Just calling to say I'm thinking of you, Blog

Yeah a chest cold has hit me square in the soul the past couple days. My wordcount is at zero, I've got no energy, and my room is a mess.


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Inform Me Again Why I Need a Moleskine

I've never fully understood the Cult of the Moleskine. I can understand the desire to have a notebook on you at all times; I suffer from it myself. The thing is, I've never been able to find a notebook that:

• Fits in my pocket
• Does the above and is not spiral bound
• Hard covered
• Not a Moleskine

This has proved harder than I had anticipated. Most notebooks that are narrow enough are too long, or too thick. Most that are the right size are soft covered. Many are spiral bound, with spirals that bend or break from living in the pocket. The only viable notebooks that I continued to spot in shops were the Moleskines, by which I felt strangely repulsed. Maybe it was the full-of-it advertising, or the dopey little rubber band, or the weird cult to the things I found on the web, but I just didn't want anything to do with them. I know this seems ridiculous since they're clearly good books, but something about them just turned me off. As such, I've made due with having to lug my backpack wherever I'll need my writing notebook or organizer. It's a pain, but I can't keep the damn thing in my pocket.

Today, I met my notebook. I'd gone down to the school bookstore to pick up what remained of the textbooks I needed, and caught sight of a pile of notebooks I'd never noticed before they rearranged the store. There, stacked (oddly enough) in the art supplies shelf, was a pile of #49358 Field Books. They were the right size, the right bind, and hideously (perfectly) orange.

I plucked one from the stacks (and boy, were there stacks of these things) and turned it over in my hands. They're cloth bound, and have a texture that's not slippery or tacky. The pages within are gridded, something I learned to like when I was majoring in computer science and had to make a lot of graphs and visually organized code on the fly. Even more appealing to my inner geek was the list of trigonometric formulas in the very final pages. I let the clerk know that I was going to briefly pocket it while she watched, so she'd know I wasn't just swiping the thing. It fit perfectly.

At about $6, it's a little pricey for 160 pages, but those pages are part rag paper and come in the nicest package I've seen thusfar.

Currently prepping it for use as my friend forever. Will introduce you to it tonight.

Oh, son of a-

Wrote 600 words.

Not happy with any of them.

Stepping it up double time tomorrow.

Kill me now.

Tomorrow's the last day

I'll be trying to enjoy Halloween without stressing too bad. dgthsdgzhjzxfuynhzednzdt.

Dearest Coffee Shop Squatters: Get the feck out!

This is directed at no one and everyone at once. NaNoWriMo participants, take these words to heart. You, too, college students. Though they're vitriolic, they're typed with your best interests in mind. Believe me, you don't want to make the clerks mad.

I have the unique displeasure of working two nights a week at a coffee shop. On a good night, I sell four cups of coffee. Four cups. I brew twelve at the start of my shift, and have to throw away what I don't sell so it doesn't get gross overnight. That's eight cups I'm dumping on a good night. This is highly frustrating in and of itself, but when you factor in the squatters it becomes almost intolerable.

I know people who read my blog are likely involved in NaNoWriMo, and are thus (if my research is reliable) obsessed with three things: Chocolate, cats, and coffee. Why? I don't know. I'm doing NaNoWriMo, and I'm pretty neutral on two of those three things. The point stands, though, that NaNoWriMo participants tend to spend a lot of time in coffee shops.

If you're going to chill in a coffee shop, for Christ's sake, buy something.

I don't mean a two dollar, paper cup, no cream, no nothing cup of coffee you nurse like a cautious drunk for four hours, sipping away at the watery dregs until you hit your wordcount quota. A lot of shops carry food, so order your breakfast or lunch there. Get a snack. If you're there for more than four goddamn hours (and God help you if you are), order something new when you've exhausted your first stack of snacks.

Just because we haven't asked you to leave doesn't mean we're cool with you.

Many shop managers, especially in chain shops, discourage workers from chasing squatters away. As far as I can tell, the mentality behind this is that offending any potential customer could hurt business. I think it's more harmful to let one jerk with a laptop take up a three person table you could fill with three paying customers. The simple truth of the matter is that, while the clerks may never mention your taking up space for five hours, they may very well be quietly infuriated with you.

Don't change the radio/CD/TV/anything unless you've bought something.

Taking any 'undue' privileges with entertainment doodads in the shop will only cement your image as a mooching, entitled d-bag in the minds of the clerks.

If you're staying longer than, say, two hours, order regularly.

I know a lot of people take forever to finish eating a meal or drinking something really good, but two hours is stretching it. If you've hit the two hour mark and still have work to do, go get another cup of coffee, or some tea, or anything.

If you can, have someone with you to chat with and possibly split the cost of snacks.

This is weird advice, but it serves a dual purpose. The first and most obvious is that two people can easily split the average coffee shop sandwich and get decent portions. The same can be said of desserts and drinks. The second, more subversive purpose is that of deceiving the clerks into thinking you have reason (the friend's presence) to stay longer than you normally would. In this situation, the food ceases to be as important as the interaction, and many people will assume you're there to meet a friend rather than fill nutritional needs.

For the types of people drawn to coffee shops, distancing oneself from the label of Squatting Douchebag is very important. A guy who comes in, orders one coffee, and sprawls out on the central couch with a laptop for four hours is a freaking eyesore. However, a guy who orders regularly for those four hours and doesn't act like he's Lord of Starbucks is a regular, maybe even someone the clerks look forward to seeing every other day.

Don't be the Squatting Douchebag. Be the Quirky Writer Dude, who tips decently and gives his laptop really intense looks for no discernible reason.

Selected Covers from Old Dragon Mags

For those of you unfamiliar with roleplaying culture (and hoo daddy, is it ever a culture) Dragon magazine is a monthly magazine covering fantasy roleplay, which these days means it covers stuff from TSR and Wizards of the Coast, playing only lip service to other interests. Though I spent a great deal of my time with a Dragon propped up in front of my speckled teenage face when I worked in a comic/gaming shop in high school and my freshman year of college, I haven't read a new issue in over a year. Kind of a bummer, but when you've got the internet a magazine that's often more about pulling one company's party line than it is about gaming becomes less and less desirable.

Some time ago, I was presented with a large box of such magazines from the 70s and 80s, and my love for the mag (at least in spirit) has been rekindled. The older issues are loaded with delicious fluff, and a kind of hokey, zine-like charm.

However, just like all fantasy literature, they often have bad covers. Terrible covers, in fact. I've selected three of the ones I found the most awful, and the three I loved most for balance's sake.

This first one isn't terrible in the sense that the art is awful, but it's just so frigging incomprehensible. What is with the floating, glowing sword? What does that guy to the far left see that's got him having aneurysms? It looks kind of like the dude in green is controlling the glowy sword, but it also looks like he's menacing them with a knife so they don't take that corpse he's hoarded for himself.

I tried to go into Photoshop and zoom in to see just what's supposed to be happening, but the colors are just so frigging dark and murky that it's impossible to discern very much. This is all totally ignoring the hilarious placement of the sword. Use the schwartz indeed.

This one is just horrible on so many, many levels. Let's ignore, for a moment, the bizarre thigh and ass-baring tunic and gogo boots on the woman, and focus on this goony-looking dragon. It's a fairly standard-looking, generic, inoffensive dragon until you get to its head. What the Hell is all that jazz doing on its head? It has neck spines, three (?) horns, a little beard of spines, big floppity ears, a waggly tongue, and what are either tusks or tragically misplaced canine teeth.

Now we can move on to the woman, who's decided to go dragon whispering in a tunic that bares not only her leg up to her hip, but the beginnings of her ass cheeks. Surely her universe has underwear. Right? Then there's the issue of her nips poking through the fabric. That tunic is honest-to-God the only thing this woman is wearing. Look at that thing, the front flap would be her undoing in a stiff breeze, and she's not wearing anything underneath. This, to me, suggests that she is in fact a fantastical flasher.

Uuuuugggggh. I was reluctant to post this one, because it's the only hideous cover I came up with for this post that actually has a reason behind having it on the cover at all. See, the cover is an illustration for a comic/game setting/a whole lot of other things that I still see floating around on the internet and other mags. The putz taking center stage is named Pinsom, and I don't care enough about him to explain him or his universe to you in depth; I just mentioned all this to make sure you know that I know that this cover isn't a non sequitor.

With that said, the cover isn't... necessarily terrible. I mean, it's no Fantastical Flasher vs. Orky Talk Dragon, but it just seems... off, somehow. The weird saccharine colors and goofy character designs make it hard to not just screw my face up and turn the mag over so as to avoid seeing it. That and the princess has one hand with four fingers. I checked and rechecked the comic in the mag, and that doesn't appear to be a racial trait.

Now, I also promised you three good covers, or at least three covers I deem to be good. So, here goes. Feel free to hate on these and praise the sickeningly purple Pinsom cover.

Mostly, I like this cover because it's understated. Yeah, there's a unicorn present, and that usually incites some kind of weird nerd rage in me, but the horny horse that's often associated with purity (how ironic) makes for an awesome contrast to the skeleton of the dead soldier just to its left. The sun beams streaming down from the treetops work to further the contrast between the setting and the skeleton, making it seem entirely out of place.

Still, the image is kind of hopeful. Even though Skully's dead, life goes on around him. He probably nourished those scrub grasses and wildflowers, you know. Circle of life and all that happy crap.

I. Love. This. Cover. It's simple in concept, but the level of detail is staggering. The fortifications in the background, the men in the field, the scavenger bird overhead. The armor and weapons look real, tangible, and from the same period. It's just. It's just awesome. It made me exclaim, "Holy crap, this is so cool!" in the same way the Dragon Flasher cover made me recoil in horror. No. Wait. Actually, it made me exclaim about its coolness even more emphatically than I despaired over the Dragon Flasher cover. Within the magazine, I was able to find some information on the cover that only cemented my opinion that it is Beyond Awesome:

Cover
As Camlan burns, a wounded King Arthur prepares to meet the mounted attack of his hated rival Mordred. This painting was carefully researched by Roger Raupp, who based the weapons, armor, and fortifications on those in existence in the British Isles after 500 A.D. The battle shown here takes place at Hadrian's Wall, where soem sources beleive the historical Arthur lived.

If that's not genuine awesomeness, then by God I'm not sure what is.

Following the baddass King Arthur cover, you may find yourself wondering, "What the fresh Hell is this? Isn't this something you'd normally call bad?"

Oddly enough, no. To me, a cool fantasy cover doesn't have to be totally badass or historically accurate to be considered good, and this cover is definitely cool. In a quirky way, at least.

As with the Arthur cover, a lot of my delight with this image comes from the little details sprinkled about. The Coke bottle (is this urban fantasy?), the wishbone earring he's got going on, the various book spines with things like 'Merlin,' and 'Gandalf,' and (of course) 'Dragon,' on them.

the most fetching thing about the image, though, is that the kooky wizard doesn't even seem to be doing anything diabolical. Upon closer inspection, he's holding a book of stories, and the mist he's conjuring takes the vague form of a sort of illustration to whatever page the book is open on. Not to mention the skeletal dragon is pretty damn cool in its own right.

As a special treat, I offer up the ginormous scanned images of any of these covers to those asking in the comments. Even the Pinsom one.

If you really want it.

You sick bastard.

I Don't Get 'Cute' Halloween

Maybe I'm a relic of some bygone era, but I've never seen the appeal in cute Halloween things. Jack O'Lanterns with big, doofy grins and those awful with tree decorations that make it look like a witch has crashed in to the tree just make me sigh. I was downright dismayed when I stopped trick or treating and started handing out candy, because I got to take an informal mental census of just how few kids wear scary costumes or take any interest in creepy decorations. I was just as dismayed by the number of licensed costumes, because they're usually awful and not ever really scary.

Until a few hours ago, I had plans to just dress up as a shirt ninja for Halloween, but now I'm making plans to disguise myself as a sinister ghouly thing using recycled stuff around the house.