Noise in the Shape of Writing

We’re half way through 2008, so it’s high time we checked in on the karma tontine.
I know I haven’t been posting about it, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t all been working on our goals (right?).

Attention: essentialsaltes, ian_tiberius, zorker, cdwfs, jsadler
Click the cut below in order to see what your goals were at the start of the year

I'm sitting at my desk and I can hear several people in the photocopier room smack talking about who they're gonna serve at the Ultimate Frisbee game tonight after work. Some of them are even bragging about how many new people they have convinced to attend the game tonight. My work here is just beginning...

Originally published at PatGames @ PopePat.com. You can comment here or there.

Equipment: none
Players: any

RULES
My Adventure is a storytelling game that is perfect for car trips, or telling stories around a campfire, or even just for two people relaxing on a porch swing. You get to make stuff up — anything! And then the other players get to make guesses as to why in the world you made up the stuff you did.

To begin, decide which player will be the first to go on an “Adventure.” That person is the Seasoned Adventurer and will be the one to make up the first story. Everyone else will be Junior Adventurers.

The Seasoned Adventurer gets to take a moment to decide what the “rules” of his adventure are. Perhaps he decides that the only rule of his adventure is that whatever happens, he will only encounter animals that start with the letter “B”. And so he might start off by saying the following:

“I just got back from an adventure! On My Adventure I saw a baboon playing a trumpet in a tree.”

The Junior Adventurers then get to follow in turn trying to go on the same sort of adventure that the Seasoned Adventurer went on. Player one might think that the rule is that an animal will play an instrument and he might, for example, say: “I went on a similar adventure! On My Adventure, I saw a giraffe playing a ukelele!”

In response, the Seasoned Adventurer would say: “That was a very nice adventure, but it was not quite the same as My Adventure.”

Now, it becomes the next Junior Adventurer’s turn. She might guess that the rule is that something must happen in a tree and say “I went on a similar adventure! On My Adventure, I saw a monkey jumping from tree to tree.”

The Seasoned Adventurer again tells the Junior Adventurer that their adventure is close, but not quite the same.

Once all Junior Adventurers have had one guess each, the Seasoned Adventurer must give another, DIFFERENT example of his adventure, using the same rule he did the first time. For example, he might this time say “I just went on another adventure. On My Adventure, I joined some beavers and made a dam in a river.”

This time, the Junior Adventurers have another clue. There are no instruments and no trees. Hopefully, the other players will guess it this time, but if they do not, the Seasoned Adventurer can make the example even easier by saying “I just went on another adventure. On My Adventure, I met a bear.”

Once one of the Junior Adventurers has figured out the rule, he should give an example that follows the rule but not say the rule out loud. He might say “I went on a similar adventure! On My Adventure, I rode a brontosaurus.” The Seasoned Adventurer would respond by saying something like “Yes! That is a very good adventure!”

Now, the other players get to continue trying to go on a similar adventure. If some of the players have trouble giving examples of similar adventures that follow the rule, the players who HAVE guessed it already can give further examples that blatantly give away the answer. That is quite okay to do! After all, the point is to eventually have everyone figure out the rule. Hopefully the Seasoned Adventurer will not have to spell the rule out to everyone, but if he does need to do so, try to start the next round with a simpler rule.

Continue playing the game by taking turns being the Seasoned Adventurer. Or, optionally, you can have the player who figures out the rule first be the Seasoned Adventurer for the next round.

Here are a few examples of “Easy” rules:
- All of the things encountered in the adventure can fly (birds, airplanes, bees…)
- All of the people/animals in the adventure make a noise or a sound.
- On the adventure, the storyteller always “smells” something.
- The last word of the adventure always rhymes with “house”.

And here are some examples of “Hard” rules:
- The adventure is exactly 4 words long (“On My Adventure, I traveled a long road” or “On My Adventure, I sailed across the ocean”
- The adventure is in alphabetical order (“On My Adventure, I ate bananas containing diamond earrings” or “On My Adventure, I asked Bing Crosby ‘Does everyone find god?”

VARIATIONS
- If two people find that they are getting good at the game, they might try going on simultaneous adventures. In this version, player one goes on HIS own adventure, and then player two goes on HER own adventure. Then, each player tries to go on the OTHER person’s adventure.
- If you have a particularly tough rule, you might consider giving two very different adventures that BOTH follow the same rule. That way, the guessers have a wider range of clues to go on for their initial guesses and it won’t be so nerve wracking to get going down the right path.

- Two fingers Pyrat rum
- Two fingers apple juice
- Two ice cubes

It be not bad at all, matey!

Ok, so if you provide software services, and you are competing to win a multimillion dollar contract with the company I work for, and you just got permission to come make a sales pitch to me and prove you have great customer service and a kick ass product.... well.... that does NOT give you permission send me a LinkedIn invitation!  No no no!!!

Bad LinkedIn usage!

Bad!

Originally published at PatGames @ PopePat.com. You can comment here or there.

Recipe for live version of the videogame Katamari Damacy:

8 parts Silly Putty
1,000 parts Lego
150 parts random tiny doodads
125 parts random medium doodads
100 parts random large doodads
200 parts rubber bands
100 parts binder clips
20 parts bungie cords
10 parts industrial clamps
1 cd player playing Katamari soundtrack

Mix well. Serve in 1 large backyard.

"The Phone" begins each episode with two hidden cell phones ringing at opposite ends of a major city. Contestants who answer the phones will have five seconds to decide if they want to play along for a cash prize, and a guide on the other end of the line then gives contestants a mission to complete before time runs out.

***

Just wait for a couple copycat misanthropists to start leaving phones of their own and then leading people on deadly goose chases. Actually, that's a great idea for a movie...

When my wife's phone broke last week, I finally decided to do a few things all at once.

I now have:
* a phone with a color screen (and a camera)
* a text messaging plan
* T-Mobile Hot Spot upgrade (unlimited WiFi at home and around town)
* VOIP (unlimited calling at any HotSpot, especially at home)
* a wireless network at home (required for HotSpot)
* a PC laptop that actually works anywhere in my house
* internet for my Mac as well (I used to have to switch the DSL between the PC and Mac)
* VPN into work (don't know what the hell I did that for, but it's too late... they know I have it now)

Thus firmly catapulting myself into 2004.
I look forward to the glorious futures of 2005 and beyond once I (someday) get an iPod and iPhone.

When the brain hurts from trying to figure something out... you have to ask the group mind.

Please tell me:  When I become a member of an LJ group, do the members of that group see my Friends-Locked entries? I know they shouldn't be able to, but I gotta ask anyway in case someone knows for sure.

- Remember the way you used to have to push the Record button and the Play button at the same time?
- How on some of them, the Record button was a tiny red prong that ran through the center of the Play button?
- Remember those counters -- black numbers on white tumblers -- with a little red pin you pressed to reset it?
- The horrible sound quality? But even so you could sit on the other side of the room and dictate into it?
- Remember the quarter second of "old" sound that would bleed through the gaps when you re-recorded onto a tape?
- If you were careful, you could open the top, manually roll back the tape a half turn, and then put it back in to avoid the bleed?
- Remember using a pencil to rewind tapes when your Rewind button was broken?
- Realistic brand? BASF? Memorex? Ideal? 


When I was ten, I started recording entire plays onto tape with friends of mine. We'd sit way in the back of the schoolyard and do all the voices. Typically, we chose READ magazine cause they had  shot comedy-mystery plays in the back. I don't think I kept any of them.

But I *did* keep a cassette of my first ever Choose Your Own Adventure. Actually, it was more of a Tunnels n Trolls module. I scripted everything and instead of Page Numbers, I used counter numbers. So it would be "If you choose to attack the troll, Fast Forward to counter #168. If you run away, Fast Forward to counter #354". It was awkward, tedious, and the counter numbers always seemed to change each time I played it.

I was wondering what the oldest instance of my recorded voice was and I think that's it.

And yup, I still have it. Well, part of it. It's barely audible in the gaps between a bunch of Oingo Boingo tracks I recorded off of KROQ in 1979.

I guess I hadn't learned the roll back technique.
 

 "When someone's that cute, their wedding ring pokes you in the eye."

Said by single friend of mine about a waiter who sang at her table. I thought it was brilliant.

Something clicked in me a few months back and now all of a sudden I'm reading like crazy.
Now, to be fair, I'm mostly "listening" to audiobooks, but I'm still reading the normal way, too.

At present, I'm going through 1 paper book and 1 audiobook a month.
Yeah, for me that's "crazy." (You have to realize that I used to read a book a year.)

And here's the kicker... at least half of it is classic literature.

See, I'm feeling the "age" thing -- and for me that culminated in the realization that at the rate of one a year, I was never going to "find the time to read all the great classics." It was the grandest case of fooling ones self ever.

So a few months back I made a pact with myself: 

-  I will read the classics in any format I want and not feel bad about the "legitimacy" of the format. If it's a movie, that's fine. If it's an audiobook, that's WAY better. If it's a paper book. That's gravy.

- I will read multiple books at the same time. At a minimum, one audio and one paper.

- I will put a book down if I don't like it. (See, one of my major holdbacks was the fact that I have *always* felt that I was not allowed to stop reading a book once I started. It's a huge impediment. I think I am over it.)

- I WILL SKIM AS I READ.

*That last one was a hard one. I think I read slower than any living person. Or I did. As part of my pact, I am forcing myself to read faster and to accept that it is *ok* to skim a little bit. If I find that I am not missing major plot stuff, then I'm gonna keep with it.

See, I think it will be better to have finished life having tried to read everything that might be great, rather than to have read only a tiny, tiny fraction of what I could have read, albeit from cover to cover.


So far this year, I have read (or "read" -- thankfully I haven't resorted to movies yet):

CLASSICS
On the Road - Jack Kerouac  
(loved it... what a style of writing... nice to see that youths were as wanton back then as they are today)

In the Penal Colony / Metamorphosis / Description of a Struggle - Franz Kafka  
(didn't work for me... .he peters out at the climax and almost makes it a de facto shaggy dog tale every time)

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
(not as good as I had hoped, though I appreciate the way the central Kurtz figure is built up so well)


FANTASY/SCI-FI
Earthquake Weather - Tim Powers  
(horrible, the man has lost his touch... but I'll keep trying until the bad ones outnumber the good ones for him)


Currently listening to... Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe 
(ok)

Currently reading... The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky 
(FANTSTIC! Who'd have thought that this imposing-sounding author had such an easy, colloquial style! If for no other reason, I love this novel for the simple fact that he's getting me to lap up a boring pseudo-biography due to his wonderful writing style. He's like a male Jane Austen!)

Thank you LibriVox...!
(I'm going alphabetically through their catalog, so I don't need recommendations, per se, unless you recommend I start at Z instead of A)

So what are you all reading?

It's amazing how good a skier my daughter is.
I don't even give her pointers anymore. Everytime she falls she figures out a reason for it (a patch of ice, a snowboarder, rubber tips on the skis, crummy grooming...), but she doesn't get frustrated anymore.

For lunch on Sunday we enjoyed the overpriced Mt. High cafeteria where a no-frills left-over-from-last-night hotdog and an oversalted pretzel run you $8.

On the way back we hit Charley Brown Farms, as usual. If you haven't been there, it's a hoot. Since I last visited a year ago, they added an eating area and they opened the statuary/prop collection in the backyard up to visitors. http://www.charliebrownfarms.com/

---

Last night, I wrote a song about David Paterson, the soon-to-be governor of New York (once Spitzer resigns). Sung to the tune of "Pinball Wizard":

"That black, young and blind kid..."

If it get's picked for the sketch show, I'll share it. Maybe even if it doesn't.

From aaronjv. My life in six words:

I got people to play games.

Bought Radiohead "In Rainbows" CD at actual brick and mortar store (Best Buy).
(After having downloaded it for free months ago).
Feel much better with self. 

I'm on the last couple chapters of Book 7.
(Yeah, I read slowly. )

In general, I can take or leave the Potter books. Love the movies, but the novels themselves have not been page turners per se.

And then I get to the end of the story where Harry has to do what has to be done.

And I just CANNOT find the right time to do it! I am *rather* impressed with how she is crafting the end of this book. Everytime I sit down to finish it I keep thinking "No. This is not the right time or place. The ending to this book deserves the right time and place. A good couple hours with no distractions.

JK certainly learned how to turn a good chapter at some point during her 7 novels. Maybe this weekend...

Unbelievable!
I've been spammed by a fantasy-themed Viagra ad!

I have gotten pretty used to deleting them without even thinking, but this one made me pause. Okay, it even made me open it -- on the offchance that there were more D&D-related Cialis references inside.

Nope. Just cheap, CheaP, CHEAP prices.
And it's arriving within 3-6 weeks!
With a complimentary supply of iron rations to boot!

To whoever found my keychain flash drive wherever it landed when it broke off my keyring and fell through a hole in my jeans on Saturday:

Enjoy my first novel! You're the only one other than me who was ever likely to read it anyway! Unless you post it on the web where we can all have a good laugh.

So, anyone else out there ever lose a copy of their work?
Anyone else out there ever lose a flash drive with something embarrassing on it?

 

(even if it was for a minute or two)

Musical:
DDR Max 2

Video:
Silent Hill 2

Computer:
Heaven and Earth

Board:
Pokemon Champion Island DVD Board Game

Card:
Pokemon + Magic the Gathering (yes, at the same time) 

RPG:
Keep on the Borderlands (with my daughter, just a week ago)