You enter a tunnel of blinding white light...

Gary Gygax died today.

I thought of the time during that ridiculous battle that we were losing badly; I levitated Karl up to that floating purple dragon, Mortus, and he rolled a supercritical and killed it. We were in the gym back in high school. I think I actually shouted out loud when he rolled that 20. Destroying Mortus removed quite a few obstacles, including, in a strange way, the good dragon guy whose name escapes me. In any case, we came away from that battle with more money that we knew what to do with. Of course, it also set in motion a chain of events that would push Karl's character further and further away from mine, and eventually lead to me being installed as DM.

Then there was the Ice Cave expedition with my cousins and the twins.

Filling coffee mugs full of dice at Gen Con 1999.

Downloading maps from wizards.com with every intention of using them.

Playing Baldur's Gate all the way through in three weeks during detasseling season.

Attempting to write a full history and theology for the world that I inherited from Ian.

Tying cloth around my monk's fists, dipping them in grain alcohol, and lighting them on fire in the hopes of causing extra damage to a squad of assassins, only to burn myself half to death.

Drawing the World map with Karl in his basement. I wonder if it is still there.

Sifting through vintage guidebooks at Paper Escape.

Finding my uncle's First Edition rulebooks in the basement at the old farm.

Years later, bringing those same rulebooks to Gen Con 2001, where I had them signed by the man who hosted what would become the first Gen Con in his basement in 1966. Telling that man what an honor it was to meet him, just like thousands of kids that day had already done, and still being treated as warmly as I could have hoped.

Despite all its pop-culture baggage, Dungeons and Dragons has been, and will be, a significant part of the development of a great many people. For some, it was a way to escape the doldrums of daily life. For others, becoming someone (or something) else was a dangerous, exciting proposition. Say what you will, but D&D is an ingrained part of the lives of many successful people.

And we joke about the passing of Mr. Gygax, as I'm sure he would expect, with classic lines: "I guess he failed his save vs. death!" or "Must've run out of HP…"

He's gone to the great inn in the sky, to relax in front of a roaring fire with elven rangers and Halfling thieves, evil human wizards and paladins of pure heart, mysterious sorcerers and half-orc berzerkers. They will quaff tankards of mead, and recount the glory days of d20s and diamonds, goblins and gold pieces, and the overwhelming happiness that can come from sitting with friends and imagining yourself to far away lands.

Rest in peace, Mr. Gygax.


(July 27, 1938 – March 4, 2008)

Vitamins

I eat a lot of them. They're good for many things. But that didn't stop my glasses from breaking the other day. Yes, they just snapped right the hell in half. Terrible business, really. They were broke like a 1932 Oklahoma wheat farmer. Oooh...too soon? Naturally, I was miles away from home, without contacts, with a bus to catch, during a snowstorm.

OK, the snowstorm was made up, but the rest is real. One of the people at the Potluck looked at my broken specs and said:

Did that just really happen?

I responded in the affirmative, and I added that now, without the benefit of 20/20 vision, I wouldn't be able to defend against knife attacks. To which this same person responded:

I don't wear glasses, and I still can't defend against knife attacks.

It led me to think about how my glasses have defined me since 1993. Surely, the advent of contact lenses almost a year ago changed many things. I can wear sunglasses now without looking like I belong in some dystopian future in a bad B-movie. I hope the new vision-aids come in soon, or I may be left unable to see clearly.

Or worse, unable to defend against knife attacks.

Yeah! إيمينيم

التفاح يقاوم الغازات والامساك وحامض البول, اما قشوره فانها تقاوم النقرس والروماتيزم المزمن والحصاة في الكلى والمرارة لذا يجب اكله طريا او مطبوخا بقشوره. وهو مرطب ومسهل ونقيعه يفيد في الامراض الحادة والالتهابية ويخفف من الام الحمى ومفعوله مفيد في الكبد والكليتين والمثانة وضد التهاب الامعاء بغليه مدة عشرة دقائق مع قليل من جذر العرقسوس . والتفاح مفيد ايضا في تهدئة السعال وتسهيل افرازات البلغم كما هو مفيد قبل وبعد العمليات الجراحية, وفي حالة التهاب الاعصاب الحاد والمزمن والوهن القلبي وصيانة الاوعية الدموية وهو ضد نخر الاسنان ، وهو مفيد للتغلب على الحموضات التي تهاجم الجسم بعد سن الاربعين وذلك بأكل ثلاث تفاحات في اليوم ، كما يقضي على التسمم الشتوي الناتج عن الاكل الثقيل الدسم من لحم وشحم وغيره.

Beard

I felt that my beard was becoming a liability so I removed a bunch of it. Face looks real trim now; I'm a fan again. Once my new goggles show up in the mail, I'll have a much better idea of how to remember what I used to look like before I got attacked by an evil Senator's goons and stuck in a coma for years before waking up with cybernetic implants and stuff and then get boosted from the hospital before the goons come back to finish the job and get taken to a farm out in the country where I'll slowly retrain not only my latent kung-fu abilities, but also my shoulder-mounted rocket launcher and super-human strength and acupuncture myself so I know where all my new circuits are and then come back and explode all the goons and then make it to the bad Senator guy and probably explode him, too, although that would make me just as bad as him, so maybe I'll just let him live in jail for the rest of his life and then join the police force and kick major ass as a kung-fu cyborg.

We'll call it Hard to Kill: The RoboCop Story, or something like that. Please treat this post as an homage to Steven Seagal and Peter Weller. Weller I like because he actually teaches at Syracuse; he's a smart cookie. And I'll say that the actual Hard to Kill is one of the few movies that I've seen more than 5 times. Due the the repeated watchings, it has grown on me. Although I haven't checked it out in years, I'm sure it's still good. And as for Robocop, come one, it's Robocop.

Peter Weller was also a terrible man in 24.

Steven Seagal is... pretty much an American institution.

Solar Energy and My Photosynthetic Shirt

When I was a wee lad, definitely older than 8 but definitely younger than 13, I was at the local state park with my brothers and my dad. It was a bright, sunny day. My dad was doing something with my brothers, and I was just ambling about aimlessly. The sun must have felt very inviting, so I got down on the cement and let it shine on me. I was wearing a black shirt, or at least it was once black. At this point in its life it was more of a dark grey. It had been tie-dyed at some point in its long life, and there was one long streak of white shooting across the front of it like a lightning bolt. In fact, before my mom explained what tie-dye was, I just naturally assumed that it was a depiction of one of Zeus' messages.

Not the real shirt.

As I lay there upon the cement, I could feel the warmth of the sun entering me, mostly through my shirt. I started to think that I would be able to absorb the energy coming from the sun in the same manner as a solar panel. Granted, my understanding of photovoltaic power back then (as now) was fairly limited. But it was different than that. I knew that my black(ish) shirt would tend to absorb more visible light and, concordantly, heat. The cement was very light, so I would essentially become a tiny island of energy. It made me feel better, and as I played that day in the park, I could swear that I was running on solar.

There's a lot of sun in Colorado; perhaps some of my polos are photosynthetic, too. Maybe then I would have a basis for feeling so damn good.

Now if only I could manage energy output. I really need to recharge my iPod.

Santa Claus

It's quite possible that I have no idea what is going on here:

http://morrire.livejournal.com/427196.html

Or it might be just what I think it is. A study by the Swedish consulting firm SWECO late last year determined that for Kris Kringle to maximize his gift-delivering to all the billions of young people across the world, he should be based in Kyrgyzstan.

The rest is at the BBC. What it boils down to is that the Kyrgyz government hosted a big celebration full of Santa Clauses and Ayaz Atas (Snow Father) and Ded Morozes (Grandfather Frost) and planned to name a mountain between the Osh and Naryn Oblasts as Santa's "new" home. RFE/RL also ran a big story about it.

While discussing the story with a friend in Kyrgyzstan, he lamented that this was just the sort of problem that the Central Asian Republics are trying to deal with: the question of identity in the wake of the collapse of the USSR. I suspect that the celebration and the naming of the mountain, just like the study that preceded them both, was slightly more benign than that, but the thought was now officially out. That friend and I, as well as two other people, are collaborating to research questions of identity just like this. We feel that it is important for some reason. Watch this space.

For me, though, the story illustrated an important point about religious identity, which just happens to be one of my research interests. In a nation whose population is probably 75% Muslim, this seems to be a cute little interfaith excursion. Of course, Kyrgyzstan is close to 20% Orthodox Christian, too, and even the Muslims there are mostly adherents of the Hanafi school, which distinguishes them from other, more strict denominations. Still, that Father Christmas can be revered in a Central Asian country is a good indicator that all hope is not lost, and that there are still options for getting along.

Or something slightly less sappy, but equally useful.

Par for the Course

←These discs are just begging to get thrown in a lake

If there is most assuredly one thing that is missing in this Colorado life, it would be disc golf. Yes, it’s golf, but with Frisbees. Now granted, these Frisbees (or discs, as we call them) weigh upwards of 170 grams and can seriously bust you up if you get hit by them, but the basic premise is the same. Naturally, you can understand more by following this link to a ridiculously underdeveloped Wikipedia page about the sport. DISC GOLF

There was a time where multiple hours every day were spent out on the disc golf course in Aurora, IL. It was usually Jason and I heading out there after work. It presented a perfect opportunity to blow off steam about the day or week, and to plan things like our newspaper. Or, for that matter, all the millions of other outrageous plans that we discussed.

When Captain Ahab was around, he’d come out, too, and we’d laugh and laugh and have REALLY HIGH-LEVEL CONVERSATIONS. I remember the last time that I disced with Ahab, as well as the last time that Jason and I went out to the Lake to throw. It was a week or two before he took off for Central Asia. On both occasions, my game sucked. My discs must have known that they would soon be “put up” for a while. With Jason and Ahab gone, I didn’t have many folks to disc with. I was working for the university, and I knew a bunch of undergrads who played, but of course, they were undergrads.

There was no discing at all during the fall semester; I was actually very busy, so it’s understandable. Drew convinced me to come out a handful of times in the spring, though, and they were mucho rewarding. Again, the golf course served its purpose as a fertile ground for discussion. In those days, it was trying to figure out what would happen in August. (In case you haven’t caught on, I moved to Denver.) And of course there was the blowing off of steam. The course that Drew took me to was in the suburbs a few minutes north along Randall. It was basically cut out of a forest. It did look like they had designed it to do the least amount of damage to the local FOLIAGE, but it must suck to be a tree on a disc golf course. You tend to get smacked...a lot!

Those were great times out there. Sadly, the nearest courses out here are quite far away, even by bike. Once the weather heats up a bit and the ground dries, I’ll make an expedition out to a nearby course. It will be good to get back out there. Maybe I’ll be alone, maybe I’ll have someone to share my thoughts with; it doesn’t matter. I’ll pull out my Champion Firebird chartreuse disc, wind up, and let fly.

I’m expecting to double-bogey every damn hole. And that’s just fine by me.