My Imram Continues

Still nomadic at work, borrowing offices where and when I can. The varying decor of people's workspaces continues to intrigue me. Take, for example, this high-tech piece of equipment.


Classic. My favorite part is this:
Was this really an issue at some point?

Blub blub

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Bubbles -- my first foray into custom vinyl toys.

Isn't he a handsome devil?

On The Enduring Relevance of Wizards

Oh, don't roll your eyes. You saw Harry Potter.

Greg sent me the story he submitted to Blizzard's creative writing contest. It A) was awesome and B) got me to thinking. What is it about wizards? Why do the children of the Geek Nation love them so? I have a theory, and it starts with a little boy named Alex.

Everyone is stimulated by intellectual activity. Everyone is stimulated by physical activity. But, when one falls to atrophy, the other increases.

As a kid, I never got into sports. I assume this is a learned trait, as I am the progeny of geeks. I spent my time doing geeky things. Video games. Computers. Reading. All this time spent in abstractions naturally led to me being pretty decent at my classes (with the glaring exceptions of phys ed and penmanship), which in turn made me the target of your standard schoolyard bullying.

Thus, physical people are bad, intellectual people are good, and there's no such thing as being both -- so said young Alex's mind. Anyone who played a sport was separate from my kind, and they certainly didn't want me around.

It took me a very long time to get past this mental division. "People can be smart AND jocks? Nonsense. One camp or the other."

So, when narrative comes into play, who is an incurable young geek going to tend towards? Rough-and-tumble heroes who punch they're way through problems (which are inevitably caused by evil geniuses)? Uh, no. Have you seen the way those guys treat the bookworms (who are only brought along to crack some code, anyway)?

Enter the wizards. People who possess the ability to interact with the physical world directly through their minds. A few mumbled phonemes from a dusty tome and BOOM -- problem solved. Ancient languages. Books. Knitted brows. These are the things I could get behind.

All of a sudden mental skills outweigh physical ones. Abused kid kept under the stairs? No longer. Now he's a wizard so powerful no one makes fun of his glasses.

But then there's the problem of Hermione Granger. So much of an egghead that other wizards make fun of her. You don't want to be like that, do you? Best get yourself on the quidditch green. Some air would do you good.

A bit much?

I'm temporarily nomadic at work. A new office is being cobbled together for me, so I'm camping out at a retiree's former workspace.

She likes cats. A lot. How much, you ask?

Enough to tape a picture of a cat to the paperclip holder.

Who uses sonic?

Garv and Lisa bought a house. Jess and I trundled over there to see what we could do to help during this, the first weekend of their ownership. In order to be prepared, I stuck a bunch of tools in my man-purse. Can you tell which one is mine?

Let me make it easy for you -- mine's the one with the sonic screwdriver.

P.S. Took this picture with the DSi, and I'm pretty satisfied with it.

The New Hotness

I'm posting this from the Opera browser in the Nintendo DSi. My experience with the device so far has been a positive one.

And yet, still no internal document storage. Alls I'm looking for is to be able to jot a note down and to email it later. Come on Nintendo -- hear my plea.

California Pipe Dreaming

Would I move to Irvine, CA for the perfect job?

Thing A) Blizzard -- the company that brought you Warcraft etc. -- is holding a fan fiction contest. Well, they're calling it a 'creative writing contest', which it is, but it's a fan fiction contest.

Thing B) Blizzard also posted a writer job for an upcoming game.

It doesn't seem like much of a reach to think that the contest is a recruitment tool, especially considering that the entry form asks for your published writing experience and if you would like to become a professional writer. Oh, and the prize is a trip out to Irvine to meet the Blizzard writers. In the HR biz, that's what we call an "interview".

Now, does this or does it not sound like THE job for your old buddy Alex? Everything I have ever had published has had to do with video games, including two VG writing-related contests.

But would I move to Irvine? Sell the house, say goodbye to casual porch nights and nearby family? Have to take a plane every time I wanted to see someone?

And what the hell would I do with the other grand prize: Frostmourne?

The march abates not.

I really just can't bear it anymore. I see and hear that damned word everywhere. Iconic is not a synonym for "good" or "popular", amigos.

Today's link is possibly the worst use of the hated word to date. "Which music do you find most iconic from LucasArts' games?". Criminy. Music is iconic now?

Alex and the Calling Cards: In Which A Customer Finds Satisfaction

At many points over the last year I have found myself in several situations in which having a calling card would make things easier. And not just because I'm a Victorian at heart. The magazine, the play, overtures from an art board, newfound family etc. etc. -- carrying around a slice of study paper with my contact info on it would have come in handy.

A few weeks ago, moo.com re-caught my attention. Here's a site that makes nice full-bleed cards for a reasonable price. There are a few places out there which say they make cards for free, but they look spurious at best. And Moo is in Britain. I mean, come on.

So I get to the process of making a design for myself. It should come as no surprise that I end up with a space invader. A few minutes in gimp and I've got the pattern set.

But what about color? Fortunately, colourlovers.com provides lots and lots of excellent palettes. And, based on the spelling, again with the Britishness.

And there you have it -- tiny little calling cards, perfect for most occasions. Don't be shy now -- give it a shot.

Bananana split!

Has Twitter replaced blogging?

I'm seeing a lot fewer "I'm so annoyed by that guy who cut me off"-type posts recently. Facebook stati and Twitter updates (which I just refuse to call Tweets) are almost exclusively made up of this kind of content. So, why blog?

I encourage all to keep their blogs, even if you only post once week, a fortnight, a month. From time to time, you're going to have an idea which can't be easily communicated in 180 characters, and when that time comes, you'll be glad to click that rusty blogger.com link.

The good news is that when I get an RSS notification that a new post is up, it's likely going to be something more than a one-liner. Maybe constant communication will actually force us to become better writers.

That being stated, here's a funny video.

Sunny NE

New Hampshire really is a beautiful place, but only if you like the deep forest. In my hometown, any livable area has been hacked from the wilderness, and is still bordered by an impassable thicket of trees. Great if the Normans invade or something,

WBER

I do so love the 90. Nashua NH to Buffalo in 6:45. Also, for a decent swath of it you can listen to the only station that matters.

Here's a peep at the Clifton Springs rest area, enjoying the bleak view while I call work.

No Meaning Except That Which The Viewer Places

It had to end.

Went bald as a fundraiser for Roswell. Also got the beard trimmed down to a goatee.



Looked a bit too much like a neo-nazi for my tastes. Way too much for Jess's.

Could see why badasses wore the look -- felt like a mask. A mask of badassedness. Didn't match my physique, of course. Even less my demeanor. Did people treat me differently? Or did I act differently towards people?

Either way, back to myself.
Note: I blame my lack of subjects in the above post on the fact that I read The Watchmen over the weekend. Too much Rorschach, I guess.

At long last

Long-time B A Starters will remember the Great Debate over whether or not videogames are art. After much discussion and refining of definitions, my statement was "not yet". Maybe they can be, but no one's come up with anything so far that makes me say "yes".

I'm pissed at myself for not knowing anything about Jason Rohrer until Alanna lent me December's Esquire. I read the article and played Passage, and now can quite firmly state that there's at least one person out there making art in this format. (The person who made The Majesty of Colors counts too -- a post for a later date)

Before you go any further, I recommend giving Passage a play. I read the summary in the Esquire article before I played it and wish I hadn't. Still, despite knowing the point before going into it, I still had an emotional reaction to the game.

Passage provides you with choices. Do I hunt for treasure chests, or do I explore the world? Should I marry? If I do, it becomes harder to get the treasure but more rewarding to explore. But no matter what you choose, you will subtly age and die. Unceremoniously, suddenly, irrevocably.

For the first time in a lifetime of videogaming, I found myself reflecting. I have had a lot of reason to consider my choices recently -- career, personal, spiritual -- and this 5-minute game resonated with my meditations. It's an interactive Beethoven's fifth; go ahead and make your silly little choices -- fate will win and they will have done nothing to change that. All you can influence is your own experience, and try to do as much with your 5 as possible.

I'll be keeping an eye on what this gent produces. If you find anyone else out there working to communicate emotion through the interactivity of videogames, do please throw a comment my way.

VI-NAAAAAYYY!!!

A heartfelt congratulations to the Benzins on the birth of their first child, Vincent.

But where, pray tell, did the name come from?

Perhaps it was Vincent O'Neill. You know, theater stuff.








Or maybe Vincent Van Gogh? They're creative types. (Apparently its pronounced Van Gokh. Who knew?)












My hope is that the littlest Benzin was named after mysterious bad-ass Vincent Valentine. I have my doubts, though.










Either way, I look forward to meeting the little guy.

Back again

And once again we find ourselves talking about Neuromancer.

So, did you give Dollhouse a watch? The St. Whedon-blest Fox show featuring Faith? The one about girls who get personalities shoved in their minds to make them perfect for a job?

Naturally, this sort of technology finds itself being used for prostitution. Which is exactly how it worked in Neuromancer. Bad-assed Molly did a stint as a hooker for a while, but never remembered any of it. A program was put in her head before the session and her brain was wiped afterwards.

Until, of course, the memories started to crop back up, a device we already starting to see in Dollhouse.

This is not an anti-whedon post. This is a pro-gibson post. I mean, did the guy think of everything?

Strange Days

So, it's clear there's some odd stuff happening around Buffalo. A plane drops out of the sky (to which I reacted very emotionally, if I may share. I wore all black the next day.). A man whose job is to fight Middle-Eastern stereotypes post-9/11 beheads his wife. Sick, sick, sick.

But perhaps oddest of all -- I fixed something. I fixed the treadmill. Like with tools and stuff. Granted, I then went on to nearly burn the house down a few times through sheer stupidity, but I really did fix something.

Maybe this all related to the Unitarian... service (?) I went to last week.

The Coke Ad

I have been led to understand that Cola-cola is the real thing, and indeed that there ain't nothin' like it. How then, are we to take the superbowl commercial entitled "Avatar"?



You know the one. Dude is walking around the city and web-enabled people turn into their online personas. Elves, zombies, pokemen, and space adventurers go about their mundane business all around our protagonist. He finally takes a respite from his odyssey in a seat next to a big bad orc, who, it turns out is the cute girl in real life.

Is this meant to be a "book-by-its-cover" morality tale? After all, the frumpy lady is a 60's spy-movie femme fatale in the digital world. The nattily-dressed business man appears as a blue-skinned beastie. Surely our avatars, the faces which we choose for ourselves, speak much more about who we are than our offline bodies.

At about the half-way point, though, a few ironic vignettes appear in rapid succession. A pasty man in a white short-sleeved oxford shirt (the uniform of a fool in advertising) ignores a woman who struggles to get her stroller up the stairs, but turns into a superhero before our eyes. A spitting image of the Victor dog -- you remember, the one who hears his master's voice on the record-player -- bounces a sad blue ball against the leg of a boy who is apparently engaged in a particularly exciting hand-held video game. A child is dutifully pushed on a swing by a virtual supermom, who is far more interested in texting with her other hand.

So perhaps, then, the fine people at Coca-cola are saying something different. Perhaps our choices of avatar speak more about who we think we are than who we are in truth.

What, then, of our orc? She certainly seems upset when the protagonist reaches for her tasty bottle of Coke -- her green brow furrows and an angry sneer appears on her fanged mouth. Are we to assume that this young woman, who to all appearances seems nice enough in the real world, is in her mind a nasty and brutish agent of evil? Or has this gladsome prince appeared to kiss her back into the form of the princess?

Next time you meet someone, ask them what they use for their avatar. Share a Coke and see what that says about them. You should probably keep your observations to yourself, though -- at least until you exchange email addresses.

More facets of the same jewel

I've posted several times now about the natural combination of my two hobbies -- the written word and videogames -- and how I can't seem to separate the two. During my brief but passionate stint in Second Life, I found myself in digital libraries holding digital book-readings. My ardor for the Final Fantasy series reached new heights when FFIII let me use weighty tomes as weapons. The codex-toting archaeologists in Lego Indy found themselves in heavier rotation than was really necessary. On the Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness features Tycho reading at all times, even when shooting evil in its grinning maw, and I just naturally had to unlock his super-weapon.

So, what about Warcraft? Oh yes, gentle reader, I have found a way.

When you're not killing things in Warcraft, you have a profession. That's right, a job in a fantasy world. Where's the fantasy in that, you ask? Well, my profession is Inscription. I make ink and write runes on scraps of paper. These "glyphs" have, unsurprisingly, magic properties, and I sell them for a more-than-tidy profit.

And, as if that wasn't enough, with the right training and some luck, a scribe like myself can make books. Big old grimoires that lend mighty powers to their holders. For example, I now carry around a book that lets my breathe fire. Fire breath! From holding a book! Marvelous.

The trouble is, sometimes my digital adventures creep into my waking life*. It's all I can do to take my bright, modern-feeling home office and redecorating it like this:


It's actually not all that far off, now that I think about it.


*videogames are far more restful for me than sleep. Ask around.

Little help

Roadrunner has apparently decided to get rid for the web space for their customers. So, I am on the hunt for free/inexpensive web hosting. Advice?

Ten Clues I Hate About the Man

So... this is Hamlet, right?

Once You Understand the Settings

Now that I own a home, I need to develop some understanding of the tools used for its improvement. So far, only one makes sense to me.

Episode IV: A New Pad

In an act seeping finality, I dropped off the keys to the old place on Lancaster tonight. The era of porching and bulldogs has closed forever. Home ownership seems to consist mainly of catching colds, checking that the doors are locked and buying the wrong thing at The Home Depot.

are for kids.

Here's my latest review for Library Thing Early Reviewers program. Gladiatrix, or "One Woman's Inability to Have a Good Day".

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

The move has been... let's call it "delayed". I'm sure that in years to come we will look back on the events of this week fondly, but right now no so much.

No really, I'm fine.

This I can tell you: two nights before closing on a house is awfully close.

And now presenting...

Did something last night I haven't done in ten years -- stood under the lights of the stage at the Marie Maday. Fortunately, I remembered to keep the lights in my eyes so as not to be distracted by the highly bored faces in the audience. That and my own actor move, frowning and shaking my head at everything the other characters say, made it a fairly painless experience.

One of the odd things about staged readings is the question of movement. Do you look at the other actors? Nudge, punch, etc?

Heh heh...

Emphasis mine. CNN.com sure knows how to make you do a double-take.

Back to the croaking

You’ll forgive me if I start this post with a quotation. Pulled from a recent book by a local writer, it describes his experience in setting up a new business, and I can’t help but find it very telling.

“There are croakers in every country, always boding its ruin. Such a one... said he was sorry for me… for [this] was a sinking place, the people already half-bankrupts, or near being so; all appearances to the contrary, such as new buildings and the rise of rents, being to his certain knowledge fallacious; for they were, in fact, among the things that would soon ruin us.... This man continued to live in this decaying place… refusing for many years to buy a house there, because all was going to destruction; and at last I had the pleasure of seeing him give five times as much for one as he might have bought it for when he first began his croaking.”

Now, allow me to clarify. The source of this abridged passage is founding father Benjamin Franklin’s widely-read autobiography. So when I say “a recent book by a local writer”, I mean “recent” compared to the sack of Troy and “local” compared to Addis Ababa. The city he describes is Philadelphia and the topic is the establishment of his legendary printing house.

All Buffalonians know their share of croakers, and even indulge in the occasional croak themselves. It’s difficult to resist. But the two examples Franklin gives of “appearances to the contrary” – new buildings and higher rents – can undoubtedly be seen here.

Five minutes clicking through BuffaloRising.com will bring up quite a few updates on new builds or conversions. The Federal Courthouse, an old Expo hotel, Rock Harbor, the new Burchfield Penney – feel free to append as many et ceteras as you like. Take a drive down-town and witness cranes actually putting buildings up. Not exactly the image of decay you hear from the croakers.

As for rent increase, I can only offer anecdotal evidence, as I’m sure you can yourself. But consider the following, which I gleaned from an email debate between a croaker and someone with a more realistic perspective:

• In May, CNN Money listed Buffalo as the country’s fifth fastest-growing real estate market.
• Forbes put us within the top 100 cities in which to get a job in 2008.
• Newsweek lists City Honors as the #11 public school in the nation.

Spend an idle hour at buffaloniagara.org and find plenty of similar statistics, all of which certainly seem to be from unbiased third-parties.

Franklin gives plenty of advice in his autobiography, including that when positing an argument one should try to avoid definitive statements, that one should pad one’s statements with tempering “I believes” or “so I understands”. In this case, I will ignore this well-intended advice and state quite definitively that we should put a quick end to all of our self-defeating nonsense lest we end up like the man in Franklin’s parable. It’s not the snow that keeps people away from our fair city, it’s the croakers.

WBFO, #2 Finale

The new WBFO listener commentary is up. 'Cause I know you guys NEVER get tired of hearing me prattle on.

Monday Link Love

Now tell me this isn't cool. I'm glad we have reached a point as a society where we can search a limitless trove of knowledge before we've even finished a word. Why aren't we all Atlanteans yet?

WBFO, #2

A slightly-less funereal version of the Aunt Mickey post is my latest WBFO listener commentary, which will be aired on Tuesday AM at 6 and 8:30. Further updates as events warrant.

Only a Matter of Time

For some time now, my brothers have been my pathway to true geekiness. For example:

• It was my desire to understand their ways that introduced me to Magic: The Gathering, with long-lasting results.
• Pete gave me his copy of Record of Lodoss War, which was a first for me in many respects -- first time owning a full TV series, first anime in my collection and the first with subtitles.
• It was at Morgan's apartment that I played my first round of 8-man Halo, prompting me to buy the Xbox and leading to a few of the geekiest things I've ever done, including holding a video game tourney as fund-raiser, manning Halo at a bachelor party, and participating in a game-inspired improv show.

It should come as no surprise, then, that when I learned that Pete is currently playing World of Warcraft, I decided to try out the demo. We're not really letter-writers, but we are certainly gamers -- perhaps this will give us a chance to hang out, right?

Well, let me tell you this. PA has it right once again. From what I can tell so far, the game is mainly a steady stream of tasks involving killing X number of Y monsters. Snooze.

Now, I assume that once the tedium of grinding is done and you actually team up with people, some coolness can occur. Except that people are a pain in the ass. So, we'll see.

Croakers

Here's a snippet from His Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin.

There are croakers in every country, always boding its ruin. Such a one then lived in Philadelphia.... This gentleman, a stranger to me, stopt one day at my door, and asked me if I was the young man who had lately opened a new printing-house. Being answered in the affirmative, he said he was sorry for me, because it was an expensive undertaking, and the expense would be lost; for Philadelphia was a sinking place, the people already half-bankrupts, or near being so; all appearances to the contrary, such as new buildings and the rise of rents, being to his certain knowledge fallacious; for they were, in fact, among the things that would soon ruin us.... Had I known him before I engaged in this business, probably I never should have done it.

This man continued to live in this decaying place, and to declaim in the same strain, refusing for many years to buy a house there, because all was going to destruction; and at last I had the pleasure of seeing him give five times as much for one as he might have bought it for when he first began his croaking.

Sound like any towns you know?

Link-love

A bit more link-love for you tonight.

Stumbled across Wordcount recently, a little app that list words by usage. And yes, I did contact the creator to see if his tool could be used to trend data for use in my continuing offensive against the word "iconic" (sorry Eric), but he replied in the negative. #47267, FYI.

reCAPTCHA is awesome. Take one of the more annoying aspects of modern life and use it for the advancement of mankind's great work.

See Me

A few videos for the lot of you.

If you haven't been over to The Humanist yet, you should really watch this. A bit more impassioned than the approach I would take, but then isn't that always the case? The passage of proposition 8 in CA is yet another blot of the record of America, proving once again how far we have fallen from the immutable ideals laid out by our forefathers. For shame, California.

The complete Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello has been posted in excellent quality.

And most importantly, turn it up, man!



_________________

P.S. -- I just ran across an old favorite. I've watched about four minutes of West Wing in my viewing life, and this just happened to be a few of them.

And Good Luck.

Looks like Obama beat me to the punch in becoming the first internet president. Change.gov sounds like a fine plan for doing what the nets were built for -- getting info from one person to another. I'm all for it. Also, seems like a fine way to tag people who might try anything untoward. And then, of course, it's only a matter of time before people start getting arrested for things they email to the President-Elect. And once some evil overlords take over, an extensive digital record of people's opinons can easily be scoured for dissenters. We'll have ourselves an old-timey central-government-fueled witch-hunt based on these emails.

Or blog posts.... dang it! Well, I've assumed since age seventeen that once the new order of hyper-christian dictators begins I'll be among the first on the block.

Of Dewey and Geneology

Coughing one's way through the book-paper dust of an inherited library is a fine way to spend an evening, surely. When my father's Aunt Mickey decided to pack up the essentials and relocate to a home with fewer staircases, I did not -- could not -- understand how many books I was about to glean from her collection. The currency with which the elderly trade is bifold; possessions and the memories attached to them, and my wife Jess's and my reward for muscling Mickey along in her move is books.

Not all of them, not by the longest of shots. Aunt Mickey is a highly clever woman, the acuity of her speech never giving away her eighty-five years, and it would appear that the fountain of her continued youth is reading. As my wife tells it after days spent packing a life's worth of possessions into cardboard with the deftness only an Army-brat upbringing can teach, she owns at least ten times as many books as we do, and has read them all. Imagine that! Actually reading all the volumes in one's personal library.

I flicked through the boxes of books Aunt Mickey sent Jess home with every day, searching for arcane ISBN numbers in order to log them in my own unachievable task list and wondering what rubric she used to determine which would go to us and which to the "donate" pile. Why, exactly, did she feel that I specifically needed 'Robert's Rules of Order'? Why so many 70's-and-80's woman-power paperbacks? The musty pile surrounding me on the couch certainly represented the prism through which Aunt Mickey views us, and sleuthing out the whys made for a lusciously narcissistic diversion.

Corners of paper stick out from many of the books. Aunt Mickey did not just read her library, but continually annotated it. Scraps of notes in the horrific handwriting to which all in my family are heir can be found in a large percentage of the collection. Newspaper clippings have been folded into to the covers with the care of a film preservationist. Would you like to know the answer to Carroll's raven-and-writing-desk riddle? I've got it, tucked into the leaves of an annotated Alice. Images of Mickey sitting in her casually mod living room, gasping with interest at an article and describing it to my uncle as she tries to remember just where precisely that one book got to are now among my favorite non-participant memories.

Time spent with these books has given me an archaeological taste of my aunt's life and those of her family. One of my cousins went through a youthful period of UFO obsession in the sixties, for example. Somebody in the family studied more than a little French. A better argument for dating one's books cannot be made; a reading life like Mickey's could be measured in the tree-rings of the inside covers.

And what of when I am eighty-five? How will some great-nephew know my life? Through a pile of video games and check stubs? At the very least I can hope that my new acquisitions will provide a feeling of connection to family history and that my own library -- and life -- will be as worthy of interest.

A-men.

Allow me to channel a little Humanist with some Saturday Site-Love for artofmanliness.com.

We all know that manliness has suffered greatly over the last 40 years. The causes of this descent into effeminacy are multifarious, but lingering on them brings us no closer to revivifying the near-dead corpus of Man. This site champions our cause. Want to learn how to shave like your grandfather? Take a little trip.

Turn on the TV for fifteen minutes and you'll see how much modern US society hates men. Every commercial and most shows depicts us as fat, slothful fools. It is our own fault -- as traditional gender roles were destroyed in the previous decades, instead of doing the correct thing and simply eliminating bias against women we unmanned ourselves, incorrectly associating our strengths with the evils of our forefathers.

The rising popularity of gentlemanly items like cuff-links is indicative of the fact that men yearn to return to the days when the positive aspects of our nature were encouraged and revered. So, man up.

A New Hope

My crusade against the word "iconic" has been documented in part here on B A Start. I swear, not three days go by before I see it used. I refuse to believe this is due to some kind of increased awareness -- we all know it was Superman Returns.

I was doing some reading this afternoon and found a suitable replacement: paradigmatic. And this in an essay published in the Spring of 2007. Please, journalists bloggers and ad writers, start using this word as an alternate. I'm starting to lose it.

All I Need to Know I Learned from 'Big Trouble in Little China'.

#1 - Independence is manly.
#2 - Muscle shirts are only to be worn by men who are a) jacked and b) pricks.
#3 - Childhood fears don't really go away.
#4 - Reporters find the need to put themselves into ludicrous amounts of danger to get something called a "scoop". Don't become a reporter.
#5 - You see a dude dressed in samurai gear, he's probably magic. Do not mess.
#6 - That group of old men who spend all their time playing some board game know something.
#7 - Next time someone throws a knife at you, just grab it out of the air and throw it back.
#8 - If given the option, leave Kim Catrall behind.

Morningstar

It should come as no surprise to B A Starters that I am and always have been a fan of illustration made during the fifty years encircling the change of the prior millenium. I submit for your halloweeny enjoyment, this pic by Kay Nielsen.

I don't know what tale this is from, but damn if it doesn't look like Castlevania. And it's got the Nielsen big-canvas-small-subject thing going, which I always enjoy.

A bigger version here.

"Kun" is an honorific for boys

I would like an explanation, and I would like it soon. Anyone want to tell me why Domokun is advertising Halloween for Target? How exactly did the lovable if mysterious mascot for NHK become the spokesperson for spooooky holidays here in the US? I, for one, am baffled.

I mean, I get it. Target has been doing their best to get all coolified, what with their off-mainstream music finds etc. Why not grab viral phenom Domo? He's cute, he's from Japan, geeks love him -- he's god damned perfect.

And yet, there's something a little odd about it.

Sure, part of the cool thing about Domo was that he wasn't well-known, but that's a fairly standard geek complaint when stuff gets out to the normies. I tell you what I find unsettling. Domo hatched in front of a TV screen and fell blindingly in love with it. The little fuzzy dude just can't get enough terebi. He's a TV mascot and he loves TV. Unlike here in the US, where our TV mascots encourage us to go outside and play.

So there he stands at Target, his gaping maw hoping to convince us to purchase halloween goodies for the kids, while secretly he's at best an addictive personality and and worst an utter sellout. I love Domo, and seeing him in a US advertisement gives me a bit of evil joy.

The RLTP Project, Part 6.

A hearty thanks to all who decided to join in on the fun this Monday. People laughed, which is all I had hoped for. Succession!

So what's next? Now I do some tweaking and try to get the thing put on for reals.

The RLTP Project, Part 5.

Today was the rehearsal for the reading on the 22nd, and I had a great time. The director managed to convince some very funny people to join in the fun, and they all got really into it. Geeks are funny, man.

The reading will be Sept 22nd at 7:30pm at the Road Less Traveled theater space and is open to the public. If you're interested in seeing (hearing?) The Alpha Geek, please feel free to come on down. Costumes encouraged.

Book Four: Air

Avatar: The Last Airbender is over, but was clearly cut short. Here's how Book 4 should have gone:

One year after Fire Lord Zuko's ascension to the throne:

Aang, while living a life of quiet reflection in the Eastern Air Temple, sees a flying bison. This starts him on the search for the missing Air Nomads, who escaped the Fire Nation's wrath by
disappearing beyond the known boundaries of the world. In the last 102 years, they have retreated from earthly concerns, and Aang must convince them to return in order to finalize his life's work of restoring balance. Katara goes with him, despite Aang's insistence that she not.

Ozai bargains with Zuko, offering information on his mother's location in exchange for a 'house arrest' arrangement on the family estate on Ember Island. Zuko, still learning how to be a softy, agrees. Ursa has taken refuge in a murky cave behind a waterfall in the Southern Water Kingdom, where firebending is nearly impossible. The precise location of this place is known only to the Dai Lee, as it is one of a network of hideouts they have established across the globe. Zuko, bored with palace life and a moron, decides to go himself. He appoints Mei as steward in what he believes will be a short absence.

With the Avatar and the Fire Lord now distracted, a group of Ozai loyalists (including the YuuYan archers) takes advantage of the situation and free Ozai. Oops. They embark on a mission to capture the Avatar equivalent of the nuke -- crazy Azula, who has been locked up far from civilization.

Zuko travels to the Ba Sing Se, where Toth has reconciled with her family and set up a school to teach metalbending. He meets with Iroh, who has set up his tea shop and has no interest in adventures. As the Blue Spirit, he sneaks into Dai Lee Central and steals the map of their hidden bases. He realizes they are all linked by narrow passages which can be navigated only by earthbenders. The Earth Kingdom could potentially move people -- or troops -- throughout the world unhindered. Huh. Zuko enlists Toth's help to move speedily to his mother's cave.

A happy reconciliation, and a stop over to see Sokka, who is hard at work rebuilding the Southern Water Kingdom with his father.

Just then, of course, Ozai makes his move. Easily overpowering Mei, he reinstates himself as Fire Lord, assuming that without the Avatar, Zuko cannot get to him. Trouble is, the Earth King has decided that the Fire Kingdom needs to be destroyed to ensure that they never pull a world-dominance stunt again. He unleashes his armies through the tunnel system and battles rage throughout the Fire Kingdom.

Zuko, Toth, and Sokka race back to the action, picking up Suki and the Kyoshi Warriors along the way. They mount a stealth mission to recapture Ozai in hopes that Zuko's reinstatement would calm the Earth King.

All this time, Aang has been searching the hinterlands, proving himself to the Air Nomads, and bickering with Katara. Just when all seems lost back home, he and his people fly in and stop the violence. Zuko reclaims the throne. Everybody goes home.

Why Japanese?

It started with, of all things, Rock Band. As my efficacy at the drums improved, I considered practicing. Twenty minutes a day, say. Keep that up, and I'd be rocking on Expert all the time.

After spending the briefest of moments entertaining this clack-and-roll fantasy, reason stamped it out. What a waste of time! Twenty minutes a day, and to what end? Better fake rocking? I might as well learn an actual instrument.

Hey, wait a second...

Thus began the next stage: an ephemeral question of whether or not I should take up an instrument. I played the baritone horn in high school to little effect, so at least I can read music. I can spare twenty minutes a day, certainly. The violin? Perhaps the ocarina?



This concept went fairly quickly by the wayside. Not to worry though -- I found another way to spend this hitherto unused twenty minutes. (No, it's not exercise.)

I heard this story on NPR, and the phrasing of a certain sentence caught my ear. Jefferson read several languages. Now there's a thought. The guy probably didn't speak German all that well, but he could read it.

This baked for a while until it combined with the previous thoughts and came out of the oven something new: time to learn a language.

Now being both a videogame geek and a lingustics geek, Japanese was the only choice.

Lost in his own museum

Not all that long ago I was hooked by a game that allowed me to play as a character who liked books. Now I find myself deep into LEGO Indy, in which archaeologist characters can get by certain puzzles by decrypting hieroglyphs. They carry books around. I... I just can't stop.

Old Habits

Sometimes, you just have to rock out the LEGOs.

Cosplay Revisit

I know I just posted about cosplay the other day, but here's another note on the topic. Why stop at clothing when you can change your physical appearance? This post describes contact lenses made ot make the iris unusually large, as in anime large.

Also, fuck yeah.

Be Free!

So, I've been wondering how Debo's move to Phoenix has been going. Twitter is helpful certainly, but little did I know his journey would be featured in today's Golden age Comic Book Stories post of all places.



Looks like it's going long just fine.

You did, Tommy. You did,

Now, I've never been to the self-proclaimed America's Fair, so I suppose I shouldn't judge. I will tell you, though, that an event which features both pig races and slot machines just doesn't sound like my thing.

Of course, if this is going on, I may just have to swing in.

BBBBQB: Vindication

Great news! BBQ Beef, which was withheld from us for so long, has returned! Perhaps this was all simply a ploy to make us appreciate the delectation all the more.

Apologeia Cosplaea

Revising the play, and this has given me cause to reflect on that most geeky of pastimes -- cosplay.

While I do enjoy Halloween more than most, I recognize that dressing up in character for a movie premiere or other geek event crosses the line of normalcy. Too bad, really. People went crazy trying to dress up like newly Jetted Brett Favre, and no one seems to mind.

Sure, more often than not cosplay, as evidenced by these pics from comic-con, ends up with scrawny guys trying to look like super-soldiers ...















fat men dressed as super-soldiers....














and women dressed in utter teenage-geek-fantasy skantitude...














but sometimes the hobby/obsession can yield some impressive recreations.

















The trouble is that comics and video-games, being visual media, are of course going to depict impossibly good-looking people in physically improbable clothing. You can dress your average person up like Green Lantern all you want, but it's going to look strange unless he's body-builder with plastic sprayed on his skin. And even then.

The Japanese Project Part I

Holy crap learning Japanese is hard.

So, there are four different alphabets. One is based in the Latin alphabet, which is nice, but it's only used to communicate with stupid gaijin like myself. There are two phonetic alphabets, one of which is only used for words imported from other languages. (After what date, I'm not sure). But the main alphabet is pretty much only used in kindergarten books, since the inscrutable kanji make up most of the written language.

To add to the fun, there are four different levels of formality in speech, and the grammatical rules apparently change for each. Awesome.

Updates

Greenfern was featured in an article on Buffalo Rising, which is the closest thing to publicity we've managed so far. Not a strictly accurate article, but any word is good word, right?

9/22 is that date of the RLTP reading of The Alpha Geek, which should be an enlightening experience. I mean, you can write this stuff, but can you say it?

I've started teaching myself Japanese. More updates later.

End of line.

The RLTP Project, Part 4

We're rapidly approaching the next phase in the project, the one where actual actors get up and do a reading of the play. The director emailed me today to discuss, and asked me this question:

If I were to select 4or 5 sci-fi or fantasy movies to watch as dramaturgical research - what would they be?

Holy crap! Now there's a question for the ages. My response below:

Certainly LOTR and Star Wars. I recommend the Sci-Fi Channel's mini-series Dune (not the movie from the 70's). Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a good, accessible anime movie based on a well-known Japanese video game series. For fantasy, Stardust and Willow are both fun watches. There is a Dungeons and Dragons movie which I did not watch, but may be good for research purposes. Also, there is a documentary called Trekkies about the extreme end of hard-core Star Trek geekdom about which I've heard nothing but positive reviews and certainly depicts the kind of people we're talking about.

*snif* I'm so proud. An acolyte of my very own!

Smells like Dork Spirit

OK, ladies. Looking for a way to attract the attentions of a book-lover like myself? Try this perfume. Guaranteed to turn the pencil-necked heads of owl-eyed Classics majors everywhere. I'll be honest -- I don't think I can be expected to be held accountable for my actions if I smell this on someone, so if you want avoid a tawdry night of discussion on Sir Orfeo, use it with care.

Jump back and forth

I quite unexpectedly felt genuine chills at one point in this BBC Olympics ad. If there were any doubts left that Jamie Hewlitt is mega-talented, please put them to rest.

Home for a Rest

Yep, still ludicrously busy. Not quite Garvey busy, but close.

Extrey extrey

Greenfern can now be found at Talking Leaves on Elmwood. Met with good ol' Alicia today to get everything set. Here's hoping I edited everything well.

With lots of bubbles.

Stealing a few moments for a quick post. Allow me to give you some movie ratings.

The Squid and the Whale. Thumbs-down.
Good Night and Good Luck. Thumbs patriotically up.
Batman: Gotham Knight. Thumbs up.
The Dark Knight. Thumbs (yawn... excuse me) up.
Jumper: Rock horns up accompanied by a slow head nod.
Appleseed Ex Machina: Thumbs unsurprisingly down.

I Live.

Yes, I am still alive. Busy busy busy of late. A few updates.

Issue #1 of Greenfern Magazine is now complete. The process of distribution and marketing begins now. Interested in one? Send an email over to greenfernmag@gmail.com.

I have been playing as much FF3 as I can fit in. I mean, one of the jobs is Scholar, and he attacks people with books. How am I supposed to resist that?

My new job is not a cake job. So stop saying that.

The RLTP Project, Parts 2 and 3

The main concern was that non-geeks wouldn't find it funny. As it turns out, they were OK with it. Packing the text with references to Dune and The Lord of the Rings struck me as risky, but the group didn't seem to mind.

One of the plays we covered last week used 9-11 as a backdrop. It wasn't about 9-11, just about fictional events that took place at the same time. As you can imagine, this got the group talking. A lot. So the question is, is it too soon? Is seven years not enough distance?

BBBBQB Continued

For those of you who are not blogddicted enough to read comments, I received the following anonymous response to my previous post:

While the BBQ Beef is a No-Show this year, I hear from trusted sources the Mighty Taco is about to launch a new menu item on the 30th of June that is going to please the stomachs of many in Buffalo. I can't wait too taste it myself!!!!

Hmmm.... I offer now an open letter to this mystery commenter.

Dear Anonymous,

Thank you for your interest in the plight of Mighty lovers. I was delighted to receive your comment, especially the words "this year". What this phrase implies is that our beloved BBQ beef may return in the future. Please feel free to share my opinion with your trusted sources.

The beginning of BBQ beef season is a well-honored holiday in my household and in those of a large percentage of my friends. Few can deny that the delectable seasonal menu item is among the -- if not the -- tastiest offered by Mighty. Just last night, as a discussion was held bemoaning the plight of the BBQ-lover this year, it was called the best food produced locally. Never mind spiced chicken remnants; BBQ beef is tops.

While I am sure the new menu item will compare with the majority of the Mighty menu, I will be truly amazed if it provides the level of enjoyment which has been denied to us. I look forward to BBQ beef's return next year, which will be received with great joy across the city.

Yours,
Alex

BBBBQB

I was just informed by a polite if laconic Mighty Taco employee that there is to be no Barbecue Beef. So, the price of gas makes travel prohibitive, food prices are up, a new cigarette tax further vilifies my kind, and now there's no BBQ beef. What a time to be alive.

Keep the Apocalypse British!

So, the Brits deploy a big ol' computer defense system which is sure to decide the best way to fulfill its' programming and ensure peace is to end all human life and they actually name it Skynet?

Hail to the Me

Did I tell you guys I'm running for president? Well, I am.

Forward

A post on webshite? Believe it.

Why do we fall?

I present to you, gentle reader, a series of events.

• I receive clearance to grow a beard.
• I grow said beard.
• I am informed politely that the aforementioned beard is leaning towards the scruffy direction.
• I buy a beard trimmer.
• The beard is trimmed by Yours Truly.
• I notice that my hair is also a tad on the scruffy side.
• The hair is trimmed by Yours Truly.

So, if you're wondering why on this sweet Earth I look like a cross between a mange-ridden chipmunk and a young Maeve Garvey, consider this mystery solved.

Random book stuff

I can't tell if I'm obsessed with literature, knowledge, or just books. It might just be books. Not bookbinding or typography, just books. On shelves, in stacks, under chairs, wherever -- a row of spines always grabs my attention. So much potential there, so much information just waiting for my ready eye.

It should come as no surprise then that this post, entitled Hot Library Smut, really gets me going.

I've seen images of the Trinity College Library before, but only because of my lasting interest in Star Wars and the book-geek scandal of the Jedi library. Seriously, check the link.

While we're on the topic of fictional libraries, the Sandman series features the best I can come up with. The library in the Dreaming has not only ever book ever written, but ever book ever dreamed of. That novel you're thinking about penning? It's in there.

Lastly, it seems I am out of the running for the Early Reviewers program. I have been denied for several months running now. Alas -- but at least I won't have to read awful books anymore.

Again I say 'Fie'!

While we're on the topic of my perennially late ideas, I think it's worth noting that the title of my play is 'The Alpha Geek". The plural form of this happens to be the title of an op-ed column printed in yesterday's New York Times by a gentle looking fellow in a pink shirt.

Dang it!

The RLTP Project, Part 1

I've never been too keen on the idea of a writer's workshop. The image is somewhere between an AA meeting and a slumber party, neither event being something I have attended to date and neither being something I think I would enjoy. That being stated, I have also never had a piece of creative writing published. So, perhaps it is time to ingest some pride and give it a go.

I wrote a play last year, and now am a part of this year's Road Less Traveled Productions new play workshop. A dozen folks are going to read each others plays and then see them read by in-the-flesh actors. Mine happens to be up first, so at least I'll get that out of the way fast.

The play is an experiment of sorts, taking the timeworn standards of the Mistaken Identity plot and the Comedy of Manners (capitalization added for the appearance of maximum intellectualousity) and testing them out in the world of geekery. Boy Meets Girl at a sci-fi convention.

Now, I had a fine time writing this and even think it may have some funniness to it at points, but having people far more literate than myself evaluate it? Read it aloud? Goodness gracious me.

Inevitable.

My latest fiction endeavor has been a steampunk serial in which victorian age Britain has made space travel possible via the invention of ether propulsion. Been working on the story for 6 months or so.

I just discovered Larklight, which the Wik describes as follows: Larklight is set in an alternate Victorian era universe, where mankind has been exploring the solar system since the time of Isaac Newton.

Dang it! Missed the aether-boat again!

Now that's better.

OK. I compared the Telegraph list to the books I have in collections, anthologies, etc, and the real total is 35. Take that, Saldanha!

Just to check notes

A recent article in the Telegraph provides a list of the 110 books which make up "the perfect library". Definitely worth a read.

Since I am a book geek, I set up an LT library to compare with my own.

Apparently I only own eighteen (outside of stuff in anthologies etc). For shame!

You really do always come back!

The next season of Avatar: the Last Airbender is on its way. All i have to say is withhold your knocking until you have tried it.

Book 'em

I'm beginning to sense a trend when it comes to the Early Reviewers program at Library Thing. I haven't been OKed for a book since The 13th Reality. Of course, the fact that my last review was roughly ten words probably doesn't help by odds.

One of the books this time around in Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Based on my collection, I think I have a decent chance. I'll keep you posted.

Yeehaw.

I've done the math, and if gas reached five dollars per gallon, it would more cost-effective for me to own a horse. Sure, convincing the places I go that horse-parking is OK may take some doing, but it would be worth it.

The Racism Post

In Which the Blogger Goes There

I sincerely wish that we could look back on racism and laugh. In a time when high-schoolers have never lived a moment of their lives without the faceless internet, one might think the concept that you can tell what a person is going to do by looking at them would be over, a relic, a foolish notion of our ancestors. Like the divine right of kings or war being good for the health.

Alas, no. The practice of categorizing people based on ethnic lines still thrives, and not just with the aged, at whom we can shake our heads and say they don't know any better, but with everyone. Racism, like the inalienable human rights we claim, seems to recognize no boundaries,

Part of the issue stems from ethnic pride, of all places. We wave our foreign flags, toast in the few non-English words we know, and tell our children that the nationality of our forefathers is superior to the others. Our food is the best. We built this country. Our noble ancestors did this or that great thing, and our fellow Blankians (where blank is some race, creed, or nationality) conduct affairs in the best way possible. Not like those other people.

By aligning ourselves with things we did not do, with a history we took no part in creating, we put ourselves and our children into a category. And if we're in one, everyone else must be as well.

Another source of the persistence of racism is far more wide-reaching than holiday bluster. Turn on your TV and see how Obama is doing with white Catholics. Go to work and talk to the marketing people about their strategies for the urban vs. suburban markets. Institutions which make their living based on what people choose perpetuate the concept that groups of individuals can be fit into tidy, preordained boxes.

On one side, this is nonsense. Chaos theory can't predict the movements of caribou – why would statistics predict what free-thinking humans will do? The trouble is, on the other side this makes perfect sense. Of course people from the same background who live in the same neighborhood, attend the same church, send their children to the same school will tend to do some of the same things. As social beings, we feed off of each other, learning our language and behaviors from those surrounding us.

So, fine. Some tendencies of pockets of people can be predicted. I'm from New England and I drink too much. As all animals do, we learn. Last time I touched a porcupine, I ended up with these weird needles stuck in my hand – best not do that again. So, if the first few times I see people from New England they're drunk, I learn.

As an employer, then, should I assume that if I see UVM on a resume I should not hire this person? I mean, they'll be late all the time nursing that hangover.

But people aren't porcupines. Plenty of people in New England don't drink at all. We've all met Irishmen that have never been in a fight, Italians without mafia connections, anglos that can dance, Latinos that aren't emotional, etc.

That last bit raised an eyebrow, yes? We have no problems discussing the irish, italians, and anglos, but throw in a protected class and the racism-ometer spikes, doesn't it? And not because we're afraid someone might hear us, but because we're afraid we might be tagged as racists and lose our jobs.

This seems unfair. It's not. When our parents were kids, a few black guys tried to go to college and the National Guard had to show up. When our elderly remember their grandparents, they remember people who lived with – and fought a war over – the concept that people from Africa were better off living as Christian chattel than pagan free men. If asking people to tip-toe around a few issues is all it takes to bring our nation closer to the vision laid out in the Declaration, then too bad. Next time you swell with pride over the accomplishments of your ancestors, consider a little political correctness to be the payment. I know you never owned any slaves; you didn't fight in WWII either.

Any time we give the government the right to decide what people can and cannot say or think, we should get very nervous. A watchful eye must be kept on this, to be sure, but until we stop both individually and institutionally classifying people into genera based on tannin-level, it is for the best.

Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

I start a new job Monday, a new position within the same company. This has been coming for quite some time, and while I understood it intellectually, the emotional wallop of passing my life's work on to another person did not hit home until I moved my stuff.

I wrote an article for Artvoice a while back on how to decorate one's office/cubicle, a subtle art to be sure. Just what does one want to represent? And how to do this? For now, my trappings are all hidden away. As I assert myself in the new space with time, though, these question will raise themselves again.

Hey! Listen!

Allow me to geek out for a moment. I share with a life-long obsession: familiars.

I don't know what else to call them really. Pet-like little guys that fly around your shoulders and help you with stuff. These are, of course, completely fictional to date.

I believe it started with Tron. That little Bit guy (in Spanish below) flitting about left a serious imprint on my young geek sensibilities.



Years went by, and as a college graduate I played The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. Widely considered the best game ever created, many people criticize Navi, Link's constant counterpart. Yes, perhaps her persistent wheedling can get a little annoying, but she certainly fits the bill as a familiar, and thus I love her.



Not geeky enough? OK, fine. Once I got an Xbox, the mysteries of Halo became my playthings, including 343 Guilty Spark. A lunatic librarian made by an long-dead alien race. How could I not go for that?



Still not satisfied? My favorite of all time is Bao-dur's remote from KOTOR2. It's a Jedi training remote familiar. FEEL THE AWESOMITUDE!

Now, what's a boy to do? Essentially, what I'm dreaming of here is a flying, voice-activated iPhone with a great AI system and a personality.

Well, seeing how this would require a level of tinkering far beyond my own, obviously the only option is to build my own steampunk familiar in Second Life. And yes, Sparky the etherworks pet is coming along just fine, thank you for asking.

Mean, mean pride

Has anyone else noticed how many songs from Rockband are on the radio?

Sure, it might be an increased awareness thing, but following Gimme Shelter with Tom Sawyer just smacks of a bit more than coincidence.

Get me my walker!

Two "you're getting old" face-slaps within mere moments today.

The young woman who sold me my fries had a picture of The Fonz next to her register. When I inquired about it, she told me her coworkers had brought her the grinning Henry Winkler jpeg because she had never heard of him. The Fonz. She had never heard of the Fonz.

Shortly afterwards, a fifty-year-old man walked by me wearing a T-shirt featuring Sonic the Hedgehog. It said "Old School" on it.

Criminy.

Just in time for spring.

I have always considered myself something of a stoic. I don't really get worked up about things either positive or negative, an even keel being my persistent goal. I did find myself laughing out loud when watching Rome and hearing the line “You’ll not turn to drink, will you? You stoic types often do when disappointed in life.”

The American Heritage def of 'stoic' give s us a bit on where the word comes from:

[Middle English Stoic, a Stoic, from Latin Stōicus, from Greek Stōikos, from stoā (poikilē), (Painted) Porch, where Zeno taught; see stā- in Indo-European roots.]

That's right -- the Stoics were the original porchers.

And another

Well look who started a blog. Frequent commenter John has opened http://maltirish.blogspot.com

for business. Get over there.

Spoooooky

Must... post.... to blog....

A hearty thanks to Garv for spearheading what is sure to become the most definitive movement in the first half of the 21st century, and congrats to all who have managed to post every day. I mean, I got into a fight with an author, bought a laptop, started playing Second Life, and shaved my head to keep things interesting.

For the record, Nanowrimo started with just 21 participants. We've got that beat! I did send Garv a note of thanks today, which can be viewed here.

Just in case a "wow, we did it" post doesn't count, I'll continue.

Apparently, Jules Verne is trying to talk to me from beyond the grave. Or maybe just from the grave. Either way, he wants to chat. He just keeps coming up. Several times in bufblopofo (tieing with Tupac, I believe). Went to a lecture on the Darwin Martin house (apparently, we are those people), and was told the Courier Express claimed that Jules Verne must have moved to Buffalo, since the style was so odd.

What do you have to say to me, Monsieur? Are you encouraging my latest writing project? Angry with me for detesting The Clipper in the Clouds? Whatever it is, I'll try to get my hands on a ouija board. See you soon.

75% Less Hippie

Just an FYI, BufBloPoFo MoFo's Scheduled outage at 5:00PM PDT.

BufBloPoFo Topic for Day 13: When the writer’s return kicks back in and all the good TV comes back, what’s your viewing list going to be?

Let's play a MadLib. TV Shows: Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, Journeyman, Boston Legal.


"I keep watching ___(show)___, even though it's not good."


The one show I can honestly say I want to see come back is Mad Men. Start watching this show. Yes, they smoke and drink all the time, and no that's not the reason I like it. Not the only reason.

Sure, Jess drools all over the couch every time the main character shows his Brylcreamy head. It's worth it.