Richard Dansky's Blog, page 31

Interview Greater

There's an interview with me up on the Syfy.uk site, for those who are curious about such things. Check it out here. I'm not sure I technically qualify as a game auteur, but it sure feels good to be called one.

Random Locally Based Holiday Gift Pluggage

For the bibliophile on your list, Samuel Montgomery-Blinn over at BullSpec has put together what's undoubtedly the most comprehensive list of available locally sourced speculative fiction I've ever seen. Check it out here. (and in case you were wondering, a BullSpec subscription also makes a great gift.)

For the little girl on your list who needs some neat new duds, there's Cary-based Sam's Closet, available through Etsy or Facebook. Don't tell my 2 year old niece, but I'll be shopping there for her.

The best hot chocolate I've ever had in my life came from Matthew's Chocolates in Hillsborough, NC. They also do homemade marshmallows that are ludicrously good, and the chocolate is, of course, sensational. Plus, Billy Strayhorn grew up in Hillsborough, so if you're shopping at Matthew's (or at Purple Crow Books or one of the nearby galleries), you're getting musical brilliance by osmosis.

Another great local bookstore is Flyleaf Books, over in Chapel Hill. Between them, the Regulator, and combination book/comic/CD emporium Books Do Furnish A Room, most of my book budget is spoken for - several times over.

Here endeth the pluggage.

New StorytellersUnplugged Post Up

Be warned. This one has naughty words in it. And I probably say mean things about something you like. Also, there are footnotes.

And so I give you "About That Crap You're Reading And The Brilliant Stuff That I Like"

By the same token, exploding into wrathful condescension against those who like stuff that you do not like – particularly things that fall into the category of Things That Sold Better Than Things I Like And Which Are Liked By Many Other People – at the drop of a hat is also counterproductive to anything except the reinforcement of a particularly weird and defensive tribal mindset. This siege mentality, which can best be summed up as “Everyone out there likes crap and I like the good stuff” is magnificent at driving off people who might actually have been interested in trying the stuff you’d like had it been offered in a friendly, accessible and non-fanatical way.

Thinking Symbolic Thoughts

Poor Thanksgiving. It's been mostly stampeded out of the public consciousness (except for the NFL, which uses it as a rationale for the continued existence of the Detroit Lions) by early Christmas shopping. Smartasses get off on pointing out that the actual holiday didn't come about until the 1860s. And someone out there invented, and continues to produce, tofurkey.

(There is nothing on God's green Earth quite like the aroma of slightly overdone imitation soy turkey. Nothing. If Lovecraft had smelled that, Cthulhu would have had red neck wattles.)

So I get it. It's an artificial holiday, insufficiently commercial for the "ZOMG Q4 SALES ARE DOWN 1.2% THROUGH THE FIRST TWELVE MINUTES" world we live in, and it's a shame to eat birds that Benjamin Franklin liked better than bald eagles. No, seriously. I get it.

That being said, the notion of appreciation for what you have is, I think, context- (and turkey-) independent. The idea of taking a day to look around and be thankful for what one has, instead of constantly looking to what's next, what's new, what's wanted - that's a good one,  I think.

I've got a lot to be thankful for. A good life with a wife I admire and adore, a family I love deeply whom I get to see on a regular basis, a challenging and interesting job that gives me opportunities to do things I'd ne'er have had the gumption to try on my own, dear friends and respected professional colleagues, a roof over my head and food in the fridge and cats who've never pooped in my shoes - it's quite a list.

So I'm going to sit here for a moment, and appreciate all that I'm lucky enough to have and share, and hope that folks reading this have plenty to be thankful for as well. Even the Detroit Lions.

Black Friday Week

More proof that the holiday shopping season has gone too far: When I get emails telling me about sales to set me up for the sales that occur to celebrate the week of Black Friday, which is in and of itself a non-holiday event driven solely by recognition of retail buying patterns, something's gone horribly, horribly wrong.

The worst part, of course, is that I said "emails". As in plural. As in, "more than one person thought this was a good idea."

Happy Hanukkah, folks. At least we're getting that one out of the way early this year.

Very Important Lessons Learned: Punpkin Sorbet Edition

Add more cinnamon. No matter how much you think is in there, you haven't added enoughIf you're plating the sorbet on top of something else, say, a graham-cracker-and-dark-chocolate wafer, you would do well to not apply the sorbet to said wafer and then freeze the whole kit and kaboodle overnight.Sugar works. Honey works better. Brown sugar, oddly enough, works best.More lime juice. LOTS more lime juice.

Hey, Look! A Post About Game Design!

Also, zombies.

A Bar Called Noir Should:

Have furniture made of red leather, brass studs, and large pieces of woodOffer many different types of bourbonBe darkBe playing Sinatra as background musicNot have a statistically significant percentage of its decoration come from the Red Bull marketing departmentNot have randomly placed curtains made of shiny beadsNot have live music of people singing "Creep" with bongo accompaniment
Seriously. Bongos.

Let There Be Rock

Took the long (read: scenic; read: poorly lit; read: twisty and windy and so forth) way home after dropping off out-of-town coworkers at their hotel, and the iPod kicked out a live version of the Drive-By Truckers' "Let There Be Rock"*. Thirty seconds later, I'm driving through windblown leaves and woodsmoke smells and singing along with lines like "Well I never saw Lynyrd Skynrd but I sure saw Molly Hatchet" and anecdotes about getting busted on the way home from a Blue Oyster Cult concert.

Now, the adolescence described in that song is not one I ever had. Not one I ever wanted, really, and certainly not one I'd have had the slightest idea what to do with. But damn if it isn't fun to borrow it and slip it on once in a while, even if it's just for one song.






*which is not a cover of the AC/DC song, but does reference it.

Interesting Tastes

Every so often, I shamble through swap.com's listings for the books I'm willing to swap, just to see how...unusual some of the trade possibilities are. This is partially because swap.com's user interface makes browsing about as productive as panning for gold in the Susquehanna, partially because I have a morbid curiosity about what's out there, and partially because I've discovered the odds of my actually finding something I want to swap for are somewhere below those of Chris Berman refraining from using the phrase "The New York Football Giants" at every opportunity. Personally, I think someone should start a rollerderby team or a Quidditch side or something called the New York Giants, just for the hell of it, but I digress, I digress.

In any case, tonight's random walk through swap.com produced these possible matches:In exchange for my copy of Charles Stross's scifi sleigh ride "Accelerando", I can receive a copy of Andy Griffiths' "The Day My Butt Went Psycho". Also, a bunch of Nora Roberts novels.In exchange for my copy of William Boyd's gentle, moving novel "Any Human Heart", I can receive a copy of Soulcalibur 2 for XBox, or Korn's "Take A Look In The Mirror", or a bunch of Nora Roberts novels.In exchange for Raymond Feist's fantasy slab "Flight of the Nighthawks", I can get something called Knitting Under the Influence. Also, an Encylopedia Brown book. And some Nora Roberts novels.In exchange for Elizabeth Bear's stab at military SF, "Scardown", I can get Jon Gosselin's memoir. Or some Nora Roberts novels.
At this point, my next step is clear: I need to buy some Nora Roberts novels just to see if, when I offer them for trade, I get offered the same Nora Roberts novels I'm posting. At that point, time will collapse in on itself, the universe will revert to a singularity, and the Royals will win the AL Central.

In that order.