Vote Fascist

     Fascism gets a bad rap.  It should.  It is a rather oppressive form of government, one that favors militarization and has inherent in its existence a sense of racial/national superiority (given that there doesn't seem to be any objective reason to support racial/national superiority, the latter component is just irrational).  The only benefit Fascism has as a government type in Civ III is that it allows for endless war without losing the support of the people.  War sure seems like fun when it is other people's lives, fake people.  People who exist only in terms of numbers, or solely on film or in print.  A war that goes on forever should be looked upon as something that, if not bad, is likely far from good.
     I made up a batch of "Vote Fascist" buttons back in 2003 or 2004.  I had borrowed a button maker from a co-worker (who in turn borrowed it from his soon-to-be fiancée) to make silly little buttons and button shaped magnets for things vaguely related to Living Arcanis.  I still have a few of those, sadly.  The idea of the Fascist Party encouraging active voting seemed to me – at the time – the height of irony.  It isn't, of course, but I do think there is some commentary to be grafted onto something so simple as a button that reads "Vote Fascist". 
     Around Chicago, the "Vote Fascist" button got a few raised eyebrows, but mostly sly nods as though whoever read it was in on the same joke.  People on the far Right saw it as a message critiquing the Left, and the far Left saw it as a simple explanation of where the far (Christian) Right wanted to go.  It isn't as though either major party candidate in '04 could have been proud to think that a supporter was getting the message out by saying that 'We, the American people, should vote our rights away and install a militaristic regime that will take control of our lives in ways we never dared imagine a generation earlier.'  Of course now I think the moderates on both sides try to make that argument about the opposition. 
     Down in Florida, fifty nine years after World War II came to an end – and with a sizable contingent of folks who actually fought against Fascists living there – the button was seen as the ultimate slap in the face of  men whose service and sacrifice (it was entirely men who had a savage reaction to it) ended Mussolini's and Hitler's respective reigns.  The Greatest Generation didn't earn that monicker for a deep and abiding love of irony.  Things were (and I suppose are, to those still living) supposed to be straight forward and as honest as circumstances politely allowed.  I don't think that is better, since that generation also had some pretty strong support for racial segregation, not exposing child molestation, and holding a worldview where there is something inherent in the American character that makes he or she better than any other kind of person.  A soft bigotry, sure, but bigotry nonetheless.
    Anyway, I am getting a little upset that I haven't posting anything in a short while.  I have a couple of movies that just didn't sit right with me (one felt rushed, the other was just...what is the right way to describe something that is a failure on every level except for lighting?) and some books that I haven't addressed.  But mostly I have been spending too much time mucking around with a game that is only supposed to be enjoyed on brief spurts (and when all other work is done). 
     Real posts are coming.  I promise.

The last surviving "Vote Fascist" button.  Might move it to one of the hats so I can sport it around town this summer.  Wonder what kind of reaction it would get almost ten years later.

There will be posts

     Spent the better part of the last two days sorting out what unit animations I have just for the Chariot, Archer, and Spearman units for the Civ III rebuild.  I had completely forgotten how much work went into getting it done the first time.  I am dreading the point when I get to the air units and likely won't have the energy to do it correctly (the learned trick is to leave slots for units to be put in the right upgrade location and edit later).
     I do have one movie and about three books waiting for reviews (such as they are).  There may be one tomorrow.

Happy Birthday, Blog.

     I have apparently been doing this for a year.   In many ways it feels much longer.  That may because the focus of the blog has shifted quite a few times (or maybe it never had any kind of focus and I just imagine that it was closer to what I thought it would be from time to time).  Or it may be because of how it started.
     I really just wanted a place to put some thoughts regarding the movies I was watching on Netflix.  Seeing as how I closed that account on 6 July, 2011, it wouldn't have been inconceivable for me to just close shop on this fledgeling enterprise and just ruminate on films and such with no outlet.  That seemed like a worse option at the time.
     The second post-Netflix post was my paper on Steven Pfiel.  It is undoubtedly the most read thing I have written since a very short, not entirely clear short story ended up in the RSI updates for the Hyborian War play-by-mail game in 1992.  I didn't get paid for either, but that isn't the point.  I tried to use the blog as a means to make sure that I could get back into the habit of writing on a regular basis.  That wasn't always successful.  I have quite a few posts that are old school papers or transcriptions of things written well before the time of the blog.
     Still, it did get me back to writing.  Losing the Netflix account meant not having access to the streaming documentaries, and that got me to stop watching documentaries.  That is the lamentable part.  Less bothersome is the severe reduction in the amount of time spent watching movies or old television shows for no purpose other than distraction.  Watching complete seasons of recent shows was never going to serve as inspiration for writing, at least not original fiction.  No, with the amount of time freed up by not watching a movie a day I was able to actually start reading in earnest.  They say you have to read if you want to write.
     And I have been writing.  Not that much of it is of the quality that I want to share with people.  There is at least one short story on the blog that I wish I had given more than a cursory revision.  At the same time, I have over a dozen pieces that have been frozen by my need to rip them apart before they are finished.  But I feel that I have not been able to give the time to the writing that I would like.  Sad as it is, the limited moments here and there this thing requires sometimes interferes with the scheduled time for writing (and more often, with the fits of inspiration where story ideas get sketched out).
     So I am going to step back from the Monday-Friday posting schedule here.  At least for a while.  I'm still going to post things, thoughts on movies (I'd love to get back to the more complete reviews that fell by the wayside), books, and television.  I'm sure I'll have a few thoughts on the campaigning for the Presidency of the United States of America.  But my goal is to start getting the fiction into focus.  Probably posting the almost-finished versions here so that my few followers can see that I am working on something.
     At the same time, I very much want to keep this as a place where I can put things up that are all about me.  Or at least in part about me.  I have a rather long piece about what it was like to live with my father (while he was living) that is just screaming for photos – proof that I am neither lying nor exaggerating – I would like to share with the world.  Not that there is reciprocal interest in it.  Or most anything here.
     But it is a year's worth of work here to date.  And seeing how the first sixteen days of the blog's existence (June 2011) garnered 59 views, I am surprised I found the strength to keep going.  This was never meant to be a mostly private, yet somehow public, endeavor.  Hell, part of me hopes that certain people (who have decided to not maintain a cordial relationship with me) can read a few posts and get pissed off all over again. 
     So...that is my long way of explaining that the schedule is going to become erratic for a while.  Maybe a short while.  Maybe longer.  There will definitely be posts coming.  They just won't be rushed out because of a deadline.  For now.
     And at the same time, I want to throw open the gates and get a few more contributors to break up the monotony of me-think.  We'll see if I can convince anyone else to join in this meager endeavor.  It certainly would make the place more interesting. 

Fifteen Books

     Are you well read?  I am certainly not, though there has been a concerted effort to go from the stage of reading less than six new books a year (let's call that from 2000-2009) – though to be fair, I did re-read a number of books during that period – to actually reading more than one per month; the goal has become to read at least four books per month.  If I could keep up the rate I have going for this year (I cannot, because it is inflated with many short books), I would read 936 books over the course of a decade.  That seems like a lot of reading to me.  I'll be happy if I pass 1,000 total before I die.  Well, no I won't, because the specter of death will be forever before me until I'm dead, at which point all of everything just won't matter.  But I will be momentarily pleased that I managed to take in some of what the written word had to offer in my time amongst the living.
     But for as much as I may be reading this year, it occurs to me that I may not be reading the books that everyone is, or rather the ones they have already read (because I wasn't much of a reader before I took a decade off).  There are so many books out there that I sometime wonder how – school assignments aside – we end up reading the same material.  I know that I only came to read Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park (1990) because the paperback release had a stand at the front of Crown (or was it Walden?) Books in the Orland Square mall for something close to six months.  Somewhere along the line I figured that people must be buying it (presumably reading it as well) if they kept the stand up.  So I borrowed a copy, ruined it via a leaky bottle of contacts solution, replaced the original and bought one for myself and finished it in what was for me short order.  Then the movie ruined everything – including, I assume, people's desire to read the novel.
     What I have come up with here is my best guess at the fifteen books I have read which I suspect most of the people with whom I associate (for better or worse) have read.  No particular order.
☞  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
☞  The Hobbit
☞  Fahrenheit 451
☞  A Doll's House
☞  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
☞  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
☞  Treasure Island
☞  The Great Gatsby
☞  The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
☞  Lord of the Flies
☞  The Glass Menagerie
☞  Heart of Darkness
☞  The Pearl
☞  Ethan Frome
☞  The Red Badge of Courage
     But I am more curious as to what books other people assume that other people have read.  Feel free to chime in with your thoughts.

There is a difference between "challenging" and "frustrating"

     I first ran into people not quite understanding how to properly challenge their charges while I was in elementary school.  There were two teachers who ran the program for gifted (in the good way, not in the Midvale School way) children, NOVA.  Aside from the issues with gender inequality – they believed that girls were disadvantaged by traditional education methods, so their solution was to actively and purposely disadvantage the boys in their classes – they really had one major screw up.  While making the material covered more challenging was the right thing to do, they also decided to be much harsher in their grading.
     Not that there is anything wrong with tougher standards.  It is not irresponsible to tell children that they shouldn't be aiming for the 70% mark to get by.  Never mind that a C average would get a student booted out of the program, and even flirting with a low B led to some encouragement to migrate back to an existence with the normals.  Those were the standards, and even though we didn't know what they were going in, they were pretty regular.
     The problem was what it took to get that solid B average.  Many of us are used to the soft and easy break down of 90/80/70/60 percent for the floors of A/B/C/D grades.  It allows for an easy concept of how one is expected to perform.  In NOVA, the break down was a little different.  The As ranged from 100-96, Bs from 95-88, Cs from 87-78, and Ds from 77-70.  Now those aren't equal spreads, but I guess there is nothing that says they have to be.
     So, NOVA had tougher material and higher expectations in terms of performance in regards to grading.  That just makes for a challenging experience; you can make your own decisions as to whether or not that is a good thing for 8 year olds.  But these teachers also decided that they needed to be hypercritical when it came to grading and testing.  The multiple choice tests had between 8 and 10 possible answers, and the students received credit only if they picked the answer that best fit the expectations of the teachers (usually 5 of the choices were correct to some degree).  The essay tests (starting in third grade) demanded that the imposed format of topic sentence, supporting sentences, conclusion be used in every paragraph.  If a sentence were deemed to not be on point within the paragraph, that was 5% off right there.  Same for every spelling or punctuation error.
     Throw in the fact that neither of these women liked me (and said so to both me as a child and to my mother while they were trying to get my brother and I kicked out of the program despite our good performance), and I never really felt like I was being challenged by NOVA.  It was challenging, but I was just frustrated.  I was punished for my inability to spell – something with which I still struggle – and not allowed any degree of creativity in building my written arguments.  I wasn't rewarded for having a better understanding – as I saw it – than the teachers when I selected the answers that didn't need unstated qualifications (that they thought were implied in the questions).  It was a fight, all the time, and it did much to ruin any fun I had in school.
     And that lasted until about 2001.  Well, if I am going to be honest it will endure in some degree forever.  I have a general mistrust of teachers because of these women – the worse of the two has been reduced to teaching computer savvy students how to use outdated school computers at St. Christina School (3333 W 110th Street, Chicago, IL) – and, I would guess, that my similar distrust of women in general springs from the same source.  (So, for those who were so eager to blame someone I didn't meet until the fall of 1991, I suggest that you may be wrong.  Ask her.  I'm sure she'd agree that she is blameless.)
     Anyway...
     One should never have a goal of frustrating people unless the desired result is to drive them away.  Challenging them is different.  In the endeavors we willingly take on, most of us like a challenge.  If it all comes too easy, we tend to get bored and move on to something else.  If it doesn't come at all, we'll just quit.  And we are right when we do so.
     I see a fair amount of RPG scenarios where the writers can't seem to make the distinction between frustrating players and challenging their characters.  Sometimes this is because they just don't understand the mechanics of the game.  Henry Lopez was a textbook offender of this when he put together a non-combat encounter  for his Living Arcanis mod "Sibling Rivalry" where every PC needed to be able to scale a 200 foot tall cliff.  Not in a, if we take a lot of time when can mitigate the difficulty for characters that don't do a great job of climbing.  No, it was a every character needs to make this check that needs to challenge good climbers.  Run as written, this encounter should kill PCs.  It should leave entire groups sitting at the base, unable to go on.  While that may be somewhat realistic, it isn't what players are looking for.
     More recently, I and my fellow players suffered through Kyle Baird's Pathfinder Society Organized Play scenario The Rats of Round Mountain—Part I: The Sundered Path (#3-20).  The author had a completely different understanding of the rules than those who have played the scenario; this is never a good sign.  The result in a combat encounter which essentially runs as all of the players can make some guesses and maybe not be able to hit while the NPCs can do lots of damage to the PCs.  Not fun.  Not even for the GM running it.
     This is not the first time that PFS has embraced the frustrating over challenging mindset.  Sometimes it is because the GM isn't running it correctly (those little creatures aren't supposed to be invisible throughout the encounter, DG), but more often it was because somebody couldn't tell the difference between challenging and frustrating.  Having to defeat a really tough bad guy?  Challenging.  Having to make more than 10 Fort saves in a scenario or pick up the plague?  Frustrating.  Needing to find a way to accomplish some tasks without resorting to combat?  Challenging?  Having all of the roleplaying elements of a sessions mean nothing because the investigation cannot reveal anything?  Frustrating.
     We want challenges.  But we expect to succeed in them.  We want to think that there is a chance of failure, a real chance, because it is that perceived risk that makes the success matter.  Now, I don't think any of us wanted failure to be an actual option in elementary school (and that is not something we really willingly enter).  And we would probably like for work to have a much greater chance of reward than real risk, since without it we may go hungry and be without shelter.
     When it comes to hobbies, we want our successes to mean something.  We want the frustrations to be minor, ones than can be overcome by a better understanding of the technique or situation at hand.  It is why we don't stick with playing miniature golf or wiffle ball as adult hobbies.  It is why – if we are being serious – we don't try to learn to play a musical instrument without some form of assistance or aid.
     I guess I am one of those people who frustrates far many more than I simply challenge.  I would apologize, but that seems like a lot of work; I'd have to track down people who I would just assume have forgotten about me.  So, I have something to work on.  But nobody is really adopting me as a hobby, so they all have the option of just walking away.  I like my time spent playing RPGs.  I just wish that the people who took the time to write the material had a better understanding of the difference between challenging and frustrating.

Danger! Danger! – A CTA Story

This is where I get on/off the Blue Line.

     It isn't just that I didn't get around to writing a real post.  That is part of it.  But this post is mostly here because I just endured the scariest ride on the Blue Line yet.  Well, for the most part, there isn't anything scary about my trips on the Blue Line.  I used to ride it to school and back between three and five days a week (it was a summer session where it was only three) and nothing bad ever happened.  Maybe a little crowded on the way down, maybe an extended wait for a train on the way home.
     But Monday night trips to Chicagoland Games: The Dice Dojo (5550 N. Broadway, Chicago, IL) – I'm sure they'd love some business in you're in the neighborhood – has me taking the Blue to the Red and vice versa on the way home.  The Red Line can get a little dicey on the way back, something that isn't all that strange given that I don't usually get on it until after 11:30pm.  Not a lot of Nine-to-Fivers in that crowd.  Actually, a fair amount of drunks and addicts, but what trouble they cause is usually among themselves.  And they are the minority in any given car.
     But not so with the early Tuesday morning (I arrived home around 2:00am) trip back on the Blue Line.  The car was equally populated with the sleeping homeless – the one alert homeless passenger got off at Illinois Medical District – and the agitating, troubled, do-you-got-a-smoke or give me some fucking money for food crowd.  Some of them just came from a hospital, as evidenced by slings and casts and those paper bracelets hospitals give out.  Into this mildly unpleasant car came a steady stream of give me a smoke and you have any money, motherfucker? passengers who had no one else to bother for these items other than me.
     No, I don't have a smoke.  I'm like 7Up with regard to caffeine in that regard.  And I don't have any money.  Seriously, not a penny on me.  It isn't like I have any money at home, either, fellas.  I have nothing for you.  Maybe its a good thing I finished the book I brought just before I had to switch trains, because I wouldn't have felt comfortable not watching my fellow passengers.
     "How can you not have any money?" 
     Well, jackass, it could be that I simply don't want to give you any money.  I don't.  I would actually rather get into an unseemly knife fight – one I'm sure I would lose, because I've never fought with a knife before and I'm still not in general fighting shape, knife or no knife – than give you money.  But since I don't have any money to give, that is kind of a moot point.
     It isn't that I don't believe in giving money to people who need it.  I do.  And it isn't that I think that addicts and drunks don't need their fixes to some degree.  I just don't think it is my responsibility to support them when I have no money to spend on myself.  Like every greedy person who can be made to feel guilt, I want to have a reason to feel guilty.  My not jonesing is not some indicator that I am well enough off to spare a quarter, largely because I didn't have a quarter, dime, nickle, or penny on me.  I had a CTA fair card with $2.50 left, which means that I need to get some money to put on it if I want to be accosted again.
     Anyway, nine different passengers approached me twelve times.  The one guy demanded I give him something.
     "I have an unopened bottle of water.  That is the sum total of food/drink/valuables I have.  If you want it, its yours."
     Guy grabs it, gets upset.  Curses under his breath.  Curses louder.  Curses at me.  Fakes throwing the bottle of water at me (I'm all of about two feet away, buddy...I don't think you are going to get any arm speed going by throwing it...may as well just hit me with it).  Opens it up and spills it on two guys who are using the train as a place to sleep.  Decides to tell them its my fault because all I would give him was water.
     Motherfucker, I don't have anything else to give you.  At least not on me.  I'm not invited you back to my place so I can give you an unopened can of store brand mini ravioli (say what you will, at 50¢ a can they don't seem that bad), a sleeve of lower sodium Ritz crackers, or more bottled water.  I don't have what you want.  I don't have what I want.  And your need to pick a fight with me because I can't help you get your fix is really just reminding me that I can't get the shit I want for me.  The simple shit.
     Anyway, after about three minutes of trying to convince any of the other beggars to help him get some revenge for being given water the guy wanders off to a different car.  He comes back once to shout something (I couldn't understand him).  The rest of the awake passengers are all upset, and their anger is directed at me.  Because I'm awake?  No.  Well, maybe.  But because I seem to be in a position to help them but I am not.
      Ain't none of us in the position we wanted to be.  Not even by modest standards.  I managed to get there, I guess.  I just wanted to get home.  Safely.  Since nobody attacked me, I guess I did.  But there was this weird, real threat of it for the first time I can remember it.  And it makes me wish I had the ignorance of my youth, in a sheltered upper-middle class suburb (where we certainly didn't have the money to fit in, but that is what living on the fringe of said suburb allows).  Where thinking that people who rode public transportation instead of driving were stupid or lazy or bums.  Bums looking to bum something.  Bad people.
     But in that suburb, that was all code for something else.

How Not to Abuse the Rules as a GM

This is the image I use for Kiara, my Arcane Monk (meaning she is mostly Wizard with a few levels of Monk).  She and I (since she is really just an alter-ego that allows me to experience dangerous adventures in Paizo's setting of Golarion) had a rather unsatisfactory experience in her final time being played.  And I blame the GM who didn't know how to properly cheat.

     If there is anything I have learned about cheating at roleplaying games (RPGs) – and let's not assumed that I have, or that what I have learned is worthwhile – it is that it is best left to the person running the game (the Game Master, or GM).  And the only reason to engage in cheating is to make sure that everybody gets to have a good time.  One of my fundamental assumptions – repeatedly proven wrong over this past weekend – is that people want their player characters (PCs), their in-game alter-egos, to succeed after being significantly challenged.  I would prefer that the players have some vested interest in story, and in integrating their PCs into the world, but since the PC has to overcome challenges (not all of them all of the time), I know that successes matter.
     Now, the game I played and judged (was the GM of) this past weekend was Pathfinder.  It is, like it or not, the true heir to the legacy of Dungeons & Dragons that WoTC threw away when they introduced 4th Edition.  I have been playing RPGs – starting with the Basic Rules set of D&D – for almost 30 years; longer if I consider playing with no understanding of the rules.  But rules are actually important.  They shouldn't be paramount, because there are the concerns of story and character and player investment, but in an Organized Play (OP) environment, rules are damn near the top of the list.
     Not that everybody needs to know every rule.  Not that anybody need to know every rule.  There is a reason we carry the books around.  Actually, these days most of the referencing is done on tablets (for access of the pdfs of the rulebooks) or on smart phones (for the website that has almost all of the rules material).  We need access to those rules.  Some of us are gracious in our ignorance, and others are fat pieces of shit who I will sooner see die then ever realize that their partially informed opinions – the same way most of the rest of us formulate opinions – are not universal truths. 
     As a player, I know not to cheat.  Hell, I don't want to.  I do want to avoid having bad things happen to my characters.  I don't want them to be killed, or robbed, or imprisoned, or raped, or any of the other unsavory things that can happen to real people (and the chances for the aforementioned possible consequences drastically increase if the PCs are adventurers).  But I see the easiest way to put the odds in my PCs' favor is to minimize the risk as much as I can, and that is just play style.  I also try to make sure that my PCs have utility, that they can do several different things (though not as well as any character that chose to specialize in them).  It means that I don't spend a lot of time wondering when the fight is going to happen so I can finally do something.  I prefer the stuff that isn't combat.  Not everybody is like that.
     The aforementioned fat piece of shit (and I'm sure in about a week's time I'll regret repeatedly referring to him as a fat piece of shit, but at least I'm not calling him or her out by name as a fat piece of shit) decided that the adventure he was running for us, the players, was too easy.  Fine.  Those of us who GM in an OP setting have been there.  Lots of players want to crack their PCs out, usually for combat.  Hell, combat is the only true measure of success in OP, so those of us who don't so it are just harming ourselves (or looking for some degree of challenge to be left in the combat encounters).  But he increased the difficulties of the encounters to counteract the combat ability of two PCs in such a way that those PCs were the only ones who could meaningfully contribute to the battles.
     That is how to be a bad GM.  It is a prime example of how not to abuse the rules.  All GMs want to feel that what they are doing matters to the players.  Players want to think that the actions of their PCs matter (though this isn't all that likely in OP sessions).  Often, players aggravate the GMs by not paying attention and having silly table talk, bullshitting with each other until it is time to roll dice.  And we should feel bad about that.  But the GM doesn't just want attention because he or she is there.  The GM wants attention because the actions of the beings he controls (the NPCs and monsters and such) present some degree of risk and challenge to the PCs. 
     The FPoS decided that one encounter had to be against a monster with an AC 41, SR 27 (maybe...we never surpassed it to know for sure, but the mechanics of it would be right), over 300 HP (all of that is meaningful if you know the system; the short version is that the monster was tough).  Our party consisted of 10th and 11th level PCs.  To put this in perspective, none of the PCs had an AC over 40 (my Arcane Monk did get her's up to 38 for this combat), none of us had SR (spell resistance), and none of us had more than 120 HP.  The monster could deliver over 70 points of damage in a single hit, and since it was attacking with better than +30 to hit (meaning that it would hit my Arcane Monk with a 60% frequency and come close to killing her on the first attack, with five more to follow that same round).  The only PCs who could fight it were the ones who were making a joke of all the other combats – the giant Robot and the dainty Archer (with his suspect dice that consistently rolled in the 17-20 range all weekend). 
     Everyone else was fucked.  And we knew it.  It didn't make the combat more exciting (the chance of losing does that to some degree, but knowing there is nothing a PC can do means that there is less reason to pay attention....like politics in Chicago).  But FPoS sat in his chair chuckling like he had found the way to bring balance to the game.
     As someone who frequently cheats as a GM, I can assure him that he did it incorrectly.  When the PCs who are built to break the game are doing just that, the GM needs to introduce elements that slow down and hamper the (usually combat) successes of those PCs.  Someone's archer is killing everything on the battlefield?  What if all the bad guys could deflect those arrows (by ability or spell), at least for a short while?  The other PCs now get to step up and help out.  The raging barbarian/ultimate fighter/giant robot is killing every NPC with a single hit?  Why not have the bad guys steal his or her (or its) weapon (even if the bad guys normally wouldn't have a chance in hell of succeeding)?  The the battle beast of a PC has to come up with a new tactic and the rest of the party gets involved.
     Maybe it is just laziness, but I think it points to a fundamental misunderstanding of how to break the rules for the good of everyone.  I first encountered people doing it the wrong way when Carl Hewelt decided to make a Living Arcanis module more difficult for us because my Barbarian/Fighter was killing everything.  The end result was the only PC who could do anything meaningful in combat was my Barbarian/Fighter.  He pissed off the other players because he was trying to show me that my PC could be made less effective, and he didn't even do that.  I think that there has to be a misreading of the situation where these GMs think that since they have to increase the difficulty of the scenario, they should only let the PCs who made that necessary (?) succeed from that point forward.
     I don't know if the players I GM for know when I am cheating.  I think they have a notion, sometimes, but they often seem surprised by the fact afterwards.  With experiences like the one the FPoS put together, everyone at the table knew right away.  And I think we all would have been fine with it had the FPoS found a way to make it a more equitable experience.  But if you are too single minded to see anyone else's opinion on anything, I guess you are not likely to consider whether or not they see the general experience the same way as you.  And the FPoS is of the belief that he can make the most effective combat builds out there, so his attempts to frustrate those who are combat monsters may have been a qualified success, but it also shows how little he understands the game.

CodCon 2012

My convention badge.  I had to have it on me all weekend to deal with people who know me by sight.  Though I would wager most of them have no idea what my last name is when it is not right in front of them.

     It was that time of year, when I get to drive to and from the College of DuPage at what should be unreasonable hours (when taken together) in the ever elusive effort to enjoy myself with – though a small and largely known group of – random people.  Not so long ago, it was slightly different.  There was more of a known quantity as to whom with which I would be seated.  Hell, well before that it was an entirely known quantity – but that was before the days of playing in Organized Play campaigns, of attending local gaming conventions, or of not having a set of close friends where it was just assumed that we would get a home campaign of some kind of RPG going.

Mike Clarke modified one of the table tents I had put together to make this table tent.  I could have done the same thing for him.  Even printed it in color.  But he – very jokingly – asked to make the blog with it, so here it is.  I remain pro-table tent and think this is more than serviceable.

     CodCon was pretty good this year.  I agitated for Brad Ruby – he who is COWS conventions – to get Matt Flinn out to run Arcanis for some time, and Matt was there running people I had not seen since Living Arcanis took its last bow in 2009.  Matt gave of himself the whole weekend, making a much longer trip than I would do just to judge, and I'm glad that he has the passion and availability to do it.  Also there were Terry Doner (running Arcanis as well, but he had a much shorter commute...insanely close in distance as mine) and Benjamin Klahn (playing, it seemed, almost every type of RPG game offered in the room).  It was good to see those people again.  But I was, by my own design slotted for a weekend of Pathfinder Society play.

Most of the player characters (PCs) and baddies (NPCs) from an encounter in Realm of the Fellnight Queen.  Not much to challenge the PCs, but I also felt that one of the players was actively fighting the spirit of the adventure while another's preoccupation with winning the roleplaying game made my experience less fun.  Because I was the world and all things opposing the players and I didn't have a chance if I played by the rules.

      For what it was, I had a good enough time.  Not great.  Probably not bad enough to really piss me off.  There was the reminder that while I don't mind being wrong, I do – desperately – want to put an end to an absolutely unjustifiably arrogant smartass whose opinions of the rules and how to play the game are only by happenstance in accordance with the reality of the former and the consensus of the latter.  I had some issues on Sunday keeping a group of players focused, and that has to be my fault more so than anyone else's.

I do not get Cosplay.  Not at all.

      There are things I can still do without.  I don't need the Cosplay stuff there (because I don't get it and find it creepy).  The person-I-pretend-to-be is a creation of my imagination (and a rule set), and it functions as a type of alter-ego.  I don't dress up and pretend to be something defined by someone else.  That's my prejudice.  I don't want to begrudge others of their good time; I just want it to happen away from mine.  Same thing with the asshole who shows up dressed as how he thinks I medieval minstrel would look and sings bad folkish songs about D&D.  But CodCon is, unfortunately, a shared convention.  And the people who aren't COWS Conventions think that I'm supposed to pay – like everyone else – to be able to game all weekend.  Like I'm not supposed to be able to do it for free (I actually pocketed $5 for the weekend on convention costs) and get free books, minis, and t-shirts.

Three of the miniatures I got for free.  I can't believe other people expect me to pay to get things like this.

Death of a Salesman (1949) and Mr. Peters' Connections (1999)

     Arthur Miller must have been writing about something endemic to, if not something so broad as human nature, the soul that can know doubt and misery found in what was supposed to be a full and rewarding life.  At least in these two plays – Death of a Salesman (1949) and Mr. Peters' Connections (1999) written half a century apart.  The earlier play is one of the great accomplishments in American theatre, and I am positive that I am not interested in investing the time to produce a meaningful musing on it.  What I am going to do instead is write about how these two plays seem to inform my understanding of my grandparents.
     If ever there were a person who was the unwholesome combination of Willy and Linda Loman, it would be my grandmother Ethel.  All of the unrealistic expectations and boundless excuse making for her children with a built-in self-support system, an unquestioning, undying belief that her beliefs were always right.  From my perspective, she never failed to blame external forces for any and all failures that befell her children and grandchildren.  I cannot say that she believed that superficial charm and the trappings of success were as important for her as they were for Willy Loman, but they certainly ranked quite high in terms of what she found important. 
     Where Biff eventually comes to terms with his shortcomings, that he remained trapped between his father's view of the world and a deep and abiding need to not fulfill those misbegotten expectations, my father remained a slave to the belief that the world was forever doing him wrong.  He came to believe the lies invented by my grandmother – that my mother had tricked him into marrying her (I vividly remember when this fiction was formed in the summer of 1986 over two nights, when it was slowly formed into a truth they could all accept), military service ruining my father's ability to start his own business, that he was not at all responsible for the fact both of his children took multi-year breaks from speaking to him – I suspect because that had been a way of life in the house in which he grew up.  Such as it was for the Lomans.
     I am sure there is something deeper going on in Death of a Salesman, but because there is something so real about it, I found it difficult to see it without comparing it to my family.  Where my grandfather managed to get something akin to Willy's dream funeral – and there was much to be made about his own grandfather's funeral, with the myth (maybe truth) that even the Governor of Michigan was in attendance – my grandmother was left with a small service, almost entirely restricted to her children, grandchildren, and people from the church where the service was held (who didn't really know her).  To be fair, both lived to be quite old, and the life-long friends they had fostered (they do have me there) were almost all dead. 
     Where Death of a Salesman felt like an examination of the danger of being raised to be a valueless narcissist (and the people who create those kind of children), Mr. Peters' Connections felt like an imagining of my grandfather's later days.  When he was scared to live in his own home, essentially confined to his bedroom (it cluttered with books and video tapes collected by my grandmother, so she could pretend to be interacting with a dead friend – and clearly looking for something, anything to justify his hanging on to his life.  Where Harry Peters was a pilot for Pan Am, my grandfather flew for United.  Both felt that retirement was forced upon them too damn soon. 
     I doubt that there was a woman for whom my grandfather forever pined – he was quite honestly in love with his wife, but there may or may not have been instances when he strayed – and he didn't have a dead brother to fret about, but so much of the rest felt true.  That Miller could continue to find the angst of the end, and for it to be as true in its emotion is quite remarkable.  While absolutely nowhere near as focused as Death of a Salesman, Mr. Peters' Connections still has something to say.  Instead of being concerned with the damage that can be inflicted on children, it examines the danger of having nothing left to identify as ones' own at the end.

Why Can't the Americans...

     Close to a decade ago, a co-worker of mine quipped "Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?", borrowing that from the Lerner & Lowe musical My Fair Lady (1956).  He was making a veiled racist statement that African-Americans simply refused to learn how to speak better American English.  Not that the overall message is much different.  Henry Higgins is espousing a harsh form of elitism based upon conformity to an elocution.  One's worth based on how well can speak, and an abandonment of any heritage hidden in speech patterns or word choice.
      But this isn't about that.  This is about how Americans – my people – and how we seem to refuse to learn how to separate that which we wish to be true from the actual examination of facts at hand to arrive at a consensus of truth.  This is apparent whenever there is some sort of artificial dichotomy forced upon, say in an election or in the discussion of religion.  The American, it would seem, is of the mind that one can simply decide to create a fact out of belief; it is in his or her nature.  This is not some sort of mere belief, but some construct the American has come to believe to be core not just to his or her own experience, but to existence itself.
     Why can't the Americans teach their children how to approach the world rationally, with respect for reason and a sublimation of personal inclinations?  Maybe that sounds as impossibly biased as Professor Higgins.  But there is something that diminishes us all in the American rush to abandon judgment.
     Recent things that have troubled me include the following (some of them are the same person):

• A stubborn refusal to see how asking someone for identification before allowing them to vote is an example of an illegal search & seizure.
• A stubborn refusal to believe that gun control laws exist because there are ways to purchase guns without abiding them.
• Someone with an open mind as to whether on not the Moon Landings were faked.  Seriously.  There is absolutely no evidence (other than the will to believe) that we spent billions of dollars, employed the best scientists, and risked many lives in an effort to do something magnificent (at the time just for America) for humanity.
• The belief that hating people can be justified because it is out of love, and the desire to save these people being hated from burning in Hell.  
• The wonderment over just where our tax dollars go.  (Seriously, that information – save some classified spending – is readily available with just a small amount of research.)
• A woman on CNN, representing the stay-at-home mother who decided that the values she was representing were tied to destroying the EPA, unions, and access to affordable healthcare.  Someone else's talking points are not knowledge, lady.

That's the thing, though.  We, the American people, don't want to do the work, the research to find out those things we just want to doubt.  We don't want to confront our prejudices with reason.  We don't want to doubt our convictions, because they don't.  And they hate us.  Except, of course, that they and us are the same group of people: Americans.
     When there isn't room for reasonable discussion, for reasoned examination of the world we encounter, there is only belief.  But what is the point?  That belief relates to nothing.  It is an empty thing, useful only for the beating of one's chest and shouting the other down.  And that just eats away at our collective soul.
     Well, if you suffered through that, enjoy some good entertainment.

Another Reminder that I am not an Artist

Female Swashbuckler by Joshua Thomas Haag.

     Yeah, this is a filler post.  I have been getting my ass kicked by a short story I'm trying to write, so that's taken up far too much time.  And I've been fighting a head cold with medication that makes me drowsy for about three hours a shot.
     So, mostly more proof that whatever talents I may have are in the realm of the written word and not in the visual arts.

This was my best attempt at a female swashbuckler, though apparently I never took notice that women have hips, don't have giant heads with flat faces, or fingers.  This would have been done about two days before the one by Josh.

This is just one of the few pages that actually has anything on it in the same sketch book.  I don't know which is worse, the detail of the eye that looks like someone put lashes in a fish or the dwarf that looks like he is wearing a fake beard from the set of Xena: Warrior Princess.

Much older (from late 1991), but just as bad.  And I was convinced – at the time – that this was awesome.  Stupid me.  But at least I don't have any of my writing from that time to share, because that would depress the hell out of me with how bad it was (and how great I was sure it was).

The Best Car (2012)

     This is some real-life inspired fiction.  While there is much about this that resembles my life, it is far enough from the real truth that it would be an unrecognizable accounting for anyone who was present to the era for me.  But the car was real.

The Best Car

     I avoided getting my driver's license at sixteen.  There were several factors that contributed to that delay – I didn't want to take driver's ed at school, and quickly quit the Len Scaduto course in which my father enrolled me; I knew I wouldn't have regular access to a car, at least not until my mother replaced her rapidly aging '86 Ford Tempo with something reliable; I had no means of income for gas or insurance, and I was thoroughly uninterested in working to acquire money; I had friends who could and would drive me places – but none of them were the real reason I didn't get my license.  I avoided it because having one would have meant I could be pressed into service at any moment, wholly subject to my father's whims and his imagined state of health.  I bore witness to my older brother being awakened in the middle of the night – anytime from midnight to four a.m. – for a not so emergency trip to the hospital because our father had a headache and wanted drugs to make it go away.  By the time I was old enough to understand his need for injectable medication to combat his maladies I was also aware that he was being administered doses that would kill a regular, healthy person.  Moreover, he needed such treatment at irregular times; whenever was worst for everyone else would perfectly fit his schedule.  My father lived a life that was, without question, wholly about himself.
     Living in fear of having a strange dictate – to drive my father to the hospital or his doctor's home, which meant that he would be getting a dose so large that it couldn't be recorded without alarming hospital staff – was something that I knew was abnormal.  Every part of it, really.  I have to assume that most children, even in the heady years of adolescence with a need to establish independence from their supervisory adults, would not be alarmed by the call to be of service.  Children are supposed to love their parents, sons to love their fathers, and so there should not have been a reason for my very real need to not be made to serve as courier to wherever the drugs were stored.  Still, there it was.  I knew that if I could avoid the license I couldn't be forced to take him, and I should then have been able to get my license without any need of driver's ed once I turned eighteen.  I drove occasionally without a license, in the parking lot of the apartment complex and once to a job interview – a job in which I lost all interest once it was clear they wanted me to work forty hours a week while I was still in school – so I wasn't wholly unfamiliar with the operation of a motor vehicle.
     My father only tried to get me to drive him to the hospital once after my brother moved on to college.  He woke me up at one a.m. and told me I needed to get dressed and take him for some relief.  I was told that he had waited hours before deciding it was so bad that he couldn't possibly sleep, apparently unaware of the fact that if we had left at 10 p.m. we could have been back to the apartment by 2 a.m., and that would have allowed for some sleep.  Waiting until one was essentially a type of sleep deprivation, so long as one allows that the thirty minutes of sleep I may have gotten to that point would effectively be worthless.  To this day I think of it as a kind of terrorism, and I had no desire to bend to the will of a terrorist.  I told him that he had plenty of options other than me.  He could call a cab – roundtrip fare would have cost less than twenty dollars.  He had a friend in the building next door that he could have called and she probably would have taken him.  If he felt so bad that he had no choice but to go to the hospital, he could call for an ambulance – we had learned that the insurance United provided would cover the cost of the ambulance if he spent at least a night in the hospital and be a little more than one hundred twenty five dollars out of pocket if he didn't – and spend the night there. 
     Whatever it took to allow me to try to get some sleep, something that never came easy back then, that is what I suggested.  He pleaded his case for about fifteen minutes upon which time he must have realized I was not going to drive him; he had no winning counterargument to "I am not driving without a license" and so he simply went back to bed.  When I saw him the following afternoon, he was fine.  More than that, he never got so sick that he needed to be taken to the hospital or his doctor from his headaches.  His condition was, as I suspected without any cause, was wholly dependent upon his ability to have others service it.  I did not want to be tethered to it, made to serve without any attention directed back at me, and thus I decided to similarly rely on others when it came to needing to be driven places.  To be fair, if I couldn't get a ride I would usually walk or ride my bike.  I appreciated the efforts others made for me, but I was sure as hell not going to be helpless without them.  And I wasn't going to make it all about me.  Not always.
     That was a lesson learned while without a license.  In an effort to retrieve a hastily mailed letter, I got a friend to drive me to its intended destination where I could steal it from the mailbox.  When it wasn't there, I told him we would have to try again the next day.  He smiled and said, "Not going to happen.  You had your chance to get it.  If it that important, find another way to get there before anyone gets the mail."  Well, there was no way I could walk or bike there in time unless I ditched school to do it.  I missed a lot of days of high school, but never so I could commit a crime.  The letter got delivered, and the consequences of it fell much more lightly than I would have thought.  Still would have liked to have had the chance to get it back before it was read, but that is a bell that cannot be unwrung.
     The only reason I ended up with a driver's license before I turned eighteen was that my father got demoted at work and couldn't afford to keep us living where we were.  In actuality, that pay cut served as his chance to hand me off to my mother while – unbeknownst to anyone – he started squirreling money away for a Harley.  He went to live out in Winfield and I was shipped up to Oak Park.  Rather than transfer to the local high school – mine was so familiar with my brand of bullshit that I got away with most of the things that would cause them to expel other students – it was decided that I should finish where I started.  The first week my mother drove me to and from school every day, three hours sucked right out of her day; she tired of that by Tuesday.  The second week I was allowed to sleep at a friend's house but not really fed, and that was about as bad as anything I had experienced to that point.  The next week school was on break, but it was also when the road work for my driver's ed started. 
     Knowing that I was to be moved twenty five miles north, there had been a real push to get a license in my hands.  I cruised through the classroom sessions, and the school decided to cut how much practical experience I needed because I would often be inaccessible.  I had four days of driving over two weeks time before the school said i was ready to get my license.  What did they care?  The check had cleared months ago.  I didn't feel especially confident, but I knew that I could not rely on a mix of commutes from my mother, accommodating friends, and simply not going to school to make it to graduation.
     My father cleared a day so he could be there when I took my test.  He had some work he had to do on the car, an '84 Subaru GL Wagon – the last of the non-boxy wagons – that had been handed down from my brother.  The red wagon had been replaced with a blue one, this time a stick, which made it somehow more masculine in my brother's eyes.  They were both little station wagons, so I can't imagine either dripped with masculinity.  And he traded the near burgundy red one for powder blue.  I didn't care, because what I needed was a car that would handle the sixty to seventy miles a day that I would put on it.  My father gave it a tune up, replaced the brakes, and properly inflated the tires before I arrived.  The car was at our old apartment where my father continued to rent garage space.  He wasn't going to abandon his collection of tools, but he also couldn't bring himself to package them up and not be accessible.  His tools were different from his son.
     He drove us over to the facility in his Jeep Wagoneer.  I'll never understand why he didn't want me to take the test in the car I would actually be driving, but in retrospect I imagine it was a sense of ownership that he needed to impress on me.  He would be fully in charge because it was his vehicle.  Anyway, there was almost no wait at the testing facility.  I got one question wrong on the written – I don't know which and it still bothers me that I don't know – and sat patiently waiting for a chance to go out on the road.  I was assigned a man who looked like he could have been my guidance counselor's ugly, angry older brother, which meant that he was thoroughly unpleasant all the way around.  He started off by barking "Horn singal!" at me, which apparently meant that he wanted me to sound the car horn to prove that it worked.  I lost points there, in parallel parking, and the three point turn, but was still set to pass.  Unfortunately, when I pulled into a space to park I was about a foot into the neighboring space.  So that was a fail.
     What to do?  I had a car sitting and waiting for me.  I needed a license so I could go to school and graduate and do something with my life.  Jesus, without the license I might have to actually finish at a different school and meet new people.  The horror of it all.  Normally – or so we were told – I would have to wait a week before any possible retest.  Fuck that.  My father and I pled my case, my need for a license.  Never mind if I might actually be a danger to others on the road, I had places to go and a means to get there; I just needed a license in case I got pulled over.  A younger, less angry man came out and agreed to let me retest right then.  I passed with no problems and got the damn laminated piece of paper.
     My father took me back to the garage.  He had to run a quick errand, but he would meet me up at the school and make sure I made it to my mother's in one piece.  That was fine with me.  I was young and stupid and eager to prove that I could handle unsupervised driving even though I had almost no experience and absolutely none with the car with which I was entrusted.  I pulled out of the parking lot and was pulled over about a minute later.  The officer said I had failed to signal and I pointed out, very politely, that I didn't signal because it was a bend in the road and there was no other way to proceed on it; who the hell wouldn't know where the car was going?  He grumbled a little and told me to "be more careful". 
     About a quarter of a mile later he pulled me over again.  "I ran your plates.  You aren't from around here.  Your car is registered up in Oak Park."  To him that meant I lived near black people and therefore crime.  I must be some kind of criminal.  I pointed out to him that I had lived in his sad little retail-reliant village for four years, my father maintained his garage there and it was where I had to pick up the car.  Furthermore, I went to the high school about five blocks west and one block north.  I showed him my school ID.  I had every right to be there, but officer asshole wanted to prove something.  He grumbled again and then said he was going to write me a ticket for the illegal turn.  I laughed at him and said something along the lines of suing him for wrongful prosecution – or something similar I could have borrowed from Ghostbusters – and waited for my ticket.  About a minute later he came back and gave me license and told me to get back to where I came from.  At least I didn't get that ticket.
     My father showed up about thirty minutes after I got to the school.  We headed north, me following him because despite making the trip innumerable times I had never paid attention to which streets I needed to use.  Somewhere after I exited on 1st Avenue I lost him.  Shit!  I crept along, terrified both by the prospect of being lost and the other, more confident drivers flying by on my left.  I made a wrong turn on Madison and thought for a moment that I had crossed the border with Chicago – instead of it just being Forest Park – because of all the signs for liquor stores and bars.  I got myself righted and made it to my mother's.  My father showed up about twenty minutes later.  He decided to stop and get something to eat.  Not a lot of concern about it, either.
     From that point on, the car was mine.  I owned that car – actually, my brother owned it until it spent a winter in an O'Hare employee parking lot letting its underbelly get salted away – and made myself powerful among my friends by being able to drive places.  More than that, I had to drive places.  I took the opportunity to give pretty underclass girls a ride home, girls who never would have spoken to me otherwise, and learned the dangers of treating parking lights as headlights.  I got to spend almost every Sunday with a girl I was in love with – never mind that she was dating my close friend with whom I would help work stuffing Sunday Tribunes on Saturday night – because I had a car and he had destroyed his.  The car allowed me to feel as though I were a real person and not subject to the threats and whims of others.
     It was, without question, the best car I will ever have.  It isn't just about its primacy.  I kept a bag of clothes in the back so that I could spend the night wherever I wanted – there wasn't any insistence that I needed to be home.  With the seats folded down it was like a miniature covered pick-up; it certainly could carry a heavier load than my best friend's truck.  While I was aware that it could also double as a fantastic 'fuck wagon', I had nowhere near the confidence to test it out in such an endeavor.  My relationship with that car was about me, and I don't think I would have wanted to invite anyone else into something so intimate and risk how I felt about the beast. 
     And it was a beast, a might monster hidden in a partially rusted out and neglected body.  That wagon drove over a tree and a mailbox in one motion.  It didn't even damage the car.  Never mind that that tree was about six inches in circumference at its thickest or that the ground was so saturated with rain that the wheels sunk three inches into the ground, tearing up the lawn like it was only an ephemeral covering for the soil.  It took some hasty work – and a pair of baseball bats wedged under the rear wheels – to free the wagon from that muddy mess.  As I drove my friends away from the scene of the crime – conspicuously close to where I had tried to steal a letter only a few months prior – me grinning and they in near panic, I excoriated them for not keeping their eyes on the road.  They knew my attention would be elsewhere, yet not one of them said anything until we had already laid waste to the tree en route to the mailbox; some twenty five feet of non-road and none of them felt the need to say a damn thing. 
     We were muddy, and scared, and exhilarated.  My car – utter perfection in a compact, unassuming form – had inflicted damage and remained unharmed.  It was beyond perfect for the feelings of an empowered adolescent; it was freedom to do anything, yet it never occurred to us that there was much more to do than use the car to drive.  Driving was both a necessity and an expression of freedom, and we were free.  When relating this story to the acquaintance who lived near the scene of the crime, she could not keep herself from bursting into a near hysterical laughter.  Apparently, all her neighbor had said when seeing the damage the next morning was an exasperated "teenagers".
     That wagon drove a thousand miles one weekend trying to keep a relationship together, and not one in which I was directly involved.  It made a trip to a Boy Scout camp just to rescue a friend to see the premiere of Jurassic Park on the big screen – but the friend blew me off – on my birthday.  It made two trips out to Iowa City while I was scrambling to get courses and a place to live, and three more while I was there for a year (not attending those courses).  It was my means of being something other than trapped.  My father was disengaged from my life for the most part and there would be no threat to be his driver as he saw fit.  My mother was content enough to let wander around with it so long as I kept her marginally informed and made appearances at home. 
     That '84 Subaru GL Wagon in near-burgundy will forever be the best car I will ever have because it was the only one that gave me a sense of freedom, a sense that I was something other than trapped and small.  No other car – and most that followed were absolute pieces of shit – can be that for me again.  Like the car, life has worn me down.  Instead of freedom, a car has become a responsibility, a necessity to travel to places not accessible by the CTA or Metra.  The subsequent cars became the beasts that bore me to and from work, which immediately lessens the value one can assign to it.  It was the freedom to continue to go to the school where I had a small band of intensely close friends.  It became the means to access pretty girls in high school, and if I had any confidence back then it could have been so much more.  It became to embodiment of what I wanted to be able to see in myself.  Small but tough, reliable, versatile, and efficient; with over one hundred fifteen thousand miles on it, the wagon still got about twenty seven miles to the gallon.  Neglected for a winter, it was destroyed.
     I would like to say that the lesson is that one cannot neglect oneself in a similar manner.  That is how time gets away from people, they get busy living the workaday and miss the moments that we think should define us.  It isn't, though.  I simply miss being able to sit behind the wheel of a vehicle and know – or be astonished by – it survive a run-in with a sapling and a mailbox and be no worse for wear.  I want it to be the metaphor for how the seemingly small shit that comes down on me like rain is nothing that I can't overcome, with nary a scratch (or smelling fine if I want to be consistent in mixing my metaphors).  I know better, though.  The little things are the ones that will kill you.  They will eat you away, piece by piece when you aren't paying attention.  They will die like that wagon, a victim of the services that made the lot accessible to those moving their cars in and out on a daily basis. 
     That wagon is the best car ever because at the time I was driving it, I was still full of potential and promise.  Never mind that it was well past its prime, it was new to me.  It was the vehicle that could help carry me forward, but it died an inglorious death.  And whenever I notice that its promise is gone, I feel somehow despondent over how I have accorded myself.  I have recaptured none of what I felt with that car.  That freedom is somehow gone forever.  The road is dark.  The trees are tall and healthy.  The mailboxes are wrapped over in brick and mortar.  There will be no second coming of that old hope, but the smallest remnant of its flame resides within me because I had experienced it and done so well.
     Even if, in the full accounting, it was just a car passed down to me because my brother had moved on to something better.

Dreamers (Original Text - Part Thirteen) (1997)

     The original "ending".  Well, actually there is another section that was started after this one, but is is very weak and gives an unfortunate happy ending to Jason and Melissa.  Then in 1998 I started a sequel of sorts to "Dreamers" that meant to explore the relationship between Jason and Stacy Andrews, his ex-girlfriend.  That was abandoned because it was poorly conceived (and not just because I knew nothing about the kind of relationship I was trying to describe).
     Anyway, Part Thirteen.

XIII

     Dave Burke left the group first.  He didn't have any choice, but he was the motivation for the rapid deterioration.  There were other reasons, the are always other reasons for everything, but nobody would deny that it was Dave Burke's murder that orchestrated the collapse.
     The days afterward were as destructive as the actual crime.  Sean didn't seem to shaken by the murder and that grated on Vicki.  Larry Pudenski argued two sides, with Burke not being too great a loss and Sean being the most likely killer.  Dave Burke didn't have a philosophy, wasn't a great contributor to society.  On the other hand, Sean would want him dead for not only being white but also because of the relationship with Vicki.
     The funeral was hard for everyone.  It was Burke's cousin who had to give the eulogy, but asked Jason to write something to express Dave's involvement with the group.  That wasn't easy.  Jason and Melissa had already begun the process of removing themselves when Burke was killed.  Still, Jason wrote how important someone can be when they are simply willing to be there for everyone else, whenever needed.  And that was how Dave should have been remembered.
     Vicki sold her house and moved back to New Jersey.  She found a better job closer to home, to her family.  She said goodbye to everyone, but spent more time with J.B.  The two had known each other longer than she had known the others, and it was to J.B. that she had a real attachment.  They swore they would stay in touch.
     Sean moved out before she sold the house, angry that she took Burke's murder so personally.  He never liked Dave Burke or Jeff Binghampton, and he thought it would be a good thing that there would be no group to distract Vicki from him.  Unfortunately, he found out that it was that very group that gave Vicki the strength to be with him.  He moved on, though with some regrets.
    
     "Four weeks.  Maybe you are psychic."
     "Jason," Nancy said in a soft voice, "it was a robbery.  And nobody knows what is going to happen to us.  I was just being childish."
     Jason, Melissa, Nancy, and J.B. had gathered at a restaurant after the service.  Unlikely as it seemed, everyone was taking care of Jason, not the other way around.  Larry Pudenski and Mike Carver couldn't even make it to the funeral with work keeping them busy.  That may have been what was affecting  Jason.  Their mellow conversation was interrupted by a striking blonde in a plain black dress.
     "Excuse me.  Are you Jason?"
     Jason offered a weak smile and nodded.  He offered her a seat at the table and she accepted.
     "You don't know me.  I worked with Dave.  My name is Anika."
     "The infamous Miss Lang.  Dave mentioned you more than once."
     "I didn't know if I should have been at the funeral or not.  Dave and I only went out a couple of times.  He was a really nice guy.  I really liked him."
     "He was a great friend.  He was better than any of us gave him credit for.  I never gave him credit."
     Anika didn't seem to have heard Jason.  "I think I could have loved him."
     "I'm sure you could have, Anika," Melissa said.  It pained her to see two people in pain from the same source but unable to see it as clearly in the other.
     There was some more conversation and Anika stayed to share a meal with them, but she could not bear to stay there with them.  They had a stronger relationship with Dave and she felt like an intruder.
     "That's the kind of girl you should be with, Jeffery."
     "Well, her obvious pain and loss aside," J.B. quickly countered.  "Yeah.  She's got the looks.  She's nice, and intelligent enough."
    "What would Brad do?" Jason asked.
     "He'd go after her and get her."
     "He's a hell of a brother, isn't he."
     "Don't give me that, Jason.  I'm not going to use Dave's death to get laid."
     Jason shrunk back, hurt.  That wasn't what he thought he was suggesting.
     "It is an unfortunate circumstance, how you met her," Melissa said.  "But you can try to make something out of it.  Something that involves more than you trying to fuck her.  You actually shared a person in common, and you can approach this from a more emotionally healthy place."
     "I thought I told you I don't do that."
     "Well, apparently life is short.  And it wouldn't hurt you to change before it's over."

Dreamers (Original Text - Part Twelve) (1997)

     So one of the things that will likely forever plague me as a writer is being consistent in the tense used.  I am bad at it.  Didn't try to fix it since I am putting the original text up here.  You are forewarned. 
     On the other hand, this is probably the best section to serve as a stand alone. I also think it is the last one I included in the version I printed up in 1997.  There is one more, very rushed section to come after this one.

XII

     "What exactly is your problem, Pudenski?"
      Larry Pudenski was as much in Jason MacLeod's face as Jason was in Larry's.  This was an unsightly confrontation happening in Vicki Souser's living room.  Everyone else was in the basement, at the pool table of watching a movie in the adjoining room.  It was a large basement, but Larry was wise enought to bring the fight topside.
     "You, you sanctimonious bastard."
     "You're already drunk, " Jason quipped.  "You came here with some bug up your ass and started drinking right away."
     "You know what I'm talking about."
     "But do I know what you're talking about?  That is, can I apply the knowledge of what I know to that which you are referring?  See, I'm still functional."
     "She called you."
     "Jason stopped smirking.  "Okay, you're right.  She called me.  She asked if she could stay at my place if she came into town."  Larry was still glaring at him, so Jason thought he should diffuse the situation.  "You called her, then."
     "Yes, I did."
     "I hadn't told anyone.  I hadn't decided if I should say yes.  I thought she should wait until you found someone else."
     "Fine.  Then I'll tell Melissa."
     "I'd like tot hink you were joking, Larry.  I'd like to dismiss how you try to convince everybody else that Melissa is too good for me.  Lynn didn't call me for some devious reason."
     "Why then?"
     "How did you leave things, Pudenski?  She didn't think you'd be real receptive to the notion of her visiting."
     "What, because I was in love with her?"
     "Then talk to Lynn about it."
     Larry stepped back a pace.  "You didn't tell Melissa that Lynn wants to spend a week at your place?"
     "I will, when I can think of a diplomatic was to say it."
      Wait here, buddy."
     Jason grabbed Larry's arm as the latter was turning to go back to the basement.  "Why does everyone want to make this more difficult than it needs to be?"  Jason sighed.  "Are you able to handle seeing Lynn and not sleeping with her?"
      "Who said I wasn't going to sleep with her?"

Nightmares (2011)

ORIGINAL FICTION

(very short story)

9040 W. 140th Street (the red arrow is pointing to the balcony for Apt. 3B, where I lived from May 1989 to February 1993), Orland Park, IL  60462.  This is where I did, in actuality, write a letter much like the one I use in the story.  That little red door is to the entryway with the mailboxes, where – much like the unnamed narrator in the story – I could not retrieve a letter I too hastily committed to sending.

Nightmares

 
     "I had another nightmare."
     Part of me – hopefully hidden and on the inside only – cringed at this.  Joe had nightmares all the time.  Well, maybe not all the time, but certainly with enough frequency that his close friends could be assured that he would have at least a couple a month.  Even his casual acquaintances were likely aware that he had memorable nightmares, by his estimation.  I likely would be categorized closer to the latter than the former, but I know he has had them.  He had been having them since at last his early teens.  But there was something about his nightmares that just didn't speak to me.  It was all I could do to offer a shrug.
     "It was much worse than usual."
     Well, usual for Joe meant something like monsters or demons or something that really scared him.  Not in the monster movie or horror film way, because his conjured beings struck at his core being in his dreams.  To my mind, however, it just wasn't that interesting.  Maybe it was because I usually had some sense of dreaming during my own fits of nightmares.  As soon as one knew there is nothing at risk in the dream, the nightmare could be experienced as theater.  How could Joe not see that his monsters and demons could not exist in the waking world?  He wasn't some kind of delusional.
     "You aren't saying anything."
     "Sorry, Joe."  I looked up to meet his gaze.  He looked a little haggard, but that could have just been him being less than diligent in his grooming that morning.  I'm sure he would have looked more put together if he had been going in to work.  "I guess I don't have anything to say about that."
     "Don't give me that shit.  You have nightmares, too.  I know you do.  I thought you would be a little more sympathetic about this."
      It shouldn't have surprised me that Joe still thought enough about me – my meager moral character – to think that I would be some kind of sounding board and support for him.  It did, but it shouldn't have.  I dropped my head to hide my smirk.  At least I managed to find enough within me to feel guilty about it.
     "Yeah, Joe, I have nightmares."
     "When did you have one last?"
     "Last night.  Why?"
     Joe didn't expect that.  Maybe he did, but my estimation of his reaction was that he didn't expect that to be my answer.  I shouldn't be so cavalier about assuming what Joe expected.  He asked the question and "last night" was a foreseeable answer, so maybe he had been expecting it as a possibility.  One would not associate idiocy with Joe. 
     "Fine," Joe finally managed.  He looked as though he were shocked by my response, but maybe he wasn't.  "What was your nightmare like?"
     "It was surprisingly a lot like this, but with different people."
      Joe thought on that for a few seconds.  I guess he decided I hadn't really told him anything, so he said, "What the fuck does that mean?"
     "It means that my nightmare – really all my nightmares – are a lot like my real-life.  You know, waking life.  You aren't in them, so you can take that as a compliment if you want."  I threw that last bit in because I assumed that people don't aspire to be in the nightmares of others. 
     "I still don't understand what that means.  How is it a nightmare if it is just like life?"
     "Maybe because I'm living a fucking nightmare, Joe."  I paused for effect, smugly thinking that this is what one should do when making a show of one's personal failings.  "If you think I can dream something worse that what I'm living, you have too much faith in my imagination.  The only difference in the nightmares is that I have to deal with the people I'm avoiding.  Or the ones avoiding me.  I think a lot of it is mutual by this point in time, but there are social confrontations between those people and me in my nightmares."
     "You want to talk about it?"
     "No.  There isn't anything to be gained in that discussion."
     "You might figure out what they mean."
     "I know what the meaning in them is, Joe.  I think I do at any rate.  Seeing as how they pretty much match-up with real life, I don't think there is much need for interpretation."
     "They still have to be about something."
     "You want to know what they're about, Joe?  You want to know that they stem from the knowledge that in my life, only one person ever loved me.  Seriously, one person.  And not even family.  You come from a marginally functional family—"
     "Hey!"
     "Hey yourself, Joe.  There is nothing in your family dynamic that even approaches being damaging to you or your emotional well-being.  Enjoy that.  Not everybody gets that."
     "If you were never loved, you'd be some kind of a monster."
     "I am some kind of a monster, Joe.  The one person who loved me broke my heart the night he told me that he would fuck me over in a heartbeat if it meant he had even the slightest chance of getting laid."
     "How old were you when this happened?"
     "Seventeen."
     "What?  Was this your dad?"
     It was not my father.  Mind you, I kind of knew that my dad placed his own sexual satisfaction ahead of any kind of relationship with his sons earlier than that.  He made me swap seats with him on our flight from Seattle to Anchorage so he could sit next to an attractive woman.  He ended up fucking her, too.  At least he had fun on that vacation.  Still, even with his self-centeredness, it would have been undoubtedly better for me if he had found a way to love me.  The closest he came was trying to be proud of whatever meager accomplishments I had as a child because those reflected well on him.  No, I learned later that the only person he was capable of loving was himself.  I knew somebody else like that, too.  He married the person I dread most in my nightmares.
     "No.  My best friend.  Was my best friend."  I paused, but this time it was to contain my emotions.  I didn't want to start crying in front of Joe.  Not that he'd think that I'm weak or something; it's just that he knows that I'm mostly emotionally dead inside and I'm sure that seeing me crying would be a little weird for him.  "In late May of '86, when it wasn't certain that we'd ever see each other again, I told him that I loved him.  You know, in a friend sort of way.  Nothing sexual about it."
     "I wasn't assuming there was."
     "Anyway, he told me he loved me.  We made a little plan that we'd always be there for each other.  Forever."
     "What happened?"
     "I think that he assumed – if he remembered it at all – that our declaration of that eternal commitment was just kids stuff.  I'm sure he had no idea how fucked up my home life was.  His dad may have been a dick – the guy threatened to beat me with a belt when I was nine – but his parents certainly loved him.  His brother probably did, too.  There was a degree of involvement in his life.  Anyway, I think that he began to grow up and didn't understand how much I needed him to always be there for me.  No matter what."
     "So he told you he would rather chase pussy than be there for you.  Then what happened."
     "Then I went home.  Nobody was there.  My brother was at Madison.  My dad may have been working, but I'm almost positive he was at his girlfriend's that night.  I cried.  I wrote a lengthy, rather hateful suicide note.  Then I went into my father's bedroom, took his little .22 pistol, put it to my head, and pulled the trigger."
     Joe sat silent for a few seconds.  "Didn't check to see if it was loaded?"
     "No, I did.  There is a lot that I am compressing in my retelling here.  I was crying most of my walk home from the party where he told me that I didn't mean as much to him as the chance of sex did.  I got the gun out and made sure it was loaded before I started writing the letter.  It is very important that it be conceived as a letter, because I actually mailed the fucking thing.  Written with a DOS version of Word Perfect."
     "Holy shit!  That is a long time ago."
     "Not really.  In a lot of ways, its yesterday.  Something being a long time ago assumes that you fill the span between then and now with living.  If you don't, then it will always be close.  If you don't do anything with your life, it will be yesterday.  Anyway, I wrote the suicide letter without ever mentioning that I was killing myself.  Wrote the thing for someone with whom I had no real relationship.  Printed it out without proof-reading it; back then you had to run spellcheck, the program wasn't set to let you know whenever you fucked up."
     "I remember."
     "Put it in an envelope.  Addressed the envelope.  Put a stamp on it and ran it downstairs to the entryway where the mailboxes were.  Went back upstairs and checked the gun again.  Sat at the edge of my father's bed facing the TV – it was off – and pulled the trigger."
     "It didn't fire?"
     "Nope.  And you know that thing they say about jumpers, the ones that survive?  How they immediately regret the decision to jump the instant they jump?"
     Joe nodded.
     "Well, I experienced something like that.  It scared the fuck out of me.  It emotionally drained me.  I'm not so proud as to hide from the fact that I am terrified of dying.  Still am.  And there I was, not dead, after I had found the strength to try to kill myself.  For a couple of seconds I thought about finding the other pistol he kept hidden in his room and trying with that one.  If I couldn't find it, though, he'd have been really pissed that I went digging through his things.  I really only wanted to kill myself in his room because if I did it in my room or the front room, there would be a chance he wouldn't notice right away.  If I was going to be dead, he should know about it.  Didn't leave a note for him, though."
     "What was in the letter?"
     "How the fuck should I know?  I didn't keep a copy of it."
     "How did it start?"
     "'I don't know why I'm writing this to you except that I have the feeling you hate me.'  Not my best work."
     "You remember that?"
     "Yeah.  Like I said, in many ways its yesterday.  I couldn't tell you what else was in it.  It was three pages long.  The plan, such as it was, was that she would have to ask my best friend why I had sent her this letter and he would have to tell her that I was dead.  In that way, both would be hurt – yes, I'm aware of how stupid it sounds now, even then the next day – and neither would have the full picture.  I tried to get the letter the next morning so it wouldn't be sent but the mailman came before 11am.  Or one of the neighbors took the outgoing mail to the post office; there was a woman who did that from time to time.  Also spent two days trying to convince my friends to help me steal the letter out of the mailbox after it was delivered.  Even got them to drive me over one day to try, but it hadn't arrived yet."
     "Slow mail."
     "Tell me about it.  Then it was embarrassing dealing with her after that.  But I found a way to make her deal with me and even having contact as fucked up as that felt better than being alone all the time.  She was the one who talked me out of my plan of enlisting in the Army or killing myself, right and proper, after graduation.  She didn't know that she did, mind you.  To her it was just an off hand comment.  But I was so starved for any kind of attention I interpreted it as having much deeper meaning."
     I didn't want to talk about it any more.  I never want to talk about it.  I knew a kind of constant fear of every having to deal with this person ever again.  After a short while, Joe wanted to talk again.
     "So, that is your nightmare?"
     "In a sense, I guess.  Its emblematic.  My nightmares, the ones when I'm asleep, involve having to deal with her.  Or my best friend.  Or some of my other close friends from back then.  Or the only woman I've ever loved, whose parents once offered to pay me to sleep with her because it might break up her relationship with her boyfriend.  They did not like him.  My nightmares harken back to a time when I still had promise and potential, a time when my life could have been anything other than utterly wasted.  Come to think of it, if I ever do kill myself, that's the line I want as both my note and on the headstone.  Not that I think anyone would pop for a headstone.  'There was a time when I had potential and promise, and friends expected great things from me.'  My nightmares are just dream versions of the truth of my situation.  That I have no meaningful emotional connections because I pissed them all away.  My nightmares remind me that I am unloved, Joe, and that the people who might have helped me save myself from that simply ran out of patience long ago."
     "Oh."
     "Yeah.  And I may have hidden the point, but I am a monster because I effectively used a total hateful impulse to manipulate someone into my life.  And I wasn't especially kind to her while she was enduring all my bullshit.  Can't be that pissed that she grew tired of it.  Or that she threw me out of her life.  Just wish she had done it face to face."
     "She do it over the phone?"
     "No, —"
     "Because I'm betting this is before email and texting."
     "There was email.  She had an email account through the university.  No, she had her roommate do it."
     "Ouch."
     "Could have been worse.  She could have had her boyfriend do it.  Or my best friend.  Important thing is that she doesn't have to deal with me anymore.  And my nightmare is as much that she would have to deal with me, me like I was then, as much as it is that I would have to deal with her.  Or any of a number of people from back then.  But she is the easiest one to explain."
     "So, your nightmares are what, just talking to her?"
     "They tend to be a little more involved than that.  They are still nightmares, but I don't think there is any substitute imagery.  The things that scare me are the truths of my life.  I would like to be able to hide from those in my dreams."
     "Ah."
     "You still want to talk nightmares, Joe."
     "Yeah, I do.  But not with you.  Yours are kind of fucked up."
     "Thanks."
     "You should probably see somebody about them."
     "They're just dreams, Joe."  I said this last bit with a forced, wry smile.  "They don't mean anything."