had the idea recently to further simplify these by creating a graphical summary of my pain and triumph. The image that follows is the first such summary.

Jordan Church should have counted his blessings

Since this is evidently nostalgia week for me, and Jordan's ego wouldn't let him leave well enough alone, I decided it would be fun to reflect on some of the good old times shared with my former college roommate:

More thoughts on faith

A group of friends of varying religious backgrounds are discussing their unique beliefs. One of them asks the others, "So, what is the difference between Gnosticism and Agnosticism?" The Agnostic friend says, "I don't know." The Gnostic friend says, "I do!"