This blog may yet be reborn

For the most part, my blogging activities will be limited to my wordpress blog, and then what? However, I am going to be making an effort to be somewhat more serious about writing on that blog, my new fever dreams will appear here, even though I've already exported most of the older one's over there.

For example, do I really want to put my odd meditations on Traveller vs. D and D. After all, I'd like to keep what readers I have.

During hs, at least, I thought that Traveller was the clearly superior game. I've already blogged about this somewhat, an experience point system and levels forces a story arc onto a campaign and though it allows for some tragedy, its mostly a series of triumphs. Traveller, which had more static characters, allowed for more loss, tragedy and redemption.

The other day, it occurred to me that the experience point system encourages a sort of seriousness of roleplaying and so does the fantasy setting. One of the best moments of my hs campaign was when the party signed on as roadies, body guards and members of a rock band. This lead to a high energy sort of anarchic role play. Staying in character was pretty easy, when necessary, and there could be a nice combination of humor and dramatic tension. One of the more interesting characters was bronzed after death and mounted on the front of the band's space ship. That particular episode, I think, sums of the sort of fun we had and I can't really imagine getting involved in anything quite so wild while questing for the lost huzzamawhatsit of where ever.

Am I wrong to be intrigued by this:

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/12/04/academic_warcraft_gu.html ?

Looking closer makes me think it might be a hoax.

Galactus, Devourer of Worlds, is coming

or so says this blog:

http://www.yourmomsbasement.com/archives/2006/11/galactus_is_com.html

It's always refreshing to find a site that revolves around references to old comic books that strike me as obscure.

Your moms basement is now right up there with Fafblog (http://fafblog.blogspot.com/) as my source for reliable news.

In breaking news, blogger now supports labels, so this blog may well live a little longer.

God is One

God is One
Originally uploaded by nycgeoff.

Have I ever mentioned that my friend Geoff is a genius? Take a look at his walking around NYC photoset. This shot is just one example.

abandoned blogs don't need titles.

Boice advices new faculty to moderate strong emotions in both teaching and writing. Avoid bingeing, he says, and the euphoric emotions that come with intense productivity. The crash just isn't worth the high. His reasoning is sound and his evidence quite respectable.

However, I'm sure that pointing out to addicts that their behaviour is suboptimal has been tried before. I try to live moderately of course, but sometimes I just need the electric feel of words coursing through my fingers and into my computer. Watching the sentences unfold and give life to the plan that's worked out in my head, the skeleton of thoughts given flesh.

As Boice points out, this leads both to depression and to less than organized prose. I wind up with my own Frankenstein monster instead of a sleek productive machine, ideas that crush and rend instead of harvest.

See, like that.

But the thrill ride is just too much.

this blog gets even slower

I am going to be pretty much abandoning this blog in favor of a new one on wordpress.com. There are two reason for this; first I want to try wordpress, second, because I'd like to further seperate out the parts of this blog. While the new blog will be more traditional and more professional, though not necessarily academic and not related to any classes that I'm teaching, this one will continue to be the home for my more whimsical, nonsensical musings, such as those times when I have a nap dream about a decades old comic book story, or reflections on yesterday when I listened to Sun Ra "Space is the Place" and Parliament's Mothership connection in preparation for the season's premier of Battlestar Gallactica.

Yeah, if I ever get those reflections out, I'll be sure to put them here where they are almost guaranteed to go unread.

How sluggish newbies ruined the marathon. By Gabriel Sherman - Slate Magazine

The thing I really love about
How sluggish newbies ruined the marathon. By Gabriel Sherman - Slate Magazine
, recently published on Slate, is the way that it allows people who haven't run any marathons, such as myself, feel superior to those who have. After 8 years of interscholastic cross country (high school and country) and intermittent training since then, I feel that I've got enough cred not to be considered a newbie at distance running. On the otherhand, I've never run a marathon. But see, I've always meant to run it the right way with appropriate speed and seriousness. (Note, a 4:00 marathon requires about a 10-minute mile, which is roughly my mile split when I run more than five miles.) Hence, it's not lack of dedication that's kept me from running the long race, it's love of the sport.

Convenient how that works.