So, as anyone who’s ever been to our house can attest, we have an excess of stuff. That’s basically what happens when you have four people, who are all essentially “fully-equipped” living in one house. Too much kitchenware, too many sitting things, etc. Fortunately for us, our excess isn’t all that excessive, as our two housemates don’t actually take up much of the common space – most of that is dominated by Ei-Nyung and my stuff. Still – we’ve got too much. At one point, we had three couches, two recliners, four other nice, padded chairs, two tables, and seven table-related chairs. For four people.

Now, I don’t at all have a Niralth-like minimalist sense – for the most part, I don’t mind having a variety of seating options, for instance. But today, I gave away a sit-up bench I haven’t used in years, and the brown couch I got from my parents, that I’ve had since I was quite young. I had a distinct emotional attachment to that couch, but the simple fact of the matter was that it had been relegated to a part of the house where it wasn’t getting much use, and the recent inheritance of two of my grandparents’ chairs meant that basically, we had way too much seating.

So, with a bit of sadness, I gave that away on Craigslist, to some people that needed a sofabed, and would use it. I’d rather it was used somewhere than not, here, so I’m happy that it’ll find more purpose, and utility in its lifetime. Same with the sit-up bench, without the weird emotional attachment.

There’s a lot of stuff we need to sort for a yard sale, or give away outright. I’d started doing that with shirts I was no longer wearing. There’s a clothing donation bin on the street near our house, and so I’d given away almost half my t-shirts. And I *still* have more shirts than I reasonably wear, so I’m sure the closet’s due for another culling sometime soon. It’s sort of strange – I’ve always worn t-shirts – I figured that was just the way it was. They’re extremely comfortable, cheap, and I’ve never been in a job where I’ve had a dress code. So, t-shirts were perfectly fine in every respect.

But recently, I’ve had a desire to switch to button-downed shirts – not polo shirts, I’m talking collared shirts that button from top to bottom. And I can’t for the life of me explain it, other than that I must care to some extent about the image I’m projecting to others. I think maybe it’s that I valued comfort uber alles, because it was in some sense a rebellion against what I’d imagined I was supposed to conform to as I grew up. But now, I’m in the game industry – everyone’s dressed like shit. You’ve got 40 year olds in ratty t-shirts, and they all think they’re still in their teens. And something about it’s sort of off-putting, almost.

It’s weird, because it’s not like, say, my dad, who dresses casually because he really enjoys it – it’s almsot like it’s an image that these people are trying to cultivate, that they’re hip, and “free.” So maybe part of me is rebelling against that – that the off-kilter thing to do would be to dress really *well*. Because frankly, the people at work would think it’s weird. And I don’t really need to conform, to be honest – my work does my talking for me.

It’s just weird, that I would have some desire to dress up in a suit, and go to a job where I sit in front of a computer all day, and never interact with any clients, or do any sort of outward-facing interaction. Eh, it’s all just style anyway.

Am I wrong in thinking that it looks like it’s pretty much all-out war in Israel at this point? I mean, there’s missiles flying about, and it just looks/sounds like it’s basically full-blown war at this point.

Anyone have any ideas whether this is likely to escalate into something that involves more than just Israel and Hezbollah? I don’t know enough about anything in this region to hazard a guess, but it sure doesn’t look good, to me.

Teardrop, Massive Attack: The reason I first picked up this song, as I’ve mentioned before, is that it’s used as the theme song for House, M.D., which is an excellent show. When I first heard the whole song, I remembered that my old roommate in college used to play Mezzanine periodically. The more I listened to it the more the vocal performance grew on me. Wacky thing is, you can basically play it in a really trivial manner on the piano, and it’s only four chords. Of course, I can’t sing in the register the woman sings in, so no singalongs for me, alas.

Mind Killer, Adam Freeland: This is basically another version of the level 5 song in Rez, which I thought was really, really good. Sure enough, this one’s really good, too. I almost opted for a song called, “We Want Your Soul,” off the same album, which has a robotic female voice reading off stuff you have that they want. Ah, hell – here’s the lyrics:

adam freeland – we want your soul

Your cell phone, your wallet, your time, your ideas
No barcode, no party, no ID, no beers
Your bankcard, your licence, your thoughts, your fears
No simcard, no disco, no photo, not here
Your blood, your sweat, your passions, your regrets
Your office, your time off, your fashions, your sex
Your pills, your grass, your tits, your ass.
Your laughs, your balls, we want it all.

We want your Soul x5
(in background…Your Cash, Your House, Your Phone, Your Life, Your Cash, Your House, Your Life)

Tell us your habits, your facts, our fears
Give us your address, your shoe size, your years
Your digits, your plans, your number, your eyes
Your schedule, your desktop, your details, your life.
Show us your children, your photos, your home.
Here, take credit, take insurance, take a loan.
Get a job, get a pension, get a haircut, get a suit.
Play the lottery, play football, play the field, score some toot

We’ll show you females, show you sex.
We’ll sell you crap, charge you max.
(unintelligible for two lines)

We want your Soul x5
(in background…Your Cash, Your House, Your Phone, Your Life, Your Cash, Your House, Your Life)

Your thoughts, your emotions, your love, your dreams
Your cheque book, your essence, your sweat, your screams
Your security, your sobriety, your innocence, your society
Your self, your place, your distance, your space

Go back to bed America, your government is in control again

Here, watch this, shut up
You are free to do as we tell you
You are free to do as we tell you

We want your soul

Here’s programs, here’s matters, here’s Britney, here’s Cola
Here’s pizza, here’s TV, here’s some rock and some Rolla
Watch commercials, more commercials, watch Jerry, not Oprah
Buy a better life from the comfort of your sofa
Here’s popcorn, here’s magazines, here’s milkshake, here’s blue jeans
here’s padded bras, here’s long cars, here’s football shirts, here’s baseball caps
here’s live talk shows, here’s video games, here’s cola lite, here’s Timberlake
here’s filter tips, here’s collagen lips, here’s all night bars, here’s plastic tits

We want your soul x5
(In the background…Your Cash, Your House, Your Phone, Your Life, Your Cash, Your House, Your Life)
Your Soul x6

Go back to bed America, your government is in control again
Here, here’s American Gladiators
Watch this, shut up

Go back to bed America,
Here’s American Gladiators, here’s 56 channels of it
Watch these pictuary retards bang their fucking scrolls together
And congratulate you on living in the land of freedom
Here you are America
You are free to do as we tell you
You are free to do as we tell you

We want your soul x5

Red Flag, Billy Talent: Another videogame song, this was in Burnout Revenge, among other games. It’s a really aggressive, poppy punk song. One of those songs that sounds so dischordant at first that it’s hard to imagine liking it. But then you find yourself humming the chorus (which is one of the only parts of the song where the lyrics are intelligible). But great stuff – sort of Green Day of the early 90’s, on a really mean day, or something.

Sweet Lullaby, Deep Forest: If you’ve recently watched the dancing video at http://www.wherethehellismatt.com you’ll recognize this. I’d listened to it way back when, and figured I’d pick it up, as I could use some laid back work music. And the mental image of the guy dancing is good fun, as well.

Unsung, Helmet: GUITAR HERO!!! w00t w00t. Seriously, I’ve had Betty (one of Helmet’s other albums) for a while, and mistakenly had thought I already had this song. When I realized I didn’t, I figured 99 cents would fix that straight away.

DARE, Gorillaz: It’s strangely compelling, because it’s almost straight-ahead disco, except for the guy shouting the lyrics in the background, which changes the tone of the song entirely into something … mesmerizing.

Nothing But You, Paul Van Dyk: This one isn’t intentionally connected to a game – I’d heard this song a while ago, and when I worked at EA, I picked up a free copy of one of the FIFA soundtracks, which happily had this on it. Great stuff. Very, very good music for driving, or doing anything you’ve got to concentrate on.

List seven songs you’re enjoying right now:

1.) Teardrop, Massive Attack
2.) Mind Killer, Adam Freeland
3.) Red Flag, Billy Talent
4.) Sweet Lullaby, Deep Forest
5.) Unsung, Helmet
6.) DARE, Gorillaz
7.) Nothing But You, Paul Van Dyk

No real “reason” behind any of the selections, deep-meaning-wise. Mostly just heard ’em in some context (a surprising number in videogames (I’m such a nerd)) and liked ’em.

Saw Pirates last night with a fistful of peoples. I loved the first one, and was really looking forward to this.

SPOILERS!!!
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So, in terms of how I felt about it, that sort of breaks down into two viewpoints. As a standalone movie, I thought there wasn’t a really good, overarching story arc. There were too many set pieces, and not enough time spent with just the characters. All these “blockbuster” sequels, from Hollywood’s perspective, seem to nead “more.” More villains, more action, more explosions, bigger effects, etc. I wish they’d just ignore all that, and make things that are appropriate to the story. It may end up that things are bigger, and more exciting, but it almost always feels like an effort to just have more for the sake of more.

In terms of other things I found disatisfying, Davey Jones’ crew was simply too uniform, in terms of color, and overall visual “noise” levels. They were really interesting in concept, but in practice, aside from Hammerhead-guy and Conch-head, there was little way to distinguish one brown, spikey guy from the next. The other thing was that Jack Sparrow, I think, worked better when he was a Captain only in his mind, or in search of a crew.

That said, I actually rather liked the movie. But that’s largely because it’s clearly the first half of a larger film, where they’ve set up plot points that are clearly not going to resolve themselves until well into the second movie. I liked a lot of the story of this movie – the realization of Davey Jones and his locker in particular. Just seemed like a really interesting character, and am really interested in seeing how the three major factions play off each other. There were a number of details that I really liked, like the Kraken-summoning mechanism, Jack’s multi-eye makeup, etc. There was a little too much in the way of nods to the audience (Will getting slapped, the dog, the comments about “rum,” etc.)

So, in terms of the first half of a five+ hour epic, I really liked it. As a standalone entertainment experience, somewhat problematic. Oh, and Jack’s last moments on-screen in this movie were incredibly well done. I wish I hadn’t had that particular plot point spoiled for me before, but ah, well – what’s done is done.

Mobius woke me up this morning by taking up half the bed. Went downstairs, and finished Call of Duty 2 for the 360. Awesome game. Klay & Nana came over to say, ‘hey,’ and pick up some $$ we owed them for a dinner a couple nights ago. Then, we went over to Alan & Becky’s to watch the World Cup finals. I was really pulling for France – they just seemed to want it more. Then Zidane freaked out, and the whole spirit of the thing deflated. It had gone from a really good match between an aggressive French team, and a strong Italian defense. I don’t know a whole lot about soccer on the world stage, but it was a fun match to watch. To have it decided by PK’s, and have such a bizarre act close a guy’s career… it just seemed sort of sad.

Went to SF, to Beard Papa to get some cream puffs, and stopped off at Yerba Buena garden to sit down for a bit, and listen to some opera in the park. Yeah, I though it was weird, too. Then came home, sat around for a bit, and decided to do something productive. That manifested itself in cleaning out the storage bin in our backyard, where I found a saw. So, I used the saw to cut off some branches on the avocado tree that were growing below the graft, then cut down the almond tree, which died about a year ago.

And then it’s now.

I’ve gotta break down the tree branches, but with the power tools in the back of the garage, and the garage full of stuff from my parents’ place… yeah, it looks like it might be a bit before that happens.

A chair is a pretty important tool we have, and having a good chair, I think, is worth a lot when you spend most of your working day with your butt planted in one. I used to think that $800 for an Aeron was an astronomical sum of money, and let’s be honest, it is, but it’s *worth it*. I’m strongly considering bringing my Aeron to work, simply because the chairs at work are so bad that I think it’s making my lower back hurt. Mind you, the chairs at work are *particularly* bad. Just cheap, uncomfortable pieces of crap.

If I were to ever outfit an employee at a company:
* Aeron, or similarly adjustable and comfortable chair
* Adjustable height desk
* Keyboard of the employee’s choice
* Wireless mouse of the employee’s choice
* Two identical, 17″+ LCD monitors
* Noise cancelling headphones

That’s sort of the “bare minimum” from my perspective, in terms of giving someone the tools that allow them to work comfortably for eight hours in a cubicle environment.

At my current job, I have the keyboard and mouse, and that’s because I was pretty aggressive about asking for a very specific keyboard, and mouse, because the flat keyboards aggravate my left wrist, which got mangled in a bike accident in high school.

Ah, well. Work’s getting better. This particular project is actually turning out decently – at least relative to my expectations. Made an interesting discovery today that I think actually makes it *feel* much, much better. I changed up some of the art with my mad mouse-drawing skillz, and it such a beneficial and entertaining change that a coworker of mine and I were playing multiplayer, and laughing, and actually having a pretty good time. So, that was pretty satisfying. There are other peripheral bits of work that I’m getting to do that are both fun, and really educational.

There are a couple potential future avenues that could actually be *really* interesting, and if they were to take off, could actually make this a really fun, satisfying job. So, things are turning up, I think. Outlook is definitely positive, at least.

I’d like to do some creative writing. The little blurb I wrote last night about the drowning man was an interesting exercise. I can see an image, or a sequence of images quite clearly, but don’t yet have the skill to translate that into anything really more than a utilitarian description of things. Sometimes, a good turn of phrase comes around, and I thought a couple moments in last year’s NaNoWriMo project turned out pretty well. It was satisfying and fun enough that it’s definitely worth devoting some time to, since I enjoy it, and it costs me nothing.

Mind you, I’m not even going to come close to approaching Kerowack’s quality, but hey, it’s just a hobby, so whatever. (for anyone who hasn’t read Salmon Apples, bug that guy about getting a copy. It’s extraordinary.)

I think one of my hangups, both in writing, and in game design, is I’m just a bit too slavishly dedicated to plausibility and realism. I have a very hard time putting myself in a mindset where I can think of the “fantastic,” that is unfettered from reality. Earlier in the year, one of my friends came up with the crux for the last game I worked on, and it was this little simple “twist” on reality – an abstraction that made all the weirdly ridiculous things about the game that I couldn’t wrap my head around suddenly make perfect sense. And it was almost like a mental block – I’d never have come up with something like that – it’s just not part of the way I think.

And it’s not that that’s explicitly a bad thing, it’s just that other people have different strengths, I think. But I get a lot of pleasure out of things that are just slightly fantastic, or *un*real, that it seems weird to me that I have to have things make sense, even when they absolutely don’t have to.

Probably also part of the reason I was terrible at improvisational jazz. I think these days, I can impart emotion into say, playing the saxophone or the clarinet, or with simple things on the piano – I’m familiar just enough to know how to create a tone that conveys a sense of something. Which is something I’m really, really grateful to my parents for basically beating into me against my will. But for some reason, though I can improvise, I can’t make the *music* itself “say” what I want to. It’s only the tone of the individual notes I can bend to my will. I always find the actual music – the structure of the notes – somewhat banal, and tired. Formulaic, I think.

Which is weird in a different sense, because when I’m talking about game concepts or designs, I think my strength is that I’m *not* formulaic.

But maybe not?

One thing that’s interesting is that I’ve been writing “pitch” documents. Basically two to five page summaries of concepts that get “pitched” to publishers, in order to get new contracts for games. Nothing I’ve written has been picked up, but I’ve only written two and a half so far (the latest one’s only about halfway done). But the other thing that I’ve found is that I’m very much taking bits and pieces of other games, and putting them together in novel ways, while adding new little ideas here and there. I think the end result, for the things I’ve pitched, are pretty novel, but if you break it down, you can summarize the ideas by piecing together a number of different games, and then filling in the holes with “new.”

And it weirds me out a little that I don’t think I’ve had a concept that I *couldn’t* describe by referencing other games. And while that’s in part because I’ve got a ridiculously huge-assed library of past game knowledge to draw from, the other part is that perhaps it’s because I’m thinking about creating something new in the mold of something old.

But in some sense, is that a bad thing? Not to compare myself to them at all, but basically, Charlie Chaplin & Orson Welles took things that had come before, and amplified them, added to them, and made them better than they were – bent existing tools to new purpose. And to some extent, the result was something completely new and revolutionary.

Hrm.

I dunno. But my thought basically is, is there a concept for a game that I can come up with that I *cannot* describe in terms of other games? Can I think of an established game, even, that I can’t describe in terms of other games? Is it the language I’m using to describe the idea that requires reference to older thigns, or is it that the idea itself is essentially just a mishmash of older ideas? And at what point is that a new idea?

Was posting a comment on a friend’s blog, and realized that our house is almost entirely furnished of things we’ve had since we were (or still are) single (both me, Ei-Nyung, and the housemates), or hand-me-downs from my parents. As a result, *every single room* in the house is essentially a mishmash of stuff. There is no single room in the house that looks like it was coherently assembled with any thought to aesthetics, or how the various items work to form a coherent whole.

Which isn’t all that weird, because right up until this second, I’d never essentially given it any thought. But now that the thought has really sunk in, part of me wants to strip a room, and give it some unified coherency. Like, to take the “office,” and using my grandparents’ very Scandinavian-looking desk as a central point, and fit the rest of the room decor (admittedly, a bunch of music equipment, a TV, some also-very-Scandinavian chairs, and a couple bookcases to match.

It’d be even better, once the upstairs living room’s drywall is done to actually furnish it in a way that makes actual sense, instead of having a bunch of totally random things put wherever, just because that’s the stuff that we had.

At the same time, that just feels weird. We have tables that function. We have couches that function, and are comfortable. Why change those, when we know they work?

I dunno. Weird.

So, there was a link on FARK about tornadoes or hurricanes in Canada, and it made me wonder, “What if Canada invaded the US, because they felt that we were primarily responsible for global warming, and thus, the hurricane (tornado, whatever), which they view as a legitimate threat?”

I mean, you can’t say, fight nature, but if the US, or China, or India, or EU, or whatever at some point is unwilling to take action to curb global warming, and let’s say there’s consensus between the remaining nations, at what point does drastic action on the environment’s behalf make sense?

No, I’m not advocating war on the US lest the CAFE be raised. It’s just a thought that popped to mind, and figured it might be worth discussing.