The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett's Journal

EEEP EEEP EEEP EEEP EEEP

theferrett@theferrett.com — Fri, 09 May 2008 13:43:16 GMT

My wife smacks the snooze bar and staggers back to bed, tumbling sleepily into my arms. It's different every time.

She snuggles close. I feel the weight of her arm across my chest here, the feel of her bare thigh upon mine here. She melts into me, seeking me out for enough comfort that she can grab a few extra minutes of sleep before the alarm goes off again. The configurations are a thousand variances of joy; sometimes she attacks me from the side to nestle into the crook of my arm. Sometimes, she lies on her back and wants me to hug her tight.

It's a unique and beautiful moment, and it will only last nine minutes.

Sometimes, I fall asleep, too. But some mornings, I just lie there, listening to the ebb and flow of her breathing, feeling the slow tug of time passing. This moment is ephemeral. This moment is eternal. This love is colossal.

Nine minutes, and everything changes.

Thank You, rbradakis!

theferrett@theferrett.com — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:23:53 GMT

Who doesn't want a GlaDOS ringtone?

(Sorry, Eric. Yours is good, but not the coolest.)

A Thought On The Nature Of Friendship

theferrett@theferrett.com — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:52:54 GMT

Early in our courtship, Gini once said that "you give me wings." Which was her way of saying that I tried my best to lift her up, to encourage her to reach for things she didn't think she could get. I tried to be a net benefit in her life, on the whole.

And when she told me, two years later, "I feel like you've taken my wings away," that was a wake-up call for me. I realized that in the course of our relationship, I'd stopped thinking about her and started thinking too much about me. I'd started trying to subtract from Gini to make her fit in the space that made me comfortable, which was completely and utterly wrong. And I started to change that.

I think that, by and large, there are two types of close friends: Those who are committed to being a net bonus in your life, and those who want you to be where they're comfortable.

Being committed to being a net bonus in someone's life is scary sometimes, because you can help them evolve right out of your life. You can realize that where they want to be is another town, far away from you, or to take up a new hobby that's going to cause them to spend less time with you, or to find a new partner who's really good for them and is going to make you secondary in their life. But those friends want what's best for you.

Then there are those who want you where they feel happiest about having you. They will also help you to change, but often it's for the worse. If they determine that you should have a boyfriend now, they're going to hammer home on you until you damn well get one whether you want it or not. If you think about moving, they'll make you feel guilty. It's all about what they want - and frequently it will come in the guise of "What's best for you," but really it's not.

You can tell the bad friends because you never really feel like yourself around them. You know, on some level, they're damping you down, because you can't say what's really on your mind.

But the good friends? They're there because they like you, not some edited version of you that's more to their liking. They're there to help you be more of that you - occasionally calling you on your bullshit and reining in your excesses, but generally helping you to become a happier, healthier person.

Good friends? They give you wings to fly. And God bless them, we'll all reach the skies some day.

Just A Quick Word

theferrett@theferrett.com — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:03:48 GMT

Dear People Who Think The President Will Make Gas Cheaper:

One hates to inform you, but the President does not have a magic wand that he can wave to neutralize the laws of supply and demand. Gas is going to continue to be expensive because a) you schmucks refuse to stop driving everywhere, b) China and other nations are on the rise and want more gas of their own, and c) there is a limited supply of oil.

The President can't fucking fix this. He can do stupid shit like give you a "gas tax holiday" so you can save $30 over the course of a summer, which will cause us to drive more (burning up more of this limited supply of gas) and take away the money used to fund the road repairs, but that's a temporary solution designed to sucker in stupid people. Which you are.

You'd think you would have learned the lesson from Iraq: The President is not a magic being. The reason we got into so much trouble in Iraq is not because Bush isn't sufficiently magical to zap away the terrorists, but because he had poor planning. And lo! As it turns out, the actions of people in other countries can affect America, just like every other fucking country. Gas will most likely never be $2 again. As such, things aren't going to get slightly better for you until you stop fucking driving your big gas-sucking cars, learn to take public transportation when you can, and stop treating the President as though he's the goddamned Wizard of Oz.

Sincerely,
T.F.

Strange Habits of a Psychoweasel

theferrett@theferrett.com — Tue, 06 May 2008 16:45:10 GMT

Sometimes, when I'm puttering around the house, I'll remember a conversation I had the night before. Suddenly, in the morning light, the way I phrased my response - a perfectly normal sentence - will sound odd and strange to me. So I'll repeat it.

"That's why people get married," I'll mutter, trying to replicate the way I said it... And now, the way I said it seems positively odd and crazy. The inflection's all wrong. It seems creepy. I thought I had been okay, but in the cold light of the next day I can see that what was supposed to be funny is now the slurred intonations of a psycho. The folks around me smiled, sure, but in retrospect I can see it as the strained rictuses of people who don't want to make a scene.

Or were they? Did I say it properly, and I'm just overprocessing now? I say it again, mimicking the tone to try to hear how it must have come off last night. "That's why people get married. That's why people get married."

Then I'll realize that I can't know how it sounded, so I'll practice in case I have to say it in the future. I'll say it as though I were a perfectly everyday person, trying to perfect the tone so that I can get it right in the future and not come off like a nut.

None of which makes any sense to my poor wife in the next room, who's doubtlessly wondering why her husband's been staring in the mirror, repeating some nonsense phrase for thirty seconds before he finally returns to brushing his teeth.

(It doesn't help that my SAD is kicking my ass hard. That's never a boon.)

The Empty Superhero Suit

theferrett@theferrett.com — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:59:13 GMT

Almost all of the big names in comics have now had their own movies – X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman, Superman. The non-comics-readin’ man on the street only knows a handful of superheroes, and they’ve all had their movies made.

There is one notable exception: Wonder Woman. And therein lies the new problem with making comic movies – Wonder Woman has no actual stories.

See, when the average Spider-Man fan thinks of Spider-Man, there are a couple of iconic story arcs that immediately spring to mind: Letting that criminal go, and discovering that with great power comes great responsibility. The death of Gwen Stacey and the subsequent death of Norman Osborn. The first time he stopped being Spider-Man. The first time he had to push himself beyond his limits to save Aunt May (“The Final Chapter!”).

Those are all great moments in Spider-Man history, and anyone passingly familiar with Spider-Man will know about them. Likewise, Batman has R’as Al Ghul and his first meetup with the Joker and Batman: Year One, and the X-Men have Dark Phoenix and the time travel story (“In This Issue, Everyone Dies!”). And I’m not a big fan of Iron Man, never the most popular of superheroes, but even I know about his battle with alcoholism and the rise of War Machine.

Each of these heroes has certain essential story arcs that are unique to them. They’re the moments that put these characters on the map, or reinvigorated the characters after a long struggle of aimless, second-tier sales. They’re everything that works about them.

If you’re lucky, the origin story is one of those iconic moments that sells it for you. But that’s not necessary for a great superhero – after all, Daredevil’s origin story is pretty mundane (OH HAI I GOT HIT BY RADIOACTIVE WASTE BEFORE MY UNCLE BEN WHOOPS DAD DIED) and yet Frank Miller managed to salvage that by turning Daredevil into a crazy-ass superninja with a hot even-more-superninja ex-girlfriend.

But if you think about, “Wow, this storyline defines this character,” Wonder Woman doesn’t have one. She comes from Paradise Island, a pretty ill-defined place that’s either a colony of warriors, or a hippie love-fest, or an isolated out-of-touch Greek/Roman enclave, or whatever the writer needs it to be for that story line. Nobody’s really nailed it down so that it matters.

And she comes to, uh, America, to be pretty and fight shit. And get tied up.

I’m scouring my brain trying to think of a Wonder Woman story where I go, “Yeah, that’s when Wonder Woman was at her finest,” and there really isn’t one to pull out. There are pretty decent comic runs, with George Perez being at the top, but nothing where I go, “That’s who Wonder Woman is.”

In the end, Wonder Woman is famous for being an idea – the first kick-ass female heroine, a set of golden bracelets, an invisible plane – than anything she’s actually done. That’s troublesome. But you know who else is like that?

Superman.

Supes has a great origin story, but after that the tales on the ground are pretty thin. He’s Superman, for God’s sake, and he’s famous for being invulnerable and morally correct and a paragon of America. There’s no comic series that I can think of that I go, “Wow, that sums up Superman in a nutshell.”

But there is one story – and strangely enough, it comes from the movies. We all know the tale of Superman facing down General Zod because he loves humanity, fighting off three ex-Kryptonians with no goddamned powers. That’s the tale that sums up who Superman really is for many people…

…and the movies had to make that out of whole cloth. Superman has a whole wardrobe full of some of the greatest enemies in comics, including Braniac and Myxwhatever and Metallo, and yet to really test him the movie producers had to make up someone new.

Why? Because after the origin story, it’s all downhill for Superman. He’s simply a set of great ideas that you can riff on endlessly, making him awesome for creating seventy years of fun stories revolving around his superpowers… But as a personality, it’s hard to pin down who Superman is in a way that challenges him personally.

In other words, Superman fights a lot of battles where he goes, “Gosh, how will I defeat this villain?” But he fights very few battles where his own identity is in danger.

At his core, both Superman and Wonder Woman are sets of interesting powers tied together. They’re not actually people. That’s really good when you’re in the treadmill comics business, trying to tell a story a week – too much specificity gets you in trouble – but it’s hard when you’re trying to find the biggest, most emotional punch you can pack into two hours.

You may note that the most of good superhero movies crib relentlessly from the comics, because they had good source material to work with. They know what challenges bring out the most essential moments in a hero’s personality, because in forty years of writing those are the ones that have resonated.

But what you have with Superman and Wonder Woman is a good idea, and with those kinds of heroes you have to make your own. Which is what we’re going to see.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I like Thor. But does he have any iconic character arcs? No. It’s a bunch of endless retreads of Loki gets everyone in trouble, and Asgard’s all worried again, and oh the snake is back and hey, the Wrecking Crew! There’s no single moment in Thor’s history where I go, “That’s who Thor is.”

Likewise, I also like Green Lantern, but let’s face it – aside from a brief flirtation with relevance in the 1970s when he went head-to-head with Green Arrow, Hal Jordan’s had a lot of adventures but no one single adventure that made him a superstar.

(Sadly, Hal does actually have one iconic moment…. But I refuse to acknowledge Dark Hal Goes Nuts. That didn’t happen.)

Tomorrow, I’ll take a look at several superheroes-who-wanna-be-movies and discuss their potential iconicness. And if they don’t have that iconic battle, it’s going to be hell to make the movie, because really, what’s all that cool about Wonder Woman’s personality?

(Feel free to suggest or discuss.)

Tales From The House

theferrett@theferrett.com — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:01:53 GMT

In La Casa McJuddMetz, Gini is Scheduling. I'm Budget. That's because I can remember to pay the bills, and keep track of our general funding, but I am useless when it comes to remembering when anything is. Every night, I shout to my wife: "WHAT ARE WE DOING TONIGHT?" And she tells me.

As proof that I am terrible at scheduling, this year I vowed to remember Mother's Day. So I bought the card, sent the present, and called up my Mom yesterday to shout, "HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!"

"That's nice," she said. "But it's not until next weekend."

"Oh."

"Sweet of you, though. This is kind of like the time you sent me flowers a month after my birthday."

"But I continued to send you flowers a month after your birthday for the next two years," I responded. "I almost made it a tradition, except then I got confused and sent them a month early."

"Which happened to be my actual birthday."

"Well, sometimes things work out," I said.

I thought that was embarrassing enough. But then I got the call from my daughter Erin: "Why the hell did you remind me to call Mom this Sunday? That wasn't Mother's Day!"

"Well," said I. "Funny story...."

Iron Man, Iron Man, Does Whatever An Iron Can (Very Mild Spoilers)

theferrett@theferrett.com — Mon, 05 May 2008 13:18:03 GMT

Scratch the surface of any popular superhero, and you’ll find what we want to be. Superman was the perfect hero for the 1940s; patriotic, all-powerful, and serenely confident in his own self-righteousness. Come the 1960s and the advent of inward reflection, and you get Spider-Man – a man bound by worries and a thousand niggling debts, but somehow able to surpass them (most of the time) to become something greater.

It’s been forty years since we’ve had a relevant superhero since then. Vietnam and Iraq II have drained America’s collective self-confidence, making us a little afraid to be proud, and the rise of the individual has left us without a collective center. When you have a thousand microtargeted magazines and cable shows, is there really one America any more? Or just a million Balkanized subsections?

But I think, thanks to the wise eye of director Jon Favreau (who also directed Swingers and Elf), we finally have a superhero for the new millennia. Someone who embodies what most of us want America to be.

For Tony Stark is America – arrogant, lavishly rich, hopelessly sexist, and blithely unconcerned in his morality because he has a long legacy of being right and he will always be right. He’s sold weapons like his father, making cutting-edge tech that cuts deep into the enemy.

Yet for all of that deep amorality he holds, Tony is strangely charming. You want to like him because he’s also insanely clever and quick with a quip. He seems reachable, even if he’s completely disinterested in people as anything but tools. But in the end, he’s just another gun for hire….

…until he winds up hostage in the hands of the enemy in Afghanistan. The terrorists, too, love Tony Stark’s guns, and they want him to build a missile for their own nefarious purposes. And in a distant cave, Tony Stark instead opts to build a weapon of his own.

There have been parallels drawn between Tony Stark and Batman for years – they’re both multimillionaire businessmen who are only superheroes because they’re smart and dedicated. But while Batman Begins handwaved all the hard work it took to create the Batmobile and Batman’s “wonderful toys,” Iron Man takes the souped-up Mythbusters route. Tony Stark is a Do-It-Yourselfer, a hacker who spends way too much time in the basement fine-tuning his suit. You are constantly reminded that the technology he works with comes from a long line of failed experiments, constant tweaking, and upgrading; the suit itself is a constantly moving nightmare of gears, cogs, and screws.

And when Tony Stark finally realizes exactly what his arrogance has cost him, he has the Jerry Macguire moment where he finally Gets It. He’s doing harm, and he can no longer write it off… And in that fine American tradition, he’s not paralyzed by guilt, but rather galvanized by it.

Tony Stark is going to fix this. And in an imaginary world, he can.

The glory of Iron Man is that Tony Stark single-handedly does what America is incapable of. Spider-Man, lovely though he is, rescues Americans in New York City. Superman makes some vague passes about helping the world, but really he mostly works between West American Coast and East American Coast.

Tony Stark, on the other hand? He’s America’s good instincts. Rather than saving Americans, who are doing fine, he flies to Afghanistan and saves the poor bastards who are being herded and shot down by terrorists. He’s not out to make his own world safe – he’s trying to help people he doesn’t even know.

It felt relevant. Up until now, I’d never realized how masturbatory all the other superhero films felt, saving us from the mostly-imaginary evils of muggers and bank robbers - who’s ever seen a bank robbed? They’re heavily guarded, they don’t need Spider-Man to protect them. And supervillains are completely imaginary.

But Iron Man is striking at the worst thing we can imagine these days. And he’s doing it not here, saving fattened old America from a bomb, but where he can help a few downtrodden folks out from under from the boot of an Afghani warlord.

The core value of America is “We want to help.” Problem is, we’re remarkably bad at gauging what needs fixing these days. But in superhero land, Tony Stark is everything America wants to be – powerful enough to get the job done, wise enough to choose the right targets, and moral enough to try to make up for his past failings. He’s going to save the world, because unlike the collapse of the Bush administration, he knows precisely how to enact a plan.

(This works, incidentally, because the terrorists are dumb as dirt, too brain-dead to recognize that the various pieces of a walking suit of armor look nothing like a missile casing. I’m really hoping they reenvision The Mandarin, Iron Man’s classic old villain, as a warlord with brains and Tony’s vision.)

Like America, Tony’s not perfect. He’s still too quick to go off on his own, a rebel who doesn’t work well with others (and sometimes pays for it). He’s supremely disinterested in the larger picture. And he’s bad at sensing the motivations of his enemies.

In the comics, Tony Stark has become everything that’s bad about America – our arrogance, our willingness to oppress with technology, our terror of terror. But thankfully, Robert Downey and Jon Favreau flipped that to make Iron Man the movie into a statement of hope and joy. We can win…. If we acknowledge our mistakes.

Because in the end, the story of Iron Man is the story of a very talented jerk who’s trying very hard to become something better. And maybe it’s just me, but I can empathize.

Snakes On A Disappointment

theferrett@theferrett.com — Sun, 04 May 2008 16:14:29 GMT

So we finally saw "Snakes on a Plane" last night, complete with a room full of rowdy strangers and a drinking game. And I gotta say:

Wow. What a terrible movie. And I mean that in a not the "so bad it's good" sense, but rather the "It's just bad" sense.

I was one of the earliest SoaP proponents. I loved the idea, I loved Samuel L. Jackson fighting motherfuckin' snakes on a motherfuckin' plane, I loved the poster. And when it bombed in the theaters (I didn't see it because I was in Germany when it premiered in the United States, and why would you not see this movie on opening night?), it was cited as proof that the Internet crazes couldn't make you money.

No. Honestly, the fact that Snakes on a Plane earned as much as it did is a testament to the power of the Internet. Because it's not even a B-movie. In a just world, it would have earned $10 million total and quietly packed off.

You know what I wanted? Deep Blue Sea. Deep Blue Sea is a cheesy film that actually has moments of tension, genuine laughter, and the single best monologue by Samuel L. Jackson ever. It's not a great movie, but it's a great "B" movie that manages to punch all the buttons you'd expect from a movie about genetically-enhanced killer sharks.

Snakes on a Plane, however, botches every roll. The characters are shallow and trite, but the death scenes? Well, there's two awesome ones, both in bathrooms.... But then the snakes descend in one massive glump, kill an entire plane that seems to be about the size of three football fields and as tall as a skyscraper - I kept wondering when John McClane would show up for "Snakes on a McClane" - and everyone dies so quickly there's none of the enjoyment of watching killer snakes pick off people one by one.

Then, as the stock characters die, they do it in such a way that it doesn't manage to feel like a comeuppance. The truth is that every good horror movie is, at its heart, a morality tale. The people die because they deserve to - they're too venal, or too shallow, or (in regrettable early 1980s movies) because they're sluts and the virgin should live. A good slaughter-a-lot-of-people flick involves having everyone die in ways that ironically reflect the nature of their personality - if they'd been someone different, someone more worthy, they would have lived.

Snakes on a Plane is so busy, there are too many motherfuckin' snakes. There's too much chaos, too much danger around, and nowhere for people to hide. For safety, they need to hole up and not wander off. And it would take a much better screenwriter to set up a situation where The Dickish British Guy or The Sexually Harassing Pilot or the Spoiled Paris Hilton Clone get their comeuppance in a way that's not the endless repetition of, "HEY, A SNAKE FELL ON YOU!"

Even what should be the greatest line in the history of cinema falls flat because Samuel L. Jackson is never driven into a corner. His character simply fights snakes a lot - he's never seriously threatened, never runs out of options, never gets angry beyond the default Samuel L. Jackson irritation. He yells, "I have had it with these motherfuckin' snakes on my motherfuckin' plane!" near the climax of the movie, when the snakes are almost handled, as opposed to the beginning, when it would have been a killer line.

Alas, in the end Snakes on a Plane is simply snakes, on a plane, trying to take itself far too seriously in a movie that generates neither tension nor heat. I was glad to watch it with my friends, and you will get hammered by playing the drinking game (pounding down one whenever the Snake-O-Vision Cam is displayed will demolish you by itself), but the fun? It's other people. You could pick any bad movie at random and have the same level of fun.

Snakes on a Plane is only good because people are, thanks to the magic of the Internet, predisposed to mock it. Which is a great way of setting up people to razz, which is the true fun. But me?

Come over to my house for a showing of Glen or Glenda. Bring your best snark. I'll show you snakes in a dress.

The Truth

theferrett@theferrett.com — Fri, 02 May 2008 02:08:28 GMT

Some might think that I am posting this link because of the titillation factor. In truth, I don't find it particularly exciting at all.

Honestly? I'm posting this because now I want to wrestle someone in a gigantic vat of chocolate syrup. It actually seems like it'd be kinda fun, assuming I could get a shower afterwards. (I really like chocolate syrup.)

But I bet it wouldn't look good. You never wanna mix lard with syrup, and my body is distinctly not bikini-worthy. Hence, the photos would probably be akin to staring up at the sun for sixty seconds at a time. But I wonder how it would be.

(If you need me to tell you a page devoted to chocolate syrup bikini-wrestling is NSFW, you're NFTBE. Page courtesy of, as all good things are, StumbleUpon.)

Dear Madonna

theferrett@theferrett.com — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:46:18 GMT

While I thank you for alerting us to this grave threat encroaching upon the world, I must express some concerns. I get that we do, indeed, have four minutes to save the world. But from what? And how can we save it?

Apparently, it involves grabbing a boy (or a girl) and doing something without hesitation. But frankly, this could not only lead to sexual harassment lawsuits, it's unclear what I need to do within four minutes to save the world via utilizing their nearness. It involves, and I quote, getting 'em "a heart," but I'm not sure what kind of heart. A beef heart? A Legend of Zelda heart? I'm not sure.

So much is at stake, Madonna. As a certified Zombie Survival Preparation Specialist (I've given talks upon the matter), I find it distressing that you would call our attention to this matter and then provide us with so little useful information. You have credibility after drawing our attention to the La Isla Bonita Incident, but please. Give us a little help here. The world is at stake.

Sincerely,
T.F.

P.S. - Does this relate to Justin's side project of penile encasement strategies? If so, please let me know.

A Feature I Think We Could All Use On Garbage Day

theferrett@theferrett.com — Thu, 01 May 2008 12:57:56 GMT

Once a month, I clean out the refrigerator. And I see all the wistful traces of the meals I meant to make; a pair of greening pork chops here, a leftover bag of deliquescing chicken strips here, a wilted bag of arugula. They were intended to be food at the end of the day, but realistically I just slaughtered a living being so that it could rot in my fridge and I could order out from Chick Fil-A.

I think it would be useful to have a gang of roving Ethiopians come over whenever I clean out my fridge, their sun-browned arms stick thin but rigid with rage, and watch me as I removed these extraneous food bits. I would hear the rumble of their bloated bellies as I apologized for America and the rest of the world, glaring at me as I took the food that they would have killed for a continent over and just let it sit until it turned into a bacterial slurry.

Then they'd kick the shit out of me until my anus bled. I'd deserve it.

A Secretly Pleased Weasel

theferrett@theferrett.com — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:21:51 GMT

Thanks to mishamish for pointing out that HotS is in fact spot-checked in this Punch an' Pie strip. (I didn't think it was a reference, but the author later confirmed it was.) Which makes me happy.

Incidentally, if you liked HotS at all, Queen of Wands was one of the major influences upon it for me (there's a reason Karla's a redhead), and Punch An' Pie is the continuation of that story. So go check it out.

The Strange Thing

theferrett@theferrett.com — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:18:19 GMT

By coincidence, I found my DVD of "The Godfather" on the same day I picked up Grand Theft Auto IV, and I've been watching it in the background while I work. And I keep thinking about Roger Ebert, who once famously said that videogames could never be art.

Many people say that GTA IV proves that games can be art. And the comparisons to "The Godfather" run rampant, natch; they're both about crime in a hard town, with men struggling to fight. They both feature top-of-the-line acting in their field. And they both are beautiful.

But compare "The Godfather" to GTA IV, even for a videogame freak like me, and GTA fails.

The problem is how you define "art." The Godfather is a great movie because it asks you to look at a variety of other characters, and in a sense it's putting you through what someone else is going through. The film is very much about the transformation of mild, likeable Michael into something both greater and lesser... And you see that through his eyes and the choices he makes.

But Michael is very much an external. He is not you. And as such, there's a wealth of interest to be found in the gap between what Michael does, or does not do, and what you would do. There's also the curiosity of trying to figure out what Michael is actually thinking at any moment, which Al Pacino does so well and so subtly with those hooded eyes. (Back before he went apeshit in "Scent of a Woman" and never recovered.)

Whereas GTA? You're the guy. They can give you all the damn cutscenes and in-car dialogues to prove that the dude you're whipping around with your gamepad is Niko, the Slavic thug... But in truth, you melt effortlessly into the game, running amuck, and it's you who feel the thrill of escaping the cops or capping a competitor. You help advance Niko's story, you may even be attached to him, but even if he surprises you it's irrelevant. You map your own emotions onto him so often that he's never other. He's you, with some chrome plating.

The problem is then it's hard to say something about The Human Experience - which is traditionally the domain of Art - when the human is you, and you're never going to surprise yourself.

Which is not to say that there aren't emotional moments in, say, Final Fantasy VII. But those are very much movies that you've unlocked by playing through mini-games to unlock the next segment. They're good, but in terms of unlocking something that movies can't? Well, that's hard to do.

That said, games can provide emotions in ways that movies can't. The first Big Games in terms of emotional interaction were Doom and Myst, and there's no coincidence in that, because games can provide horror and mystery in ways that movies cannot. It's hard to make someone feel terror and mystery through An Other, but it's real easy when you're in the driver's seat. Videogames have always been at their best when they're trying to evoke wonder and exploration.

As such games are an art. And can lead to some Art. But it's a lot easier to do it with movies, which don't have to rely upon fluffing out a story with combat or running or some other crazy mechanism to give you interaction. We all know great movies that would make terrible videogames, because the characters don't run down the street with a hatchet.

Videogames, however? They can make you feel a lot deeper than art. Whatever happens to Michael, well, he got there on his own. You just sat back and watched it happen. In the videogame, though, you got Michael there, and as such you're an active participant in his story. You're invested because you've spent several hours of your own time getting him there, and it takes less to make you feel involved. I'd argue that the Big Death In FFVII would have fallen flat on screen, but worked in the game because you spent twenty-five hours getting [dead person] to the place where she was slaughtered.

As of now, though? I'd argue that videogames create great experiences. But Art with a capital A? They've brushed against it occasionally, generally in games that didn't do that well. They're still trying to find their potential.

Does that matter, though? No. Because the experience of a great videogame is unique and bold and beautiful, and I don't care whether it states something grand. I care that it entertains me, and makes me feel things, and that it does even if those things are often trite.

Sorry, Roger. I can't give you a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down on this one. You're both right and wrong.

Grand Theft Hype

theferrett@theferrett.com — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:19:41 GMT

So after a lot of work yesterday, I finally got to play GTA IV for about ninety minutes. And while every major news outlet is shouting, "OMG! WORK OF GENIUS! FIVE STARS!" I myself am waiting for Yahtzee to come along and discuss the truth of it (as he did with Super Smash Bros).

It's hard to say anything large from a brief timeplay, but thus far... It's a GTA game. With much better graphics. And mostly the same controls, with slightly worse camera angles. Which is to say your car handles like a Matchbox car on a soapy incline, prone to spinning out in a wobbly, twisting pull at thirty miles an hour. The brakes merely are a suggestion. And the camera floats like a dyspeptic butterly from angle to angle unless you wrestle it into place with the other stick, making driving frequently an exercise in blind steering.

You don't stick to the road. You float above it like an air hockey puck, mostly on board but prone to sliding off in odd directions in ways that twist physics like a sculpted balloon.

The thing is, you don't mind as much as you do with other driving games, because when you go off-course - as you will - you have the thrill of mowing down pedestrians and knocking lampposts over in a shower of sparks. The pedestrians are the highlight of the game; they cling to your windshield, hang off your door, and if you hit a car the right way you can propel someone out through his windshield and splat him against the roof of your car.

It's a nice blind to distract you from the fact that the controls are kinda crappy, and it works, because nothing takes the edge off mushy controls faster than plowing through a crowd of greasy teenaged punks with your Chevy.

The game itself is classic GTA, which is to say that it's a bunch of fun missions involving mayhem. The good news is that you can not only hail a taxi to your destination (thus saving hours of stupid driving), but you have a GPS that you can set waypoints on when you drive, which is nice for those of us who get lost going to the bathroom. The characterization is actual characterization; rather than the mostly tabula rasae of Tommy Vercetti and CJ, the character of Niko is well-established before the game begins, and the change to Slavic gangbangers is a breath of fresh air. God bless you, Eastern Promises!

The big downside, however, is the controls. The controls are crazy complicated, and there's no manual. The game itself merrily flashes you "tutorials" on how to do stuff, but the little boxes that flash pictures are a) too small, and b) go away after a set period of time. There were at least three occasions where I was like, "Wait, which button am I supposed to hit to throw this bowling ball?" and by the time my slow-witted mind had processed it, the game had yanked the tutorial away and told me "SORRY, YOU'RE TOO DUMB TO PLAY THIS GAME."

You'd think that looking under "OPTIONS: GAME CONTROLS" would help, but the picture of the controller not only has two modes - one for driving, one for walking - but it's shot through with so many arrows that it looks like a speared porcupine, and those arrows flash and cycle repeatedly to show you that in one mode, this button can mean "pick up something" and in another it means "play game" and in yet a third it causes the character to sink to his knees, screaming, "What the fuck? I mean, what the fucking fuck?"

It's not bad, but the tutorials can't be recalled. And I finished up when I got to a mission where I was supposed to pick up something and throw it through a man's window. There were several garbage cans and crates outside, but no; despite the fact that hurling a garbage can through a plate-glass window is a tried-and-true riot tactic, I could not pick it up. I then had to pick up a bottle, which there weren't any around, because the streets of Liberty City apparently are spanking clean. I got a bottle two blocks over and ran back, only to discover that "running" apparently makes you drop bottles. Then I got another bottle, ambled back as though I had all the time in the world to commit mayhem, and discovered that hitting the button I thought I was supposed to push not only didn't throw, it made the bottle disappear.

GTA is a good game, don't get me wrong. But the controls will take you a while to master, and they're not intuitive. Just like every other GTA game. Keep it in mind.

Dear Guitar Hero III

theferrett@theferrett.com — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 01:56:20 GMT

It's taunting me when you give me access to not one, but two of my purest teenaged metal pleasures in the form of Def Leppard's "Photograph" and "Rock Of Ages," both of which I can play on drums in my sleep because the rhythm is knitted into my very muscle. I was looking to rock myself into a hernia.

Alas, the "live" versions, featuring a very strung-out and raspy-sounding Joe Elliot that robs both of their harmonic originals, mushy sound, and a pale imitation is just mean.

Sincerely,
T.F.

Rituals, Hidden

theferrett@theferrett.com — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:12:52 GMT

If I go to the end of the block and across the street, there is a freshly-built Starbucks at the edge of the outdoor mall.

At the far side of the mall, about a half-mile away, is a Target. Inside the Target is a mini-Starbucks.

On my way to Target to pick up Grand Theft Auto IV, I stopped in the mall-Starbucks to pick up an iced chai. And by the time I got to the Target-Starbucks, I had finished it. I went out of my way to drop the empty cup in the garbage can of the sister Starbucks.

Then it was all I could do on my way out of Target not to purchase another iced chai of the exact same size, walk back to the mall-Starbucks, and drop the now-emptied chai in that garbage can. It felt like a strange current was propelling me, a soft of caffeinated Gulf Stream current of commerce and coffee, wanting to establish some sort of symmetrical flow between two identical coffee shops that were both thriving despite being a six-minute walk away from each other. An exchange of fluids.

I didn't. But I can't resist this temptation for long.

If You're In New Mexico And Have June Free....

theferrett@theferrett.com — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:56:37 GMT

...there's a new opening available on the two-week-long Sci-Fi/Fantasy writer intensive Taos Toolbox, where you can go to mountain heights, be taught by great authors, and work on selling your next novel. Take a look if you're close enough to go.

A Question That's Been On My Mind Lately: What Books Will Survive?

theferrett@theferrett.com — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:58:55 GMT

As I get older, one of the things that I consider more is the nature of durability. Now that it's been twenty years since the songs I heard as a teenager have passed, I'm fascinated by the ones that have endured.

For example, when I was growing up you couldn't pass a store front without hearing Corey Hart's "I Wear My Sunglasses at Night" or Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69." Now they're pretty much radio C-listers, played on the obscure shows and mix CDs. But Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back" has risen from its goofy, one-hit-wonder roots to become an anthem, and my God why won't Rick Astley die off?

Clearly, whatever enduring qualities I thought those songs contained didn't actually exist. And there's something about those other songs that have continued to entrance new generations, even if I don't know what it is. The process of forgetting will continue - hell, it's continuing now. Given another thirty years, an entire generation of songs will be boiled down to one or two iconic hits to be used in movies to signify that This Is The 80s, in much the same way that "In The Mood" is the standard tune that lets people know we're swing-dancing in preparation to go off to fight Hitler.

There were thousands of songs made during the 1940s, mostly forgotten now except by aficionados. They just sort of vanish into the depths of Oldies radio.

So the question I'm asking is not music, but books. Namely, what books published in the last thirty years will still be read 150 years from now? If you were to ask people in 1850 whether Dickens would still be read 150 years from now, I'd bet a lot of them would have viewed him as a crude bestseller fit for the punters only. Yet he survived. Why? I'm not sure. I like him, but that's just me.

There are a lot of books I'm probably missing, but there are two recent novels that I'm reasonably sure will still be read by someone years from now, both science-fiction/fantasy works... And one that I'm not sure will.

Stephen King's The Stand
PROS: An epic tale filled with memorable characters, and a surprisingly amount of philosophy and the nature of mankind. A very good snapshot of humanity as it was in the 1970s/80s, since watching our culture be consumed by plague does a surprisingly good job of summing it up.

CONS: The ending's a botch; and even King himself admits he just ran out of ideas. (Though that could just make it more interesting to debate in class.) Extremely violent and horrorish, which generally doesn't win the intellectuals over. Not currently being taught in many classes, since it's both extremely long and (as stated) gory. And the tale itself is nothing particularly new, either stylistically or plotwise.

THE END RESULT: A lot of the enduring books have been kept alive by English professors who determine that it Has Quality. I don't think they've ever really clasped Stephen to their chest, and so students won't be forced to read it, which may make the Stand fall to its own version of Captain Trips. But it may be held up by fans, who even after near to thirty years still adore it.

Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game
PROS: A classic tale on loneliness, intelligence, and the nature of empathy, of a boy who's so smart he has to be used by everyone else. Every teenager feels like Ender every once in a while, and the book is saturated with a raw emotion that, like To Kill A Mockingbird, cannot be denied. It's already being taught heavily in classrooms to adolescents.

CONS: It's science fiction.

THE END RESULT: I think this is one of the few novels that can shed its science fiction roots and endure into the future, if the technology doesn't become too antiquated. Fortunately, we're not much closer to space travel than we were when I was born in 1969, so I don't think we have to worry. Sadly.

J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series
PROS: A huge, generation-defining literary event done in the classic "quest" style of a boy who must become a man to defeat his worst enemy. One hell of a storytelling style. Vibrant characters who anyone can sympathize with.

CONS: The "generation-defining literary event" worked because a generation grew up with Harry. Amy was six when she started reading Harry Potter, and the first book was meant for her. As she got older, the books grew in complexity along with her, so she really felt like she was undertaking the same journey that Harry was - because she was!

That's great in real time, but one wonders how it's going to work when people are able to snarf them down all at once. An eight-year-old probably won't find the later books quite as compelling, and the fourteen-year-olds may be turned off by the simplistic style of the early tomes. I'm not sure how it'll go down cold to people who never grew up with Harry.

Plus, the ending is good, but not the slam-dunk finish that we all wanted, with major characters hitting the bin without much of a wrap-up. And many folks think the prose is workaday (I disagree, but hell, it's there).

THE END RESULT: I think Harry Potter has the potential to survive. It also has the potential to become something you had to be there for. And I think it's too soon for anyone to really say.

So here's my question, since I'm obviously on the sci-fi side of things: What books published in the last thirty years do you think will still be read 150 years from now? I'm sure there are a lot of books I'm not thinking about, but remember that only a handful will ever make it. What's your take?

(EDIT: Vonnegut: Forty years ago. Madeline L'Engle: Fifty years ago. Not that I don't love these authors, but I'm curious to see what's been published since I've been reading....)

From A Yahoo! Article On Grand Theft Auto IV

theferrett@theferrett.com — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:58:54 GMT

"Game play includes simulated sex with prostitutes and drunken driving."

For some reason, that makes it sound to me as though the sex with prostitutes is simulated, but the drunken driving isn't. And I for one would be amused by the idea of a game whose gameplay element actually required you to get into a car, pound down a bottle of Jack D, and then head over the horizon wobbling as you tried to play GTA IV drunk off your ass at seventy miles an hour, balancing the gamepad on the wheel of your Camaro.

Okay. It'd be amusing until I met that bloke coming in the opposite direction. Then it'd be fatal. But it would be a game experience that no other game could match. Other games may claim to have realistic graphics, but few can promise to punch the broken end of a lamppost right through the bridge of your nose. That's realism with a capital "R." Followed by an "I" and a "P."

Will no one think of the children?

For the record, one of the best observations ever on GTA came from a friend of mine:

ME: "If Liberty City is such a shithole to live in, with murders and gang wars and such, why don't they move out?"

HIM: "Oh, yeah, you stash all your goods into a moving vehicle in this town and see what happens to you twenty yards out of the driveway."

ME: "...good point."

Bear Vs. Stearns

theferrett@theferrett.com — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:26:00 GMT

People like the idea of personal responsibility and morality. Nobody likes having to create laws, and it'd be a lot easier if everyone got the memo "Hey, guys, stealing is bad, don't do it, mmmkay?" and then just did the right thing. Unfortunately, if you break down society, generally it looks something like this:

20% of people get the gist of what you're trying to do and will follow the intent of the law because they believe in it;
20% of people actively oppose what you're trying to do, and will fuck folks over because they want to make a buck;
60% of the people don't care much one way or the other, and will do whatever's most convenient/profitable for them.

Which is why, when I think in terms of creating social policy, I think about incentives. Specifically, "If I were a guy who didn't give a crap one way or the other about the greater good of society, what would this make me more likely to do?"

As an example, let's look at my friend Josh, whose family tends to The Lusty Wrench, the eco-conscious car repair shop, voted the Best Mechanic in Cleveland several times in a row. They're all die-hard socialists who believe firmly in the environment, and they will go to extreme lengths to, say, find a recyclable part and take a little less profit on it. Furthermore, since they believe in socialism, they don't mind paying high taxes, because they think that's what all right-thinking people should do - give money to the government to help out the less fortunate.

The Lusty Wrench doesn't care that America has high taxes on small business owners. For them, "making less money" isn't a disincentive, because they're part of that 20% that's on board.

Joe Average Business owner, however, is not on-board with this. He's part of that 60%. And from his perspective, all he sees is that he's going to leave the current stability of his job, losing his insurance and 401k and other benefits, and go to an enterprise that might well fail... And even if he jumps through all the hoops and succeeds, he's going to have to hand a large portion of his profits over to someone else.

Why the hell should he bother taking that risk, then? He'll probably just stay at his day job.

Because I believe that small businesses are where a lot of America's innovation comes from, I'm mostly for reducing the taxes on small businesses. Given that there are a lot of disincentives to start a small business already, I don't want more of them. I want to give people as many reasons as I can to start up their own, so I support lowering those taxes. That's a very Republican sentiment, right up until you realize that one of the main reasons I want socialized health care in this country is because I think the Terror Of No Insurance is an even bigger disincentive for going out on your own, and a major reason why large corporations (which can bludgeon and cajole for better insurance) can steal away small business employees.

So what I wind up with is often a mixture of things that I think will ultimately nudge the uncommitted in the right direction. That's why I'm for hiring more police, because I think that ultimately passing laws and not enforcing them leads to people taking the law less seriously. But I'm also for much greater control over the police, because I think whenever a cop beats someone and bypasses the whole Constitution to take the law into his own nightstick, it also leads to people not respecting the law.

Got it? For me, it's all about what's going to incent neutral or evil people to do what's best for society. Because I don't believe that most people have society's best interests at heart.

Now let's talk Bear Stearns.

The gummint recently bailed Bear Stearns out because, well, they'd chosen to serve as a sort of warehouse for a ton of crappy loans, and as it turns out the loans were worth pretty much jack shit because all sorts of scumbags were aggressively selling loans to people who didn't know any better. Said scumbags knew that they were selling to people who couldn't possibly pay for their home loans, but they didn't care because all their profit was made on the front end of the loan deal. They made their money, then handed off the IOU to someone else, and skedaddled, leaving tons of toxic loans hanging about.

And before you start in on "People should have known better," please may I remind you that my wife is a bankruptcy lawyer. Every day she returns home shaking her head, telling me the stories of how poor people without much knowledge of finances were flat-out lied to about what would happen. And I mean "lied to," not "misled."

Yes, I know that the only thing that counts in a loan is the signed contract and everything else is dross, but why do I know that? Because I have upper middle-class parents who were good enough to tell me this, and I was lucky enough to be born into a society where this sort of financial stuff was common knowledge. This is not the case among the poor, who don't frequently have to negotiate contracts. Expecting them to understand that the man from the bank (as they understand it) is not just going to give them a bad deal, but actively screw them, is a little much. Responsibility must fall on the shoulders of those who sought out the gullible to exploit.

In any case, there was the danger of a bank run. Remember, banks don't actually have Scrooge McDuck's millions stashed away - most of their cash is forever out on loan to others, being circulated through the economy like haemoglobin through blood vessels. The fact that Bear Stearns might turn out to be worth zippo concerned the government, because it might lead others to believe that their bank was worth nothing, which could lead to the bank runs that caught on during the depression.

If we all ran to our banks right away to withdraw our money, we'd discover they don't actually have it. And if we all tried to do it, the financial system would collapse. And Bear Stearns was being rumored to be insolvent, which was causing panic, so the government walked in and poured billions of dollars down the throat of Bear Stearns to rescuscitate it and save us all from ruin.

The problems here are twofold: First, as bonerici has noted, if the government was handling out money to save people, it probably would have been a much nicer idea to say, "Okay, rather than giving money to the corporation, we'll instead give the money back to all these poor folks who owe debt on the loans that Bear Stearns holds." Because if you had $250,000 in loans to Bear Stearns, the government just spent several billion to keep them in business so you can continue to owe them money.

It would have been a lot nicer to say, "Okay, here's $250,000, tax-free. You can only use this money to pay back Bear Stearns. Now you're out of debt, they're out of debt, it's even." As it is, if you had a home loan with them, you can thank your government for still having it.

But even leaving that aside, I have an issue with the incentive here. Yes, I understand what a bank loan would mean, and how terrible it would be (darlox has a writeup on it that I think outlines it well.) On the other hand, from an incentive perspective, the lesson to greedy financiers who operate at the edge of (or outside) regulation is loud and clear - and it is this:

It doesn't matter how badly you screw up, the government will bail you out.

Which means, effectively, that we're telling financial companies, "Go fuck up. Badly. We're here to protect you, because we're terrified of what happens if you fail." And I do have an issue with that, because I haven't really seen evidence that years of funding to Detroit has saved American cars. I think once you effectively give people a big blank check to go, "We'll fix it," you encourage people to do really sloppy work.

The problem with capitalism is that it's not really a stable system. It tends towards system-crushing monopolies unless you fight it tooth and claw with regulations, and it tends towards an ugly swell-and-fall whenever there's some sort of vast sea change. And though I certainly understand the reasons why we'd want to avoid something as large and terrible as a bank run, I'm not certain that avoiding them at all costs is the healthiest thing ever, either.

darlox thinks that what we need is clearly better regulations and transparency to make the system work - if Bear Stearns had to have their assets fully revealed, this wouldn't have gotten bad - but I find it ironic that a man who dislikes government and constantly tells me how it doesn't work thinks that "more regulation" is the answer. I think, unfortunately, that the guys at Wall Street are very smart, and have constantly found new and wonderful ways to dodge government regulation for years. The incentive for "more regulation" is not "be more open," but instead is rather "find some way to get around this stupid government rule so we can make money."

This would be an excellent place to wrap up with a clear and clever solution, but sadly I don't have an easy answer. Bank runs are bad. But at the same time, capitalism works only because it's a Darwinistic system where the least competent fail and are purged, and having a system that says, "Well, if you screw up, we'll keep you in the game," makes for something that, I think, will cause a lot more constant problems in the long run. We've told Wall Street that hey, you're really critical, leave the morals to other people - you just try to fuck people over for money. And if you're sufficiently important, we'll bail you out.

From an incentive? I'm not really happy about that, either.

Uh-Oh

theferrett@theferrett.com — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 22:06:05 GMT

I have a lot of work to do next week, I really do.

But the first reviews of Grand Theft Auto IV are coming in strong, and that's not good for my productivity come Tuesday.

Must... resist.....

Things I Have Learned This Morning

theferrett@theferrett.com — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 15:10:57 GMT

1) Neil Gaiman's advice by way of Harlan Ellison (as raved about by blazepoet) is absolutely spot-on. My face is clear of stubble and baby-smooth.

I will also note my barber's advice: Shave down, then pull up the skin and shave up against the grain lightly. "Don't be afraid to pull up hard," he says. "Make it taut." And by God, I'm not going to argue with a man who holds a straight razor against my throat every three weeks.

2) "Hellion/Electric Eye," by Judas Priest, is one of the most enjoyable metal songs on all of Rock Band. And it is impossible for me not to dance around the room when I'm playing it.

3) My sixteen-year-old daughter is obsessed with Mass Effect, and watching her play over the past two days has taught me that in fact, gaming styles can be passed from (step)father to daughter. When my kid started playing a decade ago, she was a thorough wanderer, and even at age ten she was spending literally days traipsiing through the first level of Mario 64 without ever actually getting to, y'know, the game.

Now? She's adopted my razor-goal of Get To The Damn Ending, and she only counts games that she's completed. And she complains about the exact same things in game design that I do.

It fills me with both fatherly pride and a bit of terror to hear my voice coming from a teenaged girl shouting at the wide-screen TV, going, "DAMN CAMERA! I WAS LOOKING - OOOH, I SHOT THAT DANG THING, I SHOT IT!"

Question For The Crowd

theferrett@theferrett.com — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:21:46 GMT

In my D&D Planescape campaign, one of the characters has a Chaos Blunderbuss - a gun she designed from purest chaos. It changes shape to adapt to whatever environment it's in, seems to move whenever you take your eyes off of it, and has bizarre and unearthly effects whenever she fires it.

In game terms, it's a Wand of Wonder - and thanks to the Encyclopedia Magica, I have no fewer than seven tables to roll on for bizarre effects. Yet that is not enough for me!

So I ask you, my readers, for a little help. Give me some crazy things a gun of purest chaos could do when shot. The Wand of Wonder entry has some suggestions as to power levels - it's not going to destroy a city, but it could conceivably fuck up a demon pretty badly. On the other hand, it could also cover him in pistachio ice cream. Which might, in turn, be bad if said demon is susceptible to cold.

I want a really big table to roll on, so if you have any crazy and creative ideas (that can be expressed in a single sentence or less), shoot!

The Loveliest Five Decades

theferrett@theferrett.com — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 14:21:37 GMT

Dear zoethe,

Thirteen years ago, I was living in the loneliest place in my entire life. I'd moved away to Michigan to take a job that wasn't quite panning out for me, having left my family and friends behind. I was from New England, which meant that I was happy to talk once I was introduced as a friend, but after six months I still hadn't gotten the knack of forming the words, "So do you wanna go out for drinks after work?" So I had zero friends except for my girlfriend, who also had zero friends because she'd moved out to be with me...

And honestly, we were rubbing a little thin on each other.

Bored one night, I took my modem for a spin, putting in the 3.5" sampler disc to load the CompuServe forum software. I hopped online, went to the chat rooms, and found the Star Wars forum. And suddenly, I was home.

The first argument I got into was an extensive debate on how dumb the trench run in the first movie was, because why the hell did they take this suicidally long path down the heavily-defended center of the equator, spending twenty minutes flying through a killing tube of death? As I'd always thought, someone was arguing that they could have skimmed in five hundred yards away from the exhaust port, unloaded in a jiffy, and jetted off home.

It was dumb arguments like this that saved me. I wasn't sure how to make the transition from "work" to "real friend," and I never have been, but Star Wars was something I could do. So I got into huge debates on the meaningful details of the books, the movies, Lucas himself....

...and you were there.

The thing is, you and I could never just argue about Star Wars. Somehow, when we talked, no matter how we tried to keep it to science fiction we invariably spread out to touch such other disparate topics as religion, politics, abortion, and other bits. And we almost always disagreed. Our politics were incredibly different, so we went at each other hammer and tongs - dissecting each other's approaches with a scalpel and then bashing them into bits.

We spent so much time going head-to-head about world events that eventually, the moderators started moving us off the Star Wars forums. And to keep it there, we had to start adding in Promenade Protection Lines to ensure that they didn't move us - "Like the arid surface of Luke's home planet Tattooine, the Middle East is also a resource-poor environment with one thing propping up its economy..."

You never held back. I loved you for that. If I was wrong, you'd blast me. If I got a fact in error, you'd always call me on it. I considered you one of my best online friends because dammit, you were the most honest and perceptive person I knew.

And we did that for three years.

Eventually, my girlfriend left me to go back home to Connecticut - but by then, I had thankfully managed to pick up some good friends, so I finally had some actual physical people to talk to. I dated around for a bit, finding people I rather liked, and had a good life.... But I still went to the Star Wars forums every night before I went to bed because that's where my other friends were. I had two separate lives, with two separate bits of gossip, and they were very separated.

Then I got the email. You were in the process of divorcing your husband, and someone let on that you were starting to see other people. In fact, you'd been flirting heavily with one of the other members of the forum. And suddenly, I had a realization. I shot off an email to you at 11:00 at night, the words flying off my fingers before I could stop them:

Dear Gini,

Don't you realize the reason I've never flirted with you once is because I've always been half a heartbeat away from falling in love with you?

Oh, I couldn't sleep that night. Because it was true. You'd noticed that I never took any attempts at an innuendo, never signed off a post with *hugs*, never did anything affectionate online. You'd told me that I seemed distant sometimes. But though I didn't even know what you looked like - I'd never seen a picture - you had a brain that was something so compelling that dammit, I was furious that I never thought that hey, we were both either single or on our way to be, maybe I should explore that.

I kept refreshing the screen, because maybe I'd made a mistake. Maybe I'd just crossed the line and lost a friend by skeezing her out. Maybe I'd shared too much. I tried to relax, but I had to know what your response was - and your was on Alaskan time, so you were four hours behind me. I kept clicking in a frenzy of terror, hoping that I hadn't blown it.

And the response I got back was purest Gini:

Dear Ferrett,

I'm flattered. I've always been the biggest member of your fan club. But before we continue, I have to ask a vital question:

Are you drunk?

I wasn't. I was serious. And so were you. And we started talking about things.

It wasn't easy. We had distance to cover, and flying out to Alaska wasn't cheap. And we weren't committing to marriage, just a strange form of e-dating and attraction, which is heartbreaking. I burned for you all the time. We spent endless hours on ICQ, chatting into the night, trying to get by on different times and different lives. And eventually, after only a handful of visits, I knew:

I wanted to marry you.

The concept had always seemed like a press-gang chain before, some restriction - I'd had the traditional male yok of, "Oh, I don't wanna settle down" - but once I'd found the woman I wanted to be with for the rest of my life, suddenly "getting married" couldn't happen quickly enough. I asked. You accepted, even though you told me it was goddamned looney. How the hell were we gonna get together with your two kids with a life in Alaska and my career in Michigan?

The answer, of course, was that I'd have to move to Alaska. You had a life, and it was more entrenched than mine. And I'd uproot everything once again to be with you. So I left a good job, right after I'd just spent four years assembling a social life to go to another place where once again, the only person I'd really know would be the woman I lived with.

It wasn't easy at first. You know that. Online life isn't real life, and there were a lot of buried issues - my raging and blind insecurity, your secretiveness - that never surfaced over the wires. We argued a lot. We went, once again, hammer and tongs, except this time it wasn't fun. And after eighteen months, the spectre of divorce got raised, but there was one thing that kept us together:

We liked each other. We always did. We might not have been sure about the marriage, but we didn't want to tank the friendship.

That saved us.

We moved back to the states, to Ohio, and settled out the last of our bumps. And the amazing thing is that it's gotten better every year. I can't imagine life without you. I can't imagine how much lessened my life would be if I hadn't sent that email, and I remain amazed that someone as wonderful as you said "yes" to me.

I'm more in love with you than ever. You're my friend, my lover, the woman who I admire most, and yes. I am the biggest member of your fan club, and always have been. But you knew that.

And today? You turn fifty. You're still as lovely as ever to me, and still as amazing, and I'm just so fucking glad that people like you exist on this planet.

Unfortunately, this year at Penguicon I wanted to give you a special present: I wanted to break a larger present up into twenty golden eggs, then hand them to people we knew at the convention to have them hand them to you whenever they saw fit. I wanted the world to just be mystical for you that weekend, where strangers and friends alike would give you parts of a larger whole that would assemble into something grand and wonderful... But I couldn't think of what I could break up into twenty parts to fit in twenty eggs. And so that moment passed.

All I can do to make it somewhat special is to tell you that I love you. Which I do. And to wish you the hope that the next fifty years are even better, and that every day I wake up and go, "Christ, I'm going to spend the rest of my life with this woman. This woman I met in a forum. Who still argues and fights with me on a daily basis."

I love you, sweetie. Happy birthday.

- T.F.