RoBoTNiK

Paul Ford is amusing me / reminding me of jeffwik / reminding me of Ferdinand Klotz, which all three amount to the same thing:

If we have a child and the rats do not eat it first I will teach her (or him) to fear Sting.

"Be good," I will say, "or Sting will come with his lute."

"Where does Sting live?" the kid will ask.

"He dances alone in fields of gold. When he sings you fall asleep and die. But if you listen to good music he can never come close. For he is so afraid."

"Does he eat you?"

"No, because he is vegetarian. In Greece he is called Borefeus."

"I hate Sting!"

Thanks for all the thoughts on World of Warcraft, by the way. I'm still wrestling with the article (It's hard to summarize 5,000+ years of human play in 1,500 words, go figger!), but you've been a big help. Though I still kind of need a current events hook, and I had NO INTENTION of emboldening you nerds to post gibberish conversations like this.

I posted this way down in the comments to jeffwik's LJ, but it may be of interest here, in re: the current burblings of the gaming blogiverse, or in re: whatever other internet arguments you may happen to be or become embroiled in.

At JOHO last week, (that's "Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization"), Dave Weinberger linked to some discussions of New York Times editor Bill Keller's complaint that on the internet, arguments never end:

There is a great thread that starts with Jay Rosen picking up on Bill Keller (editor of the NY Times) complaining that in the blogosphere arguments never end. It's a throwaway phrase, but Jay is right to pick up on the mindset in which it's a plausible complaint. Jeff Jarvis solos on the melody, and Scott Rosenberg brings it on home with the observation that the complaint is really about who gets to end the argument.

This is one of the top five most important effects of the Internet*: We are not going to settle our arguments. There's enough room on the Web to permit that. You argue for a bit, maybe you learn a little or maybe the argument hardens your position so that you become a little stupider, and then you move on to something else. That's why the "conversation" meme is so powerful: Conversations are explorations, not title fights.

The big question is whether we can adapt this lesson of the Web to the real world with its finite space and inescapable proximities. If we're never all going to agree, can we at least all keep talking?

*No, I don't have a list of the top five. I was bluffing. [Original Post.]

I like that. Make of it what you will.

"Remember the Forge Diaspora, and how wonderful it was supposed to be? And yeah, it's wonderful now. Anything can be wonderful for a few months, on-line. Guess what - I can see where it's going, it's going straight to dogshit. ... Unless you want the Forge Diaspora to result in five or six arid little ego-based islands, then drop by the mainland regularly and post."

That was Ron Edwards, in a rare moment of testiness back in August. I don't have any particular reason to repost that. Mostly, I like his phrase for the gaming blogosphere: "arid little ego-based islands." Except that there are, by my count, now about a zillion of those islands out there, anything but arid, with volcanic activity bringing dozens more to the surface every day.

But I'm making a note to myself that January 31, 2006 is the day I gave up trying to keep up with it all. See, I've got the RSS aggregator and the del.icio.us account and the Forge and RPG.net and the number of LJ friends I feel compelled to read inches ever upwards towards triple digits and I listen to judd_sonofbert and ptevis's respective podcasts (which are great, btw, I'm not bitching about quality here, just quantity) and now people are putting actual game sessions online and I log on tonight and this Story Games forum, which twenty minutes ago I'd never heard of, is already a thriving community, like that scene in Tintin in America where they find oil, evict the Indians, and build a city before Tintin has a chance to change his chaps. It's too much!

As recently as, oh, about twenty-one minutes ago, I maintained the illusion in my mind that I might be able to keep tabs on all of it, not just reading it but posting ocassional roundups of links to good stuff at 20x20. My inspiration in that regard was Ralph Luker, a colleague at Cliopatria, whose "Things Noted" posts are nigh essential for keeping track of the equally sprawling history blogiverse. Granted, I almost never got around to actually posting any of these imagined roundups, but I've carried around the intent to do so for ages. Honestly.

Finding myself with a spare half hour and a handful of links, I thought I'd get started. See, there was this funny actual play thread at the Forge where the adorable dating rpg Breaking the Ice proved to be ideal for playing slashy fan fiction (in this case Supe/Bats), and ezrael is launching a Lexicon game with calamityjon, of all people, tentatively signed up to play (LJ worlds... colliding!), and Vincent Baker's once inexhaustible patience with newbies and naysayers finally seems to be running out, and I think it's hilarious that foreign_devilry wrote a real game in response to unrequitedthai's offhand lesbian stripper ninja rpg challenge. Plus I'm kinda curious about everyone's reaction to this little gem (via krustukles).

But it's too much! Ralph posts 3 or 4 times a day at Cliopatria. I'm never going to do that. And I guess I have to question my motives for wanting to. It would be nice if there was more traffic at 20x20. And it would be nice to be tight(er?) with some of the cool kid gaming blogger cliques. Vincent and Jonathan and Shreyas and Ben and Judd and Brand and Mo and Emily and Chad and [insert your name here, I'm just going off the top of my head, so don't feel hurt if you're left out, my whole point is there's too damn many of you to keep track of] all seem like smart, fun, cool people, and I would love to be be buddies with any of them. But it's not like the world's going to end if one gaming blog is a little less active, and if I'm just seeing Blogtown as a nicotine patch for the gaming I'm not doing, or for a social life that's taken a hit this year from work and the move... well, that way lies madness. So I guess I'm posting here to tell you that I'm not going to start doing something that you never knew I was doing or thinking of doing anyway. From your point of view: quel whoop. But from my point of view: big stupid weight off my shoulders.

That doesn't mean I don't want to talk about gaming. Geez Louise, when was the last time somebody posted a mash-up or a crazy Game I'd Like To idea around here?

Wow. That is the longest I have ever gone without internet access. Except, I suppose, from birth until 1993. I still don’t have internet at home—or a @%#$! telephone—but finally my office is equipped. You might think I could have logged in over the summer at the library or something, but come now: a grown man doesn't blog standing up.

So. What did I miss in the last three months?

[Poll #450423]

BE HONEST! Or try to lie convincingly. We're all friends here.

Edit: Hmm. I think, based on the time that usually elapses between a post and its comments, some of you might be deceiving yourselves. No shame in that. I know I'd rather read what all of you are up to than work on the paper I'm presenting in Delaware next week. But I've been procrastinating a lot lately and I'm going to try to segregate my working and email/LJ/weblog time much more strictly in future.

Related Links:

• My Robot Friend
• Seanbaby's Superfriends Page
• Friends of the Monorail
• How To Divorce as Friends
• Friends Who Stutter
• Aristasia's Friends (An all-feminine universe of elegance and style, for girls who yearn for a world without men.)
• Gnostic Friends Network
• A Foolproof Guide to Making Any Woman Your Platonic Friend
• Friends of the Cheat (Not what you think, unfortunately.)
• Friends of Hitler

The best LiveJournal you are not already reading belongs to: crisper.

I'm off to The Canada today for a vacation from my vacation. This weekend at Wolf Lake, next weekend in Toronto. Tough life, I know.

We played the first episode of Starchildren last night, and I certainly had fun but I also definitely felt like I could have done better. The players and characters were great but I handled the rules and rolls sloppily and was off my game in terms of playing NPCs. I've since realized a few things I was doing wrong with the rules, but mainly I just need to prep a little better. If everyone hangs in there I'm sure the pace will pick up as we figure out what the rules can do. Also, I was going to actually bust out my guitar at one point but with an actual musician like Dan there I totally chickened out. Also, any game would have trouble living up to a year or so of pre-game hype. Also, shut up and stop fishing so blatantly for reassurance, you big baby.

The game naturally led to discussion of Iggy Pop fan fiction. Here is the comic I mentioned last night. This is probably not the only Iggy Pop fanfic on the internet, but I suspect it's the only Iggy Pop fanfic composed in an IM conversation and then illustrated by a third party as a comic strip. Scatological and stupid, yeah, but some of us dig that sort of thing. It's really the glee of the teenage authors rather than the story itself that I like. To tell the truth, the original text may actually be funnier without the illustrations. And all of abescott's posts are like that. This argument about Vincent Gallo and Christina Ricci is another good example. An acquired taste, maybe, but he cracks me the hell up. MAN TRUE, as Abe would say.

That is all.

This weekend's reading:
Douglas Thomas' Hacker Culture,
Ron Rosenbaum's Little Blue Box article,
Larry Lessig's The Future of Ideas,
Stephen Usselman's Regulating Railroad Innovation,
and Nightwork: A History of Hacks and Pranks at MIT.

What do these have in common? ( Read more... )