August 20, 2008

Eric: Coffee tastes different with a half-numb tongue.

Dental round #4 is completed. I keep thinking that at the end of the sequence, I should get a story arc completion bonus and some kind of souvenir. Though I suppose I'll have my teeth to remember this by.

We are at Panera now, having coffee and waiting for my mouth to thaw so we can get dinner (I can drink things, but eating is dangerous because, see, I couldn't tell if I were chewing the hell out of my cheek right now. So the doctor says, and he has a shock of hair, looks like a mad scientist, and drives a motorcycle, so I'm not about to disregard him.) Right now, it's geeks on parade as Weds and I have our matching17" MacBooks Pro with their matching red Speck hardshell cases out and we're cheerfully tap tap tapping away.

(The difference between computers? Weds owns hers. Mine comes from my employer. There are days I have much the envy for her.)

It is a downright beautiful day -- warm and sunny without being hot or muggy. I admit, I'm a cold weather man at heart -- give me autumn 11 months out of the year and I'd be a happy camper. The 12th month can have some light snow for Christmas. Barring that, I mostly just ask not to be too hot. Cold I can deal with. I have clothing and blankets galore. But absent stripping naked -- which will get you kicked out of Panera -- there's little you can do to mitigate hot and humid barring an air conditioner or a friend with a walk in freezer. We cherish days like today.

I look across the booth, and I see her, that slight smile, that glint in her eyes. I keep being amazed -- my brain still hasn't quite processed the fact that she doesn't have to leave. That she can stay. Though the various continuing bureaucratic steps we have to endure should hammer the point home.

So what's the difference between now and before, when we would grab moments over weekends?

Now, we can relax. We don't need to fill every moment with frantic each otherness. We can just hang out. We can spend an hour at Panera typing into our computers, at once in our own worlds and yet together. I can reach out and touch her at any moment, without having to frantically cling to her hand.

Hang on...

There. I just held her hand. She grinned. We said "dude" to each other. And now back to it.

There's very little better in life than knowing the woman you love will be there tomorrow the same as today. And if you don't understand the simple luxury of not having to get into a car after forty-eight hours and drive halfway across a continent in the opposite direction from the person you most want to hang out with... well, good. I hope you never do.

I'll try not to get overly schmaltzy on here, if this revival takes, but let me just say this for the record: my life is pretty damn good these days.

It's nice to feel that way when your face is half-numb because a mad scientist put his hands and wire tools into your mouth not that long ago.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:49 PM | Comments (7)

Eric: Also, as far as I know I get to have sugar free lemon pound cake today. It's better than it sounds

On August 20, 2004, in the midst of a contentious political season, I got it in the back of my head that I should take another run at online journaling, which was now called blogging, which is a word that seems very strange given how entirely normal it sounds now.

The idea was simple. I would continue to use my Livejournal to stay in contact with the twenty or thirty people who had an interest, but I'd cut out the quarter-ton of dross I found on the internet. Instead, I'd do up a silly little Movable Type blog where I'd throw quizzes and funny pictures of dogs and webcomics that I found funny and other silly water cooler type shit.

My thought had been to call it stripping-the-web.com, because all the good comics names were taken, and I used to like Bloom County. (I've been rereading it for quite some time now, in various places, and to be honest it doesn't age as well as I'd expect. Not that there aren't still gems in amongst the not... so... gems. Um... I lost my metaphor. Sue me.) As a pure lark, however, I thought to check if 'Websnark.com' had been taken. It had struck me while I was in the process of filling out the registration form, and seemed like a good idea.

I was a little stunned to learn it hadn't been taken. It seemed purely obvious to me, after all. So, with a bit of a mental shrug (and recognizing 'Stripping-the-Web' would have been a terrible name) I went with that instead.

Now it's four years later. There is another contentious political season going on. There have been literally millions of words written on this blog, by myself, Wednesday and well over a thousand discrete commenters. I have had a moderate amount of Internet fame. For a while, we had sixty thousand readers a day. At least one of the posts on this blog incurred one point two million pageviews, all by itself. I have made friends, had arguments, caused and fueled drama, hopefully helped settle some, been called a dick, been called a genius, started a couple of webcomics of my own, worked with talented people, had people I deeply respect say they liked my shit, received the occasional death threat, and gotten myself the best damn wife on the planet.

And, you know, I also managed to lose most of that reader base thanks to a combination of my own burnout and the natural life cycle of internet attraction, but that I have no qualms about. That's how these things work, most of the time.

I can't tell you what the future will hold. I go through waves. Someone (Morgan Wick, really) made mention in my last post that the structure of it "took him back to 2004 or 2005," and that's about right, really. Somewhere along the way I stopped doing six minute "Jesus, look at the cool Achewood strip" posts, and right now I can't say why. Probably I lost sight of who I came to the dance with in the first place and decided that everything I wrote had to be meaningful. It's a damnable trap, it is.

On the other side of the equation, I think I've written some damn good things on this site... but part of the problem is repetition. How many times can I say Shaenon Garrity is fucking brilliant and not sound like a broken record? How many times can I throw out terms like Cerebus Syndrome or Bringing the Funny and not just sound like self-satire. You reach a point where you're writing what you think people want you to write and you're aping yourself. And honestly, who the fuck wants that? Not me, and I'm sure not any of you.

So things slowed down, but they never really stopped. And God, I hope they never do.

There's still something like a thousand plus pageviews a day, even at the end of the six and a half weeks I didn't write on here. And yeah, that's not sixty thousand, but it's also not six. I've said before that it didn't matter if you had three readers, thirty readers or thirty thousand readers -- you have readers, and for a writer there's no better thing in the world.

I'm four years older now. I'm a married man. I am, to be blunt, middle aged now. And while there are ways I feel like I've just started Websnark and I'm exactly the same person now as I was then, the truth is I'm not. In so many ways I'm not. The big ways, like the beautiful woman who's in the kitchen as I type this (I'm writing it well ahead of its post time) making bread from scratch. The small ways, like the strands of grey in my beard. My attitudes on a lot of things have changed along with all of that. And the attitudes of the world have shifted a bit too -- there's damn little "gorsh, there's comics on the web now! Bang zap boom!" going on these days. Fewer and fewer of the people just starting out in comics even intend to try to get in the newspaper -- there's just so little reason. More and more webcartoonists make their living off their cartoons, and there's reproducible models for success now. You don't have to be Scott Kurtz or the Penny Arcade folks to quit your day job.

And Jesus. Look at what some folks have done in the past four years. Penny Arcade's got a multi-million dollar charity that gets yearly national television coverage. They also have two yearly gaming conventions, and more and more game companies are treating their Expo as the must-attend con of the year. E3-Shmee3. Phil and Kaja Foglio dropped out of pamphlet style comics, focusing instead on graphic novels and the web, and from all appearances are prospering. Rich Stevens inked a sweetheart deal where he got to do Diesel Sweeties on the web and have it appear in newspapers, while retaining his merchandising rights and his ownership of the strip... and decided after a while that it was too much work, so he dropped the newspaper strip in lieu of devoting more time to the real moneymaker. The Revolution is over, kids. We won. Everything else is sour grapes (on either side and sometimes both).

When I started Websnark, I was lucky as shit. I got some high profile links early on, and while I wasn't the first person online talking about webcomics, it was still a novel concept. That helped me get traction and establish a voice at a time where you didn't need a megaphone to be heard over the din. Today, there are... [does some quick calculations] ...a fuck-ton of blogs about webcomics. Blogs that make fun of them. Blogs that tear into them. Blogs that kiss webcartoonist ass. Blogs that report webcomics news as straight as they can. Dude, there are at least two blogs entirely devoted to Superosity right now.

Oh, which reminds me. Not only has the Keenspot Gang of Four become a full on family run business, with Gav Bleuel completely separated from the online syndicate... but Chris and Bobby Crosby have done hit the jackpot, with one of their joint webcomics projects being adapted for a full length live action movie -- from all accounts, really being adapted instead. Across the border into Canada, where the winters are could and french fries are covered in gravy and cheese curds, Ryan Sohmer's apparently got a full Teletoon-sponsored version of his comic heading to Canadian television. Webcomics are rapidly becoming just another breeding ground for the ravenous beast that is the Entertainment Industry.

So what does that mean?

Well, for one thing, it means we can all stop taking things so fucking seriously all the time. I gave up drama a while back, and I've mostly stuck to that, and I've found I enjoy things a lot more than I used to. It means that the chances that Websnark -- or any largely webcomics related blog -- can claw up to almost six figures of readership again are pretty damn low. There's too much out there, which means there's too little need to congregate at one writer's doorstep. It means that there's no need to do this kind of thing... except of course if you enjoy doing this kind of thing.

Which amusingly enough means that Websnark's best case for moving forward... is exactly the same as when it was started. There's always a place for a writer to write about shit he finds interesting or amusing on the web. No pressure, no expectations, just "look at the funny picture of a dog! It's funny." At the time, I was hopeful thirty people would read it. Right now, on a good day there's still a few thousand who do. Either way, it's heartening, and I hope people still have fun.

How long will this phase go? I dunno. Maybe two days, maybe another full year. And then what will the next look like? I still don't know.

I just know this -- I still like to write, and I still like to find amusing things, and I still have a lot of opinions about shit, and I'm still not shy about combining all of those things into a delicious paste.

Here's to four years. Here's hoping there's four more.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:00 AM | Comments (19)

August 19, 2008

Eric: Visit #3, Drilling #2

It was, in the end, a cheerful appointment.

"This is looking great," the dentist had said. "Your teeth are in great shape. There's a little bit of softness in a couple places, but you should feel good. You're going to have these teeth all your life, and not in your hand, either."

"Well, that's good," I had said. "Right?"

"That's very good," he had answered. "Very, very good. Okay -- wait here, and the office manager will pick you up in a couple and do followup planning with you."

"Good enough."

And she did indeed come and get me. And she did indeed do followup planning.

"Wait... I need five followup appointments?"

"Yup! Three sets of fillings and a two-stage cleaning."

"But... the dentist had said my teeth were in great shape."

"I'm sure they are," she said. "That doesn't mean we don't get to drill them."

That was two weeks ago. Last week I'd had the first set of drilling done, and stage one of the cleaning was yesterday.

Today was the second set of filling stuff. It's all 'soft spots.' Places between teeth, especially out back where flossing ain't so easy. I sat in the chair that put me upside down, they put vacuums in my mouth, gave me a cherry based swabbing that started numbing me and filled my face with Novocain.

In the end, it's the sound that's unpleasant. The sound, and your tongue dries out because you're holding your mouth open for so long. Every one of the dental chairs also has Dish Network, and while they worked, they discussed the episode of Oprah that was on.

I am sitting at the nearby Starbucks, where Weds was waiting while they worked on me. My face is mostly numb. I have seen Oprah. There is a bad taste in the part of my mouth I can actually feel. And there is crap on my teeth waiting for me to get home so ironically I can brush it off. It seems like it must be part of their plan.

We endure. We endure drilling and cleaning and Oprah, and get things dealt with before they hurt and before they're a problem or an emergency. We endure, because we are grown up, and grown up people get their oil changed, buy food for its fiber content, know our insurance agent on a first name basis, and get their teeth taken care of before it's a problem.

And yet, when we get home, we're going to watch Power Rangers: Jungle Fury on the TiVo. We may be grown up, but we're also Generation X. And adulthood is best done in small doses. Besides, R.J. rocks.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 5:26 PM | Comments (3)

June 23, 2008

Eric: Home again!

Snarky!

Back from Vegas, feeling somewhat ill -- hardly surprising, after a whirlwind desert week filled with educational conferences, evenings out, occasional liquor, and, y'know, getting married. The wedding was lovely, with evaporative cooling surrounding us with a light mist as we said vows under a rather nice outdoor gazebo. Weds was beautiful. I didn't trip at any point.

It's done.

I'll have more to say on it and many other things later this week, but as I said I'm feeling ill and besides, I want to show off Snarky, the Snarkasaurus, as created in the free demo of the Spore Creature Creator. This is an amazingly cool thing to play with -- I've created something like a dozen creatures so far, and I'm really chomping at the bit to get the full game (or even the full version of the creature creator -- but the game isn't until September and it'll be a few weeks before a ten dollar cool thing is a prudent investment). I think he came out pretty well given the limited tools, and he looks so happy.

Which is how I'm feeling too. Sick? Sure. Still jetlagged? You bet.

But happy.

More later. In the meantime, Eric Burns-White is signing off to lie down and feel a bit ill.

(Yes, Eric Burns-White. I'll explain my choice in detail later, though one friend has mentioned I've managed to up my pretentiousness another eight points, and another friend has said "wow -- your lifelong ambition to be E. B. White has finally seen fruition!" I have literate friends.)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 5:28 PM | Comments (17)

June 19, 2008

Eric: My mind is going, Dave. My mind is going. I can feel it.

So, I'm at EduComm. This is why I'm actually here, beyond, you know, my wedding.

I am in a conference called "top 10 web 2.0 applications."

The presenter is now telling us about a new concept on the web -- something that might really change things.

It's called 'blogging.'

So, you know. You guys might want to watch out for that.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:02 PM | Comments (13)

June 18, 2008

Eric: Updates!

Las Vegas is very very hot. Naturally, the wedding will be outdoors. We are not necessarily bright.

The auctions continue apace -- bid early and often! Before we left, we added a bunch of other things, including Shadowrun, the Book of Vile Darkness (by Monte Cook!), Tom Strong, GURPS Traveller Starports (by John M. Ford!) and d20 Future! And that's not even all.

I will do my best to check in, preferably drunk, later this week. Right now, I'm sitting at a work related conference, and am therefore sober. It is not an improvement.

Thanks all!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:37 PM | Comments (1)

June 16, 2008

Eric: Ahhh... nothing says 'wedding' like 'getting rid of some crap!'

And hello and good morning, action force! It's the start of a new week -- and as it works out, a pretty important week for Weds and I. We get up tomorrow morning, bright and early, and head down to Boston to board a plane which then takes us to Las Vegas, Nevada. There, I go to a work related conference with other folks from work. In the evenings, we hang out and listen to the sounds of the bells.

And then, at the end of the week, there's a wedding. And that's downright awesome.

Needless to say, of course, we need more money than we currently have. And as we have done before and promised to do this time, we're turning to eBay -- land of getting rid of stuff -- to raise said funds while also clearing some room. It's win-win!

My eBay page is still here, and there's about 30 items up right now with more being added this afternoon. It's cool stuff! Here's a few highlights:

I won't kid you -- this has been a very expensive month for us. Between moving, getting household stuff set up, and preparing for a Wedding (just because we're going the Vegas route doesn't mean there's not, y'know, money that needs spendin') things are a lot tighter than we'd hoped for this stage of things. If folks have an inclination to use the donation button on the sidebar, we'd certainly be appreciative, though I'd admit I feel odd asking for that. Thus, we put stuff up for sale, and continue to do so. So please, bid early, bid often, and tip your waitresses. You know, your waitress doesn't get paid very much -- it's your appreciation that means she eats. Now, please enjoy the dulcet tones of mister Rudy Vallee.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:25 AM | Comments (5)

May 29, 2008

Eric: It's the "Wednesday Has Moved And Eric And Weds Are Getting Married In Vegas Baby So We Need Room And Money" eBay Extravaganza!

G'morning, all -- as promised, it's time to shamelessly sell things! Wednesday moved here over the past couple of weeks, which has been amazing and fun and exciting and expensive and have we mentioned it will be months before Weds can legally receive money for work in this country? We haven't? Well, it's true! The guv'ment done has rules and we follow those rules, dang it!

Further, in less than a month Wednesday and I fly to the city of Sin to... er, stop sinning. I have a conference work is sending me to in beautiful, neon-laden Las Vegas, and Weds is coming along with because... well, we have to get married within 90 days of her entering the country, so we pretty much need to elope, and we're going to be in Vegas anyway. Plus we have some friends who are meeting us there. So we need money for Vegas, money for the wedding, and money for immediately after Vegas since we don't need to stop eating when we get back from a trip, you know.

It is also worth noting? We now have a lot of stuff in our apartment, and some of it needs new homes. Our kitchen has been overwhelmed by boxes.

So. We're doing what geeks do when they need money and space -- we're selling bunches of stuff on eBay, and you're invited!

The stuff we're selecting tends to be stuff A) we have duplicates of (oddly enough, we have a lot of the same stuff), B) is clearly stuff we're never going to use (I have a lot of DVDs already up on eBay -- DVDs that have never been taken out of their shrinkwrap. Obviously, watching them isn't a priority so they might as well go to a new home), C), stuff we have no idea how we got in the first place (I own a Kim Possible DVD? Really? No, really? Huh.) and D) stuff that we like but that can fetch some needed coin.

My eBay page is churning away, working on 23 happy 3 day turnaround auctions with more being added throughout today and beyond. Why 3 day? Why not!? There's been some activity already, but there's going to be lots more.

For those who might wonder -- this isn't specifically a donation drive. The paypal button is still up, of course, and we will be appreciative for any donations we get. However, with the dearth of posts around here, I would feel dumb as a post shilling for cash that way. And even if we get donations, we're still going to sell bunches of stuff because... well, see A-D above!

For those also wondering -- yeah, there should be a State Of later today, work willing.

So, here's a few highlights of what's currently on the page:

There's also a bunch of GURPS stuff that's gone up, and more to come this morning, so folks looking for RPG goodness will find it. Also, some nonGURPS RPG stuff later on.

Please enjoy some delicious auction commerce!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:09 AM | Comments (10)

May 22, 2008

Eric: Life can be wonderful sometimes.

So, a week ago tomorrow I went to Canada for the last time in a long while, and while I was there I had surprisingly good mall Korean barbeque and saw the always astounding Frank "Damonk" Cormier and Meaghan "No Nickname" Quinn. It also seemed like we found a number of cool things to do in Ottawa for the first time, including finding a great restaurant that was actually open at midnight on a Friday, which would have been useful to know eighteen months ago and for the remainder of my visits.

At one in the morning Sunday Night to Monday Morning, I pulled back into my apartment parking lot with a vehicle crammed full of stuff and a woman. And finally, after years, she can just stay. She can. Just. Stay.

We are now aiming for the June elopement, and we are working on setting up the household. To that end, we're going to be starting some monumental eBaying in the next day or two to A) defray expenses both for this stuff and for the next month's... thing... and B) make some much needed room in the now-joint apartment.

When I wake up in the morning, she is there. And for the first time, I don't have to have that momentary bittersweet knowledge that within the next day, or week, or month she's going away again. She isn't. She's never going away again.

Life is good.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:17 AM | Comments (6)

April 21, 2008

Eric: I know, the thought I may have written more than is required will *shock* you all....

On Friday of last week, Wednesday and I had our interview at the United States Consulate in Montreal -- the last step in the long, long, ever so long process of getting our K-1 Visa approved so Wednesday can move to this country and the two of us can be married.

A friend of mine asked me if they asked us weird questions at the interview. You know, "what color is her kitchen" or "what side of the bed do you sleep on," with a view to proving whether or not we're a real couple or if this was a year long, expensive fraud we were perpetuating on the government.

To answer: no, they did not. This may be because when they asked us the first question, "how did you two meet," we talked and giggled for about ten minutes as we went through the long process, explaining Websnark along the way, with a diversion here or there -- I think it was safe to say we were able to establish ourselves early on as 'actually a couple.'

However, the interviewer seemed to know that when we walked in, as he grinned and said "I'm feeling jaunty today. What say we go from the end and work our way back?" In my time, I have never known a civil servant to feel jaunty whilst rejecting someone, so we had some hope at that point.

On reflection, it may have been my statement of intent to marry.

You see, I had to provide a letter, stating definitively that I intended to marry Wednesday. This is a very specific requirement.

So... I did.

But you have to remember... this is me.

I reproduce the letter here.

To Whom it May Concern:

On January 13, 2007, at approximately 3:00 in the afternoon, I proposed to Wednesday White at the 2007 Arisia convention in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the United States of America. At the same time as I presented my formal proposal to Ms. White, it was also automatically posted to Websnark, a popular commentary blog I created and which we both have written for. The online version, and the movie of the cartoon I had friends put together for me to formally propose to Ms. White, can be found at http://www.websnark.com/archives/2007/01/submitted_witho_1.html, and a copy of the post and the (literally) hundreds of comments wishing us well are included.

After the post, we retained legal counsel and began the process of bringing Ms. White to America so that we can be married. A process which is finally (hopefully) close to complete, which has both of us excited and happy.

Please let me be clear. Assuming that our Visa is approved, it is both my intent and my honor to marry Wednesday White. Our tentative plan, assuming all goes well, is to be married in June of 2008, well within the 90 day window required by the K-1 Visa. I am gainfully employed (the day I wrote this letter was my tenth anniversary at this workplace, in fact) at [my workplace], with full benefits including paid room and board to live on campus. Ms. White will be provided for while we find her work in America, and then we plan to spend the next several decades providing for each other jointly.

I am marrying Ms. White because I love her, because I want to spend my life with her, and because I want her to live with me, in the United States of America, the land of my birth. I look forward to your assistance in facilitating this process to the best of your ability.

Thank you for your consideration. If you have any questions at all, please feel free to contact me at the above address, e-mail address or telephone number.

Sincerely,

Eric Alfred Burns
Wolfeboro, New Hampshire

The first person we saw -- the one who collected our paperwork and took Weds's fingerprints -- looked at me and said "I still intend to marry Ms. White" would have been sufficient.

Oh.

They also said "yes."

Within the month, Wednesday will live with me, and then we elope.

We won.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:55 PM | Comments (47)

April 9, 2008

Eric: Moments in Time: two two-day blocks. So, four days, more or less.

February 8, 2008

I was out of place.

Work had sent me to a week long training course, so for eight hours a day, I was in a small room typing on computers, learning ways of tweaking server configurations and remote setup. My trainers were good, the lessons were useful, the work was challenging enough to get my brain pumping.

Which left sixteen hours of the day when I wasn't in training. This included sleeping, mind, but even that was suspect, because the training was in Las Vegas, Nevada.

This, by the way, makes eminent sense for my employer. So long as I had the diligence to actually... you know, do my job when I was supposed to, Las Vegas is the least expensive city that the school could send me to be trained, outside of something I could drive to. And a week work of gasoline reimbursement might not be any cheaper, to be honest. I did a package deal of hotel, flight and rental car, and it was by far the least expensive package deal I'd ever gotten to go anywhere. Food, which was covered under expenses (or chargeable to my room -- which is backdoor expenses) was way less expensive for good quality food in Las Vegas than anywhere else. I was at the Excalibur, for example, and they had a strip steak meal available from seven o'clock at night until seven o'clock in the morning for seven dollars. And it was a good strip steak, I would add, with the appropriate good strip steak sides. The Excalibur buffet, which was well stocked (and actually featured on the Food Network as one of the best deals in town) wasn't materially more, and that was All You Can Eat. All told, I was saving my employers significant coin by flying to Sin City.

The Excalibur was... well, quaint. Opened in 1990 as a show and theme casino, it was a curious mixture of old school aesthetic and slick new Vegas theme fun. Its casino floor is expansive, and relatively bright and quiet. The mazes of slot machines chirped happily, of course. There were a couple of bars with live music every night, of course. But for the most part the Excalibur wasn't chaos and it wasn't decadent. It was almost homey. The Excalibur was more or less my speed.

This night, I wasn't at the Excalibur. A series of sky bridges connects the casinos at this end of the strip together -- the Excalibur, New York New York, the MGM Grand, the Tropicana, the Mandalay Bay, the Luxor and the like. And to be blunt, almost none of these casinos feel like the Las Vegas you see in the movies. They're grand, they're expansive, they're triumphs of Civil Engineering. New York New York is meant to be loud, like plunging into the streets of the Bronx during a party. The MGM Grand is, as the name implies, grand and expansive, and eerily quiet. (Not a bonus, to my mind, to a casino floor). It also has lions. It's interesting to look up as you're walking into a gift shop and realize that three feet above your head, through what at the time looks like a thin piece of lucite there's a black maned lion looking back down at you.

Lions are very large, by the by.

(Old school Vegas, by the by, did exist on our block, at the Tropicana. The Tropicana casino floor is mirrored and glitzy and cramped and looks like every movie you've ever seen about Las Vegas. It is exactly what one expects a Las Vegas casino to be. It was worth the trip, at least for one day.)

This night, I was at the Luxor. The Luxor is the famous black glass pyramid -- the theme is Ancient Egypt (technically ancient Thebes, but there were no pyramids in Thebes. On the other hand, it's frigging Vegas. Don't overthink it). The place is huge, and if the Excalibur is homey and almost friendly, the Luxor is sheer bacchanalia. Scantily clad dancers writhed on the top of gambling tables. Noise and lights and music were everywhere. The main bar was in the center of the room, and water cascaded down all around it. The casino floor was as loud as the MGM Grand was silent.

I was, to be blunt, overwhelmed. It was huge fun, but it was also out of my league and I knew it. But I was determined to enjoy myself.

April 7, 2008

"So, what's the matter?"

I shrugged to Chris, one of my coworkers. "I have a chest ache."

He arched an eyebrow. "You going to the doctor?"

"Yeah. It's really, really mild but with my heart problems even a really mild ache--"

"Absolutely. You don't take chances. Not with your heart. When do you go?"

"1:30."

"You sure you shouldn't go sooner?"

I shrugged. "It's really mild, and that's when they could fit me in. I'm staying next to a phone and I'll stay near people. If there's a problem--"

Chris half-smiled. "Sure. But you know. Don't take stupid chances, okay?"

"Since when do I take stupid chances, Chris?"

February 8, 2008

Now, I have a good gambling system. I go to a gambling floor with a crisp twenty dollar bill. I put it in my left pocket. This is my bank. At some point, I get it changed for ones, because ones are useful. When I go and gamble at the Casino de Lac Leamy in Quebec, it's way more satisfying because they give you the money as quarters and you can feed the coins into the machines. Las Vegas left quarters behind a long time ago, and even the penny, nickel, dime and quarter slots only take dollar bills. They figured out this meant they got more money.

I then put that twenty into different slot machines, one dollar at a time. I take my time. It's more fun with Wednesday because then it's about the banter, not about the gambling. The gambling is secondary. Gambling all on my own is, to be honest, a little bit dull.

Now, whenever you win in a current slot machine, you don't get cascades of coins (though the machines have the digitally sampled sounds of coins falling into their coin trays). Instead, you get that many credits added to your total. So, if you're playing quarter slots (which I prefer, on the whole), you have four credits for your original dollar, and however many credits after you play four times is what you have won off that machine. You then hit "Cash Out," and it prints a barcoded ticket with your winnings encoded onto it, which you can redeem at the bankers or at an number of machines spread throughout the floor. Or, of course, you can feed the ticket into a slot machine and keep playing.

That, by the way, is what they want you to do. They want you to "see how long you can go." If you do that, they're guaranteed to get your full twenty dollars from you, no matter how much you 'win' along the way. You're renting entertainment, and the longer you can go the better off they'll be -- especially if you're having so much fun that you decide to get another twenty dollars out, and then another twenty, and then maybe a hundred.....

I am their worst case scenario customer. I expect, going into the gambling, that said twenty bucks is going to go away. I expect not to win a thin dime. Whatever the machines return to me goes into my right pocket. Remember that my bankroll is in my left.

When I'm out of money in my left pocket, I go and redeem the tickets in my right pocket. Whatever comes out of the redemption machine is mine to keep, and I'm done gambling for the night. I never have to worry about selling my car to pay off my gambling debts. I enjoy lots of spinning wheels and noises. I can play everyone's favorite casino game "do you think that girl in the minidress is a prostitute," so popular in Vegas, where the answer is very often 'yes.' And then I hit the bar and have a couple, using my 'winnings' to fund that.

Because slot machines are designed to hook you in, you're going to get some return on investment from them if you hold yourself to a specific amount. At the Casino de Lac Leamy, up in Canada (run, I would add, by the Quebec provincial government. Now that's a lottery system), the slots are 'loose.' They pay out relatively often. In fact, when Weds and I have played twenty dollars worth of slots together, we've never failed to leave the casino floor with more money than we had entering the floor. That twenty dollars has been anything from thirty to sixty-five dollars, the three or four times we've done this.

I assume the Casino de Lac Leamy hates us.

Vegas slots ain't that loose. I was averaging $4-6 dollar losses each night, with one night I left with $26. Not a big deal. It was decent enough entertainment, though lonely without Wednesday. There's something vaguely pathetic about being forty years old and wandering casino floors by yourself in Las Vegas, feeding dollar bills into slot machines. And "is she a prostitute" becomes downright creepy as a game. Especially if they catch you looking, because if they are a prostitute, then that means they come over and solicit you. And honestly, that's an uncomfortable moment.

This night, I was in the Luxor, and "is she a prostitute" was unplayable, because essentially everyone was young and -- if women -- largely naked. The men were mostly in sportcoats and open collars. It was enjoyable, but a little over the top. If Weds had been with me, it would have been a blast. As it was, I felt displaced.

But, I was determined to have a good time.

Now, one of the things I had done was reserve little bits of my twenty dollar bankroll, each night, to "do the Vegas thing." That meant that one night (at New York New York) I played some Blackjack, to say I'd played Blackjack in Vegas. (I pissed off one of the other players for not betting smart enough. "We don't hit on fifteen when they show a five," he said, stabbing at the table. "We do not do that." I accepted his word for it. As it was, I broke even after five one dollar bets and moved on.) And I decided, while at the Luxor, that this would be my night to play a round of Roulette.

Now Roulette is a sucker's game. The odds are astronomically in favor of the house. You play Roulette because you don't mind losing. I found an electronic version -- people put X amount of money in the bank, they entered their bets on a touchscreen, and then a real, physical roulette wheel was spun by real, physical girls who paid winners in real, physical chips when they cashed out. It was 21st century, and old school, all at once. So I figured play five bucks spread out over various bets for a few minutes, take my losses and spend the other fifteen bucks at the slots, then retreat back across the bridge to Excalibur for some liquor and sleep. I was in over my head.

I did this for about three spins before I realized (there were no posted minimums) that I was at a five dollar minimum table. The system had essentially rejected all my bets, which were 'intelligently' done on things like 'even' and 'red.'

"Fine," I muttered, annoyed, and I slapped a bet. And it was the stupidest bet you could make in Roulette. I just wanted to lose my five bucks and get on with my evening, tired of this thing. So I bet a number. 23, to be exact.

Betting a number in Roulette is moronic, by the by. It's essentially the worst bet you can make in Vegas outside of betting on the Washington Generals to beat the Harlem Globetrotters. Idiots bet numbers in Roulette. If you look at the hardcore Roulette players, they play the safer bets I mentioned above, and they play corners or sides of numbers, in effect putting their bet on 2-4 numbers at once. If they bet numbers, it's out of superstition and never, ever the only bet they play on a given turn of the wheel. Only the kind of hayseed yokel who hits on fifteen in blackjack when the dealer's showing a five would play a number in Roulette as his only bet. Please, please, please. If you learn anything from my tale, learn this -- do not play numbers in Roulette. It's stupid.

So I finished, and I hit 'cash out.' A mere formality in my case, since I bet five and my bank was five, but this would close me out of the system and stop my Player's Club card from recording my activity there. (Yes, I have a Player's Club card. Telly Savalas would be proud of me, right up until he learned I played a number in Roulette. Then he'd be pissed and leave.)

There was a flurry of activity, and the attractive woman carried over a small tray of chips of various colors.

I blinked, and looked more closely at the screen.

I had cleared $295.

I looked at the number of the last bet.

23.

I had just hit on Roulette.

I was a winner.

April 7, 2008

My usual doctor was booked, and his partner had recently left the practice, so I was seeing a temp. Which was fine -- it was Doctor Fleet's handpicked temp, and I have a lot of faith in Doctor Fleet.

"It's a very, very mild pain," I said. "If it weren't in my chest--"

"We're going to run an EKG," he said. "We want to make sure everything is all right."

I nodded. "Makes sense. We don't take chances, right?"

"Absolutely."

So they taped electrodes all over my body, and I lay back, and then ran an EKG. And then they left the room for a while (after taking the electrodes off me) and I waited.

About fifteen minutes later, they came back in. "We'd like you to go over to the ER," the doctor said.

I blinked. "Is there a problem?"

"Probably not," he said. "But... well, we want to run a blood test for Troponin levels. That's an enzyme your body releases when there's damage to the heart. It's probably nothing, but we want to see -- we want to just make sure everything's okay -- and if you go to the ER you'll get the test results back more quickly."

"Oh. But it's probably nothing?"

"Probably. But we want to make sure."

So I took a copy of the EKG over, after they called ahead. I went into the outpatient ER queue.

And I was moved to the front of the queue. Which surprised me a touch. I told each new tech or nurse the symptoms ("On a scale of 1 to 10? The pain's probably just a 1 or a 2. Really, if it had been anywhere else on my body--")

They put me on a telemetry monitor. They took blood, and started an IV. They took another EKG. Everyone was very nice and pleasant, and no one seemed to be annoyed that this dumb hypochondriac was taking up time and resources.

I began to get concerned.

February 9, 2008

I was a little bit delicate, going to class the next day. Hitting in Roulette meant having more of a good time than I normally had been, including introducing myself to a couple of scotches with names I couldn't pronounce. This was the closest I was ever going to come to being a high roller, and I had fun with it.

I called Weds a number of times. She was amused, and excited over the win. I was missing her a lot but trying hard not to let that affect the good vibe. I'd god damned hit in Roulette.

That morning, though as I said delicate, I'd done some recalculation of budget. I'd paid off all my gambling for the week. I'd paid off some other personal expenses (the kind of thing that work wouldn't cover, like the Star Trek teddy bears I'd picked up for Weds. Don't judge me for my sappiness, damn it, they were cute bears). And at the end of everything, I had a hundred dollar bill in my pocket that was entirely outside of my budget. It was, in effect, free money.

I had not expected free money. And somehow, it seemed wrong to not do something with it. Something wild, and nuts. I was in Vegas and I was way ahead. And it was on a dumbass bet. Being an agnostic who enjoys superstition now and again, I tend to ascribe good luck in gambling to Fand, Celtic sea goddess, wife of Manannán mac Lir, Queen of the Faeries, and she who teaches ninjas to disguise themselves as pigeons. A decent amount of the Scotch the night before had been dedicated to her, which must have amused my bartender. Who, a couple of days later, I learned made an outstanding hot toddy, using Benedictine of all things, but I digress.

Weds, being smarter than I am, counseled keeping the hundred bucks. Or at most adding some of it to nightly revels. Bump my last few nights' gambling to thirty bucks instead of twenty. Or go see a show, maybe. Or hold onto the money and be glad for it in the weeks to come.

But that didn't seem right to me. For dumb reasons, but validly dumb. I had a hundred bucks above and beyond my budget... and I was in Las Vegas. No, I had an idea. A thing on the big list of things one wanted to do in Vegas but wasn't dumb enough to do, most of the time.

I wanted to play a hundred dollar slot machine.

Every casino had them, mind. One section cordoned off for "High Stakes Players." And I had budgeted for one moonshot slot pull -- a twenty dollar moonshot played in a high stakes slot machine, probably on my last night. If Fand or blind luck or what had you wanted to give me a big ass payout, I reasoned, I might as well give them one chance to do so. (The major jackpot on a quarter slot, generally speaking, is not materially more than I make in two weeks at work. I had not been playing with the Lottery dream of being rich in mind.)

Well, I had a hundred bucks in my pocket. Why not take the moonshot with that? I mean, when would I ever have a chance to put a hundred bucks on one pull of the machine again? I don't play in those leagues, and I wasn't going to.

So why not? Why not take this money I never expected to have and take one grand shot at the moon?

Slots, for the record, are about as safe as any Vegas bet you can play, which means most of the time they don't return very much. Obviously, most spins of the tumblers you lose. Welcome to gambling. But reasonably often, you do win. The machines work in "credits," which count as one of whatever amount is printed on the machine. On a quarter slot machine, each credit is twenty five cents. On a dollar slot, it's a dollar. On a nickel slot, it's a five cents. Most of the machines let you play more than one credit at a time, it's worth mentioning. Vegas likes money, and this was a way for people to spend it faster. I'm a one credit per play kind of guy.

So, it's not hard to hit a one credit payout on the slots, so that you get back what you put in. It doesn't cost the house anything for that, after all, and most slots players will just play again. It's not uncommon to hit 2, 3, 5 or 10 credits for one. I've hit 35 credits for a spin lots of times, which when you're playing quarter slots means an $8.75 payout. Nothing to write home about, but exciting at that one moment. I've even hit 100 credit payouts or more. Weds and I hit a forty dollar payout on a quarter slot once, which meant we hit 160 credits on the spin.

On the hundred dollar slots, one credit was a hundred bucks. Hitting a 5 to 1 would turn my $100 into $500. Hitting 35 to 1 would be $3,500. Hitting 160 to 1 would be $160,000 -- and no doubt a comped room and many opportunities to be a VIP. The casino would want that money back.

It was astronomically unlikely I would go home with hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it was nigh impossible I would go home with more. (Many machines topped out with a 3000 to 1 payout on a 1 credit play. That's a cool $750 on quarter slots. On a hundred dollar slot shot, that's three million dollars. Seductive sounding, but it wouldn't happen.) But the chances weren't bad that I would get my hundred dollars back, or even turn it into two or three or five hundred dollars.

And it wasn't money I had expected.

And I would never have this chance again.

By the end of the work day, it was clear to me I was going to do this. In the land of suckers, the hayseed sucker who hit on fifteen when the dealer was showing five and was stupid enough to bet on a single number in Roulette was going to take a hundred dollar bill -- five hundred meals, if one bought Ramen noodles -- drop it into a slot machine, and take a shot at the moon.

April 7, 2008

"Here's the thing," Doctor Boucher said. He was the ER doctor on duty. He'd consulted with Dr. Fleet directly, mind. "If you look at this EKG from your doctor's office -- see this peak that recurs every little bit? Well, right here..." he pointed to the line in question "it doesn't. It stays smooth. Now, that might have been the placement of the electrodes. That might also just be normal for you. But it might -- might -- speak to something that's wrong."

"Okay," I said, lying in an ER bed. There were electrode pads all over me, now, and I was in a hospital gown, and there were tubes in my nose feeding me oxygen. Probably with absolutely nothing wrong with me, mind. But you don't take chances. Not with your heart. Not when I have so much to live for. The final visa appointment for Wednesday and I to cross the border and get married has finally been set, for the 18th of this month. We're that close to being done with this process (assuming they approve the paperwork, of course). Then we have her move in May, and then we get married, at least on paper, in June. (We have to be married within 90 days of the border crossing or they make her go back. And as it turns out, I have a conference I and my supervisor are going to be flying to in Las Vegas within that period. Since we're going to elope no matter what happens, and since paying for Weds's ticket to fly out as well is dirt cheap, why wouldn't we do the elopement in the elopement capital of the world?) So I have to be healthy. I need to be healthy. I need to live, God Damn it.

For the record? The good package deal in June was for the Luxor. I can show Weds the roulette table. I expect the casino floor to be more fun when I have Weds with me.

"Now, we got your Troponin test back," he continued. "And a normal Troponin level should be 0.01 to 0.05. More than that is an indicator for cardiac damage."

"And?"

"You're at 0.05. Which is in the normal range and may be normal for you. But it's borderline."

"Which means I've now had two tests showing anomalies?"

"And a history of Cardiomyopathy." The Doctor nodded. "We want to keep you overnight for observation. We'll take several more blood tests, keep you on telemetry and monitoring -- we want to see if your Troponin levels rise or fall. If you have actual heart damage, they should rise, and we can track that."

"Sure, of course," I said. "Whatever you think is best." I don't take stupid chances, I reminded myself. I have too much to live for.

They brought to the observation room in a wheelchair. I told them I really felt okay to walk, but they laughed and said "hey, it's a free ride, right?" It wasn't until later that I realized they had to bring me in a wheelchair. If I walked and that pushed me into a catastrophic heart attack, they'd have been liable because I was in with chest pain -- no matter how mild -- and they were having me walk. As with Casinos, hospitals want to keep as much money as possible -- they sure don't want to lose it in malpractice suits.

I was not, I was told, admitted to the hospital. I was in an observation room, because I was under observation. The major difference is the beds aren't nearly as comfortable as when you're admitted. They're essentially gurneys with a Craftmatic adjustable bed welded to them, narrower than a twin bed. If I had a heart attack, they'd easily be able to get people and defibrillators around it. If I had to be wheeled into emergency surgery or otherwise, it was just a matter of taking the brakes off and hauling my ass where it needed to go. It made sense in every way.

But it wasn't comfortable. Essentially every tech or nurse who came in mentioned that. I told them not to worry about it -- I was simply glad they were there. And I was glad.

I made sure Weds and my parents knew. I gave a friend my emergency contact list -- representatives of everyone I knew would need to get the word if something happened. (Something, you know, meaning 'massive heart attack and dying.' Weds, of course, who would also get the word out here on Websnark and on my Livejournal, if need be. My parents, of course. My big friend Frank, who would let the Ithaca/Syracuse contingent know.

I kept a copy of the contact list with me, just in case. It had been some years since I had made plans for these contingencies. I hadn't missed them. And I got both Dad and Wednesday on the "give information to these people if they call with questions" list.

And I settled in. They got my meds list, to make sure I got my pills. And I waited, under observation.

Feburary 9, 2008

I got back to the Excalibur. This was not a night to go scoping out other casinos, I'd decided. The Excalibur, for no real reason, was home for me. It was comfortable. The bartender knew me. The prostitutes knew I wasn't in the market.

I hit my wallet and got out twenty dollars. The hundred dollar bill sat looking at me, Ben Franklin's eyes looked amused. I left it where it was for now. First, we hit the night. Same as always. Exactly as expected. A twenty dollar bill became twenty one dollar bills. I got out my Player's Club card, and I began to walk the floor, finding games to play.

Always, I thought about the end of the night. The moon shot. The single pull. Should I wait? Should that be my last bet in Vegas before I headed out to the airplane and my normal life? Should I do it at all?

I played a game based on Wheel of Fortune. I played one based on The Munsters. I played Double Diamond. A dollar in. Four credits. Four pulls. Cash out. Pick up the ticket, and move on. Taking my time. Getting some decaf coffee -- complimentary, from a trolley circling the floor. Lots of things were complimentary when you were playing the games. Hell, if you play video poker at the Jesters' Club, and put at least ten dollars in, they'll comp you single malt scotch. They want your brain mushy, your judgement relaxed. That's why I was sticking to decaf right then. My judgement was questionable enough without liquor being involved, thank you.

A dollar into a machine. Hit the "one credit" button. Ignore all the things extolling the virtues of playing two or three or five credits. Watch the tumblers spin. Feel good when they line up in a way that makes your credits go up. Not worry when the credits just go down. Cash out. Ticket in the right hand pocket.

Look over the shoulder. High Stakes, the neon sign gleams. The home of the five dollar slots, the ten dollar slots, the twenty dollar slots and the hundred dollar slots.

And then I was done. My left pocket was empty. I went and redeemed the money in my right hand pocket.

Twenty dollars when into the machines. Seventeen dollars and twenty five cents came out. An hour and a half's wanderings and occasional playing, and it had cost me two dollars and seventy-five cents.

My wallet felt heavy. I took it out. Took out Ben Franklin. I put him in my left hand pocket, the return on the night to date going into my right.

I went for another walk, downstairs, to the arcade -- where kids were allowed. There were a lot of kids in town tonight -- some sort of cheerleading competition here in the city -- and it was disconcerting to see fourteen year old cheerleaders in the center of sin. But they weren't allowed on the casino floor. Smoking was allowed on the floor, and gambling and drinking. This is one of the rarities of rarities in today's world -- a place unreservedly for adults, where you went in knowing that if you saw something offensive, it was your own damn fault for going there in the first place. The presumption was you were making your own decisions, and no one but no one was to blame if you gawked at showgirls or prostitutes, lost your Mortgage payment playing craps or betting on the Knicks, and drank yourself half-blind on single malt scotch you were comped because you spent a hundred dollars losing at video poker.

The arcade was literally a carnival arcade. No video games here. Just token drop games, guess your weight games, throw the ball and knock over the pins games. It was, I realized, entirely devoted to teaching kids to spend their money on taking a chance -- shooting for the moon. Heck, you might get a prize if you were good enough or lucky enough! Gambling, legal almost everywhere for children of all ages. Preparing cheerleaders for that day, five or six years later, when they could come to town as adults and spend their time at tables with green felt on them.

I went upstairs, and got one more bit of coffee. I felt conflicted for a moment, and then I walked to where I saw the High Stakes sign.

April 8, 2008

It was early in the morning. My back hurt, and so did my leg. Sciatica wasn't happy with the accomodations, it seemed. Doctor Fleet was there.

"Your blood pressure and pulse are excellent," he said, grinning. "And it looks like your Troponin levels have gone down to 0.01."

"So I'm okay?"

"We think so. Do you still have the ache?"

"Well, yeah."

He nodded. "We should try Mylanta. And I want you to have a stress test, just to be sure. Schedule it with my office on your way out. We'll do a nuclear resonance test at the same time -- see your ejection fraction, make sure everything is good."

"Good. Yeah, we don't want to take chances."

"Exactly. I'm going to write this up, and we'll check your last set of test results.. Give us a few hours, and you can get out of here. Sound good?"

"You bet." I grinned.

"Thought it might." He went out the door.

And he's right. Things seem to be okay -- the ache wasn't likely my lungs or heart. It might be muscular, or my back (nerve endings do funny things in the body) or any of a number of things. We test. We rule them out. We don't take chances.

After a couple of hours, they did indeed spring me. I called Weds, and called my folks, and called work. I discussed the need for second opinions and other tests that should be done and the like. "You need to be careful," my boss said, worried about me. "You don't want to take any chances."

And I went home -- my boss insisted -- and I relaxed and let the stress out a bit, playing with the cat a little. She was right. I didn't want to take any chances.

But then, I never took stupid chances, right?

February 9, 2008

I walked into the area. It was oddly quiet -- very few people play the high stakes slots. I looked at the machines that were there. The five dollar machines, the twenty dollar machines... they all looked essentially the same as the quarter or dollar slots.

And, for that matter, like the small bank of hundred dollar machines.

This is nuts, I thought. Play the twenty dollar slots. You'll get five spins on that one, not just one. Play the quarter slots all night. Keep the damn money and consider yourself lucky.

I closed my eyes, and thought about the following week. Back home, in the middle of one of the more miserable New Hampshire winters we'd had in the past ten years. What would I feel if I played this and lost? What would I feel if I didn't play it? Was it better to have your stupidity confirmed or to wonder for the rest of your life what might have been.

I thought of that paean to gambler's enabling, "If–". I have to believe this poem has been responsible for more bad decisions than almost any other poem in literature -- not counting The Bible, anyhow. For those who don't recall, the passage in question goes like this:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds–worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And–which is more–you'll be a Man, my son!

It's a hideous thing, that poem. A Man done throw all his money into the pot and shrug when he loses. A man does everything right and nothing wrong. A man keeps going. A man does it well or doesn't do it at all.

And that poem or not, I realized that the recrimination I would feel for not taking this dumbass chance would be way worse than the shrug when this money -- that I had never counted on in the first place -- was gone.

I walked to the machine. It promised up to 10,000 to 1 payouts, which wouldn't happen, though in that moment you do stop and consider what ten million dollars would give to you. It had lots of payout options of at least 1 to 1. I'd already decided that if it returned 1 to 1 it would be a sign from Fand to keep the damn hundred, and I would, gladly.

I fed in the hundred dollar bill. But for Franklin, it was just like feeding in one dollar, except instead of four credits, it gave me 1. One credit.

I closed my eyes, feeling silly for feeling nervous.

I opened them. I hit the right button to put one credit on the line. I made sure my Player's Club card was in place, and I pulled the lever, watching the tumblers spin and the electronic sounds and lights as they played their cheerful tune for me, one last time that night.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:53 PM | Comments (36)

August 12, 2007

Eric: It's not impossible I would make more doing this individually, but these really should be kept as a set.

5129Hz0Vytl. Ss500

Things happen.

It's not my story to tell, so I won't. But it's time we get serious. You all know my love for the Legion. Christ knows I've talked about about it. So it comes as no surprise I've been collecting the Archive Editions of the Legion of Super Heroes over time.

Well. If you have a love, or an interest, or whatever in the Legion, it's your lucky day, because I've just put up a six volume set of these archives up on eBay, for a Hell of a lot less than you'd pay for each individual volume.

That's the first six years of Legion history. The first six years. That takes you from the Legion's introduction straight through into the Shooter era. Including Ferro Lad. Including...

Well, including the Legion. Honestly, if I have to sell you on this, you're probably not the market.

These books are in pristine condition and they're beautiful. The stories are phenomenal. This is the raw stuff of heroism and the coolness of comics, wrapped in a Silver Age bow.

Treat them well.

EDIT: It says shipping is fifty-three bucks. That's if you get it express mail. Please bear in mind shipping can be as low as eleven bucks if you go media mail. At least, if you live near here. Anyway. Check the bottom of the entry for shipping costs.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 5:28 PM | Comments (5)

July 3, 2007

Eric: Meanwhile, not far away....

So. I've been trying to work out... well, things. As folks know. And the writing is a part of what I've been trying to work out, because....

...well, because. I'm a happier person when I'm writing lots of stuff, and being a happier person is pretty much a good goal in and of itself.

And that brings me to trying to find the best way to actually do more of it, and to fire the writing spirit, and all that. Because... well, because I want to, and because I want momentum, and because that's all a cool thing.

Let me begin by saying that Websnark isn't ending. Not now, not for the foreseeable future. I like this place. I like all of you. I like the outlet. I like the chance to write on any topic or any subject, at any time. It's amazingly cool, and you guys make me happy.

However, it's worth noting that Websnark, in the end, is an outlet for nonfiction. There have been exceptions, here and there, but this is primarily a blog for commentaries and essays. Critiques, or just me talking 'bout stuff. And that's been amazingly cool, but it's also been limiting. In the nearly three years this thing's been a part of my life there's been a couple million words between Wednesday and I, but my fiction output has crashed through the floor. And that has created an imbalance in my humors, increasing bile and phlegm and requiring an infusion of foods higher in fire and air.

Now, I could change Websnark if I wanted. I could add in fiction, poetry, a wet bar -- whatever I felt like, at least as far as Weds would be comfortable -- and Weds is, at heart, desirous of my being content. But that doesn't seem like the right reaction to me. Folks who come here and who have been coming here have been doing so for very specific reasons. They'll indulge the odd Sestina or the occasional bedtime story, but for the most part they'd rather there not be a monumental shift in tone.

And honestly, I don't want to change what Websnark is. I like what Websnark is.

The solution, in the end, is to expand.

Which brings me to Banter Latte.

Banter Latte is a new blog, chock full of that new blog smell. It was born in the weekend following my existential writing crisis. It is dedicated to fiction, to poetry, to whimsy -- to all the stuff that Websnark isn't. It has a bunch of new bits of writing, some old writing that's been sitting on my hard drive -- sometimes for years -- and locked posts designed to let me put up chapters of novels I'm working on.

That this will hopefully also force me to, you know, finish and refine those novels is a side benefit.

The protected posts, mind, are still meant to be accessible. See, part of the problem of the publishing world adapting to new electronic distribution is the question of what "previous publication" means. By locking the posts, I can skirt the edge between publishing my novel on the web and providing a place for fans of my work and interested parties to read drafts of the posts without actually releasing it. And keeping it out of search engines at the same time.

So. What is Banter Latte?

Banter Latte is a place for me to write. Just like Websnark. They're meant to compliment each other. Folks who like reading what I write will want to head on over there and see what there is to see. Folks who like my essays but can't imagine enduring my fiction can avoid it. (Though I'll post regular links over here to the stuff going on over there -- mostly because I don't want this place going quiet again.)

Though quiet isn't as likely. As I've said before, when I'm writing regularly, I'm usually writing prolifically. You'll notice I've written more on Websnark in the time since I started beta testing Banter Latte than in the three months before. That's likely to continue.

Why "Banter Latte?" Because as has been mentioned, I have a love of dialogues taking place while my characters are drinking beverages. Nothing more or less. Also, I tend to drink a lot of coffee or tea while writing.

There is a schedule to Banter Latte, in hopes of building an audience and (paradoxically) making things easier on me. Mondays are "The Mythology of the modern world," when I tell whimsical stories about the myths behind everyday life. Post beta period, we have two entries up right now: Introductions and Coffee, and Why Does Starbucks Drip Coffee Taste Like Crotch? These are generally going to be written new for the site, which should keep me doing a few hundred or thousand words in a week, all to keep the pump primed. Wednesdays are "Storytelling" days -- vignettes, scenes, stories, past stuff and new stuff all blended. Some of the more serious stuff will go here, though I don't promise that. Right now, we have a short story set in the greater Gossamer Commons universe -- the first entry of Gossamer Reflections, called Whisperdance.

Fridays are when the protected chapters of novels in progress go up. One of the state goals -- born of a conversation I had with my father -- is that I'm going to write one chapter of a novel each and every week, thus making the completion of said novels far more likely. Right now we are in the semi-hard science fiction novel Theftworld, which is password protected (though right up in the nav bar or also on the sidebar you'll see a link to a form for requesting it -- it's not exactly hard to get access to the password if you want it.) We have two chapters plus a prologue and a bit of preface material up.

Thtree days a week with three types of content. Tuesdays and Thursdays are Random days. Any day I feel like doing something that doesn't fit one of those categories, I'll throw something into a Tuesday or a Thursday. That's where poetry will go, fan-fiction if I've a yen to write it, bits of other stories, or whatever. Or nothing at all. Those aren't officially scheduled days, but right now it looks like there's plenty of stuff for them. We have a couple of related stories in them right now: the first part of Interviewing Leather -- meant to be a Rolling Stoneesque interview of a minor supervillain, and we have On Call, a slice of life story about a doctor who specializes in superhumans, played more for laughs.

Finally, on the weekends we'll have very basic open topic posts, for people to shout out comments or make dook dook noises or do whatever it is you kids do.

And, of course, there's a chance to buy ad space if you want. Right now, it's going for like two cents, so it's a bargain!

In the end, all of this is meant to stimulate my doing what I like to do most outside of spending time with Weds or sleeping: writing. And I'm really excited about it. I hope you guys enjoy it. And I hope this helps keep the writing stream -- in Websnark and out of Websnark -- more regular than it's been.

Thanks all. And enjoy.

Oh -- bear in mind the site is still new. There may be functionality changes, and there almost certainly will be look and feel changes. So, you know. Be warned.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:46 AM | Comments (10)

July 2, 2007

Eric: Man, I used to write *happy* posts....

We all have our heroes. Sometimes they're real people. Sometimes they're fictional. And sometimes the line between the two blurs, at least somewhat.

When I was quite young, I knew who my heroes were. The Legion of Superheroes. Green Lantern. The Justice League. The Avengers. The X-Men. Good guys against bad guys, and all very, very exciting.

But above all of them, there were the Micronauts. The first major comic book company book to feature a toy license, the Micronauts were much more than the story of my favorite plastic and die cast metal toys (seriously, I had hundreds of those things) -- it was a grand saga. A full on space opera. A legend. A fantasy. An epic. And I was into it. Commander Arcturus Rann -- the legendary Space Glider and leader of the Micronauts. The beautiful, powerful Marionette -- the Princess Mari, dedicating her life to saving Homeworld from Baron Karza. The wily, canny, laughing Bug -- barely a pastiche of Galactic Warrior, but mostly unique to the series, bringing roguishness and humor to the darkest of situations. The taciturn Acroyear, named for his race, prince and exile, mighty warrior. Biotron, faithful servant for a thousand years and his counterpart Microtron, yang to his yin. Force Commander, Prince Pharoid, the beautiful Slug (don't ask), the mysterious Time Travellers and their Shadow Priests, the evil of Baron Karza, the might of the Worldmind, Captain Universe -- the hero who could be you! And so, so many more....

They were my heroes, and my friends. And through the grace of the Enigma Force, I will never forget them. I owned all their comics -- a complete run. Plus the unfortunate crossover with the X-Men. Plus the trades.

Now, a lesser hero but still one I greatly enjoyed was ROM, Spaceknight! Another toy based line, but this one far more integrated into the Marvel Universe (including a universe-wide crossover where the Dire wraiths attacked), ROM was the story of Rom, a Galadoran who was the first to volunteer to be remade into a cyborg in plandanium armor, who spans the galaxy fighting to protect those who would fall.

Heroes.

They weren't real, of course. I might have had a nine year old's crush on Princess Mari, but she didn't exist any more than Brandy Clark did. Yes, there is a Steve Jackson in the world, but he's not the man who was at once a friend and a rival to Rom (I always wondered if the real Steve Jackson was amused at his Marvel counterpart). But they felt real to me. They helped me to dream of broader things, to believe in the most noble of ideals, to let my imagination run wild.

Behind them, however, there was a real hero. A man who was incredibly formative to my childhood and to the man I would grow into. His name was Bill Mantlo, and he wrote comic books.

A lot of comic books.

Really, there was a time when he worked on almost every comic in Marvel's stable. He had a memorable run on the Hulk (a run where the heroes of Earth had banished the Hulk to other dimensions because he was so dangerous -- a plotline that should sound familiar since they ripped it off for World War Hulk's setup). He worked on Thor, and Iron Man, and even Howard the Duck. He worked on the Avengers, Captain America, Ghost Rider, and he even wrote a few X-Men comics here and there. When John Byrne's star was on the ascendence and his Alpha Flight was still a major comic, it was Bill Mantlo who took it over when Byrne left. He created Cloak and Dagger, for God's sake.

You know what? I'm going to steal a list of his work from the Howling Curmudgeons -- it's easier than trying to explain just how heavily he was involved in the work of this era of Marvel:

Alpha Flight, Amazing Adventures, Amazing Spider-Man, Astonishing Tales, The Avengers, Battlestar Galactica, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Cloak & Dagger, Daredevil, Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu, The Defenders, Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider, Hero for Hire, Heroes For Hope Starring the X-Men, Howard the Duck, The Human Fly, The Incredible Hulk, Invasion, Iron Man, Jack of Hearts, Journey Into Mystery/Thor, The Mighty Thor, Ka-Zar, Marvel Age, Marvel Chillers, Marvel Fanfare, Marvel Premiere, Marvel Spotlight, Marvel Super Hero Contest of Champions, Marvel Tales (Marvel Tales Starring Spider-man), Marvel Team-Up, Marvel Treasury Edition, Marvel Two-In-One, Micronauts, Rawhide Kid, Rocket Raccoon, ROM, Sectaurs, Spectacular Spider-Man (Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man), Spider-Man and Daredevil, Strange Tales (2nd series), Super-Villain Team-Up, Swords of the Swashbucklers, Tales of Suspense (Captain America/Captain America and the Falcon/Steve Rogers: Captain America), Team America, Transformers, The Vision and The Scarlet Witch (the entire miniseries), Web of Spider-Man, Werewolf by Night, What If..., X-Men, and X-men and the Micronauts.

Seriously, dude.

Mantlo had an incredible sense of character voice and motivation. His series featured grand themes, but explored them in sophisticated ways. Relationships were passionate but never simple -- there was pain and joy in equal measure, and his heroes had to walk heroic journeys -- trawling the depths of despair before they could once again find hope. They were incredible.

And Mantlo wasn't afraid to take risks. He subverted the heroic and sympathetic Force Commander, turning him into a villain before killing him off to return Baron Karza to the universe. He killed every living thing on Homeworld -- a horrible, terrible loss -- without losing the idealism that held the Micronauts together. After setting the town of Clairton, West Virginia as the home of pretty much all of Rom the Spaceknight's human friends and secondary characters, he had the entire town killed off and replaced with Dire Wraiths in an effort to kill Rom and Brandy Clark. You couldn't take anything for granted in a Mantlo story -- except that in the end, after terrific pain and sacrifice, good would triumph. But would forever wonder at the cost....

Oh, over at DC he also wrote the Invasion miniseries. Yeah. He actually did one of the monumental crosssovers they did in the eighties, and it was one of the ones that actually did have impact and didn't suck. Who knew?

I can't overestimate the impact Bill Mantlo's writing had on me. I really can't. And it was a very sad day for me when he decided to move on from comics, and enter the legal profession. And even there, he was a hero. He became a public defender, apparently a very good and dedicated one.

And then came tragedy. In 1992, Mantlo was rollerblading when he was hit by a car. He had massive head trauma that led to a coma for more than a year. When he emerged, he had brain damage that he has never (and will never) recover from, needing constant care. Expensive care, I would add. His capacities are diminished at best and will never recover.

When I learned this... all the breath just left me for a while. It was so unfair. It was so wrong. Bill Mantlo deserved so, so much better.

But if there was one thing Mantlo wrote about, it's that being a good guy -- and deserving good things --was no guarantee that you would get them. Bad things happened to good people in Mantlo's stories.

The point, in the end, was what you did with the things you've received. Bill Mantlo needs us.

He needs me.

And he needs you.

Fortunately, there's an easy thing you can do.

Writer/Illustrator David Yurkovich has produced Mantlo: A Life in Comics, a tribute and benefit book that includes fiction, history, and interviews with everyone from Marve Wolfman to Jackson Guice. It costs seven dollars and fifty cents, and all the profits -- all the profits -- are going to help insure Mantlo's care now and into the future.

You can order it here.

My own circumstances aren't good right now (though thanks to you incredible people, they're vastly, vastly better), but on my next paycheck my order for this book is going in. And I pass it forward to all of you. If you were of the era I was, and you liked Marvel Comics at all, you know Bill Mantlo's work. If not, but you like comic books of any stripe, you're a recipient of his legacy.

When tragedy comes, it falls upon all of us to bring hope back into the light, to take off the cloak of the Shadow Priest and reveal the shining embodiment of idealism given form.

Put simply, he needs us.

That's reason enough, and probably all I would ever need to say.

Dallan and Sepsis preserve you all.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:49 PM | Comments (6)

June 28, 2007

Eric: I wonder if everyone feels this crappy doing this.

20001027

(Stolen cheerfully from RPG World!. And check out the ultracool animation nockFORCE, by Ian Jones-Quartey and Jim Gisriel!)

I don't much care for this, but it's clear I have to do it. For a couple of months now, a series of bad breaks have kept me pretty low, financially. And people have bought of things and some folks have donated, and that's helped tons. Just absolute tons. But I can't seem to get ahead of it. It's not like I'm, y'know, spending money. And it's not like I don't have a job that pays me in money. But I just can't get in front of things, and trouble keeps pressing, harder than I'd like. And I need to get ahead of it once and for all.

So. I'm doing the auction thing, yet again. And I'll admit I'm going to miss these. First off, there is a five book collection of Nephilim -- the long out of print Chaosium occult RPG of the children of Angels and Man. This role playing game -- with lots of supplemental material by the staggeringly talented Kenneth Hite, I would add -- is one of those that RPG developers continue to cite as an influence today. Myself included. And this one auction -- this one auction -- includes the core rulebook, Secret Societies, Serpent Moon, Chronicle of the Awakening, and Major Arcana. This is a big deal listing.

Also in terms of "historic," "influential" and "well written" I have a second listing of multiple books: in this case, a listing of both The Primal Order and TPO: Pawns: The Opening Move. These were absolutely brilliant supplements, written by Peter Adkison, which took the rather lackluster support most RPGs had for gods and deities and the like in those days (Deities and Demigods listed tons of Gods, but made them into relatively standard monsters to be beaten, at least as far as their stats were concerned, as an example), and made them into something that could be quantified and used in a campaign effectively while still making them freaking GODS. There was also a brouhaha over what was a pretty clear case of copyright and trademark infringement in the games (Adkison had somewhat naively put in conversion rules for pretty much all the major and a frightening number of minor role playing games in the supplement, intending it to be a capstone to be used for other systems rather than a system in its own. Palladium, most notably, took exception to this). And what might be most interesting is these were the flagship products of a very small RPG company in the pacific Northwest which, while they sorted all this out, licensed a card game designed to be collectible from a guy named Richard Garfield.

That company's name? Wizards of the Coast. And on the backs of Magic and later Pokemon they absolutely conquered the planet. Sadly, leaving supplements like The Primal Order behind in the process. These books really are good. And this auction gives you both of them.

Thirdly, and most prosaically, there's d20 Modern. It's, you know. d20 Modern.

Finally... and I'll admit that while I hardly need the book for the rules (I have several other copies, including a legal PDF), I'm going to actively miss this one... I have the ultra-rare, first (limited) edition Black Hardcover edition of the In Nomine core rules. This was the last copy of the core rules I found -- the last version I didn't have. And it's by far the hardest to find and buy.

But, I don't need it. Not even for In Nomine. And it's got to go. They all have to go.

And I'll admit it. If you haven't donated but you've considered? Today's the day. Honestly.

(If you have donated, then I thank you.)

This isn't a threat. This isn't a "do this or Websnark goes away" or anything like that.

It's just... it's been a month. Of one thing after another after another.

Times are tough. So this is what I need to do.

If you can't spare change? Don't sweat it. I'll still be here. We'll still be friends.

Dude.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:52 PM | Comments (8)

June 21, 2007

Eric: Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today... to put an unfortunate miserable critter aWAAAAAY! (better he were hung first)

One eBay auction I don't feel badly about mentioning here, even with my dearth of recent posts, is this one: the first four volumes of Kitchen Sink Press's Li'l Abner. Li'l Abner is one of the most influential and important comic strips in comics history, with a range and significance that almost no strip has ever equalled. This is four solid years of Li'l Abner, starting from the very first strip and going through the inaugration of the Sadie Hawkins Day Race (and the running of the second race, which established it as a tradition, and led to nationwide "Sadie Hawkins dances" for decades to come).

Li'l Abner reached a point where the wedding of Abner and Daisy Mae actually made the cover of Life Magazine (at a time when Life was the seminal journal of record for news and events. There's nothing comparable to this in today's society.) There is a point -- I swear to Christ -- when it's estimated that 39% of all Americans read Li'l Abner every day. Honestly. 70 million Americans out of a then population of 180 million.

Kinda puts Penny Arcade into perspective, doesn't it? Or C.S.I., for that matter. Or any popular entertainment appearing regularly in any media today. Or the top ten popular entertainments in any media combined. Seriously.

These books are like a master class in establishing characters and voices, running gags, satirical events and establishing continuity without being beholden to it. Al Capp helmed the adventures of the good people of Dogpatch for fifty-four years. Fifty-four years. That's longer than Peanuts, for the record. And while Peanuts was certainly one of if not the most important comic strips of all time, specific story events in Peanuts never galvanized the nation the way events in Li'l Abner did.

I mentioned the cover of Life for the marriage of Abner and Daisy Mae. Well, some decades later, an episode of M*A*S*H featured Col. Potter trying to get news through a news blackout because it seemed like this time Abner and Daisy Mae would get hitched, and he'd be damned if it happened without him knowing about it. It was an important enough event that a television show about the Korean War namechecked it.

That doesn't even count the broadway musical it inspired -- one of the most successful in history, I would add. Or the movie that they made of that. Or the serials and other movies they made of Li'l Abner earlier. The musical itself continues to be produced all around the country. A much younger Eric A. Burns actually acted in a production of Li'l Abner in Fort Kent, Maine. I played Marryin' Sam (if you're a bachelor, pack up yer satchel're I'll have you pushin' a pram!) and our production killed. This despite an audience largely made up of people born after Li'l Abner had faded from the scene -- the characters were strong enough that you didn't need more than the musical's introduction.

If you're a student of comic strips, you want to read these things. If you're a cartoonist, you really want to read these things. If you're a fan of laughing your ass off, see above.

As sheepish and ungracious as it is to shill with such a long absence, this here's worth owning. Honest to God.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:27 PM | Comments (16)

Eric: State of the Burns

The question is, what now?

Websnark is going on three years of age, and obviously for the last couple of months it's been at best "quiet." Which is to say I haven't written jack shit for it.

On the other side of the equation, there's the rest of my writing life, where....

...hm. "Not. Jack and Shit."

Nothing of consequence to livejournal. Little to nothing in fiction. Little to nothing in essays or e-mails. Little to nothing... well, anywhere.

My general accessibility has also been much much restricted. I don't e-mail folks. I connect to favored chat hangouts and say nothing all night.

It's not that I'm a complete hermit. I see people at work. I talk to Weds daily, including videoconferencing. (The greatest boon to long distance dating since [inset Mail order Bride joke here].) I speak to my folks.

But I've largely withdrawn into myself. Which happens to me on occasion. My activities become solitary. I just kind of... recharge for a while. Go into a cocoon.

I've had a lot of troubles the past couple of months to boot. Some health. Some financial. Some annoying. (For the record? Losing your driver's license is a pain in the fucking ass and I don't recommend it to anyone.) Some USPS related. I really need to get another major eBay campaign going to start pulling myself up out of some of this shit, but I've been avoiding it, largely because I can't imagine cheerfully announcing more eBay auctions on here without having written anything lately. It seems ungracious, even though I'm not soliciting donations when I do it. "Hi! I'm not entertaining you right now, but feel free to buy some of my old RPG shit!"

Yeah, not so much.

I can tell this one's serious though. because both my father and my fiancée have mentioned that... you know, Eric, you haven't been doing very much writing lately, have you?

Which makes some sense. They all know that writing is kind of my mental checksum. It's what keeps me on keel. And I like to do it. I like it a lot.

So the question is "what now?"

I've thought "I should write about...." for Websnark about two hundred and fourteen times in the last couple of weeks. But I don't have anything ending that sentence just yet. I mean, there's lots of Webcomics out there and I read a bunch, but what can I say about any of them that I haven't already said a dozen times or more. The same with video games or pop culture or political science or what have you. What is there for me to say?

Dad and I discussed my beginning a "chapter a week" fiction writing program, where I do one chapter in a seven day period. It's a good plan. It might get The Recluse done. Or Theftworld. Which is still one of my favorite titles. Hell, I could write Adjusted League Unimpeachable for freaking Superguy if it would get me back on writing track.

But that doesn't help here. And I admit it. I'm selfish. I'm not ready to surrender Websnark. This is a part of my writing landscape. My writing life. My psyche.

It got me engaged for Christ's sake.

And you folks have been awfully good to me. I like you guys. And it seems like that's an important thing too.

So the question is, what should I write about. What can get the spark going? What can get the ball rolling. And make no mistake, when I write (and your milage may vary) there's momentum and inertia involved. It's way easier for me to write five thousand words on day nine of regular writing than three hundred words on day one after time off.

One friend suggested I combine my poverty with my typing skill and auction off topics for me to write about. That's something I've generally been against except for charity, though there does reach a point where it becomes appealing. Though there is generally a feeling of 'payola' involved that makes me quail. "Hi! I just spent five hundred and twelve dollars buying an essay from you. Please write about my webcomic Anime Treacle. Just tell me what you think, okay? No pressure to give me any preferential treatment. Did I mention that five hundred and twelve dollars was my food money for July? No pressure."

...uh... yeah.

So I could solicit for topics. That's always fun. Which, assuming anyone's still reading this (and as of the moment I'm typing this the freaking site's down anyway) means there'll be some comments with suggestions. I'm down with that, but then there's a potential backlog which might seem insurmountable. Or ungracious.

Man, I'm concerned with seeming gracious, aren't I?

Or maybe... maybe I could accept X amount of money to write short vignettes or fiction bits. Do something improv style. Give me a setting, a genre and characters and see what you can come up with, writer boy.

Or would that seem weird?

I dunno.

All I do know is this. I haven't forgotten you guys. I haven't forgotten Websnark, or writing.

Things are just... odd, right now.

Oh, before I forget? Howard Tayler hit seven years like a week ago, over at Schlock Mercenary, and Cheshire Crossing put up issue three in all this, too. Both topics deserve more, but at the absolute minimum, they deserve mention.

EDIT: Just to make things crystal clear, this is not, not, not! a donation solicitation. Some of you guys are amazingly generous and I appreciate that, but dude. I haven't written jack shit for two months. When I'm producing that's one thing, and thank you for your support. When I'm not, your generosity should be turned to the places that are producing. In my humble opinion. Don't make me stop this car and come back there. Don't think for one minute I won't turn around and go right back home. And I'll speed, and I don't have a license on me so if I get pulled over they'll take me to jail! Is that what you want? Well is it?

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:13 PM | Comments (34)

April 6, 2007

Eric: Son of MONG-- er, eBay.

Hey hi!

We're coming up on auction end for the first round of Eric's a Dumbass eBay Fun. We have lots of stuff still inexpensive, and other stuff going higher than might have been anticipated. In particular, TransHuman Space is going for just under sixteen and Gehenna's going for thirty-one.

What I find amusing through it all is that all of the "How to Draw Manga" books are going except the ones on drawing chicks. Apparently, people are more interested in learning storytelling and general techniques than hot chick techniques. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Folks who check in will also note that there are two new auctions up and generating interest -- the rare (and often expensive) Traveller20 (T20) d20 Hardback, and the less rare but extremely cool Victorian Age: Vampire Companion. And we have some other things on the table for going up over the weekend and into next week. Possibly a lot of other things -- the preliminary estimate on my car's "check engine" light going off is fifteen hundred bucks. On the other hand, we're going to get several second opinions, and doing some diligence on the potential cost of repairs is already dropping it by a lot.

Otherwise... things are going well. Weds is here. Life is good. Thank you all!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:12 PM | Comments (20)

April 2, 2007

Eric: On the other hand, it's not the worst thing ever. I mean, Unfettered by Talent is way crappier. Maybe.

I did a Snarky!

(Dude! I drew Snarky! Click on the thumbnail for the big size!)

For those of you playing along at home, the copy of Sidewinder: Wild West Adventures referred to on eBay sold, and sold nicely! Within its pages you will find my first ever drawing of Snarky -- and wearing a cowboy hat no less!

It was also noted to be terrible. I was a little concerned the winner would think it merely "incompetent," but then I put the tail on and realized "no. No, this counts as full on terrible." Certainly, Ursula Vernon, the artist who created the original Snarky pictures (as well as the Snarky-in-Bow-Tie picture from the proposal video) would blink twice and shiver quietly to herself when she sees it.

Also in the picture, you will note both Eric A. Burns and Wednesday White, which is always nice to be able to show in any picture.

So anyway! Yaaaaaay! Stay in school, kids!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:20 PM | Comments (15)

Eric: Dumbass lives!

Trying to stay ahead of car and ticketstuff, we now have the next stage of auctions up -- we're calling this Eric is a Dumbass eBay Excitement, or just plain Dumbass. Just think of the cross-marketing potential!

We have some cool stuff going. First off, I found my copy of Gehenna -- the end times sourcebook for Vampire the Masquerade. That one sold out quickly (and of course was reprinted, but still), and it's pretty cool if you don't already own it and have some token interest in Vampire or the world ending in horrific ways. For people with more hope for the future, there is a first edition copy of Transhuman Space by David Pulver and the good people at Steve Jackson Games. This is a fantastic supplement filled with GURPS and easily adaptable goodness, and I think you would like it! Further, there's an actual honest-to-God Webcomics related auction going on -- volume 2 of James Kochalka's Sketchbook Diaries. This is a beautiful book I picked up at my friendly local store some time before I even started typing on 'Snark -- so while it's really nice, it doesn't have huge personal resonance the way, say, my personalized copies of Narbonic or Girly do.

Finally... I'm beginning to put a very, very extensive collection of books online. These, to be rather... blunt... are a number of "how to draw and not suck" books I've collected over the years. As it turns out, buying the books, putting them on the shelf and having them work via osmosis doesn't seem to be an effective method of learning to draw, so they may as well go to other folks. Today you'll find several of the "How to Draw Manga" volumes up, and with luck you will find them useful and informative.

Anyway! That is where we are. Please, enjoy delicious bidding!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:09 PM | Comments (5)

April 1, 2007

Eric: Apropos of Nothing, Custom Ringtones are Cool.

It was, at best, a long day.

Days when I'm traveling to Ottawa are days I generally try to take off from work -- or at the least take a half-day in. The trip is relatively long, there are bits I much prefer to drive in daylight than at night, there is a border crossing involved -- all told, I like to get going as early as possible.

Friday... that couldn't happen. There were two other people at work -- including my boss -- who were already scheduled for the day off. I couldn't very well take it off as well. Not with students in the halls. So the absolute earliest I would be able to leave would be three, assuming I could slip out early. And I was up early to boot, so I could be in an hour earlier than usual. Which meant I was also operating on less than normal sleep.

As it worked out, I didn't get out of work before four, and at that point I really needed a shower. So we were looking at four-thirty to five o'clock in the evening before I made it onto the road.

That was looking to be a very late night. But still. Get there. Kiss my fiancee. Say hello to Frank and/or Megs, depending on who was still up. Crash until morning. Get up. Pack the car with Weds's things, and drive back. That was the plan, and I was still focused on it.

It worked fine -- it worked like a charm....

...until Vermont.

I have a usual plan for a usual stop. I climb the mountains of Vermont along Interstate 93 to I-91, then an exit before I enter Canada I pull off and follow the GPS to my usual gas station. At said station, I make sure I have sufficient coffee for the long run through Quebec (I prefer not to stop in Quebec, as I've mentioned before), use the restroom, get any necessary snack food, and fill up on gasoline. (By filling up at the last possible moment before Canada, I reduce the total amount of gasoline I need to get in Canada. On the trip back this time I grabbed twenty five liters, which was more than I needed. But I was being extra-cautious. You will see why.)

Naturally, climbing hills is hard work for the little Honda Civic that could.

And I was tired.

And monofocused.

And my GPS had my gas station as a target, and I was keeping my eye on it and on the road.

It was just before sundown, and I was climbing one of the taller mountains -- a significant slope that goes for four or more miles before Cresting--

My car lurched. I blinked.

My car lurched again.

My car began lurching like it were going down a ski slope of moguls, instead of up an interstate.

Eyes wide, I looked down to my dashboard... and saw (to my shock, horror, and surprise) that my gasoline telltale had lit up, and my gauge was well below empty.

My GPS said I was fourteen miles from my gas station.

Had I not been on a slope going many miles angled upward, I might have made it. Seriously. As it was, whatever gas was left in my tank was pooling back on the opposite side to the intake valve, and there was no possible way I was going to make it. I gave it my level best, letting the car lurch a bit before it began to simply lose power. I pulled off onto the shoulder, coasting up as far as I could before the vehicle grew quiet, and I turned the engine off.

There was no two ways about it. I was out of gas. In Vermont. Halfway up a mountain. On the Interstate.

I had done a dumbass thing.

I'd love to tell you all the justifications. I was tired. I was monofocused. Going uphill had taken more gasoline than expected. Alien spores. But the simple truth is I was an idiot. I didn't pay close enough attention to how much gas I had left, and I had run out of gas.

So, when you're a dumbass, you cop to it. I called AAA -- the national association for bailing dumbass drivers out of their dumbass situations.

"Where are you located," the dispatcher said.

"I'm on Interstate 91, somewhere between exits 24 and 25," I answered. The GPS couldn't tell me more than that. It's designed for directions, not coordinates.

There was a pause.

"Can you see a mile marker?" the dispatcher asked. She was young, and cheerful, and clearly wanted to help.

"Nope," I said as cheerfully.

"All right," she said, and verified my cell phone number. "We'll have someone on the way. As you're on the Interstate, you're a priority, so it should only be a few minutes!"

"Thank you!" I said. And I made the two calls you have to make when you're a dumbass.

The first was to my fiancee, who was waiting for me in Canada, many hours away. I got her machine, and left a message.

The second was to my parents.

"Hi Dad," I said. "You ever do a really dumb thing?"

"Countless times," Dad said. He sounded amused. Which may have been his way of thinking 'if he's not in jail, this couldn't possibly be that bad.'

"Well! Me too! I ran out of gas."

My father did not laugh at me. He might have chuckled, but that was clearly with me. My father is not the sort of person who laughs at a guy who's waiting by the side of a major interstate -- by Vermont terms -- for AAA to send a wrecker out to pour three gallons of gas into his tank.

My mother, I believe, was sorely tempted to laugh. But she may have gotten it out of her system before Dad handed the phone to her. We all agreed on the most important -- one could even say central -- points. Namely, that I had done a dumbass thing.

For the most part, I was laughing, and cheerful. When you do something stupid, there's no sense in trying to deny it or trying to mitigate it. You're a dumbass -- end of story

We hung up, and I glanced out at the sunset. It was really beautiful. The trees on one side were still snow covered up at this altitude. The rock face on the other side of me still had long, almost magical white ice shimmering along it, gleaming in the dying sunlight. It was peaceful.

So, I listened to This American Life on my iPod and I waited for rescue.

After another fifteen minutes or so, my phone rang. It rang to the tune of "Angel Dressed in Black" by Warren Zevon, which meant Wednesday was calling.

Wednesday was, first and foremost, concerned that I was safe and help was on the way.

Secondly, she was also in agreement that I had done a dumbass thing. "I tell you not to wait for the light to come on!" she said, somewhere between exasperated and laughing. "I tell you to fill the tank when you get to one quarter!"

Which is true. She has told me this before. And I, with a particularly male sense of smug superiority, have told her that I know my car. I know how far I can stretch it. I know how far I can go without getting into trouble. Don't worry about it.

So. Not only was I a dumbass -- I was a dumbass who did a dumb thing that the woman he loved had specifically cautioned him about. Which is hardcore dumbass.

Weds was reluctant to mock me. I had to insist. Because dude -- I had done a stupid thing. I deserved mockery. I expected mockery. Hell, I expect the comments section under this post to be filled with variations of "Jesus, Eric. You're a dumbass!"

Which, you know, I was.

We elected to hang up, in case I needed cell phone battery power.

I noticed it was full on dark now. A nearly full moon provided most of the illumination. And it was getting cold. I idly remembered that I had noticed there was still snow on the trees and rocks here. Which is another way of saying "it's still winter here, y'moron," And the sun had gone down and it was now night. And I had no heater nor any way of turning the car on.

I bundled under my coat, reflecting on the 60 degree weather I had left.

And noticing that it had been quite a while since I called AAA.

So I called them back. The dispatcher I got this time said that yes indeed, a wrecker had been dispatched, and should be there any time. He (it was a he this time) cheerfully paged the driver, who said he was almost there.

I thanked him and hung up.

And waited.

And waited.

It was very dark indeed. The long road let me see headlights from a far way back, my flashers reflecting off the snow and rocks nearby, once every second and a half, for maybe half a second's time each. And it was quite cold now.

I checked the time. It had been more than an hour since I made the first call. I wasn't listening to This American Life anymore. I had long since made sure to reserve battery power for the hazard lights. Those lights meant cars shooting past me at seventy miles an hour going up the mountain didn't hit me. Those lights meant the wrecker, whenever it showed up, would see me and pull over. Those hazard lights, in other words, were going to get me back on the road before, oh, morning.

My phone rang. The theme from the Rockford Files, which meant my phone didn't know the person calling me.

It was AAA. "Hi!" the dispatcher said. "Our driver can't find you! Can you describe any landmarks?"

"He... can't find me?" I asked, somewhat incredulously. "I'm off the shoulder of the road on an Interstate."

"I know, sir. What can you tell me? Can you see a mile marker? It's a small green side at the side of the road."

I could not. And I knew what mile markers were. "It's a mountain," I said. "I'm roughly halfway up a mountain."

"Can you see any bridges?"

"No... um... I'm halfway up a mountain."

"Because we can usually track locations by bridges."

"No bridges. Sorry."

"Hm. It would help if you could find a mile marker. Could you back your car down the mountain until you pass one?"

I paused for a long moment. "You mean... release my brake, roll backwards in a totally unpowered car in the middle of the night, in hopes I'm close enough to a mile marker to see it?"

"...yes, sir."

So I did.

I believe the white markers without numbers are set a tenth of a mile apart. By that reckoning, I rolled backwards down the mountain for three tenths of a mile before I decided I simply couldn't safely continue. There was no mile marker to be found."

"All right, sir. We'll have the driver keep looking."

It was dark, and cold, and now I was on the nervous side. I was on a highway with literally nowhere I could be except on the side of the road, and AAA couldn't find me. On a mountain. In rural Vermont. With absolutely no means of moving my car.

It occurred to me that I had seen this movie before, and dumbasses in those movies got killed by slashers wearing masks. And if you think that's stupid to think about, you've never been stranded on the side of the road in increasing cold in Vermont waiting for a wrecker to show up for a long period of time.

It also occurred to me that no police cars had happened by. None. I was sitting on the side of the road for an awfully long time, and a police officer would pull over and render assistance if he saw me. That's just part of what police officers do. But none came.

Well, obviously the wrecker finally showed up. What had happened was simple enough. AAA had told him I was between exits 26 and 27, so he'd gotten on the highway at exit 260 and ridden up the road a long way, then didn't find me before the border, so he'd ridden back down south to exit 25, circled around and did it again, and then back down to exit 24.

Exits in Vermont on this stretch of road were about twenty miles apart. He had put a hundred miles on his wrecker trying to find me.

He gave me gas. And jumpstarted the car, the battery so run down that I couldn't have started it myself. I pulled out and drove to my usual gas station. I had been waiting well over an hour and a half. Which added at least that much time to my trip.

And yet, I couldn't be upset at the wrecker driver. He went where AAA said. I couldn't even be upset at AAA. Because in the end, I'm the one who ran out of gas. I had done a dumbass thing. That's not AAA's fault or the wrecker's fault or work's fault. It's just my fault. And you sometimes receive an object lesson about stupidity when you do stupid things.

This trip marked the only time I've ever had a hard time crossing into Canada. The border guard was at the least... curious about a guy who was driving with little luggage to Ottawa -- their nation's capital -- then turning around and coming back the next day. It was many hours to Ottawa from that crossing.

My favorite question he asked, with a certain amount of incredulity, was "why do you have a Canadian girrlfriend?"

I swear to God, I said "I have taste?"

I'm somewhat surprised he didn't search the car then and there.

Needless to say, I got in the country. It was well after one in the morning that I arrived at the house. Frank had gone to bed, but Megs and Weds were both up. Weds was profoundly relieved I was there. And despite friends of hers saying she should hit me with a broom, she elected to be happy and friendly and welcoming.

The next day, as I mentioned, I was overcautious with gasoline. I wanted no more trouble.

Which was no doubt why I got stopped for speeding in Quebec. And thank God Weds was in the car, because not only was I incapable of speaking French to the woman, but I actually managed to say "pardon me, I speak French" to her. I blew my language roll when all I was trying to say was "I don't speak your language."

Dumbass.

Oh, and an hour and a half from home the Check Engine light came on. I'm hopeful that's telling me I need to change my fuel filter or air filter, but I'll get it checked out tomorrow. Certainly the car was running well, regardless.

So. A late trip. An hour and a half plus on a mountainside. A speeding ticket. A check engine light. A Canadian Border Guard who wanted to know why on Earth I would fall in love with a Canadian.

(The American customs agent was just concerned we were planning on getting married while Weds was here in an attempt to keep her in the country. We made it clear that one of our trips was to go to the processing center to do such things legitimately.)

And yet, it is Sunday morning, and my fiancee is sleeping in the next room.

Dumbass or not, I'm a lucky man. And all is right in the world.

Of course, now it's time to eBay a bunch more stuff. As it turns out, Canadian speeding tickets are surprisingly expensive and Christ knows what's wrong with my engine (and whether or not it was caused by someone running out of gas while climbing a long hill).

I'm a dumbass, but I'm honest about it. And I'm home with Weds. And that's pretty nice.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:53 AM | Comments (22)

March 28, 2007

Eric: Quick magic update!

Well. Not five minutes after posting, I got e-mailed by Microsoft. They say that they've removed the incorrect designation, but that "...although we have removed the incorrect designation, it may take up to 24 hours for you to see this change reflected."

So, points to them for rapid response and repair. And if you're an IE7 user and you notice this going past 10:30 Eastern Daylight Time tomorrow, please let me know so I can follow up with them.

In other news, we are at one hour and forty-two minutes before the Websnark Edition Sidewinder auction ends! We're at $50 -- which seems to be a pretty solid bid by someone who clearly wants this. And honestly, I didn't expect this to go as high as fifty bucks as it was, so I'm pretty freaking stoked about it. But if you're going to do an event auction, it might as well be an event auction, so I'm mentioning that we're coming up on the end times for it, and if you actually want my book, my signature, and my terrible sketch of Snarky in a Cowboy Hat -- and want it more than fifty dollars worth -- now is the time to jump in.

Thanks, all! The Extravaganza has been staggeringly successful, people have been extremely cool, and I'm really psyched. I'll try to do non-site, non-auction content later this morning.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:39 AM | Comments (7)

March 27, 2007

Eric: Dude. It's a ZOMBIE ROLE PLAYING GAME.

We are at thirteen hours before the end of the Websnark Edition Sidewinder auction. That's a very cool thing. Soon, it will be over, and someone will have a copy of my game Sidewinder, personalized at their request, signed by me and featuring -- as you'll recall -- a terrible drawing of Snarky wearing a cowboy hat. With hopes it will look cute.

The rest of the Extravaganza has ended, and it has been successful. As said before, I'm going to shoot for more of a comfort level, to try and make sure we don't have a repeat of the conditions which led us here in the first place, which means some more auctions, if anyone is interested in checking them out. That means cheerful auction page goodness for you all! We've got five auctions for today, and we'll have a few more tomorrow.

Highlights include DragonQuest 3rd edition -- this is one of the classics of RPG design and history (and is not a video game, Dragon Quest VII fans), which influenced the design of later games and still has a bunch of people who like it today. There's also the revised edition of All Flesh Must Be Eaten -- one of the best RPGs of the twenty first century, and perhaps the single greatest Zombie Role Playing Game of all time.

Admittedly, there isn't a lot of competition for that.

There's a couple of Star Fleet Battles supplements, for those of you who enjoy military Star Trek campaigns, and the recent Gamma World Player's Handbook (another Bruce Baugh connected product. You'll find I own a lot of things connected to Bruce, because Bruce is brilliant. Heck, he's even GM'd an All Flesh Must Be Eaten game for me. Go figure!)

Enjoy these things, good folks and feel free to bid early and often. As for me... I'm going to keep watching the Sidewinder auction. We're up to fifty dollars, which is at least forty-nine dollars more than my artistic talents is worth, but don't let that discourage you from what will certainly be... well, a unique thing.

Full on post-game wrapup from the Extravaganza tomorrow. The new auctions? Mm. I think we're calling those something else. Like "Eric's auctions" or something. Less targeted "I need money now" and more "I could sure use more money and don't know when I'm ever going to play Star Fleet Battles."

Thank you all.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:51 PM | Comments (12)

March 25, 2007

Eric: Quick updates for those playing along at home!

Hey gang -- the first day of eBay Extravaganza 2007 is coming up to the end of their auctions, and it's looking cool! The current hot item remains Amber Diceless Roleplaying, which as of this writing has just under eight hours of bidding left. We're also way above the Buy it Now price on it, which gives me a certain amount of relief that it didn't go immediately. Clearly, the hunger for Amber is pronounced and significant. Zelazny would be proud.

Also coming up due today, at a lot more reasonable prices, we have the Spycraft d20 system, the Star Trek Roleplaying Game Narrator's Guide, the Star Trek Roleplaying Game Player's Guide, and the Dragonstar d20 Starfarer's Handbook. As of this typing, all four are under fifteen bucks so if you have any inclination, this would be the time! This would be... the time.

I'm debating putting more stuff up. Frankly, this has been amazingly successful -- enough that it's got me thinking about going from 'okay' to 'ahead.' And I generally feel good about doing things like eBay -- I mean, in the end, these are actual products worth something. I don't feel like I'm just out there with hat in hand. (Though folks who did donate during the last few days are astoundingly cool, and I will never think otherwise.) I don't want to cut my nose off to spite my face, but there's a positive side to this kind of housecleaning too.

One game I considered putting up on the block was Sorcerer. This is kind of the poster child of the independent games movement, and one of the first to gain popularity and success outside of the distribution channels of the major labels. It's not going up, in the end, because I reread part of it before putting it up on eBay, and I realized A) it's staggeringly cool and B) I really want to run or play it. So, it gets spared under the "can actually see self playing this game sometime soon" clause. Which, as cool as Dragonstar is, I can't say the same for. On the other hand, I can see myself writing about Sorcerer more completely soon. So, you know, there we are.

If I put up more auction stuff, I'll let you know here. It won't be another Sidewinder or sketch -- best to save those for the right circumstances -- but they might be cool for some folks out there and that's a nice enough thing.

So! Bid early, bid often, be well, have fun!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:58 PM | Comments (2)

March 23, 2007

Eric: Potentially the most humiliating auction of my life. Also, *cowboy hat.*

The eBay Auction Extravaganza 2007 continues to go fantastically, with everything except the d20 version of the Star Wars Roleplaying Game getting at least one bid so far. This is exciting stuff, and I appreciate each and everyone of you. I also find it vaguely amusing that the only item to get no bids to date is probably the one that has had the most advertising and mass marketing, from the largest RPG company. Of course, given the fantastic bidding war on Amber Diceless Roleplaying -- arguably the opposite side of the coin -- perhaps that is to be expected.

And, because folks here have excellent taste, both Wonder Woman: A Complete History and Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed were bought now via Buy it Now for Now-Purchasing-Goodness all around. Those will both be shipped out later today via everyone's friend "Priority Mail." This is seriously cool stuff.

Which brings us today's auction. And yes, it's in the singular. We're just offering one new auction today. As promised (or threatened) yesterday, this is an attempt to... well, offer up one personalized item. One piece of Eric Burns je ne sais quoi, that's more than just "something Eric had on his bookshelf that now he's selling to make up budgetary shortfalls."

Which, to be honest, isn't easy to do. I mean, most of you know me because I'm a blogger. And blogging doesn't produce many... tangible goods. I don't have a file drawer full of blog manuscripts, carefully inked out in illegible scrawl, with line marks and bits of poetry and occasional rude drawings in the margins. I don't have reams of original artwork on bristol board or cardstock or white paper. I don't have much that screams Eric Burns that I'd be willing to sell (or that anyone sane would be willing to buy.)

But... we came up with something. It's a special offer. And it will be pretty old one of a kind.

You see, back in 2002 before Websnark had begun, I was one of the principal authors of Sidewinder: Wild West Adventures, a d20 western role playing game which took the then-newly opened d20/OGL Standard Reference Document and gave it a hickory smoked flavor. The book was highly critically acclaimed, including really nice words by Kenneth Hite, which is as highly acclaimed as you got in those days. And it was nominated for the Best d20 Game ENnie,

I'm seriously proud of Sidewinder. I think it was a great product for its time. I think a lot of it stands up really well five years later. And I'd be pushing it hard if... well, Black Dog Games (and designer Geoff Spakes) hadn't reworked it into Sidewinder: Recoiled a couple of years later. Recoiled takes Sidewinder and reapplies it to the d20 Modern system -- a vast improvement that makes character creation and development greatly improved. Recoiled actually won the Gold ENnie its year. It's a fantastic game and it deserves notice.

I don't talk about Recoiled much. I'm listed as a "contributing author," but my contributions were pretty much limited to "a big chunk of the stuff I did for Sidewinder: Wild West Adventures, including lots of stuff I wrote in the voice of Bat Masterson -- only a good amount of it was rewritten to 'western it up,' which meant that instead of the cool, urbane sportswriter of the 20's whose own Gun Fighters of the Western Frontier was extensively quoted (letting us put Bat's name in the author's credits), we had someone who sounded kind of... well, "prospectory." Less James Arness, more Ken Curtis, in other words.

James Arness. Ken Curtis. Jesus, people, Gunsmoke. It ran twenty seasons on CBS. I-- oh, never mind.

Anyway. I'm going to think that way because I have an ego like everyone else does, but that doesn't change the fact that if you want to do actual historical Western roleplaying, you should buy Sidewinder: Recoiled. It's a damn good game -- better than the one I'm auctioning.

But. This is meant to be a personalized auction, and that's what we're offering here. This is the Websnark edition of Sidewinder: Wild West Adventures. And that's very different indeed!

Well, sort of.

What you get is one of my Author's Copies of Sidewinder: Wild West Adventures. Furthermore -- I will sign that copy. And personalize it to you however you want... well, within the limits of good taste and space on the inside front cover. Oh, this might mean the front cover is a bit more wrinkled, too, since I have to open it up to do this.

Now, you're sitting there, and you're thinking "so what. A signature we'll barely be able to read and he'll write my name? Big freaking deal, blogger boy." And I agree. This would be the lamest auction ever to be auctioned if that was the deal.

But there is more. Much much mo-- well, there's more.

You see... in addition to the signature... in addition to the personalizing elements... I will include a never before seen, never before attempted, never before composed unique sketch of Websnark icon Snarky himself!

Wearing a cowboy hat.

That's right. I'm going to draw Snarky wearing a cowboy hat on the inside front cover of this book.

And it's going to be terrible.

Seriously, I'm going to do my best. I'm going to take my time and draw it just as best as I possibly can. But I'm a hideously bad artist, and I'm not going to do any practice runs. And I've never actually drawn Snarky. I've also never drawn a cowboy hat. This is going to look like something a developmentally disabled five year old with poor motor control would draw.

But I'll at least try to make it cute.

So. My ENnie Nominated d20 game. My signature. Personalized however you wish. And my first ever attempt to draw our mascot Snarkasaurus. Wearing a cowboy hat to boot.

That's the auction you'll find here.

You will note, the opening bid is ninety nine cents. I do not overestimate the collectablity of this piece.

Mostly, I figure this will be fun. Someone out there will probably want this for a few bucks. And it's certainly going to be unique, and we might as well have a good time here in the auction. And this is definitely a "personal piece."

So, bid early, bid often, keep an eye on the other auctions and let's see where we go with this.

And don't forget... the drawing will be terrible.

So don't claim I lied, later on.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:55 PM | Comments (13)

March 22, 2007

Eric: The Auctioneer's Ballad, and other songs, all on this K-Tel collection for $13.99, not sold in any store....

Day one of the eBay Extravaganza 2007 went phenomenally. There's lots of bidding, and a bunch of things were Bought Now via Buy It Now, the number one purveyor of Now-Buying on the web today.

Needless to say, all this is immeasurably helpful. As were those folks who went above and beyond the call of duty and hit the Paypal Tip Jar. You guys are amazing, and I hope each and every one of you wins a late model automobile in a radio contest.

Right now, one of the hottest bidding wars (for some value of 'hot bidding war') is on Amber Diceless Roleplaying, which is all the more remarkable given that I didn't even mention it in yesterday's post. I guess one shouldn't underestimate the sheer power of remarkably innovative out of print games with devoted fans and a lot of people talking about them.

But... I suppose we could have guessed that.

Also hot on the bidding wars are Adventure, which makes sense. It's a fantastic game, full of pulp goodness, and not nearly enough copies sold. And Cute & Fuzzy Cockfighting Seizure Monsters is doing Emily K. Dresner-Thornber proud so far!

And every item put up for auction yesterday now has at least one bid. Even Dragonstar! Which... is... quite nice! Really!

And four items (Mage, Trinity, the Aurora Australis Sourcebook, and Big Eyes, Small Mouth) were grabbed through Buy it Now, which is fantastic. Those four items are all in the hands of the United States Postal Service, and in three cases should make it to their new homes within a day or three, and in one case is going to Canada so "Hell if I know when it'll get there. It's Global Priority but hey -- customs."

We're pushing forward, as we said we would. The Extravaganza now has five new auctions. For those folks who asked if there would be any non Role Playing Game materials, we now have Wonder Woman: The Complete History -- a beautiful hardcover book that combines archival images and the most complete illustration of Wonder Woman's career and cultural influence I've seen. If you're a serious student of comics and how they've changed since 1941 -- and how Wonder Woman has changed with them -- it's a great grab.

If you're not a serious student of that stuff, at least one of the photos in the book is of Lynda Carter chained up by Nazis.

Look, you advertise your eBay auctions the way you want to, and let me advertise my eBay auctions the way I want to.

Also in the pot are a pristine copy of the d20 version of Silver Age Sentinels and a copy of the end of the Werewolf: The Apocalypse game line, Apocalypse: Time of Judgment. Which means the overall theme of "stuff from White Wolf and Guardians of Order" seems to be intact.

Possibly the most interesting of the new auctions, however, is Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed: A Variant Player's Handbook. Cook was one of the principal designers of Third Edition Dungeons and Dragons, and is probably one of the best Wizards of the Coast Alumni developers out there. When the Open Gaming License and the Standard Reference Document were released, paving the way for independent development of D&D compatible supplements which proved to be the most significant trend in tabletop role playing for several years. Most people flocked to the d20 licensed brand for their stuff, but the d20 licensed brand wasn't open per se, and it had restrictions placed on it -- most notably, you couldn't put character creation rules or level advancement rules in your supplement, and you had to put a notice requiring a core rulebook from Wizards of the Coast on your front cover. Pretty sneaky, sis.

Well, Cook was one of the first people to publish a major, hardcover rulebook under the Open Gaming License but without the d20 brand. When he calls Arcana Unearthed a variant Player's Handbook -- he means it. You don't need squat from Wizards of the Coast to play his game. And his game is itself a really cool alternate look at fantasy gaming, sans Tolkienesque high fantasy, elves, or Fritz Leiber lurking in Lankmarhan shadows.

So, you know. Give me money for it. It's good.

A few people expressed concern that they couldn't bid. I'll state for the record what I told them -- there is no worries if you can't bid. Things are tight right now, but my house isn't on fire. If there were an emergency, I'd have called for donations and posted a youtube video of myself sobbing, mascara running down my face. (Actually, I suspect the threat of posting such a video would cause more people to donate to keep me from doing it than the converse.) What I'm doing is selling things to hopefully good homes and getting money to get out of a tight spot. And it's working very well, and I'm very happy so far. And I hope folks are excited to get their Stuff from me when they do.

I had some other folks wish I'd put Webcomics Related Swag up for auction. Which isn't likely to happen, I'm sorry to say. The vast majority of the webcomics related stuff I've got were presents from people or were personalized by those people to me, and I think my turning around and selling it would lack grace. (Which is also why my West End Games edition of The Star Wars Roleplaying Game got spared. I rifled through it to check condition and found the long forgotten note written by Matthew DeForrest, old friend and sometimes reviewer for Pyramid Magazine on the inside cover. So, that thing stays on the shelf.)

Still other folks wish I'd put something specific to me up. Which is hard for a writer to do. Especially one who does all his compositional work on a computer. I can't auction off "manuscript pages" -- they just look like laser printings, because they are. Original artwork for John Stark doesn't exist, as it's all composed on the computer. Original art for Unfettered By Talent is nowhere to be found, and probably not all that exciting to prospective buyers if it were. And Gossamer Commons ain't my artwork.

But, bouncing the idea off Wednesday, we think we have come up with... one auction we could do that's more an "Eric Burns" auction than "random stuff that's coming from Eric Burns's eBay address."

More on that tomorrow. For today, enjoy delicious auctioneering! And a real post should soon follow this one.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:22 PM | Comments (8)

March 21, 2007

Eric: Amazing eBay Auction Information Below! Also, a tale of *woe!* Seriously, go buy some of my crap.

Something Positive!

(From Something Positive! Click on the excerpt for complete Special Friends! And click on this here link to go to my eBay auction page, which is what all this is about. I'm afraid I don't talk about Something Positive at all. It's a transparent lie in hopes you'll actually read this thing and be hooked by my pathos school of salesmanship.)

Things had been going pretty well.

Seriously, they had. Oh, the month had started out kind of... rocky, shall we say. An insurance bill turned out to be... well, double what was anticipated, which led to... well, let's just say in twelve or thirteen years I'll laugh and laugh.... It would be fine. things would be okay. I could scrimp and save, make it to midmonth, get things back on track -- no problem.

Hah hah hah.

So here's the thing. I go to a convenience store (and having shortfalls begin to look not so short). And I buy some things. About eight dollars worth, all told. And I used my Paypal debit card, because I'd moved some of my Project Wonderful money down onto it. Fine and dandy. eight dollars of Project Wonderful cash going to my driving need for basic staples, pretzels and Propel brand fitness water.

And then came the weekend, and the notice from Paypal that my latest debit card purchase had gone through, and it had deducted the balance from my funding source -- IE, my bank account.

And I blinked, thinking "that shouldn't be...." And looked into just how much got charged....

Well, let's just say it was three figures. Yeah, as in 'hundred.' But in the convenience store's defense, it was really good Propel.

I freaked out. I mean, full on freaked out. Because my bank account had claims on it. And I had been good, God Damn it! Living frugal! The closest thing to an unnecessary expense all month had been going to a convenience store for milk and grabbing a drink and snack food while I was at it, instead of a full on store. I'm not on trial here!

Needless to say, I had words with the convenience store. And they were very, very apologetic. You see, there was a computer glitch, and essentially everyone who used a credit card or debit card that day, for gas or 'other,' ended up being charged in the hundreds. It was an accident, and the company was going through, one by one, and crediting peoples' cards back. Which of course would take time, because they had hundreds of customers that day (and that's assuming it was only one day's worth that went through before it got caught) and all the edits and returns had to be done by hand.

Which was all fine and good, only it takes three business days for returned money to clear, and there was no promise on how quickly or not quickly the process will take in the first place. Leaving your gentle author "screwed."

And, you know. You deal with it. As best you can, you deal with it. But it comes down to this. Even after I get the actual money back, I need to up my cashflow for the month. Project Wonderful has helped but only so much.

And I looked around myself, and I knew it was time to start putting Role Playing Games and the like up on eBay.

This is a hard thing to do, mind. A gaming geek lives by the depth of his collection. It's his bookshelf-based codpiece, used to shield himself from the slings and arrows of fellow geeks. But the simple fact is, a good number of those games are going unused -- and always will go unused. They might as well be set free into the world, where all can see and partake and enjoy and give me money.

So. eBay Extravaganza 2007 can be found here. These are the first of the things I've put up. Over the next few days, lots more will be going up. The stuff I'm selling is mostly in pristine condition, which tells you a few things.

You'll notice there isn't In Nomine stuff in here. Nor is there GURPS stuff just yet. It's always possible I'll get hired to write more (and almost certain I will play more) in such things, so they stay on the shelf. There's a lot here that I'll miss, though. In part, because of their connection to friends or to my own history. For example, I've got Mage (revised edition) up on the block -- an edition edited and developed by Jess Heinig -- a great guy and my former editor on the Star Trek Roleplaying Game. But then, I've also got my Narrator's Guide and Player's Guide for the Star Trek Roleplaying Game itself going up, Great, beautiful books, but they have to go, so I'm kicking them to the curb. Time they bring money home to Papa Bear.

Or there's Trinity, Aberrant, the astoundingly cool and vastly underrated Adventure: Tales of the Aeon Society, and the highly regarded but rare Trinity: Aurora Australis. I have a pack of friends who worked on those, most notably Bruce Baugh -- maybe my closest RPG developer friend outside of the tight knit In Nomine community. I want to hold onto this stuff for Bruce, for Doc Blue, for Kali, and for many, many others... but in the end, I don't play them. And they're really cool. And they should go to people who're interested and maybe psyched, and who want to give me a whole lot of money for them.

You want to know how serious I am? I've got Emily Dresner-Thornber's Cute & Fuzzy Cockfighting Seizure Monsters on here! Not only is Em an old friend, but Jesus people -- this is Cute & Fuzzy Cockfighting Seizure Monsters. A supplement so on target in its satire of Pokémon and all its slave trade ilk that Guardians of Order, makers of Big Eyes, Small Mouth and publishers of the supplement had to produce a vanilla, family friendly version just to get a bunch of the brick and mortar retailers to stock the thing!

Honest to Christ. Cute & Fuzzy Cockfighting Seizure Monsters! You should be clicking on that link right now!

More's going up over the next day or two -- I've got both the d20 version and the original West End Games versions of the Star Wars Roleplaying Game eyeing me, plus a bunch of cool games and supplements that only eighteen people have heard of in North America. And assuming anyone actually bids on this stuff, I'll be just fine. And sooner or later, the stupid bastards at the convenience store corporate headquarters will give me my money back and all will be well in Frogtown.

But for now? Buy things.

Please.

And click on the people who are advertising with me. They're good people. And they bought me ramen noodles and canned tomatoes earlier this week.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:02 PM | Comments (20)

January 29, 2007

Eric: All this said, even after all this time I'd wait in the cold for a ROM Spaceknight. But we knew that.

On friday, temperatures were below zero, especially in the early parts of the morning. Saturday was also bitterly cold. Sunday, on the other hand, saw a spike of temperature, up to a practically balmy 18 degrees Fahrenheit as of 4:45 in the morning.

I was standing in that cold. It was approximately four and three quarters hours since my 39th birthday had ended, and I was spending that first morning waiting outside a WalMart in Windham, Maine. A WalMart that would be selling 19 Nintendo Wiis at 6 am. And I was not alone.

I am not a passionate gamer. Not really. I loves me some City of Heroes as you all know, and I'm forever beholden to Soulcalibur and its ilk, but for the most part I'm a casual gamer. I do not own an XBox 360, and currently I do not plan to buy one. I do not own a Playstation 3, and as near as I can tell no one who doesn't already own one plans to buy one of those. They sit on the shelves next to excited handwritten signs declaring that they are in stock, and people just sort of shrug. There is something to be said for the additional muscle these 'next generation' consoles have, but almost every review I've seen for almost every game released for them is the same -- the graphics are generally slightly prettier (though to be honest, it doesn't look that different to me. I've never cared about being able to see the sweat on a game avatar), but the games play exactly the same way as their lastgen versions did. The same button combinations, the same moves, the same modes. And all too often, the games lack some of their predecessors' functionality. For no good reason I watch XPlay, and review after review they go over this is essentially the same game as Madden was on the original XBox, only with slightly better graphics and fewer game modes. And so forth.

That will change, by the by. Games like Gears of War couldn't have effectively existed on the original XBox, and as developers get comfortable with the greater power and capacity of the XBox 360, the games they release will become bigger and grander. Which is all fine and good for the serious gamer, but of less interest to the casual gamer. As for the Playstation 3? At this point, it almost doesn't matter what they do. It's had the kiss of death in the popular culture -- it's considered lame. Half the people (it seemed) who waited on line to get one turned around and sold it on eBay for a profit, and now no one's into them at all. When prices get slashed way down, they may regain share, but I wouldn't count on it.

The Nintendo Wii, on the other hand, is a casual gamer's dream machine. It's innovative. It doesn't have the graphical power of the other nextgens, but in part that's because they decided to make the console more fun instead. It was the Christmas must-have. It continues to sell out whenever it becomes available.

Which is why, two months after the system release, I was standing in the cold for one.

I wasn't alone. There were a good number of others waiting too. High school and college guys who didn't luck out before. Parents (and grandparents) trying to make good on Christmas promises. A couple of little kids who were so excited you could power a turbine with them. Every new person who showed up kind of chuckled, too. "I'm glad I'm not the only one," was the common refrain. "I was gonna feel ridiculous if I was the only one."

At the same time, there was a way I was the only one. I was neither a late teens/early twenties guy, nor a parent or grandparent, nor a ten year old kid. I was a full adult, waiting in the cold for a toy. For myself. For my birthday.

Which might be 39 in a nutshell.

This is your last chance. Your last shot. Right now, I'm still thirtysomething without kids. I'm not beholden. I can cling to the extended adolescence that has been the hallmark of my generation -- the first generation of Generation X. I don't have to be all the way grown up just yet. I can still get excited for a new toy. I can still wait in the cold to buy it. I can still drag my amused parents on a pre-dawn quest. (Which was nice, as they could run to Tim Hortons and grab me coffee.)

The time came. There was acrimony as it looked like they opened other doors first and there was the possibility of line jumping. The doors opened. There was a mad dash to electronics. And everyone who waited got a Wii. (Though the first guy in line -- who sent his 12 year old son at a full on sprint to be the first to the electronics counter -- wanted to buy all 19. The WalMart employee just snickered, said "one to a customer sir," and moved on to the next.)

I bought my Wii. I didn't get any additional games or the like, just then. I wanted to try it out on its own merits. And I was in no way disappointed. The Wii is fun. We brought it back to my folks' house and set it up. We downloaded patches. We created Miis. And we bowled. And I was stunned at how... well, good the bowling was. My mother, who became disenchanted with video games after Zelda went 3D and the maze games of the Ladybug era were phased out, happily did the same kind of bowling dances you do at actual alleys when she did well. And the bowling went exactly as bowling always does for me. I do really well for four or five throws, and then I overthink it and it becomes harder. My Dad hooked to the right generally, too. And all that just amazed me.

Boxing? Really cool. Tennis? A lot of fun. Baseball kind of bored me, but golf was okay. All in all, it was a fun thing. A good thing. A good game that everyone enjoyed.

Tonight, I'm going to buy my first real game for it. (Not counting The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past that I downloaded off of virtual console last night, of course.) Everyone tells me I should grab the new Zelda, and of course I will. I love Zelda. But the thing that really, really stood out for me was how much fun the party game aspect was -- so I'm thinking I'll grab WiiPlay or Warioware -- quick, easy and fun games that don't take long and really use the Wiimote and the like.

Next year, I'll be forty. Chances are likely I'll have a wife and household. I trust I'll still enjoy fun, but I don't anticipate I'll wait in line at four forty-five for a toy, no matter how cool it is.

But this year? I got the best toy on Earth for my birthday, and that just plain rocks.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:54 PM | Comments (26)

January 25, 2007

Eric: On having a research department, even when they don't know it.

A couple of days ago, I caught a story.

This happens to me. I'll be walking or driving along, and something will occur to me, and I'll decide "huh." And the next thing I know I've got an opening, at least twelve scenes and a denouement in my brain, trying to claw their way out. And, because I was cursed by influenced by Hard Science Fiction, I then need to... oh, you know, do real honest to Christ research on the subject in question.

Now, this is not science fiction. If anything, it's Magical Realism, set in today's world. Something very Sean Stewart, with a soupçon of Hal Duncan for good measure.

What?

Soupçon.

It's a word.

Yes, it's originally from the French, but it's an actual, honest to Christ in-Webster's word now. It means "smidge."

No I couldn't "just say smidge." Jesus.

Anyway.

Lost my train of thought.

Oh, right. The story. It's a very contemporary story, and it's meant to actually be a road trip sort of story. In fact, it's meant to be a shunpiking story. Shunpiking isn't in Webster's but it's a fantastic word which should be. It means "avoiding major highways and interstates and turnpikes in lieu of back roads, secondary roads and the like." It means taking the remnants of old Route 66 instead of the thruway. It means driving through small towns and places instead of bypassing them.

That's what this story needs.

So I want to do it right. So I have a starting point and an ending point. And I have an internet. And if you look at our friend Mapquest, they have an "avoid Highways" feature to them! Score!

Only... said feature only works for trips of 250 miles or less. And even with interstates and highways, it estimates the trip I'm describing as over 2,700 miles.

Now, going step by step, leg by leg in 250 mile jumps is one solution to this problem. But it's not a good solution. See, the only way to effectively do that is to chart your course via interstates and then select waypoints along the way. You can then tell it to give you a shunpiker's route between those waypoints. The problem is, it's entirely possible that if you shunpiked across the country you'd end up far away from where the highways run, through the dead areas between major interstates. By using the highways as your guide, you end up less shunpiking and more tacking around the direct route -- you still end up passing through the major points serviced by those highways. It's just less convenient for you.

I checked the other driving direction services online, and as near as I can tell, those services don't even have a shunpiking function.

So, I've spent the last several days wrestling with this -- in my brain. I've been trying to either find a new service or find software that might do it without being unreasonably expensive for what, in the end, is going to be a single use or... I don't know. Something. Because I really, really want to do this right, and I don't see any good way to do it electronically.

This morning, the solution hit me. It had the triple advantage of not costing me anything (at least anything additional), giving me the route I specifically want, and providing me monumental amounts of research on the side, thus saving me time elsewhere in this process.

See, I'm a Triple-A member. I have been... well, practically forever. And once upon a time, before GPSes and the Internet, they were my route planners. If you're a member, you can call them up any time and order a triptik -- a printed series of flip maps with your route highlighted in orange highlighter, that someone has painstakingly mapped out for you.

I haven't used them for this in years. Between things like Mapquest and GPSes, I have lots more convenient ways to find routes to where I'm going. I'm sure they've had a sharp decline in these services over the years.

But now I had a project my GPS and Internet couldn't help me with.

So I called my member service number (not the roadside assistance number), and talked to a travel agent. And she cheerfully took the information I wanted down. I told her about the shunpiking, and she told me she could arrange all secondary and back roads with no problem at all -- where possible, anyway. And she offered to send along state maps and tour guide books with tons of additional information. All, of course, at no charge. I am a member, after all.

It is worth occasionally remembering that as wonderful as our Internet is, there are times the good old fashioned way is vastly better.

Things have been nuts. Catching up begins now. Rock on, dudes.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:34 AM | Comments (23)

January 18, 2007

Eric: Completely random Necropost.

Hey all. This is random because I'm up to my neck right at the moment.

However, for the record? Apple Premium Repair Dispatch has unexpected hold music. Wakefield's "Say You Will" just passed by, and now it's Tori Amos's "A Sorta Fairytale." Which makes for an odd state of mind while you try to find out if your onsite repair service tech is stuck in an ice storm or not.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:06 AM | Comments (24)

January 17, 2007

Eric: So, how was *your* weekend?

Ursula's Snarky!

It's two fifty-six in the afternoon on Tuesday. At 1:14 I watched Wednesday step through the door onto the accessway of her plane to Philadelphia and her Canadian transfer. The Manchester Airport was built to be airy and pleasant and accessible, and the security precautions of the last six years have only moderately changed that. Bulletproof Lexan between me and her didn't blunt my line of sight of her, and cell phones mean being able to talk right up until.

Which is sappy, I realize, but you have to understand. We do this entirely too often. I drive up to Ottawa, we have a great time, and then I have to climb back into my car and drive away, and neither of us really want that. She comes down here, and we settle into a routine that's warm and inviting, satisfying and pleasant. And then she has to leave. That's the part I'm not too fond of.

It was mitigated, of course, by the knowledge that there's just so much longer we have to do this. I asked, she said yes. We're engaged. And that makes a difference.

My friend and panelmate from Arisia, The Ferrett, says I shouldn't call her my fiancee -- and that she shouldn't call me the same. "You might as well just get started calling her your wife," he said. "Since you're getting over calling her your girlfriend anyway. Why relearn the habit after the marriage?" And I can see his point. At the same time, it's actively fun to call her my fiancee right now. It's like trying on a new jacket, and running your hand over the nape of the fabric. At some point you become used to it and then inured to it, but at first it's just cool. Why wouldn't I want that same experience again after the ceremony takes place?

As for when the ceremony takes place -- well, that's a darn good question. We're not looking for a particularly long engagement, but the details aren't really up to us. Despite the fact that we were born less than four hours away from each other by the driving of the automobile... despite the fact that we grew up with the same local television channels, the same cultural referents, the same potato-driven interruptions of the standard calendar and the same freaking weather, we are considered foreign to one another, and our respective governments must process, acknowledge and ultimately approve of our getting married. Until we know what Immigration has to say about our Visa applications (which haven't yet been filed, due to total lack of time since the weekend to do so), we won't know when she'll be let into the country to live with me. And by the nature of the Fiancee Visa, we will then need to get married within 90 days after she has been. That is the rule, and we will abide.

Which probably means a small and nigh-perfunctory civil ceremony, followed by a fully planned out reception et al with invitations and starchy clothes and wedding registries and all the fun that is getting married. And that will be cool, but we can't very well set dates for any of it.

Knowledgeable people who have passed the bar have told us this is the way to go, by the by. It is easier and faster to get the fiancee visa approved than it is to actually get a wife into the country.

(Before someone asks -- yeah, we're looking at her moving here. It makes more sense, given our current employment circumstances. Naturally, if someone reading this wants to give her a Canadian dream job, we will both be pleased and reconsidering our plans. Though it is worth noting we like our domestic circumstance in America.)

Three forty-one, and I've managed to find the thing causing bigass trouble to our RSS feed. I predict a veritable flood of stuff, followed perhaps by another spike of traffic. We're probably moving to Project Wonderful soon, ad-wise (it just makes sense), and it has been noted that we should really have done so back on Thursday or Friday, before the wedding announcement. It has been a mind-numbingly large amount of traffic since then (six figures of pageviews, easily. Which is very, very cool all around). And there is something to be said for that, but... well, on balance I'm glad I didn't. I didn't propose to Weds as part of a ratings stunt or a moneymaking venture, and the amazing people who pitched in and helped out didn't do so to make us money. Better to do the switch when things are settled back to normal, which will happen soon enough. If people bid on our ads based on traffic patterns, they should have accurate information about those traffic patterns.

Some people have asked me about traffic since I came back, it's worth noting. Well, we were up well over 60,000 pageviews a day at our peak. 2006 eroded that significantly, and rightfully so. Since the traffic's gone back up, we've moved to between 20,000 and 30,000 pageviews. I anticipate a moderately slow increase, unlikely to hit the same peaks as the past, ignoring for the moment something like this past weekend. Certainly, the weekend didn't hurt overall traffic, despite my now having to make up essays I missed.

Which brings up one of the amazing sides of all of this. The response to the proposal has been staggering. Weds and I have been downright delighted with the comments and responses and calls of "Dude" and "Merf" and "Woot" all over the web. On Sunday, we sat for a while in an internet cafe, waiting for some friends of hers to join us for fast nosh and squeeing and the like. We did vanity searches and Technorati searches and giggled at comments and acted... well, like a pair of giddy kids who just got engaged in front of the freaking planet. People have been fantastic, and we are really, really touched. And thank you all.

Phil Kahn!

A special thank you should also go to Phil Kahn. Phil agreed at the 11th hour to be the emergency "fill in" guy, just in case one of the last panels couldn't make it. He also penned an 18th panel to go after the whole thing, but I didn't receive it before we went down to Arisia, and the bandwidth and network at Arisia were so spotty I couldn't get it uploaded. I include it here, so you can pretend it followed the Milholland Money Shot Cliffhanger. Phil is a dude.

But so many people are dudes. Not the least of which is Ursula Vernon, who happily provided a new Snarky which I then didn't think to add to the comic either. I include it up above (though viewers of the video broadcast got to see it). Along with all the other artists in question -- the artwork, some black and white, some color, all essentially springing forth from their brains (for the record, my stage directions to everyone were "Eric standing and smiling as he talks," which means every nuance, every reference, every detail and every cool thing in those panels were put in by the artists themselves) was perfect. It brought Weds to tears when she saw it, in a very good way.

Okay, so I cried too. Give me a break -- I'm sentimental.

Everyone I contacted was supportive and happy. (Two never responded, it's worth noting, but I assume that means nothing but that spam filters can be overzealous -- it's happened way too often to me.) Of everyone who did respond, only one artist opted out, and that was schedule based -- he had just way too much stuff to do, but he wished us well.

Another fast note, this time on the ring. One or two people noticed the ring in the Milholland Money Shot Proposal panel had a red stone instead of a white one. Neither Weds nor I are partial to white diamonds (and we both find the "two months salary" thing absurd -- if I'm going to spend enough money for a car or computer on my fiancee, we're going to get a car or a computer), so we went with sentimental and meaningful to us instead of cold.

There was some discussion among my family, by the by, of my using a diamond that had been my grandmother's. So it's not sheer economics that caused us to eschew the thing. We could easily have had full on bling -- and classy bling at that -- had it been the direction we wanted to go in. Weds and I had been talking for some time about 'hypothetical' rings, and that was the guide I followed. The metal is titanium (Weds has some metal reaction issues with jewelry, and besides -- titanium is the geek's platinum when it comes to engagement rings). The central stone is garnet, which is why the ring stone is red. We also have smaller black diamonds on it, which look cool. And in the end, don't you want this thing to look cool?

Which brings up one other thing -- one or two people have asked what would have happened if Weds had wanted to say no, and here I was being so public. Well, the simple fact is, Weds and I had discussed marriage often. I hadn't asked her to marry me, but there was more than a little discussion on the finer points of Immigration Law, rings and "what we should do if we ever got married." I am a firm believer that you shouldn't ask someone to marry you if you're not pretty old certain of their answer to begin with.

Did that mean the proposal was risk free? Of course not. But she said yes and spent the rest of the day... well, weekend... deliriously happy. I conclude it was well done.

We fast forward (in one sense) to ten fourteen p.m. On Wednesday. This is the sort of thing that "just happens." I ran out of power at Panera. I climbed in the car. I drove home. And....

...well, I coped. The apartment is quiet when it's me and the cat. And I was exhausted. The trip, the con, the engagement... everything. I dozed, I talked with Weds on the phone, we tried to get the Slingbox working (by now we've succeeded in that) and then a night's sleep, an ultra-early morning, a day's work and catchup, a four hour theater rehearsal. ("So look out for me! Oh muddy water! Your mysteryyyyyyyyy's both deep and wide!") I got home and crashed again, this time for a couple of hours, easily.

Of course, there was something else to report from work today. See, I had a very... um... public proposal. Which means that someone posted a link on the school's Firstclass server. Which means everyone at the school had seen it.

I've worked here for just shy of nine full years. In that time I've never walked into the dining hall only to have the students applaud. I could get used to that. The cast of the play did the same, later on.

It's nice. It's very nice. And I'm surprised to realize how differently I feel now. My status has changed. I'm an engaged man. A fiance. I have a fiancee of my own. That's stunning.

And it's wonderful.

The massive "makeup posts" start tomorrow. There's lots of stuff to talk about. Lots of strips I thought were cool. Lots of things.

But as for me, for now? I'm tired again. Night, all.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:59 PM | Comments (33)

January 13, 2007

Eric: Submitted Without Comment: The Most Important Post I Will Ever Make

As most of you know, the "submitted without comment" posts I do are generally me uploading some reference to a strip where Websnark is referenced (directly or not) or Weds and I appear, or something like that. So it is with today.

The joke -- and I use the term as loosely as I possibly can -- is that I always comment extensively on those posts. Parenthetically.

Well, I'm commenting on this one, and I'm doing it directly. There is a full comic strip behind the cut at the bottom. (Why is there a cut? The strip is seventeen panels long. I don't hate everyone reading this.

Said comic strip has been produced by something of a supergroup of webcomics professionals. It's like Abba, that way. And it's also available -- for those who might be interested in sound and music and effects -- as a complete Quicktime MP4 file. An MP4 which, at the specific time this post automatically appears in queue, will be being presented at my Arisia panel "The Best Webcomics You're Not Reading."

A panel, it's worth noting, Wednesday is also at. This is important, which you will see momentarily.

As a side note, my thanks to the Arisia programming staff, and to fellow panelists Rob Balder of Partially Clips, Ferrett Steinmetz of Home on the Strange, and Kelly J. Cooper of Comixpedia, who helped set this whole kurfluffle up.

I also need to thank Ursula Vernon, Scott Kurtz, Greg Holkan, David Willis, Rich Burlew, Peter Venables, Josh Lesnick, Chris Crosby, Howard Tayler, Kristofer Straub, Frank "Damonk" Cormier, Brad Guigar, Darren "Gav" Bleuel, Jon Rosenberg, Shaenon Garrity, Meaghan Quinn, and the master of funk himself, Randy Milholland.

Also, my thanks to Bill Mallonee (formerly of Vigilantes of Love) for his permission to use his song on the MP4.

So. Behind the cut....

Submitted Without (Further) Comment.

(Wow.)

GAH! Corrected Rich Burlew's entry! It is now on there.

Oh. By the by?

She said yes.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:01 PM | Comments (149)

January 10, 2007

Eric: Portentious!

This was a day of too much activity, though none of it was bad. Technical problems to be dealt with early. Things at work. Play rehearsals (I'm in Big River, and I get to be eeeeeeevil). And then a trip to Maine and dinner with my folks. I ate Bison and Bacon with cheese. And then shopping, and....

You get my point. This was a day of a fast note.

For the record, however, there is Arisia this weekend. Weds and I will be there, at various webcomics things. I will let you know more soon.

I will mention to snarkoleptics in the Bay State area that the 3 PM panel "The Best Webcomics You Aren't Reading" should be an excellent time. The Ferrett of Home on the Strange will be there, along with veterans myself and Weds, Kelly J. Cooper and Rob Balder from last year's. Seriously, if you're reading these words and you're at Arisia, go to this panel.

Off! To bed!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:59 PM | Comments (9)

December 13, 2006

Eric: An unreasonably warm rain

It is a rainy day in New Hampshire. Rainy and unseasonably warm. Yesterday, I had been in Maine with my family, and my sister had been looking through the newspaper for the week's upcoming weather. "They say it's going to be unreasonably warm," she said, misreading. It got a laugh. Perhaps you had to be there.

We had gotten together the night before, because that's what you do when someone passes away. The family gathers. We felt oddly, more than anything. We had known that Grammie would die, sooner or later. She had been in decline, mentally, for many years, to the point where she couldn't walk or speak, though her body remained healthy. Healthy for a 96 year old, anyhow. It had turned into staying overnight, and then getting up the next morning and doing many things. For one, I hadn't had a chance to view the body. If I didn't attend to it that day, I wouldn't have another opportunity, and it was important to me.

That was yesterday. Today, it was raining. And it did indeed seem unreasonably warm.

Death is too much with us.

It was midday when I got pinged by a friend. Not the kind of friend who reads Livejournal, mind. Or at least, not my Livejournal. He didn't know about any recent events in my life, or the extended life of my family. He didn't read the Portland Press Herald either. He didn't see the notices -- not even the paper's story declaring my grandmother the "featured obituary of the day," which made us all pretty happy. He didn't read the actual obituary we put together, my mother, my sister and myself, bouncing wording back and forth...

Madeleine Ames Chicoine
WINDHAM -- Madeleine passed away peacefully Dec. 11, 2006. She was born March 26, 1910, the daughter of Forest J. and Lizzie (Mann) Marsh in North Gorham, Maine.
She attended schools in North Gorham and graduated from Windham High School in 1928. In 1929 she married Philip L. Ames of Windham. They eventually moved to Portland where they resided until Philip's death in 1960.

"Martin Nodell died," my friend told me.

"I know. I'd heard." I was a bit absent as we spoke.

"I thought maybe you'd write about it. You write nice remembrances."

"Do I?" I thought about my mother, my sister and I , talking about the right wording, trying to distill Grammie's life appropriately. Succinctly.

"Yeah. I mean, he was a big deal. I mean, he wasn't a big deal, but he should have been."

"This might not be the right week for it," I said, not wanting to seem insensitive.

"He created Green Lantern, you know. The original. Alan Scott."

I allowed as I did know.

"You know, you never wrote about Dave Cockrum either," he said. "That surprised me. I mean, you're such a Legion fan and all."

"It's been an odd time," I said. "I've been tired, and busy."

"Yeah, well. I was just surprised is all. I wanted to see what you'd say about them."

"Them?"

"Cockrum and Nodell."

"Oh."

"They deserve notice," he persisted. "Don't you think they deserve notice?"

Twenty four hours before, we stood in the family home on the lake -- the property I grew up visiting my grandmother on. It was bitterly cold inside the house, where the heat and lights were off, a mute testament to its unoccupied state. "It's colder in a barn than out," Mom said. I stood in the house while my mother and sister were looking over clothing. We needed to find something appropriate for Grammie. Well, they did. Dad was downstairs, putting the electricity on so we could get some lights. And I was wandering, a little bit. Looking around.

"Yeah," I answered in the here and now. "They deserve notice."

Madeleine was an energetic homemaker and dedicated gardener. Within her community she was a Cub Scout den mother, a member of the PTA and the Deering Band Mothers Club, and a founding member of the Suburban Club. Her children grown, she worked over the years as a clerk and manager at Len Libby's, Sears, and several other retail stores.

The Golden Age Green Lantern stood out, even among the lurid heroes of the Justice Society of America. His story was lush and rich -- Alan Scott, broadcaster, had his life saved by a magical lantern, carved from the stone of the Starheart into first an ancient lantern, then recarved into a train lantern by a man suffering from brain damage. Three times the Starheart burned. Once to bring death. Once to bring life. And once to bring power. Alan Scott was the recipient of that third fire -- a fire that became the light of the Green Lantern. He wielded that flame through a mystic ring that gave him almost unlimited power. Only the natural world -- in particular, plants and wood -- was impervious to the power of the Green Lantern.

I remember my first encounter with the Green Lantern. It was at my cousin Cory's house. He had a comic book which featured "two classic stories of the Golden Age Green Lantern." On the cover, the Hal Jordan Green Lantern was looking with shock and amazement at the scenes of his Earth-2 predecessor -- no doubt to remind the reader that yes indeed, this was Hal Jordan's comic book. We're just bringing you a different Green Lantern this month.

I was maybe five. Maybe six. I don't remember. I had never seen Hal Jordan before. I didn't bother to pay attention to the guy in the body stocking on the cover. Instead, I read the comic. Read about Alan Scott. Read about the Green Lantern. In the end, he'll always been the real one, to me. Oh, I loved the Hal Jordan Green Lantern. I loved the Green Lantern Corps, the neoLensman aesthetic brought to the concept's redesign in the Silver Age. Green Lantern was cool.

But Alan Scott was more than cool. He had character. He had texture. He was mysterious, and his ring was amazing.

There was comic relief in those comics, too. "Doiby Dickles," a cab driver, palled around and cracked wise. I was never a huge fan of Doiby, I'll admit. But then, Doiby didn't come from Martin Nodell. He was created by the writer who worked with Nodell during Nodell's tenure -- a man named Bill finger -- and a subsequent artist called Irwin Hasen. When Nodell drew his mythic mystery man, he meant there to be mystery alongside the action.

My father, in one of our earliest discussions of comic books, knew from the Alan Scott Green Lantern. He remembered the Green Lantern Oath. I think it helped connect us in an early age. I think I felt like Alan Scott belonged to our family -- we remembered him. Not Hal Jordan. The real Green Lantern.

When Martin Nodell was pitching his idea for a new comic to various authors, Madeleine Ames, nee Marsh, was living in Portland, Maine, in the Deering neighborhood. She was raising her family and making her home. She seemed tireless to those who saw her. She was involved in her community, in her schools, in the lives of those around her. Having come of age during the Depression, she never wasted a thing. She was neat as a pin, a lover of life and of dance and of music, but always with a sense of decorum. Always with a sense of propriety. Her husband, my genetic grandfather, was Philip Ames -- a watchmaker.

Among the effects collected from the nursing home on Monday was a photograph of Philip Ames. It showed him at a worktable, looking up. It is essentially the only impression I have of him -- he passed away eight years before I was born. Hard at work, looking up to have his photograph taken. A kind face. A dedicated face. Along the bottom of the picture is a note in pencil, indicated it was taken while he worked for Carter Brothers, a jeweler in Portland.

Along the top, my grandmother had written, very precisely, "how I loved him so."

In 1969, Madeleine married Donald Chicoine of Livermore. Upon his retirement, and until Don's death in 2000, the couple traveled the United States and Europe, summered in the family home on Sebago Lake, and wintered in the home Madeleine built in Nokomis, Florida.

My earliest memory of the property I mentioned above was even older than that first time I saw a Green Lantern comic book. I was... man, maybe three years old? And I remember a piano.

It was a toy piano, of a style no longer made, but once desperately common. It looked like a miniature grand piano, and all the keys worked, causing tinny little notes to play. It was exactly the kind of toy piano Schroeder had in Peanuts. I loved Schroeder, with the kind of irrational fixation that three year olds get, and I had declared I loved "Beeth-oven," pronounced as it was written, which is to say pronounced wrongly.

At "White" Grammie's, there was that piano, and it was enthralling.

She was called White Grammie not as a statement on my Grandmother Burns, but because she had a white topped car. My sister, who at the time was very little herself -- I hadn't been born yet -- could only distinguish between the two grandmothers by fixing on that detail. The white car Grammie. White Grammie. By the time I could distinguish between words, it was a given in our house. There was Grammie Burns, and there was White Grammie. I'm not sure I knew her married name was Chicoine for quite a few years.

That piano stood out in my memory. It was distinctive and exciting to me, and I loved playing it. One trip to their house was bitterly disappointing to me, because the piano had disappeared. "Oh, we couldn't find it," I was told. It may have been so. It may also have been that White Grammie and Grampa Don simply decided that listening to five hours of a three year old hammering on the keys of a toy piano was too much to bear. In either case, it was much, much later that the piano would be found again.

I remember that piano, and I remember oatmeal cookies. Grammie always had oatmeal cookies. And I remember a series of candlesticks she had that had prisms hanging off them like icicles. Sitting in the window, they caught the sun. I remember lying on her carpet, not far from a Parcheesi set, looking at the pools of rainbow cast by the prisms.

And I remember Grampa Don, an amiable man with precise hands and a warmth of spirit. A man who used to craft little people and animals from seashells he would gather during their winters in Florida. A man who was quiet, but always so gentle and loving.

And I remember Grammie.

In a way, she defined dignity to me. A woman who always had control over her environment, Grammie worked hard to make it seem like she didn't need to work at all. Gatherings became catered affairs in Grammie's kitchen, always seeming effortless on her part. She could take little and make gold from it -- I remember treats she would make with the leftover pie crust dough she would roll out. She would bake them, seasoning and spicing them, and creating little cookies from those leavings called chiggers which I generally liked more than the pies themselves. Pies were heavy, and even though Grammie made a wonderful pie, those chiggers were like crisp heaven on a plate.

But no matter how busy Grammie had been, no matter how much she worked, she was always dressed impeccably. She generally had on jewelry or a brooch or a silhouette. Her hair was always perfect, as near as I could tell. She spoke quietly, but with firmness, and she expected to be heard and listened to. And you did. You just naturally did.

During these years and times, Dave Cockrum was working in comics. In fact, he was directly responsible for two out of the three biggest success stories in the comics of the seventies, eighties and beyond. He was working at DC, redesigning the Legion of Superheroes, and following his designs over the next several years the Legion went from a backup story first in Adventure and then a sideline to Superboy and into the single most popular comic being published. Until the eighties and the heydey of the Teen Titans and the X-Men, the Legion ruled the roost, and it was largely the new costumes that Cockrum (and to a lesser extent, Mike Grell) put the team into. He took them out of their Adventure-era sixties jumpsuits and costumes, born of the Jet Age and swiftly becoming dated, and ushered them into an era of plunging necklines, nearly nude women and pony-tails. His costume design for Phantom Girl remains the best she has ever looked. His design for Lightning Lad is still the costume most associated with the character -- the costume that appears on the new cartoon series today.

Some of the designs he made for new Legionnaires never got brought into the comic book, though. Instead, they came with him when he crossed the street and helped design the all new X-Men. Characters like Nightcrawler, Storm and Colossus were wholly created, visually, by Cockrum. He was the first artist on the new X-Men, outlasting his co-creator Len Wein (who left the series after just an issue and a half) and collaborating with Chris Claremont, the writer still most associated with the Mutant team.

Between the Legion and the X-Men, Cockrum was strongly responsible for some of the most popular comics of the past forty years. His designs made DC and Marvel countless amounts of money. His costume and character designs fueled merchandizing that still goes on today.

"You know," I said to my father, as I looked through the cupboards of the house, just yesterday. "There should be oatmeal cookies in the cupboard."

There weren't, of course. Grammie hadn't lived there for many years. As she had gotten older, her body had remained healthy but her mind had slowly slipped. Dementia, it was called -- not Alzheimer's, or so I have been told, but I couldn't tell you the distinction. While Grampa Don was alive, he could help keep care of her, even as she declined, but when he died almost seven years ago there was no real way she could continue to live on her own. It couldn't be done. So her children found the very best homes available -- places where real love and affection went into elder care. And they stayed involved in her life. My Aunt Dona, who lives in California, flew out several times a year and spent all the time she could visiting. My Uncle Alan saw to her needs, and my mother saw to her affairs.

During the time, other folks lived in and stayed in the buildings on the property. When my sister and her children moved east, she lived there for several months while getting her new home squared away. My whole family goes there during the summer, to enjoy the lake and the company. What food was in the cupboards were artifacts of those visitations. Dog biscuits (most of my family is beholden to dogs) and staples. Crackers. Sugar, sealed away against the elements.

But no oatmeal cookies.

"I guess she hadn't had oatmeal cookies here for a while anyway," I said. "Even when she was here. I don't think she got out to the store much when she still lived here."

"Don't worry," my mother said. "I kept her in cookies."

As a lifelong Democrat, Madeleine had a strong commitment to charities and causes dedicated to relieving suffering and uplifting the human spirit.

Martin Nodell was largely forgotten. I'd seen many publications claim the Green Lantern had been created by Gardner Fox or Alfred Bester (who did create the Green Lantern Oath, or so they say). Or Bill Finger, who certainly gave him his voice, though the creation was really Nodell's. Or else they mention John Broome and Gil Kane or even Julie Schwartz, confusing Hal Jordan with the creation of the Green Lantern. Nodell was an afterthought. A footnote. The kind of fact people like me came up with so we could sound superior on Internet message boards.

But Nodell was perfectly happy with his role in comic book history. He did conventions as late as last year. He had left comics early on, and had gone on to do commercial illustration and advertising. It was later in life that he really realized that an entire subculture revered his contributions, and he gradually embraced that subculture and enjoyed his part in it.

Dave Cockrum wasn't forgotten, but he wasn't remembered as he should have been. The Legion renaissance was credited primarily to Paul Levitz (and later to Levitz and art collaborator Keith Giffen, who did another redesign of the 30th Century in the 80's, and then an ill-advised grim and dark redesign in the late 80's moving into the 90's). The X-Men, even though Cockrum was the principle artist for several years before and then after, were really credited to Chris Claremont and John Byrne. (Which is a real shame, as that credit fed Byrne's legendary ego -- and for my money Byrne was never as good a draftsman as Cockrum.)

But Cockrum was a dynamic force in comics all the same. He adored them. He ate and drank them. The night he passed away, he was wearing Superman Pajamas and sleeping under a Batman blanket. In an odd synchronicity, he was to be cremated while wearing a Green Lantern Tee Shirt. Cockrum legitimately loved comics, in all their manifestations.

Nodell died because that's what happens to 91 year old artists. Cockrum died much much younger, at 65, due to complications and health problems stemming from diabetes.

Madeline Chicoine, my grandmother, was 96 years old, going on 97. I don't know if she ever actually read a comic book in her life.

But she understood heroes. And she understood that we have to carry heroism in ourselves, every day. She gave substantially (not that she had tremendous resources to begin with) to charities. In particular, she supported Opportunity Farm -- a home for at-risk children who have nowhere to turn. She couldn't bear the thought of kids having nothing and nowhere to go, and she felt passionately that they needed to be given a chance. She was the sort of person who would cry while watching the news, because she couldn't bear to think of such suffering. But she never felt that suffering just had to be endured. She believed -- she truly believed -- that each and every one of us had the capacity to relieve the suffering of others and make the world a better place, and that with the capacity came the responsibility to act on it.

In the attic of the home she once lived in, while my sister and mother looked over clothing, I noticed white out of the corner of my eyes. I leaned down, and moved a magazine off a pile, and saw the toy piano. Easily thirty-five years old, that piano was, made out of wood painted black -- a black that was peeling and fading in places. I plunked my finger down on three of the keys, and heard it ring out, and for the first of three times yesterday I cried.

Madeleine is survived by her children, Dona (Ames) and Elton Clark of Glendale, Calif., Alan and Edie Ames of East Sebago, and Dian (Ames) and Roland Burns of Standish; her grand and great-grandchildren, David Clark; Suzanne, Steven, Catie and Will Sanchez; Brian, Angie, Taylor, Owen and Hailey Clark; Laurel, Gary, Christy and Tim Webber; Alan and Ann Ames; Peter, Alice, Brittany and Matthew Ames; Bill, Kyle, Caleb and Elise Bourassa; Kristan, Hilary and Hadley Gibson; and Eric Burns; beloved nieces and nephews Joanne Pratt, Joanie Grady, Bert and Betty Murch, Mary and Walter Sawyer, and Richard Hall; and her cherished new families in the Casco Inn and Ledgewood Manor.

It was sunny, yesterday, and cold. Not like today, when it's raining hard and unreasonably warm. It was that kind of day that saw me with my parents walking into the funeral home, so I could view my grandmother.

My mother and sister had viewed her the day before, when I had still needed to be at work. This would be my last chance, and it was important to me. The times I have encountered death, I have better been able to handle it when I could see the body of the person I loved. My grandfather Burns. My Grampa Don Chicoine. It was hard, and painful, but it forced closure upon me. The times I haven't been able to view a body -- like my Grandmother Burns (I had been three time zones away with no chance to return), or my childhood friend Richard (closed casket services) -- the deaths had stayed with me far longer. I had more I had to work through.

And I wanted to see my grandmother one last time. I wanted to.

There was a sign on the path as we walked up to the door, "Chipmunk Crossing" it warned. And I smiled, slightly, at the mental thought of it. I can appreciate a funeral home that has a slight touch of whimsy.

We were met by two men in grey suits. They were smiling and pleasant. Comforting. Making sure we knew all would be attended to. They had brought my grandmother back out to be viewed upon my request -- we had called before heading over. I turned off my cell phone, and we went in.

The reason this would be our last chance was because Grammie wasn't to be embalmed. Which relieved me, to be honest. I find the very concept of embalming creepy. When I die, I don't want to go anywhere near embalming. I equally don't want to be sealed away in a concrete bunker. I came from the Earth, I want to return to it. Given my druthers, put me in a burlap sack and compost me.

Well, we weren't going to do that to Grammie, but there was no desire to embalm her either. Services were going to be graveside, without a viewing. There was no need to introduce other elements.

She looked peaceful. And beautiful. Her face was smooth. I was stunned at... well, how much like my grandmother she looked. If that seems odd, remember that Grammie had been in a decline for some time. She had lost that dignified, precise mind, that sharp will. She had slowly moved into the past, and then beyond. The last time she and I had spoken, while she was still able to speak, she hadn't known me. She could recognize that I was a nice person, and people she did know clearly thought highly of me, so she was very loving and warm to me, though she had absolutely no recollection of me. She had seemed much older then than I could ever remember her seeing. Much, much older.

The times before that, when I saw her, she had asked me things many times. Asked about work. Asked about friends I hadn't seen in years. Asked again about work. Asked about... asked about me. She was frustrated -- she could tell her mind was going, and she didn't want it to.

That had been years before, but she had spoken about death then. To her, death wasn't something to fear. She believed. She knew that it would be a reunion with my grandfather Philip. And she knew that the confusion she was feeling would be alleviated.

Looking down onto the face of my grandmother, I saw no sign of that confusion. I kissed her forehead, noticing almost in a detached way how cool it was, and I cried a very small amount. I whispered that I loved her. And then we headed out.

That was the second time I cried. The third time was late into the evening, lying in bed, remembering her and remembering the day, and feeling oddly fragile and mortal. Grammie was the last of her generation to pass on. Now my parents' generation moves into the on-deck circle. My aunts, my uncles, my mother and father. And we have many years, fortune favoring us, before it becomes likely, but it was still the passing of an era. A passing of time.

My friend Eileen said something to me, earlier today when I was seeing her. I work with her, and I was back with her, and we were discussing life and death. "I really want to see all my friends and family and freeze them. In fact, I want to freeze them in their twenties. It's fine if I get older and die, but it's just not fair that they will."

And she's right. It's not. We shouldn't have to put up with death. It's unreasonable. As unreasonable as fifty degree weather in mid-December.

But we have to put up with it. And we have to move on from it. Life has to go on.

My friend was right. Even though he would never have brought up dead comic artists in a week where my grandmother died had he known, he said something that rang true to me. We need to note these events. We need to note these people. Those we loved and were close to. Those who influenced us or brought us the things we love. The Dave Cockrums and the Martin Nodells. The Madeline Ames Chicoines.

My grandmother would understand that. She understood that you did what needed to be done. You remarked, because it was the right thing to remark. You affirmed the lives of others. You witnessed. You did your part. And you tried your best, each and every day, to make the world a better place.

It was the kind of lesson the Green Lantern taught one generation, and Nightcrawler taught another.

You had to do it, in part because you wouldn't always have the chance to. Life would go on, whether you wanted it to or not. And this was true enough. As I prepared to write this essay -- not the easiest one I've ever committed to the ether -- I glanced at my Livejournal Friends list. And there I saw that Peter Boyle, the character actor known for Young Frankenstein, Taxi Driver, Yellowbeard and many other shows and movies, had passed away at the age of 71.

Outside, more rain falls. It is unreasonably warm.

Tomorrow, there will be more to do.

A graveside service will be held on Friday, Dec. 15, 2006, at 10 a.m., at the Brooklawn Memorial Park in Portland. In lieu of flowers, donations in Madeleine's memory may be made to: North Windham Union Church, 723 Roosevelt Trail, Windham, Maine 04062

Goodbye, Grammie. I will always love you.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:55 PM | Comments (20)

December 7, 2006

Eric: I believe it's actually an old Austrian word that means "Under the Koffler." But I could be wrong.

Zoz!

People who know me know one of my favorite role playing game developers is Mister Chad Underkoffler. Which is a fun name to type, but that's not germane to the discussion at hand. One of the earliest essays I ever wrote on this website was in praise of Chad's innovative and creepy Dead Inside. Last year, I enthused at length on Truth and Justice, the first really new and innovative superhero RPG to come along in quite some time. All Underkoffler, all superior. This stuff was and is just plain good.

Well, Mister Underkoffler (seriously -- take a moment, grab a pen, and just write Underkoffler. It's an unexpectedly complex pleasure!) has come out with his third RPG -- this one somewhere between an expansion and a campaign sourcebook. His subject matter this time is fairy tales -- true, honest to Christ kid's stories that start in Oz, segue into Wonderland or Neverland, take a sharp left at Narnia and travel back through Grimm with an intent of making Mother Goose pay protection money. It's called The Zorcerer of Zo, and it's good. It's damn good. It's got wonder and hope mixed together with just enough ironic self-awareness that you can play it any way you like. If you want to be Cinderella twenty years later, with six kids and a mortgage payment due because her layabout husband isn't good at anything but being Charrming? You can be. At the same time, if you want to be a walking and living set of Tinkertoys, rebuilding your limbs into new and useful structures you can be that too. It's one part Through the Looking Glass, one part Wicked, at least two parts Sondheim's Into the Woods and a scosh of Willy Wonka to taste.

And it's available for preorder right now. This preorder is for a resplendent softcover book, and within a day of preordering you get The Zorcerer of Zo as a PDF, so you can launch into it immediately even before you get the book itself. I heartily recommend it.

Or I would heartily recommend it. But you see, there's a hitch. I edited the book.

This is a new line for me. I've been a professional RPG writer and developer for several years now, which is heaps of fun and occasionally gets me money. This is the first time I'm being paid to edit a book though. To offer my command of English and my perspective as a reader and a RPG writer and player to improve a work. I was thrilled to get the gig and I loved every minute of doing my job.

However, that means I get a small slice of royalties from this here book. So if I come on here and say "Dude! You totally need to buy this book because it rocks!" it's at least a little unethical, because I get some of that thirty bucks.

The temptation is there, of course. It's Christmas. I have bills to pay. Not to mention the price of gasoline -- half the time in Canada, which is an ancient First Nations word that means "ninety-five cents a liter." You shelling out cash for this book makes my car go vroom, and that makes Eric a happy person. But if I don't preface my advocacy with "by the way -- I make money from this, so my opinion may be colored by that," I become a dick.

No one wants to be a dick. Jesus Christ, it's Christmas.

At the same time, I honestly do think Zorcerer of Zo is a fantastic game, unlike anything else out there. It uses an even lighter version of Underkoffler's Prose Descriptives Qualities (or PDQ) system -- which means it's like ten minutes between grabbing the game and playing it. Its got a sense of style and wonder, and it has an in-depth description of the first campaign ever run in Zo -- which both shows you the sensibility of the game and gives you ideas galore. And it contains a complete and playable campaign world which you can use, steal from or ignore as you see fit. I think anyone who likes fairy tales, fantasy or role playing games would get their money's worth out of it.

So. I'm stuck on the horns of a dilemma. How do I extol the virtues of a good game, heartily encourage you all to buy it (and thus increase my own cashflow), maintain my professional sense of ethics, and manage not to be a dick in the process?

I have no idea.

So buy the game anyway. The man's name is Underkoffler, for Christ's sake. That's reason enough right there.

Come with me... and you'll be... in a world of pure imagination....

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:24 PM | Comments (22)

September 20, 2006

Eric: Needful things and personal appearances

First off, and by far most importantly, Paul Taylor, the man behind Wapsi Square, has had a child with his wife. Unfortunately, the little one was born almost a month prematurely, and there are ongoing and mounting medical costs. His confederates at Blank Label Comics have put together a joint fundraiser to help this family through these expensive early months. There's some kick ass art and other such things being auctioned there, so go have a look and bid often.

If you'd like to contribute directly, there is a Paypal link on Wapsi's front page, or you can Paypal to pablowapsi@yahoo.com. In my case, I've both donated what little I could directly, and I also took the time to buy the Wapsi Square Print Collection, which I've been meaning to do anyhow. It's 160 pages of tasty goodness.

Secondly, for those of you who might be in a position to attend, there is a bit of excitement at the end of the week. Wednesday White and myself -- your action Snark team -- are two of the guests at the upcoming Free Culture Webcomics Lecture Series at Swarthmore College. In addition to Weds and myself we have good friend (and Modern Tales editor) Shaenon Garrity scheduled to be there. We have excellent online acquaintences (and people I'm looking forward to meeting in person) Howard Tayler and Rich Burlew coming. Finally, J.D. "Illiad" Frazer is coming, who I can't call an online acquaintance (I'm not convinced he knows what Websnark even is), but who I'm still looking forward to meeting.

The lecture takes place at 7 pm on Friday, with workshops on Saturday to boot. So, come on over if you're able and get your Academic on.

You know, after you give Paul Taylor a hand.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:05 PM | Comments (7)

September 13, 2006

Eric: Revelations

Litheroy
In the last five days, I have had a total of sixteen hours sleep. Which is a roundabout way of saying the school year has begun, and with it we have had our first monumental problems. I'm really tired of looking at my wiring closets at three in the morning. Life is miserable.

It is also worth noting that about seven days ago, Wednesday arrived. She is... well, perfect. Glorious. So, despite the assertions of the last paragraph? Life couldn't be better.

That's not what I'm here to talk to you about. See, I just got published.

Specifically, I was published (once again) over at Steve Jackson Games. And so, on top of my monumental fatigue, my first-week-of-school misery, and my joy at... well, domesticity... I have abject euphoria going for me. The combination should be considered a controlled substance.

Long time readers know that I love In Nomine. I love the game, I love the culture, I love the implications. I love the Symphony metaphor. I love playing with expectations. I love. This. Game.

Well, going back... man, eight years ago, we find that there were opportunities to submit outlines for expanded writeups of the Superiors. (Superiors meaning Archangels and Demon Princes -- the folks in charge of the War between Heaven and Hell.) And a lot of people ran out and did outlines for the major players -- Michael, Gabriel, Baal, Belial, Lilith. People you might have heard of, here or there.

And I? Submitted a proposal for Litheroy, the Archangel of Revelation.

Never heard of him? I didn't think so.

Litheroy was a so-called "minor" Archangel. This meant he didn't appear in the core rules, but instead was released in a supplement later on. He appeared, in fact, in the supplement that came with the In Nomine Gamemaster's Screen, featuring a skirmish in the never ending war between Litheroy and his opposite number (and Fallen former Servitor), Alaemon, the Demon Prince of Secrets. This supplement was ably penned by S. John Ross, and to be honest it was at most a blip on In Nomine's radar.

I loved it. And I loved both Alaemon and Litheroy. I loved them because they felt like such paragons of their Words (in In Nomine, a Word is a concept that a given angel or demon can be bound to, body and soul. In their cases, Alaemon's Word is Secrets, and Litheroy's is Revelation). I loved the dynamic between enemies that used to be so close. And I loved it because both of these Superiors subverted expectations.

Alaemon is an Impudite -- these are the most charming, social and human-like of the demons. But Alaemon's Word is Secrets, and he is paranoid and double-faced, never letting any of himself out where he could be hurt. In other words, one of the demons who most craves human contact and sociability is isolated by his Word and nature. I love that kind of innate conflict. It's so rife for character moments, for conflict, for tasty, tasty roleplaying. For eeeeeevil.

And Litheroy, the Archangel of Revelation, is a Seraph. The Seraphim are the highest order of angels -- the closest to God, and the furthest from Humanity. Their resonance and nature demands nothing but truth, and they have neither the time nor inclination to bend from it.

Only... Litheroy loves and is fascinated by humanity. He doesn't understand humanity. He can't understand humanity. But he yearns to understand humanity -- understand the alien twists and turns and self-deceptions they put themselves through. He believes that if they know the truth, it will set them free and they will find a purity of spirit to go with the great beauty of the human condition.

So. We have a demon who craves contact but fears everyone, opposed by an angel who is far removed from humanity but yearns to understand them. Each are subversions of what someone expects from a celestial of their type.

So. I submitted an outline for Litheroy, back in 1998. And as a lark, I did one for Alaemon too.

Alaemon got bought, and was published in Superiors 4: Rogues to Riches. And, while it's not my most celebrated RPG writing (I've been ENnie nominated for other stuff), it's considered one of my best. And some people say it's one of their favorite bits of In Nomine writing, period.

I don't know about that, but I know it makes me feel good.

Well, flash forward to two summers ago. Steve Jackson Games has created e23, their new online publishing venture. And with that venture comes new life for In Nomine. And hand in hand with that comes new life for Litheroy.

At this stage, I've published quite a bit of stuff in the RPG world. I've published in Star Trek supplements and written Westerns. I've done magazine articles and I've written [REDACTED BECAUSE DUDE, STILL UNDER NDA OVER A YEAR LATER AND WHAT THE HELL?!]

But, given a chance to actually write and publish Litheroy? The very first proposal I sent to the good In Nomine folks?

Oh, Hell yeah.

Writing it was a blast. Playtesting and editing was intense but good. And I am amazingly proud of the results. The "cover" art (sampled above) is by Ramón Pérez, of the fantastic webcomic Butternut Squash. The layout and production values of the PDF are great. And it took a long, long time to appear because....

...well, because that's the publishing game.

Most of all, electronic or not, this is an RPG product by Eric A. Burns. It's based on material done by S. John Ross, Derek Pearcy and others, but it was all put through the filter and crucible of my brain. This isn't a co-author credit, or a "section by" me. This is my damn RPG supplement.

It's significantly longer than was contracted for. I offered the extra verbiage at no extra fee, because I wanted to do this right. And I'm God damned proud of the result. Litheroy was, in his own way, as much fun to write as Alaemon was. It's somehow really cool to get into the mindset of someone so completely guileless. Someone who accepts the world is not as he wants it to be, but doesn't accept that it has to be that way or that it should be that way.

I'm torn. I really, really want people to spend the eight bucks and buy this thing. I want them to read it, and enjoy it. At the same time, I recognize that it's a supplement for In Nomine, and not everyone might be interested. Fortunately, if you go to the catalog page, you'll see a preview that includes a table of contents that maybe will whet your appetite, both for Litheroy and for In Nomine in general.

And one or two of you might buy it because, well... you like me and you want to buy my supplement. I'm utterly okay with that.

I'm a writer. I write. For money.

There's proof, right over there.

Work is Hell. Weds is here. I am published.

Life is good.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:14 PM | Comments (31)

August 16, 2006

Eric: Mmm. The sweet smell of self-promotion

Brigadier General John Stark!

(From The Adventures of Brigadier General John Stark! Click on the thumbnail! Or... you know. Don't.)

It is the anniversary of the Battle of Bennington, and that's as good a reason as any to fire up the old transcription gear and hear a thing or two from Brigadier General John Stark. How long the General will return to Webcomicdom I can't really say (I suspect it has to do with how long the General can think of punchlines to whisper to me).

Anyway. I actually have a post for later today that isn't about... well, me. Still, I hope you like the General's return... for however long the General's return lasts.

In other news, Clerks II was very good. Which is irrelevant to the matter at hand.

Enjoy!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:42 AM | Comments (10)

August 2, 2006

Eric: To make it official...

You might have guessed it's been a Hell of a summer. That's because it's been a Hell of a summer.

As a result, I've had to do something I feel pretty badly about. As Joey Manley has announced, Shaenon Garrity is taking over as the editor of Modern Tales Free.

Which, honestly, is an excellent thing. Shaenon Garrity is perhaps the best student of the art and history of sequential art that I've met. She's passionate about the comics, and she understands what makes a good one good. I've said more often than I could easily count that Narbonic is my favorite comic strip, and that's with good reason.

What is sometimes forgotten, in the midst of all this, is that Garrity is also a professional editor, working for one of the largest publishers of Manga in America. She's not 'second best' at this gig. She's better qualified not only than I am, but essentially than anyone else I could think of for the job. And she has a long standing history as the webcartoonist of the single most popular webcomic on Modern Tales -- almost amusingly, just a couple of weeks after she moved that comic to Webcomics Nation and took it from behind a subscription wall.

Which is another reason I'm glad to see this change. Modern Tales and Shaenon Garrity are a plain old good combination.

As for me? The same various issues that have kept my part of this place nearly silent, both my own comics essentially silent, and my other writing from going... well, anywhere for weeks have also made it prohibitively difficult to do the kind of job that Modern Tales deserves. Garrity will do better by it. Garrity will do well by it.

And as a fan of good comic strips, I couldn't be more excited to see it.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:32 AM | Comments (20)

July 28, 2006

Eric: Because reading can be so darn hard....

It's safe to say that things are very, very....

...they're very. I've had an interesting few weeks, and by interesting I mean busy, and by busy I mean oh my God. Plus recurrent and very painful gout. Plus my car was rearended. In a parking lot. For a pharmacy. Where I was getting medicine to treat my gout. Said meds are also not without side effects.

I am also drinking pure black cherry juice, which is supposed to help with the gout. Which depresses me, because black cherry juice is horrible. It's like drinking cherry flavored kero syrup.

But we do it. And we try to survive.

Now, one of the things I've been tasked to do at work is work out methodologies and techniques for curricular podcasting. Because... well, because I'm a geek, and that's what geeks do at schools. So I haven't had the time to write here, between everything, and exhaustion.

But, as part of my job, I have had to jump through the proper hoops to Podcast.

And so, I would like to direct you one and all to Websnark Annotations Podcast.

You knew it was coming. Admit it.

This first one is from me. Weds is kicking some ideas around, too, and we're also going to do some joint ones. Note that I'm being driven more by radio drama, radio humor, and This American Life than other things, so WAP's not going to be much of a news or commentary site.

How often will podcasts come out? I'm hoping for weekly, but to be honest, I'm so overworked right now I'll consider it a win if I reopen Garageband before the end of August.

The first episode, Long Drives and Match Games, is now up. You can also load feed://podcasts.websnark.com/?feed=rss2 into your podcastery reader... um... thingy... of choice and get new episodes as they come out. iTunes is coming, I'm sure.

I hope you like it.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:09 AM | Comments (23)

July 1, 2006

Eric: Because I'm honestly not dead.

A brief to do list.

And now, medicine.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:07 PM | Comments (29)

June 22, 2006

Eric: Summer Session done et mah brain!

Hey gang!

So, after all that buildup, and after several days of essays that I charitably think don't suck... I proceeded to have work hit me over the head with several blunt objects, to prepare for multiple summer sessions -- more than one of which decided to sit on their information until, oh, a day and a half before the session started.

On the plus side, I just met a Deputy Ambassador from a pacific rim nation. He was startlingly polite and humble. I was as helpful as possible. I mean, sure. This is a nation we've had peaceful relations with for centuries, but you never know what straw will break that camel's back. I can safely say we will not go to war because of me.

Er, today.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:20 AM | Comments (14)

June 13, 2006

Eric: Podcastery!

For those of you playing along at home, there are occasionally bits and pieces of we the Websnarkians elsewhere online. In two of these cases, we can be heard as opposed to read. It seems only mete and fair to bring those cases up.

First off, as alluded to before, Wednesday White is now a regular on Digital Strips. She, Daku, and Phil Kahn (whose own webcomics blog, I'm Just Saying, has just gotten a much easier to remember web-address) seem to have settled down into the regular hosts of the show, and it's got a very nice rapport going for it. And while I am biased where Wednesday's voice is concerned, I think listening to Weds do the opening sting at the start of the recent DS review of Spike's Templar, Arizona confirms that yes, Wednesday White does radio well.

It's also worth noting it's a darn good breakdown of Templar, AZ.

As for me, I was honored and privileged to be the rambling, slightly overly giggly guest on this week's Keencast. It was a lot of fun to do, though I'm a touch scattered through it all (understand, I did it after the whole "flight-delay-getting-held-over-in-Cleveland" thing, followed upon touching down by having to go straight into the office to repair systems for many hours. I am travel fatigued and generally exhausted on the podcast, but I think despite that it's a fun listen. John Troutman, Chris Daily, and Aeire were the hosts, and were both a lot of fun and kind to the slightly loopy guest in question. Among other things, we touch on the WCCA nominations, blogstuff, eighties cartoons, and David Willis.

Finally, although this isn't podcasting news, it's worth noting that David Wright's latest Todd and Penguin collection is now available for sale. I was honored to be asked to pen an introduction to this collection, which I think came out okay. The comics are cheerful as always. Purchasing the book would be a good thing, I think.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:52 PM | Comments (5)

June 12, 2006

Eric: Schrödinger's Friend

Tracking backwards over several weeks. Tracking backwards through time. Tracking backwards to Orlando, Florida, where EduComm took place in the sprawling, almost frighteningly huge Orange County Convention Center, attached to InfoComm, which defies my easy description. A land of trade show booth babes and nerf swag and everyone and his mother showing off nearly identical large screen HD monitors and televisions. A land of panel discussions and presentations on the latest offerings and mergings of technology and education. Moodle was the big star of EduComm. Moodle, and apparently there is such as thing as "podcasting" out there.

But I digress.

This was an evening. In fact, it was Friday evening. EduComm was over. Two of our party had already left, flying back home. My Supervisor and I had decided to stay overnight that last night, rather than rush like Hell after the end of the Conference. And I was all for that, because that last night was my night to have fun. More to the point, it was my night to have dinner with an old friend I'd never met.

It's the era of the Internet, and these are recurring stories. We all have those friends we've gotten to know. Friends we know through message boards and instant messenger services and mailing lists and Livejournal. People we have slowly let ourselves get to know. People we like. People we consider intimate friends. We all have these experiences.

This friend I have known -- known well, I would say -- since 1993 or 1994. He dates back to the Superguy era. He's not the most public man I know, so I'm going to enpseudonymize him for these purposes. We'll call him "Clive Staples." Those folks who know him can work it out from there.

Please note. He is not in Webcomics in any way. He is not a regular contributor here. He is not famous or infamous on the internet in any given way. I am obfuscating his identity not because I want to create a fun game of "let's guess who Eric had dinner with," but because the experience I'm relating... well, has less to do with him than the experience, and because I'm respecting his desire for privacy. I ask, as your old pal Eric, that you do the same. And let us say no more about it.

We decided to meet in the lobby of my hotel. Now, this was a pretty cool hotel -- the Wyndham Orlando resort, made up of many small two story buildings on a resort complex with pools and other amenities sorted throughout, down on International Boulevard, which is something of a Miracle Mile in Orlando -- lots of neon signs and restaurants, stores and tourist traps. Not far away from Universal Studios, from Sea World, and from the Omnipresent Mouse. And just a mile and a half from the Orange County Convention Center itself.

(On day one, we were told it was "about fifteen minutes" away from the hotel, so we walked. It was very hot. And we were carrying computer equipment. It was a mark of personal pride that it was inconvenient and long, not a moment of horrific physical failure. I take the victories where I find them.)

So. I went down, about a half hour before we were supposed to meet, and I sat down in the lobby. I had a book, recommended to me by a good friend who's one of the best, most knowledgeable reviewers I know in science fiction and fantasy. The book was Vellum, by Hal Duncan, and it is indeed brilliant. (And that friend's own review of Vellum can be found here. Eagle's entirely right in his review, as he is in most of his reviews.) So. There with a good book, waiting.

And watching.

Hotel lobbies in Orlando are amusing affairs. Even here, in June, when it's miserably hot, there was the parade of families coming into town for their vacations. Orlando is enslaved to theme parks. Every restaurant, from the upscale (and weirdass) Salt Island through Perkins down to McDonalds has a "hospitality desk" staffed during all business hours, where discounted tickets to dinner shows, Sea World, Universal and the Mouse may be bought, and free shuttle buses arranged. They are as ubiquitous as slot machines in Las Vegas establishments, and just about as subtle. In the Wyndham Orlando, the desk called itself the "Concierge," but when I asked about a hotel service, the woman blinked blankly and informed me that she didn't work for the hotel and she had no idea what might or might not be available there. But, if I wanted to see Shamu the Killer Whale, she was my hookup.

I was opposite the Hospitality Desk, sitting, waiting for my friend Clive Staples.

There was a large number of high school students there. The Florida chapter of the Future Farmers of America were having their week long leadership conference at the same time as EduComm, and they were holding it at the Wyndham Orlando itself. Which meant during this scorching heatwave, there were piles upon piles of cheerful high school boys and girls... all in heavy, dark dark blue corduroy jackets with embroidered names and patches, and black slacks or skirts (girls also wore heavy dark pantyhose). I asked one of the girls if these outfits -- perfectly suited for doing outdoor work in October back in New Hampshire -- weren't beyond uncomfortable and into deadly.

She looked at me with the kind of pity I feel for Floridians in my New England homeland, the first day we approach 20 degree weather and they can't imagine it could be any colder, ever, and said "well, you get used to it." She wasn't even sweating. I, on the other hand, was wearing light colored shorts and a tee shirt and I was still pathetically glad I was waiting for Clive in an air conditioned lobby.

And so I waited. And I watched.

A man walked in. And I found myself wondering "is that him? Is that Clive?"

And it hit me. I had no idea what Clive looked like.

None.

Now, I don't consider Clive an "internet acquaintance." I don't consider him an associate. Clive is a friend. A very, very close friend. He was one of the first people I told when Weds and I went from associates to "dating." When I have depression, he's one of the guys I turn to. When I had my surgery, he was one of the last people I messaged. He has been there for me when I've needed a friend. I've tried to do the same for him. He could show up on my doorstep and I would take him in without a second thought. He knows my secrets, and I know his.

And like true friends, we have had knock down drag out fights, at least with words. We agree on a great many things and we disagree on a great many others. We feel passionately about the things we feel passionate about, and we don't agree on all of them. But he is intelligent and well thought out, and I respect him even when I disagree with him.

I'm in the acknowledgments in his Ph.D. thesis. Which I was very proud to see.

But... we've never actually spoken before this moment. We've only typed to each other. And I've never seen a picture. Of this specific coterie of friends, he's the one almost none of us have been in the same room as before. And there's never been any reason to discuss physical appearances.

It really sunk in at that moment. I don't have any idea what this man looks like.

I had preconceptions, of course. But they were vague, formed over long periods of time. Filling in gaps with assumptions which built on random choices my subconsciousness had made. I had my mental image of Clive. But that mental image had never been based on even slight bits of reality. I was waiting, in a hotel lobby, for a complete and total cypher.

Think about this, for just a minute. Think about the people who are close to you. Think about identity for a moment. I knew Clive. I knew his opinions, I knew his religion, I knew his job, I knew his attitude. I knew what he liked. I had bought him Christmas Presents. I had received Christmas Presents from him. I borrowed money from Clive once. This went way beyond any "internet friend" thing. I mean, most of my internet friends I at least had seen pictures of. In fact, a huge percentage of my internet friends were people I met at one time or another. In person. I know what each and every friend in common Clive and I have look like.

But not Clive. I knew everything in the world about him, except anything about his appearance.

A hispanic man of about the right age walked into the hotel lobby. Followed a couple of minutes later by a white man. And I honestly couldn't say that the white guy was a better candidate to be Clive than the Latino guy. We never talked about the color of Clive's skin. I had assumed he was white... well, mostly because I'm white. But there was no reason that had to be true, or even should be true.

Was Clive fat or thin? Short or tall? Handsome or ugly? I knew he was brilliant -- I've read his thesis -- but I had no idea if he could convey that brilliance in his bearing, or if like so many people he came across as intelligent when he had a chance to write things down but lacked any social skills. How would his hygiene stack up? Did he have any scars? What color was his hair? What color was his eyes.

Hell, how did I even know he was male? I've know girls -- especially in technical fields -- who adopt masculine identities online to ensure their gender wouldn't color others' opinions. It seemed fantastic to consider, but jeez louise, we live in a culture where Gender Bending comedies came out of the Shakespearean tradition and show up on a yearly basis often starring a Wayans brother.

It hit me, as I watched more people walk in -- in a lot of ways, right that moment, Clive was like Schrödinger's cat. He was Schrödinger's friend. He could literally be anyone. The only boundary was there was only so young he could be. I knew he had a Ph.D. I'd read the thesis. I knew he had been at least adult in attitude going back to '93. Beyond that, it was a clean slate.

I watched a man as heavy as I was walk in, in green shorts and a "Git'r'done" tee shirt. I dismissed him -- Clive wasn't the "Larry the Cable Guy" type. Or so I believed. I watched a handsome black man in a suit come in. It was a professorial suit. I weighed possibilities. I could see that, I thought. I watched a well tanned guy come in -- a real "Used Car Salesman" type. White trash. Young Republicans. Guys in Sears clothes. Guys in Abercrombie and Fitch.

It was like a game. And a puzzle. Would I know this man? Would he somehow feel disappointing to me? Would I be ashamed for not knowing more about him? And more to the point... would I recognize him? Would my complete and utter lack of identifying information mean he would seem anonymous to me, or would somehow our hours upon hours of conversation, of discussing, of argument and revelation somehow impart an ineffable sense of recognition upon me? Would I know Clive Staples on sight?

I wasn't worried we wouldn't find each other. As incognito as Clive has been online, I have not. Hell, he saw the same picture of me in a purple polyester kimono you all have. He knew what I looked like, at least well enough that I wasn't worried we'd pass in the night.

But it was a profoundly strange experience -- like no meeting of an internet friend in real life had been, up until that point. I didn't consider this meeting Clive. I knew Clive. This was just having dinner with someone I knew. It just happened that I had never encountered any means of identifying him in a police lineup before now.

More teenagers. More Future Farmers. Beautiful women in tube tops, sauntering to the Hospitality Desk to get tickets to meet Mickey Mouse. Powerful looking men. Small, humble men. Bent and sickly men, coming to vacation with their families. And me, sititng with a book I wasn't even looking at any more, trying to discern some clue, some magical mark that would scream "Clive" to me.

"Eric?"

I looked.

I considered.

Yeah.

"Hey," I said, and shook Clive's hand. I looked my friend in the eye. And whether or not I could have picked him out of a police lineup, I could see the man I knew back behind those eyes somewhere. "Hungry?"

"Starved," he said. And we headed to the door.

"You're in long sleeves and a jacket," I said. "Aren't you unbearably hot?"

He shrugged. "You get used to it.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:38 AM | Comments (15)

Eric: They give you a *lot* of water when you're in 100 degrees on the tarmac.

The plane may or may not have been broken. That's where the real problems come in, you see.

You see, if you have an honest to God problem with your airplane, you have an honest to God problem with your airplane. If a wing, say, falls off? You know you're not flying in that airplane that day. If fuel is streaming out of bulletholes in the tank? You know better than to start the engines in the first place. That's the nature of flight. The big problems are obvious.

However, the big problems aren't the only reason that a plane can make an unexpected drop out of the sky. There are also little problems. And the little problems don't show up on a visual inspection. As a result, there is a tremendous number of sensors and telltale lights that modern passenger planes have within them, that assess the physical condition of a given aircraft. A warning light means "there's something potentially going on that you humans can't see, and you should check it out."

This is good. This is important. Speaking as a regular air traveller (at least at certain times of year), I like the idea that planes are regularly checked out. Air travel is actually really damn safe, and one of the reasons for that is when something might have gone wrong, most airlines will err on the side of caution.

But the problem is, there aren't infinite airplanes available. So when something might have gone wrong, it's not enough to just say "well, Hell -- we should put them on a different plane and be done with it." No, the answer is to actually try and figure out what might have gone wrong, and do something about it.

So. Here I am, with my supervisor.

In Orlando, Florida, where we have been, all week.

As you know, I was on vacation for a couple of weeks. I have stories to tell of that vacation. People I have met. Baycon. It was one of the best couple of weeks of the last couple of years, all told. But immediately following it, I had EduComm -- an educational conference welded to the monumental InfoComm trade show, down in Florida. Where it is very, very hot.

It was very very hot on Saturday, when we were scheduled to fly out.

Only... there was a sensor somewhere on the plane that gave an alert. An alert that wasn't very specific -- but that indicated something could be wrong with the plane. And, as Continental Airlines doesn't want anyone to... well, die on their planes, they had to do something.

But. Continental isn't made of planes, here. If there was any chance that this plane could be used, safely, they had to take it.

The plane was scheduled to go to Cleveland, arriving at 4:10 or so. Our connecting flight back to New Hampshire was scheduled to take off at 6:30.

We boarded the plane a half hour late, while they checked things. Well, we started to. Then they cancelled boarding, with only the first class cabin and families with children boarded. The rest of us were in the terminal.

My supervisor and I went to the bar next to the gate and had alcohol. I had cognac. Not particularly good cognac, mind, but "good" wasn't my driver, right then. Remember, I can't actually drink carbonated beverages, so I can't just have a beer or a rum and coke or what have you. Their scotches were mostly blends, and I'd had scotch earlier in the week -- a single malt I didn't realize until after I'd ordered it was a "cask strength," which is to say it kicked my sorry ass to the curb. So I was avoiding scotches in general, right then.

We then boarded. They pulled our plane back from the gate.

We then stopped.

And they let us know that light was still on, but they thought they had found the problem.

So we waited, on an unairconditioned aircraft. In hundred degree weather. On the tarmac.

For three hours.

At hour three, they pulled back into the gate. But they didn't let us off the plane. The captain came on the air. "Folks," he said. "They think they might have found the problem. In the meantime, there's a 737 sitting over on Gate 5 we could use. I'm pushing to use that one instead -- it's scheduled to go into the hanger. But they want to absolutely make sure we can't resolve the problem first. We should have an answer in a couple of minutes."

Fifteen minutes later, he came back on. "Folks," he said. "We're going to restart something. We found a panel that was open. It was closed. With luck, that will fix the problem and we can get underway. We appreciate your patience."

Fifteen minutes after that, they had us leave the plane. We were getting the other plane, instead. Of course, we couldn't just leave the broken plane and climb on the new one. The flight crew had to be the last off the old plane and the first on the new one, plus they had to fuel and provision it, and they had to move all our luggage. So this was forty five minutes right there.

My supervisor and I spent them in the bar. I got reacquainted with Mister Johnny Walker. Johnny Walker Red might not be the finest of all scotches, but my God he's a good airport bar companion.

We took off right about when our connecting flight was scheduled to launch, in Cleveland. I asked a representative of Continental why we were going to Cleveland in the first place. "Obviously you need to rebook us," I said. "Why aren't you rebooking us straight from Orlando, say through Newark or the like."

"Logistics," she said. "Your luggage is already checked through this route. Retrieving everyone's luggage and rebooking them doesn't work well. It's better for us to rebook you in the hub city, where your luggage would have to be pulled out and moved to a different plane anyway. And besides, we can't have you fly on a different plane than your suitcase."

Which is true and which is a regulation, in our post 9/11 world. I remember an episode of the Amazing Race where the racers were dumb enough to check their bags. When they found a faster flight from their connection, they tried to abandon their luggage and take it, and were told categorically "no." If you manage to put a bomb in your luggage, despite everything? You get to blow up with it. Period.

So. Long long long after it would do us any good, we flew to Cleveland. We were met at the gate with our new tickets. For 9 am the next morning. Along with our hotel vouchers. We were going to the Marriott overnight.

As we left the airport the following morning, my supervisor's cell phone went off. It was work. There was a massive systems failure, including the mail system.

So, exhausted, overdue, worn through, on Sunday, I found myself at work. Fixing shit.

I went home. And I slept for a while. I slept the glorious sleep of the utterly fucking exhausted, my cat -- desperate and lonely, though she had a sitter -- pressed up against me.

And now? My vacation is over. My business trip is over. My overdue flights and layovers and delays? Are over.

I'm honestly, truly home.

More later. There is much to say.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:27 AM | Comments (9)

May 26, 2006

Eric: I ain't dead. I'm on vacation.

For those wondering, I am actually on vacation. In the action packed wilds of California. I am typing this at Baycon, for the record, where I am having a lovely time.

The theme this year is... er.... purple.

Purple.

We don't get it, ourselves. But what the Hell, right?

The "since when are there media guests at Baycon" media guest this year is Stephen Furst, who I'll admit I'm more interested in meeting than I was Chase Masterson. Chase Masterson, however, looked vastly better in a tight dress.

It is Baycon. It is that weirdly relaxed and happy take on Conventioneering. It is Memorial Day Weekend, that time of year I am in California, with friends. I have seen Shaenon Garrity. And Darrin "Gav" Bleuel. And Greg and Elizabeth Dean. I have seen my friend Russ, who is smarter than I am in every conceivable way.

I am on vacation.

Dude.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 7:20 PM | Comments (8)

May 17, 2006

Eric: Dude.

Here's the thing. I'm a writer. I write.

I do it because I love writing. I do it because I'm not happy when I'm not writing. I do it because... well because it's what I do.

Sometimes, I get paid for it. And that rocks.

Getting my copies of books with my name on the cover rocks too. Smelling the paper, smelling the ink.

People reading what I write rocks. You all rock.

And I have had any number of moments. Thresholds. Moments that are seminal. Moments where my world rocks a little, but in a very good way.

I had one of those tonight.

I've been honored and privileged to write a few introductions and forewards for comic and cartoon collections. It always humbles me to have someone whose work I respect ask me to contribute something to one of their collected works -- I mean, this is one of the high points of their lives we're discussing. To be asked to be a part of that is an honor and a privilege. It is, in the end, fun.

And it's a blast to see them offered online. And those rare moments I go to a comic book store and see them there, it is amazingly cool. It is just as cool as it is to walk to the RPG section of those stores and see one of my books over there as well. I like RPG stores. They're good for my ego.

Well. Ever since I've sold stuff professionally, I've haunted Barnes and Noble, Borders and all of their ilk. Because while I've known that the likelihood that Sidewinder: Wild West Adventures or something from In Nomine would be sitting on a Barnes and Noble shelf was small, it wasn't zero. (I thought I'd have that moment with Star Trek: Worlds. And then it went PDF only. Sometimes, the Gods enjoy laughing at us.) I still do it to this day.

And I look through the graphic novel section. But not for anything of mine. I look there to see if folks from the webcomics world have made the jump. It happens on occasion, and I think that's really cool.

Well. So, tonight, I was looking over the graphic novels, and my heart stopped. Because the Image Comics collections of Scott Kurtz's PvP were there. And well they should be.

More to the point, volume 3 is there.

I should have expected it. PvP is big enough to make the jump to bookstores -- more than big enough. And Scott Kurtz has worked hard, and Image ain't small potatoes. Of course the Image PvP collections are there.

So I picked up Volume 3. And I opened the cover. And I read the opening words of the foreward.

I get a certain amount of e-mail about webcomics these days. A good number of those e-mails center on webcomics the writer loves. They extol the virtues of their favorite webcomics. They talk about the art, the writing, the characterization and the jokes. They are enthusiastic about webcomics and they want to share their enthusiasm with others.

I'm not going to write about those letters in this introduction.

I skipped ahead, to the very end.

Specifically, to the part that said "Eric Alfred Burns, New Hampshire" and had a picture of the Ursula Vernon 'Snarky' you see in the corner of the web site's pages.

And I knew, right then, that it was highly unlikely that a Barnes and Noble in New Hampshire was atypical in its ordering. It's better than even odds that the other Barnes and Nobles in the region carry similar selections.

And pretty darn likely the same is true throughout this half of the country. Or maybe even the full country.

And that the same is probably true of Powell's. Or Borders. Or the Elliot Bay Bookstore. Or Tattered Cover.

For the first time in my life, I can walk into any given large chain bookstore in the country and there's at least even odds I can put a hand on my book that has my fucking words in it.

I'm astoundingly grateful to Scott Kurtz for the opportunity. And I'm just blown away. This is one of those moments that just throws me. I literally have to adjust my world view to fit this fact.

I'm a writer.

I write.

The proof can likely be found at your friendly local bookstore.

Dude.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:08 PM | Comments (24)

May 16, 2006

Eric: You know what's cool? The Emergency Broadcast System. It's so cool when it's actually really an emergency.

It is a sodden day, in our State of Emergency.

For those of you unconcerned about the daily lives of your cheerful blogging cadre beyond what you see crop up in your RSS aggregator, Livejournal Friendslist or web site link, one of the cheerful writers for this site lives in New Hampshire. New Hampshire, which is currently in day 12 of 40 of Noah's Flood 2006 Brought To You By Pepsi. Large chunks of this state, of Massachusetts and of Maine are under water, with dams straining, sewers overflowing and backing into the rivers that have surged, and water tables saturating all over.

Interestingly enough, even though I live essentially next to a lake, I'm fine. My home is on high ground, my workplace is up a sloping hill. Lake Winnepausakee would have to rise like 20 meters before it became an issue, and if we had a sixty foot high wave of water come into town, we're officially into Waterworld territory.

But, there is impact. For one thing, there have been power flickers and even outages, which is to be expected since much of the electrical grid is now being exposed to our buddy water. For another, there are weird troubles with the internet -- which might have something to do with several of our backbones running through places like Manchester, which is among the hardest hit areas in New Hampshire. (Not to mention places like Peabody and Haverhill, in Massachusetts, which as near as we can tell are now lakes.)

Walking in to work, I noticed the ground was one big sponge now, though, and torrents of water sheet down every road and walkway, pooling wherever the ground bowls slightly. The earth is saturated here, and there is no where for the water to go except on the surface or sheeting down any incline. My feet are still wet.

And still the rain falls. It falls steadily. It falls hard.

Dover, where friends of mine live and good coffee can be had, is flooded. Roadways crumble under the onslaught of overflowed rivers. Rochester, the "Lilac City," is essentially drowned right now. And having been in Maine on Sunday (Mother's Day, don't you know), I'm at least somewhat surprised my trip home didn't involve driving through the Saco River. As it is, I assume my town is an island, cut off on all sides by roadways obscured by water.

And yet, life goes on. Though the state is in a State of Emergency, that emergency hasn't really hit my town, where things are pretty much normal. I'm at work today, and have no reason to think I won't stay at work the normal hours. Really, the new 13" MacBooks are a bigger deal in the office than the floodwaters. I have light and comfort, shelter and hot coffee, and after work I have to go buy cat food. When the biggest issue facing you in a State of Emergency is remembering you need a bag of Iams for Adult Cats, life is officially going on.

Still, there is some indication we should get used to such things. There have been rumblings that this year's wildcat hurricane season might trawl up the Atlantic and nail the Northeast. I'm certain readers in the Southeastern United States will think it's our turn, God Damn It, and they might be right. Certainly, it seems that when an area gets hit with extreme weather these days, that extreme weather comes in waves, not in isolated incidents. And the Nationwide (and Worldwide) incidence of extreme weather seems to be spiking higher, not leveling off.

So.

Stay dry. Have some coffee. Sit back. Look at the new MacBooks. And relax.

It's just a State of Emergency, after all.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:00 AM | Comments (18)

April 26, 2006

Eric: Going tharn

PvP Day 1!

(Both from PvP. Click on the thumbnails for full sized... whoa, dude -- look at all the people)

First and foremost, you'll notice a couple of thumbnails on here. As listed in the attribution, they're from PvP. Specifically, they're from the last couple of days of Scott Kurtz's run of guest strips, as he takes some time to do things that need doing.

They're significant to me, however, because I wrote them. Greg "[nemesis]" Holkan did the artwork, and as always he did a wonderful job.

This is astounding to me. I mean... we guest stripped in PvP. This blows my brain apart. And I appreciate the opportunity that M. Kurtz gave to us. I hope people get a chuckle out of them -- they're City of Villains dependent, of course. I mean, you expected that, right?

So, have a look see. I hope you like them. And thanks to Holkan for the drawings and sketchings, and thanks to Kurtz for not looking at them and snorting in derision.

Which brings me to this post, which isn't really about the guest strips. It's about Websnark. And a lot of other things, mostly related to Websnark.

See, I did this play. And it was wonderful. Lively. Fun. And draining and exhausting, and leading inexorably to post-theater depression, which most actors get when their brains realize "wait, the play is over." Along with some grueling times at work, in a year that's been pretty much wall to wall grueling times. And so Websnark slipped to the wayside. (As did most other things I work on, including Gossamer Commons, John Stark and my writing. And Comixpedia articles and and and....)

Well, it's over. And several days now, I've settled back down and thought "Right! Time to get back to it!" And opened up a client to write a Websnark post.

PvP Day 2

And, about ten minutes later, I've closed the window and gone and done something else.

I'm tired. And I'm a little freaked about some stuff going on. And there's so much to do in the day. It gets overwhelming. And so I seem to be locking up a bit.

It reminds me of Watership Down, by Richard Adams. You see, Watership Down is about rabbits. And their culture. And their ways. Well, one of the conditions a rabbit can fall into is called tharn. It's that point where fight or flight is so overwhelmed by danger or chaos or overstimulation that the rabbit just freezes. They lock up, right where they are, almost paralyzed in mind and body, with their only hope being that the hawk will pass over without noticing them.

I'm not entirely sure why, but at least my public side has gone tharn.

Maybe it's just the overload of the theater. I mean, the addictive quality of theater is you go out, full adrenalin, and let everything out on stage -- especially when you're in a "character role" in comedy. Your job is to bring the house down, so that the leads can then ride the energy and make people feel things. It's an august and noble tradition, and it means that you open up your calloused skin and let people jab at you with sticks, metaphorically speaking. It's perhaps not surprising that after all that, I just haven't regenerated enough to be able to reconnect to the outside world.

On the other hand, it's also entirely possible that things are changed more deeply than that. It's a very different world than it was when I first started sticking stuff up here in August of 2004. In Internet Time, we're officially a mature site now. In terms of "webcomics criticism," we're the Grand Old Person (we weren't the first, mind, but still.) Certainly, the webcomics criticism world doesn't need daily stuff from me to keep churning along, happy and free, generating drama and commentary and -- when it all works right -- real thought. And the webcomics world itself, despite regular pronouncements of doom, is flourishing. Lots of cool people are doing lots of cool things completely absent any thought whatsoever of what critics might say.

Maybe it's time to rethink what I'm doing over here, or when or why I'm doing it. I've written a Hell of a lot in Websnark over the last couple of years. Maybe my brain just needs a rest from that stuff, and needs to focus on other writing for a while.

I don't know.

This isn't a retirement letter. This isn't a "gosh, give me support so I know you'll miss me and I'll come back wahhh cry of attention." This isn't a statement on behalf of Wednesday or anyone else. This is just me, your old pal Eric.

Going tharn.

Will I write more here? Almost certainly. Will it be daily again? I don't know. It's not you guys. It's me. In the end, as I've said more times than I can readily count, it's all about writing what I want to write, and then moving on to the next thing. I can't say for sure what that next thing is going to be, what venue it's going to be in, or when the next thing will include Websnark next.

I'm just sure of four things, really.

1) I love this place. I really do. And that will have an impact.

2) I'm going to keep writing, whether for 3 people or 30,000.

3) I need a break from things, at least for a while.

4) Meatballs don't work well in a panini press.

When the mood strikes me, I'll post. I hope some of you will still be here when that happens, but it's okay if you're not. I am humbly pleased and proud that you guys showed up in the first place.

Heh. On a day there's a PvP front page link to Websnark, I'm talking about how you won't see so much of me for a while. Give me this, I have timing.

Until the next time, this is Eric, saying "hey, dude."

Going tharn.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:44 PM | Comments (59)

April 19, 2006

Eric: A true thing.

Some folks have asked me when there will be more writing, over here.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:51 AM | Comments (16)

April 13, 2006

Eric: Administrative notes.

Of the two site principals, one of them has been unable to hold up his end of the bargain of late. However, behind the scenes he keeps a dedicated cadre of program control and administrative process keepers -- a small committee, if you will -- designed to keep things flowing not only here at Websnark, but through his creative endeavors.

We are sad, broken people. But we have no salable skills and he never notices when we take three weeks off for 'personal time,' so what the Hell.

Here then are a few notes from the administration.

1. One of the principals of this journal of wit and whimsy -- the one we work for -- has been indisposed by 'theatrics.' Apparently, whilst he claims to be a dedicated wordsmith, somehow he feels several hours a night of crossdressing and caterwauling followed by several more hours of ibuprofen and babbling about "energy" takes precedence over his duty to self and site. We have been give certain 'positive considerations' by the producers of this opus to ensure he remains healthy through the run of the show. Please be assured that we shall beat him senseless the morning after the last performance, however.

1.1. Pictures shall be forthcoming. Why should this fellow be embarrassed on a purely local level when we can spread the embarrassment out onto the international stage?

1.2. Alice in Wonderland, for those wondering.

1.3. The "Duchess," for those wondering which part in Alice in Wonderland.

1.4. Yeeeeees... we covered above that pictures would be forthcoming.

2. You might have noticed some "issues" over the last couple of days with accessing this site. Unfortunately, the hosting company has had some difficulties, which they have acknowledged. It is being worked out, and we have received all assurances that things should be normal forthwith.

2.1. For some value of "normal."

2.2. We do not promise things will be 'more' normal than they have been to date.

3. Obviously, there have been some doings in the world of Webcomickal art, which said theatrical type has not addressed. We shall cover the basics as best we can, as quickly as we can.

3.1. Whilst those who were attracted to Achewood during the epic "Great Outdoor Fight" might have been somewhat surprised to move on to the adventures of a five year old stuffed otter searching for his good friend the tattered old couch at the refuse transfer station down by the old marsh, we here in program control are full well glad to see the return of Philippe to the forefront of the strip. Further, there is something delightfully creepy about the world Philippe is walking through. This is the world of Trouble Man and No No. The world that on its high end gives us Cartilage Man. On this end, we have our new blind friends. There is darkness in Achewood, but it is not always what might be expected.

3.1.1. "The transfer station takes them all through its doors... and when they can work no more they fall in among the trash and become it and are gone" might, in the opinion of we here behind the scenes, be the single most Achewood sentence ever written.

3.1.2. With the possible exception of 'I know Todd.'

3.2. At the very least, Zortic has been deserving one of the infamous "submitted without content" posts for the inclusion of the Websnark "You Had Me And You Lost Me: GPF" snark in the Da Rlingtin Code storyline. Another victim of rampant, foolish theatrics, I suppose.

3.2.1. Zortic has been overdue for mention in general.

3.2.2. Hot red haired pirate mother. For the record.

3.3. Yes, there is subtext aplenty in the Davan and Peejee phone call over in Something Positive. Yes, yes indeed.

3.3.1. People have been speculating that this means that "Davan and Peejee will get together." As if they were not already together. Please. They live together, they are there for one another, Peejee naturally assumes she will move to Texas when Davan does. There is a name for a committed couple (even an unofficial one) that doesn't have sex, you know.

3.3.2. No, it's not "marriage." Jesus Christ, people. I don't know how the principals put up with all of you.

3.3.3. In the previous strip. Linzie indicates she wants a riding lizard from Texas. One of her rather random suggestions was a 'snark.' While this was certainly meant in the Lewis Carrolian sense, it's as close to an acknowledgment as we're likely to see from that side, and so we feel humbly proud.

3.3.4. Or 'drunk.' We might mean we feel humbly drunk.

3.3.5. In general, the 'phone call' motif over the course of this arc has worked very well. It conveys a combination of distance and connection, all at once. And that's interesting.

3.3.6. Did you notice Branwen was the only one of the cast not pictured on the other end of their phone call?

3.3.7. We did.

3.4. It has come to our attention that this space has not mentioned Narbonic recently. No doubt that was an oversight.

3.4.1. See also "theatrics" and "drunk."

3.4.2. The 'madness cure' is an excellent plot hook. We down here in the Administrative Annex are reminded just slightly of the Doctor Timothy Thirteen cameo in the original Neil Gaiman Books of Magic. Which was one of our favorite bits in that series, so it's a good thing to be reminded of.

3.4.3. Our other favorite bit was, of course, the Zatanna section when she went back to fishnets.

3.4.4. Don't you dare fucking judge us.

3.4.4.1. Yes. We stole that joke. What makes you think we care?.

3.5. Shortpacked has moved on into the realm of self-insertion.

3.5.1. More self-insertions should involve fights to the death.

3.5.2. We also feel that the scene works best with the fight music from the original Star Trek playing in the background.

4. We do not know when our employer will deign to get his head out of Lewisian theatrics and back into Lewisian referenced-essays. However, until he does, we are certain he would want us to express his regret at his lack of time or appearance in these hallowed halls.

4.1. Not that he feels such regret. He's such a poseur.

4.2. And not that we are inclined to express said insincere regret. After all, it's nothing to us. He'll continue to pay us in expired medication and John Stark Vodka no matter what we write here. It's not like he'll ever read it.

4.3. The "shopping for tires" essay? That was entirely us. He was passed out in a haze of mescaline and Earl Grey at the time.

Until next time, we remain....

The Administration.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:32 AM | Comments (43)

March 10, 2006

Eric: Now, to figure out why my external keyboard has inverted my command and alt keys....

Photo 4

It has been remarked upon that the very first thing the MacBook Pro™ does is take your picture. "Creepy," a commenter name of "MikeR" reported in the last set of comments. And there is that dimension.

I've been using this machine for tens of minutes now. It's gloriously fast. Startup is frighteningly speedy, compared to the olden days of yesterday with the Powerbook G4. And it lets me take my picture. So, because I'm a dork, I put it here for all to see. Click on ye thumbnail yadda yadda yadda to see me and my office.

You will notice my reproduction of the United States Constitution over one shoulder, the clutter and bookshelf, and an original drawing by Lynn Johnston of For Better of For Worse fame that Shaenon Garrity, being staggeringly cool, got for me at the Cartoon Art Museum.

And, if you're reading this... you know my client programs correctly interpret the existence of "the internet" on the new computer.

So... yay!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:15 PM | Comments (48)

February 23, 2006

Eric: It's Burns's technical woes Part 824! Also, I don't really dislike sudoku, so don't send me mail

I'm beginning to think there may be a manufacturer's issue at play here.

Last night, for the second time relatively recently, my powerbook G4 (aluminum model) died a horrific death. Which would make me think it's a lemon, only it was a completely different G4 Aluminum than the last one. Both times, the hard drive suddenly ground into paste, leaving nothing of note behind but a sad, sad Eric.

The difference between this time and the last time it happened is... and this may shock and amaze you... I learned my freaking lesson the last time. Since the last time, I back my computer up daily. It's a cron based system using a hot little utility called "Superduper." I plug an external hard drive into it when I get to work in the morning, and the program slurps files over.

So, the absolute worst case scenario is I lost everything I did... from 11 yesterday morning (when the cron job finished) to about 11:20 last night. Twelve hours worth of 'stuff.'

Losing twelve hours worth of stuff is officially a 'pain in the ass.' It is not an 'unmitigated disaster.' For those you playing along at home.

I've synchronized my backup (which I'm running off of right now) to a second redundant backup, and I'm now letting a utility play with getting those changed files off the disk. Maybe it can do it, and maybe it can't. Either way, I'm holding off on reading my e-mail until after I see if it can recover the mail I read yesterday. (Though that offsite backs up as well, so I'm not losing sleep either way.) So, if you send me mail today, expect me not to get it right away.

Thanks, all. Enjoy the shrimp!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:25 AM | Comments (52)

February 13, 2006

Eric: No, I'm not going to write a sonnet for you.

Ozy and Millie

(From Ozy and Millie! Click on the thumbnail for full sized scansion!)

I actually don't have a lot to talk about in regards to today's Ozy and Millie. At least, in terms of the execution of the strip itself. D.C. Simpson remains a good artist with a good sense of humor who can balance a sense of whimsy which comes out nicely in a strip like today's. Okay? Cool.

No, I want to talk about insulting people in iambic pentameter, because I used to do this for a living.

The first time I ever had to think on my feet in Iambic Pentameter was in a play called The Lady's Not For Burning. Now, the theater company I was with had a reputation of producing high quality work, especially for Northern Maine, and a number of people who I'd acted with many times before were in this play. My friend Kevin Pelletier, who these days performs everything from Renaissance street theater and music straight through Action Victorian Father Christmas, was one of them. My friend Eric Clements (no relation), who was one of the funniest actors I've ever worked with, was another. It was a good cast.

And, to be frighteningly frank, going into Tech Week the play was an unmitigated disaster. Lines being dropped left, right and center. People confused at best. Christopher Fry's delightfully savage comedy about witches and people attempting to get themselves hung in the dulcet tones of blank verse was a staple of Broadway for many years, back in an age when Broadway would dare to put plays written in blank verse up, was in danger of being the single most humiliating moment for anyone on that stage.

It was bad enough, in fact, that after the full dress rehearsal -- by definition the night before the play opened -- the director called everyone on stage after we were done. This director was Chuck Closser -- an ebullient man I learned many, many things from. I must have worked with him in different capacities in at least a dozen plays over the years, maybe more. And one thing I know for certain -- on the night before a play, regardless of what he thought of it, he was unremittingly optimistic.

This time? He remitted. He laid out for us just how much of a disaster the play was. And he laid out just exactly how humiliated we would all be if we put this play up the following day. And he said, point blank, that he would close the play before it opened, unless we wanted to go through with it. And if we did, it would be on our own heads.

We unanimously said we wanted to put the play up.

There was no chance we'd say no. This is what you did. The play must go on. And to be blunt, the moment you go out for theater, you are saying in no uncertain terms "I am willing to be humiliated in front of many people, some of whom will never let me forget it." It's a part of the contract.

That day, we met in cliques. We drilled the play. We ran lines. We practiced cadences. We did scenework. We did improv tests. And we put the play up.

The audience was half-full that night. And if Christopher Fry had been in our audience, he would have wept at the butchery we had inflicted upon his work.

The next night we were sold out.

Oh, it was a disaster. But we managed to con the audience into liking it. And part of that con was a cheerful cascade of ad libbing. Eric Clements and I improved entire scenes. Only The Lady's Not For Burning is written in blank verse, which meant we were ad libbing in iambic pentameter the entire time. Failing to do that would have broken the rhythm of the play, and the audience would have caught on that we were putting out a two alarm fire with seltzer bottles.

To this day, when I see Kevin Pelletier -- the only member of that troupe I still have contact with -- we trade war stories about The Lady's Not for Burning.

But that wasn't so bad. After all, the great thing about blank verse is it doesn't have to rhyme.

Some years later, I had to improvise sonnets.

See, at this stage I was acting in the Sterling Renaissance Festival. The vast majority of Sterling's acting is done "on the field," which is to say in improv, in character, one-on-one with the public. I played an educated man. And one aspect of Elizabethan education was poetry.

And it became known to the cast -- and a not-insubstantial number of regular patrons -- that I could recite extemporaneous poetry. And when you have a trick... a schtick... you can perform, you get called on to perform it.

Which meant I got the joy of doing a full on Shakespearian sonnet, ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme, on random topics during the day.

I couldn't do it today. I'm old now and not as quick, and besides I'm not spending the week desperately rehearsing the skills necessary. But I did it once upon a time.

And more than once, it had to be a saucy little ditty -- this was a Renn Fest crowd. If you didn't throw sex and death into it, they weren't interested -- that generally made fun of someone.

So yeah. Nice little strip today. Funny little premise. "Let's insult each other in Iambic Pentameter."

But I've been there. And it's fun to be reminded.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:55 AM | Comments (26)

January 27, 2006

Eric: A relevant quote

Data: If that subject troubles you–

Admiral McCoy: Troubles me? What's so troublesome about not having died?

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:59 AM | Comments (37)

January 23, 2006

Eric: An interesting experience

It's without a doubt interesting to cheerfully sing Ling Ling's Battle Song from Drawn Together while rounding a corner in your school, and find yourself face to face with the school chaplain.

And all the children sing! Kill kill kill kill die die die!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:28 AM | Comments (6)

January 21, 2006

Eric: Almost done.

Well. In a scant couple of hours, we climb in the car once more, and then Wednesday climbs into the sky.

So, things should be getting back to normal around here starting tomorrow.

Today? Today isn't normal.

Later, all.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:46 AM | Comments (33)

January 17, 2006

Eric: Back from the desert -- er, that is, Arisia

It was an extraordinarily good time, of course. You expect that from a con like Arisia. We saw many good friends, and many friends we would like to become good friends, and many acquaintences we would like to become friends, and so on down the line.

There were many beautiful women, some of whom wore electrical tape in ways not recommended by the tape manufacturer. Also -- and this might shock you -- some people there wore corsets.

I was often quite drunk. I had my first real margarita experience. It's worth noting that by the first third of said margarita, I was drunk. So, you know, I'm a big ol' wuss.

Wednesday was fantastic, and looked fantastic. This was extremely cool.

The panels rocked. The one that was best attended was "The Best Webcomics You're Not Reading." But we had a decent turnout for all of them, and even the sparsest turnout -- for the late Saturday "Webcomics Criticism: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" which was competing with both Firefly in 35 mm and the Masquerade -- was full of people engaged in the topic.

Weds and I left on Sunday, spending the night with a good friend who -- it's rumored -- might have actually highjacked this blog at some point. Actually, there were a good number of friends we saw that night, largely over Korean barbecue.

Webcomics were well represented, this year, and should be even moreso next year. Soon, we will dominate the entire planet. With dominance.

However, these are not the experience I am going to tell you about this morning. No no. I'm going to tell you about the Macaroni and Cheese from well after midnight, when we got home.

Understand, it was late. And we were between exhausted and wired. And the cat was going nuts, since she hadn't seen us for days (we had someone come in and keep her company, because I'm a total wuss when it comes to my cat). And we had a box of stovetop macaroni and cheese bought from Whole Foods in Cambridge. Yuppie Macaroni and Cheese. That was very proud it wasn't Kraft Dinner.

As a side note, Kraft Dinner -- or "Kraft Macaroni and Cheese" for the non-Canadians in the room -- is a Canadian mainstay. Much as Raman Noodles are a rite of passage for college aged folks in America, Kraft Dinner is one of those things everyone has every once in a while as kids and then lives on every now and again in their twenties. It's a frightening color and it's as processed as anything. And I'm a fan of it, by God. Wednesday swears by it, as well.

It's worth noting I also like the aforementioned Raman noodles, which Weds can't eat. Probably because they're barely considered food, but I digress.

Well. She wanted to try this box of 'healthy' or 'natural' or 'God knows what' Mac and Cheese last night. So she did. And carried the prepared bowl back to the couch, and got ready to eat it.

And couldn't even try it. "Oh God, the smell," she said.

I smelled. It didn't smell good.

But I am the boyfriend. So I tried it. That's what I do. And heck, it had to be better than the sugar free raspberry "energy drink" I got from the same store, right?

No. No it didn't have to be. Oh my God.

So we set it down. The cat walked up to it.

Now, understand something about my cat, Sarah K. Burns. She loves cheese. If it's even vaguely cheese related, she's all over it. She loves cheese sauces, and cheesey 'things.' She loves the cheese in an almost unhealthy way.

Sarah sniffed this macaroni and cheese. And reared back. She stared at it, angrily. And then ate one of the pieces of pasta. Specifically, one of the pieces that had absolutely no cheese on it.

We found a "macaroni and cheese" so bad my cat wouldn't lick it.

Weds made Kraft Dinner instead. I had a couple of bites. It was good. And then we watched the Drawn Together DVD for a while.

She's here until Friday, but I'm back to work this morning. You should see more of me this week, and then next week all things should be normal.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:39 AM | Comments (81)

January 14, 2006

Eric: Glorious day!

It's 11:30 on Day Two. I'm about to head down to Blogging for Writers at noon. After that, at 1, there is The Cerebus Syndrome: Can Funny Comics Become Serious? which is followed at 2 by The Best Webcomics You're Not Reading. That clears my schedule until 5, when we have Blogging as an Artistic Medium, which is not to be confused with Blogging for Writers. Finally, at 8 PM tonight, we will have Webcomics Criticism: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, of which I figure I know nothing.

The convention is extremely cool so far. There are extremely cool people. Kelly Cooper is extremely cool, as she always is. Jeph Jacques is not only as extremely cool as I recall, but also just as tall. And Robert Balder, who I just met for the first time, is... well, extremely cool. Later today, I'll be seeing Alexander Danner. See above: cool.

So... cool. I need to go get coffee.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:37 AM | Comments (26)

January 13, 2006

Eric: Off! To Arisia!

We will see you! At Arisia! We hope!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:22 PM | Comments (25)

January 12, 2006

Eric: Another scene from the vacation.

It was, to be fair, after one in the morning. And we were in Medford, Massachusetts, with two hours of driving ahead of us. Our friends were back in their apartment, our dinners digested, our hanging out and the oddity that is "Bubble Tea" no longer in our immediate presence.

We were now in a 24 hour Dunkin Donuts, getting coffee and "nosh" for the trip home.

The coffee worked easily enough. Nosh, on the other hand, was problematic. Our counter person was Cambodian, from the look. Clearly a nice fellow. Clearly bright. Clearly dedicated. But new to the language. There is nothing wrong with that. He is a good person, doing well in a new country.

However, there was some difficulty in conveying the essence of our requests to him.

"I'd like a cup of coffee, please, and a reduced carb bagel."

"And I'd like a cup of coffee, please, and a harvest bagel with butter."

He smiled more broadly. But did not answer.

"Coffee?"

"Coffee!" He spoke with triumph. "Right! Right! What in?"

"Skim milk for me please."

"Milk, two sugars?" he answered.

"No," I said, hands waving a bit. "Just skim milk, please." Sugar, we will recall, is not my friend.

"Right. Right right." He got my coffee. "Anything else?"

"Um... I want a reduced carb bagel and she--"

"Right! Right right. Toasted?"

"No thanks."

"Lite cheese, right?"

"No thanks."

"Right! Toasted?"

"Um... no thanks."

"Right! Right right." He handed me my bagel. "Will that be all?"

There was a pause.

"I'd... like some coffee too," Weds said. "And a Harvest Bagel?"

"Right! Right right." He went to get the coffee. "Milk and sugar?"

"Milk please -- do you have Splenda?"

"Yes! How many?"

"Six."

He paused. I paused. We both looked at Wednesday.

"What?" she asked innocently.

He held up the six packets, to make certain this wasn't a language thing. She nodded.

He shook his head, grinning, and doctored the coffee with the Splenda. He handed it to her. "Anything else?"

At this stage of the game, we were way too into the scene to even question. This was just what we expected him to say. "A Harvest bagel, please?" Weds asked brightly.

"Right! Right right. Cream cheese?"

"Butter, please."

"Toasted?"

"Yes. With butter."

"Cream cheese?"

"No, butter."

"Right. Right right." He went to do this.

The other person on duty -- an older woman with a slightly slavic accent, came over to ring us up while he toasted the bagel. "Now, what did you have?"

"A reduced carb bagel, a harvest bagel, and two medium coffees."

She punched in the coffees and paused. "Um," she said, looking at the keyboard.

"Um?"

"Well, I'll just call them plain." She pushed the buttons, ringing up two plain bagels. "Oh. Now it wants to know if they were toasted, or if you want butter..."

"I do," the guy said, returning and handing the bag with the toasted bagel in it to Weds. "You put on butter," he said. "You do yourself. It in."

"Did you put a knife in there?" the woman asked.

"Yeah yeah," the guy said. "She put on butter. It in there." He mimed spreading butter on a bagel.

"That's fine," Weds said.

"You put a knife in there, right?" the woman asked again.

"Yeah yeah," the guy said, annoyed.

"How do I do this?" she asked, pointing at the keyboard.

He punched the buttons in for her. "Eight forty-nine," he said.

We paid.

"Thank you thank you," the guy said.

We walked out to the car, sliding in. I sipped coffee and munched the first bite of bagel.

Weds looked in the bag. "...Eric?"

"Yes?"

"There's mayonnaise in here."

"...what?"

Weds drew a packet of mayonnaise out of the bag. "He gave me mayonnaise."

"...is there actually butter in there?"

"Oh yes." She paused. "But no knife. And this is a blueberry bagel, not harvest."

We paused again.

"He was very nice," I said.

"Yes, he was," she said.

We drove off, into the late evening.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:50 PM | Comments (68)

January 6, 2006

Eric: Scenes from our Winter Vacation

It was a late evening. There had been good things and bad. And then there was Denny's food, packed to the gills by hipsters and punks, in four different groups of more than twelve each. Clearly, a show had let out.

But then, that's what Denny's in the late evening is supposed to be like. Hipsters, packing to the gills. And the music was good. The night before, we had been in a small sub shop, and it had been playing the music you hear in movies, when those movies are trying to be nostalgic. "The TIme of Our Life," and the like.

But the Denny's was playing the music you were legitimately nostalgic for. It was the actual experience. Surf guitar played at one point. Then Cheese from the Eighties. Then something in between.

The food was bad, and therefore excellent. They had sugar free syrup. This is a kindness.

But that wasn't the epochal moment of the evening. Nor was finding the seven dollar classic Winnie the Pooh bear -- not the Pooh bear of the cartoons and the Disney era. The original design, rough in fur, without a mouth, and with eyes that seem soulful, rather than 'cheery.' A real Pooh. An honest Pooh.

Nor was it the curiosity if we would run out of gas between Alton and Wolfeboro. Nor the fall on ice, and the things needed to recover from it. Nor the Apple Store, nor Target.

The epochal moment came long after midnight. We had stopped at a convenience store, because I was sore from the fall, and tired, and it was very foggy. I was nervous. I wanted to walk a moment, and I wanted coffee.

This was in Concord, mind, at the first of two convenience stores. The first was Mister Mike's, and had a built in Dunkin Donuts. The other was a Hess.

We wandered inside, and looked at things. And were disturbed to discover that at a 24 hour convenience store just off a major highway... there was no coffee.

None.

Apparently, the only coffee pots were in the Dunkin Donuts section, and that section had closed for the night.

"Well," Weds said, "we could go to the Hess station."

"Yeah," I said. "That makes sense." And I looked across the store, and saw a display of gloves. "But hang on. I need a pair of gloves."

This, by the by, was true. I did in fact need a pair of gloves. We had discussed it earlier.

We walked to the display, and I looked at gloves.

Next to me, Wednesday froze.

"What?" I asked.

"There are titles above the coolers," she said, pointing to the coolers. I looked. She was right. BEER. SODA. MILK.

"Okay?" I asked.

"It says 'new age' over the sports drinks."

I paused.

I looked.

Rows of Red Bull, Sobe, and three or four different Mountain Dew varieties. And overhead? NEW AGE.

"I'm not buying gloves from them," I said.

"No," Weds said. "You're not."

And we left.

New Age. Jesus Christ.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:05 PM | Comments (126)

January 2, 2006

Eric: ....

Weds and I are going to be at Arisia, doing various panels, along with other folks. I'll let you know more soon.

I just learned the name of one of the panels I'm not on:

The Cerebus Syndrome: Can Funny Comics Become Serious?

...the panel description even credits me for coining the term, but I'm not actually on the panel?

Huuuuuuurm.

EDIT: I'm on it now. ;)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:54 AM | Comments (23)

January 1, 2006

Eric: A brief quote from a phone conversation:

E: Hello? Hello?

W: Hello?

E: Ah! There you are. I couldn't hear you for a moment.

W: I know. I thought the new headset was dead. I panicked.

E: Mmmm... the taste of citrus.

W: ....

E: Hon?

W: My panic tastes like citrus.

E: No, my Propel does.

W: Ah!

E: Though they're both from the makers of Gatorade.

W: ...this is going in the blog, isn't it?

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:18 PM | Comments (8)

December 30, 2005

Eric: I'm torn between a serene "here's some news that might interest you" and "OMGWTFLOLBBQ" for a title to this post. I think I'll just go with "wow."

So, in the last twenty four hours, a really big thing has happened in my life. A monumental thing. A huge thing.

Weirdly enough, it could also be construed as a big deal in webcomics.

And, among other things, it means some things over here at Websnark are going to change. At least where my involvement is... er... involved.

Yesterday, after my various posts, I received an offer. I have now accepted that offer.

Over the next month or so, I am going to be the new editor of Modern Tales.

Joey Manley is not going to the sea, mind. And bear in mind, this is Modern Tales, we're talking about. Not "The Modern Tales Family." I'm not taking over Graphic Smash, Serializer.net, or Girlamatic. However, things have been changing in the Manley empire for some time. Webcomics Nation has launched, and done well. Manley's priorities are changing.

And at the same time, Webcomics on the internet have also changed and evolved. We're not where we were in 2002. And so sites like Modern Tales have to evolve and change. Manley has some really, really good ideas for doing that change.

And he wants me to be part of it.

As editor, I'll be doing all the fun whip cracking. I'll also have a chance to shape the forward evolution. Part of my responsibilities will be submissions, acquisition and recruitment. My tastes and my biases will help shape the site as a whole, and what you will read there. And I sincerely hope you will be there.

Plus, you know, I'm getting paid. Which means I'm getting paid to edit.

Which means I'm getting paid in my degree. Which is like hitting the lottery for a guy with an English degree.

I'm thrilled. I'm excited. I'm astounded. And I'm a little scared.

In part, because this means things over here will have to change.

Oh, I know what I'm supposed to write, over here. "Don't worry, True Believers! Websnark's not going away! We're going to keep doing what we're doing! This is just something else I'm doing with my time." And yeah, Websnark isn't going away. I'm going to keep writing. Weds is going to keep writing. Stuff. Things.

But of course things are going to change. If there's one truth that came out of the Fleen debate from earlier, it's that we need to understand what biases and influences are going to shape a critic's opinions. As of this moment, I can't write anything about a Modern Tales comic without you knowing that I'm the editor. It's unethical to do otherwise. And you have to balance my thesis with the knowledge that I have a direct stake in the success of that strip.

Further, a number of webcomics creators are going to submit strips to me, in hopes of making it to Modern Tales. And, well, I'm not going to say "yes" to all of them. Or, reasonably, to most of them. If you think for one New York Minute that's not going to influence how those creators look at me, you've never gotten a rejection slip.

And, some people are going to declare I've sold out and gone to the devil. Others are going to declare that Modern Tales has gone to Hell and I'm the gatekeeper. There will be Drama.

I have credibility right now. The only way I can maintain that credibility is if I be straight with all of you. This is literally the first post I've made since accepting this position, and I'm letting all of you know what's going on. And I'm really, really thrilled. I hope most of you are happy for me. And those who aren't, I hope will still be cheerful.

As for things moving forward, MT wise? Watch for announcements. Comixpedia's a good place for that. I really don't intend to make Websnark an organ for distributing Modern Tales stuff. This site is remaining independent of MT. Wednesday's status isn't changing. (And I had to discuss this with her first, among other reasons because it would have a direct impact on Websnark, and I needed her okay before I could move forward.)

This also means some of my online habits need to change. I mean, I'm becoming an editor. A submissions editor. Naturally, some people are going to want to take any in they can find to... well, submit things. I can't be quite as open and accepting of stuff this way.

For the record? Submissions will be open soon, but are not open yet. I just got the job. I haven't sharpened my pencils yet. More news as events warrant. Watch MT for details.

Finally, I'm excited and a bit daunted on another level. See, I've been doing the Op/Ed thing for a year and a half. I've had my theories and my theses. I've put forth my opinions.

And now? I get to put up or shut up. I've talked the talk. Now I have the walk in front of me. That's frightening. It's also thrilling. I can't wait to get started.

To sum up?

Wow.

Wow.

Thank you, and good night.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:48 PM | Comments (82)

December 13, 2005

Eric: Notoriety

If you haven't yet seen, the "Year in Review" issue of Comixpedia has begun. It began with a roundtable that both Wednesday and I were pleased to participate in, going over the Year in Webcomics. So, if you want some "Webcomics Year In Review" stuff from Weds and I, that's a good place to go looking. And it was an exciting roundtable, full of smart people who have smart things to say, not always in agreement with each other. And that's a pretty cool thing.

It was a Roundtable that also proved to be really, really freaking good for my ego. Or bad, depending on how you look at it.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:12 AM | Comments (81)

December 10, 2005

Eric: Today's random quote from a conversation Weds and I are having.

In all eras, and in all worlds, an eternal champion walks... and stops into a greasy spoon run by Jesus spouting puppets.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:34 PM | Comments (32)

December 5, 2005

Eric: A brief foray into self promotion.

Hi all! It's actually a pretty good morning to be... well, me. So, I thought I'd share.

Because... well, because. I do pay the bills.

We'll start with the actual news. The latest issue of the Webcomics Examiner is out. This is a bright and cheerful issue with many nice things said about many people. The most interesting section to me -- though admittedly I'm not a part of it, so maybe it doesn't deserve to be in a "self promotion" post -- is the section on their advisory board's picks for the Best Webcomics of 2005. It's a really interesting list, and while I can think of a few comics they didn't put on there, I have no problem at all with any of the comics they did put on there. Go have a look! If you see a comic you don't read on that list... you should probably at least give it a try.

The "self-promotion" part of the Examiner is part two of the Artistic History of Webcomics Roundtable that Wednesday and I participated in. As with part one, there are bits I agree with, bits I disagree with, and bits I actually wrote, so duh. You'll also recall that part one led to a certain amount of drama. Now, I'm not saying part two will as well. However, if it does you don't want to get caught out, feeling all "man, why didn't I get to be a part of all the drama." Don't make that mistake. Read it now, and be ready for any drama that results.

As has been reported in Comixpedia (for some value of reported equal to "Eric wrote and submitted a press release written so it sounded like it was news instead of blatant advertising), Gossamer Commons enters a new phase today. We're trying something different, in the wake of Greg's stepping behind the scenes and before Peter starts in as the next artist in the new rotation. This is going to be a fairy tale, told by the lead character Keith's grandmother to a young Keith. It'll be text heavy, but also feature art by our own Wednesday White. For the record, I've been indulging in a positive orgy of Rankin/Bass Christmas Specials, so this should hopefully be fun. Fans of our bedtime story should like it, I hope. If not... well, January isn't that far away.

Also, last week was a blank week for me -- things getting left undone in webcomics. So, I put up two pieces of fanart on Gossamer Commons that should have gone up earlier, including a fantastic short story Greg Holkan wrote and drew, and a beautiful picture by the talented Indigo Skynet of Kismetropolis. They didn't really get their days in the sun, so it seems to me like I should at least try to rectify that with a couple of links over here.

Said blank week also meant that John Stark suffered. However, I got my ass in gear over the weekend and put up strips to make up for the missing days. Which means that six full days of new strips are up over there, which is a veritable cornucopia of alleged humor and statue pictures. If you're of a mind, they start here. And no less than two of them include the word "boobies."

I'll have something not about me up a little later this morning. In the meantime, I hope your Monday is treating you all well, and please enjoy the Craft Services table. They went all out with the cheeses and fruit and coffee this morning, so tuck in.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:04 AM | Comments (25)

November 30, 2005

Eric: To my father, the Doctor, on the seventieth anniversary of his birth.

This is a poem, and it's quite long, so I put it behind a cut.

If you like it... I'm glad.

The Doctor, I believe, will like it.

In any case, I love him very much. This is for him.

To my father, the Doctor, on the seventieth anniversary of his birth.

He climbs down the stairs of the Pleasant Street house,
quiet as you can be on stairs designed to squeak
exactly when you don't want them to, when people sleep.
and he, the man, husband and father creeps
down before dawn on a cold Fort Kent morning.
Winter is ice and snow and bitter wind up there -- it tears
across the house and steals the heat
from old glass windows, wavy with age
and so he slips down the stairs, around the corner
and down into the cold, dark basement,
where the wood is corded along the walls, stacked by him
in autumn months before it's needed, before it's cold
against the day when bitter cold comes again, all too soon.
He takes up two or three split logs and carries
them to the heavy iron door
of the furnace. He opens it, and looks within,
seeing the coals and embers left behind. Judging.
What will they need? Paper? Kindling? Just the wood?
He twists old newspapers into knots, to burn fast and hot
but not burn out before it's done. Tosses them in,
then planks, then logs,
stirs and blows with bellows until he sees them catch.
Closes the door, adjusts the flue
and brings fire to the house while his family still sleeps.

At nineteen he went to war.
A boy becoming a man in service to his country
caught defending a distant land, going willingly
before they had to ask. He joined the Air Force.
Airman, Corporal. Sergeant.
He fixed the guns on silver jets.
Long tubes and barrels recessed into ports
made streamlined, to reduce the drag on the plane.
In the evenings he sat in smoky Japanese beer halls
and played trivia games and name that tune.
Winning records for knowing the names
of music, of musicians, jazz and swing.
Drinking and laughing, supporting the men
who flew silver eagles into the blue
and brought death to aggressors with the guns Dad knew.
Twenty five years later he would teach his son
how to clean a shotgun. Looking down the open barrel
seeing the light gleam on all sides, a silver slide.
Well kept, well oiled. Rags on wires pushed through
to the far end, turned as needed,
blue metal well cared for. Wooden stock warm in the hand.
Ancient rituals of the man and his weapons.
Cared for with all the skill born
of a thousand automobiles serviced and checked.
He was a man of letters, philosophy--
Professor. Dean. Doctor Burns.
But on the weekends he would wear his old tee shirt,
a Giants ball cap, a layer of grease,
crawling under his car, changing oil and filters,
checking the timing and the spark and the fluids,
knowing the ways of machines and men
who drove them sometimes a little too hard.

In class he spoke with a sure voice,
knowing his references, his materials, bringing to others
the fruits of decades of love of the written word.
Poetry and prose, essay and story, Ransom and Le Carré.
Never upset, always in control,
wearing his professor's sweater and sipping tea,
straight up -- red tea, in a mug from his office,
or if need be a white styrofoam cup from the lounge.
Deep red tea, the bag pinched between thumb and forefinger
hot and scalding, but endured with a smile. He told them
of significance and thesis and imagery and style
marking down Harbrace handbook notes on their papers
and reinforcing their Strunk and White, enduring
the repetitive rebellions that every new generation
was sure they were the first to whip up -- challenging
the autocratic authority of the expert -- the sage
who stood at the front of the class with arguments
someone came up with every damn year,
and the Sage refused to get upset, even though
they tried their level best to make him mad, accusing
Shakespeare and Spenser and Dickens and Hemingway
of horrible crimes against humanity.
He never seemed to mind. He simply smiled
that slightly smug smile
and said, without actually saying it,
That's interesting. That's a point.
Support it. Cite your answers. Build your argument.
Convince me, if you can. If not, shut up.
His exact words were always the same:
"There might be a paper in that."

He climbs down stairs again and again.
Down into the cold bowels of the Pleasant Street house.
Find the wood, feed the fire.
Always feed the fire.

After the fire is going he goes upstairs
and walks the dog and has a little breakfast.
He listens to NPR and prepares the morning
for his children, sleeping still, but all too soon awake.
He makes them tea, like his, but with milk
just like his Aunt had made for him as a boy.
Tea'n'milk. The warm brown tea his children love
as he loves them, so very much. He's so proud.
A daughter, woodscolt wiry, strong and fast,
a dancer, a performer, an athlete, a leader.
She will be the first one up. The one who matches him.
The one who skis with him, and jogs with him.
The one who looks him in the eye and challenges him
to keep going. Come on, old man! she says,
never meaning it.
He's not old.
He'll never be old.
Then he'll go and speak to his son,
the daydreamer, the creator, the speaker
who loves his bed a little too much in the morning.
Who never stands when he could sit,
and never sits when he could lie,
but who gets excited by
his father's words, the books and letters.
Creating, shaping, writing, singing
using the tools his father sharpened,
insisting he use them right, and well,
a father whose pride seemed to swell
in both his children -- so proud, so proud.
He is quick to support, quick to defend
his children from stupid, venal men.
His wife joins him, the children off to school.
Beautiful, funny, smart, quick.
Strong, so strong, always ready to fight
for a cause that needed fighting. So proud he was,
so proud.

Another year, another winter,
logs for the fire, keep the house warm.

Grey haired, mustached, an institution
at the institution he served. Fighting the fights
that others quailed from. Supporting his friends,
reducing banality, stupidity. Challenging the Valley,
bringing them letters and knowledge. Saying as clearly
as he could, day after day, year after year,
"this matters."
Sometimes they heard. Sometimes they didn't.
But students who balked in their Freshmen years
returned again and again to learn at his feet,
loving him as he loved them, one and all, demanding
they perform, they prove, they cite, they show
their work. Banishing muddled theses and thinking
and sharpening students into scholars. As they grew
they knew their teachers and called them by their names.
Chuck. Bill. Paul. Wendy.
But always Doctor Burns.
Always Doctor Burns.

Always healthy, always taking care,
finding the foods that keep you alive longer. Keeping
the family secure and safe, through wheat germ
cottage cheese. One year the magazines said
"oils and fats," so it was cheese and mayonnaise.
Banished the next, made way for a fistful of pills
vitamins he took, vitamins he prepared,
for his family to take.
Down the stairs he trod in the morning.
Grab the log, feed the fire,
warm the house another day.
Always he drove, into the night
on long trips the family would take, children asleep,
wife asleep,
he turned on the late night AM radio,
finding William B, and the Milkman's Matinee.
Hearing the songs of his youth once more,
just like in Japan, in the evenings, the gun oil under his fingernails.
Watching his children grow (so proud),
tending and teaching his students and his fires,
keeping the house and minds warm.

Autumn turns to winter, the house on Pleasant Street
becomes a memory, past retirement. New lands, new homes.
His children grown, though close to hand,
his daughter with children of her own, he makes them
tea with milk, one cup each, grandchildren and their mother,
and walks the dogs late into the night as needed.
A quieter life, a life at sea. His boat like his cars, his
to judge and measure. Working to keep going,
change the oil, sand the bottom, strip the iron jenny
spending time to make it right, to make it safe.
Taking vitamins, taking care.
Time keeps pushing. He feels aches
he never used to know on a racquetball court
or ski tow hill.

They add the cast iron stove twelve years
after the retirement, ready to warm
the house without so much oil. They take in a cord
of wood, carried one load at a time,
down into the finished basement, brighter and warmer
than the Fort Kent house, but still.
Still.
Comes the darkened dawn, the house cold,
he creeps downstairs, and into the basement.
The stove is upstairs, he carries the logs
two at a time in weathered hands.
He watches the woodbox slowly empty,
and stops and judges each and every day.
Winters are long, even down here.
And every day the hungry fire burns
more wood, more wood.
He looks, and judges, and smiles that smile,
the same smug smile of the professor, the sergeant
who knew the answers in the dark, who challenged
others to their best (so proud).
He stands and considers how much wood remains,
and smiles. There is still wood yet,
and more fires to build tomorrow.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:00 AM | Comments (14)

November 27, 2005

Eric: Nanowrimo -- since it's been a little while.

2005 Nanowrimo Winner Iconb

So. In case you were wondering, The Recluse continues apace.

As of tonight, according to the Nanowrimo official word counting machine, I have fifty-three thousand and sixty-six words.

This isn't true, according to my own program. It says I have fifty thousand, seven hundred and five words.

Either way, I totally win. Hah. I say again, hah.

And it doesn't suck. Seriously. On this side of the fifty thousand, I'm thinking that with enough editing and rewriting and filling out, I can make my deadline. No later than February 28, this thing's going in the mail. By Summer, it's entirely possible both Baen and Tor will have had a chance to reject me.

For the moment, I'm excited. Hell, I'm thrilled. Many, many people announce intentions in Week One. Not so many mention it in Week Four. And though I won last year, I wasn't happy with the story last year. I got it done, but that's all I can say for it. However, this time, it all feels like it worked the way it's supposed to.

And yet... the thing is?

The book isn't done.

I have... I dunno. 10 to 15 thousand more words to write on it.

Tonight, I'm a winner.

But tomorrow, we go into extra innings.

Peace, all. You get more of my brain moving forward.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:27 PM | Comments (34)

November 14, 2005

Eric: It's that time of the month aga-- oh, for the love of... would you stop *snickering?*

I think I used that title before. So, you know. Sorry for that.

It's Mystery Month over at Comixpedia. It was a topic that gave me some trouble, as you'll see if you read my column for this month. After that, peruse over this month's offerings like you might consider the taste of a Pinot Noir, which isn't a very mysterious wine but sounds like it should be. Anyhow, here's a little of this month's wine list so far for you to choose from....

I'm not the biggest Welton Colbert fan in the world (though I like Ryan Estrada very much, thank you -- figure that out, if you can) but this month's edition of "Welton Colbert vs." made me laugh quite a bit. And that despite it being one of those infinite canvas strips that make the children all scared. It's "Welton Colbert vs. Digital Strips," with guest collaborators Daku and Zampzon, and I hope you enjoy it.

Despite the rather spirited discussions that devolved out of my last mention of the esteemed Modern Humor Authority, I have to admit I also enjoyed this month's sequential bon mot on the topic at hand. But then, Lance Sharps is a pointed luminary despite -- or dare one say regardless of -- medium.

Finally, Alexander Danner's practical advice on writing mystery webcomics is well worth the read. How he managed to have such a command at the top at hand when I could barely bang rocks together and spark something eludes me.

Of course, this is a mystery issue, so perhaps that's apropos.....

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:17 AM | Comments (10)

November 8, 2005

Eric: A brief glimpse into the passionate life of your authors.

From an audio transcript from this evening.

Wednesday: Dude. You sound so baked.

Eric: I'm exhausted. But I'm eating cheese.

Wednesday: Really?

Eric: Really.

Wednesday: What kind of cheese?

Eric: Well, it's processed, lowfat light faux American cheese.

Wednesday: So it's not really cheese?

Eric: Well, my cat seems to like it.

[long pause]

Wednesday: We need to start recording these conversations.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:03 PM | Comments (60)

November 5, 2005

Eric: NaDruWriNi: Webcomics, Video Games and Frank

Penny Arcade!(From Penny Arcade! Click on the thumbnail for full sized cool headed discussion of a popular video game franchise!)

A few moments ago, I started drinking. Overnight, my bottle of General John Stark Vodka has sat in my deep freezer, getting to a frighteningly cold temperature, which is how Vodka can be. It's cold enough that it caused condensation on the outside of the glass I poured it into, and that condensation then froze. Two ounces to start. I have no idea how much I'll actually drink tonight, as it doesn't take much to get me plowed.

Two ounces of vodka, distilled from apples, with the face of my comic strip character attractively plastered on the outside of the bottle. I've had about half, and I just broke a sweat and felt my vision shake. Off to the side, I have a glass column of water I drink as a chaser. This is how you drink vodka, you see. You drink of the vodka, and then you drink water as a chaser. That's what the Russians say. And by God, they know vodka. So you have to believe them.

My face just jumped about twenty degrees and I'm sweating more. It is safe to say I'm now drunk. Since the surgery, drunk comes fast, you see. I have an extremely efficient digestive system. My altered stomach dumps alcohol straight into the lower intestines and from there it goes straight into the bloodstream. BOOM!

Let's talk fucking webcomics shall we!

Only that's a lie. We're going to talk video games.

Only that too is a lie, but you'll see what we mean.

Penny Arcade is talking about Soulcalibur, and they truly are nailing the experience of this game. It's a button masher that also rewards skill, and the desire to kill your fellow player is an integral part of this game. Gabe and Tycho understand Soulcalibur. They likely also understand intoxication. That is convenient, since I'm snarking them drunk.

(I just finished the first glass. Two ounces. Three sips. Three drinks of water from the Voss bottle of water. I can't feel my face! So you're here with me as I write, damn it!)

They get video games, and they get Soulcalibur. This is a game that makes you want to kill the guy next to you, as he kills you again and again and again with the same fucking three moves. Boom, boom, BOOM! and you're dead, and you never got close enough to hit him, because he's playing Rock, and he knows how to use that fucking axe to keep you fucking far away from him as you fight, and then you're either dead or rung-out, and he wins.

The "he" I'm referring to is Frank Orzechowicz, by the way, and that's what this snark is about. It's not really about Soul calibur or Penny Arcade. It's about Frank. But the elements we're weaving together describe the experience of playing Frank in Soulcalibur almost perfectly.

To understand that, however, you have to understand the history.

It started not long before I moved away from Ithaca, New York to Seattle, Washington. I was leaving the people I was closest to, in hopes of starting a new life that wouldn't involve me retiring as a temporary worker. I had a college degree, a skillset, and experience but none of those things get you far in Ithaca. Seattle had my good friend Bill Dickson and a whole new experience. And, this was the early nineties, and Seattle was the place to be. The music scene was at its hottest there. The girls were gorgeous and wearing midriff baring clothing years ahead of anyone else. And I was stagnant and a cross country move would only help matters.

But to move to Seattle would mean leaving the people I was closest to outside my own family. It would mean leaving John Bankert, and my ex girlfriend Karen, who I remained close to. It would mean leaving the beautiful and seductive (and sadly unattainable) Suzanne Aceti. It would mean leaving the utterly cool Becki Orzechowicz and her children who I thought rocked and good friend John Godfrey. It would mean leaving Kevin Pelletier, who I had know since I was in the seventh grade and who defined loyalty.

And it would mean leaving Frank Orzechowicz.

I met Frank (and Karen and Bankert, for that matter) on Relay. You people who know from Chatrooms? Yeah, we did it first. You people who enjoy the Internet Street Cred of IRC? IRC was made to duplicate Relay. Relay came first, and it was BITnet, bitches! You think you're so hot because you know how to use Myspace? In my day, the Internet was 80 column green text on a VT-220 screen, and Relay ran across it. I had an online girlfriend five years before the World Wide Web was even proposed. We hung out on channel 125 of Relay, called the Pink Iguana Tavern, or the PIT. We had the same goofy poses and actions. We had the same imagination based adventures. We had the same cybersex and passionate love affair and raw emotion. We had the same frat guys pretending to be girls. Only there were almost none of us, all the accounts came from schools, and there was no spam. Porn was text-only (downloading porn pictures through Kermit was about five hours per crappy GIF, so we didn't bother).

We had parties called Camp Relay out in Ithaca for the Pink Iguana Tavern crew. It's how I met Frank and Karen and Bill Dickson and John Bankert. (I knew Kevin already, but he was in the same crowd). It's how we fell in love and lust. (There was this girl named Christie, called Gypsylynx, who remains the single sexiest girl I have ever seen. She was sensuality poured into a catsuit and jeans. But I digress.) We had passionate and heartfelt declamations of eternal friendship and love. We had feelings like somehow these were the most important, most intense days of our life, and we knew they would never end.

In a word, we were nineteen years old, or thereabouts. You know what it's like. You might be there yourself.

I met Frank at one of these parties. We'd known each other over the Pink Iguana Tavern, of course. And we knew we would get along. But at the time I lived in Boston and he in Philadelphia. And the night we met he got very, very drunk. Even more drunk than I am right now, and I'm not sure what continent I'm on.

I was upstairs, trying to figure out how to convince Karen, who I was madly in love with, to let me unbutton her shirt. I wouldn't succeed at this. At least, not that night. Later, Karen and I would be seriously involved for several years, so there is a happy ending. She's now married to a good man and we trade phone calls twice a year. But I digress. That night, I was nineteen or twenty years old -- I'm not sure which right now -- and desperate to touch this goddess. And it seemed like I might have been able to do so, only the word came up from the downstairs. Frank was very drunk.

Very, very drunk.

And asking to see me.

What do you do? I went down to see him.

He was on the couch. A girl named Stacy Zimmerman, who we called Starfire, was close at hand, as was Gypsylynx and Rebecca Tants (who did not become Becki Orzechowicz later in the story -- don't be confused). And they had a bucket nearby, because it was clear that Frank would be doing some throwing up.

(He did, in fact, do some throwing up, later. In the laundry room. He got it everywhere. Including in the dryer. And no doubt he's glad I'm telling the whole world this fact in a drunken blog entry.)

"Sabre?" he asked.

I should mention this was my online handle on Relay. "Sabre." Which would become "Lord Sabre" for Relay purposes. It's worth noting I did in fact fence Sabre. However, the name came from a Car Wars car I wrote up one day. So even back then Steve Jackson had a disproportion affect on my life. Go figure.

(It's not outside the realm of possibility that I need more vodka. I'm thinking I might well need another two ounces of sweet, thick, frozen vodka. And I was never much of a vodka fan. Indeed, I have powerful and invigorating scotches close to hand too. But this is not a Scotch night. This is a night to drink vodka named for a war hero no one's heard of except me.)

"Sabre?" Frank asked.

"Yeah, Wolvie?" I answered. Because he was "Wolverine" on the Pink Iguana Tavern channel, the same way I was Sabre. Yes, we had X-Men too. Back then, there was only one fucking X-Men comic, and so you could follow what was happening in it for just eighty-five cents a month. And that was sufficient, God Damn It.

"C'mere."

I went.

Frank proceeded to put me in a headlock.

Let me point out. Frank is huge. He comes from south Philly, and casually used to lift me -- not a small person -- over his head. When he puts you in a headlock, you get put into a headlock. You don't get out of it. I was completely helpless as of that moment, until he dropped it.

"You're my best friend," he said. Slurred, really.

"You're my best friend too," I wheezed.

"I mean it. You got my back!"

"I have you back, man. I have your back."

"And I got your back! Always! I swear!"

"Okay, man!"

I'm not sure what happened next. It's not outside the realm of possibility I passed out. From lack of oxygen or from alcohol (Frank wasn't the only one plastered -- this guy called Radar was making kamikazes that should be illegal under the Geneva Convention) I couldn't say. I can say I didn't get to unbutton Karen's shirt that night.

Six months later, I moved to Ithaca. So did Frank. We got an apartment under a bridge on Stewart Avenue together.

I pause here for more vodka. Another two ounces. Because I'm beginning to consider whether or not this post is going anywhere, which means I haven't had enough vodka yet. I'll be right back. Don't go anywhere.

I'm back, with roughly two more ounces of the General. The vodka is thick, because it's so cold. And yet it warms all the way down. Even as I follow it with water, I can feel it simmering and flowing through me. Drawing me with it. Melting me. Pulling me down into nostalgia for a twenty year old person I'm not, any more. I'm going to be thirty eight in two months. The students I teach and work with hadn't even been born yet when the stories I'm telling took place. And back in those days, I drank a lot more than I do now. So maybe it makes sense that the General pulls these stories out of me.

Another healthy sip. Another drink of water. My body tingles. The ringing in my ears is even louder than normal. I'm not entirely sure if the lamp next to me is flickering or if my vision is being affected. That's about the level I'm shooting for. I'm ready to continue now.

I swear, we will get to video games and Penny Arcade.

Frank was a perfect housemate. We gamed together -- first and second edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, alongside Karen and Kevin and John and some others. Auntie Nin. Becki Tants. Christie, who we no longer called Gypsylynx. I was young and in love with Karen and desperately poor and felt alive. And Frank was at my side.

There was one night we were at some party in a bombed out shell of a frat house. I have no idea why. I assume John Godfrey knew them. Or Karen. Something like that. And I was drinking scotch. Not the potent and lovely and sophisticated single malts I drink now. No, this was Johnnie Walker Red, and I was well acquainted with him that night. And I don't remember why, but some guy was about to punch me into next year.

He was wiry and scrappy and significantly in better shape than I was, and had he started fighting me, I expect I would have gotten a decent shot or two in and then laid down on the floor and bled a lot. And there wasn't a lot I could do to stop it. In part because I was drunk as a Sophomore girl at the Senior Prom with a football player looking for deniability the next day.

And the guy -- I have no idea who it was -- got ready to punch me into next year, when I heard a gutteral growl. I heard the kind of growl that puts you in mind of wolves that see one of the members of the pack about to be punked out by weasels. Wolves who are not amused by this. And that growl turned into words. "Back off," the growl said. "Back off or I'll fucking kill you."

It was Frank.

The guy backed off. Frank had him in height, reach, muscle, badassness and testosterone. Seriously. Frank was attacked by a mugger armed with a two-by-four in Ithaca once and one-punched him.

I stared, drunkenly, at Frank. He nodded to me. "Got your back, Bro," he said. And that was that. We've never talked about it, since. It's possible he doesn't even remember it.

But I remember it.

We did everything together. Frank, Karen, Bankert, Kevin, Tants and I, with various others for good measure. After a while, that narrowed more or less to Frank, Karen and I. And sometimes Karen and I -- we were pretty intense, after all -- and sometimes Frank and I.

I remember once we were at the Renaissance Festival. That's one of the things we did together, after all. And a cute girl we knew there named Cheryl asked me "what is Frank's relation to you, anyway?"

And without thinking even a second, I answered "he's my brother." And it was true. We even look somewhat alike. And it's the closest form of relationship I can ascribe to him. Frank is my brother. He's family. He's there when I need him.

And, if you'll recall, in the early nineties I was leaving him -- and Karen and his (then wife who hasn't much appeared in this story yet) Becki Orzechowicz, and John Bankert and John Godfrey and Suzanne Aceti who had become a close friend by then and Kevin and all the rest -- behind, to move away. I was coming off a disastrous relationship with a girl named Jennifer. A girl who almost cured me of girls, and did manage to kill my formerly romantic self almost completely. And I had a degree I wasn't using and I couldn't afford graduate school, so it was time to do something. That something was Seattle.

And Karen and I had been broken up for a couple of years at that point (Jennifer was something of a rebound relationship), and most of the other folks would be missed but that was life.

But I was leaving my brother behind. And that hurt. That hurt. Because I trusted Frank. He was always there for me. I was always there for him.

At some point, we were out at a billiards place that used to be in Ithaca, and we saw a video game there. A fighter, like Virtua Fighter or Mortal Kombat, but fully three-d, and there were weapons.

Soul Edge it called itself.

"Huh," I said to Frank.

"We should try this," he said.

We put a quarter each in it.

Three hours and several dollars later, we were still playing.

I'm something of a random player. I like to play lots of different characters in Soul Edge and all its sequels. Sometimes it has to do with the weapons -- I like Sophitia's short sword, or Raphael's rapier (in later games), or the epic fencing weapons of the undead pirate Cervantes.

For Frank, it was all about Rock. Rock was a barbarian who looked... well, a Hell of a lot like Frank. He used a gigantic axe to destroy his enemies as they congregated before him. His battle cry was "BAGOOOOOOOO!" after the foster son he was always fighting to save or do some such -- who knows. It's a fighting game. Just go with it.

In the background, I'm listening to SCTV, for the record. In case you care.

Rock isn't an easy character to master, but Frank did it. And because of that, and because that fucking axe had Hella Range, Frank became all powerful using him. The balance of characters and fights are entirely biased to Frank, for the record. I admit this freely. But for whatever reason, this was a game that Frank and I bonded over. This was our game. We found another console out at the mall and dumped money into it too. More than once, Suzanne and Becki would go out to the mall with us, and we would hang out with them for a while, and then we would slip over to the arcade. And Becki would find us there, and say to Suzanne "oh, let's go shop. They're playing their game," and they would laugh at us.

Eventually, of course, I went to Seattle. And though Frank and I would stay in touch by phone and e-mail, there was still a distance between us now. Our shared experiences were fading. Time was passing. We were both getting older and we both had lives and careers of our own. Frank had a wife and stepchildren. I had... well, whatever the Hell I had in Seattle.

But I would go back and visit every now and again. And Frank and I would chat, of course. And seek a chance to connect. To be brothers again.

And then we would go and play Soul Edge. Because it was our game.

When Soul Fire came out for the original Playstation, we both bought it. And I played it almost obsessively. Mastering every character. But every time I would boot it up... every time I would play it, no matter where I was (and at this point I was about ready to head to Maine and then New Hampshire), I knew that the point was always the same. I was playing the game I played with Frank. It kept a bond alive, even without direct contact.

And, when I'd visit, we'd play Soul Fire for hours.

A couple of years later I bought a Dreamcast. I wasn't much of a console gamer at that point, but I had no point. You see, Soulcalibur had come out. And I had to own it. And I had to play it. Because I wasn't willing to give that part of my life up. I wasn't willing to give up that connection, real or fake, to Frank. To my youth. This was the game that we played, and I would be damned if I wouldn't play it.

It didn't hurt that the game was fantastic.

Seriously. There had never been backgrounds like this in a game. Never. And the gameplay was astoundingly fluid. Xianghua -- a new character for this iteration of the game -- didn't so much fight as dance with a sword in hand. It was beautiful. The stories were improved too.

In fact, one set of unlockables for the game were nothing but the characters doing fighting katas, because the movement engine was so beautiful, the programmers wanted to show off. There was Xianghua dancing with her blade. There was Ivy doing her dominatrix routine. There was Lizardman... um... standing there.

Rock was an unlockable character. They had a new character named Astaroth for the regular game. But we unlocked Rock as quickly as possible, because Astaroth just wasn't Rock. And besides... we needed Rock. I mean, Frank was the point. And Frank was Rock. Bagooooooo!

And so I got into the Dreamcast. And I played hours upon hours of Soulcalibur.

I would try other fighting games. I went through a DOA2 phase, for example. But nothing touched me as much as Soulcalibur. And I knew in my heart it was because Soulcalibur was a damn good game, rewarding both skill and button mashing... and because when I played it, in my heart I was playing it with Frank.

I remember being in San Diego, California about two and a half years ago. I was there for Baycon, with my friends Russ and Stirge. And we were walking through the area where video games are set up each year....

And I squealed. Squealed. I squealed like a slashficcing 16 year old girl drunk on Full Metal Alchemist.

Because standing there, before me... was Soul Calibur II.

Russ and Stirge were very patient with me. And I dumped a fuckload of money into that thing. There was no Rock, of course, and that sucked wind, but still. Dude. It was Soul Calibur. Raphael was a good -- if challenging -- new character. Talim was cute and speedy (and almost as tough to beat as the demonic and creepy Voldo). It was a damn good game.

When it came out for the different platforms, I bought a Gamecube for it. Making twice now I've bought a console explicitly so I could play Soulcalibur. Frank got the Gamecube version too.

"There's no Rock," he groused.

"Well, there's Astaroth," I said.

He snorted. "It's not the same," he told me. "There's no Rock."

We didn't really care, though. It was our game.

It was our game.

Going all the way back to the top of this screen, I should point out that the experience that Gabe and Tycho are portraying are almost exactly what Frank and I go through. There's trash talking. There's yelling and posturing. And then Frank absolutely schools my ass and I consider choking him to death. Frank is just plain better than I am at this game. And yet, this game consumes me. Because I don't care that Frank is better than I am at it. When I'm playing it, I'm into it. I'm having fun. I enjoy every aspect of it.

And it's something I'm doing with Frank, even if it's just inside. And so long as I have that, I haven't really lost that connection.

And you have to understand... even with our separate lives and many years past... Frank is still my brother. We're still best friends. Frank is the one man -- the one man -- I know I could call tomorrow and say "I'm in trouble. I need someone here right now," and regardless of the consequences he would be on his way.

(Actually having a third hit now. At least five ounces of vodka on the evening. Possibly six. This is more alcohol than I've had in one night for five years or so. I hope you're enjoying it, because God knows if I'll be able to get out of bed tomorrow.)

I remember, before I went back to college, when I was living out in Ithaca -- at this point I actually was living in Lansing, which is about eleven miles out of town. Now, I didn't have a car at this point. I was dependent on others for everything. And I felt trapped. And so I told Karen I was going out for a walk, just after dark. That worried her, because there are no sidewalks out there in Lansing. She wanted me to take a flashlight, but I didn't. And so I went walking.

And walking.

And walking.

About three miles up the road, there was a liquor store. I stopped in and bought a hip flask of Glenlivet. You can see that my taste in Scotch had improved by this point.

And so I drank and walking along the narrow shoulder of a highway after dark, cars flying past at sixty plus miles an hour. Drunk, ambling and walking and not stopping and sometimes singing. I was proving to myself I wasn't trapped. I could walk to Ithaca if I needed to. (It's worth noting that while I wasn't in terrible shape, an eleven mile walk up and down steep hills while drinking was significantly more than I was used to.) I did some laughing and crying and most of all walking.

And I made it. I was drunk off my ass, the flask of scotch now empty, but I was in Ithaca.

So I did the one thing I could do. I walked to Frank's.

Bear in mind, this was a weeknight. And Frank and his wife and stepkids had things to do the next day. This was at best a huge imposition on my part. They'd have every right in the world to be pissed.

I knocked. Becki answered. Her eyes went wide. She wasn't used to seeing me drunk. And for that matter, how in God's name could I even have gotten there? Walked?

She called out for Frank.

Frank came down. He took one look at me. And he said "hey Bro. C'mon upstairs. I got a movie you'd like."

He took me upstairs. He let me drunkenly ramble. He let me drunkenly cry. And then he made up the couch for me to sleep on. Becki, after checking in with him, called Karen. She (wisely) decided to let me sleep it off there.

The next day, I was a solid mass of soreness. And Karen had a few choice words for me. (Though she was mostly concerned that I was safe. There was something real there.)

But Frank never said a negative word to me about it. He was there for me. And that was enough for him.

Flash forward many years. I'm beginning to develop a relationship with the most wonderful woman I think I've ever met. Her name is Wednesday. You might have heard of her.

"Weds," I said, about seven months ago.

"Yeah?" she answered.

"You need to know something."

"Mmmmmm?"

"Sooner or later -- I don't know when -- a video game called Soulcalibur III is going to come out."

"Okay?"

"You're going to lose me for about seventy-two hours when that happens."

This surprised Weds. "Why?" she asked.

"Because I'm going to have to bury myself in it. I have to. It's non-negotiable."

"Oh." She indulged me. She didn't ask why. She just accepted that it was important to me.

That game came out at the end of October. Due to circumstances beyond all our control, this was the weekend I could play it. And of course, my fucking video cable is dead.

Tomorrow, I'm going to go out, hangover or not, and buy a new one. Because I own Soulcalibur III, and I need to play it. I need to.

Frank and I have talked. We know that Rock has returned. Frank, however, doesn't have a Playstation 2. (He had SCII for the Gamecube.) As we talked, we made it clear it would be insane to buy a Playstation 2 now. And he insisted I shouldn't buy one for him. And we joked about it. But we both know that he's going to have a PS2 by Christmas, because he needs to have this game. Just like I need to have a video cable tomorrow.

And when I start it up, and when I see the opening video, and then start to play (create a character -- Jesus, why don't they just ship the fucking thing with crack?), I will feel my heart pound.

Because this is the game that Frank and I play. This is a ritual that ties me to my brother. To my past. To my youth.

And I'll be damned if I give that up now.

That was damn good vodka. I'll have to buy more next year. And maybe pick up a bottle for Frank.

Alongside a PS2.

BAGOOOOOOOOOOO!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:30 PM | Comments (81)

Eric: On clear, nearly-frozen liquor and the application of blogging.

nadruwrini Tonight, for those who don't know, is (inter)National Drunken Writing Day. The idea, as Wednesday mentioned some time ago, is that you open your blog, whatever it may be. You start drinking. Heavily, in fact.

And you write.

You write whatever comes to mind, under the influence of powerful liquor and imagination. You can run a spellchecker if you like, but you can't go back and edit when you're sober. You write, and you write, and you write.

And then you post.

And the next day, you don't edit, revise or remove that post.

It's like a saturnalia. It's like a visionquest. It's like a party, and we're all invited. Well, all those who aren't teetotalers. Maybe it will be glorious. Maybe it will be funny. Maybe it will be a disaster. I don't know.

So. I'm taking the day off from Enter the Recluse. Wednesday and I are both preparing. I have a fifth of General John Stark vodka -- I swear to Christ, it's a New Hampshire vodka distilled from apples that's tasty and more powerful than a bomb -- and I'm preparing myself emotionally for this.

In a little while, I'm going to pour myself a glass of it. I'm going to pour myself a water chaser. I'm going to eat protein rich food in advance, mind. And then I'm going to open my editor and I'm going to start drinking.

The results will get posted up here. I have no illusions that it will be good, but by God it will be real.

Thousands of miles away, simultaneously, Wednesday White will pour her first glass of Ancien Comte Corbieres Rouge Reserve 2004. She will open her own editor. And she will begin to write as well. And those results will also be posted.

We'll see you on the flip side. And bear in mind I expect to be hung over in the morning. I wouldn't be surprised if Wednesday were hung over too.

Have fun, gang. And if you're worried that we're glamorizing alcohol... that's probably because we are. But hey, it's just one night a year.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:19 PM | Comments (36)

September 24, 2005

Eric: How you can tell you've been working too much lately

The alarms started going off on time, around six thirty this morning. I push up off the couch -- fell asleep there last night, clearly unexpectedly. I push up off said couch, wander into the bedroom to kill the alarm, then back out to grab coffee.

The power of the Keurig is hot, tasty coffee on demand. I got through three quarters of a cup before really putting together my morning plan. Grab a shower, change, head over to work, settle in for the day. It's a plan I've executed before. And I'd gotten up early enough to let me check mail and answer a few letters before I needed to really get into it.

I was part way through my second cup and bringing up webcomics when it hit me that it's Saturday. And unlike most of the last block of Saturdays I've worked, I really don't need to go into the office. I actually have the day off, barring my pager going off.

It's not, by the by, that I thought I had to work this Saturday. It's that I had no idea it was Saturday for nearly an hour.

I'm going back to bed.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 7:20 AM | Comments (21)

September 23, 2005

Eric: The quote is actually a quote, for the record. I didn't make the quote up. I wouldn't do that with a quote.

So, we're in the process of waiting for doom (doooooooooooom!) at my place of employ. (We switch our ISP -- and migrate our IP range in the process -- at 3 pm Eastern Daylight TIme, which means the giant switch gets thrown.) Until this happens, I'm actually at loose ends. And, well, I needed to eat lunch at my desk today.

Which... is actually how I normally work anyway.

Anyhow, the multimedia teacher, knowing my interest in webcomics and webcomic production, pointed me to the Macintosh program Comic Life, by Plasq. Comic Life is software designed to take images (most particularly, pictures sitting in iPhoto, though it will work with anything), and quickly and easily lay it out into a comic grid. They have lots of premade formats, from four panel through full comic page.

Well, I wanted to see just how "quick and easy" this thing could be. And so, I downloaded the software and, in the course of eating my lunch, I created my first self-created webcomic since Unfettered by Talent. Well... not counting my guest comic for Daily Dinosaur Comics I did because... well, it's fun to do those.

So, hidden away behind a "click for more" link at the bottom of the entry (RSS readers? Click on the link to go to the entry on my blog) you will find a brand new photocomic, using the first comic I found.

It stars Revolutionary War Era Brigadier General John Stark.

Look, you take pictures of stuff you want to take pictures of, I take pictures of stuff I want to take pictures of.

The software was a little bit annoying, here and there (I would love to get more granular controls for image scaling, for example), but it certainly is easy to use. It seems to be yet another way to unleash one's inner creativity without needing... well, the ability to draw.

Next, I'm going to try out some of the filter sets -- there are apparently ways to make things look drawn even when they're not. And that's what I'm shooting for. (They also apparently can take pictures directly from an iSight, which rocks.)

So without further ado... The Adventures of Brigadier General John Stark. (And yes, the logo in the first panel sucks. I've come to terms with that.)

The Adventures of Brigadier General John Stark!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:17 PM | Comments (12)

September 22, 2005

Eric: It's like putting out a call to the Blue Blaze irregulars!

I am developing a need to develop resources for various projects. Among those resources are folks wise in the ways of language.

In particular, I could use a reference point for Latin (modern or classical -- or both!) and Greek (also modern, classical or both.)

I could also use a conversation with someone well versed in alternative punk music -- particularly current/modern alt-punk with a certain measure of popularity that seems ironic. (Otherwise known as "the kind of music you might expect any given 19 year old Suicidegirl to listen to.)

All of the above are for writing projects of one kind or other. Thanks in advance!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:30 PM | Comments (34)

September 11, 2005

Eric: 20 days.

Telethon
I had last Sunday off. I really shouldn't have, but I didn't end up going in. I did work on Saturday, and on Labor Day, however.

And I worked yesterday and today.

And my average workday for the past twenty days has been over ten hours.

I'm very tired. I'm very tired.

But the students started coming back today. A couple more weeks of craziness, and then we settle down into the year.

And I have seen the art turned in for the Webcomic Telethon by Greg Holkan.

It's phenomenal. It's perfect.

We're not going with a political piece. Not for a telethon.

20 days. And five more before it's over.

I'm not getting out of bed on Saturday.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:39 PM | Comments (6)

August 29, 2005

Eric: A Note, In Way Of Explanation

August has not been kind, to me and mine.
Humid heat and cloying days, a haze of stress and anger
And noise that only I can hear.

August has not been kind, to me and mine.
Brothers, friends, loved ones, more.
Fatigue like iron clamped around our arms.

August has not been kind, to me and mine.
But if there's one thing I know,
It's that Augusts end.
And I have a good feeling about September.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:36 PM | Comments (19)

August 26, 2005

Eric: 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 10, 2005

Eric: The redemption of scripting.

I'm somewhere between eternal illness and exhaustive collapse. There is a lot of stress going on right now, which few if anyone here is that interested in. Except, of course, that I'm not writing very much on Snark. It's not because I don't love you.

However, there are things that need to be worked on, and one of those things is Gossamer Commons. Greg has been waiting for some scripts, so he can keep well ahead of the pack, and the same things that kept me barely here has kept me from getting scripts to him.

Tonight, I knuckled down and hammered out a month's worth of scripts. And damn if I don't feel good, now. Really good. Better than I've felt in a month, almost.

It helps that I really like how they're going. Chapter Two's pace looks like it's going to be about perfect -- which means I've learned a thing or two from Chapter One. Things happen, and as of strip eighteen of Chapter Two, no one's sat across a table from someone else while drinking coffee. This can only be a good sign.

It's interesting, however. I'm just as tired, and ill, and overly stressed, as I was yesterday. And this morning. (I was significantly late this morning, because I was so tired I could barely make it out of bed. My boss understood, because she feels exactly the same way.) Nothing's changed.

But I've written. I've written dialogue and script and plot. And it's good stuff. I can feel the goodness. (Of all my problems, low self esteem isn't on the list.)

So I feel good. I have hope. It all seems worth it. It all seems like it's going to work.

I've also had some very, very good news on the Snarky shirt front. Expect something tomorrow or Friday, at this rate. We're also going to be offering the Revelations: Strunk & White designs as a poster -- which some argue it should have been in the first place. (Though the run was a success, so I'm not complaining either way.)

So I feel productive. I feel creative. I feel in control. And that trumps exhausted, sick and stressed every day of the week, in my book.

Now -- to write some pulp.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:54 PM | Comments (11)

August 5, 2005

Eric: A brief conversation, 30 hours in.

Eric: "There's nothing wrong with this network that I couldn't solve with twenty ounces of scotch and a gun."

Eric's Boss: "True. But cleaning up would be a problem."

Eric: "Hey, I'll be in jail, sleeping. By definition, it won't be my problem."

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 5:42 PM | Comments (18)

August 2, 2005

Eric: Spider webs and shadows, and the purgatory of New Hampshire malls in summer.

As you know, I had a blowout on Friday night. Caused, as near as I can tell, by Orson Welles. He's had it in for me ever since I made all those "planet" jokes at his expense post-Unicron, but I digress. Yesterday was the day I was scheduled to get the front tires on my car replaced. This involved driving to Portsmouth on a donut spare, which made me the tiniest bit nervous as I crept along. But that's okay -- I had something to think about: the bastards who came up with cool names before I did.

See, I've listened to a lot of old time radio recently, as you know. That led me to read a lot of pulp. And, as with many folks in the Twenty-first century, that's made me think "why can't we return a pulp sensibility to fiction, here or there." In particular, centering on the Shadow, since that's who I'm currently obsessed with listening to many episodes of and reading many stories about.

Now, using the Shadow is simplified by the fact that the copyright on a bunch of his magazine stories -- most particularly the first couple of stories that established his premise -- expired some time ago. That means that some of the key Shadow stories are in the public domain. And that means the details of those stories are in the public domain. However, the radio character predates the Shadow's magazine and fictional life. Originally, "the Shadow" was just the narrator of a detective show sponsored by a magazine publisher. However, it was such an evocative narrator that people who ran out to buy the magazine demanded to know where the Shadow's adventures were. The publisher contracted with a writer named Walter B. Gibson. Gibson was a professional magician and a journalist, and was hired because he was very fast and used to hitting journalistic deadlines as opposed to fiction ones. He turned out a mind-numbing amount of prose as a result, heavily influenced by stage magic and misdirection. That the stories turned out to be excellent was a happy coincidence. (He wrote under the pen name of Maxwell Grant. Later, the publishers used different writers but kept the pen name. Just for the record.)

Anyway -- many of the Gibson stories were published in the days when copyright needed to be renewed regularly, and many of them weren't renewed. Thus, they're free. Blackmask has a bunch. And they're ripe for the mining. However, the Shadow himself is still under trademark and most if not all of his radio shows are under copyright protection. So I can't write stories about the Shadow. It can't be done. I would be sued by Conde Nast, and they would win, and I would have to go to a tan brick building called the "Poorhouse" and eat turnips for dinner and be poor, by law.

But, that's hardly an impediment. Writers have been shamelessly raping those writers who came before them, taking their creativity and repackaging it with the serial numbers filed off inspired to create homages to beloved stories of yesteryear for centuries. Shakespeare himself stole most of his best source material from other places -- it was the alchemy of language and innovation that transformed it into something unique and new. And Warren Ellis, who's a better writer right now than I'll ever be, has directly stolen characters like the Shadow and Doc Savage under barely disguised variations. And I won't even get into Alan Moore and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Suffice it to say, there is a case to be made for the transmutation of our shared cultural heritage into something new, if you're into that sort of thing. And sometimes that means writing something that most people know was directly influenced by a work you can't legitimately use, but also don't want to get sued over.

So. No problem. Carry a lot of the elements of what makes the Shadow so cool forward into a modern pulp setting. That's largely style and tone, rather than specifics. I don't need "Lamont Cranston" or "Margot Lane" or "Cloud Men's Minds" or "Who knows what evil lurks," per se. I need horror turned against evil instead of for evil. I need psychology and mystery blended. I need the supernatural with a veneer of exotic science to handwave it away.

Most of all, I need a name. A theme. A metaphor. If you listen to the old Shadow broadcasts, they work "shadow" and "shadows" and "his shadow" and the like into everything. It's a good thing they were good actors, because it borders on the ridiculous, sometimes. You need something like that -- something that can be a metaphor for the alien, the unknown, the frightening, that you can relate essentially anything to.

And I had one. And it was perfect. I would call my faux Shadow "the Spider." Spiders work perfectly, because they're unlike anything else in our experience. They crawl unseen in dark places. They have venom they use on their prey. They spin and weave webs -- and society is a web. A web of interpersonal relationships and shared experiences. A web of deceit and a web of honor. You can get a ton of milage out of creepy web metaphors.

More to the point, I am terrified of spiders. Seriously. I've used firearms on them before. They scare the Hell out of me. I'm terrified of their pictures. The only two spiders that don't scare me are Charlotte (because honestly -- who could be scared of someone that pedantic? Besides, I always liked her) and the spider that used to run around with the bugs at the bottom of Cricket Magazine's pages.

And it occurs to me that using something you're absolutely terrified of in pulp horror is probably a success strategy.

But in my slow creep to Portsmouth, I wasn't thinking about "The Spider" and working out the ways he would be different and unique, in a series of stories I might or might not ever write. Oh no. Not at all.

You see, we've already got one.

Damn it.

So, here I am, driving south. Slowly. And I'm annoyed as Hell because someone used my idea for a Shadow knockoff specifically for a Shadow knockoff and had the audacity to do it thirty-five years before I was born and get a couple of movie deals out of it and an enduring legacy. Fuckers.

So, when I drop the car off at Sears, I'm annoyed at people who are dead for a literary character that I hadn't heard of before doing research on spiders, and for my own hubris for thinking I had come up with a character no one had ever used (setting aside Spider-Man and the like -- this was a very different tradition, after all). They tell me that the car will be ready in two hours, which means I have two hours at a mall, which once upon a time would have been exciting, but now I'm in my late thirties and besides, I don't have a lot of cash to spend on non-tires or food for the next week and a half. So, I was kicking around a mall with a story trying to express itself in my head and what seemed a fatal stumbling block impeding it. And very little to do but think about it.

I'd worked out a lot of my "The Spider's" background already -- I enjoy such things greatly, and besides, the key to creating a pulp character set in the twenty-first century instead of 1938 is setting. My Shadow knockoff had pulled heavily from the literary version -- which makes sense since those are the bits in the public domain. In particular, I liked the idea of the Shadow's agents -- those people whose lives were saved by the Shadow, and in saving them were also claimed by the Shadow, whose organization against even ever grew. There was a lot of good web imagery you could make out of something like that. And the obvious variant name -- "The Web" -- was right out. If I'm going to be stymied by a largely obscure literary character having the same name as my supernatural crimefighter, I sure as Hell won't name my character after an Archie Comics superhero.

At this point, I'm wandering out of Sears and into the Mall, when I hear over the Sears PA "would Eric Burns please return to automotive? Eric Burns? Please return to automotive." This can't possibly be good.

It's not. I'm brought out to my car, and shown my rear tires. It becomes apparent within a couple of seconds that those need to be replaced as well. They're largely to 'bald.' Orson Welles had done his work well, damn his Paul Masson drinking hide.

I do some math in my head, don't like the answer, and say "will they last two weeks?" I get paid in two weeks, you see.

"Probably," the person said. "But we should do them today."

"Yeah, but unless you want to get paid by the sight of a fat man dancing, they're not going to be."

We priced out cheaper tires than I had ordered, and I could have afforded them, barely... but damn it, Orson Welles is trying to kill me. I need good tires, damn it. All weather tires. Tires with a warranty that'll last longer than getting to the house. And it's the front tires that do all the work, so the rear tires can make it two more weeks if they're not actually wearing through right now.

So, if I'm dead on August 10, my crumpled body pried out of the remains of my car with the Jaws of life, my two pristine front tires unharmed even as the rear of my car looks like it was shelled by artillery, I give you all permission to forward this particular essay around the internet with the subject header "stupid fucker." In the meantime, I plan on minimizing my driving even though I have been assured the risk is minimal.

I was again told to be back by eight. So I wandered out, my mood if anything worse. And the Spider still lurking in my head, insisting he could still exist. His organization could exist. He would just need another name, and there had to be other names.

Only, there's a fine line between the pulps and super heroes, and a fine line between a creepy sounding sobriquet and a goofy one. Sure, the Green Hornet was a pulp hero instead of a superhero -- with the very pulp methodology of convincing the world he was a mob boss while using that position to smash organized crime -- but he carried through so simply that when the Green Hornet was brought to television in the sixties, it was done in the same style as the camp Batman television show.

(If you ever want a fun time, track down the crossover show between Batman and the Green Hornet on Batman. Since everyone thought the Green Hornet was a villain, there was the inevitable fight scene, which meant Robin got to fight the Hornet's manservant Kato. Robin, of course, was played by Burt Ward, who styled himself something of a martial artist in real life. Kato, on the other hand, was played by a then little known asian actor named Bruce Lee. And Ward agreed to let Lee choreograph the fight. Watching Robin get his green pantied ass handed to him is one of the great unexpected joys of sixties television. But I digress.)

So, the Dark Spider or the Black Spider or the Silver Spider or the like just didn't fit right in my head. Those wouldn't do. And you have to understand, when you're a writer and you have something in your head that has to come out, it has to be right or it drives you insane. I needed a name for this character that fit, that made sense, that wouldn't be confused with anyone else's character, that wouldn't be a problem. Even if I never actually got around to writing the story, I needed that name to be able to write the story. Without it, it would fester in my brain. It would drive me nuts.

I knew the elements of his organization -- the Margot Lane figure, who wasn't very Margot Laneish at all. The various operatives he had recruited into his web -- each one flawed and broken in some way or other, each one needing something that the Spider could give them. Each one willing to swear themselves to fight and die at his command because each one had deeper reasons beyond his saving their lives. It wasn't just gratitude -- it was rebirth for them all. And at the center of the web, a figure, solitary but connected to them all, with powers and abilities beyond easy comprehension -- lacking invulnerability or strength or speed, but having his hooks into the minds of others, having a venom of his own.

And until I had that name, the rest would just sit there, open and raw.

And here I was, walking aimlessly for two hours in a Mall.

It was another warm night in New Hampshire. There were men and women on all sides. Well, boys and girls. While there were some folks my age there, it was mostly an extended advertisement for the Gap, Abercrombie and Fitch and Hot Topic surrounding me. Boys and girls expressing themselves to each other -- presenting and flirting and assuming attitudes. I wasn't anywhere near their world. I didn't belong to their world. When you're thirty-seven and by yourself, you go places in a Mall. You hit EB Games, or Sears, or Radio Shack, or Macy's. You have something to actually buy. That's why you're there. If you have nothing to buy, the Mall isn't your store. Killing random time at a Mall stops being leisure time. It's Penny Arcade all over again -- it's not for you.

There is only one sit down restaurant in this mall, and it's Mexican. Typically, I would hit the food court, get something from Subway. But I wanted a sit down restaurant. So I went, and found the one sandwichish item I could eat (with a few changes), ordered it, and took out my computer. I had scripts to write for Gossamer Commons and other projects, but I couldn't. The Spider was in my way, and he was demanding. So I played with words, and phrases, and synonyms, and tried to find something. He couldn't be the Black Widow -- setting aside the Marvel Comics superheroine, someone called a Black Widow really had to be a woman, and "The Black Widower" just sounded dumb. There was something to be said for "The Orb Weaver," but it didn't sing quite right -- and just "the Weaver" didn't work at all. There wasn't the right kind of resonance. There were other ideas. I opened up my computer's copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and I read about spiders and got skeeved out by the pictures -- and yes, it remained a fear I could use. But I had no internet there, which meant no Google, no Wikipedia. And the Britannica is best as a starting point -- it's so rarely a satisfactory destination.

I finished the food, and headed to the one bookstore in this place -- a B. Dalton's. I thought perhaps I could thumb through a book on spiders -- get some thoughts (and frighten myself even more -- the mere fact that I was willing to look at those hideous things should tell you the kind of drive I was feeling. The hunger to resolve this thing.)

Only, B. Dalton sucks.

I remember when I used to be excited to go to B. Dalton's in the Bangor Mall, on trips. We had no bookstores in Fort Kent, Maine. The mere idea was ridiculous. So a store chock full of books thrilled me. I bought dozens of books there. Heinleins. Donaldsons. Piers Anthony (I was very young. Don't judge me). Anne McCaffery. Philip K. Dick. Asimov and Clarke butted heads with Eddings and Norton, during different periods of my young life.

But now I'm an adult, and while the Science Fiction section remained good, B. Dalton's selection on insects was particularly poor. In fact, their selection on any kind of animals was poor. They had the Field Guides: a field guide to birds, to mammals, to fish, to weather. They had a field guide to weather, as if I would encounter weather in the wild and need a quick reference guide to identify "rain." I even check the childrens' section, figuring that spiders were ooky and kids liked ooky. But, while their Childrens' fiction section was pretty good, their Childrens' nonfiction was pretty much limited to several books about Jesus, several Chicken Soul for the Soul books (see books on Jesus), and Bill O'Reilly's The O'Reilly Factor for Kids. This is when I despaired.

But I couldn't be surprised. This was a Mall bookstore, after all. They had no books on spiders. Not even a field guide to arthropods. You needed either a specialty store, or a University bookstore, or a really good Independent Bookstore, or pretty much any given standalone Borders or Barnes and Noble to have that kind of depth.

(I digress a lot in this essay. But if you've read this far, you really don't care. You're just along for the ride. And this is where I confess that I actually like Borders and Barnes and Noble a great deal. I agree that it's tragic that they hurt the really good independent bookstores like the Elliot Bay Bookstore in Seattle. However, setting aside solid specialty independents for a moment, ignoring quality used bookstores and most especially ignoring the ridiculous "vintage books" bookstores that charge more for old ratty paperbacks than you would pay for a new copy -- and focusing on most general independent bookstores... Barnes and Noble and Borders tend to have vastly better selections. Their history section has depth. Their science section has broad and narrow books alike. If I took the time to walk to Barnes and Noble, I'm sure I'd have found a dozen books on spiders. And while it means that bookstores like Borealis Books in Ithaca have been steadily dying for two decades -- and I liked Borealis a great deal -- that doesn't change the fact that at Borealis's peak it just wasn't as good a bookstore as the Barnes and Noble in fucking Newington, New Hampshire. But, as always, I digress.)

I wandered out. My back hurt from lugging my backpack around. The teenagers continued to do their dance around me. It was close to eight, finally. Close to the time I could pay the good folks at Sears and just leave. So I headed back that way. And walking through Sears, I couldn't help but notice most of the customers looked like me, not like the mallcrawling teens out in the main part of the mall. I am of the Sears generation, now, I thought. I don't look at cheap tawdries, posters and blacklight shit at Spencer Gifts, any more. I don't sit in food courts unselfconsciously and people watch or girl watch. I don't wander the halls of the mall contentedly, just looking at stuff in stores. I am a Sears person now. I come to Sears for tires, and when the tires are on my car, I leave the Mall.

The mechanic was apologetic. The tires were on the car, but they were backed up on alignments, and you need an alignment after a blowout. I remember how badly the car shook just before the tire blew, and didn't argue. Nine, he said. Maybe nine-fifteen.

So I went back into the mall, after first putting my backpack in the car. My back hurt now -- I was sick of schlepping a computer around, when I had no real place or inclination to write. I could let the Spider fester and bitch at me without a computer, it seemed to me. I went back into the mall, and went to Hudson News. Like all "newsstands" in malls it was chock full of magazines, but it's mostly a smoke shop. Hundreds of brands of cigarettes. A humidor of cigars. Full tins of tobaccos for pipes or hand rolling. Lighters. Tampers.

And of course, porn. Racks of comics that didn't interest me, and general magazines, and the teen version of Porn pioneered by Maxim and Stuff, and a back section of the real deal. Playboy and Penthouse and Hustler, of course. But this is a full on "newsstand," so they also have Gent and Swank and Family Letters and God knows what else. At sixteen, I would have been desperately interested in that section -- the allure of the forbidden is strong. At thirty-seven, it barely registered as a clinical interest. And of course, I couldn't even satisfy that -- a pause to carefully look at the titles and figure out the range and depth of pornography at the back of the brightly lit Hudson News would make me into a creepy old guy scoping porn at the Mall. No thank you.

That's the advantage the Shadow has, I thought to myself. Or my Spider, who can't be the Spider. The Shadow is invisible. He walks among us unseen. He creeps out the criminal element because they never know he's there, and when he speaks they can't see him. He has ventriloquism and a hypnotic power that means they can't even trace his voice well enough to shoot. The Shadow can stand and stare at the racks of porn -- or anything else that might embarrass you or me -- because he can't be seen. He can satisfy any curiosity without censure. He can be curious about what porn magazines a non-adult bookstore can and will carry without being suspected by strangers of being a porn fiend. He can be thirty-seven years old and still wander around the parts of the mall that belong to the teenagers, and even if he's out of place no one knows.

Finally, I bought coffee. I sure as Hell didn't need caffeine at that time of night, but I was sore and tired and wanted to be alert for the drive home. And I sat in one of the "shiatsu massage chairs" that sit out in the mall. Stick money in, and get a machine-driven 'massage.' I stuck money in. I was sore, and maybe that would help. It was a place to sit, and do nothing for fifteen minutes, and that was worth paying. And if I were going to look out of place anyhow, I might as well go all the way with it.

The machine cranked up. Poles and gears ground into my back, pulsing with a vibration meant to be soothing. It squeezed and released the flesh of my back, not so much relaxing and massaging as making me feel like I'd sat in a breadmaker. But I stayed in the chair, because I had nowhere else to go, and I looked around. I looked at the "portrait booth," that took pictures of people and then ran a photoshop filter to make them look sort of like sketches. I looked at Abercrombie and Fitch, with its pulsing music and its air of street exclusivity -- were I a teenager, I still wouldn't be welcome there. I wasn't the Abercrombie and Fitch type. Nor was I a Hot Topic type back then, though I'd have felt more comfortable there.

Maybe I've always been a Sears person.

I watched a young guy and girl -- maybe fifteen each -- walking through the Mall, clearly on a date. He wore a letter jacket and jeans. She wore low rider sweats and a white spandex spaghetti top. They were full of attitude, doing an ancient ritual of dating. Putting on airs for each other, and for anyone who might see them. I glanced at them, and then looked away -- but they stayed close. They looked at the portrait booth. And giggling, they went in, the guy saying something sort of macho and dismissive, the girl saying something slightly coy, playing as much to the nonexistent crowd as to her date.

I leaned back, the chair grinding my back, the Spider still demanding I think. I didn't want to think. I was tired, and poor, and stuck in a Mall. I wished there was an Arcade. You could kill time in an arcade in a Mall, when I was young.

I glanced back at the booth, and did a double-take. There was a video screen outside, showing a live, real time video... of the boy and girl who were getting ready to pose. The kids clearly didn't know they were on television -- they had every reason to think it was private. But it wasn't. I glanced around, and saw a couple of mall workers watching. Clearly, whenever this happens, it becomes an impromptu show for the folks who work the mall.

If I were a better man than I am, I would have looked away. If I were as good a man as I'd like to be, I would have gone over and told the kids we could see them. As it was, I stayed in my chair and I watched. Had they started making out or if the boy had gone for second (or the girl offered second up), I'd have said something. But they didn't. Instead, something wholly more remarkable happened.

They became natural. They became who they are with each other. There was no kissing. There was no groping. There was instead an odd sweetness that descended on them both. We couldn't hear them, of course. But they lost all sense of the crowd they were playing to. The girl remained coy, but it was less a dance and more a sense of privacy. The boy lost almost all his affectation. This is a girl he actually liked, and he felt like he could show that without pretense, when he was in a booth with the curtains drawn.

This is the power the Shadow has, I thought. More than knowing the evil that lurks in the hearts of men... the Shadow sees the faces we wear when we think no one can see us. He sees who we are with someone we like, when we're feeling unguarded. He knows our hidden face. This is the power he possesses. In that moment, I understood the Shadow... and understood the side of the Shadow they didn't do radio plays about.

They posed, and took three pictures. We saw them select their options, which were displayed on the outside as well. And then we all looked away as they stepped out, and waited. They saw the video screen then, and the boy said "oh, no way!" and tried to cover it up, laughing, since their still picture was on it. They still didn't know that we'd seen the posing -- he just thought it was the picture itself. Still, if he was embarrassed at that flash of his true self being seen by the mall in general, it was a mild one. And they both bought a print and took it with them.

The chair stopped grinding. I got up, finishing my coffee. I walked to Sears. I paid the man for my car. I noticed my car seemed... bouncier, with its new Goodyears on the front.

Driving home, it began to rain. You might have noticed a few Northeastern websites last night, talking about the rain. Talking about the storm. Well, I was driving in it. It was Orson Welles, taking his last shot at taking me out, once and for all. It started to rain, and then it was pouring. Sheets of rain and wind, lightning from all directions.

It is worth noting I identified the thunderstorm without resorting to a field guide.

I knew then just how badly I needed those new tires. When heavy rain came before, I would skid a little. I figured that was life in the rain. These tires gripped the road hard. It was a comforting feeling. Still, I was conscious of the nearly bald tires on the back wheels, and while I have front wheel drive it seemed an opportune time to stop. So as I passed through a toll booth, I turned off and went to the parking area for big rigs next to it. A number of cars had stopped, since the storm was wild and vicious. I parked, parallel to the road, and turned off the engine and lights. I leaned back in the seat, and slid the moon roof's inner panel open, and I looked up into the heart of the storm.

It was glorious. Rain slamming down. Wind everywhere. Flash after flash of twisting lightning. Hail, finally, raining down and drumming along the car. Maybe it should have scared me -- I knew that there had been tornado warnings in Northern Maine -- but it was exhilarating. I was staring up into the very heart of the storm, a tiny little man confronted with the hugeness of nature, and I felt perfectly safe.

I thought about spiders, staring up into the storm. Perhaps it was because I was in the storm that I could think about them without being scared. Spiders wouldn't come out in this weather. They would hide away -- crawl under things or behind things, batten down the hatches and wait it out. Hidden, squirreled away, reclusive....

I thought about spiders, and I saw a tremendous thunderbolt, the clap shaking the car, itself being pelted with rain and hail, and I had my name. I knew what the character was called. It would do. It was better than "the Spider." And the voice in my head chuckled, and quieted down. I knew I could write scripts now. I could write anything I wanted. And my character and his organization were there, whenever I was ready to write their story.

And I laughed, the tension in me breaking like the storm. I laughed and I stared into that glorious, turbulent sky, and I knew that Orson Welles wasn't going to kill me today.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:20 PM | Comments (81)

August 1, 2005

Eric: Severe Tire Damage

p55.gif(From Gossamer Commons. Click on the thumbnail for full sized waiting!)

As always, this is not a snark, because I can't Snark Gossamer Commons. I wrote it.

I'm writing this link because A) it's been a while, and B) because it's been the requisite two weeks since the end of Chapter One, and so we have had guest strips. But now, Chapter Two has begun, as of today, so it's a good day to get back into it.

Not... er... that much happens today. But hey, we've all been where Malachite is, right?

And now... a brief story from my life. So that this is more than just a shameless plug.

It was Friday night, and I was driving north from Peabody, Mass. I had a stop to make there, to grab some things for Wednesday. But, it took longer than expected, and now I needed to drive fast and hard to make it to the mall in Portsmouth in time to grab other things on her care package list.

(If you're wondering just why I'd be putting together a care package to send to Wednesday... yeesh, man. You haven't been paying close attention, have you? But I digress.)

So I'm driving, listening to the iPod... and the car begins to vibrate. Rhythmically.

So, like all good drivers, I think "oh crap. Don't tell me I need to have an alignment done. God damn it." And then I sped up some more, because dude. I had to buy conditioner. Conditioner for Wednesday. And as I go faster, the vibration disappears.

(When I told Wednesday this little tale later on, she let me know in no uncertain terms my priorities were screwed up.)

I make it to the mall at 9:22. I go to two different stores and buy two different things within eight minutes, and then talk to the Select Comfort saleslady through the metal grate. (I have a sleep comfort bed, and it has a slow leak. I asked advice. She gave me an eight hundred number and told me that apparently they'll just up and send replacement parts, free. Dude!)

I head out, feeling smug, and drive North... to the grocery store. There are foods one cannot get in Britain, you see. Foods which I can provide. Foods which are dirt cheap, which means bonus points without incredible expense.

And then I drive home. And put on the iPod. Specifically, one of the episodes of The Shadow I have. It is now late, and the radio play will help keep me awake, I figure.

So... I get within ten miles of my home. And the Shadow is playing. Specifically, a commercial. For the Goodrich Safety Silvertown Tire -- a tire that literally whisks water off the road like a windshield wiper working on a windshield, with the patented golden ply for extra blowout protection! (Goodrich was the national sponsor, while Blue Coal was the regional sponsor for New England. So, about once every three episodes we get Goodrich shilling tires.) The Shadow himself was advertising this particular tire, this particular episode.

"We'd like to talk to you about your tires," the announcer said. "After all, who knows--"

"The Shadow knows!" Orson Welles hissed, in his trademark voice, interrupting the announcer.

My car began to vibrate again.

"Your tires could be a death trap!" the Shadow hissed, in his trademark way. "Slipping! Skidding! Leading to a blowout! Leading to expenses, or injuries--"

The vibrating became a violent shaking. My eyes grew wide. This -- this was trouble, and I knew it.

"--or worse!" the Shadow cried.

My front left tire -- the one nearest me -- exploded.

I pulled over to the side of the road and put my blinkers on. And let me tell you, Orson Welles screaming at me that I was in terrible danger, using the intonations of the Shadow -- which was scary as Hell, thank you -- did not work to calm my heart rate down. Especially since I can't buy stupid Safety Silvertown tires. They haven't made them since before World War II!

I got out, and looked at my tire. Smoke was pouring from it. It had overheated, and that caused the blowout. So I call AAA. (I royally suck at changing tires in the best of situations. Given that I was on the side of a major arterial highway, trying to change a tire at nearly midnight with cars doing seventy around the curve right next to where I would be crouched seemed at best suicidal to me. Besides, I have AAA Plus for a reason, and this was it.

Forty-five minutes, they said. So, I listened to more Shadow episodes.

An hour and a half later, the guy shows up and changes the tire. In his defense, I live in the middle of New Hampshire. However, even with Shadow episodes to keep me company, an hour and a half in my car waiting for AAA was plenty long enough to shift me from freaked out to bored out of my skull. I watched cars blur past me all the while (including one person in a Mercedes going at least 90 who had the audacity to honk at me. I'm on the shoulder, my hazards on, and he honks. Yeeeeeah).

I go home. I shake a bit. I take Benadryl. Eventually, over the course of the weekend, I play City of Heroes, talk to folks, and price out tires (specifically designed to not overheat on the road). I make an appointment to get them replaced on Monday. Which is tomorrow.

And then, I uploaded Gossamer Commons. Because we're back, and blowouts may happen, but darn it, I had a deadline.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:26 AM | Comments (13)

July 27, 2005

Eric: Run run run, as fast as you can!

I had all the foreign-bought shirts come back, today. Postage. Different forms for customs than I'd had. Stuff. It's all part of the fun. They were good enough to send the forms to me with the returned packages, though. So I filled them out (along with packing up ten more orders -- we're almost done with these things. Besides -- my new labels came in today, so I got to do free tracking numbers too! It's like a toy!)

Work was heavy, so I was looking to hit the post office between 4 and 4:30. Which meant I was just in time for a monumental downpour. I mean *huge* gusts of wind and sheets of water drenching the world.

Now, here's the thing. When you preprint postage, it includes a postmark. Which means you have to send the packages the same day. If you don't, there will be monumental killing. These are postal workers in New Hampshire. They're well armed.

So... I pushed it to the limit... then hit the car at a dead run, getting it close to the building so I could put packages and paperwork in the trunk. I drove down. I made it in...

...and all the customs paperwork fell out of the folder I kept them in. And became one with a puddle.

...wooonderful.

Anyway. I did new paperwork, and I paid the extra money (had I sent the things in the envelopes the Post Office provides for free, the postage would have been what it was listed as. Since I used different envelopes of the same size... it cost more. I don't get it either). I sent off the shipments. I went outside....

...not a drop of rain in the sky. Not one.

I crossed the street and went to the quaintly named 'yum yum' shop for coffee. I needed coffee after this. And I got some, and a loaf of homemade bread. Only this was after five, so the guy threw in three other loaves for free. They apparently don't do day old.

While they ran the bread through the slicer (the power slicer for bread is mind numbingly dangerous looking, and I desperately want to play with it), a woman and her kids came in. The old man who gave me extra bread walked over to chat with them, eyes wide. He sang the Gingerbread song (you know the one. "You can't catch me -- I'm the Gingerbread Man!") and then gave each one a free Gingerbread man. This place? Rocks.

And then I went back to work until eight, working on Firewall conversion.

This is why you haven't heard from me today. And why this post... well, sucks.

Enjoy!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:42 PM | Comments (20)

July 7, 2005

Eric: A brief IM conversation, quoted by permission


11:38:03 PM Eric Burns: Okay. I now think I understand you.
11:38:12 PM Eric Burns: I certainly understand the world you live in better.
11:38:27 PM Scott Kurtz: huh?
11:38:37 PM Scott Kurtz: you understand what it's like to be totally hot and brilliant?
11:38:56 PM Eric Burns: No no. I didn't get the good stuff.
11:39:13 PM Eric Burns: I now understand what it's like to say anything and have it TURN INTO FUCKING WEBCOMICS DRAMA.
11:39:20 PM Eric Burns: Let me set the stage.
11:39:25 PM Eric Burns: I have had a *terrible* week.
11:39:32 PM Eric Burns: I had a complete hard drive failure.
11:39:38 PM Scott Kurtz: heard about that
11:39:42 PM Eric Burns: I discovered my backup system had failed for two months.
11:39:50 PM Eric Burns: So I lost everything for two months.
11:40:00 PM Scott Kurtz: fuck.
11:40:03 PM Eric Burns: That same day, Gossamer Commons got hit with a worm and went down.
11:40:16 PM Scott Kurtz: heard that too.
11:40:56 PM Eric Burns: While work was boiling over in Hell, I would add.
11:41:10 PM Eric Burns: My father was injured today, on a boat.
11:41:22 PM Eric Burns: I am *stressed.*
11:41:32 PM Scott Kurtz: oh shit. How badly was he injured?
11:41:32 PM Eric Burns: I post to Websnark... about a COMIC NOTIFICATION SITE.
11:41:55 PM Eric Burns: Stitches and observation, but it was a head injury so, you know. Stress.
11:42:04 PM Eric Burns: This was a nothing post.
11:42:08 PM Eric Burns: This was a *puff* post.
11:42:30 PM Eric Burns: We are now up to 34 comments on it in a full on Webcomics Drama War Thing.
11:43:07 PM Eric Burns: And I stared at it, at the burning flames and people saying "fuck" to each other...
11:43:22 PM Eric Burns: And I thought, very very deliberately, "this is how Scott Kurtz feels all the time."
11:43:37 PM Scott Kurtz: yes.
11:43:39 PM Scott Kurtz: yes it is.
11:47:11 PM Eric Burns: But... I...
11:47:15 PM Eric Burns: Dude.
11:48:21 PM Scott Kurtz: yeha
11:48:23 PM Scott Kurtz: nice huh?
11:49:17 PM Eric Burns: Clearly, it is my gift.
11:49:28 PM Eric Burns: I aggro drama.
11:50:06 PM Scott Kurtz: HA!
11:50:08 PM Scott Kurtz: That's awesome.
11:50:17 PM Scott Kurtz: put that on a tee shirt.
11:50:20 PM Eric Burns: Yes.
11:50:27 PM Eric Burns: Can I quote this conversation?
11:50:38 PM Eric Burns: Just these last bits, I mean.
11:50:42 PM Eric Burns: It would make a good snark. ;)
11:50:59 PM Scott Kurtz: Oh yeah.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:56 PM | Comments (38)

July 5, 2005

Eric: Oh, and did I mention...

...Gossamer Commons got hacked?

It did.

And me without an effective means of getting into it. Weds is doing what she can....

I am fully insane, now. Utterly and fully. They say it was being disfigured that caused the Joker to go nuts? No no. He had catastrophic data loss and then his webcomic was hacked.

I'm off to flood a high school gymnasium with nerve gas emitted from a giant canister of Jock Itch spray. Toodles!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:45 PM | Comments (25)

Eric: My life, in a nutshell. And it's cramped in here.

I have passed through to insanity. It's official. My mind is blown. Blown.

I was constitutionally incapable of writing after a couple of weeks of multiple car trips a week, each at about four hours a go. Plus... well, my time was pretty occupied even when I was in my apartment. I didn't much look at my computer. So, consider this my summer vacation, followed by... er... well, it was like jet lag, only I didn't fly anywhere.

My intention was to post an apology and mea culpa on the Fourth, while wishing everyone a happy... well, Fourth. Only....

Well, let's put it this way.

You know that part of the computer that stores things? Like RAM, only long term? It's made out of a spinning platter that spins? Holds like seventy gigabytes if you're lucky?

Yeah. I don't have one of those any more. No utility would touch it. And it turns out that I haven't had a single thing... well, effectively back up... at all... since the upgrade to Tiger. In effect, I have completely lost the months of May and June. (Well, I should still have backups of all my e-mail. I use a different system for that.)

That, for the record, includes weeks of work on two different paid projects. And a significant amount of other writing.

This is, in a word, devestating.

Needless to say, I haven't read any webcomics for the past couple of days. In fact, I'm typing this into my server, while I wait for my two month old backup to churn. And I'm looking for a better backup method, in the mid-term.

So... life has been better than it currently is.

On the bright side... before she left, Wednesday gave me a notebook.

It's a moleskine. It's really small, and nice, and takes ink well.

And writing in it makes me feel good. For, well, many reasons.

If you want to draw inferences from that, you may feel free. And that is all I am going to say on that subject.

Thanks to the astoundingly good people at Comic Nation, I am able to start reconstructing my trawl and figure out the additions and changes that... well, got lost. And sometime by 5 pm I should have a working powerbook again.

I've missed you guys. And the month of July should get better from here.

Did I miss any drama?

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:35 AM | Comments (21)

June 28, 2005

Eric: A late night, wistfully.

It was a friend. His band was called Defenestry. They play jazz. They had a vibraphone player who goes insane, getting his whole body into the act, thrusting and jiggling and moving and all.

The band before him was Giant Panda Mode, and they played vastly too loud neo-reggae, with a couple of girls in "Grandchildren of Woodstock" attire dancing in front of them. Which would have worked better were there more than twelve people in the pub. It was an Irish Pub, in Allston, Mass.

I drank coffee. Weds drank harder stuff. My friend Kate split the difference. My friend Joe played guitar and did damn well.

One more night of driving. And then everything is back to normal, and you'll see more from me.

Though, admittedly, that's a silver lining.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:59 AM | Comments (8)

June 26, 2005

Eric: Divot bread and not going to cons: Friday and Saturday, hanging with Wednesday.

The bread was from a very old box of mix. Given that, that the yeast still had any efficacy at all was startling. It did in fact rise on the sides, more or less, leaving the center sunk, with some bubbles from gas.

Wednesday looked at the loaf, and then looked at me. "It didn't rise," she said.

"It has a divot taken out of it," I said. "It's golf bread."

"We should fill it with something," she said.

"We've found the secret process to making the bread bowl," I said.

And then, peanut butter was involved.

We're both feeling somewhat ill. The last couple of days were whirlwinds of driving and seeing things. We went to a Brazilian restaurant with friends of ours -- a buffet called the Green Field Churrascaria where among other things waiters walk up to your table with skewers of steaming, glorious meats. "Sirloin?" they ask. "Roast beef?" "Rabbit?" "Bacon wrapped chicken?"

They wrapped the chicken in bacon. Also, there was sushi available.

Yesterday, we went to Maine, to Tim Hortons. Wednesday is Canadian. Tim Hortons, for her, was a pilgrimage. We had the coffee. I had a sandwich. She had a fritter. We bought Tim Hortons coffee mugs. (You aren't supposed to put an apostrophe in the name, by the way. It's named for the founder, Tim Horton, who was an all star hockey player for the Toronto Maple Leafs. He died, drunk and high and driving 100 mph on the Queen Elizabeth Highway. He also makes good damn coffee.)

We were supposed to meet my folks there, because my folks are fun and besides, there are apple fritters. But though they showed up, they couldn't stay. "It's a hundred degrees out there," my Mother said. "We have dogs. Dogs in the car. We can't leave them in the car in this heat. We like our dogs. Don't you like our dogs? What sort of son are you." So they got drive through, and we made arrangements to stop by the family camp on the lake on our way to Wolfeboro, to hang out with them and see my sister and her kids.

For much of the rest of the day, we wandered a mall. Specifically, the Maine Mall, in South Portland, where both Wednesday and I spent many hours on trips through the state to go places. This then was an opportunity for pointing, staring and nostalgia. We rode the escalators in Macy's, because once it was Jordan Marsh and riding that escalator was the high point of a trip to Portland. I was from Fort Kent. Escalators were astounding things for me. And it was the same escalator. The same weirdass green light underneath it and everything. The entire store space has been remodeled, the mall immeasurably expanded... but that escalator was the same. It was like for one moment, my youth reincarnated.

Wednesday was indulgent.

In Waldenbooks ("I used to go to this Waldenbooks. I spent hours in this Waldenbooks. This was my Waldenbooks") we discovered there was a Portland Anime/Gaming/Webcomics con going on even as we spoke, very close to where we were.

"Webcomics?" I asked.

"Apparently," she said.

"I wonder who they got? Maybe Christopher Mills??"

"Maybe. We should go."

"We totally should. We could go to the webcomics panels."

"We could."

We didn't.

Today, we're feeling ill. But that's okay. We have divot bread.

In other news, I discovered that I missed this month's Feeding Snarky appeared in Comixpedia last week and I missed telling you about it. It was a good one, and this month everyone doesn't hate me for it, which is pretty cool. So please go read it.

And then look at Ping Teo's bit.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:30 PM | Comments (32)

June 24, 2005

Eric: On my way out the door...

...but I wanted to point you to a Cool Thing. Digital Strips, which is one of my favorite comics related podcasts, has posted three parts of an interview with Scott "Scott" Kurtz. Well, as of today, the third part has been posted -- and I'm on there too! Zampson, Daku and Kurtz pulled me in through the magic of Skype!

All three parts of the Kurtz interview are available. I haven't heard my part yet, so if I sound dorky... well, that will come as no surprise to anyone. Still! It's a chance to be disillusioned about me! And also, the conversation was darn good, if I remember correctly.

I'll see you all as soon as humanly feasible!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:23 PM | Comments (13)

June 21, 2005

Eric: Scheduling and stuff

It looks as though my time in Boston is going to be limited, tonight. Which, given my poverty, is probably for the best. So, clearly we'll need to make plans for some other meeting time this month or next, since there are a number of interested people in doing a meet. Probably on a Friday night or Saturday day, so I can relax about getting back home without work the next day to consider.

Thanks, for those who've shown interest! You rock!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:03 PM | Comments (3)

June 17, 2005

Eric: Roving

Just back in from a five hours driving/three or so hours hanging trip to Questionable Content's Jeph Jacques's birthday soiree in Massachusetts. There was much driving, plus good coffee from baristas with attitude, plus watching Jeph sketch with incredible speed (up to and including hipster Abraham Lincoln and hippie Robert E. Lee), comments and jokes, and then bowling.

I bowled four 9's in a row, but no strikes or spares, and was pretty crappy earlier in the game. So, I was pretty rusty with the bowling.

Wednesday seemed to enjoy meeeting folks as well. The hanging with Weds is a good and fun thing.

Good night! I'll try to snark with substance tomorrow.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:59 PM | Comments (15)

June 15, 2005

Eric: I have been threatened with death if I use puns about the day of the week here.

It's a drizzly day in the Northeast, and I am in Boston. I am sitting in Tealuxe as I type, my powerbook sitting on a table that is covered in hammered copper, and I am sitting across from a beautiful woman.

Naturally, I'm typing into a computer. Because I'm an idiot. This won't be a long snark.

The significance of the meeting for Websnark is considerable, however. I am drinking tea with the Incomparable Wednesday White.

Dude. She rocks.

Here. I'm passing her the computer.

...Yes. have I mentioned that he was totally trying to use <i> instead of <em> in front of me? That's been thwarted.

There is nothing to eat here.

When we finish the tea, we are going shopping.

I was sort of thinking that Eric would get here and then we'd talk for a few minutes and then some webcomics drama would come crashing through the window of the tea shop and we'd have to go into battle. This has, so far, not happened. I'm nervous now.

Okay. I'm out of ideas.

I have ideas, but... well... um... sitting with a pretty girl who's not afraid to convert my HTML code to conform to XHTML Strict.

Oh, dude. For heaven's sake. It's not even code; it's markup. Besides, at best, this is XHTML Transitional compliance.

Don't worry, girls. By the time I'm done with him, he'll be more semantic.

More later. Or not. Because, well, I'm in Boston hanging with Wednesday.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:14 PM | Comments (40)

June 9, 2005

Eric: Writing for cash

People sometimes ask me what it's like to be a professional writer. Albeit, a professional writer with a day job, which describes 95% of writers who have received paychecks for their writing. Still, there is a moment of allure that clings to the title. A mystique. "He's a writer," they say.

Usually followed by "I really need to write a book. I just need to sit down and do it. It doesn't seem that hard. And I've got lots of good ideas." So the mystique lasts about twenty-two seconds. But for that near-half-minute, you're a sorcerer possessed of powers beyond the ken of ordinary men.

The practical answer to "what is it like to be a professional writer" can be summed up in two words: humbling and tedious. It's humbling because no matter how good you are -- or consistent and fast you are, which in things like RPG development can be more valuable than good -- there are several million people who are just as good as you are, and at least twenty or thirty people who are vastly better. And the vastly better people are typically looking for exact same work you are. Sure, I'm okay at RPG design, but Bruce Baugh is in the same market for work that I am, and Bruce Baugh has more experience, knows a lot more people, has a better track record and is a better developer. So, if Bruce Baugh and I both put in for the same freelancing assignment, I only get it if he doesn't want it.

And there are several Bruce Baughs in RPG design. And a whole lot more of me. And a metric ton of unpublished freelancers who want that first assignment desperately, and don't mind accepting a half cent a word for it. Or less. Or are willing to write thirty thousand words of a sourcebook for the privilege of having their name on the cover.

Don't believe me? Remember, I pay for the privilege of writing Websnark. And the amount of In Nomine material I've written for free and put up on a mailing list or website vastly exceeds the paid work I've done. By a factor of about fifteen. Seven years ago, I'd have happily done work for free if it meant seeing my name on a Steve Jackson Games product.

Like I said. It's humbling.

The tedious side comes after you get the assignment. I don't mean the writing. I love doing the writing. I mean, some people like being "a writer," and like I said, that's fun enough. And so they suffer through the writing part so they get to go to conventions and wear a badge with GUEST stamped on it and the chance to sit at the front of the room. Or they get to wear tweed and smoke a pipe and hold court at poetry slams or writing circles as "the professional," and speak in hushed tones that imply wisdom.

That's perfectly valid. No one says you have to like your job to enjoy the fringe benefits.

But others write because they really like writing. They like the process. They like putting words together. They like the sense that they are creative. They like hearing the keyboard rattle as the urge starts flooding through their fingers. That's where I fall in. I write all the time. I write stuff no one will ever see because I enjoy writing. I outline projects I couldn't possibly do. I've outlined the way I'd completely relaunch the DC universe as a series of novels, if only there weren't pesky laws enjoining me from doing so. I write articles and short stories and essays and whatever else. I put stuff down in Websnark most every day, because I like to write.

But writing is just part of the "fun" of being a writer, and once you have a gig, it's hardly the part that sticks out.

For example -- as I mentioned a couple of days ago, all mysterious-like, I've got a new gig. There's an NDA involved, so I can't tell you what I'm writing. I probably could tell you who it's for, but I'm not going to take a chance. (The NDA, according to the contract, covers everything but the actual terms of the contract I signed. So, I assume it doesn't cover the company's name. However, it's easiest to just err on the side of caution.)

I can say this much: it's not for PDF/electronic publication work. It's for actual physical pressed pulp with ink on it. And, just because any number of folks have asked, and denials aren't covered under NDA, it's not for Steve Jackson Games, which means no, it's not for In Nomine.

I accepted the gig. They sent contracts. The contracts were okay -- among other things, they were the good old fashioned "sign and send in." Other companies have more elaborate procedures to contract work. One, which shall go nameless, actually requires all contracts be notarized before they're sent. This is a monumental pain in the ass -- you don't exactly trip over Notary Publics in today's day and age -- and I can only assume came from said company having a problem with identity once sometime in the last twelve years, and the president saying "fuck it! After today, every contract gets notarized! I don't care any more!"

Whatever -- this contract didn't need that. But it does need to be physically sent, instead of faxed with sent copies afterward. "So what?" you ask. "Sew buttons," I respond, because I enjoy The Venture Brothers, but I digress. The problem with their needing the physical signature is because there is a large volume of material that I need to A) be sent and B) need to read before I can write the fifteen thousand words I'm committed to. And there's not all that much time before those words are due.

Now, fifteen thousand words isn't hard, and I have an outline, and there's plenty I can do before I get the other materials I need, but there's always nagging questions. "What if there are requirements in the game bible I don't yet know?" "What if my core assumptions for the game are off by a few degrees?" "What if in fact all the characters are supposed to be mutated wombats and I don't know that yet?"

See, I like writing. But no writer likes getting through seven thousand words and discovering he needs to rewrite six thousand of them. Particularly since every word you have to throw away and replace with a different word effectively has its pay rate cut in half.

So you plan, and elaborate on the provided outline, and conceptualize, and prepare to write, but you hold for the other materials. And those materials won't be dispatched to you (hopefully electronically, but that may not be the case) until they get that signed piece of paper, because otherwise they don't have proof you've agreed to the NDA.

Now, a writer who breaks an implied NDA, even if he manages to do so in a way that's on the 'legal' side of the law, is a writer asking never to be paid for anything ever again. This goes beyond professionalism and straight into "oh my God, are you stupid?" But remember I mentioned that huge mass of writers who'd be willing to do all this for free? The mass of writers that once also included every single working RPG developer and writer currently producing work? (Well, excepting Gary Gygax and Loren Wiseman. They predated the yearning mass of people who want in.) Well, a good number of those hungry wannabe RPG developers would desperately love to be the ones to break the story on what their favorite company is doing with their favorite line to all their friends. For a brief moment, they would be able to bask in the glory of being the bearer of official tidings. This is a prospect almost orgasmic in temptation.

And RPG companies have no way of knowing if their new freelancer is going to be one of them. So, they require proof of the NDA before they begin. They want that nice piece of paper that says, in effect, "if this person proves to be a self important wanker, we get to sue him to the point that he owes us his own bone marrow, and he has no legal recourse at all."

And it's just good business practice to make everyone sign it, no matter how proven their track record. "Look, kid," they'd say. "We make "Zeb" Cook and Robin Laws sign this. Who the Hell are you again?"

So you wait. With every day bringing you that much closer to the deadline, which wasn't all that far away to begin with. And of course, it's not like the company's going to get my priority mail envelope (no, you don't send it express mail. What, I'm going to pay nine bucks for the privilege of delivering work for them faster? I only sent it priority mail because I like to send contracts flat, and the cost difference is negligible from one nine-by-twelve envelope to the next at this point) and immediately say "quick! Call the editor! Eric Burns sent us his signed contract! Move move move move move!" No, it'll sit in an in box, and then someone down in processing will enter the details and send an e-mail to the editor. And the editor will get those details and think "okay, I've got X number of writers to send this stuff too -- easier to wait until we get at least half of their contracts in, or the end of the week -- whichever comes first. It's not like I'm not buried up to my eyeballs as it is."

Outline. Plan. Research. Scribble notes. Generate skeletons of characters who won't get flesh until you get what you need. Pace a bit.

Sooner or later, the materials show up. And no doubt there will be "fun" with e-mail. There is always fun with e-mail during these processes.

Then, you write, expecting to be done in three days. "Fifteen thousand words?" you say. "Piece of cake!"

Riiiight. And no editor has ulcers from frantically waiting for delivered content. None. Not a one.

But, like I said. The writing is the fun part. So we assume it goes as well as we say it would, and you send it. Then comes waiting for redlines. And there are always redlines. "This needs clarity." "This needs reworking." "This whole section contradicts canon in a supplement you haven't seen that wasn't summarized in the game bible you sent, so we need to cut it and you owe us an entirely different 2,500 word section." "What style guide are you using?" "Do you own a copy of Strunk and White?" "Have you read a copy of Strunk and White?" "Jesus fucking God, Eric -- don't capitalize angels or demons! Do capitalize Djinn and Mercurians! And the fucking plural of Habbalite is Habbalah, not Habbalites! How many times do I have to tell you that?"

Okay, the last was kind of specific, not general. But no matter what game line you work on, you end up getting notes like it. Capitalization, word choices and pluralization are black arts in RPG design at the best of times.

Sooner or later, you survive the redlines. You get everything just plain done. And then....

Well, then you wait. You wait for them to get all the same things from everyone else. You wait for editorial to go over it, and make their own changes. You wait for precursor products to get published. You wait for revisions to the shipping schedule. You wait and hope that they don't decide to cancel the project altogether based on sales performance of previous projects. (Which has happened to me -- and kill fees, while better than a punch in the throat, are never as good as your contracted word rate.) You wait.

And then it gets announced. And you get to say, finally, what it is you worked on months before. And talk it up. And get enthusiastic about it. "You're going to love it," you say.

And then you wait through a publication rescheduling and a printing delay, but sooner or later it hits the shelves. Two to three weeks after that, typically, you might get your contributor copies. And then you will open them up, smell the fresh ink, turn quickly to your section, and hungrily read the text that once upon a time was yours. And be surprised at how little of it you recognize, and further surprised when you reread your last known good delivered text and compare it.

But whatever. You're once again in print. You did it. You're holding proof you're a writer. You get to send a copy to your parents for them to put on the shelf next to your other published works.

And then, you start waiting for payment. Typically, it's scheduled for 30 days after publication. It's polite to wait about 60 before sending them nice notes. You usually shouldn't start threatening them with keelhauling until 120 days after payment was due.

(If you're a publisher I've worked for before, you may of course safely assume I'm talking about the other publishers I've worked with, above. I certainly couldn't mean you.)

Meanwhile, if things have gone well, you've been doing the same process with other contracted works and have more stuff in the pipe. Otherwise, you troll for more work and hope your standing has increased. Or that Bruce Baugh is passing on a lot of stuff these days. At any given point in your writing career -- assuming you have gigs at all -- you're spending maybe one tenth of your time actually putting words on paper, and the rest of the time somewhere else in this process.

Tedious and humbling.

And so worth it.

Maybe the materials will come in today. Until then, I've got notes, and it'd be all right to write this section, wouldn't it? I mean, what are the chances the game bible will change that....

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:05 AM | Comments (17)

June 6, 2005

Eric: I can't tell you about this.

So. I can't tell you about this.

There's non-disclosure agreements involved, you see.

Dude.

Dude.

I am having an incredibly good day.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:23 PM | Comments (23)

June 1, 2005

Eric: Back to life.

The flight went mostly well, though I had tomato juice spilled in my lap. Which, admittedly, was refreshing in a way.

Today was a cipher. We got in at about two thirty in the morning (local). Waking up was very hard. And then I slept a while in the afternoon. And now, I have a bit of caffeine withdrawal and some general recovery and fatigue and junk.

Tomorrow, the alarm goes off. And we get back to work in many ways.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:48 PM | Comments (7)

May 31, 2005

Eric: Dead Dogs.

It's twelve sixteen in the morning, Pacific Daylight Time, technically on Tuesday, and my vacation is at an end. I should be asleep, but then there are a lot of shoulds running through my head right now. I just learned a college friend died over the weekend -- any number of shoulds crop up from that, of course. I should have written more during the vacation itself. ("Oh, I'll do Shortbread essays. I'm sure I'll make the time to do one or two of those a night." Yeah, right.) I should have read my mail earlier so I could go down to the bar and have a proper libation to the memory of my friend, but I didn't so it's going to have to be Room Service Tomato Juice. It can't be Room Service Beer, because I can't drink beer. Fermented products produce gas and that's not on the list of approved substances. Wine is all wrong for Charlie, and if I want scotch or the like, I have to buy a full bottle. (Though it will come with glassware and "five mixers," whatever that means.)

So I'm going with tomato juice and an iced tea chaser -- a combination which my friend Russ, who I always go to Baycon with, now officially refers to as a "Bloody Nigel." -- and I'm considering old friends and I'm considering the vacation past. By this time tomorrow I'll be in Maine, and then a few hours later I'll drive the cat home to New Hampshire, and get back to life and preparations for The Visit, of which you'll hear more later.

This is the Dead Dog of the convention -- the time which, according to Weds, takes place between the official end of Con and the point where the very last person leaves the hotel. Walking through the halls, the ineffable presence of reserve has again settled on the Doubletree. Con attendees, fans, fen, call them what you will -- last night they were hooting and hollering, wearing corsets and body paint and Regency Wear. Tonight they're largely in civilian clothes -- perhaps with Genre tee shirts, perhaps in black, even one or two still in corsets -- and they speak in hushes. This is a hotel again, not a Con, Dead Dog or not. The freedom to be as geeky as you like has been replaced with the sense of quiet restraint. The sense that you have to fit to the world of the mundane again.

Sitting in my hotel room, sipping my Bloody Nigel, and considering past friends and past days of the Con, I am in the Dead Dog.

Approximately one hundred and thirty two hours ago, I was in Chicago, Illinois, in the airport. I was on something of a high, as I'd had a milestone that only truly fat people like me will understand. I had risked booking my flight in Economy Class, coming over -- and yes, that was actually a risk. The last time I did Baycon -- two years ago -- I had to fly First Class because I didn't fit in the seats in Economy. Comfortable, in its own way (at that weight, no seat was comfortable for four hours) but a rather expensive hot towel. This time, not only had I been able to sit in Coach for the flight, I hadn't needed a seat belt extender. I haven't flown on a plane without needing a seat belt extender for years.

So I was in a good mood, and a little puzzled at the architecture of this airport. I had landed at concourse A, and my connecting flight was on Concourse C, so to get there I had to descend a stairwell from the well lit and cheerful concourse to a dark undertunnel with peoplemover belts and strange, flashing neon lights and music playing up above. It was like we had to crawl down into the tunnels underneath New York in the old Beauty and the Beast television show to go from one concourse to another.

Ascending the stairs back into the light, I rounded a corner and started heading to my terminal, when I got slammed into bodily and thrown to the floor.

The missile in question was about fourteen years old and running at a full tilt -- headlong, as it were. He wore a white shirt with -- if I remember correctly -- a blue 7 on it. And a hat. He had a hat. He was thin faced, and dark skinned, and kept on his feet even as I went down hard, right on top of my backpack. He froze for a minute, startled, and then spread his hands and gestured -- like he was a conductor moving his orchestra into a decrescendo -- saying "Sorry, guy." And then he took off running again, as fast as he could.

A United Rep yelled after him, then came over to see to me. I was still on the ground, trying to absorb what all had happened. We took the time to do a fast inventory. The backpack was intentionally designed to protect the powerbook inside it, and in that task it succeeded completely. My powerbook was and is completely fine. However, there were sacrifices deeper inside -- a pair of sunglasses that are now dead, A broken set of headphones.

And, more expensively, a wholly destroyed Palm Treo 600 Cell Phone, and a sacrificed iPod.

The United Rep was scandalized. But there wasn't much we could do -- the kid was long gone, and I doubt we could put out an all points bulletin for "Number 7." With the speed he had put on, I had to figure he was already boarded. As it was, I wasn't in (too much) pain, my powerbook was okay, and... well, the iPod was a first generation. Substantially larger than current models. Probably due for retirement (though I would have preferred to "retire" it to my mother or the like). And of course, it had all my audiobooks for the trip on it. The Cell Phone and PDA bothered me more -- it was a nice Treo -- but I'd been kind of wishing I could drop my overly expensive Verizon Wireless service anyway.

If all this sounds like I'm justifying... you're totally right. But what the Hell. It was done. There was nothing left but to board.

By the way -- United doesn't have meals. They have "snack boxes" you can buy. I got one with beef jerky, because at least that has decent protein. Tomorrow, I plan to buy food at the airport to eat while on the flight.

Twelve Forty Eight, and the Dogs are still Dead, and the Bloody Nigel is history too, and I'm thinking about Charlie. Charlie taught me Star Fleet Battles. He worked Dunkin Donuts in Kenmore Square my Freshman year of college, and used to slip my friend Robin and I donuts for free, with a smirk on his face as he did it. He had the best smirk on his face. Four years later, he was in a motorcycle accident that left him in a wheelchair. As far as we know, it was complications from that that led to the infection that cost him his life a few days ago. Knowing Charlie, he was probably hitting on a paramedic as he was being transported to the hospital. And knowing Charlie, he was probably doing it pretty well.

One hundred and nine hours ago, I was discovering the joys of Caltrain at the Palo Alto station. Caltrain is light rail -- I know people who call it heavy rail, but just because heavy rail travels on those same tracks doesn't make Caltrain heavy rail. It was entirely commuter, with two levels of seats -- groups of two seats side by side on the bottom, and a small stair to single seats up above. I was sitting in one of the upper seats, noticing how utterly quiet the train was, watching the adjacent tracks whiz by, as we passed through Redwood City, through San Carlos, through Menlo Park, South San Francisco and San Francisco itself. The architecture of each new suburb and community was uniquely bay area, and very cheerful. There were differences -- we passed by one Honda dealership that was open and inviting. We passed by a BMW dealership that was entirely enclosed by thick cement walls and dual strands of razor wire across the top. But it didn't take long, all told. I was reading a book my father gave me -- The Gunslinger, by Stephen King. The first book of the Dark Tower. I was enjoying it a great deal, and missing my iPod. At the end of the line in San Francisco, Shaenon Garrity was waiting.

Shaenon Garrity is just about what you would expect her to be. She looks not unlike her self portraits on certain Narbonic Sundays. In attitude and appearance, she's more of a brown haired Helen than anything, though something about her hair and bearing practically screams Mell. She walks quickly and she is more fun to be around than put near anyone.

We did the Cartoon Art Museum, which was amazing. It was incredible. They had Will Eisner Spirit pages. They had originals of Windsor McKay's Rarebit Fiend. They had animation cels from "What's Opera Doc." They had a cover from ROM, Spaceknight that I owned when I was younger. It's what a museum like that should be, completely, and I'm utterly glad I'm a member. I got to use my card, too. And I bought the latest Peanuts collection as well as a Windsor McKay collection. And then Shaenon and I went walking, all over. We walked through Chinatown and up hills. We walked down past the Modern Art Museum and later down to Fisherman's Wharf. We saw slacker sea lions -- dude, these were a pile of sea lions lying out on platforms. You totally knew their parents were bitching, too. "When are you going to make something of yourself. Do you want to end up like your father? Lying in the sun being stared at by tourists all day? For this we sent you to college?"

But that wasn't the thing that blew my mind.

Nor was it the fact that we were able to go to the Apple Store... of the Future. An Apple Store... of the Future is just like any other Apple Store, but on two levels (not that they have any more stuff, but they duplicate a bunch of the stuff for the second floor), with lucite stairs leading up. I got a new iPod -- 20 gigs, which is about right for me -- and therefore restored my universal understanding. I also got a car charger but failed to get an iPod case, which it really needed.

No, the thing that blew my mind happened when we were having lunch.

"I have something for you," Shaenon said.

"Oh?" I asked. Grinning, I would add, because she was taking out her sketchbook. I'd seen it once already -- she'd been holding it up with my name written on it in the train station where we met.

"Yup," she said... and proceeded to give me not a sketch, which is what I thought she was preparing to give me. Instead, she proceeded to hand me several pieces of bristol board.

Specifically, comic-strip shaped pieces of bristol board.

With originals of Narbonic comic strips on them.

In fact... the originals of every weekday Narbonic I've ever Snarked excepting one with Zeta (which had already been given elsewhere).

Holy shit.

Holy shit.

Later, she showed me the editorial and layout offices at Viz, and that was also cool. And we talked for hours. We talked about cartooning and comic strips and things that have nothing to do with either. I had it reinforced that Shaenon Garrity is one of the coolest human beings on the planet. And she gave me comic strips. Of the stuff I snarked.

Jon Rosenberg didn't give me comic strips. I'm just saying.

One ten am. Russ has gone to bed. We've set a wakeup call. I should be in bed too, but I can't. Not yet. I can sleep on the plane anyhow. It's no big deal. I just have to be largely mobile enough to pack up art and Narbonic strips at a FedEx Kinko's in the morning, to be shipped separately. I need to keep writing. I'm not ready to face sleep. I'm not ready to let the dog fully die. I'm not ready to face dreams just yet.

Seriously -- what kind of hotel doesn't have sample bottles of vodka for easy purchase? Or a fucking minibar?

I got back late, back on Thursday. I was supposed to meet Russ so we could make it to Redwood City for a show for 7. But I missed my train going back and had to take a later one. But, as it worked out, he was told 7 but the show started at 8, so we were among the first people there. The show was the 5th anniversary for Hookslide, which is an a capella group. Jon Pilat, the group's phenomenal bass and beatbox, is a friend of Russ's. And I am still in awe of this man (and the whole group) days later. I will own their album. Oh yes, I will.

One-eighteen. I'm still not asleep. I'm still not writing fucking shortbreads. I'm on vacation. So long as I avoid that bed, I'm on vacation. It's still Monday. It's a day off, not a travel day or a travel recovery day.

So long as I'm still up, and still writing, I don't have to go to sleep knowing my friend is dead. I don't have to think about how many years it's been since I called him.

I got the message from Andrew, as I said. I passed it along to other folks I knew, as I said. That's what you can do when you hear news like this. Because in a way, it's remote. Charlie and I haven't spoken for years. We weren't in each other's lives any more. That's not as true for some of the others. Every twelve or eighteen months I speak to Matt. I trade e-mail somewhat more often with Ernestine. I actually saw Andy (not Andrew) just a couple of months ago, and Robin not too long before that.

Only it is too long.

There are others I had even less contact with. Erin just got married -- she left a voicemail to that effect... last Summer, I want to say? I got it too late, sadly. Abbe I spoke to something like four years ago. In ways, that whole clique of friends took the place in my head of what most people consider "high school friends." Of my high school friends from actual high school, one of them died before graduation, one I've completely lost touch with, and the last (Andrew) came with me to Boston University, and so he crossed over into that other group.

My "college friends" list, on the other hand... that's almost more Frank and Bankert and Christy and Becki and Karen and John G. and the Rose and Seanna and so forth and sundry (and now Lisa's added into that). Many of them are actively in my life. I saw them not too long ago, in fact. So even though I didn't go to college with them, they're my college friends, my actual college friends are like my high school friends, my high school friends are completely out of my life otherwise....

One-twenty-six, and the Dead Dog continues. A Dead Dog party of one, now that Russ is asleep. Maybe I'm the last person awake in this hotel, the last person keeping Baycon 2005 alive.

It was an excellent convention. It really was. The Art Show was better than I'd ever seen. The panels were excellent. The "Con Suite" was a tearoom of exceptional skill and taste. We arrived eighty four and a half hours ago, more or less. And then it became a whirlwind.

Baycon is a "whole hotel" kind of con. They do things like project genre films and looney tunes cartoons up onto one whole outdoor wall of the hotel, overlooking the pool. Some people float in the pool and watch Flash Gordon. And there are beautiful women in bodices and corsets and miniskirts and bikinis. And some men too, because... well, that's what happens. There are stormtroopers and jedi knights, and a few Battlestar Galactica (new variety) officers, and "gratuitously torn bodysuit Padm»" and all the rest. There are beautiful women who are convinced that they're not, because they don't match up to the traditional ideal of beautiful women, so they hide and cover up and stay quiet until they get to a Convention, when they are surrounded by their own people, and then they lean far forward in corsets and tease and taunt and are saucy. Here, they are with their kind, and they know they are beautiful, and they revel in it, and so do I, because I get to see them.

Registration took forever. Every time there was some sort of Baycon Queue, it took forever. For all that Baycon goes really really well, any time they actually go out and take money or do any kind of organized activity, it takes forever. But everyone is pleasant enough, so you just go with it.

I bought two Bob the Angry Flower compilations and a DVD of three -- count them, three -- Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon serials.

I also bought Chase Masterson's music CD. Chase Masterson, for those who don't recognize the name, played Leeta on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Her presence was startling, to say the least. We don't get media guests at Baycon. To my knowledge, they don't want media guests at Baycon. But Ms. Masterson was extraordinarily nice to fans, cheerful, friendly... and staffed her own table in the dealer room. Which didn't get nearly the traffic I would have expected. I mean, she was on the best of the Star Trek series (and now the hate mail starts), she has really begun to fill the female Bruce Campbell/B-Movie Science Fiction niche (she's in Manticore for Christ's sake), and... well, she's a very attractive woman with red hair. These are usually monumental magnets for at least male fen.

So I bought a CD from her. Jazz standards -- big band era. Nicely done, I would add. So I have no regrets. Besides, I'm male fen too.

Fifty-six hours ago, more or less, I was interviewed by Sumana Harihareswara. This was the only real point during the weekend that I had my Websnark hat on. Ms. Harihareswara is an enthusiastic and insightful interviewer, who knows Webcomics well. When I know where the results of said interview will appear, I will let you know. That's my promise. As we talked and she recorded, I also had a glass of Scotch. So I don't entirely promise that I don't sound overly enunciative on her tape. I might also have advocated that New England secede from the United States. I'm not saying I did advocate that, but it was very good Scotch, so we really can't rule that out.

Don't you imagine New England seceding -- maybe with New York and Jersey and Pennsylvania thrown in for good measure -- would be a profound relief to the Southeast and Midwest? Well, Illinois (Chicago, anyhow) would probably want to come along with us. And maybe Wisconsin and Michigan.

But I digress.

One-thirty-nine. I wish I had more tomato juice. I don't want to call for more though. Russ is sleeping. And he needs to be somewhat awake in the morning. I just need to show up and haul crap. I don't want to go to sleep, damn it. I knew I wouldn't, even though I didn't know how complex my feelings would be, tonight. This is one reason why I have Wednesday off from work too -- so I can recover from the jetlag and travel. The other reason is my flight lands at eight minutes after midnight. (Which means I need to put up Gossamer Commons for tomorrow night before I go to bed too. Good. Yet more ways of putting off sleep.)

Thirty-four hours ago, I met up with my friend Carol. I always hang out with Carol for a while on these trips to the bay. A lovely and intelligent girl, who has the lapse in judgement necessary to hang out with me, Carol took me out for driving, for food, and for errands. Multitasking.

While we were out, I hit Best Buy and got a case for my new iPod. It's translucent white silicone, and looks like a condom. It's even ribbed.

"Twenty dollars for a piece of plastic?" Carol asked.

"Now now," I said. "It's silicone. Which means it cost even less to produce."

Russ later on made reference of the fact that I've put breast implant technology to new and better use, protecting my iPod from scratches.

The new iPod is significantly better than the last one, by the by. Lighter, smaller, better sound quality. I would walk around the con listening to it, letting it form a soundtrack. Giving me a chance to up my pace. Which I needed to do, because remember back earlier in this essay when I was tromping all over San Francisco, up and down hills and through Chinatown and Viz and the Apple Store... of the Future? Well, back when I was 160 lbs heavier I could never have done any of that. It would have killed me. Shaenon would have done a lot of sitting around watching me wheeze. This time, I could. I mostly kept up with her (or she managed to make me think I did, anyway).

And for three days after, I was sore. I was powertaking ibuprofin and generally trying to get over my muscles being on strike. It wasn't really until today that the last shin splints faded. As a result, I feel like I can walk for miles. And the iPod helped lengthen my stride even when it hurt. Which is why I needed the condom case.

While I was out with Carol, I also grabbed a pair of shorts, as this is California and I was warm. And some socks. The shorts told me I'd lost another four inches off my pants size. The socks told me "it's good to have new socks."

One-fifty-three. I'm dragging now. I'm tired. I want to go to bed. But I don't want to go to bed. It's like I was nineteen again, fighting through fatigue to stay up a few more minutes, to conquer the night.

I'm not nineteen. I'm thirty-seven. And I've had several friends die now. And each one seems so odd to me. Like it just shouldn't happen.

Thirteen hours ago, I learned I'd won four pieces in the Art Show Auction. All angels, because that's the kind of thing I bid on. All absolutely beautiful, drawn by Lawrence Allen Williams (a "Lawrence" whose name spells out LAW.... my In Nomine senses are tingling).

And it's easiest to describe my pieces in terms of In Nomine. Penance is clearly a Mercurian. (Admittedly, a naked one, and vaguely NSFW if you work is uptight). Solaris is clearly Gabriel. Penumbra is clearly Blandine. And the truly remarkable and beautiful The Ascendent (which is also just barely NSFW) is one of the best conceptual designs for a Bright Lilim as I've seen. I like my art.

It's after two in the morning. Russ just woke up briefly. I've stretched it as long as I could. And it's all right there and yet there's so much unsaid. I haven't talked about the shouldercat, or the goth jewelry girl. I haven't talked about sword shopping or Shaenon's theory of Green Lantern Acid Tests or the night we ate sushi by tradition or room service. I haven't talked about the lack of a fridge despite our request, or the difficulties in finding appropriate food as a result, or all the fucking melon I've eaten. I haven't talked about coffee or lattes or the lack of sugar free syrup or explaining lamination or being more or less bathed in chocolate fondue I couldn't even eat.

I haven't said anything, but I've said too much.

The dog is dead.

And I need to go to bed. Five minutes to upload to Gossamer Commons, and then the oblivion of sleep.

Goodbye, Charlie.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 5:16 AM | Comments (28)

May 26, 2005

Eric: Well, it's midnight where I am....

It has been an exceptionally good day, largely spent with the coolest person in the Western Hemisphere, Shaenon Garrity of Narbonic. I'll write up our historic meeting later this weekend, as well as getting the next several Shortbread categories out, but for today I'm tired and enjoying memories of fun times, conversation, slacking-off sea lions and kickass a capella music.

Also? The Bay Area's light rail system seriously rocks.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:59 PM | Comments (13)

May 24, 2005

Eric: Snarks what hae!

So, this coming weekend I'm going to be at Baycon. I'm not going as an official guest, mind -- I go to Baycon to hang out with a good friend, eat sushi, have a random mixed drink at some point, eat excellent sandwiches, get some beautiful art drawn for me, meet people, and look at the weirdass trees.

However, the fact remains -- I will actually be at Baycon, and if folks who might be there or be in the area or whatever might want to get together and sit and talk comics or RPGs or 'stuff,' I'd be amenable.

Also, there are usually many attractive women dressed to distraction on hand. And the same with attractive men, although I don't tend to notice them as much. And the actual con is good. Oh, and they project movies on the outside wall.

I fly out tomorrow. Thursday I'm making a pilgrimage to the Cartoon Art Museum and then meeting a friend. Friday through Monday is the con. I fly back Tuesday. Wednesday, I do a lot of sleeping.

That's the plan. If folks might want to get together at Baycon, reply hither in this thread or shoot me e-mail. Yay!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:58 PM | Comments (11)

May 17, 2005

Eric: An actual conversation.

"So... why haven't you ever snarked Krazy Larry, anyway? Don't you like it?"

"I like it fine. Southworth just stopped updating the same week I started Websnark, more or less."

"So?"

"So... what exactly would I snark, then?"

"Oh. Wait... you mean... we've never actually seen you and Paul Southworth at the same time?"

"I don't like where this is going...."

"The question is, which one of you is the superhero identity?"

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:11 PM | Comments (5)

May 9, 2005

Eric: Hopefully asleep...

...still pretty sick. Night.

(Narbonic tomorrow. Unless still sick, in which case Narbonic Wednesday.)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:05 PM | Comments (6)

May 8, 2005

Eric: Still ill...

...with lots of eternal half-awake/half-asleep moments. The fun that is my life.

I did go out and see Hitchhikers. I was still sick, but it was worth it. For one thing, the theater was locally owned in Gilford, New Hampshire. We were the only ones in the theater. The owner came down and chatted with us, and talked about the preview of Episode III he saw with other projectionists. He started the film a couple of minutes later -- no Twenty, no advertisements, only two previews, and right into it. I will definitely be going back there.

Then home, and more fading in and out in sleep. And now I'm going to get some more.

Back to the office tomorrow. I'll try to get some serious snarking done.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:13 PM | Comments (19)

May 3, 2005

Eric: Is it wrong to want to celebrate by eating twelve pies? Granted, they would kill me, but....

Though I often fail, I try to avoid doing "Livejournal" style updates as to my everyday life, health et al. That's not really what Websnark's for, in as much as Websnark's "for" anything. But every so often we have a threshold event, and I figure I ought to report it because... well, I have an ego the size of Montana.

So. Folks have gathered I've done some rather... extreme things to lose weight before I... well, died.

As of this morning, those have culminated in a 150.5 lb weight loss. I figure that once you break 150, you have to call it a threshold.

I've been saying as I went along that "I've lost my niece in weight," or "I lost a high school sophomore." Or "I lost my Mother."

However, 150 deserves something cooler. Therefore... I have officially lost one ninja's worth of weight.

I'm just scared he's out there, conspiring to get revenge. Ninja don't need bones, damn it.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:58 PM | Comments (24)

April 29, 2005

Eric: Checking in from the road!

I'm typing this at an Apple Store in Salem, New Hampshire (not so much Witches as Goths with perky attitudes), picking up a copy of Tiger for the school I work at. From here, I'm heading to a hot spot to get some coffee and get my brain on, before heading home.

The lineup was an hour long to get in. An hour long.

For an operating system.

Seriously.

Oh, and they don't have a USB microphone in this store. On the other hand, the employees are cheerful and highly knowledgable. I asked one of them where the nearest hotspot was (other than here, of course). He grinned, ran me over to a nearby computer, and downloaded a Dashboard widget that ID'd the nearest hotspots.

I have to admit, it'd be fun to be a geek on demand at a place like this.

Right. Heading out. Until later, all.

(P.S. I have Milholland and Garrity art you do not. You may envy me at any time. I'll burble excitedly about both later today.)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 7:22 PM | Comments (15)

April 22, 2005

Eric: There is something to be said for being named a Fellow.

I've already snarked on my opinions of this year's Origins Awards nominees. And yet, I am going through and doing my duty as a Fellow of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design. There being no write-in option, I'm doing the best I can.

That being said, I don't want to discuss the Origins Awards.

I want to discuss being a Fellow of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design.

Look, I'm a geek. What's more, I'm a geek with a degree in English Literature. I am essentially pretentiousness incarnate. So the opportunity to add "Fellow of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design" is just about nerdvana for me. I mean, look at it. I'm not a member -- I'm a Fellow. I'm never going to contract the Academy down to its initials again -- the sheer flow of 'the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design' deserves to be cut and pasted into conversation wherever possible.

Should I have to decide between Dead Inside and Dogs in the Vineyard for Best RPG of the year? Yes. Yes I should. Is it sad that instead, I have to consider "D&D Basic Set" on that list? Yes, yes it is. But still. I take a certain geeky pride in knowing I am a Fellow of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design. I wish we had lapel pins, so I could wear one on my tweed sportscoat to formal events, the way the Business Manager wears a Rotary Pin and one of the faculty members wears his Mensa pin.

(As a pretentious geek, I too am a (lapsed) Mensa member. However, I have my limits. I have my limits.)

I think my fellow... er... Fellows and I should begin to go whole hog with this. At cons of all sorts, we should have gatherings of the Fellows of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design, where we sip drinks in martini glasses and have light piano jazz playing in the background. We should have closed room parties where cheese trays are served and we bandy about terminology off the Forge and sniff at d20 -- most particularly d20 developers, of which I am one. We should adopt highways and send letters on pretentious letterhead set in Goudy Old Style to editors of journals that have nothing to do with games of any kind, where we make references only we would get in a tone that implies the editors of those journals are idiots if they don't understand. We should find a deserving college and give a hundred dollar scholarship to the most promising amateur Adventure Game Designer, sending press releases about it to the school newspaper. (For bonus points, we should ensure said student is in a Frat, just to see if we see his name in the obituaries the day after.)

Don't you get it? We're Fellows. We are collectively a Fellowship.

Forget the Lord of the Rings references -- we have Intelligensia tropes to adopt, now!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:37 PM | Comments (23)

April 20, 2005

Eric: Hatstand

For the record, I'm not... what's the word... sleeping, right now. Much at all. Which has my brain currently at the consistency of tapioca.

I actually have things I want to snark and discuss, and strips and the like queued up. I'll see if I can hammer some of them out today. However, I ask indulgence based on the fact that at around three hours of sleep a night, I'm not currently at a high point in my capacity to get things accomplished.

On the other hand, when I do manage to get some writing done, it's trippy.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:07 AM | Comments (2)

April 15, 2005

Eric: It's been a while...

...but I have to call this one an official "I got nothin'." I'm exhausted, work had a lot of my brain, and I did much writing this week outside of Websnark, and that shit catches up with you.

On the positive side, I'm not writing yet more about word processors. And that makes everyone vastly happier. I mean, vastly.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:15 PM | Comments (9)

April 14, 2005

Eric: A quick screenshot of the fullscreen bits from Ulysses

Here's a quick screenshot of the fullscreen editing mode of Ulysses, talked about in my last snark. I set the font myself (I like the heavier look of it), and naturally I did the actual typing bits as part of a story. But literally, that's all there is to it. You type and the letters appear. No desktop, no other windows, no nothing. Just you and your words.

It reminds me, in a lot of ways, of WordPerfect/DOS. I'd always change the backgrounds off that silly blue to the original black. And there was something I always liked about the amber text screens of old CRT terminals.

Anyway, it works nicely for me. So, sometime before the end of the next thirty days, I really need to track down sixty-something odd bucks to drop on this thing.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:36 AM | Comments (13)

March 26, 2005

Eric: Interviews!

Hey all -- this entry, so you know, is utterly cheating. I dozed much/most of the evening, after a week of travel and adrenalin. So this was done on Sunday, and backdated to Saturday, before I went back to sleep.

And the funny thing is, it didn't need to be. Weds had us perfectly covered! Covered with drawings! Good ones!

But that's neither here nor there.

I've had two interviews put up. The first was at Tux and Bunny, which is always fun. The interview itself is here.

The second was a far more formal -- one might even say absurdly formal -- affair at Modern Humor Authority. Capturing the zeitgeist is their stock in trade, of course, which means they interviewed me right at the moment that my impact was maximized. Now, of course, I am officially three minutes ago, going on four. But that snapshot of near-relevance has been immortalized on their website, in their own inimitable style.

Anyway. That's what there is. I'm going back to sleep.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:59 PM | Comments (17)

March 21, 2005

Eric: I'm home! And alive! And Jesus Christ am I tired!

I... don't know what else to write that the subject didn't cover.

Oh, except this. Vermont needs to WIDEN and STRAIGHTEN its ROADS.

This is the fourth time I've gone through that state at night, convinced I'm about to plunge off a cliff, into a cliff, or squeal into oncoming traffic whilst going significantly below the speed limit.

But I survived it again!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:57 PM | Comments (9)

Eric: And saying goodbye to Ithaca!

It's time to hit the road for home. I'll be in late, but I'll be riding high on the great comments (both positive and constructively negative) I've heard about Gossamer Commons. I hope Greg's been following along, because this has been a truly great way to launch into the trip back!

See you all tonight/tomorrow/whenever!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:58 PM | Comments (1)

March 20, 2005

Eric: A day abroad

I spent most of the day in the Syracuse, with old friends. Friends from my youth, friends from my life, friends who are vivacious and intelligent and beautiful, and sometimes bald. Friends who mean the world to me.

This has been counterpointed with excitement and terror all in a melange. It's tomorrow. Gossamer Commons is tomorrow. Launching with four strips first thing. Come here in the morning, and you'll see the official link to the site. The official link.

I'm... blown away. Literally blown away. Greg Holkan has done amazing things. This is exciting to the point of nausea. This is...

This is everything.

We go live, tomorrow.

I hope folks like it.

And I hope folks understand that both Weds and I have been distracted today.

More later.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:43 PM | Comments (7)

March 18, 2005

Eric: Not dead.

Hi all! Made it to Ithaca without incident! It was a gorgeous day for traveling, and I listened to the audiobook version of Lake Wobegon Days for the first time in years en route. It's one of my favorite audiobooks, even though it's abridged, because Keillor struck a perfect balance between radio pacing and the greater depth of the book.

So yay!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:57 AM | Comments (0)

March 17, 2005

Eric: On my way, in so many ways.

I left my home in Monterey
just another low prospects man.
I'd rather work in the foundry
than put fishes in a can.
I'm thirty-five and I haven't traveled far,
and I've spent all my money on this misbegotten car.
I'm up against it all like a leaf against the wind
and this Studebaker keeps on breaking down again.
My Studebaker keeps on breaking down again.

So I'm packing up to head to Ithaca for a few days. Long time readers (like, back in September, so that's almost as 'long time' as Websnark gets, really) know that Ithaca holds special feelings for me, and this time I'm not going for any event more complicated than "hanging out with Frank, Rose, Bankert, Lisa and Seanna."

I'll be checking in here and there, of course. Frank has broadband like everyone else. And hand in hand with that the Indefatigable Wednesday White's going to make sure you get some goodness throughout, because she's a fine, fine person.

Of course, I'm doing this at T-4 days to the launch of Gossamer Commons, but I'll have plenty of opportunity to do the final touches on that on Sunday, so 6 a.m. (Eastern Standard Time) should be the launch. You'll get a message and link here, of course. Greg sent me two more strips last night, and they absolutely blew me away. I sent them to half the people I know so I could say "look at what he did! This rocks so hard!!!"

I head out about noon, so I'll try to say "hi" before I go. Still -- this is a bright and cheerful day here at Websnark Central. (Weds is in the European Office, you see.)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:00 AM | Comments (8)

March 7, 2005

Eric: Briefly.

Up and out of the house before six. I ended up sleeping most of the evening.

The writing portion of the day went well, though. Worked on Theftworld, which was nice, because someday I'd like to actually finish that novel. About 3,500 words of it, in fact, when it turned out that the all day thing I was up and out of the house before six for didn't happen as I thought, turning today into an unexpected vacation day.

So why didn't I snark? Because I thought I would do it this evening. Only instead, I slept.

More tomorrow!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:36 PM | Comments (2)

March 4, 2005

Eric: The problem with networking your second Tivo....

....is you start thinking of it less than a dirt cheap used Tivo you bought for convenience's sake for your bedroom, and start thinking of it as a second storage device for precious, precious television.

Which means you start thinking "hey, I should buy a second hard disk for that thing. Get some serious capacity on it, and up my default recording quality to medium."

This way lies madness.

I have a doctor's appointment at the doctors who are very, very far away (well, okay, two hours), so I'll be away. Snarkage late. But I still respect you, man.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)

March 3, 2005

Eric: Evolutions and geekiness.

It was a night where work consumed. Issues kept me there until just about eight. And then, I needed emotional distance. So I drove. And drove.

But before that, I learned that my best friend, soul brother, and personal Spiritual Advisor, Frank Orzechowicz, has had a photograph selected for gallery showing, over in Ithaca. For whatever teeming masses happen to be in Ithaca, the show is at the State Of The Art Gallery from March 5 to April 5. This psyched the Hell out of me, and since we're moving into March Break at the school, I made arrangements to go hang in Ithaca for a few days, spend time with Frank and his wonderful wife (and no doubt seeing any number of other friends as well), and seeing this here art show for myself.

But back to driving. While out, I finally got a wireless adaptor that would actually work with my new used Tivo. Which it did. Then I hammered on it and my wireless network with sticks until it recognized. Now, the living room Tivo is speaking to the bedroom Tivo, so I can schlep video between them. And with Tivo2Go enabled, I can also slorp video onto my computer in the living room. (Though not the Powerbook, yet, because the Apple Tivo2Go client isn't ready yet.)

Oh, I can officially record two things at once now, too. But you knew that.

Of course, I can also migrate the video from the bedroom to the Tivo in the living room, which lets me burn it to DvD.

My sister, who generally reads Websnark, has just read this entry and realized that she is related by blood to the most titanic geek who has ever -- ever -- lived. I'm sad to say she is right. But I have a good time.

I leave you with this: Frank's photo, soon to be hanging in public exhibit? Is titled "The Sky Turns Bread."

He is so freaking cool.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:59 PM | Comments (6)

February 26, 2005

Eric: A few notes from the road

It's been an excellent day, including returning a portable dishwasher I couldn't get to work (and a Tivo wireless adaptor that wouldn't work with my model -- it's been replaced with the correct one), hanging out and doing things with friends, and learning that contrary to all expectations, Constantine didn't suck.

(Keanu Reeves is an actor I hate, but despite the hair he got the body language pretty solidly down, and while he remains... well... Keanu Reeves the director used his wooden delivery as a means of playing off the atmosphere, and most of the time it worked. And the depiction of Hell was perfect. Also, the actress who played Gabriel deserves a raise. Or several raises.)

Right now, I'm in a Barnes and Noble, hanging out and typing and junk. I won't be back to my place before midnight at this rate, so I'm giving you the update from here. (Weds, of course, gave us an earlier snark, so you haven't been snarkless.)

I saw some sketches from Sekret Projekt J tonight, and they're fantastic. I've also seen the art for the first four Gossamer Commons strips, and they're phenomenal. They're truly phenomenal.

One thing I have to add to Weds's snark: contacts. I've managed to make a tight network of contacts in the last several months. I've managed to do it, essentially, by writing often and apparently being moderately insightful or entertaining. A better way to do it, for someone who wants to crack the wide world of comics significance, is to draw often and well and be funny and consistent.

I've said it before -- someone who does webcomics but doesn't make it their primary source of income doesn't owe us anything. That hasn't changed. But people who read webcomics owe you nothing without regular updates. If you want to build up readers and emotions and have people care deeply about you over the course of time -- and hand in hand with that, create those mythical contacts -- then do your comic. Do it every day you say it'll be there. Make it something people bookmark and read on a regular basis, because they count on it. Give it time. Talk it up. Make sure people know it's there and make sure new ones keep coming.

Or, as Weds put it, better than I... "Shut the fuck up and draw something."

I don't get paid for Websnark. I'll never be paid for Websnark. And some days I have no gas in the tank for writing it at all, and I admit it. But even on those days I'll post something by midnight saying I have nothing. I have something, and I try, on at least a semi-regular basis, to have something good.

That, in the end, is the whole reason anyone has ever heard of this. And why I'm able to get startlingly good artists to help me bring my own webcomics to life.

Oh, and oddly enough, soymilk decaf lattes with a shot of sugar free vanilla? Are really good. I know -- it surprised me too.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:40 PM | Comments (9)

February 18, 2005

Eric: For those playing along at home...

...my blood pressure is back into the normal range, and we're thinking maybe things have settled back down. And I get to eat bread again.

But no biscuits.

I spent a good amount of the evening doing some beta work in prep for the Websnark move. It's going well, but there's a lot of t crossing and i dotting. Fortunately, my current hosting isn't going anywhere as we do it. And there was an idiosyncrasy in Mac OS X server that meant I had to change groups on all our students, followed by shifting their primary group to the new one. Only there's... well, no way to batch process it.

So, several hundred students, and I had to open each record, drag the group to the primary group blank, then save the record. One at a time.

Did I mention that because my diet's been highly restricted, my blood sugar is below 'low.' So I've been kind of... surly today.

Anyway, I'm going to sleep. Tomorrow, I will snark. About many things.

Like Flint.

Sigh... Flint....

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:15 PM | Comments (3)

February 15, 2005

Eric: Man, I'm fixated.

So, the checkup didn't go as well as one might hope. We're taking some steps to change that.

It's a sign that I'm completely obsessed, however, that I actually thought "damn... now I can't have biscuits any more."

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:39 PM | Comments (7)

Eric: I'm off to see the wizard!

Well, I have a checkup up at Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital this afternoon, which is a couple of hours away, so I'm leaving in about 5-10 minutes and won't be doing much on here until this evening. For those who haven't seen Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital (which... well, I assume is all of you), it's astounding. It's huge and mostly made of green glass. It looks like the Emerald City had a baby the Carousel Center Mall in Syracuse, New York.

To give you some idea... this is a hospital with a food court. Not a cafeteria. A food court. Last time I was there, they had Sbarro's, Au Bon Pan, a bank, a branch of the Dartmouth Bookstore, a convenience store, a florist's, a gift shop and a clothing store.

In the hospital.

Walking into the hospital, there's a person playing light piano jazz in the lobby. Mostly standards.

In the hospital.

These are the people who did aftermarket modifications to my abdomen last March. And now they're going to take me out for a test drive and check my antifreeze.

I'll see you tonight.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:30 AM | Comments (4)

February 11, 2005

Eric: Power is not our friend, today

As with so many other people, I was at ground zero in the blizzard yesterday. The power went out in the evening and stayed out through the night. Right now it's coming on and off sporadically, but nothing's very happy right now.

I'm hopeful that it'll come back and stay back, but for the moment, you probably shouldn't expect to see all that much from me, today. I'll only disappoint you, I'm afraid.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:44 AM | Comments (4)

January 22, 2005

Eric: Fast Con Notes from Saturday

Today's panel was fantastic. An excellent group of people, engaged with the panel, who themselves rocked. Alexander Danner picks a good group, and is himself superior. Way to go, J.

Midway through the panel, my phone rang. It would have been embarrassing, but dumb luck let me spin it to my advantage. "Hey guys," I said to the audience. "Randy Milholland says hi."

"Hi, Randy!" they chanted back. I then handed my cell phone to Randy's roommate, who was in the second row, and she made sure Randy fed her cats.

Later, we had a Superguyish get together, though three of the invitees (Greg from yesterday, and Frobozz and Van, to use psuperguydonyms) couldn't make it due to A) other committments, and B) a giant freaking blizzard. But we did have myself (Sabre, to use the Superguyism), Gina (aka Crash), Jon (aka... um... Jon), and Randy (aka Nee). I had a glass of wine, which with my ultraefficient metabolism meant they got to see me get drunk.

Oh, and Betsy? Your sister Susan says hi, and says "hah hah -- I got to meet Eric Burns and you didn't." And she and I then talked about John Troutman and Meaghan Quinn.

I think it was Susan. I know it was Betsy. I hope it was Susan, because... well, she was a pretty girl, and I'd hate to think I've managed to forget the name of a pretty girl so quickly. On the other hand, I mentioned the drunk part.

Oh, and when we got back to the room, later, it was raining inside. Seems a pipe burst. We were moved to an absolutely gorgeous room. A large, gorgeous room. Life is good.

Except I'm like totally broke at this point. But hey, that's okay!

More notes from later, and expect the return of Journalist Snarky at some point.

Also, Drunk Snarky. Randy's made me a promise about Drunk Snarky. I'm holding him to it.

Got to go! Party with an editor to go to. This is your on the scene buzzed reporter signing off!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:23 PM | Comments (8)

January 20, 2005

Eric: Is this Journalist Snarky or Public Speaker Snarky? Either way -- Arisia lives!

Arisia is almost upon us! I'm going to be at a panel called Don't Forget the Comics tomorrow at 9:00 PM in Franklin, moderated by the always superior Kelly J. Cooper. Her description:

Don't Forget the Comics: Comic books in all their forms, including graphic novels and trade paperback collections, cover many genres, including science fiction, fantasy, crime, mystery, espionage, etc. Comics can be beautifully strange works of art, superhero-packed adventures, scathing political screeds, gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans stories, works of base horror or great humor. Join our comics experts to discuss the medium and listen to their recommendations.


Then, on Saturday, I have a 1:00 panel moderated by Graphic Novel Review editor Alexander J. Danner on Webcomics. That information:

Certainly everyone's heard of Sluggy Freelance, PvP, Penny Arcade, Something Positive, and other staples of the webcomic world, some of which have already made a successful movement to print media (PvP for one). But webcomics today are more than cubicle humor for server administrators and bored college students. How have webcomics made titles possible which might not have succeeded in print? How has the webcomic transformed the graphic novel marketplace? Has it, in fact? Answers to all these questions and more from writers and artists behind Teaching Baby Paranoia, Picture Story Theatre, Streets of Northampton, and the critic Steven Withrow, author of the book _Toon Art: The Graphic Art of Digital Cartooning_.


I have no idea if they'll actually mention Websnark in the revised description or not. My bio, sans all the humor, is in the program guide.

I believe I'm on a third panel as well, but I can't tell you what it is at this point. More as I know more. Oh, and Saturday Afternoon/Evening, I'm going to hook up with fellow Superguy Alumni at an undisclosed location, but that's not a public event. So hah hah!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:00 PM | Comments (4)

January 19, 2005

Eric: Biscuits. Tasty, savory biscuits.

So I'm back in Maine tonight. Why? Because I forgot my winter coat over Christmas, and the Cold Miser decided to have a blowout sale, so I had to come and grab it. And along with it was a delayed care package from a noted British (well, Canadian, but currently British) Snarkoleptic of intellect and style. Which one? Well, if said Snarkoleptic wants to be identified, I'm sure there'll be a comment. However -- superior person in all ways. But I digress.

It had been frozen against my picking it up. And now I have.

And inside it?

Well first off, Crunchie Bars. They're honeycomb foam in chocolate. It's like eating styrofoam, only it's awesome. I loves me the Crunchie Bars.

But more to the point, it's stuffed to the gills with British Baked Mini Chedders. Baked, not fried! And as they say on the back, you the customer are "spoilt for choice!" They have Smokey BBQ and Cheesy Beans flavor available!

That's right.

I got sent tasty, tasty biscuits.

I love my life.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:14 PM | Comments (8)

January 16, 2005

Eric: Meet the Snarker!

It's now official. I'm going to be one of the guests at Arisia 2005 January 21-23 in Boston, Mass of the Chusetts. Other Webcomics luminaries will be on hand as well, including Alexander Danner of Picture Story Theater and Graphic Novel Review, Kelly Cooper, who's an editor and extremely cool person over at Comixpedia (and also, as it turns out, an author from Dragon's Inn, so I'll have to ask if she knows some folks I know who used to be involved with it), and many others.

There will be much fun, many good times, lots of shopping opportunities, and sooner or later, I will find Skunk Porn.

I always find Skunk Porn at conventions. I don't go looking for it. It finds me. It scares me.

So, if you're anywhere in or around Boston, come on down and have some fun.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:57 AM | Comments (4)

January 14, 2005

Eric: Ira Glass: Lifesaver

The event took place, was quite good, and I made it home alive, despite evil fog, one moment of adrenalin, and some serious thought of pulling over and going to sleep.

The reason I didn't was because I was actively enjoying the This American Life episodes I was listening to, so I didn't want to stop until the given story/essay I was on was over. And when it ended, I glazed over the interstitial and found myself in the next story.

Oh, and they're breeding biblical cows, and those cows are going to cause the end of the world. And the thing is, it's perfectly plausible. So now I'm going to have nightmares about cows.

Oh, also? Webcartoonists have the ability to cause beautiful women to come out to see them in the rain.

Full writeup tomorrow. Action Stalker Journalist Burns going to sleep.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:55 AM | Comments (2)

January 13, 2005

Eric: Fun Northampton Notes

So, here's some quick notes for you the person at home. On the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts I've listened to in my mother's house, these would be the things that Peter Allen would say while waiting for James Levine to get off his fat ass and start the fucking Opera, already. In this case, you can just pretend they're being said by Bob Costas and Deborah Norville, and therefore they're vapid.

The Northampton City Hall seems to be a fake castle. Up to and including turrets.

Turrets.

Several of them. Not one turret. One turret would look silly, after all. If you're going with turrets, you have to go for the full monty. They look like they should be flying pennants while bit actors in helmets ready boiling oil to be poured down onto protesting and invading hipsters.

As for said hipsters... the ratio of young, attractive men and women to old, broken down people seems to be seventy-four to one in favor of youth, out on the rain slicked streets of Northampton. It's skewed in here because there aren't seventy four people in this room and by definition, I am.

As near as I can tell, the Virgin Mary is considered an ironic and somewhat hip interior decorating choice.

Also? Santa Rita of Cascia.

Santa Rita's story can be found here. She seems to have been an interesting and forgiving woman, and a nice choice for a saint. I'm not an expert, but still -- I'm behind this particular canonization one hundred percent.

For the record, Santarita.com seems to be a Chilean winery. From woman granted stigmata of the forehead from Christ's Thorny Crown for the last fifteen years of a woman who suffered untold tribulations with grace and forgiveness to Cabernet Sauvignon in one easy step.

Of course, that might be in reference to a different Santa Rita. Check the comments for Catholics up on their female saints.

I seem to have strayed from my original topic of discussion. In conclusion, cute girls with tattoos still fucking rock. Thank you, and try the lattes.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:10 PM | Comments (3)

Eric: Your man on the scene

So, here I am in rainy Northampton, a significant period of time before the festivities are scheduled to begin, on the twin theories of A) not knowing if this would be difficult to find, and therefore not knowing if it would take long to get here and B) having fuck-all to do in New Hampshire anyhow. It's slightly over an hour before our heroes are due to arrive here at the Haymarket, and no one around me is wearing a large sign reading "Webcartoonist," so I'm going to assume no one's here yet -- and after all, why would they be? They have an hour to go.

So, as a reporter, I should give my impressions, realtime, of venue. The Haymarket cafe is cozy and pleasant and largely occupied by attractive indy girls writing in journals. I ordered a light dinner of gorgonzola and spinach salad. The spinach is good enoughm the gorgonzola all gorgonzoly, though they drowned it in way too much oil.

The coffee, on the other hand, is exceptional. And obviously, the wifi works as expected. If this place were local to me, I suspect I would never sleep again.

At least one of the reports said this was taking place at the "Haymarket Bookstore Cafe," but I have seen no books here, which makes me wonder if I'm in the wrong "Haymarket Cafe." I guess come nine of the clock I'll find out, won't I? I have to assume there wouldn't be two cafes named "Haymarket" so close to each other, but then I've been wrong before. Often. If I'm wrong this time....

Actually, if I'm wrong this time, I'll have days worth of amusing anecdotes for Websnark and for talks. And that's all I can ask for, isn't it?

More news as events warrant. This is your man on the scene, Eric Burns, wishing all ladies and gentlemen and all the ships at sea safe voyages.

Oh, and the fucking fog bank that was southwestern New Hampshire can disperse any time between now and my drive back. I'm just saying.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 7:53 PM | Comments (2)

Eric: Journalism, or Road Trip

So, I mentioned to a friend that I was swinging down to the Northampton meeting tonight.

"Isn't Northampton like three hours from here?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"So, you're driving three hours there, watching this thing, maybe saying hello to some people and buying them drinks or something, then driving three hours back... this evening?"

"Well... yeah."

"You realize this is the most 'journalist' thing you've ever done in your life."

"What do you mean? I'm not a journalist. I'm a guy with a blog."

"You're a guy writing an op/ed column who's traveling by car for six hours to cover a webcomics event. You're going to be dead to the world tomorrow, barely able to communicate verbally, and yet I'm almost positive you'll snark about the trip by lunch. You're a journalist. Own it."

I allowed as they might have a point. Now, I just need to get press credentials and use this as justification for entry into E3.

Because this is going be six hours worth of driving for a 1-2 hour event, obviously I need to make certain I'll be as awake and alert as humanly possible for the trip. To that end, I've downloaded four -- count them four -- new episodes of This American Life and the audiobook version of America: The Book into my iPod. I have things rigged up so I can plug the headphone jack directly into my car stereo, so Ira Glass and Jon Stewart will see me through to where I will sit and drink coffee and feel desperately dorky in the back of the Dumbrella presentation.

Why dorky? Well, I'll tell you. If you can look at this trip as an exercise in journalism, you can far more easily look at it as an exercise in unmitigated fanboyism. And the last thing I want to do is throw up submissively on Jeffrey Rowland's shoes.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:12 PM | Comments (10)

January 11, 2005

Eric: Too much to write, damn it.

Mrph.

I seem to have caught a short story. It's fairly demanding to be written. But there is also Shortbreads to finally finish plus the daily snarking. My brain is full to overflowing.

Oh, and I actually have a job, too. So, you know, I may not have time for any of this before 10 pm.

There is too much to be written in this world. There are too many interesting things. There is too much to say, and too many opinions to be said about it.

Or, I might need to start Ritalin. Never rule that out.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:28 AM | Comments (7)

January 6, 2005

Eric: The Triumphal and the Surreal

I'm sitting at home, with no inclination to snark whatsoever. My cat is sleeping on my stomach, content as can be, and I'm watching an old (50's or 60's era) game show that Tivo snagged for me. It's called The Name is the Same, and the celebrity guest of the night just came out.

It's Salvador Dali.

Salvador Dali. On a game show. That's shilling Swanson Chicken. Weirdass mustache and all. The game show's premise is they have nobodies with famous names come on, and a panel of guests have to guess what that famous name is. If the panel fails, they have to make out personal checks in the amount of $25 apiece to the contestant.

But this is the real Dali, on as their celebrity guest, and playing their game where he's thinking of a famous name he "wishes" to be... only this is Dali, so before that he's being... well, Dali, describing his new painting, "One Soft Watch Exploding in Eight Hundred Eighty-Eight Pieces." Which might be Soft Watch Exploding, though that was the early fifties so I think not. Or it might be something entirely different. I'm not up on Dali.

And yet, years after his death, Dali's managed to make my life momentarily surreal.

Anyhow, because there's no impetus to do any real cultural commentary, I'm going to cut and paste a post from my Livejournal. I'm doing this because... well, because hours later, I'm still just plain proud. And besides, it's something to do.

Hopefully, tomorrow there will be snarking aplenty (or even the finishing of the Story Shortbread list). In the meantime, if it's as snowy where you are as it is here, be careful.

So, for those who didn't follow this journal last year -- because, well, most of you had never heard of me -- I had a gastric bypass last March. I was... large. What the jokes would call "Oh my god, he's coming right at us." And I was dying -- sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, but the end was near.

I've lost a lot of weight since then, and I'm still losing. I now climb flights of stairs for daily exercise, when before I had to take an elevator to go one floor, for example. But there was one area I was still terrified in.

Frankly, ice scares the hell out of me.

When I was at my top weight, slipping and falling on the ice was horrible. First, there was the fall itself -- a jarring impact that caused every joint to hurt and scared me on the way down that I'd break many, many bones. But that was just the start. You see, after that, I had to get back up.

And, if I fell where there was nothing to brace on, I couldn't.

I literally couldn't go from lying on the ground to standing up. I could get my legs under me, but they then couldn't dead-lift me back into standing position. So I'd have to either get help, or crawl to a tree or staircase or something.

It was humiliating. I remember once, last winter... I fell in the middle of the quad, on a snowy day. There was hidden ice, you see. It was the beginning of winter break, so there was no one on campus right then. And I couldn't stand. Finally, I started the long crawl across the quad back to the academic building so I could get up.

A teacher -- a nice guy -- saw me, realized something was wrong, and ran out to help me. And that was great of him, and excruciatingly embarrassing. I was helpless. I felt worthless. I felt like Darwin was standing over me, waiting with his chainsaw and smirking. I didn't deserve to live.

Well. That was then. I've lost over a hundred and twenty pounds since then. I now climb stairs willingly.

But I'm still scared to death of the ice.

Today it's snowing, and it was freezing rain before. And I was walking -- you guessed it -- across the quad. There were students everywhere, though. Which would actually be worse, if you think about it.

Naturally, I fell.

The first thing I thought as I hit the ground was oh Shit!

The second thing I thought, about a second later, was wait... that didn't hurt.

It didn't. At all. So, I shifted position, got my legs under me, thought "well, I guess we find out now, don't we?"

And stood.

I didn't strain. I didn't fight. I just popped right up, picked up the bag I'd been carrying, and kept on my way.

As I got close to the school, a student fell in front of me. I helped him up, asking if he was all right.

"I'm fine," he said, grinning and shaking his head. "Just embarrassed."

"Don't worry about it," I said. "I did the same thing a couple of minutes ago."

Take that, Darwin.


And if that's too feel good happy/overly personal bloggish for you... bear in mind that on the show, Dali just answered "no" when asked if Robert Q. Lewis, the host, was a person. "He is an Object!" he asserted. And then mumbled in French.

Either way, that's pretty cool. And he just drove Gene Rayburn off the stage with incoherence. Now that's entertainment.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:36 PM | Comments (5)

January 5, 2005

Eric: Dude. It has the little pump action thing to extrude cresent shaped 'doh.' How cool is that?

So, in addition to the money I collected and donated in full from the Websnark Auction, I donated money of my own to Child's Play. In my own case, I went in and bought stuff off one of the hospital's gift lists (the auction money I donated straight to them).

Well, I must have screwed one of the donations up, because I just got a Big Barrel O' Play-doh from Amazon.com.

Well, I'm going back onto Amazon.com to order another Big Barrel O' Play-doh for the hospital. But in the meantime, I'm sitting in my office with a barrel full of little barrels of Play-doh. And it makes no sense at all to send it back to Amazon. Not for the small amount of money this cost.

Which means I now own Play-doh. Pink, green, blue, red, white, and yellow Play-doh. Plus a huge number of molds, collanders, extruders and rollers to work with my Play-doh.

Dude. I own Play-doh.

Sadly, I have to wait until the end of work to head home and play with it. But its going to rock! Dude! Play-doh!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:13 PM | Comments (13)

December 25, 2004

Eric: A note from Christmas in 2004

Obviously, this hasn't been a day I've been overly concerned about Websnark. I have been concerned with a little Scrabble (I'm somewhat good at that), and being decimated in Risk by my sister, who I dub "the Mongol" from this point forward, having seen her sweep down from Asia to decimate the rest of the world.

There were three presents of significant note to you, the Websnark audience. First off, there was America: The Book, which is hysterical and a good basic primer in high quality literate snarking. I have much to learn. The other two are Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers and Brian Walker's gorgeous The Comics Before 1945, a rich treasure trove of Krazy Kat, Thimble Theater, Little Orphan Batshit Insane Annie, Mutt and Jeff, Boob McNutt, the Bungle Family, Gasoline Alley....

Tomorrow, my nieces return home, and we do some more Christmas with them. Monday, of course, we start shortin' some bread. Tonight, I'm sitting next to a tree, surrounded by my family.

Oh, and we had Jiggers. Jiggers comes from my grandmother originally (to our knowledge, she invented them), and is essentially pie crust, cut into cookies, with cinnamon and sugar and baked. Mom had a spare crust from making the Quiche we have every Christmas morning, so we had Jiggers through the day as well. They echo down through the ages in my mind.

I hope you're all as happy on a night like this.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:04 PM | Comments (4)

December 24, 2004

Eric: Two fast notes from Christmas Eve in the rainy rainy land of Maine

Two fast notes, from my family to you and yours, this rainy Christmas Eve.

First off, we've been listening to music and singing carols all evening. However, without a doubt our favorite music of the evening, bar none, has been Crazy Utahraptor,, by joey comeau and gilyan merry, made as fan art for one of my long time favorite comics, Daily Dinosaur Comics. My sister's been dancing to the phat rhythm, and calling people "Crazy Utahraptors" all day now. Which is joy.

Secondly, we've had our traditional Christmas Eve nosh -- meats and cheeses and fruits and crackers and the like -- and are now about to sit down to hot cocoa and lemon, orange and ginger wafers. Or, as the British would call them... biscuits.

That's right. We're having tasty, tasty biscuits.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:06 PM | Comments (2)

December 23, 2004

Eric: Christmas in Maine: 51É and pouring rain.

Hi all from Maine, where I -- still sick, but on vacation at least -- have settled in with my family. They all say hello, and wonder why exactly you guys read this thing.

We were discussing Websnark, and I mentioned the Sestina that I did for Narbonic. This made my father, the Professor, quite happy. My mother blinked, and said "oh, you wrote a Sestina? So did I!"

I blinked in answer -- we're a blinking kind of family, and said "really? Was it about Gerbils?"

"No," she said. "But Isadora Duncan was in it." And she and Dad disappeared into the basement. They returned after a few moments with a tan magazine, The Maze, from 1974. And she showed me her Sestina.

My own Sestina I thought was higher level because I didn't just do the end-line things -- I also made it Iambic Pentameter. My mother didn't just do a Sestina, and do it in Iambic Pentameter... she made it rhyme.

With her permission... here is my mother's Sestina:

SESTINA

to decadence

Here! Stop a bit and watch our play;
And wait now for the perfect chance
To join the game. this is the day
We've planned to start our ritual dance.
So don't hang back, Ducks; What pleasure
To move within this tidy measure.

No doubt you could stand a measure
Of bubbly, or some such, to play
Your part with wild abandon: Pleasure
Often needs some help lest the chance
For spontaneity be lost. Dance
And draft, then, will create the day.

Still shy? Hesitate and the day
Is lost. Now's the time to measure
Your worth, the time to prove through dance
The stuff you're made of. If you play
The innocent here, Lady Chance
Must think you need no pleasure.

And now, my friend, it is my pleasure
To present the cast: Lil Here (Day-
Light is her bane) devours the chance
For youthful pranks by dark. Full measure
For our Dennis, there; he'll play
If the cup o'erflows throughout the dance.

This is Dora; her ; her frenzied dance
Has cast its spell on pleasure
Seekers of every sphere. Her play-
Mate here, Dear Aubrey, spends his day
In elfin merriment. Measure
Well his effects. Leave none to chance.

The rest you see did merely chance
To pass this way, saw how the dance
Progressed, and fell within the measure
As though entranced. Life's sweet pleasureÒ
Principle we claim; and no day
Of reckoning shall menace our play.

So, will you play? Hey grab the chance
This judgment day; for in our dance
Macabre, pleasure eludes measure.

--Dian Burns, 1974


Dora refers to Isadora Duncan, Lil to Lilith of Hebrew myth (she wrote a Sestina and included Lilith -- we're bonding on so many levels tonight. And no, my mother's not a Goth), and Aubrey is Aubrey Beardsley. She doesn't remember who "Dennis" is, though he sounds like a musician who drinks. Anyone who has a theory as to Dennis's identity (Wednesday -- I'm looking at you) feel free to chime in. It would likely be someone from the turn of the 20th century. It could possibly be John Dennis, but he doesn't fit the time period) feel free to chime in.

I just think I have the coolest mother on Earth.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:04 PM | Comments (7)

December 22, 2004

Eric: For those wondering

For those wondering (I've gotten several nice emails), I've been asleep all day. I'm going back there now.

Night.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:49 PM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2004

Eric: November 19's a weird day for me

A while back, I had an online journal. It was more personal than Websnark, as longtime readers already know. Well, I covered November 19 and why it's weird in my life in One Day in the Life - 11/19/99.

19 years after the events detailed in that entry... things still tend to be weird on the 19th of November. So, if something strange happens to me later today... remember that I warned you right at the start.

Still remembering, Rich.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:15 AM | Comments (3)

November 15, 2004

Eric: The transformative power of bristol board

So, it had all the makings of a bad day.

First off, I had a headache -- the remaining dregs of the medicine shock from the weekend. (What a wonderful phrase -- "medicine shock." It's precisely descriptive, of course.) There was a little bit of caffeine withdrawal thrown in, though I took care of that soon enough today (of course, hand in hand with dealing with caffeine withdrawal is also dealing with the jitters from too much caffeine taken in, because it's hard to be rational about how much to drink when you have a headache and feel crappy, and the coffee is warm and the demon is whispering your name and looking fine in her coffee wrapper bikini. But I digress.)

Add to that a number of crappy things at work. Work as a whole was fine, but there were a quarter-ton of annoyances. And they all led up to lunch, when I went to the dining hall twenty minutes before they were supposed to close, and discovered they were, in fact, closed. No food for me. So muttering, I went to the nearby mailroom to grab my mail.

I should mention I'm terrible about mail. I receive it at the school (because I live on campus), which means I'm usually going to actually get my mail maybe twice a week in a good week. Add to that my allergy to the phone -- I am the world's worst phone correspondent. I don't like talking at length on the phone, and I'm terrible about returning phone calls. Anyone who's known me for any length of time knows that. I've reached the point where, having been forced by circumstance (not financial) to change my phone numbers recently, I'm just not giving them out to people. I'm going to see about retaining an official voice mail box for businesses, I'll have my home number which I'll give to my parents and my boss and that's about it, and my cell phone number.

As a point of order, if you call me on my cell phone number and you're not either my mother or currently on fire, you're going to get a pretty pissed off Eric who won't want to play your reindeer games. Hell, if you are my mother, you should be at least smoldering.

Anyway, my point is, I'm a total hermit. It's how I am. Despite my being plugged in for 10-16 hours a day into the most extensive and powerful innovation in telecommunications since Gutenberg first said "well, what if we made woodcuts," I'm pretty much Henry David Thoreau if Thoreau had spent less time ruminating about philosophy and nature and more time watching X-Play on his Tivo. And so I had a big pile of bills, credit card offers, and catalogs waiting for me at the mailroom.

And... I had a slip for a package.

Well, I usually do. I buy stuff. Pretty much all the time. So I went back and redeemed it, and they brought out a cardstock envelope, about 9x12.

"Oh cool," I thought. "One of the prints I've ordered has come in." Because as you know, I love illustration and cartoons and art. I'm addicted to bristol board. I love sketches. I love all this stuff. And I'm... well, not comfortable with asking for it. If I make it to some place on the Con circuit this coming year -- a con where webcartoonists go, as opposed to a con where SF dweebs like me go, mind. I don't expect to meet many cartoonists at Baycon or Arisia unless I bribe them to drop by with promises of beer and sushi -- I'll bring a sketchbook, wander the artist's alley... and probably never say more than twelve words to people. If I do manage to ask for sketches, even if they're doing "free sketches," which a lot will be, I'll force money on them, because I'm terrible about just asking someone to do art for me. It doesn't seem right. I'll be incredibly self-conscious about my name and Websnark, unless it's someone I've established a friendship with. And if it's someone I've established a friendship with, I won't ask them for a sketch in the first place, because I won't want them to think I just want to be their friend for the sketches.

Yeah, I have issues. I own them.

Anyway, this means I commission stuff and I buy prints and I bid in auctions. I bid in the Two Lumps auction and lost out, for example. But there is always tomorrow. And I'm usually waiting on a print or two to come in. Today, seeing the cardstock envelope, I assumed it was a copy of a print I ordered not long ago from Aeire of Queen of Wands, for example. No big deal -- just kind of neat, and I needed "kind of neat" on a day when I was in a bad mood.

So I get the envelope... and the return address is the right state for Aeire, but not the right city. And also, last I knew, Aeire's name wasn't spelled "S. Garrity."

"Well, cool," I thought. "I don't remember what I ordered from Narbonic, but that's nothing new." And then I got excited, because as I've snarked before, Shaenon Garrity has a habit of sketching on packaging. Which means hey, original art I didn't have to sheepishly ask for, from someone whose art I love. So I flip the envelope over....

And Garrity's sketched all right. A Snarky, sleeping peacefully away in his recliner with his comic strips. It's adorable and I'll have to ask Garrity for permission to post it, because I absolutely love it.

Right there... right there... I've gone from "bad mood" to "good mood." This thrilled me, and I haven't even opened the envelope yet. This is the power of cool people who draw.

So, I head out to the car, to drive elsewhere, to get some food because I really am pretty hungry. And I take a few moments to have a look inside the envelope... it is indeed bristol board....

But I know the second I look at it I hadn't commissioned it or ordered it and just forgotten.

You guys know, if you've been reading for a while or if you've read through my "My Comics Page" trawl in the corner, that I love Lynn Johnston and For Better or For Worse. I mean, love it. I've been reading it for years and years and years. I've been watching this family grow and mature and deepen and develop in all the ways Bil Keane's Family Circus doesn't for pretty much my whole cognizant life. FBoFW is one of those strips I point at when I'm told by a cartoonist who's loudly declaiming that there's no quality on the newspaper comics page, that there's just bland retellings and Garfield and Nancy. I point to it and say "you do one thousandth of the quality, the depth, the storytelling and the artistic values of this strip, and then come talk to me about the Newspapers." I don't care if it's merchandized or collected or published or printed or syndicated or anything else: this is a good strip. It's funny when it tries to be funny, and it brings the story better than 99% of any strips I've ever read. The woman does payoffs ten years after the plotline introductions, and yet you never feel it's being dragging. (If you want a trip, trawl through the archives and find the strips where Mike's wife was introduced. Here's a hint -- it was back when Mike thought girls were ooky. And remember these characters age in real time.)

Well, Lynn Johnston did an event at the Cartoon Art Museum of San Francisco not too long ago. And Shaenon Garrity's husband works there, and Garrity herself puts in a lot of volunteer time, or so I'm given to understand. I'm a member of this museum (and if you love cartoons and comic strips, you should be a member too), which Garrity knows.

And so, unsolicited, she decided that since Johnston was there, and she knew I liked Johnston, and she further knew I liked original art... she got Lynn Johnston to do a signature and a sketch for me, and then sent it along.

It's a gorgeous piece. I'd scan it and put it up, but I'm never comfortable doing that with an artist's work. It's in blue ink, and features April and Farley's faces (okay, it's actually April and Edgar, I'm sure, but the dog I grew up with in the strip was Farley, so it's going to be Farley to me.) and an elaborate, beautiful signature and date. Maybe it only took Johnston eight seconds to draw. I don't know. It clearly didn't require any pencil work.

But it's the only one of this kind in the world, and she did it for me. (Well, she did it for Garrity, but hey -- it counts.) This is like getting a sketch from Berke Breathed, or Gary Larson, or Garry Trudeau to me. This is one of the strips that kept me coming back year after year after year to comic strips. I'm writing Websnark now, in no small part, because of a love of the form that Lynn Johnston was a significant contributor to forming in me.

For the record? I'm as happy and pleased, artistically speaking, by the Snarky Garrity sketched for me. But the gesture, the thoughtfulness, and the piece itself just blow me away.

I had been having a bad day. I'm now having a good week.

Thank you, Shaenon. I owe you even more beer now.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:42 PM | Comments (3)

November 10, 2004

Eric: Live, from Waltham, Massachusetts, it's a dull series of vendor demonstrations!

In my secret identity, I'm a systems administrator (a fact that causes my technically inclined friends to snicker uncontrollably) for a school in New England. On occasion, this means my boss (who I shall call Secret Manager-1, or just "M," for short) and I have to go and listen to people without charisma drone on in front of powerpoint presentations their secretaries worked up, and try really hard to pretend they're not saying what the previous vendor said. Right at the moment, a very tired man is telling us that there is an exciting new technology called "wireless," that people can use to get connectivity without wires! Honestly!

For the record, the fact that while he says that, I'm able to write this missive to you... and the fact that everyone else in the room, literally, is doing the same (well, they're not writing to you, but they're surfing the web) should tell the presenter that the word is out, but he's got to go through the motions because he has nothing else to talk about. I also get to hear IT managers and systems administrators ask the most absurdly esoteric questions in the world (we just heard -- I swear to Christ -- someone in the audience ask "what frequency range will 802.11n use?" The answer, if there's any possibility you care even slightly, is 2.4 Ghz, and there is no humanly possible reason why he'd possibly need to know that yet. That's just slightly like asking if the new hydrogen cell cars are going to have an alloy wheel option. There is an answer, but why would possibly care at this stage of the game.

There is an off chance that there'll be something interesting sometime during the day. And it's business travel, which is always fun in its own way, and M is fun to do these things with because she's just as cynical as I am, and when we finish here I'm going to go have drinks with an acquaintance which is always cool, so that's pretty nice. I'm not likely to get much writing done, but it's not wholly impossible. We are sitting in the back row, which is where the wired geeks are hanging out (we have cell phones, pagers and e-mail pings going off every thirty seconds or so, M and I apparently being the only two who know how to mute our powerbooks.

I'm not sure she'll appreciate me surfing webcomics sites, so we'll see how quickly snarks happen today. I might be able to get some writing don--

The wireless guy just told us not to install access points inside of metal encasements or behind metal pipes. This is the perdition I am sitting in for the next five hours. Pray for me. Pray for Bobo.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:04 AM | Comments (3)

November 9, 2004

Eric: A fast note from a busy day.

I'm buried neck-deep in work, because tonight I'm overnighting in the Boston area for a 7:00 conference with my boss, and I need to have a clean slate here at the school until I return. So I haven't had much time to snark or anything else. I also had to duck out and grab cat food at my lunch hour, killing my lunchtime snark time. And yet, I'm ducking in for a moment.

You see, they just got a shipment of British foods at the market, because... well, I don't know why. Maybe it's a Christmas thing. And I glanced at them quickly... and then saw they had relatively inexpensive packets of Kedem tea digestives.

What does that mean?

It means that right now, on my desk, I have a packet of biscuits.

Tasty, tasty biscuits.

Life doesn't suck.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:36 PM | Comments (3)

October 21, 2004

Eric: Maybe we'll just chalk this week up to exhaustion and burnout.

Yesterday was a day of recovery from food poisoning, followed by four hours on the road -- and a great evening with my sister. And listening to the Red Sox win on the radio.

Today was a day of unmitigated exhaustion. It wasn't that I couldn't wake up -- I did. I went to work and everything.

But I couldn't think. I stared at computer screens that didn't resolve into words. I sat in meetings and barely could focus. I came home, ate something basic, and went to sleep for six hours. I'm about to go back to sleep.

I have notes for two snarks sitting in a folder on my computer's desktop. One involves the word "Mandible," and the other has a picture of a monkey. I have about twenty-seven unread Websnark e-mails sitting in the Websnark account.

I am typing this, instead, and then I'm going to bed. Tomorrow's Parents Weekend at the school, which means that barring a catastrophic failure of the database the faculty use to grade our kids, I'm not going to have to do a damn thing. You'll get them then, right after I put an overdue paid assignment to bed.

Chicken Salad is a deadly killer. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:26 PM | Comments (1)

October 20, 2004

Eric: A rather focused correction

I've had a few people wish me well, offer me prayers, and be just darn good folks today, after my accident. Which means I wasn't nearly clear enough in last night's post. But then, I was fevered. So let me make something abundantly clear.

I did not have a car accident yesterday. I had food poisoning, the onset of which happened while I was driving. Had I not been driving on a deserted New Hampshire road at dusk, I would have plowed into oncoming traffic. However, there was no oncoming traffic to plow into. Other than a continuing desire to cut what's left of my already truncated digestive system out with a spoon rather than continue to enjoy this feeling, I am perfectly fine.

At the same time? You people rock. You really do. So I appreciate it, very much. But please don't consider me the boy who cried car accident.

(I was in a car accident a few years ago, if the thought of me being in a car hit by the hammer of Thor makes you smile. My old journal has the details if you're interested, and honestly, why would you be?)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:24 AM | Comments (0)

October 19, 2004

Eric: On top of it all, my eyes hurt. From behind. I don't know what that means.

So I was pretty ill this evening. Food poisoning's the most likely culprit, though flu can't be ruled out. But it hit me like a ton of bricks out of nowhere, and that's more a food poisoning kind of thing. Sadly, I was driving at dusk when the ton of bricks hit. Let's just say we're all fortunate there was no oncoming traffic right that moment. Well, I'm more fortunate than you are, though I think it'd be hard for me to write this with all my bones broken and my chest one big subdural hematoma from hitting the airbag. As it was, there was just some cleanup and a limp back to my apartment, putting off a trip to my sister's until tomorrow, health willing.

I slept most of the evening, with unpleasant bits. And yet, unlike other times I've had this light a day, I didn't stress about Websnark. I figure you guys will cut me some slack, especially when chicken salad is trying to kill me. It was also a day when not a lot leapt out and said "snark me," which happens sometimes. Once again, you guys seem pretty cool about such things.

It's weird. When I first started this, it was entirely because I wanted to, and I had no rules for how often I posted. As it turned out, I posted a lot, but hey -- this thing was new and shiny. These days, if I don't write four snarks, I generally feel like I've let you guys down.

That's nuts, by the way. It's totally insane. And I'll never force out a snark I don't feel just to give you something to read. If I write about it, it's because I honestly have an opinion I want to talk about it.

No, if I have to force out a snark to assuage my work ethic, it'll be a meaningless ramble about my health.

Cheers.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:25 PM | Comments (6)

October 18, 2004

Eric: It's always nice to fill the vita out a little....

I seem to have an article in Pyramid Magazine this week. It's on In Nomine, covering one way to perhaps make Impudites work a bit better. This makes the first time my professional writings cross the path of Dead Inside writer Chad Underkoffler, whose regular column Campaign in a Box also happens to appear. And his column covers one of my favorite subjects -- second string super heroes -- so it's a double pleasure..

Anyhow, while I was taken slightly by surprise by the article appearing (I submitted it a couple of years back, and a couple of queries went unanswered), it's always nice to discover you're scheduled to get paid for writing. And I've always liked Pyramid. So, if you get a chance and happen to be a subscriber, have a look.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:11 PM | Comments (1)

October 14, 2004

Eric: A fast update.

The woman and the baby at the next booth? I mentioned them in the last snark?

Well, as they were getting up and getting ready to leave, the baby started to bitch. Probably because it had no chance to sleep during the meal.

"Oh you," the woman said. "Don't be a fussbudget."

Fussbudget.

There's ways to get back in my good graces almost instantly. Invoking old school Peanuts is one of them.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:47 PM | Comments (0)

September 27, 2004

Eric: Drink deep of the Snark, now in more than one place!

Over on Comixpedia, you'll find the first of what I hope will be many monthly columns by me. Feeding Snarky features... well, more of my stuff. Only it also has an astoundingly cool 'icon art,' done by the equally astoundingly cool Ursula Vernon of Digger fame. And right there, that makes it much cooler!

Anyway, check it out. Or don't. I mean, I don't see the hitcounts for Comixpedia, so I'll never know. On the other hand, there's also a new Wednesday White article and one by Meaghan Quinn and they interview Steven L. Cloud, who draws the brilliant Boy on a Stick and Slither. So there's better reasons than my sorry ass to check it out.

In other news, Venture Brothers was good this week. That is all. All the news.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:59 AM | Comments (0)

September 20, 2004

Eric: One last light day

Hey all! I'm about to climb in my car and drive for New Hampshire. I'll try to get stuff done tonight, but I should be back on a normal life-schedule regardless tomorrow.

Also? Talk Like A Pirate Day failed to have significant Webcomics impact this year, as far as I saw. That's sad. Sad and wrong.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2004

Eric: Darrrr! I want the white pony!

So, we spent the night with friends. And then we talked like pirates while riding a carousel. I met a kickass 8 year old girl who, the second time she spoke to me, said "THAR SHE BLOWS!"

My life is a webcomic.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:13 AM | Comments (2)

September 18, 2004

Eric: Updates on travels in the (moderately small) city

Ithaca is beautiful today -- the sun is shining and the air is crisp without being cold. I'm wandering the Ithaca Commons looking at things, sipping caffeinated beverages, and stopping off in various places where I can legally connect through the magic of wireless internet access, to tappa tappa tappa on the keys.

At the moment, I'm in the new public library. Its building used to be a Woolworth's, though that went out of business a long time ago. They've essentially rebuilt the building from scratch. It's gorgeous, well stocked and well laid out. This library is fantastic. And of course, wireless internet access and a place to plug my nearly-drained-powerbook in. This is a sizable bonus.

Around four, I'm going to crawl back into my car and drive back out to Frank's house, meeting up with his wife. We'll then drive (in her car -- I'm way exhausted when it comes to driving, right now) to pick Frank up at Cornell where he is working today, and then we'll drive up to see other friends up in Syracuse. We plan on celebrating Talk Like A Pirate Weekend by going to the Carousel Center Mall by riding on the aforementioned carousel. While, naturally, talking like pirates.

Tomorrow is the wedding I'm here to attend, and our second attempt to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (I was too tired to go to see it on Friday, as we'd originally planned). And tomorrow should be a restful day for me, as I'm not doing any of that driving. And then Monday I head back to New Hampshire.

This is all going by too fast. I'm remembering how much I love Ithaca with every passing second. I'm taking lots of pictures, too -- including at least one pertinent to Websnark.

In the meantime, please enjoy the hors d'oeuvres.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:06 PM | Comments (0)

February 26, 2004

Eric: Six Days

It's six days before the surgery. Six days.

I have a GPS system. I played with it last night. It was fun. It led me to my destinations and came up with new ones. That's what GPS does.

Six days.

I drink only liquids right now, just like I will after the surgery. It helps clear the system, helps prepare me for what happens next. Instant breakfasts, Cream of Wheat, soy milk, powdered milk.

Six days.

There is a current of excitement as I push to get everything done and tied up at work. Things are tense here anyhow, but this adds a rush.

Six days.

I am elated.

Six days.

I am terrified.

Six days.

Seriously. Terrified. I alternate between excitement and terror. This is insanity. That it turns out it is the best possible thing I can do doesn't change the mind-numbing weirdness of the prospect. They are going in, and they are disabling healthy tissues and altering healthy organs, to make me healthy. Astounding.

Six days.

I drink a lot of water right now too. 48-64 ounces a day, accomplished by drinking a couple of quart jugs of water, plus a good amount of crystal light and sugar free kool aid. I feel odd, like maybe I'll drain away. Well, that is the idea, isn't it?

Six days.

I have waited for this for so long.

Six days.

One out of two hundred. That doesn't sound as comforting as half of one percent, does it? One out of two hundred. There were three hundred people in the information meetings I attended. One and a half of the people there, by the odds, wouldn't make it. One out of two hundred. I play the lottery on a regular basis, with absolute certainty that I'll win. Those odds of winning Powerball, statistically, are 1 in 120,526,770. One out of two hundred.

Six days.

I met a woman when I went for my preadmission physical. I also learned that Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital uses a pneumatic tube delivery system. Isn't that the coolest thing? It's like I'm getting my surgery performed in 1930's New York. The woman's last name was Burns, just like mine, so she struck up a conversation with me. She was an attractive woman, with a nice figure. She was having some skin removed -- she'd had the gastric bypass in 2001, and was doing some followup. She lost 260 lbs. She looked fantastic and was cheerful.

Six days.

260 pounds would put me very close to goal weight. Very close. Astounding to consider. In the meantime, my legs and knees hurt a great deal. I can't take ibuprofin for a week before and six weeks after the surgery. It's a blood thinner. Very dangerous. And tylenol... look, Tylenol means well, and always offers to participate and helps clean up after class, but it's just not knuckling down and performing, y'know?

Six days.

This is going to change my life. No matter what happens next, no one can ever claim I didn't try. I am making my leap of faith. I am stepping through today into tomorrow. I will walk. I will run. I will climb. I will learn to dance.

Six days.

I will learn to dance.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:17 AM | Comments (9)