She had seen an old educational film from the 1950s that compared the circulatory system to a series of pneumatic tubes, carrying vital documents from one end of a modern office building to the other. Being a child of the 1980s, she had had no idea that there had been a time when capsule pipelines were common infrastructural items in most modern cities. Being three years old, and having never seen such a thing, she misunderstood the metaphor. She thought, as a child, that the circulatory system actually worked on the same principles described in the film. She thought that blood was a gas, pressurized, flowing through tiny tubes running up and down the body, sending oxygen to all the cells.

When she was four, the headaches started. Sudden onset migraines, sometimes lasting for two days, sometimes three. The headaches brought an extreme sensitivity to light. The doctor told her parents that it was a common early warning sign for an oncoming migraine. Her preschool teacher, Mr. Abrams, kept a pair of dark glasses in his desk with a post-it note with her dad’s cell phone number. She knew that when the light started hurting, she should ask Mr. Abrams for her sunglasses. When she asked for her sunglasses, Mr. Abrams knew to call her dad to come pick her up. She never told anyone that she could tell when a headache was coming even before the fluorescent bulbs in the classroom forced her to squeeze her eyes shut. The first symptom was never light sensitivity. The first symptom was the pressure.

It was like the gaseous blood in her pneumatic circulatory system was forming clouds. She pictured a deep black cherry Kool-Aid cloud drifting up from her back, up into her neck, and thickening in the base of her head. More and more gas, more and more pressure, her head like a balloon, but like that time when they made a piñata in arts and crafts by covering a balloon with papier-mâché, the blood cloud didn’t have room to expand anymore. There was a big, fluffy cloud of blood expanding in her head, and soon the light would hurt, and soon the pressure would grow until it started causing cracks on the inside, and then there’d be pills that didn’t help, and the vomiting, and the throbbing, and applesauce with cinnamon served in bed, with the lights off and the curtains drawn.

On her fifth birthday she was learning how to ride her new bike when she fell off the curb into the street and scraped a large chunk of skin off her leg. She had never seen her own blood before, and was so confused she forgot to cry. It wasn’t whistling out of her shin like steam in a teapot. It was oozing, thick, syrupy. Her mom soaked it up with a washcloth and sprayed something on it that made it feel like she was melting in acid. She had a faint scar for years, but it faded.

When she was seven she was in the car with her mom when they visited a bank drive-thru teller, and she watched her mom put her deposit slip into a canister and slid it into a chute that made a whooshing sound. She saw the canister fly up a tube, and then saw it fall inside the bank window. Nobody, not the bank tellers nor her mother, seemed to think this was as amazing as she did. “That’s like the blood stream,” she said. “Like in that film, yes,” her mother replied. For years after, whenever her mother went to the bank without her, she would sulk in her room.

She was eight when she cut her hand. She was in the woods with a friend and he had a pocket knife and she was using it and somehow the blade folded in on her fingers. She had seen blood enough times by now not to be surprised, but it was a hard image to shake, the idea of blood as a gas. She stared at her fingers, three deep gashes across her knuckles that looked like little mouths. Flexing her fingers, the wounds opened and closed, and it looked like her fingers were breathing blood. Straighten, close, inhale, blood stops. Bend, open, exhale, blood gathers, like a bubble, until it gets too heavy, falling off the fingers, through her other hand cupped beneath, spattering the oak log they sat on.

Blood seemed so heavy to her. If she was full of blood, she felt she should be heavier, weighed down with iron and sludge. It was her secret truth she carried, that her blood only turned to liquid when it met with the air. The rest of the time, she knew, it was light. She could hear it whooshing around inside when she plugged up her ears. She could still feel the pressure building up, the blood rising to her head in a dark red cloud, just before her headaches started. Filling her head to bursting.

When she got her first period, she giggled. She never told anyone why.

She wondered what happened to the sled.

She had felt the pressure building, the cloud forming, funneling up her spine and filling her skull from back to front. She’d said “Not now, not now.” She’d left her sunglasses at home. She’d forgotten how snow reflected light back in dozens of angles, so it was like the sun was in the ground, in the trees, on the roofs and sidewalks and buried cars. She closed her eyes.

Floating. She couldn’t hear anything but the quiet sound of snow hitting snow, a gentle hiss, almost a sound by virtue of not being a sound at all. Almost sounding like a tiny leak in a balloon. Gas escaping slowly through a tiny hole. She stared up at the trees, and felt warm.

Anyway, that said, let me tell you about this dream I just had, skipping all the bits that don’t matter. In the dream, I walked into a hardware store to buy some glue and duct tape and a few other things, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that fully two walls at the front of the store were devoted to comic books. I was thrilled to find a new issue of Phonogram, as well as a Phonogram CD featuring tracks from the bands referenced in the comics (as well as an all-new Los Campesinos track recorded specifically for the compilation). So I got my glue, and I got some comics, and I got a CD as well.

[As an aside, I recognize fully that the point of this essay could well be that I think about Phonogram too much for someone who isn't Kieron Gillen. Or Jamie McKelvie. (There are probably days I think about it more than McKelvie does.) In reality, I just like comics about bands and the music scene way more than I actually like bands and the music scene. Hell, most of the comics I've written (still sitting in the drawer, likely never to be seen again) are about bands, going to see bands, watching bands break up, and all the common experiences in the music scene. So it's only natural that Phonogram fills a particular vacant spot in my brain, namely standing in for an entire genre of comics I've always thought should exist but could never get off my ass to make myself. But that is, most definitely, another story for another day.]

Now, for whatever reason, this dream got me thinking about a discussion that was first becoming popular on the WEF (and other comics discussion sites) ten years ago; namely, what comic book stores should be doing to get new people in the door. Then, like now, the most intriguing answer to this question, at least for me, is that the question is wrong; comics don’t need more people walking in the door, comics need to become ubiquitously available. [I should probably tell you straight away that this whole conversation, while certainly an important, even necessary conceit, bored me, then and now, about as much as hearing about other people's dreams. Even then, when it was "the important" discussion. It seemed to me then, as it does now, that the way to get people into a comic book store is to have the best damn comic book store known to man, and pimp the hell out of it. Over the past ten years, people like James Sime and Andrew Neal have proven that formula. But again, another story for another day.]

So, I was thinking about how hard it is for non-comic stores to get comics on their shelves. And, because in my dream the example was being set by a hardware store, I thought about things I buy in hardware stores, and how I would go about getting them on my shelves (my rhetorical shelves, seeing as I no longer own a comic book store). And I thought about ULINE. Over the years, I have placed several orders with ULINE, both as a store owner and as a private citizen. They sell boxes and tape and shrink wrap and displays and trash cans and, well, primarily hardware and supplies best suited to a shipping company or warehouse. Important stuff. They deal primarily in large, bulk orders to businesses. Yet the process of getting an account with them was as simple as filling out an order form, entering my credit card information, and clicking “submit”. They don’t care who they sell to — money is money. They do have a check box in their order form that will tell them if the order is being shipped to a residential address, but that’s so they know the best way of shipping (and know not to send a large pallet on a tractor trailer when you don’t have a loading bay).

But here’s where ULINE excels, at least in this argument — they have tiered pricing. Order small amounts, it costs just about retail price (usually a bit less, but not by much). Order in larger amounts, and the price goes down. Order in huge bulk amounts, the price goes WAY down, to the point where it would be perfectly practical to use them to order stock to sell at retail.

Comics should be like that.

You know how hard it is to get a DIAMOND account? It involves credit scores and business IDs and phone calls and certified checks (seriously, when I ran my store I would have to go to the bank every week and get a certified check in order to get my order; after, I think, a year DIAMOND allows you to switch to a regular business check). As any comics retailer will tell you, the DIAMOND website is just about the least intuitive site ever created, and ordering from it (or even just finding a product on it) is mind-numbing. And that’s for the people who have decided to focus their entire business on selling a product they can only get through DIAMOND. (This is where the argument of ten years ago would devolve, justifiably, into a discussion of how terrible DIAMOND is. That discussion can be found anywhere else online, so I won’t go into it here.) So while there might be plenty of non-comics stores that have some interest in stocking a selection of comic books, most would run up against DIAMOND and decide against it.

[Here I should mention that for the first two years of JIGSAW, when it was a comic shop and art gallery in NYC, I didn't have a DIAMOND account, and instead got all my comics through COLD CUT and private small press distribution, as well as the occasional "fell off the truck" deal with friendly creators whose books I couldn't get because they were published by Marvel, DC, or Image, who are all exclusive to DIAMOND. It was, in fact, impossible to keep a broad selection this way, and one of the motivating factors for moving the store was so I could afford to get a DIAMOND account, and have enough space to put it all.]

As this is stretching on a bit longer than I’d intended, I’ll skip the bit where I contemplated the perfect match that is comics and hardware, what with single issue comics being cheap, disposable, and the perfect length to read on a break on a construction site (how great would that be to see a line of guys in hard hats reading comics on their lunch break?). I fully recognize that the comics industry is so far in the hole in terms of “how things are done” that changing the system is next to impossible. And I know that the business is built around pre-ordering and exclusivity and all sorts of things that, while idiotic, are just status quo. And I know that DIAMOND can barely get their distribution correct as it is, so adding customers would cause more problems than it would solve. And, and, and.

But picture a different world. Where there was a website where a customer could go and buy the new issue of PHONOGRAM for full price with nothing more than their credit card. A world where that very same website could sell 50 copies of the new issue to James Sime at his normal retailer discount. A world where the owner of that hardware store could decide to try having a selection of comics for his customers to read, and could get a good discount without having to jump through hoops. A world where the ubiquity of comics wasn’t such a weird idea.

All I’m saying is that it was kind of a nice dream.

Gentlemen of the Lab,
–by which I mean Milton, Lump, Frank, and Regibor, should you all find the distinction of “gentleman” to be as spuriously applied to you as I–

I had cause to contemplate a chronometric device today in the course of my studies. Drat, I should start earlier. Transcription start again.

Before I attempt to detail the results of a seemingly casual observation I undertook this afternoon, I must first recount the situation I found myself in upon waking this morning. As you all well know, my robotic spider legs require recharging from time to time, and I often find it convenient to park myself over the wireless charging station just before bedtime and simultaneously gather a few REM cycles. Well, last I recall, I had done this last night after clearing up the mess left from our Jigsaw π experiment. So you can imagine my surprise and confusion upon waking, finding myself lying on my side underneath a workbench in the lab, covered in maple syrup and — no, actually, I think I’ll leave that bit out. Transcription, delete the previous sentence.

So you can imagine my surprise and confusion upon waking, finding myself not in the charging dock but under a workbench in the lab. I likely don’t have to tell you my first thought was of shenanigans, that one or more of you were pulling some sort of hilarious jape to blow off steam following our difficult month of videos. Indeed, I myself had contemplated substituting hydrogen for helium in our planned celebratory event as a mischievous joke — imagine the subtle difference in the buoyancy of the balloons! But soon I ruled out pranksterism, as it was then I caught sight of the surveillance feed from outside the building.

Doubtful I have to tell you gentlemen that there appears to be a great deal of snow sitting outside these walls. Snow that, by Feynman, I swear wasn’t there when I went to sleep.

It was, of course, at this point that I had cause to seek out and examine the lab’s chronometric devices in some detail. At first this brought merely confusion, as the date clearly read “February Third”. In several different languages. I was momentarily terrified that the completion of the Jigsaw π experiment had been a horrible dream and that we would have to undertake the daily video project all over again. Granted, this thought gave some comfort, for I also recalled a very vivid dream about pancakes, and thought that this might explain the maple syr– dammit. Transcription, delete that last sentence as well. Mustn’t talk about the maple syrup. It’s not as embarrassing as the feathers, but– DAMMIT. Transcription, delete THOSE two sentences, please. Must remember the recording. Okay.

But though the thought of having dreamt the entirety of Jigsaw π was disturbing, it was nowhere near as alarming as the moment when I noticed the year. Brace yourselves, gentlemen, for if you have not yet discovered this, I promise it will come as quite a shock. The year is currently 2010. 2010! I, for one, found this very upsetting, and was determined to find all of you to aid me in undertaking a grand experiment to uncover the manner by which we were delivered eleven months into the future.

Here I fell over, as my spider legs, sensing low battery, ejected me rudely and ran off to recharge. Rather undignified. It’s cold here, on the floor. When constructing this new lab, I really should have put in underfloor heating elements. I seem to recall seeing them on an old episode of This Old House. Something to keep in mind for the next time we renovate. Transcription, file the previous sentences regarding underfloor heating under Kranium’s personal notes, and remove them from this memo document.

So, gentlemen of the lab, I put it to you that we have been asleep for eleven months. To think of all the technological advancements we have missed in that time. The cultural events. The political developments. To think, we weren’t even here when the year changed from 2009 to 2010. It must have been horrid; not being around to correct the misapprehension that we were entering a new decade, countless websites and magazines must have published “Best of the Decade” lists. We could have stopped it, gentlemen. But alas, Lord Somnus had other plans for us.

Getting to the point, gentlemen, I propose that we set about the purpose of discovering what happened to us. Was it some horrible accident? Some toxic fumes leaked from the sublevels? Perhaps an old experiment come to haunt us? Or some other outside force? Gentlemen, we cannot even be certain of our safety until we have clearly assessed the forces behind our Rip Van Winkle activities. We must gather together and set our minds to this discovery, by whatever means — oh, my legs have come back. You certainly took your sweet time. Transcription pause. I really must reprogram you to let me down more gently in case of emergency recharge. Better yet, I should just place a passive induction station under this spot near the lab monitor. Help me up, front right leg, just bend there — hrmph — get the — hurgk — must have put on weight while I was asleep, it’s a bit — no, there we go — okay. Well, at least now I can review the transcription –

Dammit, transcription, I told you to pause. PAUSE, I said. No, stop — stop taking down these — dammit, Milton is the only one who can get this damn program to work correctly. Milton! Right, if I could find Milton, I wouldn’t need the blasted note. TRANSCRIPTION, PRINT NOTE. I’ll just hand-correct the — PRINT MEMO. PRINT. PRINT NOW. PLEASE. Dammit. MILTON! COME FIX THIS TRANSCRIBER PRINT

Granted, I mostly just wanted to avoid school. I enjoyed playing in the snow to an extent, but even then I would contemplate wet, clammy socks, runny noses, sharp, tingling fingertips, the blindness that comes from glasses fogged up with my own breath. It was an act of will to play in the snow, even then, though one easily made. Because it happened so rarely.

After I spent several winters in Boston, the magic of snow wore off pretty quickly. In Virginia, snow was typically a novelty. In New England, it is far more ubiquitous, a given that inches will pile up every few weeks, and cars will get frozen into large, gray cocoons of ice. It didn’t take long to start hating the stuff, especially when I was riding my bike in a blizzard to go open the video store, passing cars the whole way, fishtailing and cursing my fingerless gloves.

Once I left Boston, I left behind my hatred of snow. I didn’t live in snowy regions. Even when I was in New York, it was hard to hate the stuff, though that might have something to do with my being drunk on red wine and bourbon almost the entire time I lived there. I’d actually forgotten what it was like to hate snow until two feet of it dropped on Charlottesville last month, leaving me stranded at home, alone, with no shovel, and a gammy foot, threatening to cancel Xmas.

So what’s that got to do with creating things? I have no fucking clue. It’s snowing again. It’s supposed to accumulate. More snow on top of the snow we got last weekend that canceled plans, and more snow coming this weekend that will cancel more plans. I sat down to write about my own stalled-out creative process, and out came three hundred words about snow.

Maybe it has something to do with The Shining.

I was actually just thinking about that as I was getting out of the car with my milk and bread. (Which, by the way, I was going to buy anyway today. It’s not like I panicked and went to the store; I was going to the store, and it started snowing before I could get there.) The snow has definitely made me pretty stir crazy. Not just the snow, but the relapsing problems with my foot that prevent me from walking great distances sometimes. Before, walking a couple miles in the snow wouldn’t be a problem. Now, it is. Or can be. Or maybe it’d be fine going out but coming back would be hell. It’s not knowing, I think, that has gotten to me, has built a mindset where I feel completely trapped. I shouldn’t walk, so I can’t walk. And the snow means that confines me to my house until the plows come down my cul-de-sac. Trapped.

Which is all well and good when you don’t have to be anyplace. Like when I was a kid, and looked forward to being trapped, because I didn’t really want to go to school, and it’s not like I had anything else that had to be done. Trapped can be a great excuse for a party, or for a day of rest, a day of meditation. Trapped can be happy, peaceful, fun. But me, if I have the least amount of work that needs to be done Out There, even if it’s days away, the snow now gets me feeling a little paranoid and nuts. The Whatif monster hides behind my chair and whispers at me. Whatif I can’t drive? Whatif I can’t get to work? Whatif I get trapped here and can’t get anything done?

I haven’t been writing much. To be fair, I haven’t been writing at all. I wrote a way-overdue thank-you note to my aunt today, and I think it was the first time I’d done anything more than update Twitter since the Richard posts. I… I have been feeling trapped. Creatively, I mean. Stir-crazy. Like I can’t go anywhere or do anything. Like a part of me isn’t working correctly, and it prevents me from getting anything done. I suppose there’s some hope if I figured out a way of turning a long, contemplative journal entry about snow into a metaphor for my lack of product, but then, I always did have a weakness for such things.

Jigsaw Season Four was halfway written. Ten episodes scripted, albeit in need of polish. This is past tense. I kept on not writing, and not writing, and doing everything but write. It finally dawned on me why — it wasn’t that I was lazy, it wasn’t that I was lacking discipline. It was that I didn’t think the new episodes were funny. Oh, they’re interesting, and ambitious, and the structure is way better than previous episodes. They push my writing to a place I’ve never gone, and the plot is as detailed and intricate as I’ve ever written. But they’re just not funny. Like, at all. To me, anyway. There are jokes, and there are moments that are quite good. But overall, I look at what I’ve got and I just don’t care.

It dawned on me that, as nobody was paying me for these things, I could just throw them out. Sure, I was quoted in the paper as saying the new season would start… nowish. Sure, it’s been a year (!) since there was any sort of regular Jigsaw thing. These are facts that make me feel guilty, pressure that certainly ups the stakes in my brain. But I’d rather be late than suck. Actually, I don’t even care if I suck. I just want to suck in a way I enjoy. Right now I have the luxury of doing that.

Although, that may just be a justification. At this point, I’ve been trapped in the snow so long (metaphorically if not literally) I don’t remember what it’s like to… not wear boots? (Feel free to leave better allegories in the comments.) For better or for worse, I’m going to force myself to write more. Starting today. With this. That you have just read.

I don’t pretend to know if anybody is paying attention. But then, I’m used to that with the show. For now I’m going to force at least 1000 words out every day on this blog. Some of it will be Jigsaw related, some of it may be media reviews, some may be short stories, some may be random head-pounding, and much will likely be utter crap. But I assure you, after a few weeks, I’ll have a better idea of when the new season is actually going to happen, and what it’s likely to be.

For now, I think I’ll go drink some red wine and watch the snow.

Sara makes with the awesome. Also, how’s that for a price, folks? One drink and then whatever you feel is fair AFTER you’ve seen the show? I mean, it’s just ridiculous! You were gonna drink ANYWAY. Our biggest problem will be if people drink their entire wallet and can’t pay us anything for the show. So folks, for the poor, sleepy actors, save back a couple bucks. If you hate the show, you can always get one last beer at the end.

Click here to view the embedded video.

…we thought it only appropriate to take measures to ensure the audience is too drunk to notice any textual missteps or random theatrical inconsistencies. To that end, we have taken a moment from our panicked line memorization to create a Richard the Third Drinking Game. This document will evolve over time as inspiration (or desperation) hits, culminating in horribly rushed, typo-ridden copies being distributed at the venue.

RICHARD THE THIRD THE DRINKING THE GAME [sic] (R3DG)

GENERAL RULES

…Any mention of husbands, wives, or marriage, married people must drink.
…Any mention of God, Heaven, or such matters, all atheists must drink.
…Whene’er a Messenger enters, anyone looking at their phone or laptop must drink.
…At any mention of Saint Paul, anyone and everyone named Paul must drink.
…Any mention of the Tower or imprisonment, anybody who has ever been arrested must drink.
…Whene’er anyone makes a misogynistic comment, all men must drink.
…Whene’er anyone double-crosses another, drinks must be switched with the person next to you.
…Every time someone is killed, everyone must drink.

CHARACTER RULES
Players shall each be assigned a character to follow; each character shall have a specific set of rules to be observed.

RIVERS
Those players assigned to follow Rivers shall drink whene’er he…
…manages to get through a line without asking a question.
…is sickeningly deferential.
When Rivers is killed, the remainder of the drink shall be consumed. These players now follow DERBY.

*DERBY
Only those players who had been following Rivers unto his death, or likewise latecomers who thus were not assigned a character, shall follow Lord Derby. They shall thenceforth drink whene’er he…
…uses an excessive number of personal pronouns; e.g. “Pray God, I say, I prove a needless coward!”
…delivers expository information.
…pledges his support to someone.
When Derby crowns Richmond King, all followers of Derby must rise and shout “HAIL RICHMOND!” If any follower of Richmond at their table is without a drink, a follower of Derby must offer theirs as substitute.

CLARENCE
Those players assigned to follow Clarence shall drink whene’er he…
…talks about his brother. Or his other brother.
…happens to mention his royalty, or others’ lack of it.
When Clarence is killed, his followers must cry out in alarm, then finish their drink. These players now follow THE PRINCES.

*THE PRINCES, EDWARD AND YORK
Only those players who followed Clarence until his brutal end shall follow these, the sons of King Edward. They shall, hereafter, drink whene’er one or both of them…
…offer discourse upon their stature.
…complain.
…mention any of their uncles.
Followers of the Princes are advised to take small drinks, as befit the children they present. Once receiving news of the Princes’ death, they must finish their drink without anyone else at the table witnessing, and thereafter follow RICHMOND.

ELIZABETH
Those players assigned to follow Elizabeth shall drink whene’er she…
…wails, weeps, laments, or mentions wailing, weeping, or lamenting.
…speaks of her children.
…flees to sanctuary.
…prophesies doom.
When, at the end of Act IV, Elizabeth flees once more to sanctuary, abandoning her players, all those following her must now finish their drinks and swear allegiance to RICHMOND.

BUCKINGHAM
Those players assigned to follow Buckingham shall drink whene’er he…
…says something negative.
…says he will follow/wait upon someone before exiting.
…dotes upon Richard.
…doubts upon Richard.
When Buckingham is killed, all drinks must be consumed. These players now must align with RICHMOND.

*RICHMOND
Such players whose characters have abandoned them through untimely death or unseemly cowardice shall align, at last, with Richmond. Newly reborn as Tudors, these players shall drink whene’er Richmond…
…mentions his tent.
…makes a stirring speech to rally his troops/retainers/office supplies.
…insults Richard.
When Richmond is crowned King, all players must rise, shout “HAIL RICHMOND”, and finish their drink.

Feel free to leave more rule suggestions in the comments.

And by all means, come to The Southern on January 14th (at 8 or 11pm) and take part in the game yourself. Oh, and also see some Shakespeare performed by ridiculously brave, talented, sleepy people. Go, go, dispatch.

My desk. My set. My life.

The Jigsaw monitor is my computer, or was; with the purchase of a new, larger iMac, the facing panel I constructed for the old machine is too small to be of any use.

Eetsa too SMALL, you see?

So pretty much the thing keeping new episodes from happening was the lack of a piece of spray-painted foamcore with holes cut in it.

An over-simplification, perhaps. But more embarrassingly true than you might think. Still, this strange hindrance got me to focus on the show a bit outside the realm of structured improv it was sliding into, and also made me remember my mission statement for the show, which I’ve talked about in bars but have yet to overtly state here.

For me, Jigsaw is a constant challenge to myself. With every season, if not every episode, I push myself to try something new, to explore new techniques, to learn new skills. Jigsaw is the place where I can push the boundaries of my comfort zone, secure in the knowledge that even if the end product isn’t as entertaining as I would hope, it’s free, so I can ignore any complaints I might get at least I have done something new, with the hope of becoming a better craftsman.

I could go through the past episodes trying to list everything I was hoping to accomplish, but I think we’d all be bored to tears. Instead, I’ll just let you know ahead of time the focus of Season Four: Writing. Over the course of the show, the content has been getting more and more improvised. Rough outlines taped to a tripod and revised over the course of shooting. It was fine, although it makes my friends in production grind their teeth a bit.

I finally broke the story for Season Four, and it is abundantly clear that this method won’t work. So it’s time to challenge myself in a new way. I’ll have to write the entire season before I shoot a single frame of footage. Twenty episodes, three to five minutes a piece, four arcs, one giant story. Pretty much the equivalent of four half-hour episodes.

Two hours of content. That I want to have completely written in time to start shooting in January. Which, my calendar informs me, is less than a month away. Oh, and if I want to start posting content in January, I’ll need to have most of the shooting done, because the interaction between the four mini-arcs requires me to film episode 401 at the same time as episodes 415 and 419, and 416-418 have to happen before then, and probably 417 and 408 need to be shot concurrently, and…

Well, you can see it’s a big mess. Oh, and I need to build at least two new puppets before I can start filming. Maybe three.

But you’ll be happy to hear the new monitor face is just about done.

Needs glue. And ink. And battle-damage.

With that in mind, I’ll be shooting a video before Xmas. A very short one. Doing triple duty as an apology for downtime, teaser for s.4, and holiday thing. Of course, it would be unprofessional of me to admit that I just got that idea as I was writing this. So I’ll pretend instead that the idea came to me in the shower earlier. Sounds way more writerly.

As I start banging my head against scripts, I will also be forcing myself to add content to this space (“writing begets writing” and all that). I will also likely be posting build videos for the new puppets, so all my new friends in puppetland can look at my process and realize I’m way more clueless than they thought. Hi, puppetfriends.

Okay. That’s a bit of prelude, and I’m out of time. Must run to the wine shop before work, as I’m cooking a chicken later. I will not be blogging about the chicken.

Similarly, if you were registered for this blog and you no longer are, that means your email/username combo was waaaaay too much like a bot and/or not incredibly amusing. If you really have some pressing comment to make, contact me, I’ll make it right.

To answer a question from months ago and only a few posts back, no. No I have not started blogging again. What can I say? Most of my thoughts are 140 characters or less, and therefore Twitterable.

I have a cold. I need to go to bed now. The only thing preventing me from signing up for Netflix right now is the fact that the computer next to the bed is too ancient to do On Demand movies. Instead, I will probably watch some old zombie movie I already own. Which, really, isn’t that bad.

I’ve said too much. Landshark.

*edited to add Oh yeah, and by the way: the show isn’t dead. It really really isn’t. Milton and Kranium are now making demands of me. It’s like a labor dispute of sorts, and when we all can sit down at a table and hash things out, we’ll start up with Season Four. I will not, however, promise that it will be worth the wait. It might be. But I don’t know yet.

NOW I’ve said to much. Noonan.

“I’m sorry?”

“The sausage guy. He’s usually at this table on Wednesdays?”

“Oh, he’s in the hospital.”

“Well, shoot. Is he okay?”

“Don’t know. He probably won’t be coming back.”

“Is he that sick?”

“I suppose that’s a matter of opinion.”

“…I don’t, what–”

“The farmer’s market has ‘disinvited’ him from returning.”

“Why? His sausages were incredible.”

“I probably shouldn’t talk about it.”

“Is there any way we can start a petition, or–”

“They found out he was cording, alright?”

“Cording?”

“It’s… it turns out that sausage guy had an umbilical fetish.”

“I don’t know what–”

“He was taking the sausage casings and attaching them to his belly button.”

“What? How did he–”

“Then he would hire men to… well, to provide nourishment. Through the tube.”

“Provide–”

“They found pictures.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Believe me, you’re not the only one. Anyway, it seems he thought he could actually make a real umbilical.”

“A real–”

“They found him in his bedroom with an Xacto blade, trying to pull his intestines through his belly button.”

“Oh my god.”

“He almost bled to death.”

“I… I just…”

“Yep.”

“…his sausage was so good.”

“Breaks yer heart, doesn’t it?”

This thing appeared in my head this morning. I am of the opinion that, somewhere in England, Warren Ellis is thinking about funny robots and doesn’t know why.

This response, originally intended for the comments, has spiraled out of control, and therefore I am putting it here. Feel free to ridicule this post on your own blog, or in the comments.

Hmm.

Firstly, anyone who claims that Citizen Kane is the film that proved movies could be art is playing fairly loose with the history of cinema. I’ll grant that it is one of the movies people use as an example now of early artistic film, one that serves as a gateway flick for people who want to explore the more artistic side of filmmaking. But it is a bit like the fourth comment in a thread proudly proclaiming “First!” There jes ain’t no sech animal.

That said, I think the real argument here is whether Games (or ANY popular medium) want to even bother with the label of “Art.” Frustratingly, it’s impossible to engage in this conversation without having some sort of working definition of what Art actually IS, a conversation that has been going on for a century with no consensus in sight. The latter half of the 20th century was one long argument over the nature of art. Most of what came out of that argument was that anything that was created before the argument began was automatically called Art, everything that happened later had to earn the moniker. Painting, illustration, sculpture, classical music, classic literature — automatically passed. Film, TV, modern music, conceptual art, performance art — that’s not art, that’s trash.

So it goes, with each new medium growing and asking to be called Art, whether the term is applicable or not. Personally (and I say this as somebody who strives to work in the medium), I can’t think of a single moment of Television that I’ve ever watched that I would call Art. Very few movies are Art. Popular books are usually not Art. Most comics, not Art either. And I haven’t played more than two or three games that were even approximating Art (I’d say Passage is the argument that it’s possible at all, for me).

You know what? Art isn’t a guarantee of entertainment. The fact that I haven’t seen Art on TV doesn’t mean TV isn’t my favorite medium. When I’m deciding what movie I want to watch, Art almost never factors into the decision. I admit to giving a second chance to comics with more Artistic conceits, but I’m far more excited about a new Ex Machina trade, say, than the Wolverton Bible.

The Big Lie is that something being Art automatically means you’ll like it. Unfortunately, when you do all the reading, listen to all the arguments, and really examine what it is that defines Art, it comes down to a weird mixture of posturing and fame.

There’s a story my old art teacher told about visiting the Louvre. He talked about the room with the Mona Lisa in it. He talked about how there were lines snaking around the building of people waiting to get a glimpse of the Mona Lisa, which was in a ten foot enclosure of bullet-proof glass. What boggled his mind was that the rest of the room was covered in other paintings by da Vinci. Small, delicate landscapes, other portraits, all of which were painted by the same great man, all of which were arguably better paintings than the Mona Lisa, and all of which you could walk right up to, put your nose an inch away from, no lines, no glass.

That’s Art.

The Mona Lisa is one of the greatest works of Art of all time not because it’s a great painting, but because it’s a pretty good painting that everybody has agreed is one of the greatest works of Art of all time. The Mona Lisa is an icon of the entirety of da Vinci’s career, and is a symbol for what Art is (even to me, as you’ll note by the use of this story to illustrate my point).

This is slightly different than mass-market popularity; most people, when asked, wouldn’t be able to tell you whether or not they like the Mona Lisa. You don’t typically see Mona Lisa posters in dorms or living rooms. Everybody knows it, few people ever actually pay attention to it. It’s Important without being Popular. Which is a neat trick.

No, while people often recognize Art, they spend most of their time with Other things. TV shows. Action movies. Superhero comics. World of Warcraft. Things that, for the most part, nobody would mistake for Art. What they are, and the point I’ve been trying so very hard to work towards, is Craft.

Things that are Good, things that are Well-Made, those are Craft. As in, well-crafted. By Craftspersons. Take TV. Sports Night, for example, is an incredibly well-assembled, well-paced, brilliantly performed comedy/drama with excellent writing, precision editing, and seamless direction. Apart from a few choices forced upon the creators by the network (the laugh track being the most glaring), the show is damn near perfect. It isn’t Art, though. It’s something else. It is a shining example of the Craft of Television.

Once you take “Art” out of the equation, things get so much easier. Craft is something demonstrable. Something is well-crafted or it isn’t. Sure, Arrested Development isn’t to my particular taste, but I cannot deny it is a supremely well-crafted show. I can appreciate it for how it’s put together, how individual performances play off each other, how the camera moves to manipulate the thoughts and emotions of the viewer, how and where the sound effects and music play into the scenes to intensify the experience, &c. I don’t have to like the show in order to respect it. Because I’m looking at it through the lens of Craft.

Video Games don’t NEED to be Art, see? They are Games. Games are for Playing. And what they need to worry about is Craft. How many times have we seen a review that praises a game’s ideas and then curses its interface? Or that notes its solid gameplay while mocking its voice acting? Video Games are the lovely little mash-up of all the Crafts of the last hundred years, but all this striving for Art has them a bit misguided. The best games I’ve ever played remembered that every moment needed to be Crafted. Skilled people (to use the term “artisan” here might cause confusion, as well it should, because it’s sort of at the root of the whole thing) creating solid things. Crafting a unique interactive experience.

So while I agree that it’s time for Video Games to grow up, I propose a clarification. Lamb, you ended your piece with this line:

The first step to being a grown up is calling yourself one – sooner or later, the rest of the world will come around.

The point at which the rest of the world comes around is when you stop worrying how you’re perceived and get on with your adult life. The respect (and really, isn’t this all we’re talking about here?) comes AFTER you do the amazing work, not before.

What this means is that it’s time for a traditional “sorry I haven’t posted in a while” blog entry, which I have decided to do in advance of the real dry spell. The Jigsaw season finale will not air for a bit, because I used that time to go Xmas shopping for my family and I have too many paid deadlines coming up that demand my attention.

I’m pleased that I’ve finally figured out what I want to do with the Spam column, i.e. do a weekly illustration based on the contents of a junk email, but again, there just isn’t enough time in the day to guarantee anything. Which is a shame, as I was just starting to build momentum. Sigh.

Meanwhile, it’s the final day of 2008. Tomorrow, I request that everyone take the time to kick 2008’s corpse in the face, just to make sure it’s really dead. Made it through the year, folks. Give yourselves a big toast. But check the jam for botulism first.

Working two jobs today. Best get moving.

So if you like puppetry (I’m assuming you do), it’s worth throwing a link to Puppetvision in your RSS reader of choice.

www.puppetvision.info

First, it was too long. So the first upload was a big waste of time. Then I split it in half and uploaded both halves. But the second half, the sound was so far out of sync it was unwatchable. So I recut the file. Sound was still out of sync. I repeated this process four times, it took a few hours of my life, and I finally gave up and went to bed.

Where I proceeded to dream, vaguely, about YouTube for a couple hours before needing to get up to use the WC.

When I returned to bed, I discovered the dulcet tones of Rick Astley were lodged in my head.

Yes, somehow, in the night, I managed to Rickroll myself.

This is more embarrassing than the Xacto knife in the leg.

Similarly, you may no longer append the word “punk” to a noun in order to describe what is inevitably a minor subgenre of science-fiction. If you must over-specify your particular thematic fetish, you must justify this with a name that accounts for the historical and/or aesthetic origin of said fetish.

Also, until further notice, use of the word “literally” will be restricted to those who apply for special permits, which are limited in number; those who need access to the word due to employment in or relating to literary criticism will be given higher priority.

The word “essentially” is now retired, and requests that you respect its privacy by never using it again.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

episode 318 will appear Friday afternoon, due to a desire to film during daylight hours.

My computer is finally back from the shop, and all appears to be well (apart from the mysterious switching on of system noises). Actually, potentially better than well; only a few days of hard use will tell for sure, but the new logic board may be actually making the system run, you know, better than before. Which is to say, my computer may now work as it’s supposed to, as opposed to the two-legged cheetah it was impersonating before. We shall see.

In any case, I owe you some videos. Rest assured, I haven’t been completely slacking off in the interim. The next three episodes are plotted out, and there will likely be a quick address from Kranium tomorrow or Sunday on matters philosophical.

Also, I now have a part-time job working for the Vinegar Hill Theatre, meaning I come home smelling of popcorn. This is neither here nor there.

In the meantime, here is a photograph of my pal Mike Keenan playing guitar for John Brown’s Body in Richmond a few days ago. Taken with the Goophone.

It is starting to rain in Virginia.

I woke up this morning thinking about the moment in the West Wing when Joshua Malina, in charge of a hopeless Democratic campaign in Orange County, a campaign that for some reason is neck-in-neck with the Republican incumbent despite the fact that the Democratic candidate is dead, there’s this moment when towards the end of the day, clouds start forming overhead, and a storm starts brewing, a literal one to match the metaphorical, and Josh Malina walks outside and looks up at the sky and shouts “NOW,” and with a clap of thunder, rain starts pouring down.

Today feels a bit like that.

For the second day in a row, the first human being I’ve encountered in the day has been an Obama worker. Not campaigning, not doing any last-minute conversion, just making sure I know where to vote and have a ride to get there. Today’s representative was wondering if Girl had voted yet (she had), and both made sure I knew to vote for Tom Perriello and not just vote for Obama. Everyone has been extremely polite, no-nonsense, and incredibly well-organized. I’m not really their target audience — I was going to vote already, I voted in the primaries, I’m an active voter for years — but Girl was newly registered in VA, so our house got the full campaign treatment. I was happy to have the privilege of watching the GOTV movement first-hand.

I made my way to the polls a little after 10 this morning. Beautiful warm autumn day, upper 50s, clean-smelling air. Rode my bike downtown, unsure as to how long I’d be waiting, what to expect. On the way I noticed that all but one of the (admittedly few) McCain houses on the street had taken their signs in already. Charlottesville is a very blue town, but it seems oddly prophetic that the handful of Republican households in my neighborhood are retreating from showing obvious support for their candidates. I hesitate to make assumptions as to their motivations, but like I say, it’s interesting.

The polls were not the madhouse we were told to expect. Then again, I did pick 10am for a reason; just after the last pre-workday voters, just before the lunch break voters. Outside of the polling place, the Obama and Perriello campaigns had lots of staffers offering copies of the ballot, with instructions on how to fill it out, and again offering a reminder to vote for ALL the Democrats, not just Obama. They also had a table filled with snacks, pretzels and granola bars, a mountain of water bottles, obviously well-provisioned should one of the four+ hour lines form at any point. Also of note, there was not a single campaign worker from any of the Republican campaigns. The Republicans have clearly abandoned Charlottesville. Or at least downtown. Probably a wise enough move; even Goode has a hard time downtown.

Inside, the lines were short but well arranged to accommodate as many folks inside as possible. People in line were smiling and chatting, some folks had brought a huge box of doughnuts and were sharing them with their neighbors. This polling place was set up with both electronic voting machines as well as paper ballots, and both were getting a fair amount of use, with a majority using the electronic machines. These were not touchscreen, but rather click-wheel design, one of the better designs I’ve seen (very hard to choose the wrong candidate, as you have to highlight the one you want and press a button). Unsure as to the paper trail possibility of these particular machines; something I’d guess Waldo knows. Should probably ask him, come to think of it.

All in all, the entire process took twenty minutes, tops. I left the polling place with a stupid grin on my face, and a Perriello worker outside gave me my “I Voted For Obama” sticker. Just then, it started to rain. My grin got bigger, I thanked all of the people working outside, hopped on my bike and rode home, getting absolutely soaked in the process.

I’m still exhausted from the Film Festival. I’m behind on three different projects. I’m fairly broke. I slept on my hand weird, so my wrist is sore. None of that matters right now; I’m sitting here staring at the big serif letters — “I VOTED FOR OBAMA” — and I am starting to tear up. Awash in a wave of uncharacteristic optimism, I’m contemplating just how much work so many people put into working for Obama and Perriello, and I’m proud of how well they did it. Proud of my fellow citizens for devoting so much time and energy to a cause, not for personal gain, but because they just want their country to be better. I have never before in my life seen such an outpouring of truly selfless action, so many people putting their community first, their country, their fellow man. My inner cynic tells me this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but I don’t know. People might actually be getting better and being better to each other. It’s hard not to get a little choked up.

In that West Wing episode, the dead Democrat does end up winning; Republicans don’t vote in the rain. Here in Virginia, the rain is coming in fits and bursts, but it might be enough to make history. Yesterday the polls were showing Perriello in a statistical dead heat with Goode. A bit of heavy afternoon rain could make all the difference.

As for the President, I suspect Mr. McCain will wait until Arizona is called, and then will concede shortly thereafter. I can’t imagine him conceding before finding out what sort of margin he receives in his home state. But by then, it should be pretty clear that he hasn’t won Pennsylvania, that he hasn’t won Virginia, and that Colorado is about to go blue as well. As soon as they call Arizona, the night is over. And the victory parties begin.

Thank you, America. You’re making me feel patriotic for the first time in my life. Keep it up.

In other news, the review I wrote of the new Tom Tomorrow comic collection got published in today’s C-VILLE. I’m pretty happy with it, considering I’ve never really written a proper review before. By all means, leave all sorts of positive comments so I get more writing work. Or negative ones, so I’ll finally shut up.

I don’t really know where to begin, so I’ll quote Lisa Provence at the Hook:

Raelyn Balfour, the mother whose infant son died when she left him in the car while she went to work at the Judge Advocate General’s School, was back in the same court today where she was acquitted by a jury of involuntary manslaughter in January to ask that her record be expunged.

To both expound and summarize simultaneously (a feat that likely requires some sort of libation, which I have just procured for myself during the course of writing this parenthetical), Balfour went to work at the JAG school at UVA, and left her nine-month old son in the car for seven hours. She claimed she forgot to drop the child at the sitter. The baby, to put it bluntly, baked to death. Balfour was brought up on two felony counts, second-degree murder and felony child neglect.

The charges were almost immediately reduced to involuntary manslaughter (stemming from criminal neglect), and when the case came to trial, the jury acquitted Balfour, despite there being no doubt in anyone’s mind that she was, in fact, responsible. The common feeling was that the woman was forgetful, but that she had suffered enough. Essentially, she hadn’t been guilty in their mind of criminal neglect, only of a tragic mistake.

I should point out here that the community rallied behind Balfour, and the loudest cry was, in effect, “This never should have gone to trial.”

Today, Balfour was back in court. She was there to try to get her record wiped clean. Because she’s worried that if somebody in the Army sees she was charged with two felonies, she’ll lose her security clearance, which will have detrimental effects on her pension and benefits. The judge — the same judge who had heard the original case — denied the request.

Summary of the summary: a woman accidentally left her son to die, was found not guilty, and now wants there to be no record of there ever being a question as to her innocence, because everybody agreed she should never have been tried.

…am I the only one who feels the need to call “bullshit”?

Of course the case should have gone to trial. That is the entire point of our legal system. We use the process of jury trials to evaluate incredibly difficult situations involving the law. This case was one such situation. Balfour was, by her own confession, responsible for leaving a baby in a hot car for seven hours. Whether or not this was criminal neglect isn’t up for one person to decide. Or two people. It’s for situations like this that we have a jury system. So that a large body of peers from the same community can bear impartial witness upon the facts of a difficult case and make a judgment based on their interpretation of those facts as they pertain to the law. THAT’S WHAT THAT BIG COURT BUILDING IS FOR.

In this case, the jury decided Balfour was not guilty. I bow to their judgment; they heard all the facts, whereas I skimmed an archived article in one weekly paper. My initial, knee-jerk reaction is “You left a baby in a car for seven hours, you most certainly have to be sterilized, at the very least,” but that’s my own personal bitter social darwinist talking. I’m a bad man for saying such a thing, and I recognize that. I certainly don’t begrudge Balfour her freedom.

What I do have a problem with is the idea that an acquittal somehow means abdication of responsibility. Balfour has never denied being the person who forgot that her son was in the car. Call me crazy, but even if you’re not found criminally negligent, you should maybe expect there to be some repercussions. Lose your pension and benefits? Yes, that’s terrible. At least you’re not serving ten years in jail. So suck it up.

In order to justify having a legal record expunged, there has to be “manifest injustice.” This means that there has to be a supreme miscarriage in justice resulting from a verdict. In other words, this should only apply when someone is tried, and the verdict is given, and then through the process of appeal this verdict is proved to be false. From what I understand, the purpose of expunging a record is to remove records of false conviction. Which doesn’t even remotely apply here.

I’m trying very, very hard to maintain some degree of fairness here. There are many things about this whole situation that I would like to rant about, but they seem sort of… mean. I don’t want to discount Balfour’s tragedy. It takes far less work than you might think for me to imagine a scenario where I forget a baby in a car. I doubt very highly it’d be for more than an hour, but I could see it happening, given a lot of extenuating circumstances. I don’t want to paint Balfour as some sort of villain wrongfully released upon the community. I truly believe she meant no harm, and truly believe in her continuing grief, no matter how self-inflicted.

So I am attempting to limit my ire at particular things, primarily the complete misunderstanding of the justice system that pervades our society (i.e. the continuing guilty-until-proven-innocent mindset that allows people to believe that a trial resulting in acquittal should not have happened). Not being able to rant about the other stuff is, admittedly, killing my momentum a bit. And I feel the tendrils of tangent wrapping around my wrists, which is to say, I think we’re rapidly coming to the end. Let it suffice to say that I look at this case as an example of the system working. A terrible thing happened, the person responsible was put before her peers, they passed judgment, the community was happy. Balfour was given a gift: she was allowed to go free. The community forgave her mistake. For her to come back and try to use the system to erase all evidence of it seems ungrateful. The record is valid, it does not need correction.

Also, if the Commonwealth’s Attorney is to be believed, expunging the record wouldn’t actually have any effect on a review of Balfour’s pension or benefits, as apparently the pertinent military regulations would require her to reveal the information anyway. Making the whole exercise utterly pointless, apart from a misguided attempt to move past guilt. Wipe the slate clean, maybe the pain goes away, too. I feel for the woman. But I’m applaud the judge for ruling against her motion.

To be honest, what really prompted what is growing into a rather sizable disdain for the woman is the fact that she held any sort of security clearance. Or rather, not a disdain for the woman, but rather a disdain for the system that would grant her a security clearance. Or rather, that there should be any argument as to whether she should be allowed to keep the aforementioned clearance. I think, maybe, and I’m just talking down my sleeve here, I think maybe if you forget a baby in your car all day, you maybe don’t get to have a security clearance anymore. I think maybe that’s actually, you know, fair. A security clearance implies trusting someone to act responsibly with sensitive information and/or goods, and that sort of trust should, oh, have some guidelines as to who is likely to be deserving of that responsibility. I’d say somebody who accidentally leaves important documents in a car shouldn’t be allowed to have a security clearance; they didn’t act responsibly with something in their care. Babies left in cars? Sort of a no-brainer. You don’t get to handle even the most mundane of classified information after forgetting a baby. If that means you lose some health insurance and have to get a job because your pension is cut off… then maybe you shouldn’t have left a baby in a car for seven hours.

I’ve been out of work for months and have to pay for my own damn insurance, and the worst thing I ever left in the car was an iPod. Maybe I should go to court to have my resume struck from the record.

It wasn’t worth trying to remember; in the dream, we played the game twice, and the first time I won without having to make much of an effort, and the second time I lost before the game was over, without getting to do much. The game mechanic was flawed, the card distribution was unbalanced, and subsequently the game was only fun if you got lucky. Which isn’t much of a game.

It did get me thinking about games, though. Or perhaps, Games. Waking after the dream, on the short 3am stumble to the bathroom and back, I suddenly realized why Poker is so popular. It’s sort of the perfect game. Take a basic rule set built around a fundamental quality of human nature (i.e. to try and make patterns out of chaos), use a centuries-old system of random value allotment (a deck of playing cards), come up with a distribution scheme using that system that minimizes unfair imbalance issues (give each player access to a certain number of cards), and then invent a game play order that emphasizes and rewards play based on the science of probability (knowing how likely you are to get a good hand given the cards on the table) and the art of performance (bluffing and calling bluffs). With a deck of 52 cards, you can play a game that can be taught in a matter of minutes that automatically increases its own difficulty depending on the experience of the players. It is, when played correctly, a game where you are almost always assured that skill will be rewarded. It is Fair.

Which, I thought upon waking this morning, is what makes Poker a Sport. Here I am classifying a Sport as any competitive Game where the rules minimize the effect of chance, where the Game is typically won by the player with the most skill. (Athletic Sports are a subset of Sports for the purposes of this rumination.) Sports are games where looking at average statistics of previous rounds played generally predict an average outcome of future games. I say “generally”, because although sports do favor skill over blind luck, chance events do happen, and humans are humans, and even the person with the most skill at any given pastime will occasionally make mistakes.

I’d argue here that there are only two kinds of sporting events that are enjoyable to watch; well, three if you’re a sadist. The first is watching two sides of high skill play against each other; watching rivals who are both very, very good at what they do is enjoyable simply because extreme competence is fascinating. The second enjoyable experience is to watch a game where normally skilled players make interesting mistakes. Watching people cope with unexpected incompetence is also interesting. The third type of game (that only cruel-hearted people enjoy) is to watch a very good player beat the snot out of a very bad player. Yes, this proves the concept that witnessing competence is fascinating, but it’s hard not to leave feeling bad for the other side. The side that just wasn’t very good.

Which brings me back to Poker. Poker is perhaps even one of the purest Sports. It takes no athletic prowess to speak of, and isn’t even terribly demanding on an intellectual level. Utterly average people can, given dedication and study, become very good Poker players. It is the ultimate in equalization.

I don’t play poker, despite my high opinion of it. I have played a few times in the past, and have discovered the odd determination of most people to remove poker from its position at the peak of the realm of sport. This is to say, when most people play poker, they don’t want to have to be good at it. Instead, they play weird variations, increasing the number of rules to the point where half the cards are wild or blind or cause you to trade hands with the person to your left. People have spent years inventing new ways of infusing Luck back into one of the purest games of Skill mankind has ever come up with. I don’t play poker because I only want to play real poker. And for that, I’d need to gamble, which fiscally isn’t something I can really justify.

(Although it should be noted that for some reason I could never fathom, people still play with actual money after turning their poker games into nearly skill-less exercises in card tossing. Seems to me that it’s more fun to put money on something you have a reasonable assumption of being able to Win without having to flip a coin twenty times. But maybe that’s just me.)

After contemplating the defilement of poker, I was left with the reinforced notion that we, people, have way too much interest in giving in to Chance. I’ve played a bunch of games over the years, board games, card games. I find it interesting to note the different types of people who play games. I haven’t yet quantified them, but I’m sure there are plenty of game theory books that explore the issue (and if not, I should probably start looking for grant money). I am fascinating by players who don’t care that a game is based on Luck. If in playing the game it becomes clear that most of the action of the game is based purely on drawing a certain card, or rolling exactly the right number, I tend to lose interest. Certainly all games must have a randomizing factor to keep from being the same game over and over, but over-emphasis on chance (and here’s where I do the big opinion dance) takes the element of play away from the player. If a game is based too much on the luck of the draw, the player isn’t so much playing the game anymore, but rather watching the game play itself.

And for some, this is delightful. Some people seem to enjoy not having to put much effort into the game, to be able to watch it unfold and delight in having any interaction with it at all. Win or lose, they witnessed a story, and for them it’s enough. For me… I need to feel I have some sort of actual impact on the story of the game. I want to take the elements given to me, and through knowledge of the rules and skill at dealing with random factors, attempt to do something spectacular. When I lose a game, I want to know it was either because my opponent was better, or because I made a mistake. I never seethe more than when I lose a game that, because of the game mechanics and bum luck, was utterly unwinnable from the start.

But then, I’m really big on fairness. I like it when there are rules, and when people play according to those rules. I like knowing that my failures are for a reason, a fair reason, not because of some random thing that was beyond my control. Which is to say, one of the points of playing a game, for me, is to leave Real Life behind for a moment, and enter a world where fairness is actually possible. Life isn’t fair, goes the old chestnut. That doesn’t mean our games shouldn’t be.

• an unordered list looks like in a blog post, not that I’m terribly likely to use them
• a link in aforementioned list looks like, if any different

This is all due to my being crap at stylesheets. Apologies to any readers for whom these test messages are becoming a burden, especially any blinkingline readers who are already sick of these inept tech posts. Thanks for your patience, I promise this is 95% likely to be the last post of this nature.

Now, many moons later, I’m editing this post to see what exactly is broken with the image uploading. Hopefully this won’t get re-sent to your RSS feed as a result. Also, I have no idea how to fix the thing that is broken. Which is very, very sad, as having an image uploader is a damn fine thing to have, and it seems I don’t actually have one now. Sigh.

Wait a minute, I think I found the tiny bit of code that was funky. Does this image work?

YES IT DOES. One bit of code never got changed from the test server address. Opened FTP, low and behold the test server had been RECREATED by WP, just to post images in the wrong place. Technology is powerful, but not as powerful as the idiocy of its masters. Anyway. Nice to finally fix that.