99 Problems but a Lich aint One

Whippersnappers should go
back to whittlin their dice!

So the playtest for D&D 5E is out and if this were 2008, I would be really excited! This is the natural evolution of 3.5. Unfortunately for WOTC, 4th edition was put out in 2008. I actually posted something like this on the WOTC forums and got a variety of responses. Most people agree it feels like anything from 1e to 3.5e. What is apparent, though, is that no one thinks it feels like 4e.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this. Fourth edition fixed a lot of things that were broken with 3.5 and I hate to see regression. That said, there are some good additions like rolling more d20's as bonuses rather than adding numbers as well as the increased character customization that 4e is sorely lacking and bringing back saving throws. It's kind of like dating your ex though. Sure you've both changed since the last time, but the same problems are still there at the core of the relationship. Some highlights:


The return of "The Tyranny of Chance", eg: rolling for hit points, rolling for stats, and save or die.  There are two types of gamers: Gamblers and Tacticians. Gamblers enjoy leaving things to chance. Tacticians like knowing that if they play smart, they can win. Craps vs Chess if you will. It's a spectrum, since no one is entirely one or the other, but we are all more of one.  Right now, D&D Next is a lot more craps than chess. Not really excited about that.

I only do one thing, so I'm gonna do it!

The return of Fi-Tor the Fighter: Every class in the playtest takes up two sheets of paper with one exception: the fighter. One of the flaws of 3.5 was that spellcasters and skill classes would play and talk and do neat things while the fighter would role a d20 once every hour to hit something with a club. I'm also worried that there is no good way for a character to "hold aggro", meaning any encounter with half intelligent NPCs will involve trying to take out the cleric and wizard first. I'm hoping some of the background and build concepts will address these issues.



A "Good Old Days" production:  I think what troubles me a lot is that this feels like a retro clone that a fan would make and, even more troublesome, they bring back some of the sacred cows that 4th edition had the courage to change.  Dungeon World has me a lot more excited about old school D&D than D&D Next.  If it was a company other than WOTC making it, I might be excited.  The fact that it is WOTC means I expect more.  It's kind of like if Ford re-introduced the Model T, but now it has an electric engine! I'm very troubled that they may be throwing the baby out with that bathwater for the sake of an "Old Timey" feel.

Thankfully, this is only a playtest.  Mike Mearles has in fact released an article stating that some of the things in the playtest are there deliberately to gauge player reaction to them (melee vs laser cleric for example).  Here's hoping the later playtests will be more encouraging.  I'll get back to you all with more impressions after playing it a few times.

Movin Right Along

So the Omega Child has been doing a number on H over the past few weeks and she was throwing up 1-2 times per day. Lately it's down to about every other day, which is improvement at least. As a guy, for the first few weeks of your partner throwing up you wring your hands and ask what you can do (answer: Pretty much nothing.) You then graduate to this point of continuing to play iPhone games until she stops throwing up and then maybe asking if she needs any help cleaning up. I had no idea how callous this looks until we had a friend in town recently who looked astounded that I was simply talking to him about comic book movies over the sound of H in the other room.

Oh don't worry. That's where she takes her little naps

Him:  "Err... shouldn't you do something?"

Me:  "About what?" (sound of vomit) "Oh! That!" (sounds of puking) "Not really. I can't help clean up until she's done. So why is Spider-Man even in that building?"  (sounds of retching)

The good news is that we are entering week thirteen.  H has had a bunch of tests revealing that the chances of birth defects are very low, so it's now looking like we can stop holding our breath and start planning! For months H and I have been passing over adorable baby items like Timbers onesies and Futurama plush figures due to the fear that we might lose the baby and be left with a house full of reminders. Now we don't have to restrain ourselves and can buy stuff! Once we find out the gender in a little over a month or so, we can really cut loose.  For now, I'm happy that most geek items of apparel apply to both genders.

Living Geek

(Note: This is part three of my retrospective look at D&D)
I remember being terrified of turning 30, but really, it was one of the best years of my life. H and I were in the beginning stages of our relationship, I had some amazing friends from grad school, and things were falling into place. Whenever you hit a landmark age, though, you also re-evaluate your life. You decide what's working, what's not working, what to try next, and maybe what's worth revisiting in your life. On my 30th, I decided to start playing soccer again and to try playing D&D again.  Both have been great decisions for me. However, I'm not sure my D&D resurgence would have taken root except for one factor:  Living Greyhawk.


Living games are games where your character exists independent of the modules. What I mean by that is that I can start off with a first level character playing with four people locally, take it up to 8th and gain a bunch of magic items, then fly across the country to a convention in Chicago, play with 4-5 complete strangers, and I can still use the SAME CHARACTER!  I think this is unbelievably cool.


You see, I'm the type of person who likes the blackjack tables in Vegas not because of the game, but because of the people you meet. Everyone who comes to the table has a story and since none of you are competing against each other, people tend to share. Last time I was there I talked with a dealer who had spent most of his life working at The Sands Hotel until it got torn down and it was a really fascinating life he had led.  Living Greyhawk (LG) was kind of like the D&D blackjack table. Meeting people from all walks of geek life was great. Some became regular faces. Others were one shot partnerships. Sure linear story and character development were sacrificed, but in return you were exposed to a multitude of playing styles, character concepts, and player personalities.

Home Sweet Home

Alas, the only thing constant is change. LG was a grassroots, volunteer run organization only sponsored by Wizards of the Coast. It was divided up into regions that were assigned virtual territories in the world of Grehawk. Washington, Oregon, and the rest of the NW were The Duchy of Urnst.  Adventures were developed on a national level about the world and destiny of Greyhawk, but also at a local level about your region by people in your region. This allowed for a massive amount of flavor, customization, and genuine regional difference. Adventures designed by people in Australia for their region "Perrenland" would feel genuinely different than Oregon adventures. While this created a ton of flavor and details, it did not offer enough control to the people at Hasbro, WOTC's parent company.


LG was killed off and Living Forgotten Realms was launched in its place; a living game that was very vanilla and completely controlled by the corporation. Initially I didn't like 4th edition, but I now realize it wasn't really 4th edition I didn't like, it was Living Forgotten Realms. They had taken away my quirky local coffee shop and replaced it with Starbucks. Yeah, maybe not everyone was a fan of free trade coffee sponsored angry lesbian slam poetry night, but it's better than homogeneity of assembly line coffee any day. Life goes on, the sting fades, and while I may not play living games anymore, I have at least gotten over my issues with 4th edition.

RV Adventures

Dog is my co-pilot.

There are many different degrees of camping, but like shades of colors, it's difficult to tell where one starts and another begins. There was a time in my life when camping was backpacking and that was it. Things have been in a gradual slide since then. Various degrees of car camping, yurts, cabins, and now the RV.

My mother and stepdad bought an RV recently and we went camping with them last weekend. I'm really excited about this since camping is about the only "vacation" activity H and I do, so it's nice to be able to include family.  A good time was had by all, and yet I've struggled with how to describe the experience.  If I had to describe it, it's not camping, but it's not... not camping (see what I mean?).

H is a morning person, but not an afternoon one.

It includes the usual trappings of car camping. A site.  A picnic bench. A fire pit. Yet the comforts of home are right next door. It was sometimes a problem. On at least two occasions, we all had to reprimand ourselves for hanging out in the camper when it was a perfect day outside. We did make it to the beach, but for the most part it was difficult to motivate ourselves past leaving our site. Naps were frequent. Oh, and the campfire grill  (high sides and fixed grill) was not really set up the way that I enjoy as a tent camper (shallow sides with a swing top grill), but that may be more on the park than the site itself.

Roughing it in the rain.

The big, big, big plus was Sunday morning. We woke up to torrential rain happening outside. When tent camping, this sucks to an unbelievable degree.  On the day you are leaving, you have to break down, roll up, and stow the tent (not to mention gear), and then find a way to dry it out when you get home. In the RV, it's a hot breakfast and coffee followed by a shower. I was dubious about the RV until this moment, but let me tell you, the rain washed that doubt all away!

The Red Box and Jason

Note: This is part 2 of a series of posts leading up to 5th edition.

Ten Dollars?!?

I thought I'd continue my journey down memory lane regarding D&D and get a little sentimental. Very few people played first edition. Unless you are about twenty years older than me and 100 times geekier, you probably didn't. First edition was very basic. Illustrations by Gary Gygax basic. It was that bad. It was the evolution of the Chainmail system by Gygax that Arneson usded to take the focus off of miniature wars and put them on individual miniatures. However, this was a different time and these were old school geeks who were into the details more than anything. Kind of like how old school nerds designed computers to be functional and hadn't ever considered that they could be sexy until Steve Jobs got his hands on one. In the old books, the dungeons and tables were the centerpieces. Characters and sometimes story were incidental.  A far cry from today where characters are the centerpiece.  I never played this version though.

Happy National Geek Day!

What I can speak to is the original Red Box. I actually have my old Red Box books.I got it in about 3rd grade, so that places things in the mid to early 80's. This is the one where there are only seven classes: fighter, cleric, magic-user, thief (not rogue!), elf, dwarf, and halfling (the races WERE classes then).

Why did this unlock my imagination so? I'm still not sure. I suppose that since I was into fantasy books, the prospect of making my own fantasy adventure was empowering. I bought a bunch more of the Advanced D&D books but I essentially lived in the rural country. The closest person my age lived about a mile away, so my odds of finding someone I could actually play with were really slim. I attempted to play D&D on a few occasions around school and with friends, but without a car, gatherings were nigh impossible. It possibly would have faded from memory if not for Jason.

When I was in middle school, my mother brought in some extra income by tutoring a teenager named Jason. My mother would pick me up from school and I'd wait in the car while she tutored Jason in math and I would come in towards the end of the lesson when I couldn't stand the boredom. Jason was a paraplegic who only had the most limited movement in one hand due to a car accident, but had a fully functioning brain. In a situation like that, it's only natural that you would develop an amazing imagination. Jason had long hair, loved heavy metal music, and had an large colleciton of crazy RPG materials like Gamma World and Shadowrun that he would talk up and lend to me.  He was eccentric and intelligent and I remember thinking he was pretty cool.

Unfortunately, the age gap prevented any real friendship (I was in 7th grade and I believe he was a sophomore in high school). Very sad really. While 4 years age difference doesn't seem like much now, it was half a lifetime back then. By the time I was a teenager and likely old enough to hang out with him, I was way too much into all the teenage high school drama to think of contacting him and my mother had stopped tutoring him years ago.

Jason is gone now. He passed away in his mid 20's. When my mother showed me the obituary, I did find myself feeling regret. In some ways, I feel like my self consciousness about being a geek really robbed me of experiencing some truly legendary adventures with a great guy. Maybe it's kind of paltry, but I like to think that when I put myself out there on a limb openly indulging my geek nature by doing things like going to conventions or unapologetically confessing my love of D&D, I'm at least doing right by his legacy.

The New Edition

(Note: I originally planned to do this as one post, but I have decided to break it up into a series of posts leading up to my impression of 5th ed)
Today is the day that the D&D Next playtest comes out.  Despite every fiber in my body protesting this, I am excited. Why do I have such reservations? Because being let down by D&D has been a trend in my life. It's like Jagermeister. On the one hand, Jagermeister is brought out only when it is party time, so it's good and brings out good memories. Unfortunately, it's appearance can also often be traced back to when the party went seriously downhill and you had to spend the night emptying the contents of your stomach. That's what a new edition of D&D is like. You yell out in an intoxicated cheer every time it's brought out and end it feeling sorry for yourself on the bathroom floor. Sad.

..... no  comment

My first disappointment with D&D actually came before I even played a game.  I remember being just crazy excited about the D&D cartoon. Yeah, almost all of the magic weapon powers sucked and the episodes were mind numbingly bad, but that ranger bow rocked! (the shield was also pretty cool, but who wanted to be that whiny guy?)  It's almost exclusively the reason I bothered learning how to shoot a bow. Throw in some confusing pre-adolescent feelings about the chick with the invisibility cloak and the acrobat that made a staff... become longer... and I was there every Saturday morning.

WTF D&D?!?

Unfortunately, there was never any closure. The kids, transported to this magical dimension and tormented by Vengar and Tiamat, never found their way home. THERE WAS NO FINAL EPISODE!  It was planned. They just decided to not make it! For a while the script of the final episode was floating around the internet. There was no internet back then, though. Just one Saturday you woke up, D&D is not in the rotation, and you were left feeling confused. There is a guy starting a Kickstarter project to do the final episode. I'm not a fan of his animation style, but I suppose half a loaf is better than the dark empty hole in my childhood.



Honestly, this cartoon is kind of what's lacking for Wizards of the Coast. I don't know if I would have bought that Red Box set if I hadn't already been intrigued by the cartoon. Getting it to fly in this day and age would be tough. Cartoons were allowed to be more violent back then and even by the standards of the 80's it was singled out as being too violent.  A way to get kids into the game that doesn't dumb down the game is sorely needed.  Just make sure it has an ending!

Sigh.  Even if it means including a stupid  unicorn in the party...

Overload

Wow.  Sorry about the lack of posts this week, but it's been pretty much non-stop for the crisis team. I hear the emergency pagers for hours after leaving work and a few of my co-workers admit to having strange dreams about work.  My theory is that people in the NW cannot handle the massive dose of sunshine we got all last week.  Vitamin D toxicity or something.

Gah!  Make it stop! Bring back the rain!

There area lot of theories abounding the office regarding why this is the case. While it is only an urban legend that things get worse on a full moon, it is pretty reliable that sunshine brings out the mania. Winter has its own defense mechanism really. Depressed people have no energy, and all but the most psychotic recognize the wisdom of maintaining shelter. An uptick in energy with an unstable mental state is dangerous. The depressed have energy to act on dangerous thoughts and those who live only in the present moment have no external reminders to keep them grounded to the more practical needs of life.


Honestly, who knows if any of these theories are real though. One of the flaws of advanced human existence is ascribing meaning to things that have none. Cognitive biases are the shortcuts that allow us to worry about things like tax season rather than food and shelter. In many ways, it's what makes us human.  We try to find patterns in life since once one is identified, life becomes more manageable.  The calendar is a great example of this.  On the flip side, we have the Gambler's Fallacy, a phenomenon where people will attempt to ascribe a pattern to a random system, ultimately resulting in failure.

One way or another, that pager has to slow down soon, since I'm to the point that sacrificing a chicken to Imbroglio, the balding and panic ridden God of Crises is looking pretty appealing now. (Thankfully Imbroglio is almost always distracted and won't notice if you eat the chicken later.)

No Longer Bored Games

Once upon a time... Is a game Hydee and I own. It's a story game where you create fairy tales based on the cards you have, trying to force the ending to the one you want. A friend of ours from France introduced it to us years ago and it took forever to find.  Even specialty game stores didn't cary it, so we had to order it online. And today I saw it in Powells. In fact, most bookstores these days have layouts like this:

These aren't crap games either.  These are games I would have specialty ordered in years past.

I plan to talk a lot about games and gaming on this thing and one thing that has caught me by surprise is the rise of board games. Board games were a relic of an age without computers.  You either had boring abstract "classic" games like parchesee or you had gmicky remakes such as Lord of the Rings Monopoly.  Gameplay wasn't innovative, but instead laid out like a formula by the men at Parker Brothers.

Then one day, everything is upside down.  Who saw that coming? I remember playing Settlers of Catan years ago and thinking "Wow, this is like Monopoly, except fun!"  I'll let the trailer from the documentary "Going Cardboard" say it better than I could, but rest assured, I will be back to this topic.

The Weighting Game

   

Recently, a guy on my team posted a video of us playing soccer. Now I thought I was about average as far as being out of shape when compared to the others on the team. The video speaks otherwise. My skill and even my hustle aren't really that far out of whack compared to my teammates.  I look, however, like a man stuffed into a sausage casing. My chest trap and clearance from defense around the 56 second mark is a good illustration of these points.

.

Perspective is a painful thing. I think it was only a matter of hours afterward that I signed up for Weight Watchers. There is a reason that in the universe of Douglas Adams, the most terrifying from of execution is via the Total Perspective Vortex.  As follows:

The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.
Trin Tragula — for that was his name — was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake.
"Have some sense of proportion!" she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day.
And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex — just to show her.
And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.
To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.

Douglas Adams from "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" 

Now that awareness has been bestowed upon me and my brain unmelted, I had to take some action. There are a lot of pros about Weight Watchers that lured me into signing up.  The points system is appealing and technology has come a long way so that you can do most of it on your iPhone.

However, while they have tried to change their image, one thing is apparent when you walk through the door: This is a woman's world. Pictures of happy, slim women on pink excersie balls, on pink yoga mats, and outside in the sunshine maniacally laughing off their hunger pains abound.

Quick which is Woman's World and which is Weight Watchers?

I've done Weight Watchers before, but it was with H.  Since she's pregnant, I'm on my own here. While there are a few other guys in the room, all are there with their female sponsor. You really can't look to them for help since they are already clutching their xx chromosome life preserver as is. So you go it alone and your companion is the YouTube video of you waddling around the pitch as your support.  Thankfully, that's pretty motivating!

The Wolf

Crisis mental health work is a very interesting field.  We are what is known as "second responders".  Police, fire, and medical are all first responders. This isn't to say that we aren't first on the scene in some cases. Calls that come from the crisis line and not directly from police allow us to go out first and bring police with us. Four out of five times these are false alarms though. We stand there sheepishly talking to a completely or at least semi composed person while fully armed officers shuffle their feet in the hall. It has to be done for the sake of that fifth time out of five when you're glad the officer is there.

As second responders, though, when we are called out, often the acute crisis has abated and police are unsure of what to do next. The person isn't committing crimes, but neither can police simply leave someone who is in a concerning mental state. I often felt redundant on these calls. To me it seemed that the officers could have handled the situation on their own if they truly had to and that we were superfluous. Thankfully, a co-worker pointed out to me that I underestimate our expertise in the situation and had the brilliant suggestion that I think of us more like Harvey Keitel as Winston Wolf from Pulp Fiction in "The Bonnie Situation". 

In Pulp Fiction, Jules and Vincent are assassins.  While driving back from a job, Vincent's gun goes off shooting their associate Marvin (fun fact: played by Phil LaMar of Futuruama!) in the head at point blank range.  This creates a bloody mess of their car. They pull into their friend Jimmy's (played by Quenten Tarantino himself) to regroup. However, Jimmy's wife Bonnie is coming home from the night shift at 9:30am.  Jules calls for help, and Mr. Wallace sends out The Wolf. (Graphic language and some cleaning of blood in the following clip, but there is a cameo by Julia Sweeny!)

Does the Wolf actually DO anything that Jules, Vincent, or Jimmy could not have done? The answer is no.  Clean out the car? Cover the seats with blankets? Wash up? Simple solutions. His connection to the junkyard is the one unique trait he brings to the job and likely Jules or Vincent could have come up with a workable solution through their own connections. What Winston Wolf really brings to the situation is his calmness and perspective. Let me tell you, this job has become easier (and cooler!) for me since I just started thinking of myself as The Wolf headed out to a call.

End of the Semester Baby

I was talking on the phone with a friend of mine recently about The Omega Child. I was insistent that I was nervous, but he pointed out that I wasn't sounding nervous or overwhelmed about it. While struggling to describe my type of nervousness, I was able to find a familiar anxiety in my past. The end of the term paper.

And when else will you learn to keg stand?

What happens with a semester in college is that you come to class and get your syllabus on the first day.  At the end of the syllabus, an ominous and long project/paper including certain formatting and reference requirements looms over the entire term. So you stuff it into your folder and say to yourself, "I'll go to the library next week and get started on it." But at least for the first 4-5 weeks (let's say this is September), you usually don't. There are parties, sports events, socials, and occasionally classes that you have to attend.  Plenty of time to worry about that paper later.



The next 5-9 weeks involve some sporadic research, checking out resources, and maybe highlighting some points. You've usually survived a midterm at this point, but really there's still plenty of time and more importantly a bitchin Halloween costume you need to work on and probably some really dark poetry you have to write about a failed relationship.

November is the point where your denial hits its stride. You likely have one month left, but also that 4-5 day Thanksgiving weekend gap in your schedule. On paper it looks like a lot of time.  Plenty of time to finish a project. Little did you know that traffic, family, and a cold would knock you down. Now your paper still isn't done and where's your precious Thanksgiving now? Nowhere!


And thus enters... December. Yes my pet, you have waited far too long. Now you have finals AND a paper! There's a slight chance you might be able to get an extension on your project, but that's leaving your destiny in the hands of a potentially merciless professor. No. It's sleepless nights in the library for you now.  You'll either write that paper at the last minute and succeed with a brilliant grade or a library stack will fall on you one night while sleeping there, horribly disfiguring you and forcing you to find a secret tunnel under the library where you will live as the Phantom of the Library, playing a pipe organ as a warning for all future slacker students!

Most universities have underground
pipe organs for this purpose

So, I think that clears things up pretty well about how I view the stress of pregnancy. Either I'll be there for H and the kid or I'll be living in subterranean storm tunnels as a semi-allegorical creature of legend. Wish me luck!

The Losing Season

Everyone likes a winner.  However, I've never really followed a losing team before.  I've BEEN (and currently am) on a losing team, but never followed one.  It takes a combination of passion for the sport and passion for the team that allows you to include yourself as a fan.  I've never considered myself a Seahawks or Mariners fan mostly because  I simply don't follow the sports.  In soccer, I've been an Arsenal fan since the mid 90's so the biggest pain I've had is under achieving and coming in 4th (Oh the pain!).  The closest I would say I've been to being a fan of a losing team is following the US national team as we bomb out of the World Cup and most other international tournaments again and again and again.

The Timbers are officially a losing team. While we played a fantastic game against Columbus on Saturday, it ended in a 0-0 tie.  This makes it 6 games since we've won a game and we've lost 5 out of those 6.  I'm sure if my younger self could time travel, he'd punch me in the face for making this statement, but it can be kind of fun to be the losing team.  Yes, I understand that this sounds un-American, but let me explain.

I only scored four goals this game.  Maybe it's my fault...

A winning team is perfect.  The problem with perfection is that it is static.  Boring.  However, it can't stay that way, so you fight this constant battle against entropy that you will always lose.  Case in point is Pep Guardiola, coach of Barcelona.  He's been coach for 4 years and has constructed what is widely considered to be one of the best teams that soccer has ever produced.  Yet he is stepping down.  Why?  The pressure.  When Barcelona plays another team, anything less than a beautiful AND dominant victory IS a failure.  An actual loss is a catastrophe!  So now there can be no low expectation games.  If Arsenal beats West Brom by one goal, we're happy.  If Barcelona beats Malaga by one goal, we ask what went wrong.  Therein lies madness, or at least ulcers.

Although not getting to see the chainsaw is demoralizing.

A losing team can be changed at whim.  Fans can speculate on roster changes they would make, transfers they would go for, formations they think should be tried.  Of course too much chaos and change is bad since a team will never settle, but for the most part, the team is a sandbox.  You can be daring and unconventional with your theories and strategies and not worry too much since what is the worst that can happen?

Avengers Assembled!!!

Thankfully this movie is amazing!  I got to see it this weekend with H, my dad, and my stepmom who all enjoyed it as much as I did!  Co-written, produced, and directed by Joss Whedon, this is the type of windfall success that geeks sorely needed.  The failure of this would have doomed all of us to another decade of Hollywood feeling they could only trust their franchises to skeezy, frat boy Michael Bay clones and his style of low plot, low dialogue, low character development, high explosion, and hyper macho movie making.

Actual picture of Mr. Bay.  If I have a daughter, she has permission to pepper spray men like this before they even talk to her.  Or if they enter the same room as her.

The real hero of the movie!

Joss Whedon is loved by all geeks but has never really had box office success.  Usually his shows and movies are unappreciated in their time, do not reach high numbers of sales, and really only hit their stride as cult classics.  Buffy has been the one exception to this.  However, there is only so long a person can coast on one hit and numerous unprofitable cult successes before Hollywood stops giving you opportunities.  Just ask Terry Gilliam.


Hopefully the massive success of The Avengers will help us see an uptick in Whedonesque style movies!

Presentorama

I couldn't tell you when exactly I began loving Futurama, but it is one of my passions in life.  I remember watching it back when it first came out mostly because it was on before The Simpsons and was made by the same guy.  The Simpsons was starting to suck at that point as Homer made the slow transition from lovable moronic oaf to sociopathic lunatic.

How... lovable...

However, Futurama is a more acquired taste.  I remember not really "getting" the show until the episode "A Big Ball of Garbage".  Then it was renewed, but FOX bounced it around the schedule so it was too hard to follow.  One week it was on at 8pm on Thursday, and then the next week, same time, same channel, I'd turn on  the TV and be greeted by Calista Flockhart's duckface as they decided to show an Ally McBeal rerun.

All glory to Futurama.

I tried my best to follow the show, but I'd already been burned by Firefly being cancelled and could not devote myself to another show.  Oh, and I suppose was massively depressed, addicted to MMORPGS, and living in a spare room of my mom's home.  It's probably not a coincidence that Futurama was there when I turned my life around, though.  In 2003 I went to grad school, had a studio apartment with a TV, and evening classes.  I would come home from classes and watch Adult Swim.  This block featured bizarre anime, Family Guy, and Futurama.  I'm one of those guys that falls asleep with the TV on so I would usually fall asleep to Adult Swim.  You could make an argument that I only like Futurama due to subliminal influence, but I don't really like Family Guy (though I did grow to love Cowboy Bebop and FLCL).

Erwin Shrodinger: Evil Genius

So what is it about Futurama that now makes it the show I watch pretty much every night as I drift off to sleep?  I'd say that except for a dip in form during early season six and "Bender's Game", they don't go for the low hanging fruit.  They pass on the simple, obvious joke and try harder or at least they usually make the writers work hard to bring in that simple joke.  They're also not afraid to assume their audience has a brain. For example, in "Law and Oracle" we have a scene involving Schrodinger's Cat, Lorentz Invariance, refracting combined with Andy Warhol style portratits, Tron, and then they wind it all down with Fry getting attacked by Shrodinger's cat. How do you even pitch a joke like that?

Diaper Commercials

I found myself today considering the merits of diaper commercials.  H and I don't have cable.  We watch mostly movies and Netflix and aren't exposed to commercials much.  A call the other day at my job resulted with mid shift having to hang out in the ER for over an hour, so my partner and I ended up watching TV in the hospital waiting room. Daytime TV.  Boring daytime TV with weird commercials designed for stay at home parents and shut ins.  That's when I found myself actually paying attention to diaper commercials.

Diaper commercials are designed eerily like auto commercials or high performance shoes.  Red lines for angry stress areas, blue for cool relief and security.  It's like a universal language advertisers have decided upon. Kind of like if Esperanto had taken off and was designed by an evil genius.  I mean, look at all the blue! What horrible parent wouldn't want their child to experience all this blue!  You want your kid to go to college?!?  How can they if you expose them to horrible red lines!!!  You Monster!!!

Don't look for red here Communists!

Soothing, gentle dolphins... with only the occasional sexual assault.

Diaper commercials have always been there, but as background fodder. Kind of like feminine hygiene commercials. I'm obviously not the target market, so they stop existing for me. Moved to the back of my mind as a priority for awareness.  Except... I'm now a dad to be.

Today was like one of those magic eye posters. It's all dots and blobs and then BAM! Unicorns and dolphins frolicking! Except for me it was watching the news and then BAM! Diapers everywhere! But sadly, no matter how many special effects you pile on an ad, diapers are just not as pleasant as dolphins and unicorns.

Old Man Soccer

So I'm at the mid point of playing in an over 30 soccer league. When you first enter at age 30, you feel like freakin Maradona circa 1984. You are faster, more agile, and have better endurance than the other people in the league.  By the time you leave, you look like Maradona circa 2008.

There is a legend in Argentina that once, in fit of rage during a World Cup game, Maradona ate the game ball 

Currently I'm not a liability, but I'm also not the prized asset I was 5 years ago. I can sprint up the field or down it, but not up AND down it. My team is also in last place in the over 30 third division. This is a very humbling situation. Out of all the middle aged guys in Portland who play soccer, we are currently the worst. Thankfully, things are getting better. We are gelling a bit more and trying out new formations has brought us closer to the win column.

The weird thing about these old man leagues is that the competitiveness never really dies out even if you are the worst middle aged soccer team.  When you are young, sports are a blazing sun; defining your daily and seasonal activities.  When you are old, that fire burns low.  Jobs, wives, kids, and responsibility block it all out, but it's still stoked.  One bad call by a ref and it blazes.  A part in the back of my head is rationally saying, "You work in crisis services.  You calm people down on a day to day basis.  It's your job to keep a level head."  Meanwhile, my mouth is telling the ref he is goddamn moron.  Then the yellow card comes out and I leave the field, high-fiving my sub as he runs on.

C'mon fellas!  Let's stick it to the Kaiser and do this for the Gipper!

As with most men of my generation, I think we struggle with how to define ourselves as an adult.  The symbols of the past (wife, property, kids, pension) are more or less gone or irrelevant and now we search desperately for signs to let us know we have transitioned out of the man-child stage.  Frankly, I don't think men of the past really were much more "grown up" than we are, but the signposts they had gave them a sense of progress (though they also limited the routes they could take).  This leaves modern men with this odd hazy concept of maturity; kind of an all or nothing mentality.  Ron Swanson vs Andy Dwyer if you will.  Anyhow, I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this post, but I think lately what I've been learning is that maturity doesn't have to be a universal trait.  As long as you know how to be an adult and how to yank yourself back into that mode when it's required, it's all right to act like a kid.

Suck it youngster!