A Stranger In a Strange Land

I'll let you in on a little secret. One that I've pretty much already told. But for the past few months now, I've been volunteering for the Obama campaign. It started off slow and tentatively since I'd never done anything like it before, so I unsteadily checked in at a locale office, attended some meetings, and made some posts on this or that message board. Before long, though, I was doing my best to live up to a promise I'd made a long while ago that if I ever encountered a candidate who made me believe, made me want to believe at the very least, that they should get elected then I'd do my best to do everything I could to make sure they did.

When Senator Obama began to call on people to help him get out the vote in his latest speeches, when he asked for people to make phone calls or knock on doors, I smiled. Because I already had.

I haven't talked about it, though, because my best really isn't very much. There are people who can and have and will do so much more. And I don't want to make it seem like my efforts are some how commendable. My volunteering wasn't about making myself feel good but, instead, about feeling like I was doing something. Contributing in some small but important way rather than just allowing events to pass me by again.

My efforts, though, were interesting, especially as the election is underway and they've now drawn to a close. Because I didn't just volunteer once or twice. I volunteered a few times and at several different locations. I travel a lot, you see. And there are over 80 in my home state of Michigan alone. And even more in neighboring states that aren't that difficult to reach.

So, when I had the time and even sometimes when I didn't, I'd stop in at the local branch office and see if they needed any help. If they asked, I'd explain that I lived in such and such a place but that I was in the neighborhood for a little while and wanted to help out. I've lived, after all, around the Metro Detroit area and its surrounding suburbs all of my life. From the west side to the east side, from the inner city to the exurbs, I've been there or known someone who lived there or spent time there and I wouldn't feel walking through Farmington, any more than I would in Warren or through Dearborn or anywhere else. I had a whole spiel laid out, when I started, for how I'd talk myself past the front desk but I never needed it because I didn't run into a single office that wasn't glad to have that one more person. Or, for that matter, a staffer who didn't thank me for coming down and spending some of my time to help out.

It was, I felt, an interesting experience because it meant I could see the many different campaign offices and compare and contrast. Some were fly by night operations, set up in dingy, abandoned store fronts with little more than card tables and a coffee machine. While others were slick, professional looking office buildings, comfortably appointed. Some were in the inner city and staffed by veteran community organizers. Some were in the suburbs and looked run by the local coffee clatch. But no matter what they looked like, no matter who the staff were, it was all the same once you got inside. The places were always full of activity with volunteers walking in and out of the door or phone calls being made. A hustle and bustle filled each place as the staff would chat or the volunteers would converse. I sat through training session after training session, getting the latest script or talking point, learning what stage of the effort we were involved in and just how I'd be doing my part. Listened to different staffers explain the same thing in different ways in different locales and I felt the same exact thing. That buzz. That sense of excitement blending with weariness and lack of sleep that pervaded each place. The excitement that I felt with being part of something. The expectation that everyone there felt, working at being part of the great engine of change. The exhaustion of too much coffee and not enough rest that goes along with being part way through and one day closer to the end.

I spent my time answering phones or entering data but what I liked best was when I got to head out and canvas. I'd take my trusty map and figure out where to head and then I'd wander around a neighborhood for an afternoon with a clipboard and a list, knocking on doors. It was nice to get out and get some exercise, better than any walk. And it was even better to get to talk to people, to ask them about their views. Hearing their opinions and having to try to explain to them my own was, I think, good for me. It forced me to confront my own idea, to have to refine them into words that ccould easily slip past my lips. To cram my high-minded ideas and complicated thoughts down into workable bites, something that I've always struggled with.

More than that, it was just nice to get to see so many different people and houses and towns. So many ways of living just within a few hundred miles. It makes me appreciate just how vast this great country is and how many perspectives and ways of life there must be, stretching from one coast to the other.

When I went home, for example, to visit my mother, I drove into the Pointes. A little oasis of red surrounded by a sea of blue. A place where the McCain signs were many and the Obama signs were few. Part of Wayne Country, true, but spiritually part of nearby Macomb, that great bastion of Reagan Democrats. A place of old families and older money – they say that when you grow up in the Pointes you tend to come back and I can see why, it's a beautiful place with a small town feel right in the middle of a larger metropolis. Good schools and friendly people, wide lawns of green grass with children playing on them and sidewalks filled with people taking their dog out for a walk. Grosse Pointe, where I grew up, is one of the original suburbs. Back when the auto industry first started, it was where the plant's managers and owners would live, driving a short way into work and, then, a short way back away from the industrial parks to their comfortable homes. The most valuable property was by the side of Lake St. Clair, along the Jefferson where the Ford estates once were. And when I took that trip home to help my mother clean her house and get ready for Thanksgiving, that's exactly where I wanted to go.

They said I was a brave man in the office, for wanting to walk in the Grosse Pointes. After a few hours of knocking on doors, I could understand why. With my Obama sticker and my liberal policies, I was definitely out of place. A stranger in a strange land that was all the more odd for being where I came from. That's the old selection bias for you, though, until I grew up I would have never thought that my neighborhood was anything but dyed in the wool liberal, just like me and my folks because that's who I'd been surrounded with. But, really, the GPs are a pretty conservative area. The Pointes, after all, are now a place for the graying and elderly and those are the people for whom McCain's politics of racial resentment have really hit home. Detroit is a city of de facto segregation if no longer of de jure, and the proud white folk of the Pointes have built up a lot of mistrust and enmity over the years.

The saddest, though, had to be the time I spent walking along the Eastside. Oddly enough, both of those assignments came from the same office since the heart of Detroit is only about a twenty minute drive from my mother's home. It's a world of difference, though, like driving into another country.

But I firmly believe that sometimes you need to be reminded of how lucky you are, so I took my nice car and my lily white face and headed into the fringes of the urban jungle, armed only with a clipboard, some pamphlets, and a smile. I needed have worried, though, even though I still rue that fleeting worry I felt as I locked my door and wondered if I shouldn't have tried to borrow my sister's less expensive, less likely to be stolen car. I worked downtown once, you see, and I still remember how that car was nearly stolen right off the parking lot in front of me. But although I got a few stares, I didn't get any meaningful looks.

I saw the kind of things that just break you heart, while I was down on the upper Eastside, that one chilly autumn afternoon. From the burned out shell of houses to mothers younger than I am, hanging on to a handful of kids while they nervously opened the door. Trash piled up on porches and paint peeling away. Wood work splitting and concrete steps that were starting to crack. Empty lots that were a sight better than the still-standing houses with broken windows and pried open boards just rotting away.

But the people? They were the same as I talked to anywhere else. A little poorer, maybe, but not as poor as some other spots to which I'd been. They were friendly and kind and full of hope. That audacity to believe that as bad as things are, they could one day get better. I could see it in their eyes and hear it in their voices. All over Michigan the feeling is the same, that the election was the day when the tide might break and the sorrows might well roll back. And more than most didn't have shabby, worn-down houses just waiting to fall apart. They had nice homes, well-maintained with fresh panelling or coats of paint stood proud and dignified amidst the squallor. A sign not of the increasing decay of a city that's too large with too few people but, instead, a promise that things can get better.

After I'd finished my list and returned to the office, I turned in my report almost in silence. Just drained by the experience and unsure of what to thing. What hits me the hardest whenever I go back to a place like that is that I was born in a house not very far off. I was born in Detroit, within the city limits, and raised for those first few years of my life that I hardly remember on a street, nearby. Over the years, my family's followed the flow of people out and away and into the burbs. But Detroit is where I started and where I'll probably always return. I've never gone back to look for my old house, though, because I'm not sure what I'd feel if it had been swallowed up by the blight and decay. But I imagine it would be something like what I felt standing in that campaign office that afternoon as the light was beginning to fade.

Still, all in all, I'm glad I did it. It was an experience worth having. It might not have been fun to pound the pavement until my legs ached or to wander around in the drizzling rain trying to keep my pages from getting wet. And I might not have made much of a difference. I knocked on, perhaps, a thousand doors, maybe a few hundred more, and talked to nearly as many people. And some of them I might have convinced and some might not otherwise take the time to vote and that makes me feel good. But then I hear about the millions of bells that have been rung and the calls that have been made and I can't feel too good because I was just one part of a vast effort and my contributions weren't so great, after all.

But it was worthwhile because of the experience. Like with voting, I've come to realize that it's not so much the result as the getting there that counts. My one vote probably isn't going to change any election in which it's cast but that doesn't matter. It's important because it's mine and I'm going to exercise it and be a part of that great, wider process. A process that would then include me. I'll remember the result, I'm sure, although I'll probably never be able to tell if I made any difference. But what I'll forget are what really matters. Those sunny days and cloudy afternoons where I was out in the world and being a part of it all. The experiences that I had along the way.

Some were funny. Some were rewarding. Some were scary. And others I just plain don't know what to make of them. Like the black men who said to me that they were voting for McCain with a straight face and holding on to the joke just a little too long. Or the elderly man with the raspy throat who looked around and told me that his area was all going for McCain even as his daughter stood behind him, pointed to herself, and mouthed “Obama”. And don't even get me started on the crazy Ron Paul supporters and their conspiracy theories while I nodded along patiently. For every dog snarling at me and straining at the fence or at its chain, there was someone who told me they weren't sure what to do but they were now leaning away from McCain. For every bigot and door slammed in my face there was that elderly person who needed a ride or that young voter who needed information about their polling place.

In the end, I think, it all balances out. And it doesn't mean much. But it meant something to me. And the secret is that I hadn't realized just how important that was.

A Black Man Will Be President, Some Day

Unlike some others, I did think I'd see a black president. Just not so soon. I'm young enough that I figured shifting demographics would have made in inevitable at least by the end of my life (And, of course, I'm young enough that I think I'm going to live a long and happy live instead of, you know, dying horribly in some unpredictable wreck.). That by the time I was an old, graying man still tottering around I could greet the monumental news with a warm smile. That I would then call over to my children and their own, have them gather around me and wait, as I told them just how bad it had once been.

I'd tell them about lynching and riots. Poll taxes and Jim Crow. Detroit and Watts and cities burning because of racial tensions. Dogs and firehoses and boycotts passed. About a dream.

I'd tell them about the long march of time, in so many words. And how, by my time, it seemed as though things were better. And how, by theirs, it had become better yet. Until things had improved to the point where what they'd just done had seemed like nothing remarkable. And that, maybe, they should take a moment to appreciate what they'd just done.

That it used to be unthinkable that a black man could become president of the United States and, now, there was one.

I never thought, though, that I'd be hearing a version of that speech from my own grandmother.

But it's true. What's about to happen tomorrow - what will happen, what should happen, what I and so many others have hoped and worked and strived for through the many long months - is remarkable. It's historic.

But it also feels like it's not anything special. We're about to elect a black man to the presidency. Not because he's black but because he's the best man for the job and, for me, there's nothing extraordinary or remarkable about it.

That, more than anything, speaks to how far we've come. The unthinkable has become normal.

It doesn't, though, speak about how far we've yet to go. You don't have to turn to the election to see that but, instead, the campaign. And all the vile and disgusting sewers through which we, as a nation, have been dredged.

But somehow, on this day at least, I'm not bothered by it all. The ghosts of the past aren't going to vanish without a fight. It's a fight that must be waged and one that is being waged. And it's one where it might not seem like much progress has been made as you've pushed and shoved away. Until, that is, you turn around and see just how far the line's been moved.

Random Thoughts On An Early Autumn's Eve

During the fall, it must be an awful time to die.

When the earth is resting and preparing for the winter to come. A cold gray season that seems like the perfect time for parting – a time of homes and hearths and comfortably warm evenings in which to drift away.

Better yet to live to see another spring and the inevitable turn towards the summer again. To leave with the peace of knowing that the world turns on. That the grass will grow and the flowers will bloom and children will run, even if you never will again. I'd choose to believe there's some comfort in that and all.

But the fall is a time of a crinkling promise of what's yet to come. Parting then means not living to see that promise become fulfilled.

One of my teachers, a favorite who reminds me of my own gray lady of a grandmother, told me her husband had died. He'd been ill for some time, and we'd all known as she was constantly ducking out of class to hurriedly answer her phone or late to arrive from driving to the hospital and back. But whatever illness he battled finally took him over the weekend. Late Sunday, as she told me while she apologized for not having some trivial request done.

I was stunned. What I should have told her is that it didn't matter. There are more important things than coursework. And, at the moment, she was certainly dealing with one.

Instead, I only mumbled and shuffled away. Too afraid, too unsure, too surprised, and too unwilling to say anything to someone surely dealing with a lot of pain.

What else could I do?

Canary On the Phoneline

For the record, my mother is a smart woman. Educated, talented, works a six-figure job, and raised - with all due humility - several fine children. And you do not ever want to go up against her in a puzzle game because she will crush you and your hopes. She's not a saint, she's just the average working mother. But when it comes to politics, she's about as low-information a voter as it gets.

So, when I called her tonight (Her birthday's coming up and - yikes - I need to figure out what to get.) and the subject turned to McCain's veep choice (I have a pathological weakness for political coverage. I devour a daily diet that's both massive and probably unhealthy for me. So, I'm her go-to when it comes to politics.) I knew the Republican message machine was in trouble when even she saw the pick as a shameless ploy to get women voters.

That wasn't quite her phrasing, of course, but her first response was to worry about whether other women were going to "fall for it", and that's not a good sign.

The plural of data and all but my mother is exactly the demographic that McCain's probably hoping to grab here. Blue-collar girl from a battleground state, Reagan Dem who loathes Bush but isn't sure about Obama (She never really said but I got the feeling that she would have like to see Clinton get the nod. Not because she agrees with her policies - we're talking someone who cares more about what Simon and Paula think than Broder and Kos, you know? - but because she'd really like to see a woman president. Just once. And she's old enough that she knows that might have been the best chance for a while.) - the woman even voted for Perot, for heaven's sake.

An independent-in-name looking for a third way, in other words. And she's looking past the choice of someone with the right set of chromosomes and into the reasoning behind that decision. If she's not alone, then McCain might have won the newscycle, but he's just lost the election.

Guild Wars: Had To Do It

Had to do it. Had to. Had to go. Couldn't not. It was like an invitation to a wedding for one of those friends whose path through life took a sharp turn from your own some time ago. An obligation you're not sure you should have, let alone honor, but one which you - nonetheless - still feel bound by. So, you grit your teeth and put up with everything that goes with it, even though you'd honestly rather not, because, sometimes, that's what it takes to be human - to put someone else's need to feel loved and accepted above your own, if only for a brief while.

I'm talking, of course, about the Farewell to Gaile event that was held over the weekend.

I've put off writing about it because, honestly, I found it to be pretty underwhelming and I didn't want to be spoiling someone else's moment with my complaining. I knew going in that there wouldn't be much for me to enjoy. No festival mask, no interesting new mini-games offered up for a few days of whirlwind fun, just a bit of Simon Says with some scripted bots and a chance to inflate a title that I don't even care about.

And, as expected, as my chosen district crawled with players and their mini-pets it turned into from a celebration into a lag fest. I thought I'd been smart by picking one in the middle of the list, one that people wouldn't flock to but it still slowed to a crawl as people clustered together, dancing and shooting off their party favors making my attempts to follow along with the prompts more like blind stabs from someone who'd lost their sense of inner balance.

I tried to take a bunch of pictures but, you know what? I deleted them all since there really wasn't all that much to it. Just a window a few minutes long to pump up the new Party Animal track. At least it was a chance to empty out some of my junk from storage and free up a few more slots.

Although, I have to say, some of the scripted lines were brilliant ("I roll up to the Xunlai, my account at maximum. You could call me King Jalis by the way I drop platinum." It takes a certain type of mad genius to come up with that. My kind of mad genius.) and the frog effects on the sparklers and fireworks were a nice little touch.

But, no, this weekend wasn't about the 100 odd points I now have in yet another worthless fluff track. Instead, it was about Gaile.

More precisely, about the community paying its respects, confirming its gratitude, to someone who's worked so long and so tirelessly on its behalf. Gaile isn't quite gone but her moving on is as good a time as any to reflect on just what she's done over the years with bittersweet fondness.

While I've had my run-ins with her, I'll refrain from rehashing those things that are truly better off left in the past. I've always respected Gaile even if I never quite liked her (It's one of those mutual things where I didn't like her because I was sure she didn't like me. I have no idea where I picked up that impression but it's always lingered and, perhaps, unfairly colored my perception.). She had a grueling job riding herd on the mangy collection of ingrates and crusaders - zealots with their pet causes and an inflated sense of their own privilege - who call themselves the Guild Wars community for the longest time.

But, not, I'd think, a thankless one. Because even way back when we all knew just how hard she worked and just how good she was at her job. Gaile was part of the community, the ever-present figure watching over our shoulders. Helpful, friendly, but always ready to be firm when it was called for. The early days that I remember so fondly just wouldn't have been the same without her.

That's why, out of all the choices I had for faces when I activated my nearly forgotten account and logged on for the first time in ages just to stand around for a few minutes waggling my avatar in some kind of poorly choreographed puppet show, I picked my first - my eponymous Warrior, the first character I'd ever created and the last one I'll ever delete. And out of all the destinations I went to the place it all started for me, Lion's Arch. Not the Khylo of the E34E, that had been wiped out long before it had been rebranded Ascalon City. Paved over by wave after wave of changes to the game and its environs until all it's lost all the landmarks that once made it familiar to me. But LA was, when I joined the test (Back when it was still the player-named Hakewood), where every character you made started out. And although it, too, has changed (I don't, for example, remember any gulls flying around in the air. Those came later, part of a change I had long dreamed of to add more life and vibrancy to the various lobbies by adding that smallest touch of motion. A minor addition, hardly the most important and certainly one long forgotten among all the other causes and concerns I've had over the years - but one that I had and, I hope, suggested all those many years ago. I might even have never bothered to share it, I had so many ideas back then that I never fleshed out for lack of time or interest and I can't recall whether I pitched a fit on the alpha boards about it or not. But it's still nice to see that it was one of the ones that I had right.) the vistas have remained the same. There's still the same ornate, arching towers in the distance, promising mystery and adventure to come with their ancient grace, that I remember slowly loading into that first time. Lion's Arch was where it began for me because being there it felt like I finally belonged.

And Gaile, ever-present, tirelessly helpful Gaile was one of those people who welcomed me in and made me feel like I had been there all along. Whether it was hanging around town or rushing through some press event or another or even just crashing down on the boards, Gaile was an intrinsic part of that whole scene.

It felt only too right, then, to spend a few brief moments, pouring out my rockets and glowing flares, like someone tipping out a bit of liquor to a fallen friend. Because those days are gone. And never coming back. And with Gaile leaving it means they never can be. So many things have happened, so much time has passed since then, but it's still worth it, to me, to celebrate what was once so right.

So, like all partings, it was a bittersweet affair. A chance to remember, to pay homage to those fleeting ghosts of feelings and emotions haunting our minds from the past. Sad, because we know they'll slip even further away, following that person into some place far from our reach. For me, that's how it is. A farewell party is just a wake for that part of your life that's well and truly over now.

Though it's also sweet because every leaving brings a chance for new greetings. It's hard to be too sad because that person is moving on. To something new, maybe even something better even as they leave a hole behind. But that hole can be filled in time, by someone new. Like Brinstar, who's stepping into the shoes that Gaile leaves behind - big ones to be sure but at least they'll be filled by someone who's been a part of the community for a while now. It's one of those bits of news where I knew about all the pieces but never quite managed to put them together. But, since this is a post about Gaile and the day we said good-bye to her, that's a non-surprise I'll leave for another time.

That Thing That Happened

Yeah, okay, so I'm back from talking with the police now. The end of the story is that nothing actually illegal happened so no charges to press or anything like that.

The beginning of the story is that I was wrapping up my nightly Snowball run in Guild Wars, definitely starting to feel the diminishing results as sleep beckoned, putting down some thoughts, preparing to fire off a blog entry or two and call it a night. Half-awake, in other words, and just waiting until my latest winning streak came to a close before I logged off and got ready for bed. Everyone else in the house was already asleep except for my brother, the other one, who was out and about.

Then, I heard this loud pounding that I, at first, dismissed as a figment of my imagination. An auditory hallucination caused by too much speed metal blaring through my headphones and listening to the game's sound effects too closely for too long. But it continued long enough to get my attention. Once I realized I should do something about it, I figured it was my brother. That he'd forgotten his key and how we can get into the house when that happens. So I wasn't in any big rush as I made sure I had pants and a shirt on (This is a very important thing to do before opening the door as I've learned the hard way.) and sleepily clomped down the stairs to fumble with the door. But when I opened it, I found not my younger brother but a strange car idling at the bottom of the driveway.

I paused, in the door, in my pajamas, expecting that it was some friend of my brother's that I didn't recognize and he was going to hop out, abashed at forgetting his key, now that he'd stomped back to the car after waiting for so long. And I could get in some big brotherly needling before getting back to my run.

But, no, it wasn't my brother or anyone he knew because, by that point, someone I didn't recognize had stepped out of the car and was, well, bellowing is the only word I think apt. Not quite shouting, not quite yelling, but not exactly talking in a normal tone of voice either. Nearly screaming at me, in the dead of the night, in the middle of my mother's quiet, peaceful neighborhood, demanding that I step outside.

Which, right, I don't know about you but when a random stranger pounds on my door in the middle of the night and begins yelling at me to step out of the door my first impulse is not "Okay, this sounds perfectly reasonable." But is more along the lines of "Oh shit, who the fuck did I piss off now and why do they want to beat the shit out of me this time?" And, so, forget about the fact that I had no shoes on and it was minus something or other beyond the door, there was absolutely no way I was setting one foot outside.

It went on like that for sometime. "Get the fuck out here!" "No." "Come out on the fucking porch!" "What do you want?" "For you to step outside!" "No." And so on until I finally realized I was talking to the son of my mother's next door neighbors. He's about my age or a year or two older and, well, I hadn't seen him let along spoken with him for years. Even though our families have been living side by side for over twenty at this point.

And, well, I'll be honest here, our family and his have never gotten along. Not to the point of angrily threatening each other in the middle of the night or anything but the sort of quiet tension between neighbors who just plain don't like each other which occasionaly boils over into the odd bush trimmed that shouldn't have been or that fence a foot past where it should be and the tense words that follow when you unexpectedly bump into each other at church, at the store. Wouldn't call it a feed but let's just say my mother thinks they've been planning on moving away ever since the wife died and she's not exactly going to feel sorry to see them go. Myself, I don't know, but, then, I don't live there and I don't have to think about it most of the time.

Anyhow, in my defense I'm awful with remembering faces and not only was I tired it was dark out but about the time I was recognizing who I was talking to the realization was dawning that he was incredibly drunk. Or high. Eyes definitely a little red and hazy and he wasn't exactly making coherent sense. If I wasn't stepping outside before, I certainly wasn't going to do it then because not only was he being threatening he was inebriated and there was no telling what he was going to do. At this point I was pretty much just shouting back at him since he'd been steadily and profanely insulting me the whole time. And, in retrospect, I probably could have handled it better up to and including just shutting the door and walking away. At the time, though, the adrenaline was pumping and the stupid macho juice was flowing, it was fight or flight time, and I wanted to win.

Not by getting into a fist fight or anything but, I think, by then I was just hoping to goad him into something illegal so I could get his stupid ass arrested. Sadly, pissing me off isn't illegal. Yet. But I definitely wanted him to pay for disturbing me. Eventually, what I got out of him was that he'd found some dog shit on his porch and had, apparently, decided that was the last straw. That's, at least, what he was yelling at me about beside my being fat, retarded, and unwilling to step outside and "handle things like men" (Seriously, I wish I'd been calm enough to remember exactly what he said because some of his "insults" were classics. Nothing like a drunkard's logic, after all. I mean, it's funny now but I was pretty shaken up at the time.).

Now, again, to be perfectly honest it's entirely possible that he found some canine droppings on his porch. His family has this ultra-annoying, huge German Shepard things that barks and growl every time it's outside (Which is, where my mother lives, technically illegal. Not that we've ever complained. Now, our dog, who like most would bark on occasion, they managed to call the cops on more than once. It's been that kind of petty crap for years with these people, basically.) especially if you happen to be outside at the same time. They let it run around, unleashed on the front lawn (Again, technically illegal) and it has the nasty habit of crapping all over the place. Including on our lawn - as I tend to find out when I've mown the lawn - and, from talking to the folks down the block, on theirs as well. Personally, I don't give a shit, for lack of a better term but it annoys my mother and, if she finds it on our property and she's in the right mood she'll get a shovel or something and flip it onto theirs. And sometimes it's landed on their porch, sure. But, for one, she hasn't done that it months, according to her (As you can well imagine, we've done some talking about this by now.). And, for another, there's about a foot of snow on the ground and I'm not sure you could find a lump of dog shit in there even if you wanted to.

In short, I think he got rip-roaring drunk and the dark memory of finding the same disgusting lumps of shit his dog leaves all over our yard on his front porch flashed through his mind and he decided to make a big deal out of it. And that meant pounding on our door around midnight and whatever he was planning to do if anyone bothered to come outside to play.

Finally, he'd had enough and stomped off into his car with his friend and sped off into the night. But not before he'd managed to tear half the Christmas lights off our bushes. I mean, it's not exactly the most extravagant display ever but I'd put some time and care into putting them up and it's the kind of dick move that really typifies what sort of person I was dealing with, I think. "Oh noes, I can't trick this person into stepping outside, well, screw it I'm just going to smash something now." Again, if it wasn't for the fact that this was the middle of the night and he was completely out of his fucking mind and, therefore, scarily threatening, it would be hilarious.

By this time, the rest of the household had woken up. Except my mother who managed somehow to sleep through it. Anyhow, we managed to wake her up shouting amongst ourselves about what to do. Personally, I just wanted to forget it and move on with my life although I was definitely feeling my heart pound in my chest a bit. I mean, sorry if this makes me less of a man or something but that's as close as I've come to a fistfight in a while. And, having been in some real serious scrapes in the past and been incredibly lucky to have, well, survived them, I was feeling pretty scared. And I think everyone else realized that even as I was trying to affect my typical cool, calm detachment. My brother, the one I picked up at the airport, wanted to march over and have some words of our own. My sister wanted to sue them about one of the many things we've argued about over the years. But my mother was adamant and insisted we call the police. And before we could stop her she was on the phone with 911 - this is, I think, the sort of case where you just want to call up their front desk or whatever instead of tying up emergency resources.

Anyhow, to recap, again, nothing much happened. It gets marked down somewhere as "neighborly tension" or something. Some report that they'll drag out the next time this happens or if this gets worse. A record that things aren't so cordial between us so that no one can be surprised when it comes down to the Hattfield and McCoys thing. But as threatening and nasty as the guy was he didn't do anything illegal. All he did was pull the lights off the trees and, since they didn't even break, it's not even like he destroyed our property or anything. He didn't even really threaten me. Never said anything like, "Come outside so I can beat your ass." Whatever menace I felt was implied, certainly, but largely in my own head. Can't even get him on a potential DUI since his friend was driving and I couldn't see if he was as shitfaced as our neighbor before they drove off. The officers took down our information and made a few notes about the whole thing (Brief ones, I saw the notepad as he was writing. Not that I blame him or anything since this is all probably nothing but, you know, no one likes to be dismissed.)

As you can probably tell, I'm still a bit shaken up by it. Mostly, trying to understand what happened. To go over the events and get my story straight in case some detective decides to follow-up as the officers feebly pledged might happen. Just amped up by the surge of uncertainty. The rush of emotions about what did and might happen. Which sucks since I'm still bone tired and more than ready to go to bed. But my mind's racing and I just know I'm not going to be able to sleep until I get this straight, if only in my own mind. Because, although I think I could have handled things better - mostly by just walking away - I think I did about as well as I could. I didn't escalate things, didn't step outside, didn't try to function on his base level, and, instead, tried to keep calm and rational and did the right thing by reporting a potential problem to the authorities. I mean, it's probably nothing but if he's going to make a habit of pounding on my mother's door in the middle of the night and making veiled threats then you can be damn sure I'm going to get the police, the courts, and everyone else I can on his sad, sorry ass. Because what scares me isn't what happened but what could have. What if this guy had a gun? Or if he'd snapped on another night when it was just my mother home, alone? What if I had actually met his demands and stepped outside? The possibilities of what could have happened are going to haunt me. And there are so many because whatever he was on, it meant that he was capable of pretty much anything.

Of Doors and Dogs Now Gone

Oh man, exhausted. Been run ragged the past few days with chores as we get the old homestead ready for the relatives' visit. Things have been polished and buffed, ornaments have been hung by the stockings. At this point, I really don't care if that makes sense or not just so long as it's done. Not to mention that I've also had to buffet myself in the vast seas of unwashed humanity as I bravely venture into the retail experience because I still don't have all my holiday shopping done - just have my mother to go but she's annoyingly difficult to shop for.

Anyhow, I'm not just drained physically but emotionally as well. Today, as part of the repairs I've been making around mother's home, the small to middling maintenance things that she needs her big strapping son to provide, I put up some insulation over the big glass door that leads to the backyard. The one that we don't use much anymore now that the dog's gone. So to save a few dollars and to keep a bit warmer, it's now been sealed up. Won't make much of a difference since no one's likely to want to go outside much and there are plenty of other ways to get there but, yeah, it made me think about my deceased pet yet again. And that wound is still fresh enoughto put me in a black mood.

It's hard to escape it, though, because it's the holidays. Her name was Prancer. And, as you might imagine, she was a Christmas present from a time when me and my many siblings still cared about what was under the tree or about when, exactly, it would be permissible to wake our parents up instead of how late we could sleep in and still stumble to the family dinner in time for the gorging. And we didn't just name her because of the song but because of the way she used to walk. How when she was small and little she'd, well, prance around the backyard. Lifting her paws up proud and high to make her bouncy way through the snow. We thought it was hilarious. Thought everything she did was cute and precious. Back when she was just a puppy, of course. But this time of year was always her time. She was the sort of dog who loved the snow. Loved to run and play and toss it up in the air and snap at it - eternally surprised at the cold. In that same backyard that I've now closed off. In that same backyard where I spent those painful moments in the warm sun realizing that, just like the day, her time was drawing to a close. The sun was warm and golden that day. The breeze full of the gentle promise of fall. You couldn't have asked for a nicer day. But I would have liked for her to have lived long enough to see the backyard full, once more, of snow. She always liked it and I think she would have enjoyed one last walk with the ground frozen beneath her paws.

So, yeah, that's the kind of thoughts that have been buzzing around my mind today whenever I've had time enough to stop and let them brood. Which, fortunately, hasn't been very often. Just busy and with a last weekend to go before the Christmas we've been preparing for it doesn't promise to get any less hectic. Always something to do at the last minute, some last errand I'll have to run. Have to pick up my brother at the airport tomorrow, for example, and his flight supposedly lands in the middle of the night, at time even the airport calls "Officially Too Fucking Early". I suspect it might be a bit hit or miss around here until after that's all over with.

Also, Wintersday unfolds tomorrow and that's sure to suck up some of my free time as well. I am fully prepared to spend a lot of time enjoying myself. Which I am going to do even if I'm not having any fun doing it, dammit! But I do plan to get in as many rounds as I can. Make a good push on my gamer track in the next few weeks. Blow off some steam. That sort of thing. Since I never got around to putting up a guide last year I should have some things to put up about it, too. But, until then.

Burn RMT, Burn!

A little bird directed my attention to mmobux the other day. It's an interesting place in its own right (I, for example, now have an idea how much that meager amount of plat sitting in my vault is worth. The answer is probably a lot less than people are willing to sell it for but, still, my hundreds of hours of gameplay have added up to something, after all.). But although it's taken me a little while to getting around to it, what I was interested in was this article about IGE and their spectacular collapse from their formerly dominant position. Because, you know, I played a minor role in that story.

Now, For those that don't know me, hi. (For those that do, again, I'm sorry.) I go by the handle of Sausaletus Rex. It's a name I've used on various forums and boards throughout the gaming community for years now. The most well-known of which are probably the Guild Wars ones but even before then, I've been hanging around and delivering enormously long posts on any number of subjects. And although I've since withdrawn in large part from any number of boards and fansites, I've been around long enough to have been there when IGE was first making a splash. When, as the mmobux article says, they went around competing to buy up every community they could find because that was the only way they could get any advertising done. People weren't very fond of the RMT, after all. And then, when they bought out their competitor and created a massive, monopolistic entity lurking in the dark corners of the gaming scene.

Where I come into this story is indirectly. Because, at the time - call it summer to fall of 2004 - I was working as a moderator at a fansite. One of the ones, the Guild Hall, which gets mentioned in the article as having been bought out by IGE along the way. Not that I knew, of course, since I wasn't involved in the financial side of things, just a volunteer tending to the forums. Even if I had been, I suspect, it would have escaped my notice because of the hidden, shadowy, backroom nature of the deals IGE had been striking around the place.

Back then, of course, things weren't looking so good. This was before the release of WoW, of GW, and gaming hadn't quite yet made the jump to a mainstream activity. The people running them knew there was money to be made, somehow, but no one had really figured it out yet. Like the old South Park joke no one had figured out how to get from step one to step three, profit. And, the scuttlebutt from my site and from the people I knew who were working at several others was that they were mostly hemmoraging money. Big server costs, large bandwidth bills to pay, as the fanbase grew. These fansites were out there doing the lion's share of marketing for the game companies helping to create a lot of buzz and publicity and, really, they weren't compensated for it. With access, with prestige, sure, but not with anything like defraying costs (Because, then, the game companies would be, in some way, responsible if not liable for everything on those sites and that would open up a can full of nightmares. I'm not saying this is a bad thing or that the fan community is screwing the developers or vice versa or even that RMT is the root of all evil in the online world just that I've ridden this train before and there's a reason I'm not doing it now.) - they were reluctant to even buy some ad space to help keep these sites afloat. And for a lot of those site owners there was IGE or one of their subsidiaries with an offer full of zeros in their mailbox.

A lot of them took it. But they did so quietly. Without letting anyone know that they'd been bought by this shady company which danced in the gray areas of laws and morality. That now, they might just be mining data for IGE with every visit. Streaming ads to every eyeball. And the obvious concerns about editorial content and censorship and the rest. IGE had bought themselves a seat at the table but they hadn't bothered to let everyone know.

Among the ones who, well, sold out was a site - a network really - called OGaming. I didn't mod there although I posted infrequently. In those pre-release days there were several hotspots for the discriminating Guild Wars fan. I frequented most of them, if only to keep my finger on the pulse of things. OGaming was, if not the biggest, then certainly in the running - super special official status, marked out by ANet as a place to go if you wanted to know more about the game although I don't believe they'd yet come up with triple super official elite status or whatever gold star they pin on their favorites now just yet.

Ever since I'd become a moderator trying to right the ship at the ever-contentious TGH, I'd made a point of trying to get to know the people running them. Call it professional courtesy. Call it networking. Call it a lingering fear that I had no idea what I was doing and wanted to look to some others for guidance. But through IRC, through e-mails, through just general poking around I'd gotten to know them. The folks who ran GWOGaming, led by an awesome guy called THX, were my favorites (Outside, you know, of the ragtag family of GR and MeatMan and Cit and more that rode herd on the cool cats at TGH, of course.). We'd talk. He was a nice guy. Hardworking. Dedicated. Always gracious with his time and his advice.

So it came as something of a shock to me when he told me he was being forced out at OGaming. You see, this is the part of the story the aforementioned article doesn't cover. How IGE let these sites run on their own for a while before taking over completely. Before they stared reorganizing, start replacing the mods and admins with their own people, to put their own stamp on the sites and those communities. Didn't happen everywhere but it did at OGaming. And my pal THX was one of the people caught in the middle of it all.

It was a bit of a scandal at the time. People wanted to know what had happened. Why the board had changed hands. Why the sky was falling. The usual inane questions of the chattering masses that populate any gaming board. THX was silent in public. But in private? I and others heard the whole sorted story. Those of us who were the gatekeepers, the influence peddlers, who made up the elite in our floating world of devoted Guild Wars fans, we soon pieced it altogether. And the rumors, the innuendo began to fly back and forth. I wasn't the only one who liked THX, after all. I don't think I've ever met anyone who thought he was something less than a prince among men. ANet even took the unprecedented step of revoking the site's official stamp of approval - reasoning that it had been THX and the rest of the staff's hard work that had earned it in the first place.

For whatever reason it was a deep dark secret at the time. Etiquette, contracts, something kept all of us from posting a diatribe in public. But there was a flurry of whois and amateur sleuthing as we uncovered that IGE owned a lot more than OGaming. Including the very site I'd been working so hard for. How I hated them at the time. How angry, how bitter I was at their deceptions and secrecy. They'd cost my friend his job. They'd turned me into an unwitting shill. Claims of editorial freedom and hands-free guarantees weren't enough to placate me. Not at the time. Although, now, I wonder just what I was so concerned about because it all seems so trivial.

It's a bittersweet feeling to know that my old nemesis, the bette noir of years past, has fallen on hard times. That IGE turned out to be the fly-by-night operation built on starstuff and false dreams that I always knew it to be. But it's hard to feel too good about it. In the end, I'm grateful to IGE. Because you know what? THX landed on his feet after he was let go. He found the funding, the support, to go out and start a brand new site. A better site. A site that was, I think, and still might be the best Guild Wars fansite ever. And I was lucky enough that he asked me to come along. If it wasn't for IGE there might never have been a Guru. I might never have had that experience. It might have taken some burned bridges and flame wars to get there but I'm glad I was along for the ride. For all the regrets and poor tastes I carry around from those days, it remains, in the grand scheme, a joyful one.

Still, there's a small, sad part of me that can't help but smile when I see words like the "fall of IGE".

The Best Part About the Annual Get-Together Is That It's Now Roughly A Year Away

Ah, what a wonderful weekend. This year, the annual get-together was not held in a MetroPark. A first, as far as I know, but hardly a necessity since so many of us have been growing up and growing away. Like my brother who's gone to California. Like my cousins who've moved to New York. Or my uncle who's announced he's getting divorced and moving to Seattle. Still reeling a bit from that one. Child of divorce myself but the rest of my parent's siblings seemed to be content not only with their lives but their spouses. They seemed so happy when we saw them just a few months ago, hard to believe it's happened. But that's some old family news, bubbling to the surface by a juggled guest list. Instead of a placid afternoon in the wanning days of summer spent amongst the trees and walkways of Kensington, we instead descended on the home of yet another cousin (Don't worry, I have, like, twenty, even I can't keep track.) for a day of grilling and chilling within the boundaries of Detroit. Getting to the Cass Corridor is a bit of a trek for some of the clan but not much since I stopped at my mother who lives in a nearby suburb.

My cousin's place is the kind of beautiful old home that makes you ache for the Detroit of yesteryear. A Victorian-era split level with the kind of workmanship and charm you just don't see these days, separated into a few apartments suited for the nearby university population. It's in the midtown region, just off that triangle formed by Wayne State and the museums. It features a huge yard that's been partly given over to an impressive garden. The house across the way had beehives to make their own honey. The next street over is a newly constructed subdivision of factory formed houses. Pretty close to the rotting husk that is Tiger's Stadium, too, which is always as interesting as it is depressing to see. But I was more interested in the progress of the permanent casinos.

It's a long, complicated story but, basically, about ten years ago the city legalized gambling, somewhat, and allowed three casinos to set up shop. They were supposed to open up temporary homes while more permanent fixtures with hotels and more. These places spent millions fixing up or refurbishing old buildings for those temporary homes. Now (About a few years too late to get the benefits from a SuperBowl in their backyard, of course, because if you can't shoot yourself in the foot it just wouldn't be the Motor City.) they're finally ready to move into those permanent structures they've been building the past few years.

My cousin's house is just down the street from the new Motor City Casino's home. It's...well, I hear it lights up in neon lights and you have to applaud the ambitions but it's still the ugliest thing I've seen in a while. Here, not the best picture of it but an awesome picture I found on Flickr but, unfortunately, can't swipe.

Looks more like an airport stuck on top of a high rise than anything else. Although you can't see it in the picture, just barely, I got a look at the new MGM, too, which looks a bit more palatable but still really out of place next the to DTE complex you can see where my mom works. That behemoth cost her a parking spot but earned her a year's worth of free buffets so it all works out.

Speaking of high-rises it's also near the Brewster-Douglas projects. That's where Lily Thomlin, Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, and more grew up, by the way. Most of them are gone now, replaced by those psuedo-suburban tracts but a few towers still rise into the sky. A reminder, like the heavy locks on the door, that things are far from rosy. Because just a few houses down from my cousin's meticulously maintained, chicly appointed outfit, was a similar looking house. Just one that was boarded over, the windows and doors replaced with plywood. Abandoned. Just one more piece of the blight that surrounds the oases like my cousin's.

Still, it was a nice afternoon. My Sino-Indian ribs, coated with a melange of all-spice and caradmon and brown sugar and more. They're recognizably barbaque-y, flavored with smoke and sweet and savory, but still completely different from ribs slathered with the old mesquite from the bottle. As I was in charge of the proteins, I also brought along a selection of burgers, most store bought (I'm doing a lot of things, but staying up late to crank out thirty hamburger patties is not one of them.). An assortment ranging from plain old ground round for the unadventurous, to turkey burgers, and even some veggie burgers for the vegans in the crowd. I also made some of my, now famous, gormet burgers, with some spices and chunks of blue cheese mixed into the blend of different meats. Those were just awesome topped with home grown lettuce and tomatos. I brought way too much, though, and I'm now going to be eating burgers for the rest of the week.

My grandmother broke out the photo albums. Gifts were exchanged. We managed to catch most of the football game by running an extension cord out from a second story window to a little 13-inch black and white with rabbit ears. The reception would blur whenever anyone walked near it. That might sound bad but you have to keep in mind, this was done by the same uncle who brought an adapter and said extension cord to run off of his car's cigarette lighter so we wouldn't have to miss the game. I made off with a wickedly hot chile plucked fresh from the earth that morning.

It was a nice, in so many words. But now, more than ever, I'm ready to get moving. Nothing like your relatives asking you, "So, what are you doing with yourself?" to get you motivated.

An Unfortunate Series of Events

Last year, at this time, I didn't have this blog. The year before that, I had nothing. The year before that, I forget what stopped me but I'd guess it was probably a misguided sense of propriety. Before then, I'm not even sure. But, for whatever reason, I've never had the opportunity to express my feelings on the anniversary of September 11th, the Day the Nation Stood Still. So, you'll forgive me if I try to sort through the conflicting emotion and baggage of that watershed day.

It's especially haunting this year because the anniversary falls on a Tuesday. Which was the day of the week that the towers originally fell. The day outside my window is overcast, it's rained only hours before, leaving the ground wet and the air heavy with precipitation just as it was six years ago. There is, there was a chill in the air as summer faded away into the crispness of fall. Just as it was when a symbol of American, of economic, might was destroyed in a grand redeclaration that we were under attack. When this:

Tumbled in a cloud of ashes and flames into this:

It's just spooky, really, how much today has played out like that fateful one so long ago. I keep expecting something to happen. Something awful. For that unexpected phone call to wake me from my reverie and into a world gone horrifically wrong.

That's, of course, how I found out in 2001. It's not a particularly interesting story, probably echoes the mundane experiences of so many others, but in September of 2001, I'd just finished with school. I was back in my hometown on the fringes of Detroit, puttering around, really at a loss for what to do with myself. I'd slept in that day, longer than I usually do, because I'd been tossing and turning the night before. I had no sense of warning, no special foresight, just the same vague anxieties that had been costing me sleep for months. But I had no real reason for being up at the crack of dawn, either. A meeting, an interview, something like that, later in the day, hooking up with my friends for another night on the town later that night, but nothing to rush about. My biggest plans, that morning, were about going to the Michigan game that Saturday with the tickets I'd bartered for with my sister. She'd given me her season package with their low, student price saving me from having to pay the newly raised alumni price and, in exchange, I did...something I can't remember for her in return. And I was going to visit the campus to pick those tickets up, wanted to take my sister who'd just started college out to lunch, needed to figure out where to park and who to bring and where to tailgate, and had a dozen other ordinary concerns that were about to be seared away in the ashcloud.

For some reason, as I went about my wake-up routine, prepared myself to head out into the day, I hadn't turned on the news. Which was unusual for me since at the time, I was a voracious consumer of the news media. So a day that started without CNN or NPR and instead in a deafening silence only broken by the crunch of my cereal was an unusual one. I found out thanks to a frantic call from my mother, asking me if I was okay. Asking me if I had seen the news yet in response to my confusion. She worked downtown, even then, in one of the larger buildings. One that would be a dwarf in Manhattan skyline but on that day, as that panic gripped us, as we all turned towards the skies, nothing seemed safe. It hadn't been evacuated yet, that would come later, but already the work day had ground to a halt. Radios, televisions had been turned on and the entire building was no doubt riveted. In the background, I could hear the phones of my mother's normally immaculate work environment ringing off the hook. Could hear the fear in her voice.

I turned on the news. Saw the towers burning. Saw them fall. Images that hollow out the bottom of my stomach to this day. And, in my shock, I was riveted. Just entranced by the coverage. Waiting for someone, for something to make sense of it all. It was a trance I don't believe I came out of for weeks. My phone continued to ring as the web of my family drew tightly about itself as we all tried to contact each other. I spoke with my mother, again, as word was being passed around that the building was closing and they could all go home. When I was talking with my sister, I realized, right then, that the Michigan game was never going to be played. That a stadium full of a hundred thousand people was at once too tempting a target and too frightening a prospect. My brother needed to be picked up from high school, which had been closed as well. My aunt wanted to see if I was okay. My uncle wanted to know if I wanted to drive with him to New York to see if there was anyway to help. My grandmother wanted to know what she was going to do with her plane tickets to Florida as the planes were being grounded. Really, I think she just wanted to complain. Everyone wanted to know if I'd heard from my cousins who lived in the Bronx. I wanted to call my friends. Not because I had any reason beyond seeing if they were alright. Not because it would do anything. But because hearing their voices would make me feel just that small bit better.

That was my Tuesday, on September the 11th, six years ago. And I'm afraid now. It feels so much like that day. And we've done so much to squander that amazing moment when things felt so wrong. Because it was also a moment we were pulled together by our shared tragedy. Not one, I think, where the world changed but one where people were willing to. A watershed moment in our history, a chance to divert ourselves from our current path, and redirect ourselves into something new. But the road we've traveled since then has been one filled with blood and tears as we've pulled ourselves even further apart. Misguided wars, grabs for power, and the cowardice of those who were supposed to lead have left us no better protected than we were six year ago. And what I fear, right now, is that we're much worse off. That it's only a matter of time before my phone rings again in response to some other disaster because, somehow, it's all gone wrong again.

But while I'm afraid, I'm also hopeful. Because that horrible day six years ago was one I'd never have wished for, true, but it was one that spurred me to action. Pushed me out of the doldrums, of complacency. By the end of that year, I was in a different place, trying, working to make it better. Pushing myself past the limits I thought I had because I've always thought it best to try and take something positive out of the bad times. It wasn't long, of course, before it all fell apart and I, again, found myself at a loss. But, I did, for that brief, wonderful time, manage to turn from my course. And if I can do that once, I can do it again. And if I can do it, then everyone can. This day, this situation we find ourselves in, might be a sad one. It might be for the best to take today to pause, to reflect on who we are and where we've come from, and properly mourn that. But we're not so far gone, not so poor off, that we can't improve, if we would but only try.

This Is The Most Awesome Thing I've Yet Seen This Day

Behold, high school students, a camcorder, and a script stitched together from Star Trek and Julius Caesar:

Bonus content. There's a blooper reel, too:

All I have to say is I'm glad I grew up before the age of YouTube. Because that's exactly the sort of thing my friends and I would have done. Remind me to tell you about the fake radio show we did for far too long one of these days...

Guild Wars: Out of the Mists of the Past

I have, understandably, been somewhat ambivalent about Guild Wars lately. On the one hand, I'm not picking up GW:EN, I'm really not planning to any time soon, and I'd sooner shove an active stick blender down my pants than get deeply involved in things again. But on the other, I can't seem to help logging on to run some mission or quest whenever I have a spare few minutes - the way I always envisioned doing. Because, at its heart, the game is still fun and engaging for me and decent enough as a time-waster. It's like I know there's this big, important event happening, I know I should be involved, but I can't quite bring myself to care. And I can't quite figure out why.

Still, while I'm not gazing into my navel or stealing a few moments storming Glint's Lair because, you know, I never really have slain the prescient beast on my own and it's far past time I corrected that, I've been getting nostalgic. Like someone wistful for their salad days will idly flip through a yearbook or a stack of pictures, I've been revisiting the shattered ruins of old haunts. Looking at old threads, old conversations, to walk with the ghosts of a time long gone. It's just fascinating to me to look at the arguments from the past. Bold statements that Elmos would sound the deathknell for primary Monks. Epic posts arguing that skill crystals and the ninth slot they brought with them would be the game's downfall. Builds of a past when people were still trying to find their way. Strat that would be laughable today being bandied about as revelation. How much time, how many bytes did we waste in caring about things that turned out to not matter? Or did we, really, waste them at all? Were those kind of things necessary to get where we are today? Did we have to make those mistakes, miss those insights, to gain the knowledge we carry forward from now? It's the sort of thing that keeps me awake nights, staring at the ceiling and wondering how it might have been, if only.

Here's just one example, from the old days at TGH. This is a conversation I missed since I was in the middle of launching Guru at the time and, thus, persona nongrata. But, if you think I'm going to dredge up an old instance where I was holding courts – saying, for example, that Hunter Shot was useless (Missed the numbers there. Prot Strike, I got right away. But Hunter's was like that for Rangers. It's not about the effects, which have never been too thrilling, it's all about that quick recharge, letting you pour more damage into the spike that was about to explode all over the PvP scene. And I completely did not get that, made a jackass out of myself shitting all over the skill, until someone pointed it out to me. I think that's about when I realized that I was in way over my head and needed to get out.), that Wastrel's Worry Mesmers had no place in the game (Which, obviously, they do. But at the time Energy Drain and e-denial were stupid crazy broken. And there was no reason to do anything but abuse the hell out of them and put a butt helmet on two or three different enemies at a single time. Any Mesmer not doing that was a poor one. Operative word there being was as e-denial got swiftly nerfed in the pants and Korean teams using Dom Mes with Wastrel's just ravaged people in Taiwan. I hear Chuck was taunted mercilessly about this because he was right there with me shouting “Don't use Wastrel's, use ENERGY DRAIN!!!” from the megaphone.), and any other gross lapses in judgement – well, you've sadly overestimated my intestinal fortitude.

It's a thread from the tail end of January, 2005 – a time before release, but a time when monthly BWEs were giving everyone a taste of the game and, as I said, Guru was in the midst of taking off (A reason, perhaps, why a lot of the heavyweights I remember from back in the day neglected to weigh in. They were all busy crashing at the new place and enjoying the refined, upmarket atmosphere that the founding troika had provided. Inde might have been running - bankrolling - things, but it was really Spooky, THX, and I who'd worked like mad to pull the thing off. THX was the linchpin. He did the lion's share of the work behind the scenes, as the hardworking, affable glue holding everything together because of how much everyone respected him. He was the guy behind the databases, the projects, like the skill directory and more that really drew people in. Spooky's involvement immediately legitimized us in the eyes of nearly everyone involved. Even then, we all knew he was a rising star destined for greater things. His deft touch with the written word created the charm, the little plays on words and forms and encouraged everyone involved to try just that little bit harder. Me? Well, I set the tone. I was always comfortable playing the heavy, the black hat, the abusive mod drunk on his own inflated sense of power, to whip everyone into shape, if need be. But more than that, I like to think I brought my own kind of legitimacy, my own kind of authority, that drew the right kind of collaborators and commentors to the site. Would they have shown up if my timelost friends had picked someone else to invite into the fold? I'll never know. But I like to think I was known for the intelligence, for the attention and care towards detail that I brought to a discussion and that there were plenty of people out there who wanted to talk to me in those days. And that helped to establish the Guru as a place to be for a hardcore crowd that had grown disillusioned with the other available options. Nowadays, of course, it's an intractable swamp, a hive of wretched stupidity which has collapsed in due to the sheer weight of its own uselessness. I, of course, say that in the nicest way possible. But you have to remember, that wasn't what we, what I, set out to create. In the early days, we wanted to be the next Lurker's Lair. The three of us, together, our goal was quality, not quantity. And all the attention, all the massive influx of new and clueless, all stemmed from that commitment to being just that little bit better than everyone else.). And the original poster's someone who'd clued into the potential of Crip Shot did the sensible thing, for TGH, and ran to the boards to bitch about it.

It's fascinating, with the benefit of hindsight to see just how correct he was. Crip Shot was grossly unfair, amazingly so, and it was going to come to dominate Warrior builds and the style of play in the months ahead. All because of the points that are made in the thread – its low cost, its low recharge, and how it eliminates many of the commonly available counters, like Deflect Arrows (Shield's Up didn't even enter into the picture. Probably because, at the time, it sucked an noone cared about it. I love this kind of stuff.), because it ignored Blocking. And Evading, a mechanic that's now relegated to the boneyard of history.

But more interesting to me is reading the reaction. There's Blackace, good old Blacky, spreading malicious disinformation about Expertise.

There's good old Scaphism, for another example, arguing that a blind bot screwing over a Crip Shot Ranger is, at best, a tactical draw. Something that might have made sense at the time, but runs counter to the experience and development of the game. Erasing that Ranger, even for a time, even at the high costs mentioned, is worth it. Not because of things like e-management and more powering the Ele through the gap but because by taking that Cripple out of the picture, the Eles team has just gone on a power play. They're blasted open that elusive window of opportunity and now their Warriors, their melee attackers are running impeded all over the field. The Ranger's team finds their targets kiting away with ease, lacking that snare they've been relying on to train. One team's offense finds that a critical piece of their opponent's defenses has been blown away. The other finds their offense hamstrung by a missing component. That's the sort of tradeoff a seasoned team, a good player, makes handsdown.

And, there's Falconer (Seriously, what happened to that guy? He used to know what he was talking about. /metajoke.) saying that Crip Shot was a wasted slot because people “rarely block or evade”. And he was making sense because this was back in the days before SoD and Wards and Aegis everyplace and all the countermeasures of the modern game just weren't used. Weren't even on the radar for the smart people who thought about the game, who followed it, who tried to dissect it into discrete pieces of understanding.

The calls in the thread for changes to Crip Shot were, actually, what ended up happening, for the most part. It got linked to Marksmanship – not really the problem but an important step – and more importantly, had its cost amped up to make it harder to keep the entire team snared for long periods of time. And creating a tension between pumping up your Expertise high enough to actually use the skill and keeping your Marksmanship at a level where you still got a useful snare. That pretty much took the Ranger out of play for a while. Until juicy new skills like Mending Touch and Natural Stride along with BHA and BA brought them back to the forefront. At the time, though, Cirp Shot Rangers with Distortion were the order of the day (I have this pet theory that there's really only one bow Ranger build at any given time. Just like Dagger Sins, some people use last meta's model, some people experiment to find the next's, but there's just one popular, effective build that's the best at doing what you want that character to do. Other classes have a bit more variety but, ever since R-spike went the way of the dodo, the only thing that changes about a Ranger is the particulars. You've bolted D-shot and a prep and a run/block stance to that bar and only need to pick the elite flavor you want – these days I imagine the choice is between Broadhead's or Burning still although I'm completely guessing. But the actual archetype hasn't advanced far from the Crip Shot days.). Which was an important, metashifting tweak.

Now, though, Crip Shot's been rebalanced back down to 10 energy, making it insanely cheap again. And the crazy thing is that it doesn't matter. Crip Shot used to be the skill. The one that the game revolved around, the one that forced build decisions and tactical adjustments. Now, there's just no way those cripples stick in a metagame that eats conditions raw. There's too many good skills for dealing with them. Too much of a focus in the planning to deal with them. And too much experience hard won by keeping the frontliners clean of blinds and more besides. They could put Crip Shot at 5 energy and I wouldn't be tempted to run it any more than I am tempted to run Pin Down (You'd need some kind of really condition heavy pressure team just to make it fly. Something like the old Tainted Flesh builds. And I'm not sure those really work anymore.). Just not as effective anymore. The game's passed it by.

But in that thread, no one knew it. No one had even encountered Ranger Spike yet. Crippling Shot was another menace on the horizon that someone was smart enough to catch only to be shouted down. It mattered back then. Just fascinating. Staring into the abyss of that past.

Like A Sexy Hamburger

Well, I don't know about you, but I enjoyed my Labor Day weekend. The weather was perfect for grilling or heading to the park. For pretty much anything else you'd care to do in the wanning days of summer, really. Not so elsewhere, as word from my brother in sunny California is that the temperature crested 110 degrees over the weekend. They're stuck in a heatwave and I took the opportunity to get my barbs in. I consider it only fair because it's only a matter of time before I have to hear about the eighty degree weather and lack of fabric in bikinis at the beach while I'm heading out to scrape a foot of snow off my car.

I hear there was some sort of football contest over the weekend which, were I to acknowledge it, might have ruined my mood. However, I've selectively edited my instance of reality to completely remove all traces of any football program at my alma mater. This took several careful hours of drinking and blunt force trauma to the cranium but I'm largely happy with the results. Ignorance truly is bliss.

We also used the weekend to celebrate my mother's birthday. It actually falls today but the holiday and the promise of a backyard feast of unheralded proportions was enough to unscatter the clan for a few brief hours before the winds took them again. I commandeered a barbeque, the better to foist my homemade chicken basil sausages (The secret ingredient? The barest hint of fresh mint.) on my ravenous relatives. But otherwise it was a pretty lowkey celebration. I spent most of the time running around time trying to get a last minute present together.

Made the mistake of going to Eastland in my quixotic search for the pair of white t-shirts which were my assigned prey (My sister, the other one, treats birthday lists like scavenger hunts.). Just like every other time I've been to that mall in the past five or so years, I was reminded just why I need to stop going there. It was getting bad when I was growing up and Eastland was a quick walk from the halls of my high school and a favorite place to hang after (*cough*during*cough*) classes. Getting rundown and shabby what with stores closing and leaving and all, but by now it's a shell of its former self. And, as my DJ friend would no doubt say, the merchandise has skewed distinctly urban, along with the clientele. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but not exactly what I was shopping for. Still, I had to get something. It probably would have helped if I had gotten any kind of ideas more than 36 hours before the gifts were to be unwrapped. Ultimately, though, I returned from the hunt successful. Benefiting from my last minute shopping with some healthy Labor Day discounts. Or it could have been just clearance price slashing as they try to get the last goods out the door before bulldozing the place, either way I wound up spending far less than I had planned to, in a good way. The surplus went towards a nice assortment of chocolates – also on sale – because you can't go wrong giving my mom some tasty sweets.

Late word out of the ancestral compound of the Pepperino dynasty, however, reports that I wound up getting the wrong sized shirts. I kinda thought I did, but my policy when buying clothes for females is to err on the side of getting things too small instead of too large – anything to avoid the “you think I'm fat, don't you?” speech. This sad state of affairs will now kick off a circular relay of receipts, returns, and rendezvous as my mother descends into the third level of retail hell. Attempt to get the right items and right slip of paper in the right hands at the right store before those shirts become irrevocably, irretrievably, irreturnable. We must, you understand, for they were on sale!

In other words, it was a great break. Came at a good time, too. Things...haven't been good lately. I'm sure I'll wind up talking about it in more detail at some point in the future. For now, though, I've spent enough time worrying about what's been done and undone. I'd rather focus on the positive. Because refreshed, replenished, renewed I'm ready to get back into it.

It's a new month, a brand new day, and I'm anxious to make sure it turns out to be a good one. Black nights behind, brighter days ahead.

Getting Ready For Guild Wars: Fan is Short For Fanatic

The Super Fan contest was an interesting one. And if I can be said to know someone by frequenting their site than I do, in fact, know one of the people who won. Brinstar's going to be at PAX and promises to deliver some reporting from the event. Including, no doubt, the GW:EN launch part. So, a belated congratulations, but congratulations all the same.

However, the most super fan of all is, of course, me. Since, I'm nowhere near Seattle at the moment, though, and not exactly willing to shell out for the trip on the off chance of getting a pass to early Guild Wars party access or whatever, I didn't enter. But we all know that the e-king would not be denied in this, had he but chosen to pursue it. Finding out about it after it was over probably had something to do with that, too.

But, seeing the page of the winning entries, I couldn't help but think what I'd have said if I had, though. Because, somehow, I don't think “You fuckers owe me.” would have worked, here's what I would have written:

There are dozens of stories I could tell but the one I will is that I first played Guild Wars back in 2004, because of a link I blindly followed from Penny Arcade. A tiny file. Only sixty some k. A free demo, promising a few hours of fun to while away the hours. It sounded like fun. That installation file's never left my computer since. In that time, I've been a tester, a poster, a writer, a player, a builder, a teammate, a winner, and more. And less. You see, in those stories I won't tell, I've left the game, come back to the game, left again. Cared about it until I didn't want to care any more. In all that time, I've never taken the opportunity before, so I'd just like to say thanks for all those memories.

Which is too long as always but, you know, fuck it.

Where I've Been: Back From Cali

So, you remember how my newly graduated brother got a job out on the west coast and was about to move there? Well, he was planning on driving because he's young and it turns out to be pretty expensive to ship your new car loaded down with all your crap across the country while you take flight. Driving across country with said car slightly less full of said crap makes sense especially when you have a friend, also starting a job in said west coast, to share the expenses and trip and eventual living quarters with. Plus, as I said, everyone should drive across the country at least once, if only to appreciate how nice it is to have airlines.

So my brother and this guy he knows from school both landed nice jobs out in nicer California that aren't too far from each other. They've gotten an apartment to share and the whole works. And they were planning on making the trip together. It's pretty amazing how well things fell into place for my brother. The only problem was the 11th hour flaking of his friend who was suddenly unable to drive across country for reasons to complicated and annoying to get into here. But understandable ones, let's just leave it at that. But reasons that left my brother faced with a drive from the metro Detroit area through to the greater Los Angeles area all by his lonesome. That's something like 2,000 miles. And let's just say our mother was freaking out about running off the road in the middle of the night because he'd been driving ten hours straight or something.

So, I got asked and since I didn't have anything better to do, I said, sure, I'll drive across country with you and catch a flight back. What the hell, right? The company gave my brother some moving money so it's not like it was going to be coming out of my pocket or anything. The last minute nature of it all, though, left me with little time to do much more than hastily pack a bag of clothes, toiletries, and my aging laptop and scramble out the door.

The trip itself was fairly uneventful. My family has long perfected the arts of passive aggressive silences and speaking a lot without actually saying anything so it's not like my brother and I had a bunch of long heart to heart conversations. Mostly it was, “Hey, corn.” “Yep. Nebraska.” “Yeah.” We stopped in Chicago to visit with some of my brother's friends. It was as lovely a city as ever. Visiting there always reminds me of everything my hometown of Detroit isn't. As in, active and vibrant and alive. Of course, that's probably just a memorable night of drunken revelry with a bunch of college age kids talking. We also took a little spin down route 66. Stopped by the Grand Canyon along the way, too. My brother was pretty anxious to get going so we didn't go hiking or on any of the trails or anything so, let's face it, there's only so much you can do with looking at a giant hole in the ground. But it means I can check off another of those “places to visit” off the list.

Otherwise, we only stopped to eat or at night to find a motel so splitting the time behind the wheel we could spend most of the day driving. My brother drives like a maniac, flying down the highway weaving in and out of traffic like he's playing Gran Turismo. I drive like a little old lady, hunched over, hands at ten and two (Well, okay, 11 and 3), constantly afraid of careening out of my lane and into other vehicles in a shower of twisting steel and glass. Both of us drive with one finger on the radio, flipping between stations for a choice blipvert of music with manic grace. Between the two of us, we made good time. It only took us about three days to get there which is pretty good since I always thought it took about five to get out west.

California was gorgeous, as you'd imagine. Although a bit sunny for someone who's genetic predisposed to foraging for tubers in a bog somewhere in northern Europe. I'm a pasty white motherfucker who sunburns just thinking about a cloudless day, I'm just saying. My brother's apartment is student-ish and about what you'd expect for someone who's just gotten his first job and bought sight unseen through the internets. But it's pretty close to where he works and, given the convoluted mess that is the LA freeway system, that's a good thing. Unfurnished, though, which means my brother is now spending time looking for a mattress and desk and everything else you can't strap into a Fusion and haul across the country.

Spent a day or so around LA, taking in the sights. Tried to look up a few friends in Silicon Valley, thought better of it since I haven't heard from them in a year, and let it go. And then it was time for my flight back home – went standby so I got the ticket for a song. Which was the part of the trip I'd been dreading since flying brings out the worst in my fear of heights. And of crashing to the ground in a vast heap of screaming metal and flame. But, no, I'm seriously afraid of heights and that dizzying glimpse out of the window of a city spiraling into (or out of, depending) view on landings is enough to make me go weak in the knees. Not to mention that queer sensation of rising and falling in the pit of my stomach like the one I always get in a tall elevator. By my departure time, I was a nervous wreck, having nearly convinced myself that fate was conspiring against me and I should cancel the flight so I could be the lucky fellow who'd avoided the destined crash by stepping off the plane at the last minute, and marvel to myself at the quirk of fate. I know I'm statistically far likelier to die in a car crash but getting on a plane just screws with my mind.

The flight was, of course, uneventful. I did, though, manage to sit next to a particularly lovely young woman. Thanks to the oft-neglected gift of the Blarney Stone and the smooth Irish charms flowing through my veins I talked her up and down the length of the flight. Even got her number – or the digital age equivalent - although I suspect the fatalistic attitude that the plane was about to drop from the sky at any moment had something to do with that. It's not exactly going to do me much good since she lives in DC but, you know, it's an accomplishment for me.

I seem to have arrived back just in time for torrential downpour of biblical proportions – I don't think it's stopped raining yet. And an unseasonal drop in the mercury that's especially stunning since when I stepped on the plane it was a balmy mid-80s. I'm wearing a long sleeve shirt at the moment. And I'm still cold.

Anyhow, it was a fun trip and one I'm glad I made over my misgivings. A little weird to be back after, well, getting out. If I learned one thing it's that satellite radio is really, really awesome. I don't know how I'm going to go back to terrestrial now.

It's Pop. It's Red. What's So Hard to Understand About That?

As you may know, since hardly a week goes by when I don't mention it, I'm from the D. The 313. Motown. D-town. I'm from Detroit, in other words. Which, you probably don't know, is the heart of pop country. It's well north of the soda/pop dividing line which marks where the heathen tongue takes hold and people start referring to their carbonated beverages as “soda” instead of the correct “pop”. Oh, we Midwesterners are a welcoming bred so we'll humor visitors when they request a soda at our restaurants but we all know what they're really called. And the reason we do, in large part, is thanks to Faygo. Who've been in operation for a hundred years at this point. To celebrate, have a commercial:

Oh yeah. Although I'm more of a Towne Club partisan, myself. I have a TC crate within arm's reach as I type this very sentence - no longer used for storing bottles, though - which has been in my possession since I loaded up on a trip back home during college (My brother was the same way with Crush cream soda – the day-glo pink kind which you can only get in Canada.). Still miffed they switched from those retro-cool glass bottles to plastic ones, by the way. But I'm still partial to a good Rock and Rye among other flavors. The best – and most popular – is the Redpop mentioned in that song.

It's strawberry flavored, in case you're wondering. And while Faygo's earned a reputation as cheap pop (It's usually priced a bit lower than the national brands since they have to be competitive and all.), it's really good. And you can credit its popularity with spreading the use of the word “pop”.

But, really, I can't think of Faygo without think of the ICP. Juggalos!

I'm probably dating myself but the first concert I ever went to was for the Insane Clown Posse and, yes, I did get sprayed with some Faygo – one of their bits is to drench the crowd with some Orange Pop or similar as part of their stage show. We did, in fact, travel to the show with a trunk full of Faygo ourselves. Sadly no fat chicks...

Great Milenko wave your wand. Don't look now but your life is gone. This is all because of you. What you got yourself into.

Those are all songs from their best album (Because it came out when I was still in high school, of course. My friends and I weren't hardcore Juggalos or anything but, you know, we thought they were cool.), the Great Milenko. Which was one of the six Joker cards the ICP would reveal to cause the rise of the Dark Carnival and the apocalypse. Jebus Christ, what the hell were we drinking?

Oh, right:

I hear that's actually on a shirt. I so want it.

And, because I don't want to end this post with the...unique taste of ICP rattling in your ears, have some Esham. Not his best, but to keep with the theme the song mentions the Faygo, too, so it's all good: