Sunday, August 2, 2020

D&D and Me: Part 7 (The Next Generation)

[This is the seventh post in a new series. You may want to begin at the beginning. Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week. Just that I will eventually finish it, someday. Unless I get hit by a bus.]

[Last time, I talked about my longest-running character, a monk in D&D’s third edition. This was also one of the last characters I played with my long-time gaming group.]

In 2005, I moved to Southern Maryland, and in 2007 I moved again, this time to Southern California. I didn’t find a new gaming group in either location, so, after roughly 15 years of weekly gaming with very few breaks, I began a long hiatus away from TTRPGs. From actually playing, in any event. I still kept up with the news, and I would buy a book occasionally, just to read for myself. In many ways, this period harkened back to my original experiences with D&D: just reading new rules, messing around with creating characters or storylines, but not really playing.

In 2008, D&D released its fourth edition (referred to, of course, as “4e”). I was actually quite excited about this in all the hype leading up to the release, but once the product was in hand ... I was disappointed. Not sure if it would have really made that much difference, seeing as how I had no one to play it with anyway, but for some reason I was really quite irked at how bad the new version was. Luckily, that was about to change.

I don’t need to go into a long explanation about what Pathfinder is, because I’ve already done that, if you care to read it. The short version is, Pathfinder updates the D&D 3e ruleset with major improvements, but little structural change. I’m not opposed to structural change, mind you: the jump from 2e to 3e was huge, and I loved it, because things got better. But this change—from 3e to 4e, that is—felt different, and definintely not better. Pathfinder, on the other hand, was somehow both amazing in how much was changed and in how much remained the same. By the time it was officially released in 2009, I had already been avidly following the public playtest, and I was ready to try it out. If only I had someone to play with ...

But, of course, by that time my eldest was 11 years old, and that’s plenty old enough to learn TTRPGs. I was back to being solely a GM, of course, but that was okay. In many ways, those early days of Pathfinder were eerily similar to my early days of D&D: after a long period of just reading rules, I had a young child to teach, I had to constantly invent new rules because you can’t stifle a kid’s creativity, and I was generating settings from scratch with way more emphasis on fun adventuring than rational worldbuilding. That the young child was son instead of brother made little difference; that the game was Pathfinder instead of D&D pre-1e was only different in that it was much easier to teach. The big contrast was that, now with about a decade of GM experience under my belt, I mostly knew what I was doing. I also knew enough to play around with other games: we spent quite a bit of time experimenting with post-apocalyptic RPGs, for instance. In Pathfinder, my kid played a half-wood-elf-half-drow named Krad Demonshield who started out as a custom class I made called “witchblade” (that ever-elusive search for the perfect blend of fighter and magic-user) and then multiclassed into another custom class I made which reused my favorite alt-classname “nightblade,”^* this time cast more as a shadow-magic-wielding assassin (but, you know, the good kind of assassin). There was also another fantasy character, a minotaur named Foghnar, but I don’t believe we used Pathfinder for that one.

Pathfinder was really fun for me. I spent a lot of time developing classes, which is one of my favorite things to do, and I also enjoyed a lot of the supplemental classes that were released for it. Their witch was so good I abandoned my attempt at building one, and their oracle was so close to something I’d been working on (which I called a “hermit,” after the tarot card, which was its inspiration) that I completely reworked mine to be a slight tweak of it. Their magus gave me major tips for reworking my witchblade, and their hybrid class the hunter may be a better ranger than the ranger.^** I loved the rules, which were still way more complex than they should have been, but I was comparing to the previous editions of D&D, and in that light they look delightfully slim. The combat was still a major pain, especially from the GM point of view, but character creation was a joy, with ever-so-many options, and fairly easy (at least for a long-time 3e player) to add even more of your own.

Eventually my child went off to teach Pathfinder to their friend group, and became a GM in their own right. This led to less tabletop gaming for me, but that was okay. I had other things to do, and GMing is a pretty big time commitment, so as long as the kid was having fun and carrying on the family traditions, I was fine. The GMing I had done up to then was still pretty satisfying.

Of course, the only downside was that I didn’t really get to play a character. I had NPCs, sure—Krad Demonshield, for instance, was almost always accompanied by his paladin friend Alcinor—but they weren’t really my characters in the same way that my PCs had been. They were sort of GMPCs, although I didn’t really treat them as such. But it’s a gray area when you’re playing one-on-one campaigns.

Of course, I had another child as well. He was far too young to play with us during our Pathfinder heydey, but, then, children have a tendency of getting older. By the time we’d burned out on Pathfinder, my middle child was now 11, and it was time for him to get in on the action. He first played a Dungeon World one-shot^*** for the eldest’s sixteenth birthday, and we moved on from there to a new campaign where I got to create the first paladin character I actually enjoyed, Arkan Kupriveryx. Because, you see, by that point, fifth edition was out.

Next time we’ll talk 5e and the rise of actual play D&D games.

__________

* See part 5 for further discussion on the origin of that term.

** Although probably still not as good as 3.5e’s scout.

*** For those not familiar, Dungeon World is sort of like D&D crossed with Apocalypse World, and if you don’t know what that is, probably just best to think of it as a “modern” TTRPG designed to focus more on narrative than rules.

Gaming Series

Lately I’ve started a bunch of series related to gaming, in particular my love of D&D and similar TTRPGs (tabletop roleplaying games—sometimes, in older posts, you may see me refer to them as PnP RPGs).

D&D and Me

My personal story about how I came to love the game and my formative experiences with it.

GM Philosophy

These are posts which outline my personal tenets as a GM (game master). This is mainly to have a formal place to point players to if they want to know what to expect in my games.

(the fine print)

Playstyle Matters

Multiclassing

One D&D topic that’s near and dear to my heart is multiclassing: the ability for one character to advance in more than class. I started a series exploring how this was handled in various editions of D&D, hopefully to culminate in some ideas about what the perfect multiclassing system might be.

General D&D 5e Musings

Occasionally I write something more general about fifth edition D&D in particular. There’s not a lot of throughline for these. It is, by its nature, an open-ended series.

General Pathfinder Musings

Before D&D’s fifth edition (affectionately known as 5e) came out, I was pretty big into Pathfinder. I have some musings on that too:

The Path to Pathfinder (part 1 of 2)
Destination: Pathfinder (part 2 of 2)
Looking Forward to Pathfinder’s Next Iteration

General Heroscape Musings

Outside of TTRPGs, my other big gaming love is Heroscape. Here are some thoughts about that game:

Why Heroscape Is Cool
Heroscape Forever
Assault on the Ice Tower (posted on Heroscapers.com as “Xotli”)
Mapmaker, Mapmaker, Make Me a Map (short)

General Fantasy Musings

Sometimes I just like to talk about fantasy gaming in general, storytelling through TTRPGs, etc. Like these:

Gaming with my Family

Of course I sometimes game with my family, and I sometimes write about it. Here are some samples: (Note: Most of these are about D&D, but some are about Heroscape.)

Heroscape tournament reports

Most years, I attend an annual Heroscaper tournament with a group of folks called the SoCal League. Typically I take at least a human child or two along for the ride, so here’s a family subcategory consisting of those posts:

Tourney the First (NHSD 2012)
National Heroscape Day 2013 (short)
Tourney prep (short)
National Heroscape Day 2014 (short)
National Heroscape Day 2015 (short)
National Heroscape Day 2016
NHSD 2017: Quick Results (short)
SoCal ‘Scapers Summer Gameday, 2019 (short)

Sunday, July 26, 2020

Isolation Report, Week #20

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

I had to go to the doctor for the first time during the pandemic: apparently, I (probably) have diverticulitis. My grandmother had this for many years, so it doesn’t surprise me too much. Now I have to go find a gastroenterologist, and I’m sure there’s a colonoscopy in my future, which is never pleasant to look forward to. In other sad news, The Mother‘s dad and brother aren’t doing well, so it looks like she will have to undertake a short plane ride in these troubled times, which definitely isn’t pleasant to look forward to. Our littlest will accompany; neither of them would sleep much otherwise.

We subscribed to HBO Max; it was the same price we were paying for HBO Now, so we figured why not. Mostly what’s on HBO Max is the same as what’s on regular HBO, but there are a few extra things. One of which is Doom Patrol, one of those marvelously inventive comic book series (like Preacher or Legion) that is oh-so-much-more than a typical superhero story. While he wasn’t the inventor of the Doom Patrol (a group which actually preceded the X-Men by a few months, despite seeming like a rip-off of them, which makes it decades old), it’s Grant Morrison we truly have to thank for this bit of Dadaesque surrealism (see also Happy!, on Netflix). While the core four characters predated him, Morrison gave us Crazy Jane, Danny the Street, and the amazing Willoughby Kipling, expertly portrayed by Mark Sheppard (a character actor who’s made a career of brilliant recurring characters in great series such as Supernatural, Warehouse 13, and White Collar). If you don’t like shows where you are constantly trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, definitely do not watch this one.

Let’s see ... what else ... we’ve been playing some family board games. The Wizard Always Wins, Betrayal at House on the Hill, and Bears vs Babies; all highly recommended. Also some card games—Minecraft Uno and Timeline—and of course the littlest one still sucks me into Portal Knights on a semi-regular basis. That game is for me what I understand Animal Crossing is for other folks during these weird times: we mainly just battle things and go on quests so we can get more materials to build our awesome house. It’s up to 3 stories now, with a rootfop observatory on top and a vegetable garden and pool out back. There’s also a large bathroom with a red crystal ceiling, a little marketplace full of vendor stalls out front, and a cannon in the side yard that we occasionaly fire off the edge of the world just so we can watch the flaming cannonball shoot off into the abyss. We really do spend a lot of time on it ... it’s weirdly soothing, vaguely creative, and surprisingly social. Plus my kid loves it when we share decorating tips.

So things aren’t too bad on the personal front, although I grow ever more fearful at the state of our country. While the rest of the world seems to have figured out how this whole virus thing works, we’re traveling backwards in time; as The Daily Show recently pointed out, we’ve now arrived at 1918, when the president said to ignore the doctors and scientists and encouraged large gatherings, people claimed that wearing masks to avoid infecting each other was unconstitutional, and localities triggered a second wave by reopening too soon. Protests for racial justice continue unabated, but the news seems to have forgotten (or perhaps merely grown apathetic). In point of fact, we’ve now progressed to the point where our president is sending in secret police to disappear people off the streets, and our system continues blithely on. Is this what people felt like in Argentina in the 70s? in Russia in the 30s? (I hesitate to mention Germany in the 40s due to Godwin’s law, but I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t crossed my mind.) I bet you all those people in all those countries said the same thing we’re all apparently thinking: “obviously that could never happen here.” I mean, I’m assuming people are thinking that, because otherwise why the fuck isn’t everyone in the country freaking the fuck out right now? A couple of news stories that faded fast and a few sternly worded tweets from the opposition? Is that really all the reaction we can get for secret fucking police? kidnapping people? I dunno, man ... I’m not feeling particularly sanguine about the future.

Sunday, July 19, 2020

Saladosity, Part 15: Autumnal

[This is the fifteenth post in a long series. You may wish to start at the beginning. Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week. Just that I will eventually finish it, someday. Unless I get hit by a bus.]

(If you need a refresher about my salad-making lingo, go back and review our first salad.)

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure why this salad is called an “autumn salad” ... I don’t personally find it particularly autumnal, but I searched online for salads with similar ingredients, and what little concensus there was in the naming of it pointed to the seasonal moniker, so here we are. Perhaps its because the fruit and nuts we’re going to add are commonly harvested in the autumn ... although, these days, you should have no problems finding any of this stuff year ‘round. Still, “autumn salad” is what I’ve always called it, once I started calling it anything at all, and that’s what we’re sticking with here.

The Fruit

So this is one of those salads with some fruit in it.¹ Hopefully that doesn’t turn you off. Trust me that this will all work out.

What this salad really should have in it is pears. However, I dislike using pears for two reasons:

I have a hell of a time keeping pears from going bad. I like this salad quite a bit, but it’s very much a “once in a while” salad. It’s a bit more of a pain to make, and it does contain some added sugar, so I just don’t eat it as often as the others. That means that I often don’t get around to the pears before they go bad.
Pears are, at least for me, a huge pain to prepare. They’re annoying to peel, due to the irregular shape, and it’s annoying to try to get the core out.

Now, if you have some secret way to get pears into chunks, and you eat pears often enough that they won’t get bad, I definitely encourage you to substitute pears. They’ll actually make this salad even better.

If, on the other hand, you’re a mere mortal like me, just use apples. They keep for-friggin-ever, they’re super easy to peel,² and, because you bought all the stuff I told you to, you have a corer-slicer which will give you beautiful slices in a matter of seconds. Once you have the slices, take half of them, cut each one into about four chunks each, and use that for your salad. Eat the rest: they’re yummy. Adjust amount and size of apple chunks to your taste.

The other fruit we need for this is dried cranberries. This is the first place we’re going to have to be okay with added sugar, because I’ve never even seen any dried cranberries that were unsweetened ... and, honestly, even if you could find some, you probaly wouldn’t want to eat them. Even sweetened, they’re not particularly sweet. The added sugar just makes them tolerable.

The Nuts

You want walnuts for this. Now, as I mentioned previously, I personally can’t find roasted walnuts—if I could, I sure would buy them. If you’re ambitious enough to want to roast the walnuts yourself, again I encourage you to do that. But we’re trying to keep it as simple and pain-free as we can, so I just use raw walnuts. They’re perfectly lovely. You bought the pieces, right? That saves you having to chop them, and they’re usually cheaper to boot.

You could try other nuts, if, say, you really hate walnuts. But honestly I think that makes it a whole different salad. Try it at least once with the walnuts. (Okay, you’ll most likely have to make it with walnuts several times, to use up the whole bag, but that’s not so bad.) I think you’ll dig it.

The Dressing

For this one, you’re going to want a slightly sweet dressing. If you really don’t want to make it yourself, you could try a raspberry vinaigrette, or a balsamic fig.³ But it works best with a good honey mustard.

Now, the primary problem with honey mustard dressing is that you can’t actually buy a good honey mustard dressing. Oh, sure: you can find some decent honey mustard dip ... I like Ken’s, personally. But if you have a burning desire to slather a chicken nugget in something, there are several good store-bought honey mustard choices. For salads, on the other hand, most premade “dressings” are totally infeasible. They’re too thick and goopy—that’s a great quality for a dip, but not really what you want in a salad dressing. The answer, happily, is simple: make your own.

And it’s also super easy. You won’t even need the food processor for this one. Just a bowl and a spoon and a very small amount of elbow grease. Although we do have to do a little bit of prep work first. But don’t worry: this is prep stuff you just do occasionally and then you’re set for a while, not stuff you have to do every time you want to make the dressing.

Lemon Juice

Remember when I told you I was going to tell you how to juice your own lemons and it would really easy? Okay, now’s the time.

Take your lemons and put them on the cutting board. Slice them all in half around what would be their equators if they were little yellow Earths. Now take your handy-dandy juicer that I told you to buy and plug it in. Use the smaller reamer. Now, one at a time, just put the lemon halves in your palm, put them onto the reamer, and push down. That’s literally all there is to it. But I’ll give you a few extra tips:

You can adjust the basket to allow as much or as little pulp as you like, but for this application you’ll probably want as little pulp as possible.
Once the pulp starts getting torn out, squeeze the lemon gently to bring more of the pulp into contact with the reamer.
A good juicer will spin both ways. Once you feel like you’ve gotten all you’re going to get, lift your hand up, the juicer will stop, and then push down again. If you’re lucky, it will immediately begin spinning in the other direction. (If you’re not, you’ll have to lift up and push back down a couple of times.) It will only take a few seconds for this second reaming, but you may be surprised how much more you get after you thought you were all done.
I mentioned before that lemon juice will keep forever, but it does eventually get so damned sour that you can’t stand it. Also, it will develop white solids that you should strain out, because they’re sort of fibrous. But if all that sounds icky to you, just freeze your lemon juice. They way I love to do it (when I do do it) is in an ice tray. Ice cube sizes vary according to tray, of course, but in my experience most ice cubes are almost exactly a tablespoon (a.k.a. 3 teaspoons). I like the ice trays that have little covers on them, because that way the juice won’t pick up stray flavors, but that’s mostly my anal retentiveness showing.

Homemade Mayo

Now that you have lemon juice, making your own mayonnaise is trivial. Take a mason jar and crack an egg into it.⁴ Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice (that’s 2 cubes, if you froze it up above). Squirt in just a small squirt of mustard: I like brown mustard for this, but any will do. It’s mainly there for its emulsifying properties. Toss in a heavy pinch of salt. Top off with oil up to the 1½ cups line, or maybe a smidge above it. Many places advise that you let this come to room temperature before proceeding, but I don’t find that it makes much difference (unless you need to wait for the lemon juice cubes to melt, of course).

Now just jam your handy-dandy stick blender (a.k.a. immersion blender) into the jar and turn it on. Mayonnaise will magically appear. It’s insane, I tell you.

Tips:

You can experiment with different types of oil. Sunflower is probably the best; canola is terrible for you, and olive and grapeseed just taste bad. Avocado oil is nice, although you will end up with mayo that has a slightly greenish tinge if you use only avocado. Personally, I like about half-and-half sunflower and avocado. Occasionally I’ll go a little heavier on the avocado—perhaps to as much as 2/3—but then again I don’t mind greenish mayo.
Until you’ve done this a couple of times, starting with a smaller amount of oil is better. You can always add more as you’re blending. Remember: more oil makes it thicker, which can be a bit counterintuitive if you’re thinking of the oil as a liquid. But the emulsification of the oil is what makes the mayo, so more is thicker in this case. Basically, start your blending and, if it’s too thin, add more oil. If it’s too thick ... well, you’re sort of hosed. Try again.
You may need to gently move the stick blender up and down a bit to get the oil on top. If you’re really good, you can cock the blender at a slight angle and create a vortex that sucks the oil down to the blades, but don’t feel bad if you can’t manage that. Just plunge up and down a few times (gently) and you’ll achieve the same effect.
This mayo is absolutely not just for this dressing. Use it all the time. Never buy mayo again. Seriously: once you figure out how easy it is to make your own mayo, there ain’t no going back.

Put it all together

Ready to make some dressing? Here’s what you’ll need:

4 big spoons of homemade mayo
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
5 big squirts of yellow mustard
1 little squirt of dijon mustard
4 big squirts of honey
2 heavy pinches of garlic powder
1 heavy pinch of salt

Just throw it all into a big bowl and stir it up. The end. Use a funnel to put it into an old salad dressing bottle and stick it in the fridge; it should last a couple of weeks, but don’t wait too long.

Feel free to mix up the ratio of yellow mustard to dijon, or add or subtract honey to your taste. You should find this version way more tangy than sweet, but still sweet enough that you know it’s honey mustard. I’ve also experimented with using vinegar instead of (or in addition to) the lemon juice, which makes it super-extra-tangy, but eventually I decided the lemon juice was the better call.

Don’t leave out the garlic powder though. I was frustrated for months trying to create the perfect honey mustard before I found some recipe that suggested garlic powder. Like you probably do, I thought this was an utterly insane idea. Until I tried it. Trust me on this one.

Autumn Salad

And now you’re ready. At this point, you’ve already done the hard bits, so this is just assembly.

base veggies
walnuts
dried cranberries
feta cheese crumbles
apple slices
honey mustard dressing (normal)

There’s sweetness in the apples, the sweetener on the dried cranberries, and the honey in the honey mustard. There’s also tartness in the cranberries, the feta cheese, and the lemon juice and dijon in the honey mustard. Plus the crunch of the walnuts and the veggies ... this is one of my favorite “dinner” salads. As I say, it’s not an everyday thing, but once every few weeks or so it’s a real treat.

Next time, we’ll experiment with some “south of the border” flavors.

__________

1 But not a fruit salad. Totally different head.

2 Although, again, if you enjoy eating apple peels, you don’t even need to bother. But ... blech.

3 Try Annie’s for some quality pre-bottled dressings: they have both of the kinds I mentioned.

4 You don’t have to use a mason jar, of course, but it’s easiest, because it has lines on it for 1 cup, etc.

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Isolation Report, Week #18

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Well, there was an Independence Day celebration here in the US ... sort of. We mainly just swam and made s’mores around the firepit. That’s about as much patriotism as I can muster these days.

The past two weeks all my regular news sources have been on vacation, so I’m looking forward to seeing what the world has been up to tomorrow. Wait ... did I say “looking forward to”? Yeah, maybe that’s not the proper phrase. Come to think of it, I’ve actually been fairly unstressed the past couple of weeks. Maybe I shouldn’t go back to watching news stuff ...

I continue to be disappointed in how quickly it seems the coverage of racial justice protests seems to be disappearing. In one panel I watched recently, the folks worried about “ally fatigue.” I wish I knew what the right thing to combat that was. But I understand the sentiment.

Critical Role has come back, and Narrative Telephone is also continuing, so that’s the best of both worlds. I’m blasting through all the TV shows I said I wanted to catch up on ... perhaps sometime in one of the next few reports I’ll explore how much television I’ve blasted through. Then again, that also might depress me.

I’ve also caught up on nearly all my outstanding podcasts, so I’ve gone back to audiobooks. I had been behind for a bit, and, at the beginning of the pandemic, I wasn’t doing well even keeping up with new podcasts, since my commute was gone. But I’ve worked out now how to work some podcast/audiobook time into my schedule, and I just started my first new audiobook in nearly a year. So that’s ... progress? Something.

I also took a few days off to turn the 3-day weekend into a 6-day weekend. I spent a bunch of time fiddling with the code for my Google Sheets GM sheet: that is, the thing I use to help me run my D&D games. There’s a bunch of products like that out there, but I don’t care for any of them, mostly because I have my own idiosyncracies and house rules. So of course I continue to write my own. A few months ago Google Apps Scripts upgraded the version of Javascript they use to run the back-end stuff behind Sheets, so I’m finally getting some features I’ve been longing for—when told the situation, my boss said something along the lines of “welcome to 2017.” I still don’t like Javascript much, but admittedly this is way better. Anyhow, I upgraded everything, and that of course caused some problems, and I wrote some brand new systems, which was pretty exciting. Anyway, that took up nearly a week. And I lost a few more chunks of time to Portal Knights with the baby girl.

Anyhow, I think that’s all there its to talk about, really. Next week should be another full post, barring any unforeseen circumstances.

Sunday, July 5, 2020

80s My Way I

"There's a New Wave Coming, I Warn You (1979 - 1981)"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes. The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use. You may wish to read the series introduction for general background; you may also want to check out the mix introduction for more detailed background.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week. Just that I will eventually finish it, someday. Unless I get hit by a bus.]

Well, it’s only been 3 years since I said I was going to start on this mix, and I think I’m finally pretty happy with volume I. At this rate, I’ll be done memorializing the 80s in about 2047. Hopefully I live that long.

This whole mix is trickier than most, for reasons that I outlined—okay, more like belabored—in the intro. And the first volume is super-tricky, because I’m attempting to epitomize a genre which didn’t really exist yet. What to include? what to skip? There’s a lot to consider.

After a lot of agonizing, I decided to include a number of songs which were not really alternative at all, but I consider them (at least in retrospect) as harbingers. I open the volume with the undeservedly forgotten “My Girl” by Chilliwack, usually considered one-hit wonders here in the US, though less so in their native Canada; I then follow that with Australia’s Little River Band and their guitar-heavy “Night Owls.” Both came out in 1981; the former reached #3 and the latter peaked at #6. In many respects, these were perfectly normal, straight-up rock songs, particularly the single by LRB: often known for softer, power ballads like “Reminiscing” and “The Other Guy,” this was one time that they just rocked out. Chilliwack wasn’t much known for anything, but their song also featured some solid rock guitar work. So why do they appear here? Well, in between the almost expected hot licks, these two experiment, just a touch: “My Girl” features some beautiful almost-a-capella harmonies backed only by a drumbeat, while “The Night Owls” plays around with dynamics, creating a hint of lonely echo on some of the background power chords. Throughout this mix, I will not be afraid to throw in songs that I only discovered much later, on the grounds that they should have been part of my 80s, but these are two songs that I distinctly remember hearing at the beginning of the decade, and they were two of my earliest memories that something ... different ... was on the wind.

Also in this camp are the classic “Jessie’s Girl”—possibly more famous for rhyming the word “moot” and confusing an entire generation who didn’t realize it was a word¹—and Billy Joel’s “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me,” which simultaneously touched on the very edge of the new sound while singing about it, a new level of meta which came to characterize a lot of 80s pop culture. Joel sang: “Next phase, new wave, dance craze, anyways, it’s still rock and roll to me,” and he was right ... and yet he was wrong. It was still rock and roll, but just barely, and it was morphing every day.

What were we to make of “What I Like About You” by the Romantics, for instance? It certainly wasn’t punk, and it absolutely wasn’t new wave,² but it somehow was something more than simply rock. And how about “Kids in America” by British pop star Kim Wilde?³ That ain’t pop—Wikipedia wants us to believe that Wilde was “inspired by the synth-pop stylings of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Gary Numan,” but I’ve got news for you: it ain’t synth-pop either, although that’s closer. There is a strong synth throughline, and I’m betting that’s clearly a drum machine you’re hearing, at least for part of the song, but it’s also ... more. It holds on to the standard forms of rock and pop, while going in new directions. Wilde sings:

Giddyup to East California,
There’s a new wave comin’, I warn ya ...

and any line that prophetic is not to be ignored.⁴

And there’s even weirder stuff in the mix. The Easybeats were sometimes called the Beatles of Australia, and they too drifted into the psyschedelic territory that the Beatles trod. Two of them in particular began a project after the Easybeats were no more that they called Flash and the Pan which went even deeper into psychedelia, and, in 1980, they released an album called Lights in the Night and their first single was a bizarre little track called “Welcome to the Universe,” which combines ambient synth, voice distortion, rock guitar, and a rollicking piano performance that could almost be considered boogie-woogie. When I first heard this song,⁵ I had no idea how to categorize it. Hell, I’m not sure I do even now.

And then we have the real new wave. There are two songs that will always exemplify the sound of new wave to me: “Pop Muzik,” by M, and “Cars,” by Gary Numan. Now, “Pop Muzik” is a bit to the left of europop, and it’s got a lot of disco influence as well, but the synth layers, and the way the guitar is used—not licks or power chords, but just individuated notes that seem to vibrate in your head—that’s new wave, baby. But if I had to describe new wave in one word, that word would absolutely have to be “Cars.” It’s nothing but synth and drum machine, and whatever buzz there is is not provided by guitars at all: it’s just more synth, made jagged-edged and discordant. “Cars” is the first time I can remember hearing sounds that were essentially sci-fi sound effects used as actual music ... and it works. A healthy chunk of the entire genre of electronica can be traced back to Gary Numan, as far as I’m concerned, and while I’m not a hardcode Numan fan, there’s no denying the absolute majesty of this song.

Of course, the other two classic new wave bands of the 80s are DEVO and the B-52’s, and both are here, because they were both putting out amazing songs right from the start of the decade. Sure, including “Whip It” means I can’t⁶ include “Working in the Coal Mine” or “Girl U Want,” but come on ... “Whip It”? That was a harbinger of the decade if ever there was one. Likewise, “Rock Lobster” is here bumping out “Private Idaho” and “Channel Z,” but I decided to include it for a couple of important reasons. First of all, while the B-52’s are undeniably a new wave band, they’re not synth purists the way some of the others are. “Rock Lobster” includes some great guitar work that almost sounds like it’s played on a bass guitar (but it’s not). Again, this echoey, almost ringing guitar sound would become very prevalent in much of the alternative to come. But one of the most interesting things about “Rock Lobster” is that it was originally released in 1978—and then appeared on 1979’s The B-52’s, when it entered the charts, and finally peaked in 1980. So I feel fully justified in including it here, but it’s fair to note that this is the earliest song to appear on the mix. That kind of ahead-of-its-time phenomenon is too important not to celebrate.

But the real reason this retrospective on the 80s actually starts in 1979 is “My Sharona.” Unlike the B-52’s, there was no other option for the Knack, but there was also never any question not to include this iconic track. If “Cars” single-handedly defines new wave, “My Sharona” does the same for post-punk.⁷ This track isn’t quite the punk that the Ramones and the Sex Pistols were delivering, but it owes so much to it: you can clearly hear the punk in both guitars and drums. The harder edges of alternative stem mostly, in my opinion, from this one song.

Of course, another band that is often the recipient of the “post-punk” moniker is Joy Division. I’m not sure I can entirely see it, though. Let’s take “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” for instance—their highest-charting single, which, sadly, peaked well after lead singer Ian Curtis was already gone.⁸ It’s an almost goth tune, with all the sense of melodrama that the word implies, but also containing a fair amount of synth. Compared to “My Sharona,” this is an entirely different sound, but a no less important one.

Of course, the heavy synth makes sense, as the post-Ian-Curtis remnants of Joy Division would go on to become New Order, one of the most important synth bands of the decade.⁹ Synth pop, in fact, is one of the most crucial musical components of my 80s, because it’s where most of my all-time favorite albums of the decade truly fall. And synth pop really starts, in my opinion, with Soft Cell, and 1981’s “Tainted Love.” It may not have been the first,¹⁰ but it was the one which exploded onto the scene and changed the landscape in a pretty fundamental way. The song itself explodes into being too, using sounds which we previously had thought were only useful for laser blasters in Star Wars. It’s a cover, although most people have never heard the original,¹¹ a rockin’ Motown number. Soft Cell remakes the song so fundamentally that people will forever think of their version as the way it should be sung (similar to what the Marcels did to “Blue Moon”). It stayed on the charts for a record-making 43 weeks: nearly a year, all told.¹² To my mind, it ushered in a new era that would eventually bring some of the greatest bands of the 80s: Depeche Mode, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Tears for Fears, New Order, a-ha, Naked Eyes, my all-time favories Yazoo—all of whom we absolutely will be hearing from on future volumes. On this volume, though, the only other synth pop classic from the start of the decade, in my opinion anyhow, is “Don’t You Want Me” by the Human League. I don’t know that the Human League lives up to the standards of some of those other bands, but at least Dare was a pretty good listen all the way through, whereas Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret is pretty awful apart from “Tainted Love.” Still, while a few other tracks on Dare are pretty cool (I particularly like “The Things that Dreams Are Made Of,” and I have a soft spot for “I Am the Law,” goofy as it is), there’s no doubt that “Don’t You Want Me” is a powerhouse pinnacle that the League would never reach again.

Many of the other choices here are fairly predictable. Picking only one Police song is particularly painful, especially since Synchronicity was such a major part of the soundtrack of my senior year in high school. But “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” was the first Police track I ever heard, and it really did have quite a big impact on me. Picking only one Men at Work song is a bit easier, but there were still several other good choices (“It’s a Mistake,” “Dr. Heckyll & Mr. Jive,” or even the contemporary hit, “Who Can It Be Now?”, which I almost certainly heard prior to “Down Under”). But, in the end, this is such a great tune, with some impressive flute work from Greg Ham (more typically their sax player). Likewise, the Go-Go’s present a number of excellent candidates, including “Vacation,” “Head Over Heels,” and, once again, a contemporary song that technically preceded my choice here: “Our Lips are Sealed.” This was a much tougher choice, as I like both songs equally, and I changed my mind several times before settling on “We’ve Got the Beat.” It’s a great example of the dancier side of alternative, and I think it presages stuff as diverse as Animotion and Bananarama. Finally, the Vapors certainly didn’t give me anything to work with even remotely as well-known as “Turning Japanese,” which, despite its racist overtones, is still such an intrinsic part of my 80s memories that I couldn’t exclude it.

80's My Way I
[ There's a New Wave Coming, I Warn You (1979 - 1981) ]

“My Girl (Gone Gone Gone)” by Chilliwack [Single]
“The Night Owls” by Little River Band, off Greatest Hits [Compilation]
“Welcome to the Universe [single mix]” by Flash and the Pan [Single]¹³
“My Sharona” by the Knack, off Reality Bites [Soundtrack]
“Jessie's Girl” by Rick Springfield, off Working Class Dog
“It Must Be Love” by Madness, off Complete Madness [Compilation]
“Harden My Heart” by Quarterflash, off Quarterflash
“It's Still Rock and Roll to Me” by Billy Joel, off Glass Houses
“Pop Muzik” by M [Single]
“Cars” by Gary Numan [Single]
“Tainted Love” by Soft Cell, off Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret
“Turning Japanese” by the Vapors, off New Clear Days
“Kids in America” by Kim Wilde, off Kim Wilde
“We Got the Beat” by the Go-Go's, off Beauty and the Beat
“Down Under” by Men at Work, off Business as Usual
“Call Me” by Blondie [Single]
“What I Like about You” by the Romantics, off The Romantics
“Don't Stand So Close to Me” by the Police, off Zenyattà Mondatta
“Generals and Majors” by XTC, off Black Sea
“Don't You Want Me” by the Human League, off Dare!
“Rock Lobster” by the B-52's [Single]
“Whip It” by DEVO, off Freedom of Choice
“Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Joy Division, off Substance [Compilation]

Total: 23 tracks, 84:38

I’m not sure there can be any real “unexpected” or “non-obvious” tracks on a mix like this, but I will address a few of the songs that exist at the edges of alternative. Let’s start with Madness, who are 100% pure ska. And yet, they pepper it with just enough pop that a track like “It Must Be Love” can break into the ostensibly rock charts; while it only reached #33 in the US, it got all the way to #4 in the UK and #6 in Australia. Strangely, this is another cover that I (like, I suspect, most of you) never knew was a cover: the original was a more folksy affair by a British guitarist and poet named Labi Siffre. I would say the Madness version is better, but perhaps it’s more fair to say it’s just different.¹⁴ This track, along with Madness’ other contemporary hit “Our House,” was a big part of what led me to discover and then treasure retro-swing, which of course leads inevitably to Salsatic Vibrato.¹⁵

But I would have to say my love of saxophone in particular was engendered by hearing Quarterflash’s “Harden My Heart.” Quarterflash is one of those bands that’s hard to pigeonhole into a style: Wikipedia just calls them a rock band, but that’s so generic as to be useless. They remind me slightly of Romeo Void¹⁶, but also of Scandal,¹⁷ which is a bit of a feat, considering how different those two bands are. Scandal is solidly female-fronted post-punk, while Romeo Void leans hard into the new wave side. Quarterflash is neither, really, though guitarist Marv Ross has some chops that certainly feel punk-inspired. But the revelation of Quarterflash is of course Rindy Ross, whose velvet vocals are filled with a longing quality that her gorgeous sax playing only echoes and accentuates.¹⁸ Saxophone as part of rock music was nothing new of course; we’d been hearing it since way back on “Get a Job” by the Silhouettes in ‘57, if not long before that. But the sax in alternative music is different, somehow: less punctuation and more emotional backdrop. Rindy Ross prepared me for Andy Hamilton’s break in “Rio,” and Kirk Pengilly’s amazing scales in “What You Need.”

The reason Blondie is such an amazing icon of the alternative movement is their refusal to stick with one style. They’re playing rock, mostly, but each song delivers a different sub-style: “The Tide Is High” gives a little reggae, “Sunday Girl” leans towards an almost loungy jazz, and “Rapture” was the first proper rap that some of us white kids ever heard.¹⁹ But “Call Me” is the one I went with here: with its strong disco influences, this track is just a poster child for the transition from 70s to 80s. I never liked disco, but I love this song. The fact that Blondie can make me like things I never did before is a testament to their genius, and their influence on the 80s alternative movement.

Finally, I threw in “Generals and Majors” by XTC. While XTC is a band that not as many folks are familiar with, for me they provided just as many options as the Police: all the way from “Making Plans for Nigel” in 1979 through “Mayor of Simpleton” in 1989. I suspect that 1982’s “Senses Working Overtime” was the first track of theirs I ever heard, while 1986’s Skylarking is one of my all-time favorite albums, including classics like “Earn Enough for Us” and “Dear God.” But, while I never heard “Generals and Majors” until close to the end of the decade, it’s such a classic XTC tune that I felt like it had to be the one I chose. It’s poppy, satirical (“generals and majors always seem so unhappy, ‘less they got a war ...”), and most of all layered. Layers of guitars, layers of percussion, layers of synths, I’m sure, although never too obvious, there’s whistling, and soft vocals, and jangle-pop guitars, and just a touch of post-punk. There is never any question that XTC should be considered “alternative,” but that’s only because you have no idea where else you could possibly put them.

Next time, we’ll see the first second volume of a pre-modern mix.

⇐ 80s My Way 0

80s My Way II ⇒

__________

1 If you have an older friend who tends to say “the point is prob’ly mute,” it’s entirely Rick Springfield’s fault.

2 Fuck you Wikipedia. You don’t know squat.

3 We talked about the weird dichotomy of Wilde back on Salsatic Vibrato V: in the US, she’s thought of as a one-hit wonder, while in the UK she’s a mega-star.

4 So much so that I made it the volume title. Natch.

5 The fact that I ever did, and how that came about, probably deserves its own blog post.

6 According to the rules I set out in the intro, that is.

7 I typically despise terms like “post-punk” or “post-grunge,” as “post-X” just means “the music that comes chronologically after X,” which could describe most anything. But, then again, the term “alternative” is already pretty generic and meaningless—especially after alternative music became mainstream in the 90s!—so I’ve pretty much given up.

8 I also confess that “Love Will Tear Us Apart” was not a part of my 80s experience at the time: I had to go back and learn about them a bit later in the decade.

9 I predict we’ll see them show up around volume VII or so.

10 Wikipedia wants to credit first Giorgio Moroder, who was of course busily inventing Italo disco, and then Gary Numan, who we’ve already pointed out was the progenitor of new wave. Then they throw in “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles, which is harder to argue with ... I suppose that’s synth pop, sort of, but I just never really thought it was that good of a song. Which is why you don’t see here on this volume.

11 I certainly hadn’t, before writing this post.

12 Admittedly, nowadays the record is closer to nearly two years.

13 As always, I hate linking to YouTube. If you want the 9-minute version of the song, you can find it on Amazon ... but you don’t. It’s not that good of a song.

14 If you want to hear the original to compare for yourself, as always YouTube is your friend.

15 On which mix Madness have made two appearances: once on volume III and once on volume V.

16 Who we will absolutely hear from when we reach 1984.

17 Ditto.

18 For the ultimate Quarterflash experience, though, you must listen to “Find Another Fool,” where Rindy not only channels Pat Benatar, but also provides us with what has to be the world’s only saxophone-electric-fiddle duet. Yeah, that video is ultimate 80s cheese; maybe try just closing your eyes and listening.

19 I’m not claiming it was a good introduction, of course.

Sunday, June 28, 2020

Isolation Report, Week #16

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

I originally thought I might make up for last week by doing a full post this week, but a number of factors have conspired against me. One is trying to finish a thing for $work. Probably the more time-consuming, though, is that our cycle of D&D (and other TTRPGs) has cycled back around to the Family Campaign, which is the one game where I tend to put in a lot of work. So I suppose we’ll have yet another virus isolation report.

Aside from the slight interruption of Father’s Day, it’s been pretty much business as usual. The news seems to be confirming that, yes, we did open back up too early—perhaps I’m just cynical, but is there really anyone out there who is surprised at this news? Experts said, if you do a thing, another thing will happen, and then people who are supposedly in charge did the thing, and then the other thing happened. To borrow the eloquence of a fourth-grader: well, no duh. I’m definitely not feeling bad about our family’s decisions to maintain our mostly-staying-isolated lifestyle. In fact, honestly I would say we’re staying at home even more now than we were at the beginning of the pandemic: we’re going longer between runs to the grocery store, we’re eating out way less, and, while The Mother and the smallies have been out a couple of times recently, expanding our “social bubble,” overall extra-domiciliar expeditions are, on balance, reduced.

Protests over our militarized police state continue, but the media seems less inclined to continue focussing on the story, which is ... frustrating. I guess we’ll just have to see how things keep going. I do find it encouraging that so many people—especially so many white people—are calling for change. On the other hand, the idea that the public outrage might be quelled by the 24-hour news cycle is ... frustrating.

So far, I haven’t baked any sourdough bread or tried to pick up any new hobbies. Unless my daughter sucking me into Portal Knights counts. I have been, admittedly, watching a shit-ton of television, have blown through most of my podcast backlog, and been trying to watch more videos on the Internet, but there’s not as much out there as I wish there was. In many ways, we’re getting some cool new stuff—to name just one, check out Josh Gad’s Reunited Apart series—but a lot of what I used to watch is struggling to figure out how to cope with the new normal, and that goes for television too.

One spot of good news: Critical Role is returning this coming week. This is good news, because, I gotta tell you: watching people who normally play games together live try to figure out how to play on Zoom or other videoconferencing technology where the lag is just enough to make it difficult for people to figure out whether to jump in or shut up and let someone else talk is ... not as satisfying. The people who have been doing it that way for years already have a leg up, of course, but a lot of the streams I’ve tried to watch (such as the otherwise entertaining annual livestream games from the makers of D&D, this year called D&D Live 2020) are just not what they used to be. So the news that Critical Role is going to come back, filiming with everyone in the same room (albeit no longer at the same table), is quite welcome. And, also, they’re going to keep doing their Narrative Telephone series (new episode came out on YouTube just yesterday), which brings me a lot of joy. We’ll see if the new format works for Critical Role or not.

In the meantime, we’ll soldier on, try to stay safe, and try to stay sane. Hopefully you all will as well.

Sunday, June 21, 2020

Father's Day Amusements

Well, there was going to be a regular post this week, but I’ve spent Father’s Day weekend playing games with my kids and essentially accomplished nothing. But, you know: in the best way.

Yesterday was around 5 hours of Portal Knights. If you haven’t played it, it’s basically Legend of Zelda meets Minecraft. So there’s equal parts fighting wandering monsters, exploring dungeons, and talking to townspeople along with planting trees, mining for copper, and constant expansions to the insanely large house you’re building. The cool thing is how these seemingly dissimilar gameplay elements interact: can’t reach a cool place you want to explore? Just build a bridge or some stairs to it. Can’t find the door to the dungeon? Just pickaxe through the wall. Contrariwise, can’t build that cool wardrobe you need to hold all your extra stuff? Just explore until you find someone else’s house that already has one and just take it. I had a human wizard I made back when I played for a while with the Smaller Animal, but for this game it was just the baby girl and I, so I created a furfolk ranger. I optimized him for being able to just sit still and shoot the shit out of things: I put every ability point into dexterity and constitution, built the best bow I could, took bow master and the sentry power that increases your damage if you shoot without moving. Then I started grinding: I let my daughter concentrate on house building and interior decoration while I provided construction site security. Eventually I got to the point where nothing in the level could kill me before I just shredded it into oblivion without ever moving. Sweet. And then of course I started fulfilling requests from my daughter (go find me a wardrobe, we need more copper blocks, etc etc). It becomes very easy to lose yourself in games like these, where they’re just hard enough that you’re not bored but just easy enough that they don’t piss you off too much and you quit. The 5 hours was gone before I knew it ... and that’s why I don’t play videogames any more. I’d never accomplish anything.

Today was board games, by my specific request. We started “simply,” with The Wizard Always Wins. This is one of those games that seems moderately simple: the rules are just barely complex enough to warrant a second reading to clarify some of the finer points, but it turns out that it’s chock full of interesting choices and competing strategies. We really enjoyed it.

Then we moved on to Betrayal at House on the Hill. This is a quite complex but amazingly fun game. The storyline is very Cabin in the Woods, although it precedes that movie by several years. Basically, you build a haunted house out of tiles, thus making it different every time, and the various rooms give you items, events, and omens. Items are usually good, events are often bad, and omens are usually a mixed blessing: it can be a valuable item for your character, but every time you get one, you have to roll for the haunting to begin. You have to get more pips on your roll than there are omen cards on the table, so obviously there will eventually come a time when you just can’t beat it. But of course it might come much sooner than that if you have shitty dice luck. If you fail this roll, you look up which haunting you get by cross-referencing the room you were in with the item the omen granted you: there are 50 different scenarios in all. Typically, one of you becomes the betrayer—it might be the one who failed the roll, or it might be someone else entirely, or it might be no one ... yet. We played this twice, and it was entirely different the second time, which was amazing. We’re looking forward to playing again soon.

(By the way, I have to thank The Mother, who picked out both of those games. She doesn’t even like playing board games that much, but she knows what we like.)

So that ate up another several hours, and thus no proper post for you. But I had a great time with all my children, so I’m not complaining, and hopefully you won’t either. Until next week.

Sunday, June 14, 2020

Isolation Report, Week #14

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

So, these past couple of weeks have been a bit surreal. People are trying to open the country back up, but nothing about the virus situation seems to have changed: still insufficient tests to see if you have it, still unreliable tests to see if you already got it and recovered, seemingly no closer to a cure or a vaccine. I did see one report that the number of reported cases is starting to climb again—to which I say, “no shit”—but no one is sounding any alarms yet. Which I find disturbing.

But perhaps that’s understandable, since the pandemic as a news story has been eclipsed by the tenacity of the Black Lives Matter protests, at least in the US. Although I understand that some protests are taking place in other countries too, so perhaps more than just here. This is another issue that I hope for balance on: I am so happy to see that the protests are not just going to go away, as they have in the past, but I’m also very concerned that that crazy person in charge of our country is going to actually do something crazy as opposed to just talking crazy. Following the news has become completely surreal: if it weren’t my country, I could almost find it ridiculous. Is this what people in other countries were feeling right before their democracies failed?

And we’re still supposed to be having an election. The primary voting is still fucked, and some election officials are saying “we’ve got time” to fix it ... but there isn’t. In large counties, they have to pre-plan the elections months out—sometimes up to a year—and it’s very hard to change directions less than five months out. And, even if some places are willing to try to do that hard work, other places just aren’t. Hell, the president openly admitted that making voting easier makes it harder for Republicans to win. (Well, I say “admitted” ... I guess “bragged” is more appropriate, as he was celebrating defeating legislation to make voting easier.) Will our elections be fair? Will they even happen at all? The president is asking people to apologize for polls that don’t show him winning, and he already seemed perfectly fine with tear gassing citizens. Once upon a time the concept that a sitting president might attempt to delay or even cancel our election would have been utterly ludicrous. Now it’s only mildly silly, and becoming increasingly feasible every day.

So, I don’t really know. This is supposed to be a virus isolation report for me and my family, but, for us, little has changed. The “reopening” of things has certainly not been heartening, and we’re in hurry to rush out and mingle with the folks who don’t seem to give enough of a shit about their fellow humans to cover their faces. We’re eating out slightly less, trying to get back to homeschooling the kids regularly, trying to reduce stress wherever possible. Which is tough these days.

I’ll toss you a few more links for things I think people should watch, even when they’re difficult:

Anthony Mackie makes an emotional appeal in an appearance on Jimmy Fallon’s show.
The Daily Show once again exposes hypocrisy on Fox “news”; in this case, they interleave clips of Fox anchors and commentators ranting about racial justice protestors with clips of pandemic lockdown protestors. (Of course, the Fox folks had nothing bad to say about those people being in the streets.)
Dave Chappelle is full of (understandable) rage, and never afraid to be offensive, but I still think this show, which he believes to be the first in-person concert in North America since the pandemic started, is worth watching.
Wyrmwood is a company that makes some things I like, and they released this video where they solicit opinions from all their employees about the ongoing protests.

I particularly want to highlight the last one. You don’t know who Wyrmwood is, and, for purposes of watching the video, you don’t really need to know. It might be useful to know that they’re craftspeople—they’re makers. But even that is purely optional in the end. The point is, this company didn’t just want to make a blanket statement, which many would (rightly) perceive as just words, and perhaps suspect that the statement is more for show than anything else. Instead, they wanted to ask their employees what they thought. Their employees don’t agree on what the right response is, and they put that in the video. Their employees have different opinions, and different levels of engagement, and they put that in the video. There are black employees and white, women and men, gay and straight. Each one has a different take, and it’s all in the video. Probably the most compelling opinion came from a white employee, who said this:

So, I’m a combat vet. ... If a solider kills an innocent civilian in another country, you’re going to Leavenworth. If a cop kills a person here, who is innocent, did not pose a threat, they at worst get fired. That’s a huge issue. There’s a lot of good police officers, just like there’s a lot of good soldiers. How you deal with those bad people defines you as an organization. And an organization whose slogan is “to protect and to serve,” if you’re putting your life before the people you’re supposed to be protecting and serving, that is an inherent problem. The consequences for actions, those are what need to change. You change those, you change the equation.

Just in case you decided not to watch the whole thing. But you really should.

Finally, on a lighter note, I’ll leave you with another call to check out “Narrative Telephone.” My peeps over at Critical Role have kept it up, and I swear it’s the only decent thing about this whole pandemic bullshit. Not only the fun of watching the story degrade hopelessly over time, but the joy of watching their faces when they watch the same thing you just watched: they give each other shit, they shake their heads in despair at their own foibles, they analyze what went wrong and where. It makes the whole thing take more than twice as long, but it’s so worth it. Remember: you don’t have to enjoy D&D or even know anyhthing about it; just enjoy the stories.

Because there should be a little joy in the world. The pain is necessary, but sometimes you need to take a break.

Sunday, June 7, 2020

Protest Is the Bedrock of Democracy

The world is suffering through interesting times right now—and I use the word “interesting” in the same context as the supposedly (and apocryphally) Chinese malediction “may you live in interesting times.” In my own country (the United States), we are now undergoing a layering of protest against racial injustice on top of the pandemic concerns. There are a lot of opinions on this out there, and I wonder if anyone still reading things on the Internet like this post has an opinion unformed enough to be changed. I suspect not. I suspect that we all just read and watch the things we already believe, so that we can feel good about how sound our beliefs are, and don’t do much challenging of them. I don’t exclude myself from any of my criticism, of course, but then that’s why I named this blog what I did.

Nonetheless, I have listened to a few opinions that dissent from my own—probably not as many as I should, but a few. I have to confess, though, that I’m a little puzzled this time. That is, on many issues, I can at least understand where people are coming from, even though I don’t agree with them. If you say that it’s wrong to steal money from the rich via the gunbarrel of taxes, and we should just rely on their generosity to support charitable works, I understand that point of view. It’s crazy, of course—it didn’t fly for Scrooge, and it doesn’t fly today—but at least I see where you’re coming from. If you say that your holy text tells you that non-heterosexual non-cisgendered people are an abomination, I of course violently oppose your viewpoint, but at least I know which religious passages you’re wilfully misreading. This one though ...

I understand racism, at least a little. I am, after all, related to a lot of racists. If I were to tot up all of my blood relatives, I would feel pretty confident in coming up with more racists than not, even considering that a lot of the most racist ones have done the nation the great service of dying. I understand that the majority of it stems from not understanding any culture outside their own, from the systemic dehumanization that was the foundation of slavery in this country, and from being educated in systems that didn’t address any of those issues on the grounds that this was “too delicate” to discuss with children. At this point in history, it really requires a stubborn insistence on ignorance, but at least I understand the root causes. But, okay: say you hate black people. They’re less than human, you’re sure of it. Now, how do you then take the leap to say it’s okay for police officers to kill innocent people without repercussion?

Because, you understand that the legal systems in place that protect the cops don’t just protect them when they kill black people, right? It so happens that they tend to kill more black people than anyone else, and that’s why this issue has become centered on race, because figuring out why the police are more likely to kill blacks than whites (or even Hispanics, or Native Americans, or Asian Americans, etc) is a pretty damned important thing to figure out. But the truth is, the police kill all of those types of people, and probably plenty more besides, and they are protected from prosecution for murder regardless of whether the victim was innocent, whether the officer in question followed procedures or not, or a million other things. Are all police killings murder? No, of course not. But how can we know how many of them are when there is no way for the officers to be held accountable ... hell, not even any way to simply track how many deaths there are. No matter how racist you are, I can’t see how you can be comfortable knowing that, if a cop decides to shoot you in the street tomorrow, there will not be any consequences.

And I also understand the fact that protests are inconvenient. I understand that, when Colin Kaepernick takes a knee in the middle of the anthem while you’re just trying to enjoy watching a football game, that’s irksome. But I don’t believe that anyone on Fox news actually believes it when they try to argue that this is the not the “right” time to protest. The national anthem is not the right time to protest, right after a mass shooting is not the right time to protest, right now right here in my very own city: that’s not the right time to protest, people say. But of course, this is a moronic argument. If the protest didn’t disrupt your life, it wouldn’t be much of a protest, would it? Of course “this” is not the right time to protest, no matter when “this” is, because the wrong time to protest is the only time to protest. If there was such a thing as a “right” time to protest, protesting then would be meaningless. And, again: regardless of how you feel about the protestors, you already know this.

Even more incomprehensible to me are the people trying to say that protesting is itself undemocratic, somehow. Many of these same people claim to be students of American history, claim to idolize the founding fathers. So obviously they know that this country was founded on protests. We were protesting unjust government by the British, not being treated equally with citizens in the motherland, taxation without representation ... remember that great American slogan? That meant that the government was taking money and not listening to those they took it from. That was worth protesting. But now some say that it’s not okay for the government to take lives and not listen to those they take them from? How can anyone reconcile this position?

Though it’s written in a different time, for a different issue, in a different country, I feel these words from a British student protestor still have relevance today:

Those who take to the streets, or engage in direct action, don’t have lobbyists to fight our corners. This is the only power that people can exercise, beyond box ticking in a ballot once every five years. Protest is vital to our democracy, giving a voice to those with no platform or privilege. So next time you read about troublemaking activists, wait before passing judgment.

And yet this is not just a matter of people talking: the police themselves are more often than not taking the attitude that protestors are the enemy. Not just through tactics of violence against them, which is already deplorable, but through tactics such as not allowing protestors to leave so that they can then arrest them for being out past some arbitrary curfew. And localities are encouraging this by instituting more and more ridiculous curfews: I heard Stephen Colbert ridicule some places recently for 6pm curfews, but I’d say his research team needs to step up their game: here in Los Angeles, where I live, many localities are declaring 4pm curfews. Is anyone even trying to justify this? What justification could you even give, apart from trying to curtail or even eliminate protests, or to have a legal excuse to arrest people?

I’m even going a step further: to hear conservative pundits rail on about the horrors of looting, and what terrible people these must be ... again, are these not the same people who claim to idolize the founding fathers? What the fuck do they think the Boston Tea Party was? It was a massive, coordinated act of looting, which resulted in property damage of over a million dollars by today’s standards. This is what the major conservative organization in America is named after, for fuck’s sake! And now they want to turn up their nose when people are looting? The hypocrisy is so rank you can taste it.

Look, I’m not advocating looting. It’s terrible if you’re a small business owner, minding your own business and someone breaks your windows and takes your shit. But we live in a capitalist society and, the sad truth is, if no one’s losing money, no one’s taking action. I’m sorry, but in our country the bottom line is the bottom line. Once the rich people start losing money over this issue, then we’ll damn well see some action taken in the government to fix it. Am I happy that this is the fucked up way our country works? Of course not. But I’m not going to try to deny it either.

I guess the biggest thing I can’t understand is how anyone can continue to support Trump. The man literally had people shot and gassed for a photo op. Some of the people shot with rubber bullets and gassed with tear gas were journalists; others were clergy and lay members of the church Trump desired to stand in front of. Sure, you could argue that Trump denies that they ever used tear gas, but but do you expect me to believe that you trust the word of a man who lies so often that he constantly contradicts himself over the word of dozens if not hundreds of eyewitnesses, one of whom is a Catholic rector? Seriously? This is the philosophical equivalent of plugging your ears and screaming “la la la I can’t hear you!” at the top of your lungs. I understand that you can make such a statement. I just can’t understand that you could do so sincerely. I don’t buy it. You know in your heart what is true. You know what is right. It’s time for us all to be honest with each other. It’s time for us all to stand up for what we believe in, rather than just paying lip service to it. It’s time for us all to stop trying to make our side “win” ... it’s time for us to just be human and strong and do what we know is right.

Links to things I think everyone should watch: