The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett's Journal
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "The Ferrett" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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09:34 am
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My Brief Review Of The New Wizards Of The Coast Site
They've redesigned. And the one thing I will note (aside from the fact that it's very Flash-heavy) is this:
They sure do love mystery meat.
(EDIT: This is not helped at all by the fact that their link to their main page is well below the fold, and I've overlooked it twice now on my 1024x800 Firefox screen.)
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09:27 am
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A Brief Thought On Hillary And Politics
I'm not in a mood to post lately - in fact, I'm debating the existence of this journal - but there is one thing I feel I should say.
Last night, Hillary Clinton gave a speech endorsing Barack Obama, taking one for the team magnificently as she handed the reins over to the guy who won. But in the end, it was the guy who won.*
Now, say what you will about Hillary, but I read recently about a study which showed that on the whole, women are no more likely to lose a political campaign than men. (Note that these aren't great odds, mind you - a lot of men run, and lose.) But women are 40% less likely than men to think that they can win, which I'm sure affects the lessened number of women who actually set out to run.
So if you're upset by Hillary's loss, and you want a woman in the White House, take that anger and run for a local office. Yeah, you.** If you think you're unqualified, look closely at the folks who are currently doing it; chances are really, they're not particularly superhuman, and I'm sure you could do at least a good a job debating local yard regulations. Get yourself into positions of power. Who knows? You might even like it, and climb the ladder. (And this qualifies especially if you're young; you can't be President without doing work somewhere else.)
And if you have some spare time in the next twenty-five days or so, you might wanna start with politics by, say, protesting this "conscience" rule that changes the kind of care that a doctor can provide. I'm not opposed to doctors having their personal morality, but when your morality can affect whole communities who don't have other choices to go to, that's not a personal morality, it's a public morality. Sorry, guys.
* - A guy who, mind you, I support.
** - "But I'm not a woman!" Ha ha. Even so, having more women-supporting men in positions of power is still a good thing.
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11:39 am
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A Brief Movie Review
For a movie that is, ultimately, about killer plants, The Ruins is a horror film that plays fair, runs quick, and delivers a damn fine punch. It looked like your everyday horror flick in the previews, but honestly I don't think it got quite enough play.
It's the old horror standard: Lock several different, slightly-loathsome characters together in a paint can. Throw something awful in the paint can. Marinate. And for all of that, the creeping terror of what lies within the ruins works, and works well.
I'm not sure if I wanna watch it again, since it's big on gratuitous gore (at times, I thought I was watching Hostel again, and that's never a pleasant thought), but the effects are well done, the acting's competent, and the plot features no idiot character moves (well, at least not before the pressure makes people snap).
I will stand behind the Ruins. Where, probably, you can't see me.
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07:32 am
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A Contract For Life
I, William “Ferrett” Steinmetz, make this promise to Gini Judd not to kill myself.
Signed,
WFS
Because I love you.
Because I keep my word.
It's been a rough couple of months lately, and things have been getting worse. Even when things have been going comparatively well, there have been these strange moments where I'll just stand by the edge of a curb and think, quite dispassionately, "You know, things would be better off for everyone if I just stepped out in front of this bus here*" or find myself taking out the knives in the kitchen in strange ways. I tell myself it's not true, that my mother and wife and others would be heartbroken, but the nature of suicidal thoughts is that they convince you that somehow, all of those people have just been quietly lying to you, that they've been enduring you in a kind delusion and the best thing you could do would be to walk away from them.
I've been trying to avoid those thoughts, but they've been coming with increasing frequency.
The impetus came on Saturday, when I was talking to a friend and he told me what happened to Marine applicants who didn't make it through boot camp. "You have to sign an agreement saying you won't kill yourself," he explained. "Guys like that, they have a certain definition of honor, and it keeps a lot of people going." Someone else chimed in, "Actually, that's a reasonably common practice in therapy. It works." And I realized, to my dawning horror, that I actually not only could use a contract like that, but actively needed one.
So last night, I signed one with Gini.
The interesting thing, I suppose, is the marginal usefulness of it. I know that if I'd been forced to sign one, it probably would have been useless to me; the fact that I wanted to make a contract indicates that the thoughts aren't too bad, and that my concern for Gini is still enough to keep me in this world even when mine flags. I just need some physical reminder in those wobbly moments to keep me anchored. And it's not a replacement for therapy; as my wife notes, things have been a little unsettled here for both of us since I've returned from Clarion, and if I'm still having these thoughts in a week or two it's time to haul my ass in for serious therapy. I'm hoping I won't have to, but I suspect otherwise.
I debated making this post. This is, partially, a journal of my own life, and partially a public forum. No matter what I post or how clearly I try to state it, there's always going to be someone who takes it the wrong way. I didn't feel like chronicling a significant moment in my life, only to have it chewed up into debates on whether I'm attention-seeking, whether I hate therapy, the nature of depression, yadda yadda yadda. Yet what eventually convinced me to make this post was the fact that a lot of people do struggle with serious depression and still manage to do their jobs... But, ironically, because they're struggling successfully they get no credit for being depressed, and sometimes people don't even realize how bad it is because they manage.
I think that it's important to sometimes speak out as to who you are, even if it's embarrassing, just so that others can realize that yes, this issue is probably more common than they realize; that other people are going through things right now that they may not always discuss with you, but they do exist. (It's easy for people to write off what they perceive as strange and unsettling aspects of humanity when nobody they know has [or is] them.) I'm not trying to be the poster boy for depression - others have more serious versions of it - but I think as someone who is frequently depressed, both chemically and psychologically, it's vital to say that this is part of who I am, and there's nothing to be ashamed of about it.
So the end result is that things have been very bad for a few months, despite a great job, new opportunities, a loving wife, a great family, grand friends, and many other wonderful things. I try to look on the positive side, but some parts of me want to focus on the negative.
My challenge is to find a way to deal with that properly. I hope that I can.
* - Even more interesting, what stops me - in addition to my thoughts of my Dad and Gini and Mom and everyone else - is that the bus driver who hit me would be traumatized, and that's really not fair to him. Poor guy.
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12:14 pm
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How To Tell If A Weasel Is Still Sick
GINI: "Hey, Ferrett, wanna watch the women's fire-spinning team? They're starting on the front lawn in five minutes!"
ME: "No, I have to go home and relax."
Thirteen-hour runs of sleep. At least one whole day of holding up signs and communicating with gestures - which I am, apparently, terrible at - because I can't talk. A complete inability to think. Constant sinus pressure. And, of course, trying to do writing and work in the middle of all this.
This cold has lasted for nine days, and I'm about ready for it to leave. I'm not generally one to complain about my health (barring, of course, losing all my front teeth, which is pretty notable), but this has been the kind of wondrous cold that seems like it's continually about to leave, and then stays for another day or two. This cold is like a bad houseguest.
I have not kissed my wife full on the mouth in nine days. This is now how I imagined my return from Clarion, but some day I will be disease-free. I swear.
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02:50 pm
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Still Sickened And Dead
As of now, I don't know who Barack Obama's Vice Presidential candidate will be. But this is ridiculous: Some people are upset because Barack never requested anything from Hillary Clinton.
Come on, folks; what kind of paper would Obama need from Hillary at this point to see if she was ready? If anyone's been pre-vetted more for the position, I can't think of them; one suspects that after months of Republicans scouring for dirt, if there was anything left, they would have found it by now. And certainly, he knows enough of what she's like to know all of the pluses and minuses.
Now, it may well be that Obama doesn't want Hillary for the position, and that's a cause for upset among Hillary-supporters. But the fact that he didn't ask her for anything isn't a snub, it's a sign that her family has been in the spotlight for so long that it's hard to believe that everything's not out in the open already.
And I am still coughing. Jesus.
(Edit: Also, here's an interesting link from someone who was a POW with McCain on why he's not voting for McCain. As has been noted elsewhere, the Swift Boat Veterans weren't even with Kerry in Vietnam. Not sure whether this is as vital, but it's an interesting take.)
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12:31 pm
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Once Again, The Real World Disappoints
A man called Usain Bolt is breaking world records. And yet he has not yet a) donned a spandex costume,and b) found a way to use his fantastic sprinting powers to fight crime.
The man's name is "Bolt," for God's sake! In the crappiest Marvel comic, the man would already have his girlfriend stuffed into a refrigerator, found that with great speed comes great responsibility, and faced down Dr. Doom. Yet all the man does is, you know, run fast.
What a world, what a world.
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11:01 am
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Flu, Stupid
When you have not one, but two jobs that involve relying on your brainpower to work, having a stupid flu is not fun. When I get sick, my brainpower tends to shrink rapidly, and having a head cold for four days running has impeded my progress.
How dumb am I?
- I could not watch "The Spiderwick Chronicles" because I was having difficulty following the plot.
- It took me (no joke) three hours to figure out how to do a proper three-table grouped join in mySQL - admittedly, there were one or two things that made it slightly tricky, but what should have been a fifteen-minute conundrum became the goddamned Da Vinci Code.
- It took me an hour to post my Barack Obama post the other day, and at the time I posted it I wasn't even sure if it made any sense. (I still don't.)
- I spent four hours staring at my screen, revising, to produce 800 words of revised story, and I don't even know if they're the right words. (This may be par for the course for many slower writers, but I'm known for my speed.)
I am trying to struggle along on fewer pistons now. I have become Simple Jack, and the slowness of my head movies makes my eyes rain. (And of course, what am I trying to red to educate myself in my sickness? Building Scalable Web Sites. Yes, that's going swimmingly.)
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12:27 pm
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Dear Obama
Please learn the lesson from Al Gore's 2000 defeat.
Your poll numbers are dipping. You lost twelve points among young voters. Why? Well, I'll tell you - in fact, I already have told you. When your guys called me up and asked me for my usual monthly donation of $100, I said this:
"Kindly tell Mr. Obama I won't be donating to him for the next two months."
"Do you mind if I ask why, sir?"
"Not at all. I've been supporting a liberal. Then it turns out that he's perfectly fine allowing the telecommunication companies immunity, as he said he wouldn't be. I'm not thrilled about that. And he's now moving towards the center in other aspects I'm not thrilled about - wire-tapping, for example."
"Sir, he needs to compromise - "
"He may well. But I want a liberal in the White House, not some watered-down centrist. If he wants to alienate the die-hard supporters in order to get mainstream America, rather than trying to sell his liberal policies to them, then that's fine. But at that point he is not representing me, and I'm not going to give him my money so that he can try to get voters who have stances that I don't agree with. He's an eloquent speaker; tell him that I'd prefer he actually start fighting for liberal values instead of being embarrassed by them."
"So he can't count on your support now, sir?"
"Why should he? He hasn't supported me. Call back in two months and we'll see where he is."
Al Gore, I should add, lost me in 2000 by the exact same strategy. Liberals are tired of having to apologize for their values, and a little sick of having politicians flee like a retreating army any time someone suggests that they're not "tough enough." If Obama wants to try to reach middle America by hiding his true values and obscuring the debates that need to happen, then not only do I think he can't win, but I think that he's doing active harm by treating liberal concepts like they were a shameful case of head lice.
Break open the debate, chief. Bring it on. McCain's been rallying his base, you've been pissing off yours. Make it liberals versus conservatives - we're at the tail end of seven years of conservative power, and where has it gotten us? Make your case. Make it so that "liberal" isn't a value that costs you votes. Remind people what liberal thoughts actually have done for people.
It's not a guaranteed win by any means. Certainly there are enough conservatives who believe that liberal values are toxic. Fair enough. But unless you start making a case for the other side - that government programs are often more effective than their free-market equivalents, that unrestrained free markets often lead to economic collapses, that the government's job is to ensure a level playing field, that living in constant terror means the terrorists win - then you're going to lose the war.
Fight, sir. Please. I want to give you my money. But you have to raise your fists a little.
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10:34 am
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Mamma Mia! A Brief Rant
Through a drug-induced haze, Gini took me out to see Mamma Mia! last night, on the assumption that it might cheer me up. And lo, it did, even though every time I laughed it felt like I was gargling with ground glass.
The funny thing about Mamma Mia! is that it's kind of invulnerable to critical analysis. Nobody in it can really sing or dance a lick - it's amateur karaoke night brought to the big screen - but that's not the point. The point is that all these actors are having such an awesomely fun time on screen that you can't help but smile, and Abba songs are so bulletproof that anyone can sing them and make them sound good.
Professionals would have fucked it up. This is the joy of watching your friends sing "Dancing Queen" into a hairbrush while you prance around the bedroom, singing with them. It's not good, but that's not the intent, chumma.
However, the movie kept annoying me by putting Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan next to each other. These are both two gorgeous, aging people with excellent bone structure. And yet Pierce still gets the "hunk who younger woman longs after" roles because he's a guy, and there is no equivalent for women.
This sucks. If anything, Streep's gotten more beautiful as she's gotten older. I'm no fan of early Streep, with those watery eyes and bladed nose, but she's matured into a kind of timeless beauty, the extraneous bits stripped away, and her body is ripely gorgeous. But Hollywood's said that older women can't be sexy, unless they're in chick flicks that are marketed specifically to other women.
You can have a sixty-year-old Sean Connery kissing it up with his granddaughter Catherine Zeta-Jones in a mainstream movie Entrapment... That's cool, man. We all know men just get better with age. But reverse that situation, and suddenly Hollywood barfs, because wrinkles on a woman are evil. Good God, she's forty? She shows evidence of smiling at some point in her past? Throw her on the fucking garbage heap, she's done.
I'm not sure where that comes from. It's a whole chicken-and-egg scenario, because Hollywood and TV has taught us that older women are kinda creepy, and as such many men are revulsed when an actress turns forty. Is that inherent? I don't think so. I think that it's that Hollywood is run mainly by guys, and guys want to believe that they're hip when their hair starts to go, and so they're endlessly campaigning for the idea that hey, women love men like this. And since they personally want hot young thangs, it's in their interest to cast as many sleeping beauties as possible.
Would men accept older women as being beautiful? I think they would. They wouldn't accept all women as beautiful, of course, but then again not every Hollywood Lothario ages gracefully, either.
But it pissed me off. Two beautiful people on-screen. One of them is going to get more "I've still got it" roles. The other is not. And that's such a fucking double-standard that even the joy of "Take a Chance on Me" could not wash it from my brain.
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11:33 am
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Two Other Notes
1) For those of you who are interested, my post-apocalyptic Rock webcomic My Name Is Might Have Been has returned from its hiatus. Put your lighters in the air.
2) I am currently suffering from one of my worst sore throats ever. I cannot talk. Hard to concentrate. May take a day off. Bleah.
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11:31 am
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So What's It Like, Leaving Clarion Behind?
So it's been nine days since I left Clarion, and some folks have asked me what it's like to leave the Greatest Summer Camp experience ever. And I will tell you that returning to everyday life is a challenge.
First off, your whole environment changes. At Clarion, there is no doubt that you - yes, you - are a Writer. In the everyday world, you face constant threats to this identity as a Writer, because you have this day job to deal with where you become, say, a Web Programmer for eight hours a day. And your friends and family insist upon talking about things other than how to construct your latest story, and you return to the cold arms of a world that isn't invested at all in your future.
For six weeks, everyone wanted to read your stories. Everyone wanted to discuss the Craft. Now you're back in the real world, and it feels like you're wandering around in a big void where there are too many choices again. You might not be a writer. You might be some lazy person chatting on GMail.
Then, too, there are different people. For six weeks - perhaps the longest six weeks of your life - you pretty much only socialized with the same eighteen people. Those were your family, a bizarre culty stew of love and pressure. When I went to San Diego Comic Con, the weird thing was that I had come to assume that any tall guy with moppy dark hair was Neil Gaiman, that any thin woman with curly black hair was Mary, because my entire world had been distilled down to eighteen archetypes. For four weeks, my only real conversations beyond asking for more fries at the cafeteria were with these folks.
The old friends are lovely. Don't get me wrong, I am glad to be back. But not having my Clarionites around with me feels as though I have had a limb severed. I want to talk about these new stories endlessly, to swap gossip with them, and they are only online. That's unsatisfying in any case, and if you'll recall I'm notoriously bad with chatting, so I feel adrift and isolated from my family.
Many of us cried when we heard the podcast, since we missed the voices of our friends. We feel scattered.
Plus, I'm suddenly back at work, and "work" for me consists of sitting in my living room, typing alone. A week or so ago, any time I felt lonely or bored, I could wander into the lounge or go over to Dan's room and find someone for a chat. I always had someone to do lunch with, someone who I liked. I had a community that was vibrant and alive, a grand number of folks, and I'm down to just Gini - who is absolutely lovely, but she has her own life and is frequently unavailable. Clarion as a whole was always there to meet my needs for good conversation, a host of brilliant chats waiting to happen, and not having that makes me feel lonely.
(On the bright side? Ginicuddles and happy chat with my wife as I fall asleep is way better than anything Clarion had to offer. Fo'realz.)
So you try to reach out. You send emails. You try to reconnect through these threads. But you miss Dana, and you miss Keffy, and you miss, hell, sixteen other folks who you'd grown to love. And you're not sure when you'll see them again. And you make plans that when one of you finally hits it big and gets a zillion dollars, you'll buy a castle in a good location where you can all live together again in perfect harmony.
No, really. You do. Or at least we have. And maybe one of us can get to that superstardom, and create the haven we all long for, and we'll see what happens. (I'm not going without Gini, but I know she'd fit right in.)
In the meantime, we sit at home. And we type a little. And we mourn.
That's what it's like to leave Clarion.
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09:18 pm
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Upon Watching Return of the Jedi
Dude. Just shut up. Twice now, Luke was about to slash his dad into little Vader-bites, and you interrupt his angst.
Every time you open those wrinkled lips, you just remind everyone that they're being evil. Stop sermonizing and try a little silence, chief. Luke's into it, just let him go.
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09:45 am
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What Is Sex?, Part II
Some interesting responses from yesterday's post on what it means when you say, "I had sex with X," some of which were quite fascinating.
Some folks went roughly with my internal definitions. Other folks went with the idea that "Any activity intended to give orgasm to one of the participants" was sex - which is an interesting, if extremely vague, definition, but some folks want that vagueness.
Before we continue, however, a fun Ferrett fact: my first sexual experience, which involved a very small woman and non-lubricated condoms, was very much like sticking Little Elvis into a Play-Doh Fun Factory. It wasn't pleasant, and so I assumed that sex itself was overrated. For the next two years of my life, my only sexual contact with my girlfriends was oral and manual sex.*
Now, in that time, I had two of the five most memorable relationships I've had. The intimacy I felt with those girlfriends was nothing short of amazing, and the fact that I never had penetrative intercourse with them doesn't lessen what we shared in the least.
Yet if you were to ask me, "Ferrett, did you have sex with them?", my answer would be, "Uh... no. I didn't. But..."
Which is the interesting bit. For me, my own internal definition of "sex" has nothing to do the level of sexual intimacy experienced in a relationship. Some folks thought there was some hierarchy at stake, wherein if you didn't have sex then by God, it somehow "doesn't count" or is less real. But for me, the term sex is merely a definitional word, in much the same way I draw a distinction between kissing, kissing, and making out. (The first is just lips, the second involves tongue, and the third involves multiple tongue kisses with full-on body contact.)
When I say, "Wow, I didn't have sex with them," for me it simply defines the physical range of what we experienced together. I've stuck my penis inside of women where it was considerably less intimate than what I had in with most of the girlfriends in those first two vaginal intercourse-free years. Far as I'm concerned, intimacy can't be measured by a simple "What body part touched what body part."
And because I believe that, my definition of the term "sex" does not connote the level of intimacy, but rather the range of activities experienced. Many folks want it to connote the level of intimacy, because if they spend several hours in bed with someone they want it to count. And that's perfectly fine.
But that brings up the second point - this is my own internal set of definitions, which I firmly acknowledge are illogical and not particularly thought through. They're just what instinctively goes through my head when someone says, "X had sex with Y." The definition of "any act intended to bring someone to orgasm" is such a wobbly construct that it can contain everything.... Which is convenient for some, but not for folks like me who a) like categorizing things and b) like knowing what happened. (Yes, I'm nosy.)
As it is, for me, if someone said "I had mind-blowing sex with [GIRL] last night!" and it turns out that [GIRL] gave him a handjob, that image would be at odds with what I'd consider sex. Yet that is simply me. I'm not attempting, as many are, to make some blanket statement of WHAT SEX IS, but rather to look at how society and our own personal desires create an odd set of not-always-consistent rules that each of us uses.
I think that "intent to provide orgasm" is a useful tool in polyamorous households to determine where the backstop is. And it's not a bad way of looking at it if you're looking to come up with some way that makes you feel as though you've connected with your partner. But again, none of those are what flit instinctively through my head when someone says, "I had sex with X," which is the question I was asking.
And I find it interesting. Fisting? I count that as sex for lesbians, not for men. (Not that it's not sex per se, but fisting is unusual enough in a lot of relationships that I'd expect some mention of it as an exception.) Tribadism? Not sure why, but for me that absolutely counts for women as sex. Bizarre, but it's what floats through my head instinctively. It is not universal.
Do any of those matter? Fuck no. What matters is what you think and what makes you happy. As it always has been.
* - Thankfully, an older woman introduced me to the joys of lubricated condoms and the difference they made, and ho boy it was a whole different ball game.
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02:52 pm
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What Is Sex? Tell Me, Tell Me, If You Think You Know
![[info]](../p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) andrewducker had an interesting post on defining "sex." And I realized that, paradoxically enough, I have three different definitions of sex, one for each possible connection, and one set of disclosures.
For a male-female coupling, sex for me is the penis-vagina connection. That's it. If you told me, "I had sex with her," then I'd assume there was penetration. Fascinatingly, anal sex (which has penetration) and oral sex does not count as sex proper.
But there's the disclosure factor. If I asked you, "Did you have sex with her?" and you said, "No," the Bill Clinton evasion doesn't work. The proper answer to said question is, "Well, we didn't have sex, but...." Because either anal sex or blowjobs counts as intensive sexual contact, even if it is not sex. Fascinatingly, however, a handjob or manual stimulation? An optional disclosure, except when determining whether possible cheating has taken place, in which case you have to tell.
(I also count kissing as a piece of evidence in terms of possible cheating, since kissing is usually a betrayal for me and most of the relationships I know - but I do have some friends who allow unlimited French kissing as long as it goes no further. Bizarrely, groping sans kissing, weirdly enough, is not a cheating problem for me, since I have some friends groups who happily grab butts as a form of consensual joke/titillation... And sensual dry-groping without kissing just strikes me as bizarre.)
Now, for a male-male coupling, sex is anal sex, because that's the only form of penetration one can achieve. The blowjob "disclosure factor" rule still counts, though, so if you had oral sex it's significant - it's just not sex proper, in my mind. Which means that in many of the homosexual relationships I've seen it sometimes takes a while to have sex, and some never have sex at all. Which doesn't at all lessen the relationship.
And finally, for a female-female coupling, sex is oral sex - the only relationship where there is no umbrella of disclosure, since (as stated) manual stimulation falls below my radar. Intriguingly, the penetration factor of strap-ons or shared dildos don't count as sex for me, that's playing with toys, which is weird because it generally comes in conjunction with oral sex, which does count as sex, but the plastic bits don't.
All of this is, naturally, completely arbitrary. I'm not saying these categories make any sense. And it probably gets worse if, as many people do, you think that a relationship somehow doesn't count as much if you're not having sex - which I don't. I simply have a categorization issue, much as I draw fine distinctions between "an orgy," "a threesome," and "a foursome."
It's totally bizarre. But I mean, honestly, "sex" is a weird thing, especially when you take hetero/homo lines into account. So here's the question: When someone says, "I had sex with X," what do you think they meant? What categories does that cover? And would you feel they omitted some details if you asked them directly whether they'd had sex, and they did X but didn't mention that Y happened?
Man, society is just weird.
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07:59 pm
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Guitar Hero: Aerosmith
The good news is that I picked this up for $50, with a spare guitar, at a second-hand shop. The bad news is that it's not worth $50 by any means.
The problem with Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is that it's inherently bad if you don't like Aerosmith... But bizarrely enough, it's bad if you do like Aerosmith, which I do. Because on the Career mode, before you can play one Aerosmith song, you have to play two songs by other bands. That's right; I sure hope you like Mott the Hoople and Cheap Trick, because if you don't you're going to have to choke them down to get any taste of Aerosmith whatsoever.
And your reward for smashing "All The Young Dudes"? You get... "Make It," a rather tedious song that's nowhere to be found on their Greatest Hits album. Then you get "Uncle Salty," a second-tier classic, and "Draw the Line," not exactly a song the fans have been clamoring for.
At this point, I was like, "Are they proceeding in chronological order? I mean, this is all cool, but where's 'Dream On'? Where's 'Sweet Emotion'? Where's 'Toys in the Attic'?" And I am a big Aerosmith fan, and it turns out that to get to my first real hit, I'd have to slog through a bad Joan Jett song and an awesome Kinks cover to plow through two other not-quite-classic hits ("No Surprize" and "Movin' Out") to get, reluctantly, to "Sweet Emotion."
So basically, the pattern is this: Get through two songs by bands you may or may not like in order to unlock two second-tier songs from Aerosmith. Once you beat them, you get a genuine hit. Which really actually sucks, because chugging through three or four mediocre songs for every great song makes it feel like the game hates you. If you're going to give me Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, it should be dripping Aerosmith's finest from the get-go. Aerosmith has plenty of smash hits without having to litter the ground with minor drips like "Bright Night Fright" and "Beyond Beautiful." Plus, I don't particularly like The Clash or The New York Dolls, so making me choose between two songs I loathe to get to the good stuff is just baffling.
It's as though the game designers said, "Well, people really like Aerosmith. How can we make it as hard as fucking possible to get to the songs they like?" Which baffles me, since a game is supposed to be, well, pleasurable.
In addition, you grow to hate Joe Perry throughout the game, because you get used to his little tricks. I sat there going, "Oh, very nice, Joe, you're strumming a lot of chords in rapid succession during your solo. Yes, you're very clever, going up and down the neck like that. Not that I haven't seen you do that in every other fucking song until now." It seems like that Guitar Hero III wanted me to hate Tom Morello, and now Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is inculcating a deep loathing of Joe Perry. This is probably not what they intended, but maybe we shouldn't have forty solos by the same goddamned guy.
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12:30 pm
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Because I Am Very Old, Though Just Old Enough
When I was young, the Russkies were our main competitors in the Olympics. Every morning when you picked up a newspaper, there was the listing of how many gold medals those eeeeevil Russians had gotten and how many AMURRCA had gotten, and much hand-wringing over whether we were ahead and why. It was very important that we beat the Russians in the 400-yard dash, or else the Antichrist himself would rise and walk the Earth.
And every day, there was some mild bitching about how the Russians had some evil doping scandal or were bribing the judges or were secretly fielding males in place of females, all to show how untrustworthy those damn Russkies were again. Which was irritating at the time, but I dealt with it.
Now? China. And OMG, THEY FAKED SOME FIREWORKS IN THE OPENING CEREMONY! OMG, THE LITTLE GIRL LIP-SYNCHED! The front page of Yahoo! tells me daily how we're benchmarking against our evil Chinese competitors, and every day I hear about how relentlessly, soul-crushingly EVAL the Chinese are.
Look, I'm no fan of totalitarian regimes that crush the environment and don't give a rat's ass about human rights. But I'm also not a fan of thinly-veiled propaganda, and oh boy the way our press is looking for the thinnest excuses to show me how utterly awful China is smacks of a bias that feels ham-handed.
I don't like China much already, and certainly the fielding prepubescent girls in the gymnast events is legitimately scummy... But so much of this feels like schoolyard gossip that I'm a little tired. Yeah, they pulled some Hollywood shenanigans in the opening ceremonies; who cares? It just feels like a recasting in a bad movie; in the 1976 original, it was Russia playing the part of America's Soulless Rival, and now it's China spouting the same lines with the same director shadowing them in the noir light of EEEEVIL.
I get it, guys. Can I just see some damn sports?
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11:10 am
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I Am Feeling Dry
The blogging is a bit strange, now that I'm writing in the mornings. I feel all writed out.
So what would you like me to blog about? I'm searchin' for topics.
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11:06 am
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Would You Like To Hear My Voice?
Well, I'm up on the Clarion podcast at Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing, where you can hear my whiny, scratchy tones discussing how hard Clarion is and me missing my wife. Man, I know how to sell myself, don't I? Fortunately, my other Clarionmates are all lovely people and have interesting things to say, so you should check it out.
I myself have not listened to this podcast yet. I would probably break down in tears, because I miss my Clarion family. So y'all can tell me how it sounds.
Also, thanks to atdt1991, we have at least one data point on the endless "Bear vs. Shark" debate; scientists have found part of the jaw of a young polar bear inside the stomach of a Greenland shark. Though I would like to mention that no sane person has ever debated the fact that a shark would inevitably triumph over a bear floating in water, just as a shark in the forest would be savaged by the tiniest baby bear. It's all about providing an equal footing, people.
The Japanese are suitably crazy. When, oh when, will they make the Bear vs. Shark game show? I await it with thrumming nerves.
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09:05 pm
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What The Fuck?
Someone thought this was a good idea.
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