Entries from March 2005 ↓

We spent all day on Sunday playing a board game. And by “all day”, I mean this game takes a good 12 hours from start to finish. We’ve had multi-day games happen before, but it’s never as exciting the next day, so now we try to start early and finish fast. I always tend to be the one trying to “move things along”, for some reason. I don’t have any/much German in me, so I can’t explain this need to facilitate.

Daniel came down to visit for a couple days, and Civ is our tradition, dating all the way back to early ‘99. He was in China for a year, and now lives in Austin, so it’s been awhile. It was a great time, with some good guys and lots of beer (once again, Adam brought an excellent home-brew). Daniel stayed until this morning, and he got the full flavor of an Ahniwa slice-of-life: swing dancing, and music. I wish I didn’t work so close to the line (the line of financial ruin, that is) and could have taken some time off to visit with him more. Hopefully he didn’t feel cheated, but I did warn him that my life is frantically busy. Still, it was good to see him, and he’s coming back down for another weekend soon, so perhaps we’ll be able to catch up more then.

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Sprint has stolen my soul and replaced it with cancer.
That’s right, I’m now cellular.

I like the service, but the prices screw you over unless you get a two-year contract, which seems a bit long for me. And evidently, if you cancel your contract early, Sprint is entitled to your first-born child and a yearly Christmas card. They can have the damn kid (had I one), but I suck at sending Christmas cards.

The first phone I got sucked.
But I’m getting a new one.

It’s like Eddie Izzard says, when you get a new technology, you expect it to be able to do everything for you. “I got this new thing, now I’ll never have to work or do anything myself ever again!” I don’t know why, but that’s what I expected from my cell phone (I even tried to cure a leper with it). Instead, the coolest thing I’ve gotten it to do so far is play the Cure whenever one of my friends calls me (which is, in fact, pretty cool). The funny thing is, I blame my phone’s failures at performing miracles on the particular phone I had, and not the technology in general. So when I get my new phone, I’ll go through this all over again, most likely (unless it actually can cure leprosy, I’ll let you know). Even if it fails at miracles, the new phone is silver and blue instead of just silver, and it’s got the whole walkie-talkie thing going for it, and a speakerphone, so I can just set the phone down and yell at the top of my voice (because that seems like it will annoy everyone around me even more, which is my goal as a new cell-phone user seeking revenge). I’ve joined the 21st century, and lo, there was much rejoicing. Thank you, Saint Sprint.

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Gamespy has a first. A decent article. But you’d know that already if you read Penny Arcade. Which you should. The game itself looks neat. The concept is ground-breaking.

Also, with EA so big in the news lately, people should take a moment and read the EA Spouse transmission. I don’t know if such a thing is possible any longer in our EA-infested world, but I’m strongly considering boycotting them. This is old news, evidently, but it’s the first time I’d ever seen it. So I put here on the off-chance it’s the first time you’d ever seen it too.

Other news: McGill Application - Finished, Sent.
Yelm Job: I declined the interview. It was too far away.
Likeliness that I’ll still be in Oly this fall: 95%.

If you live in Washington, I hope you’re living through our pollen plague. Flowers are sure rude bastards. You don’t see me throwing my male gametes all over the place, do you? Do you!? No, and you don’t want to either. In honor of these plants being assholes, I’ve butchered the “Roses are red…” poem in a new and fun way.

Roses are red,
violets are blue,
keep your seeds to yourself,
I don’t gamete on you!

Yes, “gamete” is now a verb. Use freely.

–OHMYGODBECKYLOOKATHERPISTILITISSOBIG–

Things punk-ass kids say in the library that I overhear:

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“How long have you been playing?”

“Oh, like four years.”

“Do you have a lot of good cards?”

“Yeah, I even have The Dark.”

“What’s that?”

It’s like, the first cards that came out.”

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“I even beat the original Zelda. You know, on the N64.”

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And I died a little bit, each time. Thus reconfirming my status as a renegade dork hero. And then one of the little prats tried to regenerate a goblin he had just sacrificed, and I was forced to step in. I’m not sure what they thought, some guy who was moments before quietly reading the shelves next to them, all of a sudden informing them that they were not playing the game correctly. I also explained that you could block with a creature, and then sacrifice it before damage was dealt, and the attacking creature would still be blocked, but would itself take no damage. They looked momentarily as though I’d grown horns.

It was great.

Perceptive readers will note that we’ve moved from Adam’s pale ale to his stout. Looks good, don’t ya think? 

I have all the rest of my Saturdays off for this month, so I doubt I’ll be able to update as well (though I realize that it’s not a huge burden, really; just a lot when added on top of everything else). So, I’m putting the weekly micros on hiatus for the month of March. I’m going to try and dig up some more writer-types, so we can get a bigger turn-out, and thus more motivation for me. The next stories will be posted on April 9th, and I’ll put the subject up at least a week beforehand. Keep in mind that if you think of a subject you think would be interesting, feel free to email them to me at brieflies (at) gmail (dot) com. The last two subjects were suggested by someone else, and honestly it saves me from having to choose things I worry everyone will think are dumb.

We didn’t get any stories for the emo-music subject, which I blame on schedules more than anything (I personally had some good ideas for the topic, but no time to write them down). Hopefully this will be rectified somewhat if we get a larger author pool to draw from. Everyone have a good month, and I’ll catch ya in April.

- Ahniwa

Brain wired to the nitro-detonator, thoughts fire jittery like a five-year-old waving a sawed-off 12-gauge. It’s the caffeine in my head, coffee in my head that was supposed to go down to my stomach and light a slow fire, and instead I got this incendiary thought-bomb, begging to implode outwards. My mind denies these little impossibilities. My fingers are tingling as I type this. Curse the temptation of a triple-short-caramel-latte. Mmmmmm. Curse th- Mmmmm. I think I need another.

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We drove up to stinky-town last night for to watch The Merchant of Venice at The Grand Cinema. At first I was like, “Oh shit, I have to turn my brain to ‘11′.” My brain, at the time, was running at a solid ‘6′ and quite happy to be there. But I managed to turn it up to about ‘8′ or so, despite yawning a lot, and after a short time it was like Shakespeare had actually written the damned play in English. First off, Pacino does a bang-up job. He deserves a nomination for best supporting actor, despite the impossibility of him winning it. You go from hating him, to liking him, to hating him, to feeling sorry for him in the end, and after you’ve left the theater you feel a little angry that he can jerk you around so well. The other performances are equally well-done, if less outstanding.

I have two issues, however, with the story, or with this particular presentation of the story [bearing in mind I have not read the actual play, nor seen it performed elsewise (I made that word up, just now)]. Firstly, the movie does a poor job of showing why exactly Bassanio needs the 3000 ducats to win Portia’s hand. As this money is the crux of the conflict between Antonio and Shylock, the viewer deserves a better exposition of why this money was so important to Bassanio, and how precisely it aids him in winning Portia. Secondly, aside from the fact that she may have been born in the year of the monkey, and thus would be a naturally mischievous devil, I don’t understand Portia’s motivation to fool Bassanio, and torture him so. Granted, she takes the situation lightly and it ends well, but for her being so happy I can’t but feel that her devilry is a bit unwarranted, in testing her new husband so tricksishly. I can understand her masquerade in the first place, as a young civil scholar, as she wants to save the man who her husband holds in such high esteem. And in that, she does a fine job. That scene, the swing from Shylock as the revenging, angry jew who wields a righteous fury, to Shylock as a man with nothing, weeping on the floor as his world and his pride are taken from him, is deftly played and certainly moving. As a climax, however, it seems a bit quick, and as I was swayed into feeling pity for Shylock as his world was stripped bare, my sense of vindication, or that some great battle was won where good triumphed over evil, was lessened. My friend mentioned after the show that in reading the play, she had never felt pity for Shylock, and so I wonder if this was not a blunder in the interpretation of the story, or indeed if it was even intentional. Perhaps the director wanted to maintain this sense of uncertainty. Shylock, certainly, has his reasons to seek revenge, has had a lifetime of prejudice and mistreatment; and so while some of his actions are villainous, he is not in fact a villain, but just a man who is in the end on the losing side of a conflict over money.

The moral of the story: be merciful, for as Portia says, “mercy is “twice blest; / It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.” And if you have the chance to show mercy, and you do not, you’re going to get screwdeth over.

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And now for your moment of zen.