Lots of Monkeys

I’m receiving a lot of “compliments” tonight.

“You play a very convincing coke addict.”

That’s something I don’t have a good response to. Other than asking how many coke addicts they know.

We’re wrapping up for the night, the debriefing is going well. I look around the room and see my friends chatting, the birthday celebrant laughing, and the GMs smiling a good bit.

I just finished my first LARP game.

And I had a good time, despite my initial reservations. The word, “LARP” has a negative connotation. One not helped by videos freely available on the internet. In my recollection, “Lightning bolt” was my first introduction to the concept.

It means Live Action Role Playing. So, basically, take any of the various tabletop roleplaying systems out there and then act it out in real life.

I know. Very geeky. To the point where it makes me uncomfortable even thinking about doing anything LARP related.

But there I was, invited to a Murder Mystery Party that turned into a full on LARP experience, complete with character sheets for all the attendees, Game Masters to keep the game orderly, and all of us exchanging worried looks and shaking our heads to ourselves when we thought the GMs weren’t looking. Continue reading →

I pass the Tenleytown Best Buy and there are tents just outside of the metro entrance that lead right to the doors. I wonder about the homeless man that often sleeps in the little alcove, where the metro escalators meet sidewalk that hedges along Wisconsin Avenue.

I wonder how he perceives the fancy tents, the sleeping tents, the televisions on battery power, the electric heaters, and the warm jackets.

I remember I slept on the street once, and that was for a fable made film, a myth that I quote and reference on a weekly, and sometimes daily basis. I can see sleeping on the street for that.

I look now on these young men, with their college sweatshirts, and hats worn sideways, and PlayStation Portables and I know that they are waiting in line for a video game console. The PlayStation 3. The mere thought of losing three days of work or school or what have you is just not attractive to me. Sure, I wouldn’t mind getting one, but not this way. This feels too much like work.

Me? I’m looking on, and part of me wonders how many will walk away with one only to jump online and auction it off. On the one hand, it’s not like they are stealing a child’s holiday gift. Six hundred dollars is a lot of money.

I’m actually at the Best Buy for work, to pick up a longer phone cord so that we can move a fax machine tomorrow morning.

As I leave Best Buy, cord safely in hand, I look and see that the line is growing. A few more people here and there, and it will have to line up around the building, towards Albemarle.

It’s just not worth it.

After fiddling with a new video card and seeing the computer was running, I moved it back under the desk.

Then it wouldn’t boot up.

“No problem.” I thought, considering that I was going to upgrade anyway. Then I remembered that parts of the novel are currently saved on its hard drive. Not really an issue since I can get to that data by putting the hard drive in an enclosure or swapping it into another system.

More of an annoyance than anything else.

I’m going to take a wild stab that it’s a power supply issue, and replace that first.

I decided to try something different this year by not having an outline. Instead, I have a theme, which is “normalcy,” and then I try to think about something in my freakish, bohemian, shenanigan filled lifestyle that fits the bill.

It’s working so far. I’ve been averaging around 2,000 words a night, which is “ahead” of pace if you want to finish in thirty days. A lot of the novel seems to be a series of interconnected stories loosely based on events and people in my life.

I’m also breaking another habit I have which is editing while I’m writing. I’m ignoring typos, spellcheck, and instead of rewriting sentences on the fly, I’m writing that sentence again. It doesn’t happen all that often, but sometimes I wonder how many good ideas I’ve lost to the delete key if I was too hasty.

Basically, I’m using this as an exercise to try to get to creation without judgment getting in the way.

It’s pretty refreshing to go back and read what I’ve written, especially since sometimes four or five pages will be written and I barely recognize my style. Then I will see that I’ve remembered or added details that might have been lost if I slowed down to edit.

Tonight will mark a third of the way through this competition and I plan on uploading the word count to the robotic overlords counters for an update on my progress.

I’m sort of in a strange situation with the ladybugs in my office. I have dozens, maybe nearing a hundred or so of them in my office, hanging out near the sources of light.

They get in somehow, but then they can’t leave, due to the fact that the office is enclosed. So they manage to get inside the florescent light enclosures and then starve to death. They don’t bother me at all, other than the fact that I feel I have to rescue two or three of them every now and again.

The window in my office never had a screen installed, so I can cajole a few of them onto an index card, open my window and gently evict them into the open sky. At least I know they’ll fare better than the rest of their mates.

Their dry husks slowly littering the floor of my office, only to be swept away by the cleaning staff tonight.

Then the cycle begins anew.