Strange But True
1. Eli 23.5 flew from Bogota to Houston to London yesterday. The customs official in Houston was a typical old Southern guy. "Where are you coming from he asked?"
"Bogota," Eli said.
"Where are you flying to?"
"London."
The customs official looked up. "Son, where do you live?"
Eli laughed and said, "Good question."
2. He woke me up at 6 this morning and asked me to send him $50. "Dad, my bank account here is frozen because I went to Bogota, bought food in the Houston airport yesterday, and I'm going to Switzerland tomorrow. They must think I'm a smuggler," he said, laughing.
3. C knew two people who were killed by hippos. In separate incidents.
On Writing
Everyone writes a first draft with varying levels of skill.
Mine are ass, generally. A skeleton story told all the way through, but with little supporting detail. I've mentioned this before, but I write in a similar way to musicians who lay down sound in layers, adjusting the level of each instrument as they go.
I always thought that other writers did much of this automatically, without so much conscious intent, but now I'm doubting that. All the symbolism and interlocking themes of your favorite author? It's methodically put into the manuscript. It doesn't happen in the first draft, or the second. It takes a long time.
I once casually dated a writer/audiobook recorder/D-list personality. She was a fine writer, and almost a great one. She claimed to write her novels in one draft, which was inconceivable to me. I could see cracks in her work, though, where another few drafts would have made her text airtight, so maybe she was telling the truth.
For most writers, though, interlocking a story with the accompanying symbols is a painstaking, lengthy process.
I'm going through this in the second section of the book now. I see connections and also where it's lacking connections. Anything that doesn't get used more than once gets thrown away, and I'm sewing together everything that's left.
Charitable Colonialism
I was walking through downtown Grand Rapids last week.
It wants so desperately to be a cool city. It has places in it that are cool, but overall, it's always felt like more of a 2D facsimile of a cool city than a real one.
As I was walking, I think I finally figured it out.
Western Michigan is quite conservative, and the course of Grand Rapids, in this era, has largely been determined by two families: DeVos and Van Andel. These families have spent tens of millions on charitable projects, but also are so far right politically there's no room beyond them.
Van Andel and Devos founded Amway, the pyramid scheme-adjacent business that made them billions. The DeVos family is also (through marriage) connected with Blackwater, in case you need any black ops run for you (I'm joking, but barely).
Because of the money they've contributed, they have a disproportionate effect on the city's future. In effect, it's colonialism through charity.
They also own an enormous share of the city's business.
The truly creative, hip cities are almost always progressive. It's an environment that allows creativity to emerge. This city, though, is tightly controlled, and "hipness" is a top-down imitation instead of bubbling up from a multitude of sources.
In other words, not cool.
Investment
I'm watching the College Football Playoff semifinal and I just realized why the twelve-team format is so much more fun.
I watch a ton of college football (ask C). What I don't usually do, though, is watch full games. I've seen all twelve teams in the playoff during the regular season, but only watched a full game for a few. For the rest, I'm only vaguely familiar.
By the time the semifinals of the playoffs roll around, though, I've seen all these teams for at least one full game because I saw them in the previous rounds. That's different from other years, when I'd come in cold on some teams in the semifinal.
Because I've seen everyone already, I'm more invested. I have more likes and dislikes. I have theories about what will happen, and reasons why I want it to go one way or the other.
In other words, I'm invested, and anything is more fun when you're invested. Well, unless it's one of your kids playing sports, when that investment can become a mild form of torture.
Otherwise, though, it's great. And it's great here.
Wildfires
I hope that any of you affected by the California wildfires are safe and have minimal property damage. It's tragic that one of the most beautiful places on earth is destroyed annually by these horrific fires.
I'd like to say something heartwarming, or clever, but the harsh reality is far beyond my ability to make it better.
Surviving the Doubt
Eli 23.5 and I had a long conversation about learning and creativity.
To paraphrase, he said that learning how to interview people effectively was hard. Especially when you're interviewing people about a deeply traumatic time in their past.
He's doing groundbreaking research in Columbia. At least, it seems that way to me. He's getting unbelievable, intimate information from the interviews he's conducting, and he said it was because he was willing to get into a situation where he wasn't exactly sure what he was doing and survive the doubt until he figured it out.
Surviving the doubt is such a great description of what gets in the way of learning anything. There's always a point where the degree of difficulty looks like a high wall, and you can't ever imagine scaling it, and that's when you have to put your head down and keep working. You can fail, too, because failure is part of the process of learning when you understand how learning works. If it's not difficult, and there's no chance of failing, you're not pushing yourself hard enough.
I could bemoan not understanding this when I was younger, and I have (in this very space), but I'm glad I understand now. More importantly, I'm glad he does, too.
He taught me, really.
Good News
My cardiologist said today that based on my various recent test results and scans, my arteriosclerosis appears to be reversing.
It turns out lowering your LDL to <60 and total cholesterol to <120 in conjunction with 10mg a day of Lipitor is a powerful combination.
I don't enjoy eating nearly as much anymore, since so many things are excluded (basically zero dairy and zero red meat except bison and forget cookies and pastries, etc.), but I can't complain about the results. It's a significant change from two years ago.
2024 Top Five PC Games (and a bonus)
As a follow-up to yesterday's post, here are my top five games of the year. I've written about each of them during the year, so this is just a simple list.
5. Wartales
4. UFO 50
3. Football Coach: College Dynasty
2. Hero Emblems II
1. Our Adventurer Guild
All five of these games are phenomenal and would have been a top five selection in any year. Oh, and a note on #1 and #2: if you have a pen tablet, you can use it for both of these games. Instead of many, many mouse clicks, it's just easy tapping. I use a pen tablet whenever I can now, as it puts exponentially less stress on your hand.
Bonus Console Pick: EA Sports College Football 25.
It took four major patches, and it has all the limitations inherent in an EA Sports game, but it's still great fun to play.
Happy New Year
The first thing I heard when I walked into my gym today was, "You are officially banned from this location."
That's quite a way to start the year.
They weren't talking to me, but a strangely tan, lanky guy wearing shorts when it was 30F outside. Following a long discussion with the employee, he left, and I wondered how much of a tool you had to be to get banned from a gym.
I mean, it's not hard. You go in, work out, and leave. You're polite. You don't bother other people. It doesn't seem like an Ironman difficulty situation.
I finished working out and didn't get officially banned. Achievement activated.
2024 Game of the Year
No, it's not
EA Sports College Football 25, even though I've played a ton and enjoyed most of it.
My game of the year is one I only started playing about a month ago. It was developed by one person, and ranks in the top 20 of my favorite games of all-time (spanning almost fifty years of gaming).
Welcome to Our Adventurer's Guild.
Here's the basic set-up, and it's nothing revolutionary. You manage an adventurer's guild from a central headquarters with the usual structures (pub, church, blacksmith, merchant, etc.). You can send parties of adventurers (which you recruit) on missions which auto-resolve, or you can lead them yourself and determine battle tactics in a turn-based system.
The missions have plenty of variety, and there are always plenty to choose from. It's a satisfying network of possibilities, and every game system has plenty of meat on its bones. The character classes, in particularly, are terrific and have real differences between them. In addition, no part of the game is too easy (on normal difficulty), but no part feels impossibly difficult, either.
Superficially, it resembles Battle Brothers or Wartales, but there are additional dimensions, including relationships between characters that far exceeds anything I've seen in a game of this nature before.
Plus, and this is important, you have to explore EVERY game system to be successful. You need to become familiar with everything, and here's an example. I was struggling with one of the last two battles in the game (a particularly powerful and recalcitrant dragon) and kept getting defeated. Then I realized I hadn't explored the teamwork mechanic, which allows you train adventurers to build positive relationships with each other, which gives your party special bonuses when they're together in battle. This was crucial to my eventual success.
The game builds in a fantastic way, with battles gradually becoming more complicated. By the end, the battles are enormous setpieces and have an epic feel to them. A few qualify as some of the favorite battles I've ever played in a game.
It's not a short game. You'll get 60+ hours of entertainment. I didn't crash once, and never encountered a bug. Inconceivable, really, with today's development standards.
"GreenGuy" (the lone developer) has created a complex masterpiece of management and tactics, and it's all supremely satisfying. I could not possibly give it higher praise.
Is it expensive to play this wondrous cauldron of entertainment? No. $11.24, as of this writing. It's one of the biggest bargains in gaming history. Here's a Steam link:
Our Adventurer's Guild.
