Category: Uncategorized

So one of the somewhat common refrains I’ve heard about our country’s actions against Afghanistan is that we’re hypocrites for taking this action when our own government has committed various atrocities against civilians of other countries. This baffles and angers me, because I don’t feel that people who make that statement are actually advocating any meaningful course of action. They’re just being scolds, and the statement comes across as a schoolmarmish “well, those people have reasons to hate us.” What exactly are we supposed to do with that alleged understanding? Not fight the Taliban in the pursuit of Al-Queda? I don’t see a meaningful alternative, or even any form of advocacy at all other than “feel bad.”

This same sentiment was well-publicized during the Gulf War, the notion that it was a war fought merely for the sake of America’s interests in oil. I had the exact same reaction then: so what? Opposing Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was the right thing to do. If our leaders were prompted to do the right thing for the wrong reason, does that mean they made the wrong decision? In other words, does the fact that we failed to act in other similarly outrageous situations (such as Rwanda) mean that, for the sake of consistency, we shouldn’t have acted there either?

The ultimate point of that general concept seems to be that two wrongs make a right. Having acted wrongly once (by omission or commission), we should act wrongly again because at least we’d be acting wrong for the right reasons. My impression is that the people making these statements would rather we hadn’t fought Iraq, and let them take Kuwait, because that would be morally superior to fighting Iraq for the sake of oil. I think the rightness of the act itself trumps the equivocation of its impetus.

The choice this idea offers looks to me like a choice between cowardice and hypocrisy: do nothing and at least be consistently isolationist, or do the right thing some of the time when it’s in our selfish interests. Well you know what? I’d rather be a hypocrite. At least hypocrites are right some of the time.

Or as one commentator put it: the last time I checked, the cruise missiles we sent into Sudan a couple years ago weren’t packed full of screaming, innocent people.

More work at Flying Lab today. I’m wrestling with the design for the strategic part of the Delta Green computer game. There’s a reasonably Cool New Feature I want to implement, and I haven’t yet figured it out. But I did figure out enough to recognize that I was putting some pointless busywork into the gameplay, and I stripped it out. Small steps. Today I found out that part of my job on the game is designing the actual game system–stats, skills, chance to hit, that sort of thing. Much of that stuff is invisible to the player, of course, since the program does all the crunching, and its needs are very different than those of a tabletop RPG. It’ll be interesting work, and there’s a heck of a lot of it.

One side benefit: Flying Lab rented a movie theater for Wednesday so we can watch Lord of the Rings free from the clamor of the public. I’ve got a wallet full of tickets that I’ve begun handing out, like Johnny Geekyseed. It’s going to be fun.

I’m really looking forward to LOTR, and it’s not because I love the book. I read it as a kid, a couple times, and enjoyed it. The book’s emphasis on melancholy and sacrifice stayed with me even as the details of the story and characters fell away. I haven’t cracked the cover in seventeen years. In that time, my appetite for swords & sorcery has vanished. Elves, longbows, dragons, all that stuff pretty much leaves me cold.

No, the reason I’ve been excited about LOTR is because it’s by Peter Jackson, a filmmaker who has never let me down. My first exposure to his work was in 1994, when I was visiting a friend in Scotland. He mentioned a film he’d seen called Meet the Feebles, and it sounded mind-blowing: an x-rated version of The Muppet Show. Lo and behold, his corner video store had a copy so we brought it back to his place and I watched it.

The damn thing was amazing. I mean, sure: it’s a gross-out parody of the muppets. It’s set backstage at a television variety show, rife with sex, drugs, and violence, and it’s an all-muppet cast. It’s very funny, very gross, often shocking in its complete over-the-top spectacle. There’s the lizard smack junkie, a Vietnam vet who flashes back to his capture by the Viet Cong (played by buck-toothed rabbits, of course), complete with a Deer Hunter scene of Russian roulette. There’s the lovestruck hippo, the gangster walrus, the star rabbit with VD, and on and on.

But it’s easy to just focus on the concept and ignore the execution. This guy, Peter Jackson, a low-budget indie filmmaker in New Zealand making slapstick-gore zombie movies, decides to make a film with an all-muppet cast. He’s not a puppeteer or anything. New Zealand isn’t a particular haven for puppetry. It’s just a funny idea for a film, a joke you make at a bar with friends. But he does it. He puts together a team, they figure out how to make the muppets, they build the sets, they shoot the whole thing, and it comes together beautifully. Strictly from a technical standpoint, it was an amazing exercise in logistics and craft.

From there he made Heavenly Creatures, an art-house hit here that could only have been made successfully by a director immersed in genre, someone not afraid to take a real-life story and imbue it with a layer of special-effects fantasy that told the story the way it needed to be told without alienating the art-film audience in the process. An amazing feat, and it showed storytelling with real emotion and empathy.

Then he did The Frighteners, a film I just loved. It’s a cheeseball horror comedy with Michael J. Fox as a guy who can interact with ghosts. But in its way, it’s breathtaking. There’s a fantastic fight scene at one point with two humans struggling and two ghosts struggling, all in the same location. The two fights are independent, and the humans don’t know the ghosts are there. But it’s all choreographed beautifully, and the effect is remarkable. It sticks with me because it’s a visionary portrayal of mortal and spiritual struggle. I know, it’s just a funny fight scene. But that notion of a simultaneous two-level conflict among the living and the dead was, at its core, a powerful idea. It’s even worked its way into some of my writing.

It’s also one of the few CGI-heavy films whose CGI really works for me. Just as with Feebles, Jackson built a team, learned the ropes, and did fantastic work. He created his own special-effects company in New Zealand, WETA, and their work on Frighteners was better than ILM would have done.

There’s a laserdisc edition of The Frighteners that has a four-hour making-of documentary. That’s right: four hours. Twice as long as the film itself. And it’s riveting. The only making-of film I’ve seen that’s better is Hearts of Darkness, for very different reasons.

To me, The Frighteners just confirmed what Meet the Feebles already proved: Peter Jackson is better at putting technical skill to the service of story than anyone else working, even those Matrix guys. He has the vision, the charisma, and the dedication to make incredible things happen on his own terms, and on top of all that he’s a gifted storyteller.

That’s why I’m looking forward to Lord of the Rings. Not for Tolkein half so much as for Jackson. If you’ve got the eyes to see it, you’ll realize that this guy is the real deal. Plenty of people have watched Feebles and laughed at the jokes. I think few appreciated the amazing accomplishment that film was, for all that the concept was a frat-house gag. I doubt they’ll miss it this time, though. LOTR should, by all rights, give Jackson the same blank check that Spielberg gets. He’s that good. And Spielberg never made a film with the maturity, intensity, and vision of Heavenly Creatures.

Watch this guy. He’s got some of the best films we’ll ever see still waiting inside him. I’m not saying that LOTR is going to be one of them–I dunno. But my faith in Jackson is substantial.

I bought a car.

My 1990 T-Bird, acquired from Scott Glancy in April for one dollar (and worth every penny!), bit the dust about a week and a half ago. I thought about repairing it, but the darn thing already had so many problems that I figured I’d be better off putting the money into something more solid.

My plans for buying another junker for $500 quickly escalated into looking for cars in the $2000-$3000 range. Still crud by some standards, but solid enough to last a few years. About the same price as my computer, actually.

What I finally settled on, and just picked up this afternoon, is a 1983 Saab 900. Yeah, it’s seven years older than the T-Bird. But damn it’s in great shape. Even though it’s an eighteen-year-old car, it only has 130,000 miles on it–do the math. This car has not seen nearly as much road as its age would suggest.

And it’s beautiful. The body is in perfect shape, the original paint looks fabulous, and the interior is almost spotless. Really amazing condition. It’s even got the original Saab mini-spare and tool kit, complete with tube of color-matched body paint, and the manuals. In the manuals I found service records for the first 75,000 miles, which show that the original owner (a guy in San Diego) was responsible and regular about getting it serviced. After that it’s a blank, unfortunately, but at least it had a happy childhood. I know from the title search I did that it spent its last several years as a commercial vehicle of some sort. I’m guessing it belonged to a small company around town, either as an office car or for small deliveries. It’s a two-door hatchback, and when you drop the back seat it’s incredibly spacious for cargo.

I just took it on the interstate for some late-night driving, and it’s such a pleasure. Rock solid feel, great handling, and the five-speed stick-shift really lets you punch it just the way you want. When I started going up a hill, I dropped it into fourth and floored the pedal and actually accelerated to 85 going uphill–something I’m not used to doing in any meaningful way with the cars I’ve driven in the past. It’s just a four-cylinder engine, but it really seems to have what it needs for the road.

My favorite car up until now was a 1978 Datsun B210 that my parents bought used in the late 1980s. It was small and kind of weak but handled pretty well. By comparison, though, it felt really light and insubstantial. This Saab feels heavier, more massive, and it’s a comforting sort of weight.

My impression driving this thing sounds like ad copy: this car likes to drive. It really does. Driving around town, I started dropping it to second and speeding into turns at intersections, and it took those corners like a champ. No rock and roll, just steady power. What a ride!

I must admit, however foolish it sounds: my taste for driving really changed from playing a lot of Test Drive V-Rally for the Sega Dreamcast. It’s a fantastic driving game, and it’s all about racing on rural roads with real-life compact street models like this Saab. My experience playing that game actually transferred to some extent to my real-life driving, even before I got the Saab. I feel much more confident about what I can do with a car, and I’ve put in some time driving that way to develop that confidence. Not recklessly, but just with the full belief that I know what I’m doing enough to make the car do what I want it to do. It’s a great feeling. I understand now why people get obsessive about driving. Once it stops just being absent-minded transport and becomes something you invest your brain and muscle memory into, there are real rewards to the experience.

And in a happy twist, when I got back to my studio from the dealership, the car next to me was a late-model Saab. As I was fussing over my car, the driver of that car came out of the building and we started talking. He’s a Saab lover, and recommended a Saab-only service shop that he’s had good experiences with. Sometime early next year I hope to take it by there to get it checked out and see what kind of work I might should invest in it.

God knows, something awful could happen with this car. It’s over half as old as I am. Maybe it’s just waiting to devour its own transmission or something. But I’m hopeful, because it drives like a dream and looks even better. We’ll see.

Biggest downside: no stereo. Not even any *speakers*. I checked the rear speaker grilles and there’s nothing under them. I need to take a flashlight to them and see if the wiring is there or if the poor thing came from the factory without any sound system at all, which seems really unlikely. Assuming the car checks out with the shop in the spring, I’ll look at investing some money into that. Because jeez, I need a radio in that car if nothing else. I suspect that someone put a good sound system in there and then took it out when they sold it, because the radio slot in the dashboard has what looks very much to be an aftermarket cover. If I’m right, it means someone put good speakers and a stereo in there and yanked them before trading it in, in which case it shouldn’t be too big of a deal to get them replaced.

Anyway, that’s for later. I’m just pleased to have a swell car.

A couple years ago, the documentary Project Grizzly chronicled Canadian Troy Hurtibuse’s ten-year, $150,000 quest to develop a suit of armor powerful enough to protect the wearer from an attack by a grizzly bear.

On December 9, the rubber meets the road. An American animal trainer is bringing his adult Kodiak bear and, under allegedly controlled conditions, the bear will attack Troy.

I would be remiss if I did not mention that the suit’s construction materials include 2,289 meters of duct tape.

The details are online at the site of the Annals of Improbable Research.

—

We’ve announced the Delta Green computer game, and you can read more about it at the software company’s web site. I spent the day there yesterday planning the press campaign, brainstorming revisions to the strategic-mode design document, and possibly buying a car from one of the ArtCo team, the trio of graphic artists who work at Flying Lab.

—

Something odd happened this morning. I was asleep, and I’d guess it was around 4am. A dream had just finished, and I was in a light sleep, slightly aware of my surroundings in bed. Then I heard, quite clearly, a voice say: “John?”

There wasn’t anybody else in the room, or in the basement for that matter. It sounded like a woman’s voice, but the sound was slightly slowed-down and unreal. But it did not at all have the quality of a dream, nor was it accompanied by any dream imagery. In fact, all it did was bring me the rest of the way out of sleep into full consciousness.

Because, of course, I was terrified. My immediate reaction was panic. I burrowed further under the covers and thought about anything and everything but the voice I’d just heard. I was completely freaked. After a couple of minutes the panic passed, but even then I didn’t want to think about it. The experience was freaky as all heck.

The second installment of my movie column is up now at Tablet‘s site. Confusingly, it’s titled “Film Foursome” in the paper and “Film Frenzy” on the site. Both titles are pretty lame. I just can’t come up with a better title than “The Four Somethings,” and that lacks the crucial words “film” or “movie” that would actually indicate what the column was about. Oh well. Give it a read.

For my next column, I used DFILM’s MovieMaker feature to make a short animated film. It’s a very simple process that takes about ten minutes. Really, it’s sort of a glorified electronic greeting card, but as those things go it’s pretty impressive. Take a look at my lame effort, complete with embarrassing typo in the first line of dialogue. Be warned it’s full of Seattle in-jokes that are meaningless and unfunny to the rest of the world.

Saturday night we had a WAR MOVIE! dinner party here at Pagan House. It was couples galore: Ray & Christine, Daniel & Heather, Scott & Jane, and Karen and I. Ray brought over two obscure WWII movies: Anzio and The Halls of Montezuma. Christine and Jane made a WWII dinner: bratwurst, spaghetti carbonara, sushi, and baguette & pate to represent the Axis powers of Germany, Italy, Japan, and Vichy France. They jammed little American flags on toothpicks into the various food items to proclaim victory, then served good old U.S.A. hot dogs to wrap it up and free-French sorbet for dessert.

There was no British food because, in reality, there is no such thing as British food. There’s just stuff that British people eat.

It was a good thing the dinner was so entertaining, because the films were not. Anzio was a dreary, dull crapfest, an early Dino de Laurentiis project starring Robert Mitchum and Peter Falk. We did our best to make fun of it, but after an hour or so we gave up and fast-forwarded through the rest looking for explosions. After suffering through that much Anzio, we only looked at a couple scenes from Montezuma before ejecting that puppy, too.

Instead we sat up late talking and watching an old horror flick called Dark Intruder that’s quite a treat. It’s reviewed in the Lurker in the Lobby book we published a couple years ago.

As a special treat the day before, my car died. It’s now sitting in the parking lot at my studio, looking mournful. Tomorrow I call one of those “We Take Your Dead Car As Is Where Is For Cash!” places and send it to its final resting place. That 1990 Ford Thunderbird came here from Florida in early 1998 when Scott Glancy drove out here in it, and came into my possession last spring. It was not long after I turned 30, and it’s the first car I’ve ever owned. Now it’s gone. Ah well! I only paid a dollar for it.

So now I need to buy a car. I’ve never bought a car before, except from Scott, so I’m full of half-remembered advice. I’ve sorted out the decision into two options:

1) Buy a disposable POS car for $750 or less.

or

2) Buy a decent car from a reputable dealer for $3000 or so.

Anyone in Seattle got a car to get rid of? No? Oh well.

To my shock, horror, and eventual glee, Karen helped me clean my room on Saturday. She even vacuumed. To say that she vacuumed isn’t sufficient, so let me explain: she spent the afternoon on her hands and knees, using the vacuum cleaner’s hose attachment to scrub over every accessible square inch of carpet in the room. It was so filthy with ground-in dirt that normal vacuuming didn’t stand a chance. I can’t believe she did it, but at least now my bedroom is as neat as hers. It’s like the last dust motes of my bachelorhood have been swept away, and now I’m living in a strange and wonderful world of clean sheets and clean carpets. How bizarre. My room hasn’t been this clean and orderly since the carpet installers finished their job and walked out the door more than five years ago. I’ve lived as unto a pig, oink oink. But thanks to this amazing and patient woman, life looks good.

I’m just glad she only has a twin bed at her place, so that she has no choice but to spend the night here when we’re together. If she had a larger bed, she’d probably never darken the door of my room again. Hah hah! My superior bed technology has triumphed and now I’m reaping the rewards.

Scott and I stayed up past 5am the other night playing Grand Theft Auto 3 on his Playstation 2. (Hmm…5=3+2) It’s an amazing game.

Speaking of which, yes, we’ve made a deal for a Delta Green computer game and work is underway. The project is going to take about a year and a half, so be patient. I believe we’ll have stuff to show off at the E3 computer-gaming expo in Las Vegas in the spring. It’s an X-Com style game, with both strategic and real-time tactical-combat modes. More than that I cannot say, but we’ll get the word out when the time comes. I’m having a blast so far.

Karen and I had dinner tonight with her housemate Ned and his girlfriend Sarah. Today is Ned’s birthday, and dinner was his parents’ gift to him. So he and Sarah took us out to the Noodle Ranch, a terrific Asian noodle place in Belltown that Karen and I have eaten at numerous times. Their red bean ice cream is superb. They also make a great martini with sake, vermouth, and a slice of cucumber.

A good meal is a glorious thing.

Oh, my. It’s been a while since I posted here. Busy days of late.

Karen and I went to Memphis, Tennessee, for a week to visit with my parents and other folks. We spent a night at Reelfoot Lake, a massive lake created by an earthquake in 1811 that actually made the Mississippi River flow backwards for a brief time–long enough to turn some lowland into Reelfoot Lake. The lake is only five feet deep, and fringed by swampy zones populated with cypress trees and knees. Bald eagles use the lake as a winter nesting site. We ate catfish, quail, barbecue, and most anything else that wasn’t moving fast enough.

The first installment of my movie column for the local alt-paper Tablet is now online here, and my review of the film The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition is also at Tablet here. Tablet has a new and vastly superior website now, happily. I’ve turned in the second installment of my column and it’ll appear in the next issue. My title for the column was “The Four Somethings,” but it’s been renamed to the somewhat more prosaic but at least comprehensible “Film Frenzy.”

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Pitch-perfect production design and solid entertainment made this an enjoyable film. I’ve read all the books and quite like them, so I was game to see this on opening night. We caught a late-night screening bereft of screaming kids, then saw it again a few days later at a kid-friendly matinee. I liked the film more the second time. Karen likened it to a book with a color illustration plate in each chapter; the biggest and boldest moment from each sequence was up there on screen, while lots of in-between stuff was left out. Given the limitations on time, I think director Chris Columbus did solid work. The real stars were the art/design team, who brought J.K. Rowling’s world to life magnificently.

Amelie

One of the most perfect films ever made, with a wit, cleverness, and humanity that is so rarely achieved. Amelie is a delicate young woman in Paris who sets out to change the lives of the people around her through subtle stratagems. Beautiful, charming, intricate, and fantastical in all the right places. It simply is, a flawless jewel of delight.

Monsters, Inc.

Pixar scores again. Not as virtuoso as the Toy Story films, but chock full of fun and good humor. The climactic chase sequence takes place in a stunning environment that just yanks the floor out from under you–a magical moment. So superior to the narcissistic Hollywood crap churned out by Dreamworks that it’s almost cruel. I walked out on Shrek after twenty minutes, disgusted and furious with that particular crapfest. Monsters, Inc. is a much-needed tonic, created by people who are doing the best work of their lives for our benefit.

—

This week I did a lot of good work on the second edition of Unknown Armies, the roleplaying game I created with Greg Stolze. It’s a heavy duty revamp. The new rulebook is completely reorganized and largely rewritten, and I’m having a blast with it. I’m so determined to make it the book I see in my head that I’m putting about a thousand dollars of my own money into it just to increase the art budget sufficiently to get it the way I want. UA’s sales are low enough that there’s no compelling reason to do a new edition except for our own satisfaction, so I figured I might as well pony up to make it right. Happily, my writing work for Bungie Studios at Microsoft has resumed just in time to help finance this little indulgence. I’m working on an X-Box videogame for them that is coming out in about a year.

Speaking of such things, this week I signed a deal for another computer game project with a local studio. I’ll be serving as co-designer and lead writer, and will also be bringing Scott Glancy and Dennis Detwiller on board for writing and story work. What project is it? Well, we’re not ready to make the announcement yet, but what computer game project would most likely be written by Detwiller, Glancy, and Tynes? I think it’s going to be Deliciously Great . . .

Anyway, enough tomfoolery. If all goes well, I’ll have fine-art prints of some of my photographs available for purchase in time for Christmas gifts. If it works out, I’ll post info here as usual.

This is going to be the first Christmas I spend away from my parents. Ever. That’s a bit of a shock, but I am thirty years old and I suppose I can wrap my own presents now. As compensation, my friends Mike and Jean-Michele Daisey are coming back from New York City for the holidays, then driving back cross-country with the stuff they’ve had in storage this fall since moving out of their Seattle apartment. Mike has finished his non-fiction book based on his Amazon.com stage show, and is now doing edits for the publisher. They’re both enjoying life in Brooklyn very much, now that the planes have stopped falling from the sky for a while.

Tonight Karen and I had dinner with her fairy godfather. That’s what she calls him, at least. His name is Robert Fulghum, and some years ago he wrote a book called All I Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten. It sold gajillions of copies all over the world and changed his life forever. Fulghum was Karen’s art teacher in high school, and has been her mentor ever since. He’s the one that sent Karen to Crete for a month last spring, commissioning her to stay at his house there and paint pictures to accompany his next book. That project isn’t over yet, though. Karen has finished the Crete portion, but in May she’s off to England and France for two weeks to illustrate the next phase of the work–but this time, I get to go along! So we get to play at being a globetrotting writer/artist couple. All we need are proper tennis clothes and a notorious friend to go motoring around the continent with. Fulghum and his wife Lynn were delightful–I hadn’t met them before. We had a fabulous dinner at a Greek restaurant run by a young guy whom Fulghum has known since the guy was a little kid. It was great fun, and I’m looking forward to our sojourn to the continent in the spring. I should have a digital camera by then . . .

Yes, I’m just full of all kinds of good news these days. It’s very, very nice.

My cousin Jeff became a muslim some years ago. Last summer he traveled to Jordan to visit friends from college and ended up staying there. He got a job as a journalist for an English-language weekly paper in Amman. His articles have been all over the map–a trip to the zoo, a fashion show, a film festival. But with the current turmoil, he’s expanding his mandate a bit. This recent article, about the CIA’s history in Afghanistan, was the third in a series of historical overviews about the situation.

Taoism can be a somewhat obscurist belief system–the nature of the tao leads to endless, almost concentric metaphors. I found a pleasant and accessible little essay on taoism that is worth reading.

FLASH: God regains sense of humor

Nine months ago, I lost my Palm Pilot V–a precious gift a friend gave me, with a retail value of about $500.

Today while hunting for spare change, my friends Daniel & Heather found my Palm V buried in the cushions of their living-room couch.

Two weeks ago, I threw away the recharging station, connection cables, manuals, and box.

I’m happy about this. It means that God is feeling better after recent tragedies and is ready to start pulling pranks again. I suggest you be on the alert for stray banana peels, lost socks, and short-sheeted beds.