A little nonsense now and then

Half a year between entries once again. Shock and awe for anyone who knows me.

Cliff's Notes of life in G-funk Land (and website updates) -

Dynasty Warriors 5 is still my favorite in the series. I wrote this retrospective love letter to celebrate its 10-year anniversary.

Here's another fond look back on Milon's Secret Castle, a childhood favorite game that the internets love to hate. I may suck at most modern games because minimal depth perception and sense of direction and fast twitch aiming skills, but I beat this supposed impossibility when I was ten. It took me four months, but yay?

I went to see Mad Max: Fury Road because my friends were going, and it looked like reasonable fun. I ended up head over heels in love with its insane craft and adrenalin. Fury Road knows exactly what a straightforward action flick should be and blows it out of the water with surprising nuance and restraint - and also happens to be feminist. Review here.

I'm making arts again, woo hoo. I seem to have improved via osmosis of following pro illustrators while my visual brain was in torpor. I'm working on a 4-character piece and taking my time finishing it to the best of my ability, but it is entering the Zeno's Paradox of its final phase.

We entered the current console generation with a PS4. What finally kicked me over the edge? Fallout 4. Of course I had to get the Pip-Boy edition because I can use more crap in my house when it pertains to one of the very few game series that continues to build on its excellence. I must write my comprehensive review of Fallout: New Vegas - which is probably the best game I ever played, bugs notwithstanding - as I get hyped for the November release. I also foresee myself coming down with a convenient multi-day cold at that time - or just scheduling time off because work is awesome like that.

Speaking of work, the tl;dr version is that this year has focused on a career-defining system switchover and deployment, and I have built - and continue to build - some seriously beautiful, modular, and flexible shit in ColdFusion. I'm not terribly fond of the language - just let me at the underlying Java without all the quirks and "helpful" conveniences that don't do what I want half the time. But Coldbox is a wonderful framework, and I love that I had time to learn and apply it. I PUT ON MY ROBE AND WIZARD HAT

I got the job. Not just a job. The job. The high end programming position I applied to at Penn State, whose listing sought a driven and creative problem solver. The one with an interview I prepared for by mainlining '80s tunes in the Kern Building lobby beforehand, and in which I shed my suit jacket and flexed for a room full of staffers in response to an inquiry about my hobbies. It's a position within a department seeking to grow and develop its information technology division. It's my closest approximation to tenure. Said department has lots of other women, who I had a blast interviewing with. You bet your ass I'm stoked.

I can still walk to work. My office space seems quiet and private. I get a deep tuition discount and a boatload of vacation - that trip to China is A-OK with the management and won't put me in time off debt for the next century or so. I do have to dress business casual - a culture shock to someone raised in the jeans and snarky T-shirt world of web development and research engineering - but I have plenty of comfortable options, and I can use a wardrobe refresh anyhow. It's a good reason to kick me back into the Cleaning Out Clothes for Goodwill Project I started a couple of weeks ago.

I've been a lazy vacation bum. I had a full week where my best defense against doldrums was room escape and tile swap puzzle games. I also had breakfast with penm_rx3, who has a creative writing minor and a planned cross-country move. Which gave me a nice novel-related goal of finishing my first act to send them for some hardcore critique. I do appreciate the honest feedback from my friends who share my tastes and understand what I'm going for, but I need that detailed impression of themes and threads and pacing and prose. I understand that such requires money for the hours of work and experience involved. So if I can help my friends build their bank account and shore up Act 1 as a solid prototype for the rest of my structure, style, and tone - ayyyyyyup. It's moving in steady steps, with previously yet undetermined character chemistry falling neatly into place. I had reached my limits for how much I could plan ahead, so focusing on early content is just what I need right now.

Dynasty Warriors costume DLC is at its best when it involves absurd and/or modern themes. The Wei jobs exemplify this. Zhang He is a literal assclown, and Cai Wenji and Jia Xu are also in the circus because they are a popular fandom ship because matchy matchy let's pair up the new characters together I understand why people like it but I don't feel it at all. There's a lot of assorted military business, Xiahou Yuan is a crime scene investigator (who would totally be eating on the job to prove he isn't disgusted by anything) and Cao Ren is one of those technical rescue team guys. I have a perfect reference photo for him going after someone's cat stuck on a roof, but I've been more about words words words and there goes that damn artistic performance anxiety again. Although for once I've drawn something I don't facepalm at the flaws in two months later. Go figure. I'll get over it. And I do have plenty of in person reference for felines.

Let's get the worst out first. I got laid off. My reviews were stellar over four years of employment. I just happened to lose a game of Contract Musical Chairs during a time of uncertainty in the realm of government R&D funding. I have contacts, I have references, I have excellent prospects lined up - including an interview soon to come with a desirable employer - along with a high security clearance and the magical decade of experience required to bill myself as a senior software engineer. I'll be fine.

It's still a shock absorbed with its share of high octane beer. Spring House Big Gruesome Stout is a new favorite in the Strong 'n Flavorful lineup. It is peanut butter drunky time, and it is glorious. But consumed in measured quantities, all things considered. I continue to put in my quality time at the gym. I enjoyed a four-odd mile hike to get my just repaired car, which was backed into by a very nice and apologetic friend of a friend. I could have pinged the body shop's ride service, but where's the fun and celebratory pancakes in that? And mud-splashed pants, but they needed a wash anyhow.

I'm outlining. I'm pushing conflicts forward into the Great Unknown of my narrative's center. I'm researching soporific details required to contextualize and develop assorted business machinations. Readers will only see the tip of the iceberg, but it needs the apparent weight and fortitude to sink a ship.

I'm working up the nerve to draw again. I get art performance anxiety in ways that writing rarely pings. Oftentimes I'll make a godawful first sketch that needs to be thrown out. Then the next one starts to get it, and the connection clicks between brain and hand, and I surprise myself with some improvement or another, and I wonder why I ever feared the challenge to begin with.

My final word tally: 17,000 and change. Which doesn't include the leaps I made in planning, both in substance (notes, detailed brainstorming) and getting the best ever handle on my writing process. As I mentioned, just forging onward doesn't work well for the narrative I'm going for. Instead I need a somewhat iterative combination of the following:

• Decide on the overall development of a plot or character arc - main points, where it might lead afterward, implications, thematic aspects, etc.


• Consider how to show it in scenes. Sketch scenes in as much detail as you need. If I'm lucky, they jump into my head all at once. Otherwise, I need to hammer at them by brainstorming about the intended feel, finer points of content, and dialog hooks - which help me conceptualize tone and character chemistry, even if I don't use them all as originally conceived. If I'm struggling with an opener or ending, I brainstorm it separately, and perhaps alter or redo the scene to fit.


• Save every dialog snippet and scene idea that comes to mind, even if you don't have an intended home for it. If you're ever stuck, go through the list for inspiration.


• Lay out your scenes and notes on events that haven't yet been sketched out thusly. Is the pacing too rushed? Think about what other conflicts are going on - whether strongly pertinent to a main plot thread, tangential, or worth including to reinforce a theme, add depth and nuance, etc. Is the pacing too bogged down? Think about what could be cut or compressed - for instance, development might be better incorporated as exposition instead of shown in a scene. (Though you might not want to get too cut-happy before your rough draft is even done. If in doubt, make a scene and deal with the streamlining afterward.)


• When you have a compelling scene concept, write it out. This is where the Just Write Crap concept can help. Sometimes your first whack at prose will fall flat on its ass, but you can't improve it if you're afraid to try in the first place.

My outline has begun to split itself into acts separated by time, which is helping me organize those main points and build out the requisite subplots around them. There's the initial challenge, the delicious optimism, swimming in the proverbial money pit, and subsequent danger and resolution. Act 1 is mostly planned into scenes, Act 2 is getting there, the last act is vague but has a known general outcome, and the rest is main points that need to be nestled among that subplotty awesomesauce. And this provides some metric of rough draft progress far more meaningful than raw word count, even if I don't yet know how many scenes I'll need. At least I feel like I'm going somewhere substantial and sustainable.

The annual Grange Fair rolled around last week. It's no ordinary rural gathering of livestock, crafts, and any food that will maintain its constitution in a deep fryer. It's a settlement - literally. Families pass down their tents for generations, and every year is a reunion as neighbors watch each others' kids grow up to take on the tradition themselves. Pittsburgh transplant that I am, I don't exactly have a stake in these long-term local fuzzies.

But I sure as hell love the bungie trampoline.

Length of line: half an hour. Price of admission: $6. Time permitted: a good five minutes, which is plenty - I got loopy and had to pace myself. Best fair ride ever? My audible WHOOOO! says it all.



Back in the tail end of elementary school, my cousin and I used to watch wrestling. He was all about the Ultimate Warrior. For whatever reason, I had a crush on this guy.



So what if he was Bad, whatever that meant in the utterly serious world of 1990 kayfabe. DAT MULLET!

(In other words - I was 11. Shut up.)

I caught a match some years back when our cable was out and I had nothing else to watch. Oh, the hilarity. Betrayal commented about ad nauseam for those who managed to miss the other 409812 expressions of shock that Rhyno just came out of nowhere and gored Kurt Angle! Breaking out of pins at the last microsecond! Apparent exhaustion followed by inexplicable bursts of strength! Chants of USA for two guys from the same country! Botching the big bang signature move, followed by hard-fought victory!



I was recently directed to this over a friend's amusement at some random Japanese wrestler who could have been Cao Ren and Xiahou Yuan's long lost angry cousin. And there went that glee again. The stage mannerisms are more animated, more scrappy, more cartoonish. The moves are sold awkwardly at times, which somehow makes it even more amusing. Too bad for the language barrier. I'll just have to tolerate the pain of never knowing the deep and nuanced reason why Abbad got whacked with a crutch.

June, my unofficial 2012 month of Pittsburgh reunions.

The first was a meetup with some of my best friends ever at a noodle restaurant that hasn't changed since high school, from the menu to the blown-up photos on the striped orange wall. This week's occasion was my old neighbor's summer party. Her mom and my mom go way back, and we always got along well over the years. I invariably enjoyed loafing around with her friends as well, even though I tended to be the runt of the group because I was two years younger.

It was a hell of an awesome party. Nice buffet, cookie tray, keg of quality brew supplemented with a variety pack from the neighbors. Friendly dog, backyard up the hill, kids running around with Super Soakers and chasing fireflies in the dusky blue twilight. Very chill and down to earth and reminiscent of various others hosted by my parents' friends over the years, in which the young ones found their common ground as the grownups sat and drank beer. One's demographic may change, but the get-along aspect remains the same - with a bonus case of Small World Syndrome as I realized that I was sitting across from one of my first online friends. Conversation ranged from renaissance fairs to Halloween costumes and the Toledo Zoo, which apparently has quite the impressive hippo exhibit. Interesting people tend to be educational by sheer virtue of their variety of knowledge, and I was reminded of some American historical tidbits that I hope I had only forgotten rather than never learned in the first place. At least I remembered "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too", even if I didn't recall the specifics of Tyler's presidency itself.

My mom still lives in the house I grew up in, and I stay in my old room whenever I visit. The neighborhood noises are strange and the bed is rather short, but I always sleep well.