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August 26, 2005
Eric Burns-White: Threshold
There is still a whistling in my ears. At this point, and I do not recommend this as a home remedy, it takes me a shot of Scotch to get to sleep. See, my Gastric Bypass means alcohol hits me like a cannonball, so between the kitchen and empty shot glass and my bed is sufficient time for me to be legally unable to drive.
I lie down, and find I do not care about the constant noise that constantly whistles. Whistles whistles whistles. I dream that whistle. I wake up to that whistle. That whistle is my world. That whistle consumes me. I am hearing it right now.
Plus we're struggling with a conversion to Voice over IP from work. (The less said about that, the better.) And my blood pressure is sky high, and my stress level is high.
Before you ask? Yes. I am seeing the doctor at 2:45 today. Because I am not an idiot.
And yet? I am happy. Hell, I am ecstatic.
And it's all thanks to The Simpsons.
Long term readers know I have lost a ton of weight. The Adipose Ninja, we call it, because I've lost more weight in pure fat than a human adult male trained in the arts of ninjitsu would have. For the record, we are in the ballpark of 200 pounds down. (We're not near the wall of that ballpark, yet, but we're starting to think about it.) This is astounding. My health is a thousand times better. I fit into things. I can shop at the Gap... if I can come up with a credible reason to want to shop at the Gap. There is far to go, and there is additional surgery needed (remember kids -- buy a t-shirt so Unka Eric can get large folds of deflated skin hacked off his torso!), but it has been a staggering, smashing success.
Only... I've still been above 300 pounds.
Yeah, do the math. Take a moment. Then stare at the screen in slack jawed horror at how much I clearly weighed before all this started. Go right ahead! It's fun! I'll wait.
300 is a big number. It's a perfect bowling game, in fact. And for people who haven't been morbidly obese, it seems impossibly huge. I have spent years coming to terms with that. (Hell, when you've broken 450, 300 doesn't seem so bad to you.) But there's that damn Simpsons episode.
You know the one. Homer discovers that the Nuclear Plant has a policy of setting up disabled workers with telecommuting. And he discovers that if a worker is fat enough, he is considered disabled for the purposes of that policy. And so Homer begins eating. And eating. And eating. His rule of thumb is if he rubs a fried food on paper and the paper turns transparent from grease? Eat it! (When nervous about eating fried fish -- fish allegedly being good for you -- Homer rubs it on the wall of the restaurant. The wall turns clear and birds start flying into it. I've eaten at fish places like that.)
He get huge. Monumental. Colossal. He starts wearing mumus exclusively, because pants just don't come in that size. He can barely waddle. He is one gigantic huge tub of lard.
The magic weight he needs to reach in this monumental obesity -- this "oh dear Christ he's coming right at us" fatness?
You guessed it. Three hundred pounds.
I don't look like Homer, currently. I'm wearing jeans that sat in my bureau drawer for years, unable to be worn due to fatness. I can wear 2XL shirts -- not small, by any stretch, but considered "normal" in today's world. I can walk. I can even run. I fit into booths again. I don't break chairs I sit in. I don't overflow chairs I sit in.
I do not. Wear. Mumus.
But that episode mocks me. Because it was so funny. And so true. I've been the shape Homer is in the episode. I've always worn pants, mind, but they were pants of frightening size. I went through a long period where I had to wear suspenders because belts just weren't an option. I know from that.
I've nearly died because of it.
And I took extreme measures to correct it. And it's not just the surgery. The surgery is a gigantic kick in the ass, but it's not a panacea. The surgery would do nothing to stop me from drinking chocolate milkshakes every waking hour of my life. The surgery would make it hard to eat six dinners in an evening, because I'd have to do it over four or five hours, but it could be done.
And make no mistake -- pre surgery, it was nothing for me to put away that much food. Nothing. I would do McDonald's drive through after a hard day, and I would get three or four extra value meals, because I was tired and stressed out and the food would make me feel better. If that sounds like I was using it as a drug, you're right. I would flood my body with carbohydrates and saturated fats, and my body would release hormones that would regulate my metabolism and my hormones. Like heroin, only heroin addicts get skinny. By the end, I couldn't walk into a convenience store without coming out with pounds of crap. There's been a lot of contributing factors that got me to that point, but once I got there I was keeping myself there, and I was out of control.
Those cravings and habits don't magically disappear when you get a gastric bypass, kids. And yes, you go through withdrawal. If you've never actually cried while watching a Taco Bell commercial, I envy you.
Does it sound pathetic when I say that? It should. I was pathetic. Don't make any mistakes about that. You know all the mean-ass jokes people love to say about fat people? I deserved them. I still do.
So. The surgery gave me an immediate, sharp negative consequence to binge eating. (And said consequences are horrid, I can tell you.) It gave me a governor to replace the mental one I lack. But there are ways around it. A lot of ways around it. And yeah, they'd kill me even faster (sugar is not my friend, now), but the old me wasn't exactly keeping myself from dying.
Only... the old me took the steps to do what he had to do to live. He saw the right doctors. He got the right recommendations. He did therapy. He then went on -- I swear -- a year and a half crusade with his insurance company to be able to get the surgery.
After all of that... and after the surgery itself... I would be damned if I was going to let myself slide back into the pit. It was too damn hard to get there, and this was my last chance. I broke the habits. I went through the withdrawal. I cried at commercials for food I never much liked in the first place. I forced myself to exercise. When things turned problematic, I went back in, found out why (the sugar sensitivity/latent dumping), and made an even more restrictive diet change.
I did it all right. And I lost weight. Tons of it. Huge amounts. And got healthier. And happier. I got more energy. Better energy. I became... well, human.
People don't stare at me when I walk any more. I look human to them.
I look normal.
And I tell myself that. And I try to believe it. You get so used to being a freak of nature that it's hard to believe you're not, any more. But I can't deny the differences in peoples' attitudes. The differences in people's bearings when they see me. Little kids don't giggle at me any more. Tell me that's not a change.
Only, this little voice in the back of my head kept saying, over and over again "yeah, but they'd let you telecommute to the Nuclear Plant, wouldn't they? Mister Burns of all people would pity you enough to let you park your fat ass on the couch and let a bobbing head bird push the Y key on your terminal while you watched Days of our Lives.."
And I'd argue with that voice, but I knew it was right. For all I've done, and no matter what evidence my eyes said, I was still over three hundred pounds. I was still pathetic.
Yesterday morning, I weighed myself.
I gave it a day. These things can vary tremendously from day to day. But no, this morning, I was able to confirm.
I am 297.5 pounds. Soaking wet.
If you'll excuse me? I have to head over to the nuclear plant. They don't let me work from home any more.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:37 AM | Comments (104)
August 25, 2005
Wednesday Burns-White: Scenes from the headache weekend
Friday begat the headache, a piercing, screaming thing birthed from the caverns of Video Room One.
Ayacon was showing He Is My Master, a Gainax anime which should have been the Evangelion of maid-fetish shows. Two young girls -- thirteen and fourteen, barely more than little children -- run away from home and end up on the estate of an equally tiny orphan boy. At first charming and sweet, the boy hires the two girls on as maids. It turns out that the boy views his parents' tragic death as an opportunity to act out reprehensibly, and so begins to demonstrate an alarmingly lecherous streak. It does not help that the girls carry with them an alligator who exists mainly to jump the fourteen-year-old girl and tear at her clothes. "Oh, that's Pochi," says the younger girl. "He gets like that whenever he sees her."
This show is meant to be a comedy. I had hoped for subversion -- the self-insertion target is selfish and slavering? Bring it on! -- but no such luck. Gainax had used up all of their year's mojo on Re:Cutie Honey, leaving us to simply feel unclean.
At roughly the third screech, the four-day headache began. An ill-advised attempt to drink away the pain of He Is My Master begat a hangover, which compounded the problem. By Saturday afternoon, con flu had firmly taken hold instead, and the headache persisted.
By Saturday night, my back joined my head and stomach on the picket line. I would spend much of the convention holed up in my room, wrapped around a laptop, swaddled in masses of blankets. The scabs and reruns of CBC Radio One were cold comfort, but I felt too out of sorts to position myself so as to watch Teen Titans episodes or my copy of The Incredibles.
Periodically, I would leave the room for a couple of hours, trying to enjoy the con, or spend time with friends, or find food. Passing through the crowds of costumed eighteen-year-olds, I felt out of place. Here, a catgirl. There, a goth Moogle. Beyond, a passel of elegant gothic Lolitas. While some of the worst excesses of American anime fandom were thankfully missing (for example, no one carried signage soliciting sexual favours in exchange for Pocky), the event was set about an octave and a half above my comfort levels. Once again, I did not speak the language anymore.
I gingerly made my way through the dealer's rooms, eyeing a wallet of shoujo-themed Letraset Trias, but only buying a small set of ProMarkers (thinking all the while: "What am I doing? I can't even draw in this state"). Five years ago, I would have walked through the room and been wracked with tchotchke desire; now, the plushies and knickknacks were quaint. I barely even glanced at the DVDs; I knew that there was next to nothing that I would want to watch.
It took two Nurofen Plus and a Luna bar to get to sleep that night. Everything hurt.
By Sunday, little had improved. I moderated the anti-piracy panel, by which I mean that I stood at a podium and looked menacing, then took questions from the audience and continued to look menacing. (I suspect that I looked less menacing than exhausted, but either will do for the purposes of cutting people off when they ramble.) Occasionally, I would sling the panelists a question, or give them a two-minute warning, but that was about it. It went relatively smoothly, although we had limited time for questions.
A nervous, wild-eyed young man circled a small group of us -- panelists, friends, audience members -- afterwards, then approached to ask if I worked in the anime industry. This perplexed me. I'd helped out at a distributor's booth the year before, at another event, but my badge plainly labeled me as a regular congoer. I'm not particularly remarkable.
"You seem so knowledgeable, and you have such a strong American accent..."
Ah. No.
Politely explaining no set off a bit of a panicked screed. "I want to work in the industry," he told me, "but I can't seem to make any connections." And so on, and so forth, with the undertone obvious: can you tell me how to make them? I couldn't. So he began to pace. Around us, around the panelists, around the people around the panelists. Waving his hands, lecturing the air.
I'd seen that look and that stance a few times in my life. At charismatic Baptist prayer meetings, from the purpotedly demonized. In a hospital, from schizophrenics who'd been led down from the wards to the cafeteria. One night in a shelter, on the faces of some ongoing residents. You don't forget it. You just learn to huddle in, then slink away when you have your chance.
What could I tell him?
On went the headache, through another pass by hucksters, through the dwindling crowds, through an escape into Coventry for lunch and books. Disconnected, pained and alarmed, the last day was a fog. When the Blood concert ran long, and the closing ceremonies were postponed for another hour, it didn't seem like such a bad thing to just go home.
Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 8:41 PM | Comments (24)
August 24, 2005
Eric Burns-White: More good shirt news!
I just got a note from my shirt printer -- the Revelations: Strunk and White T-Shirts are being shipped to me today. I should have them by the end of the week, which means the folks in the range of my typing should have them starting at the beginning of next week! Huzzah!
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:09 PM | Comments (10)
Eric Burns-White: [e] SNARKOLEPTICS T-SHIRT PREORDER SALE! WOOT!
You guys have been great, when it comes to our t-shirts. Honestly. I'm just glad to know you guys. But while we've produced a couple of fun designs and they've sold well, people have let me know (in no uncertain terms) that they wanted something Websnark related. They wanted to show their Snarkoleptic pride.
Well, okay, that's going a bit far. But they really, really like Snarky, and they wanted to wear something that had Snarky on it. Which was problematic, because the full color Snarky picture can't be done through spot coloring (there's something like a billion colors in it. Roughly. My minimum shirt order for a run like that would clothe India).
However, acting on strong recommendations, we have found a very high quality 6-color process image transfer partner -- the extremely cool (and Webcomics saavy) Ellen Million Graphics. And we have actually arranged to have Ellen Million Graphics print on the exact same high quality Gildan and Bella shirts we already use! And, because Ellen Million Graphics works on an on-demand basis (they don't need to reink the press for new runs), we'll be able to have these shirts on an ongoing basis! ALL HAIL MING!
Now, the process is more expensive than a one or two ink run would be, so the ultimate cost is going to be higher than other shirts we've offered -- $20 per shirt, with a markup for 2XL-5XL. (I need to, you know, make some money on this.) However, from now until September 9 we're pleased and proud to offer a PREORDER SALE! By working in preorders, we can work in volume, and pass some savings along.
So! If you order between now and September 9, we can offer the same high quality Gildan T-Shirts and Bella Crew Neck Babydolls you've come to cherish, adorned with Snarky's picture, at the sale price of $17.00 (plus shipping and handling, as always. 2XL and higher costs extra, because... well, it costs extra for the shirts and processing on the printer's end. Honest.) That's the same cost as the Revelations: Strunk and White Shirts! (And a dollar less than the Babydolls were, no less!)
Unfortunately, we can't offer the Bella V-Necks yet. Ellen Million Graphics might allow them later on, but they've never worked with them before and they're not willing to take a chance until they get some experimental time. If and when that changes, I'll let you know! If it changes between now and September 9, I'll give anyone who orders a crew neck Babydoll a chance to change their order to a V neck at no extra cost! (Because... well, it won't cost extra for me, so what would I care?)
Go forth, friends and neighbors, and order! Order early! Order often! YAY!
Gildan 100% Cotton T-Shirts click here!
Bella 100% Cotton Crew Neck Babydolls click here!
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:37 AM | Comments (82)
Eric Burns-White: This is what happens when you tweak things while whistling shreds your sanity
Right. I managed to kill the main index template. We have a default up top, and I'm going to bed. I'll fix it in the morning. Snarky will return soon, I swear.
EDIT: Okay. I couldn't rest without fixing some of the stuff. So, Snarky's back. The About Section and Trawls are back. The Categories... well, work again (and there's a list of how many entries each category has, next to them. Because we can). Under them, you'll find the new "Recent Comments" feature, which lists the 20 most recent comments. Next down are the Weekly Archives. Under that, you'll find a list of the 20 most recent entries. And finally, below that you'll find the Technorati link, the Creative Commons license link, and other such fun.
STILL BROKEN: (Weds? If you want to try and figure this out while I'm asleep and you're awake in the morning, I will be your best friend, I swear.) The Individual Archives (when you click to add comments or whatever) choke on the sidebar. Now, the sidebar is just Snarky, on those pages, but I think it actually looks better (and would look more consistent when navigating here from the front page) if it, you know, actually has a Sidebar on these pages. So... um... yeah. Totally be your best friend.
Night, everyone.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:44 AM | Comments (17)
Eric Burns-White: Time for a change, dagnabbit!
Since we were tweaking the sidebar anyhow, it was just plain time for an overhaul. The old stylesheet was nice, but inefficient. And besides, shaking things up is just plain American.
Or, you know. Canadian.
Maybe it's universal.
Anyhow. Let us know what you think of the changes! (And thanks as always to Movablestyle.com, which has lovely resources for sites like ours.)
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:12 AM | Comments (24)
Eric Burns-White: Sidebar Changes
After a suggestion from Matt "Action" Sweeney, and some cajoling of broken bits which the good people at Six Apart helped us resolve, we now have some sidebar changes. If you scroll down below the categories list, you'll now see A) that we've gotten rid of the superfluous "Calendar" function (seriously, did anyone ever use it? Ever?"), B) stripped back the Recent Entries list to the last 20, and C) added a Recent Comments listing below the categories, so you can easily keep track of new comments as they're posted and people can actually get their names on the front page if they want.
Below the Recent Comments, we still have the weekly listings, which some people truly love to use, what since it gives you a full listing of entries for a given week, for folks who've been away and want to get caught up.
And, we've bumped up the "days displayed" back to our traditional 7 days. We'll see if it so badly hits bandwidth that we need to restrict it back again.
Enjoy, all!
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:56 AM | Comments (9)
August 23, 2005
Eric Burns-White: Utterly random and superfluous congratulations go to PRODIGAL!
Yes! Prodigal! Congratulations! You are the proud poster of the Ten Thousandth Comment to Websnark!
10,000 comments.
I think I need to lie down.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:51 PM | Comments (13)
Eric Burns-White: You know what I haven't done?
I can't sleep. I can't sleep because there's a sharp whistle in my ears driving me slowly spare.
But you know what I haven't done?
I haven't said that Maritza Campos is back from a well deserved maternity leave (and congratulations, which I also haven't said.)
Which is to say, I haven't said that College Roomies From Hell! is back. So if you've been away from what has to be one of my favorite Story comics... like, ever, then you should go back.
And if you haven't been reading it? You should be.
I haven't done that.
And there's whistling in my frigging ears. So this seems like a good time to rectify that.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:41 AM | Comments (19)
August 22, 2005
Eric Burns-White: On the plus side, this month's cover art was pretty cool.
So. Not that I think anyone hasn't figured this out yet, but I love City of Heroes.
I. Love. City of Heroes.
I love the game. I love the heroism. I love the ideals. I love the fantasy. I love running through the streets of Paragon City and fighting the good fight. I love the immersive environment that the game has put together. I love the powers. I love the silver age aesthetic. I love the modern age edge. I even love the "grand evil" that they seem to be putting together for City of Villains.
This is convenient, because the City of Heroes comic book is actively trying to cure me of this fact.
You know I have a general policy of not reading webcomics I don't like. The question is, why do I read this comic book I don't like. The answer is very simple: it comes free to my mailbox as part of my game subscription. You can "opt-out" of having them send the comic to you, but you don't get a bump of subscription time that corresponds to your opted out. In other words, you save them a little money, but get nothing in return.
Well, I don't like the comic, but I'm also from Maine. I'm paying for it, so by God they're going to send it to me, and I'm going to read it.
Being from Maine is not the same thing as being rational, just for the record.
The old comic, by Blue King Studios, had its share of problems. It had art issues and was rife with situations that our own characters couldn't get involved in (I for one would have liked to see them push to keep to the same style of missions and costuming that the game... you know, actually provided), but it was goofy fun nonetheless. Most of all, you got to like the lead characters -- Apex, War Witch and Horus -- and the dynamic that formed between them. And you believed in them. They actually felt like yeah, they were in fact super heroes, for all the right reasons.
And they had the same relationship we the players have to the Surviving Eight -- the Justice League/Avengers analogue of City of Heroes -- who are (mostly) members of the Freedom Phalanx. These were legends to them. The heroes that everyone looked up to. The heroes that we heroes believed in.
Well, Blue King lost the license. Top Cow got it. And they hired Mark "excellent in the 90's" Waid to write a three issue arc. And unlike the last series, this one focuses on the Freedom Phalanx.
And in Waid's run, we learned A) that the citizens of Paragon City hate super heroes and are just as glad when they all lose their powers, despite packs of Skulls still running around terrorizing them, B) the Freedom Phalanx are a pack of miserable whiny bastards, not a single one of whom (except maybe Manticore) is in this game for anything that resembles heroic reasons, and C) Statesman is the largest jerk who has ever lived. It was like reading Kingdom Come without the emotional attachment or sense that the Justice League actually was doing what they thought was best.
There were... complaints... on this theme. And assurances that yes, our heroes would rise up, better than ever. And they did rise up more powerful than ever in the third issue.
We're in the fourth issue now. The writing is being handled by Troy Hickman, the scribe of the justly critically acclaimed Common Grounds. And there was reason to hope.
At the end of this issue, I've decided that Paragon City is probably right for being just as glad these miserable bastards lost their powers. Frankly, I wouldn't have them in my house. It's just, now we know they hate low level heroes, too.
They hate low level heroes.
Sister Psyche snarks about how glad she is low level heroes get torn apart running through the Hollows -- "serves 'em right," she says. Statesman brushes off a star struck young hero who has worked up the nerve to talk to his hero. Synapse resents the implications that they should watch out for civilians (while clearly not watching out for civilians) because they're superheroes, so duh.
Sister Psyche in particular has the line of the issue. A fourteen year old boy walks up and asks her for an autograph. She sees in his mind the kid's imagining her in her underwear. So she screams bloody murder and kicks him away from her.
For reference's sake, I enclose a sidebar featuring Sister Psyche on this post, as well as a second picture right here to the side.That's right. She wears translucent clothing WITH LEATHER STRAPS OVER HER NIPPLES AND OUTLINING HER BREASTS, along with strategic cutaways for navel and cleavage. Look, I'm no believer in "she was asking for it," but this is a woman who gets offended because a kid going into puberty sees her dressed like that, and despite walking up and speaking respectfully to her, dares to have sexual thoughts about her?
Later, Sister Psyche and Statesman compare notes on how utterly miserable it is to have to have super powers and be looked up to. Statesman is sick of being a patriotic hero, because it gets him into political debates. Sister Psyche can't tune out peoples' thoughts and she pretty much hates all people. Is it worth noting both of these heroes have been active for over sixty years in this chronology? They've had over six decades to get used to this, and neither of them has ever thought "well, maybe if I just change my name and costume I can get away from people" or "gosh, maybe something that covers my tremendous rack would do something about all those salacious thoughts?"
I don't like these people. Manticore has been consistently characterized as the only one who gives a damn about anyone outside of the Freedom Phalanx, but they also saddled him with an "early Avengers Hawkeye" attitude that makes it sound like he just bitches for bitching's sake. Synapse has all the charm of JLU Flash without any of the humor. Positron is obsessed with technical minutia, with occasional repetitions of the exposition that he can't take off the Iron Man armor lest his heart stop his powered suit or else his antimatter powers will destroy Paragon City.
If this comic book is supposed to be a reward to players, then they're failing. The Freedom Phalanx gets to have clothing and missions and lives we don't get to have in the game, and the Paragon City described in this comic book is a hostile place where the superheroes don't care for the people they protect and those people resent their presence in the city. If this comic book is supposed to be an advertisement for the game, then it's also failing -- I can't imagine anyone picking up this comic book, reading it, and thinking "I wanna play this game, where I can be a young hero the top heroes of the world are disdainful of and amused at even after he gets crushed by a boulder."
Is it so utterly hard... is it so utterly wrong in the twenty-first century... to put forth the idea that maybe being a super hero is a good thing, maybe it's rewarding on its own merits, maybe the people you save might like you, and maybe wanting to be a super hero makes sense?
Apparently so. Apparently so. This won't "cure" me of the game City of Heroes. I love that freaking game.
It just has me convinced all my characters are better than these jerks. And when I earn the mission sequence where I have to save Statesman's life, I figure I'll just skip it. Paragon City's in better hands without him.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:36 PM | Comments (53)
Eric Burns-White: The razor blade in the masthead just makes the site complete.
A clever name for a website, tying it back into the website's mission, is a difficult thing in today's day and age. I lucked out with "Websnark.com," for example. As I said over the weekend, I assumed someone would already have taken it. However, even as evocative as Websnark is as a name -- and I do appreciate it -- it's somewhat misleading. We're not snide first and critical second, we're critics and editorialists and essayists first and snide second or third at the most.
So, when I ran into Christopher Wright's Eviscerati.org, I was impressed, both at how intensely evocative the title is, and how well it ties back into what he's trying to do.
Wright is rightfully best known for Help Desk, a long standing webcomics gadfly that's been one of the best satires of Microsoft I've run across. Well, Wright is bringing his savage wit and focus to Eviscerati.org, now, and I can see I'm going to be a regular reader. The title is a conflation of the verb "eviscerate" and the neologism digirati, and stands for those cognoscenti who have seen the great golden promise of the web, then seen the execution of that promise by snake oil salesmen and Amazon.com, and grown surly. From his site's mission statement:
So youÌre looking for the soft underbelly of this so-called ÏenlightenedÓ age, and youÌve got a very sharp stick. While the white hats are out there finding ways around onerous encryption restrictions, and doing everything they can to defeat the technical impediments to our freedom, you are out there trying to knock down the social ones. I know you guys (and ladies) and I salute you. You are not the digerati Û those shysters, those prophets of a false god called Ïcomputing.Ó You are the eviscerati, and you will not rest until every stupid idea put forth by corporate stooges, political flaks and self-important twits has been exposed as empty, meaningless drivel. And youÌll do it in the most painful, scathing, and sarcastic way possible, because you understand that weÌve been so beaten down by this idiotic culture that the only sensation that will get past our defenses is the sweet mixture of irony and pain.
Shine on, crazy dreamer. Shine on.
I'm vaguely surprised he hasn't elected to slap a Creative Commons license on his work, but that's as may be. Wright knows his subject and knows his philosophy and he's unafraid to be mean when they come in conflict, and that's worth reading right there.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:28 PM | Comments (6)
-->Eric Burns-White: Wherein Eric proves he is an RPG snob. *sniff*
Friend and Funkmaster Soul Brother #741 Chad Underkoffler came away from this year's Indie RPG Awards having done well for himself -- a runner up for Indy Game of the Year with Dead Inside, winner of the People's Choice Award (which was voted on, believe it or not, by actual physical postcards being sent, not a web thing), and other high placements elsewhere and in other categories.
There's an odd feeling I get when I read the Indy RPG Awards winner, too. It's a feeling I'm so... not used to when I look at RPG awards being given out these days.
That feeling? "Satisfaction." Everything that's on the winners or runners-up lists for the 2004 Indie RPG Awards seems worthy not only of praise but attention. Dogs in the Vineyard, a game that combines both stunning innovation and great heaping gobs of fun, took top honors this year, and good for them. Games like CAT and The Shadow of Yesterday also did really well, and the supplements category (topped by the utterly cool Monster Burner and going down the list from there with many good and froody offerings, including Underkoffler's Cold, Hard World) gives me both pleasure and a list of products to seek out. And that's a good combination.
It can be said that the lack of the "mainstream" games calls the efficacy of these awards into question. However, given the sheer banality of the Origins Awards this year, actually seeing games that pushed the envelope and innovated was so refreshing I almost wept.
There are the ENnies as well, of course. And I'm much much happier with the ENnie nominees than I am with the Origins, though the structure of the ENnies is all People's Choice, without juried or peer components. That the ENnies do a vastly better job of nominating games than the Origins should say something about the anemic connection the Origins selection process has to the actual RPG landscape. The Origins should be the award that bridges the gap between the ENnies -- which specifically reflect the popular tastes of the RPG community -- and the Indies, which specifically cant towards innovative design in small press. The Origins should be the big awards because they're the awards that cover both the specialist understandings that RPG Developers and Peers can bring to the table alongside the clamor of folks who love what the big publishers do.
Instead, we can at least take solace that everything the Indie RPG Awards nominated and selected is solidly worthy of your time and attention, with selections based on a real understanding of both the art and science of game development. And if you can't stand the Indie mystique, at least the ENnies are out there to punch up solid, excellent games without throwing sops to Wizards of the Coast to give the awards "legitimacy."
Congratulations, Mr. Underkoffler, Mr. Baker and all the winners of the Indies.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:53 AM | Comments (5)
Eric Burns-White: Short and to the point. Eric didn't really write this, did he?
(From Partially Clips! Click on the thumbnail for full sized epiphany!)
Every so often, I don't have a detailed distillation to give you of something I link to. In this particular case, there is today's Partially Clips. Which I think is utterly hysterical.
So there you are. Read and "snrk" away, kids.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:23 AM | Comments (4)
-->August 21, 2005
Eric Burns-White: And now, the plug!
It's once again time to plug a new Feeding Snarky over at Comixpedia -- and this is one I'm actually particularly proud of. It's also one of my longest columns to date.
And it's all about porn!
Well, no. It's not. But there's a lot of porn in it. Sweet, sweet sex-positive porn. And some thoughts on perceptions.
Check it on out, when you get a chance!
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:42 PM | Comments (34)
Eric Burns-White: And while I'm dreaming, I'd like to win the lottery.
So, I'm pointed over to B.C. earlier today. Which isn't a stop I usually make. Once upon a time, B.C. was a cheerfully surreal (and even somewhat countercultural) addition to the comic strip ranks. That time passed. These days, B.C. is... not so good.
But, B.C. is contributing to a pretty special event -- a three month storyline that is celebrating Blondie's seventy-fifth anniversary on the comics page.
I'd link to the strip in question, but the Comics.com version is being... unkind. And Mycomicpage's version is by subscription. So I'll spoil it.
See, the cameos are starting in other strips. Blondie characters have been showing up in strips ranging from Rose is Rose to Garfield delivering invitations to the festivities. (It's worth noting these invitations are being delivered across syndicate lines -- I've identified participants from both United Features and King Features, and I suspect there are others involved too.)
Now, it's one thing for Dagwood to show up at Jon Arbuckle's house. I mean, they're both pretty cartoony strips. It's another to have someone show up in For Better or For Worse, which is a much more serious and 'lifelike' strip. But we'll see how that goes. But how in God's name (no pun intended) do you have a Blondie character show up in B.C.? I mean, it's supposedly in the time before Christ (not that the cavemen remember that). Either Dagwood has to show up in an animal skin, or else he's got to show up in civilian clothes and it's The Village all over again.
(Actually, I'd pay good money for the cavemen of B.C. to be living in a sheltered and isolated community cut off from the rest of the world, only to have a helicopter crash land or something. But then, someone might think that was another backhanded knock on Johnny Hart's zealous religious convictions, and hey -- would I do that?)
But they pulled it off. In it, the turtle and bird combination are delivering mail. And struggling to get on schedule. They just barely manage it when POW! They're bowled over, letters everywhere. Chaos reigns. And we pull back and hey -- the Mailbox they're next to reads Bumstead. A subtle joke. From Johnny Hart. I suspect space aliens.
In any case, that's cool. And it's cool that a strip that launched with Blondie a wild Flapper chick in 1930 (yes, there was an era when Blondie was considered edgy) is ready to celebrate seventy-five years of mailman collisions, gigantic sandwiches, sleepings on the couch, interrupted baths, pesky neighbors, tool borrowings and guilty fourteen year old readers trying not to stare at Blondie's admittedly impressive rack.
But if I have a hope for this three month arc, it's not for good sight gags with Hagar the Horrible or the Pattersons. Or for some explanation why Daisy the dog can't speak but Grimm can. That's nothing. A flash in the pan. It's CRAZYLAND and that's just cool.
No, my hope for this three month arc is to have the one great dangling plot arc of Blondie's existence to be resolved. I'm hoping... for reconciliation between Dagwood, Blondie... and the Bumstead family.
Flash back to the 1930's. Blondie is a poor but wild flapper. Dagwood Bumstead, on the other hand, is a lazy, gluttonous, mind bogglingly rich playboy heir to the Bumstead Family name and fortune. The Bumsteads hated Blondie -- she was, after all, poor white trash, and probably loose to boot. And tried very hard to keep Dagwood from seeing her. Finally, they were engaged to be married, and Dagwood's family put their foot down. They forbade him from seeing her. They practically put him under arrest. In desperation, Dagwood played the ultimate trump card: he went on a hunger strike.
That's right. Dagwood Bumstead loved Blondie Boopadoop (I swear I didn't make that up) so much, he gave up food.
His family relented, but presented him with an ultimatum. Either he break off the engagement... or they would disown him for marrying beneath his class.
He went through with the marriage. His family threw him out. To survive, he went to work for Julius Caeser Dithers at the J.C. Dithers Construction Company, and the rest is history. (In fact, many of the most common tropes of Dagwood's behavior are holdovers from his days of wealth. His archaic business suit. His falling asleep at the job -- he wasn't used to working when he began, so he just took naps when he got tired. His odd closeness with Mr. Dithers's wealthy wife.
The actual change of strip happened because of the change of tastes on the comics page. Blondie premiered during the Depression, after all, and there was just so long a strip about a very 1920's flapper would remain popular. (Blondie had multiple boyfriends at the time. Dagwood was just one of them.) The storyline let them transition to strip about a poor family trying to make ends meet with a tyrannical boss browbeating Dagwood at a time when he wouldn't dare quit and look for other work.
But you know what? It's been thirteen presidential administrations since the Bumsteads threw Dagwood out. And Dagwood and Blondie have had two healthy children, plus Dagwood fathered that weirdass love child with a neighbor (come on. You can't tell me Elmo doesn't carry Bumstead genes. And Blondie wouldn't care, what with all the threesomes she goes in for with Herb and Tootsie Woodley). It's time for the aristocratic Bumstead family to swallow their pride, accept that their black sheep has done well for himself, and mend fences. And in the process create a whole new rush of issues. Suddenly, Dagwood could become a majority stockholder over at the Dithers Construction Company. Suddenly, Blondie's catering business could become an international concern. Suddenly, Daisy could have her pick of stud.
Now that would be an anniversary celebration.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:10 PM | Comments (64)
