An Open Letter to Judge John Hodgman

I am sending this open letter to one of my favorite podcasts, Judge John Hodgman, so I thought I’d also share it here with you guys.  The version below is a bit more fleshed out than the one I’m emailing, because a) when you’re writing to busy famous people, brevity is to be commended, but when you’re writing on your own blog you can be as verbose as you like, and b) I can do a lot more crosslinking here on the blog.

While the letter makes more sense if you’re also a fan of the podcast, I think you can probably manage to eke out some amount of enjoyment even if not.  And perhaps it will inspire you to give the show a listen.  There are worse outcomes, certainly.

Anyway, here’s the letter:



Your Honor,

I’ve been listening to your excellent program for a few years now—certainly not your oldest fan, but a faithful one.  One of the main reasons I keep listening is that your decisions are always right ... or nearly always so.  Of course, even a sage of jurisprudence such as yourself is only human, and can occasionally make a mistake.  At only one or two mistakes, I could overlook them.  However, some months ago, the number of such misstatements (all completely unintentional, I’m sure) reached a staggering three, and I felt I could no longer remain silent.

#1: Why all the hate for electronic cigarettes?  I’ve written about this on my blog before, but the executive precis is, e-cigarettes got me off smoking—and off nicotine altogether—after over 25 years of frying my lungs.  Now I’m consuming nothing more than water vapor and I still have to listen to people giving me shit about it.  It’s a little disheartening, to be honest.  I just cannot fathom what the complaint is: I’m not exposing you to second-hand smoke, nor even to secondhand nicotine.  Are you complaining about my second-hand water vapor?  Well, I hate to tell you, but you were breathing that anyway, even before I pulled out my e-cig.  I just feel that, instead of being congratulated on making a positive change for myself and my health, I’m being told I’m still scum because ... well, I’m not entirely sure why.  But I’m definitely still scum: lots of people have told me so.  Your Honor is not alone in this attitude, of course.  Many other people whom I respect greatly have also taken this stance.  Perhaps it’s just cool to hate on vaping, like dissing Nickelback or Keanu Reeve’s acting ability.  But Your Honor is generally not a joiner, so I’m not sure what the source actually is.

#2: I was also pretty discouraged by your discussion with your bailiff about how all us poor people in the tech business are forced to “dress down” because that’s the social norm in our industry.  Do you really think that I’m waking up every day and going, man, I wish I could tie a strip of cloth around my neck and be half-strangled all day, but I guess I’ll put on these horrible jeans with the holes in them so I can blend in with all the other guys at work?  Is it perhaps more likely that people who prefer to be comfortable in their clothing rather than fretting over how good the clothes look tend to gravitate towards jobs where fashion sense is not used a substitute for competence?  I know that you and the bailiff are natty dressers (and purveyors of fine clothing, even, in the bailiff’s case), but this discussion somehow reminded me of what a wise man once said about the difference between hipsters and nerds:

The definition, as we have discussed before, of a hipster, more or less, is someone who has enthusiasms like a nerd, but uses those enthusiasms to gain—to cudgel others with their taste, and to gain status because you like the wrong thing, or you don’t know what the right thing is, or you learned about something the wrong way, ’cause you found out about it once it became popular or whatever.  Whereas a nerd is someone who also has enthusiasms, but just wants to share the enthusiasms.

    — John Hodgman, “All Laws Are Off”

  
I never thought anyone could accuse Your Honor of being a hipster, but let’s just say I felt a bit like a clothes nerd when I listened to that episode.

#3: The coolest Delta fraternity brother is Otter?  C’mon man: D-Day.

I do continue to enjoy the show, however, and have even started sending a (very small) monthly stipend to Maximum Fun (which is something NPR never managed to convince me to do), because you were right when you pointed out that when artists you love do work that you appreciate, you need to show your support for that.  You’re right most of the time, really.  And I want to support that.

Another Virgo birthday season successfully concluded

Well, it’s the second weekend of our Virgo birthday season, so my eldest has been in charge.  We kicked off the weekend by hosting the kid’s crew for a marathon roleplaying session, to which we weren’t invited, so at least that made it easy.  And the kid had to work on Saturday—apparently being an adult means you have to work on your birthday sometimes.  Who knew?  Today has been more chill, with animal fries from In-n-Out, Chinese food, and an extended horror movie night featuring the original version of The Thing and The Return of the Living Dead.  With all that excitement, is it any wonder that I couldn’t manage to put together a full blog post?  You know, it’s weird, but back when I was trying to do a full post every week, missing two in a row during the Virgo birthday season never seemed that bad.  But, now that I’m just shooting for one every other week, missing two in a row seems unforgivable.  Weird, eh?

But, unforgivable or no, that’s the situation.  Tune in next week to see if I get it together.  Or not.

Entering the Virgo birthday season once again

This is The Mother‘s birthday weekend, but we’re primarily taking it easy, with activities such as swimming in our pool, going out to pick up Mexican food, and watching the new version of Tomb Raider (decent, although nothing to write home about^*).  Hey, whatever The Mother wants, The Mother gets, right?  That’s what we’re here for.

The Smaller Animal is back from camp and had a lovely time.  The Mother and the sprite are back from beach camping and had a ... well, a time, at any rate.  I took a couple of days off and tried to catch up on a few tasks I had, but mainly what I caught up on was sleep.  I dunno why I’ve been so exhausted over the past few days, but it’s been nice to be able to just fall asleep whenever I felt like it.  Next week, back to work—for four days, anyway.  Then another birthday weekend, but hopefully a full post for the blog anyway.  We shall see how it goes.

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* Or, perhaps I should say: nothing to write blog about.  Get it?

Why the MCU Is Cool: Bringing the Funny

[This is the third 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.]


I want to take a brief tangent from my planned outline to discuss something while it’s fresh in my mind.  Just as this whole series was originally inspired by one of the MCU movies,¹, this post is inspired by our recent viewing of Ant-Man and the Wasp.  This movie, like the first Ant-Man movie, exceeded my expectations mainly because I had very low expectations.  And the reasons for that are actually fairly complex.

The thing about Ant-Man is, while he’s actually an original member of the Avengers, Ant-Man the superhero isn’t actually very important to their story.  And part of that is because Ant-Man is a fundamentally stupid superhero: he has weird powers that don’t make sense when put together as anything other than a plot device, a dorky costume, and a lame name on top of everything else.  In many ways, what Aquaman is to the Justice League, Ant-Man is to the Avengers.  So why is he even there?

To understand this, we need to understand how superhero groups work (I already touched on this last installment, but now let’s expand on it properly).  There are two basic types of superhero groups: the “event” group, and the “collective” group.  (To be fair, there’s also sort of a third type—the “non-group”²—but that’s really just a variation on the collective.)  An event group is a group that’s invented lock, stock, and barrel, specifically for an event ... the event almost always being issue #1 of the group’s new comic series.  The quintessential event group is probably the Fantastic Four, although certainly the X-Men are a pretty popular one as well.³  On the DC side, event groups are a little more rare; the Legion of Superheroes is probably the most famous, and even they are not that well-known.  The Watchmen got a high-profile movie,⁴ but they’re only an event group because DC refused to let Alan Moore use the collected heroes he had in mind, since he planned to do terrible things to nearly all of them.  Other DC event groups, such as the Doom Patrol and the Metal Men, are fairly obscure.  Contrasting with the event groups are the collective groups, which consist of pre-existing heroes gathered together into to form a new series.  If you loved Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman on their own, you’ll love them even more together as the Justice League!  If you thought Iron Man and Thor and the incredible Hulk were amazing individually, you’ll be blown away by the amazing Avengers!

These two types of groups are created for very different reasons.  An event group is the shotgun of superhero creation:  If you invent one superhero, and nobody likes them, you’ve failed.  If you invent a whole mess of superheroes, chances are that at least one of them will succeed, right?  Contrariwise, collective groups are about two things: crossover appeal, and reflected glory.  Crossover appeal means taking the Superman fans and trying to turn them into Batman fans, or Wonder Woman fans, assuming they’re not already.  And it definitely works: if it weren’t for Justice League, I’d know practically nothing about Superman, and very little about Green Lantern; for folks like Black Canary or the Atom, I’d likely never have heard of them at all.  Reflected glory means that the creators of the group hope that you’ll come for the big names, and learn to love the guys you never heard of before.  I mentioned last week that the Martian Manhunter fulfills this role in the Justice League: although he had been around for 5 years before the League was formed, and was probably the strongest superhero of the group—he has all Superman’s powers, plus shapeshifting and telepathy—he wasn’t very popular.  Most of those fans who bought JLA issue #1 were probably seeing him for the first time.  Undoubtedly the creators were hoping the Manhunter would get some of that sweet, sweet reflected glory from Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, and the rest.

Which brings us full circle back around to Ant-Man.  Ant-Man was introduced in 1962, a time when any ol’ moronic idea could be a superhero.⁵  The following year he acquired a sidekick, the Wasp.  As sidekicks go, Wasp was very unusual: instead of a young boy who idolizes the older, wiser superhero (e.g. Robin, Bucky), Wasp (a.k.a. Janet van Dyne) is a beautiful lab assistant and later fashion designer.  She is independently wealthy and generally independent; though she initially suffers from some sadly-period-appropriate personality traits (such as desperately chasing after Ant-Man in a one-sided romance), she quickly becomes a feminist icon, including campaigns to introduce more women to the Avengers and even becoming the second-longest-reigning team leader.  Even though she’s supposed to be Ant-Man’s sidekick, she is in fact infinitely cooler than he is.

And poor Ant-Man flounders in the Avengers (much as Martian Manhunter does in the JLA).  The writers just don’t know what to do with him ... nearly immediately they scrap the whole ant motif and make him Giant-Man, then they make him stuck at giant-size and call him Goliath, and eventually he ends up with the same powers as Wasp and dons the moniker of Yellowjacket.  Yes, that’s right: here’s a superhero whose ultimate form is to become a knock-off of his own “sidekick.”

So, despite the fact that Ant-Man is a founding member of the Avengers, I was never that surprised to hear that he wouldn’t be part of the team in the MCU ... except that Ant-Man’s secret identity Hank Pym is actually crucial to the story of the Avengers.  Pym is the calm, rational genius to Tony Stark’s brash, impulsive genius.  Pym probably designs more of the Avengers’ tech than Stark does, and it’s Pym who invents Ultron, who goes on to become one of the team’s greatest foes.  So shortly after my entire lack of surprise at hearing there would be no Ant-Man in the Avengers, I started wondering how they would manage having no Hank Pym in the Avengers.

But they managed it perfectly well.  All the tech gets desgined by Stark—who is, after all, a weapons designer—and Stark invents Ultron.  When they need a counter-genius, they just use Bruce Banner, which is actually very smart (Banner is almost criminially overlooked in the vast majority of Avengers comic stories).  Poof: no Pym required.  So at that point I naturally assumed we’d never see Ant-Man appear in any MCU property—not even a brief appearance in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.—and the thought that we could get a major motion picture which featured Ant-Man ... why the very idea was pure madness.

And then it happened.

And it wasn’t even Pym!  They went with the Scott Lang version, which makes absolutely no sense, because the Scott Lang Ant-Man is twice as useless as the Hank Pym Ant-Man because at least Pym is an interesting genius.  But somehow they made it work.  Well, I say “somehow,” but obviously Ant-Man works for the same reason that Iron Man works: they found the perfect actor to portray him.  I never cared much for Iron Man, but Robert Downey Jr makes me love that character.  Scott Lang is boring and Ant-Man is stupid, but how can you dislike Paul Rudd?  I don’t think it’s humanly possible.

Which brings us to why Ant-Man and the Wasp ultimately works: humor.  All of the MCU movies have utilized humor to some extent or other: with Joss Whedon at the helm, that was a foregone conclusion.  Whedon knows that making shows like Buffy and Firefly funny—not just the occasional mild chuckle, but rip-roaringly funny, on a semi-regular basis—somehow makes the emotional moments even more emotional.  There’s something about having laughed along with characters that makes you cry even harder when they hit those inevitable crushing defeats.  Nearly every MCU property has a couple of those moments in it: Hulk’s hilarious first encounter with Loki, the obligatory and highly comical clash of egos when Iron Man first meets Dr. Strange, Agent Coulson’s obsession with his car, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage exchanging origin stories on their first date (“Accident.  You?”  “Experiment.”).  But lately we’ve been getting movies which are pretty much centered on the humor.  Ant-Man gave us that, and Thor: Ragnarok doubled down on it.  Ant-Man and the Wasp doesn’t quite reach the levels that the latter film achieved—Yes Man is no What We Do in the Shadows, after all—but note that, just like Taika Waititi, Peyton Reed is primarily known for directing comedies.⁶  And the MCU is capitalizing on the comedic talents of these directors (and actors) in quite literal fashion: Ant-Man and the Wasp has already passed half a billion dollars on an estimated budget of less than $200 million, so the capital in this case is quite real.

And, let’s face it: humor is the only saving grace for a superhero who is still, fundamentally, stupid.  When your main character shrinks down and talks to ants, you better embrace that and not be afraid to make fun of yourself.  I’m a bit disappointed in the role they’ve relegated Hank Pym to (and Janet van Dyne, for that matter), but I can’t ignore the brilliance they’ve shown in turning what I assumed would be the worst idea for a superhero movie ever, and actually getting me to watch two of them.  And I wouldn’t say no to a third, either ...

So humor is important.  But it’s not the end of the story either.

⇐ The Heroes I Like

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1 That would be Captain America: Civil War.

2 Such as the Defenders or the Suicide Squad.

3 The original X-Men were an event group.  Later incarnations did a little of both; the more famous X-Men group from the 70s consists of 4 previously extant heroes (though most were fairly obscure), and 4 newly-created ones.

4 And an excellent one at that.

5 Have I mentioned B’wana Beast?

6 Of course, Guardians of the Galaxy is probably the most consistently funny series in the MCU, but James Gunn is whole different animal.

Another week, another excuse ...

Last week I totally flaked and ran out of time and didn’t even put up a post saying I wasn’t going to put up a post.  In a perfect world, last week would count as my off-week and this week would be a full post week.  But, alas, life conspires against me, and this weekend has left me not much more time than the last one.  Well, enough time to write this lame-ass excuse, I suppose, but nothing beyond that, really.

Next week, I’m going to get you the next installment of my series on the MCU.  For realsies.

Saladosity, Part 12: Always Be Prepared

[This is the twelfth 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.]

To be prepared is half the victory.

    — Miguel de Cervantes

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

    — Abraham Lincoln

Today we’re going to talk about veggie prep.  Part of my secret to saladosity (if there even is one) is this: always have a bunch of chopped veggies in the fridge.  I’m telling you from experience: if I keep chopped veggies in the fridge, I will eat salads just about every day, and never get bored doing it.  If I don’t keep chopped veggies, I will wish I could eat salad for a little while and then give up and eat something terribly unhealthy.  Look, it may be a bit of a cliché to point out in this day and age, but today’s modern life puts a shitload of demands on your time.  Whether it’s realistic or not—hell, whether it’s even real or not—we all at least feel like we never have time to do things.  If you have to chop veggies every time you want to eat a salad, you will hardly ever eat salad, simply because you don’t want to take the time.  If you set aside an hour or two once a week, you can chop enough veggies for the entire week and eat healthy every day.  If you don’t believe me, just try the experiment.  This coming weekend, chop a big bowl of veggies as I suggest below then record how often you eat salad the next week.  The following weekend, don’t.  Then see how often you eat salad.  Compare numbers, then return here.

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

So we’re going to chop a big batch of veggies and we’re going to stick it in the fridge and keep it for a week.  With proper preparation, you can manage to keep almost anything for a week after it’s been chopped (and we’ll cover the major exception below).  You may be able to push it for a few days beyond that, but I wouldn’t count on it.  So the big trick is to work out how much salad you can eat in a week.  Once you get that down, the rest is pretty trivial.

So here’s my pro tips:

Prepping for the Prep

From our last post, you’ll need your chef’s knife (or Santoku knife, if you prefer that style), your vegetable peeler, your cutting board, and your salad spinner.  Also, although I didn’t specifically cover it in my equipment post, take a tip from Rachel Ray¹ and get a large bowl to hold your ends and seeds and peelings and all that.  It’s much easier to dump it all at the end.

Most of your veggies need a quick wash.  Unless you’re doing something crazy like leeks, you probably won’t need to soak.  But certain things—especially celery—need to be disassembled during the washing process to make sure you’re getting all the dirt from between the stalks or leaves.  Rub your thumb along any particularly dirty spots; that’s normally sufficient.

Scallions and onions (and other allium relatives) need special attention.  For onions, remove the outermost layer—not just the papery part!  The outer layer is usually not that great, and onions are cheap.  Scallions are similar but I dont always remove the outermost layer: just check that layer, and especially the long leafy part of it, to see if it’s wilted or bedraggled or starting to get a bit slimy.  If so, remove it.  In both cases, make sure you get the transparent membrane between the outer layer and the next layer.  Rub it hard and it should come right off.  If you know how to get the “skin” off a hard-boiled egg, this is the same principle.

Bagged Greens

You don’t have to buy greens in bags, of course.  Feel free to buy whole heads of lettuce or what-have-you and chop it or shred it by hand.  But that’s a pain.  The nice thing about buying greens in bags is that most of the work is done for you: the greens are washed, separated and/or chopped, and all the really bad leaves have already been tossed.  Plus you can typically get a lot more options when it comes to bagged, and often even blends of different greens, which can save you the hassle of buying a bunch of different ones and combining them yourself.

Which is not to say that using bagged greens is no work, of course.  You still need to pick out the really good leaves from the not-quite-as-good leaves.  You’re not looking for leaves that are so bad you wouldn’t eat them—you’re not going to find many (if any) of those.²  You’re looking for leaves that will be bad in a few days.  You know the expression “one bad apple spoils the bunch”?  Same principle, only with lettuce leaves it’s much more likely and will happen much more quickly.  Be ruthless: discolored spots? wilted consistency? brown around the edges? looked at you funny when you picked it up?  Toss ’em all.

There’s various things you can do with the rejects.  If you compost, that’s a fantastic destination for the not bad leaves.  If you’re particularly budget conscious, you can always just make a salad out of them right on the spot: remember, they’re not bad yet.  Personally, I feed them to our guinea pig.  Certain lizards, fish, or turtles/tortoises are other good choices.  Hey, your fuzzy and scaly children deserve good organic food too, right?

Do not underestimate this step.  You’ll end up with a nicer (crunchier and tastier) salad that will last significantly longer.  On the other hand, don’t stress over it either.  When you see a piece that has a bit of a spot on one side, either let it pass or just rip it in half and let the pieces go to the appropriate receptacle.  When you get to the bottom and it’s all little dinky bits, just toss those in with the guinea pig fodder: lettuce is cheap and your time is worth more than a few stray leaves.  I do this with my salad spinner on one side and my garbage bowl on the other, sorting two-handed.  With a little practice, you can do this surprisingly quickly.  But I won’t lie to you: the first couple of times, it’ll seem like a giant pain in the ass.  Perservere.  Trust me, your patience will be rewarded.³

Chopping Veggies

Now, in general, you’re better off searching YouTube, because a video can teach you chopping hints with a shorter time investment and a clearer visualization than any large quantity of words I could spew out.  But I’ll hand out a few tips:

Onions.  I like to cut the non-stem end off, then cut them in half.  This is the only time I cut the stem end, which minimizes the amount of crying.⁴  Then each half gets a radial cut, then cross cut to make a lovely dice.  One half I chop fine, which means I try to line my radial cuts with every “stripe” on the onion, and the other half I do a rougher chop, which basically just means I go with every other stripe.

Peppers.  Cut the cap off, then reach in and just yank out the guts by hand.  Tap the sides to get the remaining seeds.  Chop it in half, slice the little puckered end off each side, then flatten it as best you can and, holding your knife parallel to the pepper, slice the ribs off.  Do them one at a time at first; eventually you’ll be able to do 2 at once.

Cucumbers.  Peel them first, then chop the ends off.  Cut them the long way, once for thinner cucumbers (like most Persians), or twice for fatter models (like most Americans).  Then just chop along the length.

Celery.  You can buy pre-cut stalks, but I find those go bad more quickly.  So just buy whole hearts and cut them yourself.  At the cut end, just slice an additional sliver off to remove that unsightly part that’s starting to brown.  At the stem end, cut off the really really white part (which is also pretty tough), and maybe anything that was so dirty or streaked that it wouldn’t come clean.  Slice each rib in half the long way, then chop down the line.

Scallions.  Chop off the very tip of the bulb, where it’s “hairy.”  Now just bunch them all together and chop down the length until you get into the fully green parts.  Now begin to stop every 4 or 5 chops and look at the leaves; any that are looking sad or too woody or too flat or anything unappetizing, pull them out and toss them in the garbage bowl.  Then chop 4 or 5 more times and keep repeating that process until you don’t have any leaves left.

Other Stuff.  You’re own your own for other veggies, because that’s all the veggies I personally chop.  Fruits I always chop for the particular salad at the time I make it.

Refigerator Storage

Believe it or not, the best way to store the majority of your veggies is right in the salad spinner.  I dump them directly in there from the cutting board tray.  Spin it a few times, then stick in the back of the fridge with the lid on.  Every time you take it to make salad with, leave the lid off it for a while to let some of that moisture evaporate, then spin it a few more times and back in the fridge.  The only other consideration I’m going to give you is this: if it so happens that you go for a day or two without making a salad (and I think you’re going to be surprised how rarely that happens), take the salad spinner out anyway and let it breathe and spin it.  The trick with keeping veggies fresh in the fridge is that you have them keep them moist, or else they dry out and get gross, but you can’t let them get too moist, or else they get slimy and then they’re gross.  So keeping that moisture at the perfect level is key.

However, there are exceptions to keeping all your veggies together.  Let’s talk about the most important ones.

Onions.  I don’t actually use yellow onions in any of my main salads, but I use them all the time in cooking, and I like having them around.  And, if today is veggie chopping day anyway, why not do ’em all?  So I store the onions in separate containers.  I also like to store a few of the pepper and celery bits separately, and then I can have trinity ready at all times.⁵

Cucumbers.  People give iceberg lettuce shit for being mostly water, but honestly that will last in the fridge just fine (although certainly butter lettuce is better).  Cucumbers, however, are really all water, so they get mushy fast, and you don’t want them to take the rest of your salad down with them.  I like to cut about half as many cucumbers as I think I’m going to need (which, if you’re doing the big, fat Americans, is probably just one), and then store the pieces in a container lined with a paper towel—that helps keep the moisture level about as perfect as you’re going to get.  You may have to cut up another cucumber in the middle of the week, but it’s better than gross, mushy cucumbers, right?

Romaine.  I like romaine lettuce, but I had to give up on it, because it goes bad if you just look at it funny.  Seriously, romaine will pretty much instantly decompose and take down everything around it, which can be super-tragic.  I swore off the stuff long ago.  But, if you insist on using romaine anyway, just don’t cut it until immediately before you’re going to eat it.  I know that’s a bigger pain—and that’s exactly why I don’t eat it any more—but there just isn’t any other decent option.


Believe it or not, after 12 installments, we’re finally done getting ready.  Next time, I’m going to show you the simplest of our primary six salads.

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1 And many other chefs who know what they’re talking about, I’m sure, but I learned it from Rachel.

2 And, if you do, please consider using a different grocery store next time.

3 As Alton Brown is wont to say.

4 It is of course possible not to cut the stem at all, but I find that method more unweildy, and plus I like cutting the two halves differently, as we’ll see.

5 Trinity, by the way, is not only excellent for all forms of Cajun cuisine, but is amazing for omelettes or scrambles, Italian dishes like Italian sausage in marinara sauce, or even on pizzas.  Yes, I put celery on my pizza.  Deal with it.

Because reality is real

Tonight we watched Ready Player One.  I thought it was pretty awesome, personally, although of course it’s one of those movies that you pretty much want to turn your brain off for maximum enjoyment.  But, you know, I don’t have any problem with that myself.  It’s certainly gorgeous to look at, and it has a bangin’ 80s soundtrack that I particularly appreciated.  Worth at least a look.

That’s all I’ve got this week.  Tune in next week for a fuller post.

Dreamtime I

"We Came Out from the Deep"

[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 introduction for more 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.]

This mix is a bit unusual, for a couple of reasons.  Primarily, it’s different from other mixes that I have presented here because it’s a “transitional mix.” That is, it’s one of the three mixes I made between the “pre-modern mixes” and the “modern mixes.”¹  As such, its original version showed the strong influence of Hearts of Space, but still didn’t have the full sophistication that my current mixes have.  For instance, the themes of the transitional mixes were very loose, not very specific.  They tended towards mellow instrumentals, beacuse that’s what HoS was doing.  And, while the transitions were somewhat important, I didn’t fuss with them the way I do now, and I didn’t put much thought into openers and closers at all.

Now, the mix I’m presenting today is Dreamtime, which is pretty much what it says on the tin—dreamlike ambient, showcasing the unusual and perhaps slightly sonically surreal.  It’s slightly upgraded from its original form: songs have been shuffled around, and in some cases shuffled out entirely (mainly to bring them in line with the No Reuse Rule).  A new opener was chosen, and the mix was cut off at a track that provided a good closer, in order to make a statisfying volume.²  So it’s much closer to a modern mix now.

The transitional mixes were different in another way as well: instead of consisting of songs from my collection, for the most part they utilized various snippets I found lying around the Internet.  Some of those I’ve since purchased.  Some of them are just gone—while the Internet is often forever, even the Wayback machine doesn’t generally have copies of old WAV and MP3 files.³  So some of these tracks here only exist on the hard drives of people like me who downloaded them æons ago as curiosities.  For that reason and that reason alone, I’ve uploaded a few of the more bizarrely obscure tracks myself.  I am in no way attempting to claim ownership or in any way infringe on the copyright of any of those original authors.  I just want to see these tracks preserved in some way.

Now, I’ve already spoken about my discovery of Ensemble of the Dreamings; reread the relevant paragraph there if you need a refresher.  Back in those days, the Internet was new and jumbled and just a little bit like a huge flea market: there were treasures, if you had patience, but they were buried under a whole lot of useless junk.  Who can say how I found some of this stuff?  Linkwalks, maybe, or just aimless wandering.  Besides the two tracks here we have from the aforementioned Dreamings, there’s “Dotiki,” by Bostjan Perovsek, a Slovenian “musician, composer and soundscape artist,”⁴ who dabbles in setting electronic backgrounds to the natual sounds of animals, especially insects.  “Dotiki” is an amazingly original piece of ambient music that I’ve adored for years.  Taking that concept a step further, the aptly named Zoolophone (in reality, Randy Weddington of Arkansas) composes tracks entirely of animal sounds: frog calls for basslines, cricket chirpings for percussions, etc.  As you might imagine, this is one of those experiments that doesn’t always work, but, when it does, it’s kind of amazing.  The track here, “Clair de Loon,” is centered around a loon’s evocative call, but also features an eagle’s cry, and the buzzing of some mosquitoes or flies ... really, you have to hear it to believe it.

Continuing on the natural sounds theme, at some point during those early days of the Internet, I went looking for a nice, ambient thunderstorm recording.  But I couldn’t find one.⁵  What I did find were various snippets, each one a minute or two, of various rainstorms that were uploaded to various sound hosting services.  And then I had the brilliant idea to glue all those bits together and make one big thunderstorm out of them.  Thus was born “Washed Clean,” which I composed out of various bits in some primitive late 90s/early 2000s sound editing software.  It starts with just the thunder, then the rain comes in, gently at first, then ratcheting up to a downpour.  Finally the rain stops, the thunder rolls away gradually into the background, and you start to hear birds, and then a stream, which starts out as a trickle but soon becomes a flood.  Just for fun, I threw in some very distant wind chimes in the background, but I made it so subtle that I personally can only pick them out when I’m listening with headphones.  Listen for them at about 3 minutes in.  Anyways, it’s not my original work, since I just glued together other parts, and it’s nothing fancy (because I am only barely adequate with sound editing programs), but I’m happy I finally got an opportunity to share it with you here.

So all this is hopefully giving you the idea that, aurally, this mix is a journey through soundscapes that are just a little ... off.  Sometimes I’m almost a little too on-the-nose with this theme: one of the Ensemble of the Dreamings selections is literally titled “Here in Our Dreams.” And a bunch of songs featuring actual insect sounds apparently wasn’t enough, because I also threw in “Insect Justice” by A Produce (the nom de plume of Barry Craig, who is one of the greatest ambient artists you’ve never heard of), which features electronic noises that only sound like insect noises.  To really nail it home, I threw in a track off Iain Bellamy’s brilliant soundtrack to Mirrormask,⁶ which is exactly as surreal an experience as this mix wishes it were.

When it comes to genres of music that might have something that works here, darkwave is of course good, and I fell back on my two go-to choices there: Black Tape for a Blue Girl and Falling You, each of whom gives us a very early track of theirs.  “Overwhelmed, Beneath Me” is one of the first BTfaBG tracks I ever actually loved;⁷ it’s from The First Pain to Linger, which compiles some of the tracks that didn’t make it onto his early albums.  ”(and the muse spoke solemnly)” is a track which floated around the Internet for many years but never ended up on any actual Falling You album that I know of.  Its quiet beauty is perfect here.  Bridging the gap between darkwave and dreampop, I added a track from Unto Ashes when I upgraded the mix; “Swarm” is another insect-evocative track with a droning sort of minimalism.  And arriving in dreamscape proper, we couldn’t of course forget about This Mortal Coil, whose mellow-but-trippy track “Barramundi” is perfect here.

But of course the epitome of dreampop is the Cocteau Twins, and the original version of this mix opened with “Lazy Calm.” But that’s also the opener for Numeric Driftwood I, and really it works much better there.  So I went hunting for a new opener, and finally settled on “Second Chapter,” which is the opener for Enigma’s overall-less-good follow-up to their excellent MCMXC a.D., The Cross of Changes.  Despite coming out the worse for comparison to Enigma’s strong debut, Cross has a few good songs, and “Second Chapter” is one.  Plus it finally gave me a title for this volume.  But then there was no Cocteaus on this volume, and that just wouldn’t do, so after long delibaration I settled on “Whales Tails,” which is also off the amazing Victorialand.  I’m not 100% sure it’s dreamier than the rest of that excellent album, but I felt like it worked well enough for this mix.

But of course the best subgenre choice for this mix is ambient, and there’s a decent chunk of it here.  Returning yet again to the insect theme, “Humito Final” is from the collaboration between well-known ambient artist Michael Stearns and lesser-known (but undeservedly so) Native American ambient artist Ron Sunsinger, Sorcerer.  This is my favorite track off that album: it’s got a spooky, ritual vibe that works very well here.  Ably representing the Magnatune influence, Claire Fitch provides a track from her album Ambiencellist.  Although much of that album is more mellow (and neoclassical, really), this track has a sort of surreality that really speaks to the theme of this mix.  And our closer is yet another track from unsung ambient genius A Produce, the live version of “The Dreaming Room,” one of his most ambitious pieces.  At over 13 minutes long, it’s one of the longest tracks I’ve ever put on a mix,⁸ but long tracks are okay for this sort of mix, where you’re just letting your mind drift away.

Dreamtime I
[ We Came Out from the Deep ]

“Second Chapter” by Enigma, off The Cross of Changes
“Swarm” by Unto Ashes, off Moon Oppose Moon
“Whales Tails” by Cocteau Twins, off Victorialand
“Here in Our Dreams” by Ensemble of the Dreamings, off Chthon [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Insect Justice” by A Produce, off Land of a Thousand Trances
“Overwhelmed, Beneath Me” by Black Tape for a Blue Girl, off The First Pain To Linger
“Abandoned Hall” by Iain Ballamy, off Mirrormask [Soundtrack]
“Humito Final” by Michael Stearns and Ron Sunsinger, off Sorcerer
“Washed Clean” by Wavmaster B [Single]
“Clair de Loon” by Zoolophone [Single]
“Monkey Road” by Ensemble of the Dreamings, off Chthon [Videogame Soundtrack]
“(and the muse spoke solemnly)” by Falling You [Single]
“Really” by Claire Fitch, off Ambiencellist
“Barramundi” by This Mortal Coil, off It'll End in Tears
“Early Bird” by Banyan, off Anytime at All
“Secret Heat” by Jami Sieber, off Lush Mechanique
“Dotiki (Touchings)” by Bostjan Perovsek, off Bio, Industrial Acoustica
“The Dreaming Room [live]” by A Produce, off Land of a Thousand Trances

Total:  18 tracks,  76:42

That only leaves us with two tracks: “Early Bird,” by Banyan, and “Secret Heat,” by Jami Sieber.  The first is an almost-bridge that features some slow, jazzy noodling around by Buckethead and Stephen Perkins backed by what seems to be a bird washing itself off.  The second is a primarily instrumental, electro-ambient piece which is quite a departure for the American cellist.  I’ve read that she sometimes plays an electric cello—who even knew there was such a thing?—so perhaps that’s what’s going on here.  The syncopated plucking of the cello combined with her background whispers make this a weird, dreamlike track indeed.

Next time, let’s get nostalgic, like we did once before.

Dreamtime II ⇒

__________

1 For a full set of definitions, check out the series listing.

2 No doubt the remainder of the mix will eventually show up as a volume II.

3 Trust me.  I tried.

4 According to his website, which didn’t even exist at the time I originally discovered this piece of his.

5 Remember: that was 20 years ago or so.  Nowadays, I could find hundreds.  But we had no YouTube back then.

6 Another artist we also heard from on Phantasma Chorale I.

7 I’ve said before that I admire Sam Rosenthal much more for his influence and the record label he founded than for his actual music.

8 And the only longer one I can think of ~will show up on~ was originally scheduled for volume II of this very mix, though it’s since been bumped to volume III.

The weeks just keep rolling on ...

Once again, nothing exciting to report this week.  Just all the usual work and family stuff.  As per usual, a full post next week.

Multiclassing, Part 4: History of the Multiclasses (5th edition)

Last time, I bitched and moaned about how 4e (that is, D&D’s 4th Edition) eviscerated my beloved multiclassing.  To be fair, some people were overjoyed at this move, primarily because they believed (and possibly still believe) that multiclassing is only for powergamers.  But I saw it as a crushing blow to my ability to be creative during character building.  If you don’t want to play one of the dozen or so classes we’ve predefined for you, that decision said to me, then we don’t want you to play at all.  So I didn’t.

And so Pathfinder came along, and I already talked about that in conjuction with my discussion of multiclassing in 3e, because it wasn’t significantly different from what 3e offered.  And I was perfectly happy with Pathfinder ... honestly, in many ways I still am, especially in terms of character building.  But, eventually, D&D came back to answer the upstart Pathfinder (which, many sources claimed, was outselling the game that had spawned it) with a fifth edition, which of course we call “5e.”

Now, the vast majority of what makes 5e stand out above Pathfinder is in the gameplay: faster combat resolution, simpler rules for many systems, the elimination of dozens and dozens of little bonuses all over your character sheet, saner numbers even at higher play levels, and so forth.  In terms of character creation, 5e can’t really compete with Pathfinder, and I suppose it doesn’t really aim to.  But let’s give them this: they learned from the debacle of 4e in many ways, and (for purposes of this discussion at least) one of the most important of those ways was the restoration of proper multiclassing.

Which is not to say that they put back all the crazy flexibility of 3e’s multiclassing, because they had learned from that as well.  They wanted something which gave the same amount of flexibility, but allowed for less abuse.  Again, we’re not yet talking about whether that’s a necessary thing or a good idea or any of that.  Let’s just look at the rules.

Multiclassing in 5e is a fascinating collection of rules that make it simultaneously very attractive and remarkably inconvenient.  Presumably this paradox exists so that they could both satisfy the people like me who think multiclassing is a necessary part of character customization, and the people who think that multiclassing only exists for powergamers to try to gain every power in the game.  This leads to a series of “yay!” moments which are promptly counterbalanced by “aww!” momeents.  So, for instance, you can take a level in any class when you level up, just like in 3e (yay!), but you can only multiclass if you have a 13 in the “prime ability scores” of both the class you’re coming from and the class you’re switching to (aww!).¹  Your proficiency bonus is based on your character level, and experience point penalties for multicass characters are gone (yay!), but now you don’t receive all the starting proficiencies of your second (or more) class (aww!).  Best of all, the horror of trying to be a multiclass spellcaster is utterly corrected: all spellcasting classes have a single table for spells per level, and all your spellcasting classes are added together to determine how many spells you can cast.²  On top of that, you can now cast a low-level spell in a high-level slot and have it actually be much cooler than using its original low-level slot, which completely eliminates the problem of multiclassed spellcasters only having pointless low-level spells and no way to use them on the high-level enemies they’re more likely to be facing.  Yay!  But worst of all: ability score increases are no longer tied to your character level.  They instead come as class features.  The smaller benefit of this is that some classes (fighter and rogue, specifically) can have more ability score increases than others.  The larger “benefit,” of course, is that multiclass can easily fall behind in ability score increases, unless they take at least 4 levels at a time in each class.  Aww.

(We could also note that 5e, like Pathfinder, adopts the concept of “capstones”: powerful abilities gained at 20th level in a class, making them simply unavailable to multiclassed characters.  However, as I mentioned when discussing multiclassing in 3e, nobody ever gets to 20th level anyway, so this is rarely relevant in a real-world game.  Still, it’s a carrot rather than a stick, so I generally approve of it as a practice.)

Now, some of these new rules are fine—better than fine, even.  The fact that taking your first level of fighter after already having several levels in another class doesn’t automatically make you proficient at wearing heavy armor actually makes sense, from a thematic standpoint, and it’s a perfectly reasonable mechanical restriction.³  Even missing out on the skill and saving throw proficiencies that you normally get at Fighter 1 can easily be explained by not having the extensive training that most apprentice fighters get, and it solves a lot of the issues that 3e had with dipping.⁴  As a restriction, limiting proficiencies that multiclass characters get for their first level in another class makes a lot of sense.

The fact that multiclass spellcasters are somewhat “fixed” from how badly they lagged behind in 3e is pretty awesome too.  Sure, as a sorcerer 5/bard 5 you don’t have access to 5th level spells (nor even 4th level spells), but you do have access to 5th level spell slots.  And there are plenty of 1st-through-3rd level spells (for both sorcerer and bard) that will do cool things if cast in a 5th-level slot: burning hands will do an awesome 7d6 of fire damage in a 5th-level slot, charm person will charm up to 5 people with a 5th-level investment, or just do a 5th-level healing word for 5d4 + Cha points of healing goodness for your compatriot, and you don’t even need to touch them.  And those are just your 1st level spell options; many of your 2nd and 3rd level spells have similar scaling properties.  And your cantrips?  Those now scale by character level, meaning even spellcasters multiclassing with non-spellcasting classes can get something out of them.

But the corresponding downside I have mixed feelings about.  Every class gets an ability score increase at level 4, meaning that a strict alternation of levels is not always the best way to go.  For instance, a sorcerer 1/bard 1 is fine, and a sorcerer 2/bard 2 is okay, but a sorcerer 3/bard 3 is just stupid.  And then when you get to sorcerer 4/bard 4, you get two ability score increases in a row, which is weird.  You’re really much better off going single-classed up to sorcerer 4, then sorcerer 4/bard 1 and so forth until you hit sorcerer 4/bard 4.  And, even then, there’s a weird breakpoint at 5th level, where classes change from “tier 1 play” to “tier 2 play”: martial classes get their extra attack, spellcasters hit 3rd level spells, etc.  So you can make a strong argument that even sorcerer 4/bard 4 is inferior to sorcerer 5/bard 3 (or vice versa).  And I see what they’re going for here: make it painful to jump around a lot, use the progression itself to strongly encourage sticking with one class as long as possible.  And it’s clever design, and I really respect that.  But what I don’t like is how it forces you into these artificial channels.  If you believe multiclassing is only for powergamers, this is brilliant: it’s like a carrot that weirdly turns into a stick when you try to turn up your nose at it.  On the other hand, if you believe multiclassing helps you build more interesting characters, being punished for strictly alternating between two different classes, which is as close to a smooth progression as you can come and therefore the most realistic expression of a “blended” class, just seems bizarre and unnecessary.

And then you have the ability score requirements.  This is just generally bad.  First of all, it’s a blatant stick, which I don’t care for.  Thematically, it’s on shaky ground; the Player’s Handbook says:

Without the full training that a beginning character receives, you must be a quick study in your new class, having a natural aptitude that is reflected by higher-than-average ability scores.

Which almost makes sense, if you squint just right ... but only for the second class.  Except that it also applies to the first class, which is not explained by this logic at all.  I don’t need to have a 13 wisdom to be a cleric in the first place; why do I need it to study anything other than divine magic?  But the worst problem is with something that D&D players often call “multiple attribute depedency,” or just plain “MAD.”  Certain classes are considered MAD all by themselves: monks, for instance, need strength for their attacks, dexterity for their acrobatic and defensive maneuvers, and wisdom for many of their powers.  Many multiclass combinations are inherently self-limiting because of MAD issues.  For instance, you may find people railing on the Internet about how “broken” certain combos are, like sorcerer/monk or barbarian/wizard, but the truth is, no powergamer in their right minds would build such a character, because you need to maximize 4 out of the 6 ability scores to do them right, and, if all you care about is having the best numbers on your character sheet, there are far better ways to go about it.  So being MAD is already a problem for some single-classed character concepts; forcing an artificial MAD-ness by demanding high ability scores in order to multiclass just exacerbates the problem.  And the hardest combinations to achieve by these restrictions—paladin/ranger and paladin/monk, both of which require four 13s—are generally considered to be two of the worst possible combinations by hardcore optimizers anyway.  So who exactly are we punishing here?  The only people who would even want to play a paladin/monk are going to be the players who have a crazy vision and have already said “who cares that my character will be suboptimal?”  We want to discourage those players from achieving their vision?

So 5e makes a huge amount of progress, but perhaps still doesn’t completely hit the mark that I’d like to see.  It’s one of the best expressions of the multiclassing concept that we’ve seen yet, but it still has a few warts and wrinkles that I think can be improved on.


Next time, we’ll step back from the history of what has been done, and start looking and what we want to see in the future.

__________

1 For the most part, the “prime ability score” for a class is exactly what you expect it to be: intelligence for wizards, wisdom for clerics, etc.  Fighters get to pick either strength or dexterity, making it the easiest candidate for multiclassing, which is probably sane.  The more “gonzo” classes—that is, those which are already a bit like multiclassing compacted into a single class—have two prime ability scores (those would be monk, ranger, and paladin).  Also, “prime ability score” is not what they call it in 5e, but that’s what it was traditionally called, going all the way back to first edition.

2 With the half-casters only contributing one every other level, and the spell-dipping archetypes (like eldritch knight and arcane trickster) adding only one every three levels.

3 You might still magically become proficient at medium armor, of course, but that’s okay.

4 Both single-dipping and double-dipping.  Of course, to be fair, 5e has different issues with dipping—dipping two levels of warlock or moon druid, or one level of rogues, for instance, can still make powergamers lick their lips.  But there are fewer issues overall.

Another week gone ...

It’s an off-week, and I’ve been sick all week.  So, as much as I’d love to toss out a few paragraphs about this or that, I’m just too tired.  I’ll just leave it there and see ya next week.

Perl blog post #57

This week I’ve done a full post over on my Other Blog as regards YAPC 2018.  Which I really should refer to as “The Perl Conference,” now that they’ve changed the name, but I will always think of it as YAPC.

This year was in Salt Lake City again, and we took the whole family (as I mentioned last week) and spent some time with the kids’ grandparents and one of their many uncles.  We didn’t do much as far as Utah sightseeing goes, but it was a chance to enjoy some quality family time, so it was good in that sense.  And we stayed in this wonderfully weird, creepy house which was built in 1889, and various doors kept opening by themselves and scaring the crap out of us, so that was fun.  Other than that, the only exciting thing we really did was go see The Incredibles 2, which was pretty awesome.  I think everyone enjoyed that.

So, now we’re back at home after a week away, including 4 days of 6 – 7 hours’ worth of driving, which is about all we could manage at a time.  We considered trying to make it straight through in one day (even only trying to do so one way), but, in the end, we figured that 5 humans and 2 canines in a car for 7 hours is damned plenty.  We stayed in a newish hotel in Mesquite, Nevada (right near the Arizona border).  I spent some of the driving days doing things (mostly Perl things) on my laptop while riding in the car, which I’m old enough to still think is pretty amazing.  My kids are all like, yeah, so?

Another thing we did while at the Utah rental place, in the company of grandparents, was to officially graduate my eldest child from homeschool high school.  We adopted the rough format of the Sudbury school where said child first attended school, which is that we asked for a thesis on why the student should be allowed to graduate: in order words, to what extent are they prepared to go out and be a self-sufficient adult?  And then there are some questions (occasionally even quite pointed questions, making the person defend the thesis), then there’s a vote (which is mostly pro forma) and then we proclaim them graduated.  So we did all that, and it was pretty nice.  It’s perhaps not the formal, hats-in-the-air ceremony that most get when they get out of high school, but I think it was impactful, and hopefully memorable.

But it’s nice to be back home, back in one’s own bed, with one’s one shower, one’s own recliner, one’s own TV, eating one’s own food instead of mostly bad-for-you fast food and whatnot, and so on.  As we get older, it gets harder and harder to be away from home.  I used to think that was because you just needed more crap as you get to be an old fogey: you need your medicine, and your special pillows, and all that sort of thing.  But now I think it’s more that, at my age, I’ve spent years and years working out what I need to have to be at my most relaxed and happy, and, when I leave home, I’m leaving all that behind.

Or, then again, maybe I’m just looking for excuses to avoid admitting that I’ve become the old fogey myself.  Either way, good to be back home.

The starry sky ... they are swimming happily ...

It’s a good thing this is already an “off” week for me, because I’m currently in the car driving to Salt Lake City for this year’s YAPC.  Okay, well, technically I’m not driving, because that would be totally dangerous while I’m typing this blog entry, and technically YAPC is now “The Perl Conference.”  See, “YAPC” stands for “Yet Another Perl Conference,” which was entirely appropriate when Perl conferences were a dime a dozen.  But, as my preferred computer language enters its twilight yars, it turns out that YAPC is the only Perl conference really left.  So they decided to drop the “YA” and just go with “T” (after politely asking permission of the name’s former owner, who hadn’t used it in years).  But I’ll probably always call it “YAPC” just because I’ve been calling it that for so long that I’ll never break the habit.

This is the second time (that I know of) that YAPC has been held in Salt Lake City (you can read about my experience at the last SLC YAPC over on my Other Blog).  Last time, we packed the whole family (including human and canine—but not feline or other furry/scaly—children) and drove to Utah, a four-state trip (I-15 goes through just a little corner of Arizona), where we rented a house for a week, and The Mother‘s parents and sister drove in from Colorado and stayed with us.  So this year we’re doing the whole glorious, insane thing over, except The Mother is swapping a sister for a brother, and hopefully the house will be a little nicer.  This is what one of my co-workers referred to as a “conferenscation.”  So it should be fun.  Plus, I am giving a talk at the conference (for the second time ever—well, second time at a venue this size), so that’s exciting.

Next week should, ideally, be a full post.  But the weekend after a YAPC is notoriously bad for my blog: I get home and I’m exhausted, and I generally flake out.  But we’ll see how it goes.