GRABBINGSAND

so far, i’ve gotten six of them. six postcards from six strangers, all of them appreciated. go look.

it is wednesday in atlanta, the middle of the workweek. no different than the next or previous day, other than the ever clearer view toward the horizon that assures us all that a weekend is approaching. about the only noticeable wednesday event is the morning distribution of creative loafing, atlanta’s free weekly newspaper. every wednesday, the stacks of creative loafings are replenished in front of the restaurants on ponce, in the no-change-required bins in front of buddy’s and various other places around metro atlanta. the topics range from music scene reports to theatre reviews to pseudo-exposés. like this one. from today.

go ahead and read. i’ll be here when you get back.

finished? good. now, i don’t know the accused, not personally. and as his trial is pending and since vultures are lurking for textual flesh, i will refrain from using the accused’s name in this context. i will say that i have been to staff meetings that were run by the accused, and i saw the accused about once a day during the 2000 dragoncon, often as he was making his way across the concourse to deal with some problem or another. my impression was that he was a very busy person with little time for any social interaction that had nothing to do with the operations of the ‘con itself. his name was dropped on a regular basis by conventioneers and guests that were of a mind to escalate an issue that might be troubling them, or to get assistance that was above and beyond the call of duty. i heard his name often, saw him in passing some and never had any actual contact with him. and i do not think my situation is a rare one. conventioneers were concerned with themselves, each other, the attending celebrities and the events scheduled over the four-day span. the group was practically self-steering and self-sustaining.

the 2001 convention was different in that not only did i still not have contact with the accused, i never saw him and only heard his name mentioned in an occasional whisper or accompanied by a perplexed and slow shaking of a head. as the accusations came in the year or so between the two ‘cons, the accused was removed from the mechanics of the convention, not attending even a single organizational staff meeting prior to the event. a successor was placed in his stead, and the ‘con came and went as planned, perhaps better than any that had come before. for four days, two of the larger hotels in downtown atlanta played host to a 20,000 member freak show of stormtroopers, elves, klingons, goths and trenchcoated loners, and not just professionally, but graciously. when asked what she thought about the costumed spectacles that constantly passed her desk, one concierge replied, “oh, this is nothing, and i’ve seen worse at the chamber.”

what is most troubling about the upcoming trial is that the public will be unable to separate the accused from the convention he helped to found, though it is obvious to those who have participated that the convention can, will and does survive without his involvement. and continued support of the convention itself should not in any way be misconstrued as an automatic belief in the accused’s innocence or guilt. yet blanket assessments like the one in this article do nothing to bring focus to this blurred stance.

“For [the Dragon*Con community], a convention is more important than children,” [Nancy Collins] says. “The con geeks don’t take it seriously and now they whine that this scandal makes fandom look bad. It does, but the cover-up makes it look worse.”

actually, i believe that the benefits of the convention are more important than the apparent sins of one man. and i do take it seriously, but if there is a cover-up, i have no part in it. i know nothing to support the defendent or the plaintiff in this case. however, i do know that the continued association of the accused with this convention, the largest in the southeast, perhaps the best of its kind, can only result in the ruin of something that is very special in the lives of so many people. the geeks, the nerds, the quiet kids, the brainiacs, the freaks… the ‘con belongs to them, and for four days they have license to let their flags of allegiance fly wildly. and when it is over, they’ll go back to their classes, back to their jobs, back to the blue-glow of a computer monitor and back into their shell. these are fascinating people, and the accused is no more their wizard than harry potter is a real boy.

especially in this case…

live and direct static from the bbc, this is radio webcam london.

you can’t bake them cookies, but you can certainly visit. over to the right, you can see that i have joined a couple of webrings. these act as communities of like mind or similar concept, and they are usually good for providing you, the occasionally aimless wanderer, with a new destination for your ever-seeking eyes.

jish runs one. jish is good people in my book, and from him i received an email politely asking that members of his webring give mention of the neighbors to the “left” and “right” of our site. and so, i am obliging this request.

So if you have the time and feel the motivation, say “Hello” to my webloggers webring neighbors.
» to the left of me: so gifted.
» to the right of me: talia’s musings.

there may be nothing new under the sun, but i love it when someone can take the things we already know and make them seem almost alien and utterly fascinating. like underground DJs in the UK creating unlikely collaborations like kylie minogue and wham and grandmaster flash through no-holds-barred remixing. if you make it through the sample track, go here and download some more. the best one i have found so far?

freelance hellraiser’s “a stroke of genie-us” — combining the strokes with christina aguillera and making her sound more like liz phair than britney’s rival. (sort of via MeFi)

wizards of the coast is entering the realm of online role-playing, or perhaps simply online-gaming with a an MMORPG-version of magic: the gathering. and the gimmick is this: you play online with virtual decks of cards that you purchase online for the same price as actual physical cards. a pack of 15 cards is about $3 or so at your local hobby shop, and it will be so online for a “pack” of 15 “cards” that you can use in the game. a premade deck of 60 cards costs $9 in the real world, and a ready-built “deck” will cost $9 on the ‘net. and the manufacturer’s response to cries that the user will be paying actual money for virtual property? from their press release: “will include an innovative feature that will enable players who have collected full sets of online cards to redeem them for full sets of physical Magic cards.” in other words, you have to compete until you have the full run of a set of cards, and then you can get the real things. and a full set of cards can mean anywhere from 75 to 300 or more. the purpose, they claim, is to give players the option to play online or actually. but really, if you have spent all of this online energy mastering the game in a virtual setting, are you even going to want to play with a real opponent with your hard won cards? it would be like placing the champion of a fishing video game in the middle of a real lake in a real boat and expecting him to enjoy the experience of catching real fish.

you need a little background information and perhaps an introduction to some concepts. you’ve got role-playing games, like dungeons & dragons and vampire: the masquerade and the like. (actually, those two are only alike in the most basic sense, as comparing the execution of each is like comparing painting in oils to sculpting in clay — both are artistic endeavors, yet the product of one is nothing like the product of the other.) anyway, role-playing games are social activities, regardless of whether you’re sitting around a basement table or skulking around a rented warehouse. they require the participation and cooperation of more than one person, usually a group. descended from role-playing games are card-based role-playing games, pokemon being the most well-known these days. prior to the introduction of pokemon, the be-all end-all of card-based role-playing games was magic: the gathering. and while magic: the gathering can be played in a group setting, it works best and is geared for head-to-head play between two people. unlike pencil-and-paper role playing games (like dungeons & dragons) magic: the gathering required no dice rolls, no referreeing dungeonmaster and almost no setup time. if you had a deck of cards, you could play. it also required no character-immersion, no play acting — a key component in live-action role-playing games like vampire. known as a trading card game, the original intent was for players to purchase and acquire cards to build individual decks to employ against other players, the prize of any game being an ante’d card from each player’s deck. but still, even with two people, it is a social activity. the mid-90s advertisements (carried on MTV) claimed that all you needed to play magic: the gathering was a deck… and a friend.

the other spawn of old school role-playing games was the computer-based adventure game. the earliest incarnations in my memory were the text-based games produced by infocom. they gave you a simple description of your surroundings and offered limited interaction with that environment through one- or two-letter directions (N, SW, NE) or two word commands (look box, get fish, kill grue), most of which were ignored or impossible. gradually, graphics were integrated into the games, usually pushing the text to the bottom of the screen. and as personal computers became more powerful and more affordable, the games became more and more realistic and immersive. the internet gave the added option of playing online against another player, or even in cooperation with another player, someone across town or around on the other side of the globe. but despite this development of an online community, the computer-based role-playing game is not a social activity. it is a single-player game being approached from many different first-person points of view, and it lacks the reality of any interaction with another physical human being. this is not to disparage the games or the players, only to make the point that the computer-based adventure game is an outlet for the individual and the social role-playing game is a group activity.

will this succeed? based on the track record and sordid history of wizards of the coast, it is hard to say. they will have to please two disparate camps that often intersect but rarely at the same predictable points. and if they are as truly out-of-touch with their target market as they seem, now that they are blinded by their allegiance to pokemon and the ease of selling to a pre-pubescent demographic, this venture might be a straw that breaks the camel. or the dragon, so to speak.

by the way, i have a couple of boxes full of neglected magic cards that a fair price could win… anyone? anyone?

for the first time in over five months, the fountains in front of my building are working. a bubbling underline to a relatively good day.

this is the word of the day. namaste. say it with me. nah. mah. stay. look up from where you are sitting and say it to the next person that passes. namaste. see what kind of reaction you get. most likely, something along the lines of a sidelong look or a puzzled “what?” that stops halfway through its execution — wha..? then it is up to you to decide whether or not not reveal your sources, to explain your new word. and it is a good word too. i have known it for a couple of months now and i could have sworn that i shared it earlier, but i have poured over my archives and i come up with nothing. so, to continue with this intermittent series featuring occasional scraps of found enlightenment, let me introduce you to this new word.

namaste. a hindu word that can be used in greeting or in departure. like aloha, only not nearly as much of a verbal caricature. it is used to describe a means of contact between two people, something like a handshake involving the clasping of hands close to the heart and a slight bowing of the head. it acknowledges both humanity and something greater. the word itself is variably translated, but even loosely its meaning is striking, and it is this meaning that i most admire:

“I salute the Almighty within you.”

if this seems a bit too “within you without you” for your tastes, then just think of it as a simple acknowledgement that the person before you is more than the sum weight of their flesh and blood, that there is a mind in that skull beyond the nerves and synapses contained, that there is a heart in their chest greater than its four chambers, that there is a soul inhabiting that body that makes them more than just a base-model human.

another translation:

“The Great Perfection within me honors the Great Perfection within you.”

and though the word namaste is based in indian philosophy, the sentiment is echoed in western thought with temet nosce. a latin phrase, far more familiar in english. know thyself. it seems self-centered in comparison, but by examining the self, we acknowledge the importance of the individual which should then carry over into our dealings with others. each one of us an individual of worth.

(and yes, it is on the sign in the oracle’s kitchen in the matrix. you have to love pop culture…)

so there you have it. a new word for the day. namaste.

if you look to the right, you will see that i’ve added a new menu entry. imagery. imagery is just a linked list of most of the collected photo pages i have posted in the last three years. eventually, i will get around to scanning and uploading some earlier pics from the days prior to digital cameras and photo CDs, and this is where you will find them.