The Dragons in my Garage

Pete Prometheus - Olympus PEN E-PL1 Contest

2010-06-13T18:42:00.001-05:00

We've got five days left! Everybody follow through, vote thumbs up/like on Youtube, and pass these on to your friends.

Scraps 02: The Cargo Cult of Human Relationships

2010-05-03T23:40:00.003-05:00

“So what do you think my problem is?”

“You ever hear of the Cargo Cults?”

“I’ve heard the name, not much else, though.”

“Well, they break down like this. In World War II, both the US and the Japanese built air bases all through the Pacific. Suddenly both sides are flying in goods that the natives had never seen, oftentimes sharing it with the local guides and such. Only since it was a war, there weren’t any missionaries or anthropologists to explain what was going on to the natives. They could only watch, puzzle and take what cargo they were given.”

“Interesting enough.”

“Problem is, the war ended, and the cargo stopped coming. For the natives, this was all magic and these cults started springing up that imitated what they saw the Americans do to bring the cargo. They built faux runways, did military drills with mocked up or salvaged weapons, carved coconut headsets and worked wooden radios. They imitated the behaviors they saw, hoping to bring cargo from the gods, without knowing what any of the real meaning of the activity was.”

“Wow. That’s weird as hell, but why bring it up.”

“Because that’s you.”

“What?”

“That’s you with women, heck, it’s you with people in general. You’ve watched everyone interacting your whole life. You understand scraps, you imitate the little rituals. You’re funny, you pay complements, you wink and nod and smile and laugh at bad jokes… but there’s a disconnect there. That’s why it doesn’t work. That's why you say the wrong thing or just spin your wheels. You’re the cargo cult of human relationships.”

He didn’t respond. He just sat there, looking somewhat depressed and frustrated. Part of him was clearly searching for a response but the rest was trying.

“There is a bright side.”

“What?”

“Sometimes… when a plane got struck by lightning or got lost in the dark, the pilot would look out and see a runway complete with lights. It didn’t matter that the lights were just torches and the runway packed dirt. It was close enough. You see. Sometimes… just sometimes… the rituals worked. Sometimes the cargo came.”

Scraps 01: A Score to Keep - Why the Heroic Fantasy lives on

2010-04-29T13:39:00.004-05:00

Armchair Psychology follows.

The appeal of the heroic fantasy, by which I mean the defeat of evil (be it in mortal or monstrous foes) and the completion of quests is common in men of my demographic (for lack of a better term). White knight syndrome in male/female relations is more than common despite its general irrelevancy and its lack of overall success.

The reason is simple. Human interaction is, largely, a game. Its rules, however, are not written down in any satisfactory way and there are exceptions and cheats across the board. The result is a deeply unbalanced playing field, in which the disadvantaged not only fail to achieve victory but are, in that failure, denied psychological essentials to human survival.

The appeal of heroism, then is obvious. Denied absolute rules, the holder of the fantasy longs for a different game. The fantasy of heroic deeds brings the nebulous realm of romance into the concrete and measurable. Young men, especially, often unable to determine how to increase their own value on the market are sure to want something more concrete. He longs for sexual currency, a scorecard for human interaction to replace the baffling subjective chaos that courtship appears to be.

Heroic deeds are pretty straightfoward in theory. An obstacle is overcome, a foe slain or subjugated, an innocent rescued, a quest completed. Success is measurable and a clear account of worth. That is what the hero-fantasist really longs for: a measurable account of self-worth for evaluation from within and without. It appeals to ancient longings. "Of course I'm a good mate, I just killed a goddamn sabertoothed tiger."

For the modern B-list fellow, there is always that point, amid the awkwardness and embaressment, that he wishes that he could just fight a hydra instead.

-Trent

A Liberating Foolishness on a Cold Winter's Day

2009-12-24T23:46:00.001-06:00

I’ve never been much for Christmas. For reasons I won’t go into here, my mother’s side of the family didn’t celebrate. They had alternative fests. Much like pork, it was the sort of thing I never quite got a taste for. It isn’t that I dislike the holiday, it just wasn’t important. All Christmas really meant was spending time with friends and/or family, and sometimes, the giving and receiving of gifts. Any religious or traditional significance beyond those acts is more or less superfluous.

This Christmas, however, had a certain uniqueness thanks to the weather. Oklahoma rarely has white Christmases. The snow and ice tends to come more in January, and usually in the form of crippling sheets of ice and sleet rather than in the white, powdery snow children dream of playing in. This December 24th, however, the snow came down hard, laying down more than four inches in an evening, and trapping myself and my friend Russ Trippett inside what was, for another week or so, my house.

Earlier in the evening I’d driven the half-block to his house to see him, and we decided to go back to my house for dinner. I had leftover pizza, and there was fun to be had with good company. Coming back to my home, it had taken a herculean effort to move my car into the inclined driveway. In the end, it was stuck and barring a change in the weather or a concerted act of several physically capable individuals it would remain there indefinitely.

When it came time for Russ to leave, he called his folks to come get him. This was at about 10 in the evening, and we rationalized that the roads would be good enough for them to reach my house and drive back, so long as they didn’t attempt to navigate the inclined driveway that trapped my own car.

After about ten minutes, Russ’s iphone rang.

“I’m stuck.”

I could hear a bit of the conversation from across the room, through the tinny, muffled speaker of Russ’s cell phone. His father had gotten stuck in the snow. We had to mount a rescue.

A lack of typically snowy weather tends to equate a lack of snow-ready clothing. I threw on a long sleeved knit shirt, donned my coat, thick socks, my sneakers, an extra t-shirt wrapped around my neck like a scarf and a pair of work gloves to keep out the cold. I topped it all with my only winter hat; a bright orange toboggan with “hat of shame” knitted into it. A gift from my college days, it was a drunk hat, to be worn by the person in the dorm who was, at that time, the most inebriated.

Thus, Russ and I set out in the cold. The snow had stopped coming down, but the wind still blew. The white snow and the thick clouds reflected the city’s light into an unnatural twilight and our vision was no more obscured than it might be on a cloudy afternoon.

Anyone who has ever been a boy can tell you that there is an exhilaration that comes only from doing amazingly stupid things. In the false-twilight of the winter snow I felt it in my bones. I laughed with each step, relishing the crunch of the snow and the tingle of wet and cold. Yards and streets were blown over with an even coat of snow. One footstep would sink a few inches, another almost a foot. We came up a rough hill, and saw Russ’s father in his car, stuck on 29th street.

Russ’s father was trapped in a six inch drift of snow that made street, curb and yard all into one unbroken plane. The cold and the absurd situation conspired to bring out the best in me. I laughed as, digging with gloved handsm we cleared the snow away from the tires. Braced against the ground and the bumper we shoved the car until it moved backwards, only to find it trapped again. Back and forth we pushed and shoved the vehicle, sliding it slowly down the hill.

Partway through our adventure, Russ’s mother appeared. She had walked from their house with a bag of kitty litter to provide extra traction. Again we pushed, shifted, and pulled. The car rolled slowly downhill.

“Keep going, don’t stop.”

It stopped and was stuck again. More digging, more pushing. I fell down as the car pushed out of my hands and rolled backwards. As the car drove slowly backwards I waved my arms and jumped about as though I were directing planes on an aircraft carrier. The wind snapped my pseudo-scarf into my face, blinding me as I shouted muffled directions. The shirt was hard as cardboard, layered with ice crystals and flecks of snow.

Finally the car was far enough back it could turn around and return home. Russ’s mom handed me the kitty litter to help me move my car and, not knowing what else to do, I took it and started walking home.

As I walked home, I thought of old stories I read in school. Most notably, To Build a Fire. Overcoming an obstacle with raw force and wit brings to life a feeling of power and accomplishment. Awash in the adrenaline high of the physical exertion and the tingle of the now everpresent cold and wet I trudged back home. Our footprints were already gone, reduced to small ruts by the sweeping wind that carved steppes and valleys in miniature in the shadow of electric reindeer lights and argon street lamps.

If this weren’t a city, if I were in the wild I imagined, I wouldn’t have found my trail back to camp. I imagined myself the archetypical hero in one of those old stories. I imagined the mundane, essentially silly set of circumstances, into a romantic adventure, complete with a beautiful girl waiting in some far-off place, wondering if I’d ever get home. ‘If I fall down and succumb to the cold right here’ I thought to myself, ‘would I have time to send a call for help, or perhaps my goodbyes, in a text message?’ I wondered if that would be poetic enough, if it would make a good enough story. If you die doing something stupid you ought to at least leave everyone a good story.

Thankfully, this adventure was a small one, a simulation of a larger man-against-nature struggle. While capable of stirring a form of nostalgia in the ‘racial memory’, it wasn’t capable of threatening my life. I wasn’t going to fall down and die in the snow. I wasn’t going to get lost and seek shelter in a fallen tree or an abandoned suburban. I could see my house from there, my car barely pulled into the driveway. Still, I felt like a man, brave and powerful, as the failing light glanced off the snowflakes that happened to face me.

The whole world sparkled like a snapped piece of white quartz.

In retrospect, if we’d just walked to Russ’s house, the problem would have been solved and the whole affair concluded with hot chocolate. We had done something foolish and soaking wet, encrusted with snow and blind from my glasses fogging up, I felt alive.

The Video is Complete! Behold FROGSTAR!

2009-12-11T00:03:00.003-06:00

We finished it.

Our first music video, for the Darkest of the Hillside Thickets' music video contest. I've got a good feeling about our chances. At long last you can see what we've been slaving over, and see me as the terror from space.

The Kids Are Losing Their Minds... the BlitzWING Bop!

2009-11-17T11:22:00.002-06:00

My 9th official Transformers prose tale, Blitzwing Bop, is now up in the members-only area of the Official Transformers Collector's Club. It's a Shattered Glass "mirrorverse" tale done in the style of the old 80s cartoon. My Co-Writer, Greg Sepelak, and I put in a lot of hard work on it.

Since Blitzwing Bop is members-only, you'll have to join the club to read it (and you should!). If you want to read some of my other TF fiction, however, the New World and Force of Habit are both available for free.

Check it Out.
-Trent

I'm making a career of evil.

2009-11-12T16:59:00.002-06:00

Having officially had 'enough', I've decided that my previous motivations in life were largely misdirected. As such, I've decided to move towards my back-up plan: villainy.

Now, as I see it, I need the following things to be successful as a villain:

1. A theme.
2. A series of bizarre hang-ups to use as a motivation for unfocused revenge.
3. Henchpersons.
4. A new wardrobe and 'villainous style'.
5. A doomsday device.
6. A stack of evil schemes.
7. A nemesis.

I am taking suggestions for all of the above, and I'm taking applications for #3. I specifically need interchangable goons, eccentric assassins, and a second-in-command.

Trent's Evil Organization, Ltd. is an equal-opportunity employer.

Ro-Man, Ro-Man, Ro-Man... Keep them doggies Ro-man...

2009-10-25T23:55:00.003-05:00

As everyone knows, I have a certain affinity for the stumbling avatar of monstery failure, Ro-Man. To this end, I present this (Click to Enlarge):

Dream Journal: In Soviet Union, Myth Busts You! / Night of the Living Mammoth

2009-10-25T13:33:00.001-05:00

Tonight’s dream came in three major sections.

The first and second ‘chapters’ were connected by a similar theme. In the first part, I was on a composite of the various Enterprises from the various Star Trek series. The ship was under attack by various enemies of the crew members (Khan, the Borg, etc) who seemed all but undefeatable. In this part I observed more than interacted, and the crew eventually discovered that the phantom foes didn’t know anything their counterpart crewman didn’t. It was shown that these beings were manifestations drawn from their minds, and, as the source of these constructs was being found, I was kicked into another dream.

In this dream, I was in a massive building that was like many stores tacked one against the other, one of which was a giant country-and-western themed gift shop. It was here that I was confronted and captured by the cast of Mythbusters, who apparently needed me as a living subject to test some sort of explosive catapult. Apparently, Buster was unavailable.

In what seemed to be an odd continuance of the previous dream tacked on to a bout of semi-lucid dreaming, I engaged Kari Byron in conversation, explaining that I didn’t think she or any of the others were the real deal. In dream logic, this meant they didn’t have jurisdiction to try and blow me up. Kari asked that I put it to the test (keeping in character) so I asked her which was the right pronunciation of her name ‘Kay-ree’ or ‘Kar-ree.’ She wasn’t sure, and I pointed out that neither was I, but it was her name, and if she wasn’t sure how to pronounce it, it’s a good chance that she was molded out of my knowledge. A follow up in which she didn’t remember her own middle name proved that the whole thing was pulled from my subconscious brain. I was immediately released.

Unlike the crew of the multi-Enterprise, however, I was less concerned with learning the identity of my tormenter than I was with attempting to willfully amend my impression of Kari Byron into being the type of woman who would be interested in me.

The alarm clock didn’t cooperate and I didn’t find out if that worked.

Hitting the snooze, I decided to try and go back into the dream, a tactic that never works. This time, instead of being back face-to-face with a perfect simulacrum of Kari, I was in one of the business zones of the great city of the Dreamscape. Ah, the Dreamscape, recurrent environment of my subconscious mind since I was eight, how I’d missed you.

The people of the city, which included my friends Russ, Nathan, Shawn and Lacey. The city itself was under siege by wooly mammoths. The town had apparently been under mammoth attack for a long time, since everyone was used to just getting off the streets when the mammoths came. My friends and I were apparently on a school trip to this town, and when a mammoth came, we just ducked into a Quiznos and waited. Only the mammoth in question had a particular dislike of me, personally, and leaned against the front of the shop until it caved in. What followed was a typical monster/zombie movie scenario (small group on the run from relentless un-killable monster), but with a single wooly mammoth standing in for the zombies.

By the time we started stockpiling weapons to fight the mammoth, I awoke.

Flea Market Adventures

2009-10-05T02:02:00.004-05:00

This saturday, Travis and I went to the flea market, as we often do. Once upon a time, the core of my Transformer collecting was the flea market. Around 1996, when I started collecting again, the line was lucky to produce 26 figures in a given year (for reference, the first wave of figures for a given line now approaches those numbers. Thankfully, I'm not a completist). And there was a lot of older material to pull together. So the flea market was a great place to go for TFs. It was also before a lot of nostalgia collecting hit hard, so figures could be found relatively cheap, and I had the sort of time on my hands where I didn't mind buying six figures in crappy shape to combine the good parts off them into one, good condition figure.

Now, the flea markets are primarily a source of raw material for the Pete Promethius film production. I buy a lot of helmets and nerf guns and broken electronics that wind up being costume parts, ray pistols and control panels for an imaginary spaceship.

Well, this weekend I had one of the better 'classic' Flea Market runs, wherein I go and I find stuff that I like for a great price. In this case, I found what amounts to about five sets of Heroscape, for four dollars. For the whole set.

All this in addition to three new nerf guns to make into ray pistols. A good haul indeed.

And now, to counterpoint that rather dull brag at my ability to find nerd-supplies on the cheap, I give you a routine by Dara O'briain:

Welcome to my nightmare, whoah-oh-oh-oh...

2009-09-21T01:21:00.003-05:00

I've spent the last week in a period of self-reflection. In all honesty, I probably could use longer, but I'm not able to take more time off from work and money will become an issue if I linger much longer.

Ever since the trip to California, I've been weathering a lot of discontent. The majority of my ability to cope with the life I've been living has been due to a false assumption that the level of discomfort I had was largely universal. That there really wasn't anything out there that was much better. This is demonstrably false. I was inspired, and I've accomplished some great things since then.

But there's also been a bit of a slide. Hope, it seems, can be somewhat toxic when its held just out of reach. I'd also let myself have too much of my self-worth get tied up in elements of my life that simply don't matter. I'm looking to resolve these things, but it is a new war now. Last Monday, I lost a battle in that war, and I've been recovering. I don't know if I'm going to be able to weather, psychologically, that battle again, but I'll find out soon.

Alice Cooper put it well.

In unrelated news, I bumped the back of my bumper against a post, scraping the paint today. It is an irritation, but hopefully I can touch it up and it won't be so noticable.

-Trent

Slacking: I excell at it.

2009-09-09T16:11:00.004-05:00

Ok, apparently, I've let the blog thing slide.

I'll preface my apology with an excuse. I've got a lot more on my plate lately. Video Projects (Actual Video you can watch will be up soon!), more comics (more details to come, Yo Joe!), secret projects (darn NDAs) and all the old stuff on top of that.

And yes, Champions Online.

To this end, I've been letting things slip and I'm sorry for that. The IP policing at work has been stepped up, so a lot of my 'type while bored' projects have been torpedeoed. If you've been feeling neglected, its not you, its me, and I'm going to be trying to keep up.

I promise an angry rant or three sometime soon, as well as the self-congratulating braggartry you've all come to know and love.

-Trent

Everything is Different

2009-06-08T14:31:00.002-05:00

To those who want to know how Trentmas went, don't worry, I'm going to be reconstructing a full account shortly. I have other more pressing concepts pressing on my brain in the meantime. Foremost of these is this:

Everything is different.

Normally, Trentmas is a much needed break. For a few scant days I'm kind of a big deal, and then I go back to being just some guy on a phone. The process leaves me refreshed and ready to weather the storm until my next Botcon. I dream about it. I long for it in my metaphorical heart. The friends, the events, the sense of freedom and joy... they all mix together with the sense of unbridled discovery of an unknown place.

This year, however, Botcon/Trentmas isn't a much needed break. It is a sea change.

There has always been this lingering, nagging voice in my head. This voice would say that every place, every life, would be roughly the same, and as such weathering my current existence was the best I could hope for.

But I've seen, first hand, that there are better things. My humid pit of misery and failure is a unique prison, and there are things beyond it, greater in scope and magnitude, that I have but to reach out and grasp. My soul-crushing job is a fetid, meaningless lie that is beneath me. And in this realization, the shackles begin to crack, and my ascendancy begins.

As such, I reintroduce myself to everyone here.

Hi, I'm Trent, maybe you've heard of me. I'm kind of a big deal.

My Uncle Truman

2009-06-02T11:37:00.003-05:00

I know everyone is waiting for news of my trip, and it will come in a large, well-thought out post. I don't have internet very much out here and so I have to keep things short until I get back to Tulsa. This, however, warranted borrowing a computer.

My uncle Truman died yesterday at about 3:30 in the afternoon. I say died for a reason, because "passed on" fails to express the loss that I, and the world itself, is faced with. My uncle Truman (actually my great uncle) was a remarkable man. He lived longer and better than any human has a right to hope for, and was my inspiration in many things. Even in the twilight of his life he was teaching watercolor painting to the others in his shared community. He was a strong, noble man, and is worthy of remembrance.

He is survived by his wife, Mildred, and a large family that includes myself.

In other news, my sister was in a car accident. Fortunately, she is alright, even though the airbag failed to deploy. I am relieved beyond all knowing that she is going to be well.

-Trent

It's beginning to look a lot like Trent-mas...

2009-05-23T09:11:00.004-05:00

Greg arrived in town yesterday, and we're geared up and ready to embark on a quest... A quest to find the true meaning of Trentmas, and to put an end to Snarflawq, the dragon of vaguely-defined despair.

The second element of this quest is made more difficult of late, however. Since Obama's election, Snarflawq has taken up residence at Fox News Headquarters, as it is now all all-you-can-eat buffet of vaguely-defined despair for him. Also, its well known that Snarflawq supports tax cuts for the rich and gay marriage.

Now, long trips are always a point of panic at their earliest stages. Everything must be gathered up, checked, doublechecked and then stowed in some fashion that makes it able to be located. And if you forget it, its miles away by the time you remember. As someone who operates poorly with this human 'memory' thing, the essence of panic is tangible. I think I've got everything packed away and ready to go.

For those who are keeping tabs, today is the first day of Trentmas. As such, its time for you all to set up the wreath of regrets, in Trentmas tradition. For those of you waging the War on Trentmas (and I think you know I know you know who you are), a wreath of regrets is a wire hoop that you fasten your regrets to (in the form of notes scribbled on grocery store receipts you saved for Science-knows what reason). Throughout Trentmas, as regrets come to you, banish them to the wreath. At the end of the holiday, the wreath is burned or fed through a woodchipper to be used as pet-cage liner.

This symbolic act has a noticable placebo effect and will keep you regret free the whole year long.*

Today's Trentmas Carols are Livin' in a Box, the dirge of Keyboard Cat, and Bananaphone.

Well, its that time. I'm gathering up my +2 sword of stabbing and we're going after the dragon that's trying to eat Trentmas. Merry Trentmas to all, and to all a robot-filled night!

-Trent

*This blog post does not consitute medical advice. 'Year' as expressed may refer to a literal year or one of the following: cat years, dog years, horse years, mouse years, tapir years, fruit-fly years or capybara years. By reading this blog you have surrendered your right to sue in favor of arbitration. All aribtration will be delivered through an angry bear. Offer void in Wisconsin.

Trentmas is just around the corner!

2009-05-21T13:47:00.003-05:00

That's right folks, there's only two skulking days until Trentmas, the annual celebration of Trent Troop going on vacation. Now, being raised as unwashed heathens you may not know about Trentmas, but I'm going to lay out the basics for you.

When is Trentmas?
Trentmas comes but once a year, except when it doesn't. The exact date and length of the celebration varies, being based upon the largely unused Buscemiean Calender that the Catholic Church deemed irredeemably non-linear in 543 AD. The exact method to calculating the Trentmas season requires the combined efforts of forty blind monks using a single, triple-sized abacus. Thanks to the miracle of numerology, the one pure pseudoscience, the length and location of Trentmas on the calender coincides with a number of factors, primarily the variable rates of hotel costs and the schedule of a giant transforming robot convention. These coincidences prove the sacred nature of this wondrous holiday.

Where is Trentmas?
This year, Trentmas is a 16 day festival involving a pilgrimage to Pasedena, California. In previous years it has been in Cinninati, Providence, Frisco, St. Louis, and so forth in that fashion back through history. The pattern is obvious, and the next location can easily be deduced, provided one has forty blind monks and a giant abicus.

But I'm not going to Pasedena! Does that mean I can't celebrate Trentmas?
Of course not! In fact, there are only two possible positions on Trentmas... you're either celebrating, or you're part of the War on Trentmas. You don't want to be a member of an unpopular outsider group that is routinely accused of attempting to tear down a ritualistic celebration out of a sense of obligation to rationality, facts and fair play, do you? Of course not. So get ready to party like it's 1859!

What are the Trentmas traditions?
The major traditions of Trentmas are:

1) Going to a giant robot convention, and experiencing fellowship and shared interests with Trent and his many awesome friends.
2) Buying gifts for oneself. Typically, these gifts are robots or mind-shatteringly obscure bits of 80s and/or Japanese merchandise. Liberal sects also purchase self-gifts of booze, video games, exotic foreign confections and miniature toiletries.
3) Not engaging in the drudgery of a day job.
4) Pretending Trent is far more interesting and fun than he normally is (also known as 'seeing through the veil')

Now, those are the most fundamental traditions, and require that one be a part of the pilgrimage to Trentmas. If you aren't going, or you don't know Trent personally, then you can still celebrate in the following fashion.
1) Wishing that you, too, were not at your day job.
2) Engaging in traditional Trentmas games. These include Dungeons and Dragons, Smash Brothers (any variation), Space Quest III and competitive napping (the person with the best combination of depth of nap, length of nap and quality of erotic dreams is the winner)
3) Singing Trentmas Carols:
* Rush's Tom Sawyer.
* Herman's Hermit's Henry the VIII.
* Schnitzelbank
* The Theme to Batman, no, not that one, the annoying one.
* The entirety of ELO's breakthrough concept album Time.
* In the Hall of the Mountain King, sung acapella.
4) Drinking Trentnogg and sharing happy times with nerdy friends.
* Trentnogg is Root Beer (or Dr. Pepper, for our friends south of the border and in Europe), Dark Rum and a shot of Jagermeister. I strongly suggest making it fresh, as the store-bought just isn't as good.
5) Inventing affectionate but surreal nicknames for friends and well-wishers.

There's going to be more on Trentmas. Depending on time and internet access, you will all be witness to my ultimate Trentmas blog. Witness as I and a host of friends embark on a journey of self discovery cross-country. Its like Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas without the drugs.
Actually, wait, its more exciting than that.

-Trent

The newest Winner - "But it couldn't have been my pets..."

2009-04-07T13:38:00.004-05:00

I didn't take this call. I wish I had. This one comes courtesy of one of my coworkers, name withheld to protect the innocent:

Caller calls in. Laptop is showing a blank screen, but when its closed and then opened the machine is, like magic (I won't say which kind), covered with a yellowish, crytalizing liquid.

Now, the caller was quick to point out that it couldn't have been her animals that did it.

How did she know? She tasted it.

I told my coworker to pass this on that if the caller felt strange in any way to immediately contact poison control. Mmm... liquid crystal. I wonder what DPI she gets on her liver.

-Trent

Rockets are Go!

2009-02-15T23:56:00.004-06:00

A little Sneak Peek at a Project in Progress:

-Trent

A Worktime First:: Caller Brings Back the Classic Crazy

2009-02-10T11:14:00.003-06:00

There comes a point in every skeptic's life when he is confronted by the ultimate abortion of skepticism: the conspiracy theory. I'm not talking about a 'found some wackaloon talking about this on the interwebs' kind of confrontation. No, what I'm talking about is speaking to someone who casually brings this kind of thing up as if it were fact.

Now, there are conspiracies in the real world. At the core, however, they are unglamorous, dirty affairs that crumble and are exposed by the ineptness of their fellows. Insider trading is a form of conspiracy. A religious cult is a conspiracy that may contain others. And there are conspiracies of governance as well. Say it with me: "Nixon".

But these are painfully mundane conspiracies. They're limited in scope and for the truly devoted headcase, they lack the glamor and spectacle that makes the horrible mundaneness of their lives worth living. Price fixing in the oil industry is just simple greed. It doesn't make a bland middle-aged accountant the subject of attention from sinister external forces that perceive him, inexplicably, as a threat that must be observed and silenced.

Today's caller of note seemed like a regular call with a nervous new user. His new computer won't shut down, it says 'installing updates' and sits there. I informed him that the first batch of Vista updates (complete with the service pack) can take hours. Comforted and ready to wait 5-6 hours for it to update, he seemed ready to go. Until I asked him if there was anything else I could help him with.

What followed wasn't not a question, nor a statement, nor a description. It was some indescribable mutation of language that was fascinatingly insane yet completely incoherent. I will sum up the major points of the caller's delusion here:

1) Zone alarm is actually spyware, integrated into the system by the government.
2) It connects to secret cameras hidden in the computer's fan.
3) This has something to do with the systems being sent over seas for spying purposes. Or perhaps foreign governments are in on this. Like I said, incoherent.
4) These cameras are also hidden in new cars.
5) "Well, maybe I shouldn't be talking about this over the phone."

My first impulse is to debunk these hallucinations one at a time. But this guy thinks a laptop fan has a camera in it. A camera that would point away from the user, possibly down into a desk or into a lap, at all times.

Even if the government was interested in your activities, they wouldn't point the super-secret spy camera at your junk. If they want cheap voyeur shots, they'll install the camera in your shower. Then the antichrist and his one-world government cronies can laugh about your excess back hair at their leisure while plotting to control the banking system and corner the market on fezzes and tiny, tiny cars.

-Trent

I am the Cham-peen of the World!

2009-02-05T16:09:00.002-06:00

Today, I cost a man $750 dollars, or so he'd likely tell you.

I was doing my job, which is largely coddling people who, with minimal effort, could solve their own problems. The sterling customer of the day was a fellow who, apparently, was an entrepreneur of some stripe. He did not want to do the troubleshooting. He was thoroughly convinced that his printer was broken beyond use, and he was not going to waste time with troubleshooting because his time was worth one thousand dollars an hour.

I stifled my impulse to laugh mockingly.

Let me just say that I don't think anyone can seriously claim that they are worth one thousand dollars an hour. People may be paid more than that, but really, at that point they should just embrace the fact that they're scamming and deal with it when the annoyances of life (of which I am apparently one), come at them. Screaming at a traffic jam that its costing you roughly 16.67 a minute isn't going to make it move faster.

Well, since I wasn't dealing with some sort of alternate-universe Gillian Anderson who had turned to high-dollar prostitution to keep going after the cancellation of the X-Files, I felt the claim that someone's time was worth $1000/hr was not really worth taking seriously. Personally, I find the implication that I should prostrate myself before the wishes of people who make more money than me laughable. If anything, it makes me spiteful. I am, after all, only human (despite my better efforts). If you really make twice my yearly salary in a week, you have no right to complain about cash related matters.

Nevermind that you aren't worth anything. You make what you make, but you only deserve it if you do the work. A cut in what you expected to make is a disappointment, but it isn't a loss. The money doesn't belong to you by divine right.

I make $11 an hour, no matter if you get troubleshooting or not. What people in general need to remember that it is know-how, skill and talent that is real power. Money just lets you rent know-how, skill and talent from people more capable than yourself. In the land of the overpaid technical inept, the underpaid tech support agent is King. And I can be a cruel and spiteful king when provoked.

Spite, in this case, is not required. I simply informed the penny-pinching dunce that unless he went through troubleshooting I wouldn't be able to dispatch. At this point his claim lost its foundation. A man who really is worth a thousand dollars an hour would have hung up and left me alone at that point, cutting his losses to buy a new printer (also, $199.99 junk printer is really not what someone of such esteemed status should be using, don't you think?). He didn't.

In the end, after 45 minutes, and thus $750 dollars of his fictional fortune, the troubleshooting fixed all the problems. I was right, he did as I commanded, and the problem was fixed. The mighty font of human wealth was forced to grovel at the hourly wage slave's beck and call. A triumph for all persons of the lower middle class.

$1000/hr. Seriously, one wonders how someone who honestly believed that could stand to go to the bathroom. A fifteen minute break for a number two would be a loss of $250 dollars of potential profit from the penny faeries of the Lost Kingdom of Hypothetica! If he's not there to take their lucre, they'll simply toss it in the streets where poor people might use it for booze and condoms!

Actually, not going to the restroom in order to preserve that precious, precious gold might explain his attitude.

-Trent

Today is: Surreal and Somewhat Depressing

2009-01-26T14:02:00.002-06:00

Today, we do not have a new winner...

However, I did get a call on the Online Services tech line I work at. It was from a guy named Matthew. See, Matthew works for Circuit City as an on-site tech, and was asking us if he could come work for us.

That's... weird and sorta sad, really.

I can only take solace in the wisdom of my good friend, The Phantom Dictator of the Planet Krankor. "I will arrive tomorrow night at precisely eight o'clock. At that time I shall make my wishes known to you. You will obey them... or die! Have a pleasant night's sleep... HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!"

That Krankor! What times we had.

Shockingly, we have a new winner.

2009-01-13T12:13:00.003-06:00

I thought the guy who didn't know of the shift key was going to rule from his gilded throne of staggering incompetence for much longer than this (I think Barney Frank's campaign headquarters gets a special trophy, so it doesn't quite count in the normal running.)

The new winner, the woman who called me to get the phone number used to call me. This was not a transferred call.

I know being ESL (English as a Second Language) excuses certain failings of communication, but basic fundamentals of logic are supposed to be pan-lingual.

-Trent

The Grandfather Clock - S. Trent Troop

2009-01-06T12:54:00.005-06:00

Once upon a time, there was a young woman who had gone on a few dates with a young man of modest income. He seemed like a good fellow, but the relationship was not serious. This was in no small part due to the young man's punctuality. He had a habit of setting dates for precisely 6:37, but would show up minutes, or even hours, early or late. It was rare that he ever arrived on time and when he was in the general ballpark it was largely due to other obvious factors, like the position of the sun in the sky.

After the seventh or eighth incident of this type, the young woman came to her boyfriend's home with the intent of giving him a piece of her mind. When he let her in, however, her gaze was drawn to an old grandfather clock in the foyer. The hands were stuck at 6:37.

"I think," the young woman announced. "that you are in need of a new clock."

"But that clock belonged to my great-great grandfather. It's been in my family for generations. It is a part of our history."

"Then perhaps it could be fixed?"

"Fixed? But look at its fine carvings, the artistry, the quality of the wood and brass. No one makes these parts anymore and it would be a terrible shame to have to change such a piece of art."

"Oh, well if its just there for aesthetics and tradition, maybe you could get a new clock, one that is accurate and actually runs, to tell time and keep the old one around to look at." The woman was getting exasperated but for the sake of the man's feelings and out of respect for his sentimentality she didn't let it show. Or at least, not much.

"Ah but I don't need to. My clock is perfectly accurate when it is 6:37."

The woman thought about this for a minute or three and, without another word, simply turned and walked away. Under her breath she resolved that the next young man she asked on a date would have the sense to own a digital watch.

Warning: Religious Ranting

2008-12-18T12:03:00.002-06:00

Good o'l PZ's blog, Pharyngula, led me to this wonderful little tidbit: A church in Jacksonville is threatening to air a member's private sex life (a divorced person having sex with a new boyfriend, btw) in the middle of church services in punishment for her 'sins'.

What is telling isn't that a religious organization is blackmailing a member to control their actions, nor that it sees nothing wrong with this kind of bullying, nor that the victim sees the particular church, not the insipid ideas that drive it, as the source of the problem and is ready to move on to a new church in response.

What is telling is responses to the story, in which the misanthropes that support branding a woman who is not married as an adulterer (gotta love that Bible-logic) claim that this news story is a plot to paint all Christians as lunatics and whack-jobs.

Attn Churchy-Type Folks: You believe in an all-powerful voyeur who manipulates your life and simultaneously hides from all scrutiny. If you didn't have thousands of people who share this 'belief' you would be in a sanitarium. There aren't 'crazy' and 'normal' religious beliefs. There's only moderately harmless and less-than-moderately harmless variations on the crazy.

---

On a second note, George Bush recently hacked off his religious base by stating that he wasn't a biblical literalist, even though that's what got them on his side. Now they feel all betrayed and tricked.

Man, what sort of religious figure would lie about religious belief to cultivate power, money and influence from the gullible?

Before we delve too deeply into that, maybe we should work on a more simple problem. Perhaps this: What sort of fish would stoop to obtaining its oxygen from water?

-Trent

Attention: Your insipid giggling demeans us both

2008-12-12T10:52:00.002-06:00

I'm accustomed to people not knowing obvious things when they call in for tech support. Typically, when someone calls in, they're aware of their own level of titanic ignorance and there are three common reactions. The first, and most common, is hostility. Confronted with his or her own lack of knowledge, the caller reacts with unveiled hostility and defensiveness. The second, and least common, is to simply accept the lack of knowledge and attempt to move forward. The third is to be apologetic and submissive.

You would think the third option would be the most pleasant for the person providing assistance. It is not. The apologetic ones tend to overlap the "I'm computer illiterate" group. These are the people who have no trouble admitting that they're cretins because they don't want to change. They're proud of it, because it means someone else can do the work. They keep tech support in business, but they also keep the techie's cardiologists and psychoanalysts in business.

Yesterday, I met a new subset of this group. I had several calls that all went the same. The caller, by the sound of her voice, was in all cases a woman in her late twenties to early thirties. In all cases she was utterly ignorant of basic computer processes (the star of this had her computer for eight months and just found out how to turn it off from the start menu last week. Yes, it was vista, but all it takes is one web search to find it out. For emphasis: Eight months.)

And in all cases, they'd make the statement of ignorance, and then they'd giggle. "Oh, I'm pretty much computer illiterate. Tee-hee-hee."

I didn't notice it much the first time but it kept on happening. It dawned on me that this person wasn't giggling nervously. They were attempting to be cute to compensate for being uninformed. I don't know that she was doing it on purpose and I suspect it was simply habit. The sheer gall of the tactic, however, was demeaning in a way the caller did not realize (or at least, I hope she didn't realize). The assumption was that I, as a man, would be lured into a more helpful position if she came across as a helpless twittering little girl. A secondary assumption was that acting like/being a bimbo would cause her mistakes to be more easily forgiven.

Sorry, you're just a user, I assume you know nothing and are are undeserving of both a computer and a share of the planet's precious supply of oxygen. You don't need to be forgiven, because I expect so very little of you.

This person, were I to guess, went through life using a tittering, vapid persona to avoid responsibility and to dodge expectations of competence. People were fooled by this. They were more than willing to let her play the airhead. After a time, this became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Denied avenues of self improvement by her giggling faux anti-intellectualism, reasonable human expectation far outpaced her dazzlingly stagnant mental abilities. In short, pretending to be a bimbo has made this woman into a bimbo.

So I say to my small audience, please, when something makes you feel unprepared or ignorant, don't try to brush it off with a giggle. It demeans the whole species. Instead, accept the situation and take the time to learn and overcome. You'll find it is far more rewarding.

-Trent

A New Winner

2008-12-01T11:32:00.002-06:00

I normally reserve the 'new winner' posts for truly idiotic calls, brand new levels of stupidity that defy belief. Well, today, the level of moronic failure is defined not by the crime, but by the context.

Most people who have a business should have a backup for any system they can't do without. Typically, they don't. Their fax machine is the core of their communication with the outside world but they only have one and they can't comprehend that a warranty replacement process might take time. despite the warnings in the freakin' warranty documents.

So "but our fax is our lifeline! We don't have another!" isn't epic stupidity.

Unless you're Barney Frank's Campaign Headquarters.

Seriously.

-Trent

Spam Header Deconstruction Theatre: Be a Hero In Bed!

2008-11-21T12:39:00.003-06:00

We all get spam, and a lot of it is puzzling.

For about a year, I got Spam, in Russian, trying to sell me graphic design services (thankfully, Google Translator let me know, with reasonable assurances, that I wasn't being targeted by the Russian Mob). But that was relatively normal.

No longer content to promise me enhancements for my junk in a polite terms, the spammers gave gone to promising me superhuman powers to boot.

Recent Spam Headers in my Inbox:

"Want to be a hero in bed?" - From: Brent Larson
Normally, I leap at the chance to be a hero anyplace: At home, at work, in the park, at Dairy Queen, you name it. However, there has only been one hero who was a hero 'in bed'. And that was the Sleepwalker. His power was that when he was asleep, his mind manifested a dream-superhero that went around fighting a crime in various surreal ways.
What's that, you've never heard of the Sleepwalker?
Congratulations, you are what most people would call 'normal'. He's one of about six heroes who would regularly get made fun of by Aquaman. Rocket-Frikkin'-Raccoon has more fans than this guy. Same with Squirrel Girl (No, not making that one up). That gives me pause, even without bringing the skeezy single entendres into play.

"Explode her mind with pleasure" - From: Lucinda Colossus Cope
I'm not going to ruin this by actually opening the message, but apparently, Lucidna "Colossus" Cope (a halfway point between Charles Atlas and Dr. Ruth, no doubt) is offering me an opportunity to gain the ability to actually broadcast pleasure into the minds of others. This power is also, potentially lethal (though one assumes its a good way to go). Now, I'm sure someone out there has a Scanners fetish, but its not me, and if I'm going to make a person's head explode, its probably going to be with rage, not pleasure.
I apologize, Lucinda, but I will have to pass on your sinister psychic serum or whatnot. Your pretend name is, however, awesome.

"Power up your package" - From: Rebekah Kent Lay
Rebekah takes a different track. Rather than suggesting that I gain psychic powers of pleasure projection (Say that three times fast), she prefers the "Akira Toriyama" school of sexual mightification. In other words, I will be training in high gravity in order to 'power up' my package, which will no doubt involve a lot of standing around yelling while light flares up from unseemly places and rocks float slowly up into space.
Gratuitous reaction shots and eye-twitching are sure to follow.
This is a double-edged sword. This kind of Dragonball Z approach to power is more or less just a 'big overture, little symphony' kinda deal, but on the other hand, if everything goes all DBZ, then 15 minutes of action can be stretched across six episodes.

"Gain the monstrous dimensions" - From Joyce Hartley
Dear Mrs. Hartley,
I have recently received your offer to grant me dominion over monstrous dimensions. While I'm certainly tempted by the opportunity to breach the thin walls of reality and bring forth cephalopodian horrors from realms of mad angles to bring ruination on all mankind, I must decline, as I am currently forbidden by court order to come within 300 feet of any book with a title ending in 'omicon'. I wish you all luck in your quest to find a mortal dupe to liberate the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young from its eternal prison.
Ftag'n always,
Trent Troop

Hindsight is a Three-Act Play

2008-11-12T12:31:00.002-06:00

I don't remember events, I remember stories.

I find that the past, as represented through my retellings, becomes increasingly altered over time. I have a strong sense of the narrative. I am a story-teller at heart and my world view 'digests' (for lack of a better term) life into narrative. Real life has no narrative structure. It is a random series of chaotic events stemming from billions of independent causes. Beginnings, middles and ends are all defined in hindsight and are relative to the person or persons experiencing them. There are no morals, few soliloquys, and far too little ironic resolution.

But that's not how I remember things.

Warped by my writing bug and a cavalcade of fiction, I don't remember disconnected events. I remember stories. The involved persons become the character cast. The events become the major plot points and challenges, and different events are emphasized or ignored to form the traditional western narrative skeleton: prologue - introduction - buildup - conflict - climax - resolution - afterward. Lessons to learn are introduced and literary themes expanded on.

And I do this without intending to.

I wonder, are there painters who see their own pasts in terms of a gallery of finished and unfinished paintings? Sculptors with memories in clay and marble? Do senators see their own childhood in terms of politics? Are programmers even today shuffling high school recollections into organized lines with hosts of if/then statements and commentary hidden by brackets?

Or do we all just turn our history into stories?

Whatever the answer, I intend to embrace this process. When I rewrite my teenage years it will be a truly epic tale. I strongly encourage the supporting cast to simply enjoy their new history, as it is going to be much more interesting the second time through.

-Trent

I've joined the 21st century.

2008-11-11T13:24:00.001-06:00

I've joined facebook. Search me out and add me if you so desire.

And with that out of the way.

2008-11-05T05:05:00.002-06:00

Now that I've given the Republicans the Nelson Muntz laugh, I'd like to be serious for a moment.

I'm not certain where we're going from here. Politicians on the national stage don't like to talk about pride in their country as being conditional, but I'm not bound by that limitation. Pride is like forgiveness. If given out universally, without regard to to circumstance or reality, it has no meaning and it loses its value.

I haven't been proud of my country for the past eight years. Horrible things have been done in our names by worse people and the populace has stood idly by as the very foundations of our Democracy have been eroded. The United States has embraced fear. It has embraced mindless faith. It has embraced anti-intellectual thuggery. It has embraced torture, preemptive war, internal espionage, loyalty oaths and countless other terrors. And along those lines it has embraced the most shallow and subservient form of patriotism.

It is this patriotism that demands we 'support the troops' by not questioning their orders. It is this patriotism that says that the US is the Greatest Country On Earth(TM) regardless of its many failings. And it is this patriotism that finally failed.

I don't know what the future holds, but I know this: For the first time in a long time I am proud of my country because for the first time in a long time my country has done something to be proud of.

There is going to be a long road ahead. We have to rebuild and repair the damage done. There are criminals who need to be captured and punished and I hope that there is a will do so. President Elect Obama is not a perfect man or a perfect candidate but he strikes me as the right man for this time. It is cliche to evoke Kennedy here but I can't help but do so, perhaps in the vain hope that my generation will mean something the way the youth of that age did. If I even qualify as youth anymore.

True patriotism is bittersweet because for all of the swell of pride, it doesn't allow you to succumb to the easy high of tribalism and exclusion. There is responsibility there and the knowledge that maintaining this pride is not an easy path. I know now, however, that there will be millions on that same path with me.

-Trent

Suck it!

2008-11-04T22:10:00.003-06:00

A message to all Republicans.

Suck it.

Suck it hard, bitches.

A new age of justice and vengence is upon us. Even Fox has called it for Obama. Hagan just beat Dole, proving that you don't diss the godless without invoking the wrath of nothing-at-frikkin-all. Weep, gnash your teeth and curl up in Ayn Rand's dresser drawer, 'pubs!

I invite any interested to embrace their failure through the time-honored tradition of ritual suicide.

-Trent

The Merits of the 10, er... 3 Commandments

2008-10-31T17:28:00.003-05:00

Recently, in the midst of a theological debate, a friend of mine asked me the following question:

"Trent, tell me honestly, do you think the world would be a better or worse place if everyone followed the Ten Commandments."

Now, I thought about this for a bit. I didn't want to answer one way just to be contrary, but I find that my knee-jerk reaction and my pondered reaction were similar. My answer was "worse."

I feel, however, that this requires explanation. The common man is accustomed to think of the 10 Commandments as some sort of codex of essential morality, a sort of fundamental quanta of humanness that proves that its authors were, if not divine, at least nigh-infinitely wise. Never mind that the commandments are just a portion of the law laid down in the old Testament and that, if the Leviticus apologists (who are thick as flies and twice as irritating) are right, would be just as essentially eliminated by a wave of Jesus hand along with the rest of the old law. The people on the submissive end of the victim/victimizer religious dichotomy seem to think that the Ten Commandments are all you'd need to live well, and, to be honest, I find this is not the case.

So let us dissect the 10 Commandments as ethical laws, divorced of the idea of a supernatural lawgiver to give them extra weight. Of course if Yahweh was real we'd want to follow these rules (or at least we should invest in iron chariots, Judges 1:19) but that isn't ethics, that's fear of an omnipotent dictator.

Commandment the First: Do not have any other gods before me.

Inherently meaningless without a 'me' to serve as the God. Also, religious pluralism is ultimately ethically harmless. The only advantage of universal monotheism is an unopposed Priest Caste and, arguably, a bit more societal homogeny. This gives us some wiggle room in regard to the value of cultural diversity but ultimately, this is irrelevant authoritarianism by the Great and Powerful Oz and, in my option, would simply make the world worse off.

Commandment the Second: You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

Often summarized as the 'no graven images' clause, this is again, just religious powerbroking. On one end, yes, it would free up a lot of resources and man-hours currently spent churning out Mary Merch, Plastic Jesuses and Smiling Portraits of Saint Reagan of the Republican party. And if universally applied, then anything that reduces religiosity would be considered a good rule of thumb, but just as you can't legislate morality you can't legislate rationality. This fails as well, stop trying to sabotage the competition and show me some product, Jahova!

Commandment the Third: You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

I'm sorry, but at no point has "all must love and speak respectfully of the leader" been a positive social rule. Controlling speech and expression, sweet batter-fried baby Jesus on a spit, that's definitely going to make things worse. What's next? Thought crime?

Commandment the Forth: Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

We're four in, and not a single one that controls anything except the means by which one must prostate themselves before supernatural authority and, by extension, its earthly representatives.

Commandment the Fifth: Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

Ok, now we're to something resembling ethics. "Be nice to mom and dad". It only took us halfway to the list to hit something of social significance and yet its still pro-authoritarian jackbootery. I love my mother and my father. But they screwed up a lot, and they weren't even that bad as parents go. Should all people honor their parents, no matter how irresponsible, abusive, idiotic, neglectful or criminal they happen to be? Authority that isn't earned isn't ethical, its an open door to abuse and irrational control. So I toss #5 on the chopping block and head into the 'meat' of the commandments.

Commandment the Sixth: You shall not murder.

Sometimes rendered "Thou shalt not kill." Finally, an ethical rule, and one that is nigh-universal in societies the world over. This one gets the thumbs up, and would get a bigger thumbs up if it weren't for the fact that it specifies murder. "Thou shalt not Kill" is a bad translation, since there are plenty of acceptable means of dealing death according to the Bible, they're just not considered murder.

Commandment the Seventh: You shall not commit adultery.

Adultery is a betrayal of one's wife or husband or hufe or wisband or whatnot. Presuming, of course, that's the agreement. I'd say that betraying one's spouse by cheating is bad. It hurts feelings, causes conflicts and can cause issues with children and (other) STDs. But not everyone is in a monogamous relationship. I don't do the 'open relationship' thing personally, but some folks do. And if that's the agreement both spouses aspire to, then considering what they do criminal, not just a bad idea, but criminal, is silly and authoritarian. Can't support it without a lot more clauses, and this is one of the short ones, in both Exodus and Deuteronomy.

Commandment the Eighth: You shall not steal.

The theft of property is all but universally considered a bad idea in terms of societal norms. Gotta agree with that. For those keeping track, that's two.

Commandment the Ninth: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Well, this is often simplified, rather stupidly, to "Thou shalt not Lie". Actually, its an admonition against perjury, or, at the most expansive, lying about one of your own. For the sake of being generous, we'll ignore the 'your neighbor' clauses and assume that everyone, not just the persons in your own particular tribe of G-d fearing shepherds is to be given the benefit of these rules. Defaming others and lying in court are harmful, we have our third rule that yes, would probably make things better if universally applied, provided, of course, the subtle push for tribalism is ignored.

Commandment the Tenth: You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Well, I was wrong. Thought Crime wasn't next, it was just coming. Wanting things other people have is a crime. Fantastic.

This sounds like a good idea on the surface. If you don't desire other people's things (insultingly enough wives and slaves are considered things one can own), then you're not going to be tempted to take them by force or trickery. This is often seen as the linchpin of the whole ethos. Don't want, and you won't be tempted to bad action to get. Too bad there are several flaws here. There are so many flaws, in fact, that this, the most unassuming of commandments, requires the largest rebuttal.

Firstly, this rule is impossible to follow. Desire is not something one controls, it happens, and a reasonable approach to modern psychology indicates that this isn't because we're morally corrupt or we're all evil misers waiting to happen. It is because we're wired that way. We want things that will give us advantage. Its our choice what we do with those impulses. This is, in essence, thought crime, and I can't support it solely on that level. Moreover, its presence is used, more often than the monstrous concept of 'original sin' (inherited criminality, would we tolerate that, even for a second, from a mortal authority? Or, more accurately, a mortal authority that doesn't claim to be speaking on the behalf of an immortal authority?) to ensure that everyone is guilty of something all the time. One cannot prove oneself innocent of thought crime, and thus the Church-Complex has something on you all the time. They need only have the will to act on your invisible and intangible wickedness.

But this exercise, which is the idea of everyone, universally, following these rules, actually allows for this prohibition to work, no matter how ridiculous it is in reality. To explain why, even in this scenario, the 10th Commandment is a hideous thing requires a little setup.

There's a lot of talk of why the Soviet Union failed. The most plausible reason, on a fundamental (and probably over-simplified level), that I have heard, however, is that it failed because of a crisis of motivation. With everything under state control, and everyone equal (except for the more-equal party leaders), there was no competition. No reason to stand out and do better than others because the rewards are all equal.

The story goes that a Russian Diplomat was amazed when his lodgings in the US had to be repainted. The painters did the whole place in a day. He marveled that the painters were so quick, since in Russia it would have taken a week or more. He was then informed that, since the painters were paid by the job, they had good reason to get to the next one. Their quality was due to the need to ensure that if their services were ever needed again, they'd be called back. This is the so-called 'enlightened self interest' that the MegaCapitalists like to shout about while they fight over the opportunity to sniff Ayn Rand's panties. Allowed to flourish unchecked, it is just as bad as the extreme in the opposite direction, but as a fundamental human motivation, self-interest and localized group interest (my friends, my spouse, my children, my family, my tribe) cannot be denied except by the most dewy-eyed Pollyanna.

The 10th Commandment takes the Communist system up a notch. It doesn't eliminate rewards and thus undermine the desire to achieve. It instead goes straight to the root of the problem and rips out the very desire to have nice things. What this Commandment dictates is not a sense of security with one's own possessions and position, but a lobotomized lack of desire for anything better. Enacted to its fullest, this Commandment, more than any other, would grind human progress to a halt. Thus, it can't be considered a good or positive thing in my eyes.

If I see my neighbor's car, and its a very nice one, I will want something like it. This doesn't mean I'm going to steal his car. Even without legal ramifications I wouldn't do that, as my ethics are derived from empathy. But wanting that car would, however, make me do what I could, legally, to buy one of my own. Or perhaps a better one, or even a less nice one that is more suited to my needs. This applies to all material goods: houses, livestock and other belongings all in sum total.

I don't count wives or slaves, because ownership of human chattel in any form is fiendish. Once a being reaches a certain point of mental development (I may address this point in a future essay on what it is to be human in regard to abortion rights and transhumanist definitions) a person owns oneself, according to my moral estimation. One needs only the most basic shreds of empathy to come to that sort of conclusion. That said, anyone with the Internet, eyes and at least one functional limb has likely coveted more than a few wives.

Conclusions

What I find most telling is what isn't in the Ten Commandments. Where is "Thou Shaft Not Rape?", "Thou Shaft not Vandalize" or "Thou Shaft Respect Thin Neighbor's Privacy"? Nearly half of the Commandments exist purely to put the Almighty Alcoholic in the tops position with his Codepedendant Mortal spouses. From there we have three universally good ideas (one with qualifications that makes it far less ethically useful) and three ideas that sound sort good on the surface until you really start thinking about them.

The world might yet be a nicer place if everyone followed the Three Commandments (No murder, no stealing and no perjury), but those aren't unique ideas by a long shot.

Spore or Less

2008-10-30T15:57:00.002-05:00

Everytime I want to post about Spore, the temptation to do a bad pun for the post title is too much and I back down. But not this time.

I won't go into a big time review of Spore. Its simplistic in some ways, but is really fun in others. I've started a 80's Nostalgia Sporecast, which should surprise all of nobody. Its big, but it still needs expanding. He-Man has helped, what with the swarm of monsters and vehicles, but there's still more to do. Some stuff, the Popples, the Carebears, the Gremlins, I'm holding out on until the Creepy and Cute parts pack hits, but other stuff is just dependent on me getting around to it. I'm debating whether I want to go with Thundercats or MASK for my next big update push. The goal is that, eventually you could theme a game after my Sporecast and encounter nothing but a hallucinatory swarm of mis-matched 1980s cartoon strangeness.

In the meantime, look upon my works, ye normal, and despair:

A minor thought.

2008-10-17T00:10:00.004-05:00

I promise to fall in love with the girl that sings to me the way Natalie Merchant sings.

There is a 70% chance of similar results when one substitutes Stevie Nicks for Natalie Merchant.

October in Essence

2008-10-16T00:13:00.002-05:00

Today, I walked out of work and felt the first blast of cold wind of the year. The sky was shrouded with clouds and all my senses were overwhelmed by a vague sense of nostalgia. I touched something deeply beautiful and infinitely bittersweet, a comforting swirl of sadness and contentment. In a brief moment I touched thirty Octobers that preceded this one, and felt a sensation that might well have been a rapturous religious experience in another context.

I stood for a brief moment and absorbed what I know as October, a sensation and an experience that is more than a point in the annual marking of time.

My only regret is that you weren't there.

Vote Your Subconscious!

2008-10-10T10:08:00.003-05:00

or... Obama / Troop '08 - Change Like You Wouldn't Believe!

A man once said that there's nothing more boring than another man's dreams. To that man I say... Havesomeathis!

Last night I dreamed that something had happened to Joe Biden. I'm not sure what, exactly, but Joe was gone and there was a spot open for the Democratic vice-presidential nominee. All this had gone down in the middle of a debate with Sarah Palin and a series of very odd events then followed.

First off, the ghost of my father apparently has great pull with the Democrats, and I was, thanks to his intervention, vetted within a few minutes and made the new vice presidential nominee, and ushered on stage. I was worried about the debate, but since Palin didn't answer any questions and couldn't question my credentials because she was trained to debate Biden, I coasted through pretty well. As if this were not strange enough, I then went to the white house hangers-on area. This was a massive sprawl of TVs, secret service agents and politically minded people wandering around the White House lawn.

There, I met Penn Jillette. He was performing death-defying magic for a pair of Japanese tourists (I think it was Hiro and Ando from Heroes) but I got his attention. He was reluctant to talk to me but I insisted that he was one of the few people who actually cared what the Constitution said, so I wanted his opinion. "According to the Constitution, do you have to be 35 to be President or just to RUN for President?" I asked. Apparently, my ghost-vetting had not brought up the age issue. His response was bizarrely philosophical and out of character. "Well, you're forgetting the much overlooked 12th Amendment, which states that all rights held by one citizen are held by all. As long as there is at least one person over 35 in the country, you can run."

When awake, I know that the 12th amendment actually has to deal with the election, but states quite plainly that I would not be eligible until the 2012 election.

He then continued: "Sometimes we are individual people living our lives, sometimes we are our entire species, a mass of apes, dying all at once. Sometimes we are both and sometimes we are neither."

At this point, I informed him that I was now in the running for vice president. He said he would not vote for me and left. I spent the remainder of the dream wandering around the sprawl around the White House, wondering how to adjust my wardrobe to fit my new role.

EXCALIBUR!

2008-10-01T12:15:00.002-05:00

At long last I have found it... The perfect blue-line pencil!

I like sketching in blue-line. Its easy to drop out during scanning and you don't notice the pencil lines as much so there's no ink/pencil confusion during the inking process. But the problem is that most blue pencils are terrible.

Prismacolor makes almost all of them. Oh, they work, in that they are blue and they are pencils, but the leads are, for lack of a better term, greasy. They're soft, lay on thick, smear easy, and worse: they repel water, and thus, ink. So you go through the process of inking something, but the ink doesn't stick. It fades when you go in to erase something or it just beads up.

I found a better blue-line pencil, though it took buying one each of all the blue line pencils offered by an online art supply store (it wasn't that extravagant, they cost about 50 cents each and there were only three varieties). Of the three pencils I obtained:

Pencil 1 is a Prismacolor Verithin 761 1/2 Non-Photo Blue/Bleu Inactinique. Same old story. Greasy, thick, soft as my midsection. Practically worthless!

Pencil 2 is a Prismacolor Copy-Not 1298 Non-Photo Blue. Getting warmer... this is an actual hard-lead blue-line pencil! The telltale sign is that this pencil has a real eraser on the end... one of the crappy pink ones. This pencil was made for architects rather than artistes (in my experience the architects get all the coolest supplies). On normal paper, this thing would rock. Sadly, I don't use normal paper for most of my sketching. I've fallen in love with a #234 Paris Bleedproof pad from Borden & Riley... the pages are like velvet and ink doesn't bleed on them, at all... but our Copy-Not's lead is too hard to leave much of a mark at all on the almost tractionless surface of the page...

Pencil 3 is our winner. It is a Staedtler Non-Photo-Blue 108 30 / 0 31901 10551 8. First off, its from Austria... which means it was made with that sort of Schwartzineggerian Knockoff of German efficiency. Its sales barcode is printed right onto the pencil in negative space between white lines for Genius' sake! No crappy sticker wrapped around the haft for this pencil! Moreover, the lead is the perfect balance of tone and hardness. No greasiness, not to light, not too dark and the line quality is beautiful.

All hail the new king of blue pencils!

As an aside, I've been considering posting art to the blog. Would anybody want to see that?

New Text Story Online

2008-09-17T16:54:00.002-05:00

Members of The Official Transformers Collector's Club can now read I, Lowtech, the latest TF story from myself and Greg Sepelak, in the members portion of the website. Here's the official Blurb:

The Official Transformers Collectors Club is excited to present the final installment from its trilogy of TransTech illustrated short stories by Greg Sepelak and S.Trent Troop. Noted Transformers comic artist Nick Roche illustrates this members-only tale with colors by Winston Bolen. I, Lowtech is the third text story set in the teeming TransTech Metropolis known as Axiom Nexus and serves as a follow-up to the previous two stories: Gone Too Far and Withered Hope. I, Lowtech also offers a glimpse into the final hours of the current Transcendent storyline which concludes this November.

Something horrible has happened in the depths of Axiom Nexus. Bulletbike, a member of the TransTech elite, has had his life stolen from him. His fevered climb to regain his position will take him from the lowest of the Offworld Zones to the heights of TransTech society amid mystery, madness and murder. You will see the rise and fall through his optics as his one-Transformer struggle against his faceless enemy brings him into contact with beggars, thieves, smugglers and a seemingly unstoppable killer.

All this and three, count them, three Swindles!

---

Hyperlinks have been added for the Transformers impaired.

Breaking the Chains of User-Created Content Exploitation

2008-09-17T12:41:00.003-05:00

Ok, I believe strongly in user created content. Heck, its the best way to get a lot of things done. Seriously, look at Spore!

But sometimes user-created content gets exploited. And that's the situation with Wikia, a wiki-hosting company that, up until now, hosted the Transformers Wiki. In short, because their advertising system was made to support a lowest-common denominator system, they began imposing increasingly limiting rules on how people ran their wikis, to the point that those hideous animated, noise-making ads started being put within the body of the wiki entries themselves.

That's right. You go to read about, say, Blitzwing, or, say, me, and there would be a two-inch square screeching monstrosity howling at you to buy Pringles like some rabid baboon. And this would be displacing, and in some cases, covering up content.

Well, it was Wikia's servers, so one might argue that they were within rights (though not ethics) to change their rules constantly and outright mislead their contributors (who, BTW, make their money for them.) But it was also within the rights of those contributors to beat feet outta there. And they did. The whole thing is now located at www.tfwiki.net, thanks to bold culture heroes like David Willis (the Shortpacked dude, as some know him). The wiki has taken control of its own destiny, and that to me is what the internet experience is all about.

I don't do much contributing to the wiki, since I currently have a hand in producing TF fiction. But I did write their press release for the move, I support their move and the motivations and principles behind it, and I encourage everyone to check them out. This isn't your standard dry wiki: its informative and irreverent, the way the internets/interweb/tubes/webway/snarkzone/that Tron Place ought to be. After all, nothing that considers me worthy of an encyclopedic profile probably shouldn't take itself seriously.

Really, check it out:

Trent Troop @ TFWiki.net

And no, I didn't create my own page.

Weight Loss Update

2008-09-02T10:37:00.000-05:00

310.8 pounds, as of Friday.

The New New Winner

2008-08-26T14:42:00.004-05:00

Today, I had a fellow, both hard of hearing and somewhat belligerent, call in for service. He had paid for the online services because of problems with his keyboard. Apparently, it would not make the special symbols at the top of the keyboard (! @ # $ % ^ & * and so forth). Fully expecting this to be a problem with stickykeys, I walked him through the excruciatingly long process of linking his system to mine through screen sharing.

Sure enough, my input goes through fine to his notepad. Though he did have trouble finding the number 2 when he typed it into notepad, and when I highlighted it and waved the cursor around it to show him where it was. Then he tried to type an @ symbol. It came up a two.

"Ok, press the shift key and hit the two."
"That's the one that says caps lock, right?"
"No, its the one that says shift."
Another two crops up.
"Sir, are you holding it down?"
"No, should I be?"

Yes, friends, I have found a human being who both owns a computer and claims to have used it for stock trading online, who was unaware of how to use the shift key. For reference, the shift key was invented as an innovation to the mechanical typewriter by 1910, which predates ENIAC, generally considered the first general-purpose electronic computer, by 37 years. Being unapologetically 'not an expert' and having 'no intention of becoming one' is not an excuse here.

So we have a new winner. I can only imagine that he is a retiree, most likely from the upper class, who dictated his letters to some hapless, brow-beaten secretary for his entire career and is likely to kill himself through comical incompetence the moment he has to, say, do his laundry or cook a meal.

Well, he did pay $50 to have someone tell him what a shift key is, so maybe there is some justice in the world.

Jet(ta)-Jaguar

2008-08-20T12:34:00.003-05:00

Well, it took some doing, but now I own a car. And what a car! Its a 2005 Jetta with all the bells and whistles. A silver dynamo with decent gas mileage, leather seats, a six-disk changer, and one of those remote-entry click-gadgets. More than one person has commented that it has room for no less than two corpses in the trunk. The whole thing is a triumph of free-spirited German engineering, and the giant Volkswagen logo on the grill makes it easy to find in parking lots.

Also, I just got back from the nation's capital, as I'd gone to visit Leigh Ann. We had tons of fun, I walked way more than I was accustomed to, and I got to see the National Gallery, the Spy Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Air & Space Museum, among others. It has to be one of the most inspiring things I've done in some time. Faced with the noble endeavors and the greatness that this country once had when it had an ounce of vision, side-by-side with the accomplishments of science and art on an unrivaled scale, I felt myself re-energized. I've started laying back into the Adventures of Upgrade & Beatnik Baby and I may have a few other art-type projects bubbling in my brain.

On another life-related note, I spent seven hours playing Rock Band this weekend. It was amazingly fun. I'm tempted to buy it for the Wii, but I've decided to hold out for Rock Band II. Video games have always been about wish fulfillment and fantasy. Interesting that it has grown out of fueling our fantasies of heroism and adventure to give us the simulated life of a rock star. I personally think once someone invents Pornography Hero, society will grind to a halt as no one will leave the house ever again.

-Trent

We all make cars turn into robots... can you help me turn robots into a car?

2008-07-20T22:39:00.004-05:00

All things must come to an end, and that includes my car.

The old girl is a 1994 Kia Sophia who finally sputtered her last last week. As of right now it is in the shop, where mechanics will surely attempt to raise it briefly in some sort of zombie-like state. This won't last long, however. I need to get a new car, and that means money for a down payment. I was gearing up for this anyhow, but this has hit earlier than expected.

Here's the deal, I'm out to raise some cash to get this taken care of, and I'm looking for your help. I've got several ways to get this cash together, and here they are:

Step 1: You Buy My Robots, I do not Drink Your Milkshake

Here's the situation: I've got lots of Transformers. This is a seriously large collection and I'm looking to trim it anyway. I'm going to be starting off with the 'premium' stuff and will move down to the more mundane offerings as time goes by. My goal? Reduce my collection by 50% and raise enough money to get a new car.

You get robots for your own collections or for your kids, and you also get my solumn promise that I will not, literally or metaphorically, drink your milkshake from a distance with a room-length straw. Quality merchandise and security against milkshake theft. What more can you ask for?

Click here to see the currently-for-sale list.

Step 2: Gaming for Wheels

"But Trent!", you say, "I'm not that into giant robots!" Well, I've got you covered if your geekdom runs a different way. All Octavirate Gaming PDFs sold through RPGNow are 25% off! This includes ExorSystems, Inc and our Stock Art Collections for game publishers. Half of each purchase goes to my car, while the other half goes towards the general wellbeing of Ron Smith. Both of these are important things in the grand scheme of things. Once the car is purchased, this money will return to its original purpose: paying freelancers to do art for future gaming products.

If you prefer your books in a printed format, we've got you covered over at lulu.com:

Step 3: Wear your support.

We've got plenty of T-shirts for sale. I'm working on a special one for promoting this project, but in the meantime, enjoy:

So there you have it, three ways you can help me help you help me get a car while simultaneously putting awesome swag in your hands. If you need to contact me regarding a purchase or with general questions, you can email me at trenttroop (at) octavirate (dot) com. Convert that into the standard email format to send it over.

-Trent

We have a winner, ladies and gentlemen!

2008-07-08T14:01:00.004-05:00

My best tech support story ever is now this:

A guy calls in with a laptop problem. Now, this is how about 18%* of my calls in a given day start. So I ask the gentleman to tell me what's happening with the machine. To my surprise, he asks me a question:

"Where are you guys from?"

I answer "Oklahoma", as that's as detailed as we're allowed to get.

"Well, then you wouldn't know much about what we've got here in Virginia..."

At this point, my curiosity is piqued. What could they have in Virginia that would cause specific computer problems? Roving bands of New England hackers? The Wild Virginian plastic-eating marmot? Ol' Qwerty, a civil-war era ghost that steals any object that bears his name? Some sort of chaotic magnetic distrubance eminating from Mount Rogers, the tallest point in all Virginia?

"Ok, well, I was at this scenic overlook..." Oh, I see. When he speaks of 'what they've got in Virginia' he means 'hills.'

Around this time the tale goes from surreal to dumfounding and back again. Long story short, this fellow as at a scenic overlook in Virginia. Taken in by the wonder and majesty of the great outdoors he felt compelled to capture it in an image frozen in time. As a man of the modern age he didn't carry anything so mundane as a 'camera' on his person. Alas, his plans would be scuttled and he would be forced to pay the fifteen dollars for a pack of photographic post cards at the Park Services Gift Shop.

But wait! He had his laptop computer with him! His computer had a webcam! Salvation was at hand!

Perching precariously close to the railing (Or perhaps on top of/over it? Sadly, I was not there.) he leaned in to take the shot. Just as his finger came down upon the 'capture' option, some uncouth fellow bumped him from behind. Our hero's grip failed him and his laptop slipped from his fingers and tumbled, end over end, to the chasm's rocky bottom. There the rocks scattered the fragments of his difference engine into a shower of metallic debris and plastic shards.

Mind you, at this point our photographic McGuyver has failed to procure even his purchase reciept. Thankfully, with or without the receipt, he is up the same creek. I inform him, quite solumnly, that some of the warranties cover accidental damage. How cruel fate and the terms and conditions of the warranty, are! For without the remains of the mechanism, this is categorized as loss, not accidental damage. This was, of course, not what our tepid explorer wanted to hear and shortly after the fifth or sixth explanation he resolved to call back.

It isn't often that one encounters something that can be described as truly amazing. Today, however, we have a new winner and I have been witness to something that boarders on the supernatural.

*Percentage is a total guess and is based on no scientific evidence, whatsoever.

Weight Loss Update - Pride Trounces Gluttony and Sloth

2008-07-04T15:57:00.006-05:00

I'm a chunky dude.

I've been working on it, though. Since November I've lost between 45 and 60 lbs, but since my scale wasn't able to measure above 300, I have no idea where I started. My only scale was one at the gym at work, which is the old style sliding-weight design that I can never get an accurate bead on.

Well, I have a new digital scale. Huzzah. And because you may or may not be reading this, my ongoing self improvement is now your business.

Last week, I took my first Friday measurement: 318.2 lbs. More than I had thought (the scale at work had finally put me under 300, good gravy, where did I start at?) but still, a definate improvement.

As of Friday, 7/4/08 - 315.2 pounds. Three pounds lost in seven days. Not bad and well worth sacrificing my precious gummies. Oh gummies, how I miss you. Everything else that's bad for ya? Bah! screw it!

This has also come with a vast improvement in my general physical health. I've got more energy, more endurance, and my upper body strength (which I've been working on for reasons of proportion. My legs? Frikkin' tree trunks. My arms? Noodly.) has, if one takes into account what one does on a bench press machine, doubled since November.

It all goes to show you. If you pit your deadly sins against one another, you can come out ahead. Pride proved to be a major motivating force, being out Gluttony and Sloth.

-Trent

Reaping the Conservative Whirlwind (Warning: Politics)

2008-06-24T14:40:00.004-05:00

Forewarning: If you think this blog entry doesn't apply to your brand of Christendom-and/or-Right-Wing-Politics, then it probably doesn't, unless, of course, it does. Whatever helps you sleep at night.

I believe there's a bit in the Bible about 'sowing chaos and reaping the whirlwind?' It is surprising to me that this is not more frequently brought up in regard to American Christian politics in the past three decades. For years the religious have produced and backed numerous na'er do wells and have pushed to marginalize and punish those who do not cede to their will.

Now, after almost a full decade of having everything they've asked for, the conservative Christians are worried. Their zealotry has cost them their financial security, their dignity and whatever scraps of respectability they had. The free-thinkers and secularists, once scattered, are now uniting to defend themselves from theocratic skullduggery. Religious affiliations now have the average lifespan of cell phone contracts and the populace at large is beginning to see hypocrites and thieves behind every Jesus-fish bumper sticker, and rightly so.

Caught with their pants down (like so many in their leadership, zing!) they turn into a horde of Lady MacBeths, washing their hands to remove the bloodstains and denying their part in things. "We were tricked! The Republicans said they were like us!" they cry. But they weren't tricked. The right-wing philosophy was theirs from the start and still is. They just failed. They had their way and they failed and they got caught. It is the same pattern they have always followed: they prop up the bigot, the liar, the thief and the lynch mob. They cheer these villains on, sometimes loudly, sometimes silently, and when the monsters are caught, defeated and dragged into the light, they shout "PRETENDER! You are not truely one of us!" With the Judas goat duly sacrificed their sins are cleansed and they can find a new avatar to help them get what they want.

Sorry folks, you reap what you sow. Its just a pity that the punishment you brought down on yourselves affects the rest of us, too.

-Trent

The Dungeons and Dragons in my Garage

2008-06-20T14:38:00.002-05:00

The 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons just came out. It looks like a good system and has a lot of unique and interesting elements to it. Eventually, I'll review it. That, however, will require playing it and since I haven't got a group together, I'll have to settle for a more generalized examination of D&D as it pertains to my own life.

My parents weren't the most objecting parents around on average, but they had their things they didn't like. Mom rejected G.I.Joe as a pro-war cartoon avatar of the military industrial complex and forbade He-Man for its 'occultism' and, I expect, for its rampant commercialism. I recall several times when dad would throw what can only be described as a 'fit' over the costumes of female comic book characters. Still, I had my childhood obsessions: Star Wars, dinosaurs, Transformers, the X-Men and the various 8-bit heroes of the NES... because seriously, the Genesis? Every kid in the neighborhood with a Genesis was a dick. Don't ask me to explain it, that's just how I recall things.

But there was one thing that terrified them both. And that was Dungeons and Dragons.

Mom had an easy excuse... her church said it was of the devil (literally) and at the time she didn't question that sort of thing (she's gotten better.) Dad claimed that they both knew people who had 'taken it too far', but neither of them, when pressed, could sum up details or even names. The latter claim was rather scurrilous, given that I was born in the same year as D&D, and the supposed friends were typically 'from college' in the stories... which would date them before my birth and thus, before the invention of the game they took too far.

All this from parents who informed me, quite matter-of-factly, that the Easter Bunny and Santa were imaginary, but that I shouldn't tell my cousins because it would ruin it for them. Go figure. Like all kids with overzealous religious parenting, I was surrounded by wonderful ironies. Santa, the Easter Bunny and leprechauns (which I found more compelling than the other two put together, for some reason) were stupid fairy-tales... but Jesus, the devil, the angels and demons were all real (if you asked mom. Dad, who didn't buy into any of it outside of a Jeffersonian deist perspective, avoided such talk to avoid hacking off mom.) D&D and He-Man were evil, but Thundercats, the Hobbit and Greek Myth got a pass.

Oh yeah, Gary Gygax was peddling 'taken from real magic', soul-damning, demon-summoning, satan-worshipping darkness and that wouldn't be in the house. Of course, that didn't stop me. It made it all the more tantalizing. Anything I was explicitly denied I sneaked, and I was involved in D&D and other roleplaying games since Middle School. Heck, we even played a second edition campaign on the bus on a church field trip. We got caught, the stuff got confiscated, and the other kids, after getting the 'demon talk' wouldn't resume play, but we did it. I got the lowdown on episodes of the D&D cartoon and He-Man that I couldn't sneak from my friends at school. And I had a stash of roleplaying games as a young teen that I hid with more cunning than my collection of skin mags and racy catalogs.

After awhile, D&D became a point of natural rebellion for me. On my last church-based trip (a trip to Russia I undertook because it was a good opportunity, long after I had learned to become a 'stealth atheist' and before I shifted to 'militant agnostic') I toted around a D&D novel, for which I was proclaimed, by my fellow travelers, 'ballsy'. Eventually, I won my youthful rebellion, by no fault of my own. Mom's church, a nationally-recognized-as-a-cult assemblage called the World Wide Church of God, fell upon itself when the founder's incest, embezzlement and general malevolencies came to light. The D&D players were still standing and the paranoid, apocalypse-loving cross wavers were KO'ed.

The ultimate irony is that role-playing has benefited me greatly. My first published bit of writing was for Dragon Magazine, Octavirate draws in decent sales on our old 3.0/3.5 d20 gaming library, and I'm gearing up to write some new 4th edition stuff. The irony is furthered by more upcoming projects pertaining to other forbidden elements of childhood. I'm going to break down and review D&D 4th edition but the lesson of this article is clear:

The things I was most forbidden as a child have become what I am doing for fun and profit as an adult. Parents, let your kids play D&D and forbid them from experimenting with Pulitzer-prize winning journalism and best-selling adult fiction. That's the kind of rebellion that pays well.

2008-05-30T17:38:00.002-05:00

It is well known that my day job is a Sisyphean nightmare of legendary proportions. I provide phone support to the customers of several major retailers. In the process, I've witnessed every mauling of the English language anyone could reasonably expect. Sorry human dignity, you've just gotten 20 years with no parole and people too dim to realize that extended warranties are a scam are your new bunkmate.

Over time, you become desensitized to the normal abominations. The various lazy drawls and hyper active dialects stop impressing you.

It is the cartoon characters that you never get used to. I've had all kinds. People with voices that make Mike Tyson sound like Barry White. People who talk seventy-miles-per-hour. People who pronounce "Baton Rouge" as "Belange'" Heck, I had a guy from Brooklyn call once who literally reversed what words would and wouldn't be plural, just like Sal on Futurama.

And a few moments ago, I had a woman who started every answer to every inquiry with 'uh-huh?' and appended it to the front of random sentences and paragraphs. Every question: What is your name? What is your phone number? What are the numbers at the bottom of your receipt? All answered, yes, but with a vapid "uh-huh" coming beforehand. If the call hadn't mercifully dropped I might well have been driven mad.

I'm not sure what this really means but I will say this: if the whole world is a twisted simulation of a long-dead reality I really hope it is more like Dark City and less like the Matrix.

-Trent

Addendum: Someone just called in with a warranty on a cassette walkman. Purchased in 2008. I'm amazed.

UT:APfEE Chapter 1: The Dragon in my Garage

2008-05-26T15:49:00.002-05:00

Understanding Trent: A Primer for Everyone Else
Chapter 1: The Dragon in my Garage

I've decided that, in order to have something to blog about frequently, I will be peroidically attempting to reveal the depths of my existence to my minute readership. I fancy myself an emperical-sort, but while I revile arguement from authority in terms of facts, sometimes philosophy is best taken from the source.

If anyone wants to understand my skeptical nature, read on. Also, this will explain the meaning of my blog's title.

This is the best sum-up of my view on the whole skeptical worldview, as originally stated by Carl Sagan in The Demon Haunted World. I find it more diplomatic than the Flying Spagetti Monster and more educational than the Curch of the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

Go here to read: The Dragon in My Garage by Carl Sagan

Consolidation and Mass Distribution

2008-05-26T15:37:00.000-05:00

I know I've said this before, but seriously, this time I mean it. I'm going to blog more frequently, and this is how I'm going to get it done. I'm going to try to at least update this thing weekly (other goals include doing the same for Octavirate.com and still keeping up with my TFCC duties.) and I'm going to be providing more substance than previous blogs, many of which were largely shilling for my projects.

Not to say that I won't be shilling. I will be. A lot.

But it will be more balanced from here on out.