Mile Zero
no matter where you go, there you are
Mile Zero is the personal website of Thomas Wilburn. All statements and opinions here are my own, and do not represent the views or policies of my employers at Congressional Quarterly, Ars Technica, or other publications.
My RSI is acting up. Between playing bass guitar (which tends to abuse the first two fingers of my right hand), using a mouse all day (abusing the same two fingers), and playing Meteos and Nintendogs (how do you think I hold that stylus?), the joints in my hand are starting to feel a little creaky. I'm familiar with this feeling, of course, since I've been playing music for two years now, and writing intensively for at least three years before that. To prevent it from reaching the "terrible shooting pains that cancel all music/gaming/writing activites" stage again, I'm using the Mousekeys feature of Windows with my pinky finger. It does give the day a slightly more relaxed pace.
So no writing today for you. Instead, I grace you with a picture of the lovely and talented Belle at her artiest and most self-referential, who is upset that she is not mentioned here more often.
Coming soon: The New and Improved Racism, more Electroplankton, new original music, David Byrne on recording contracts, and (if you've been very good) fiction I never finished.
14:29 x Thomas x /meta/announce/delays x link x 1 comment
I'm planning on opening up a domain for posting music and gig announcements (cross-posted here, of course) so people won't have to wade through tons of Electroplankton and bizarre microfiction just to hear my latest bass-only cover of Boyz 2 Men and find out which streetcorners I'll be playing on next. The following is a short list of prospective domain names, not to be confused with a band name. Any preferences?
11:28 x Thomas x /music/management x link x 1 comment
I've read Hunter S. Thompson. You, sir, are no Hunter S. Thompson.
00:03 x Thomas x /journalism/gonzo x link x 1 comment
You can't see all the new wiring in that Vester guitar, but it's there. I know it's there, because I put it in this weekend. When the acoustic proved too noisy for the Nerdlet's needs, we picked up this electric guitar for around $75--the only thing wrong with it was a disconnected audio jack, which was an easy fix. But when we got it home and I went to pull the tone knob off the potentiometer shaft, a big chunk of the assembly came with it. Clearly, this was a sign that I needed to learn to solder.
My first attempt was, to put it bluntly, not good. The guitar worked, but only intermittently, and the soldering was very messy (my mistake was that instead of heating the joint and adding solder, I heated the solder and tried to stick it to the metal. This does not work at all, kids.). So I took all the old wiring out, bought new pots and switches, and reworked the whole thing. I even took the pickups out and ran new wires to them, because the old ones annoyed me. The diagram I got from Seymour Duncan didn't look anything like the original wiring, but it worked flawlessly the first time and is apparently still working. So! The Nerdlet now has a 2-humbucker guitar with fully-functioning electronics, a beautiful pearlescent purple finish, and a brand new Fender Telecaster neck (complete with black hardware--none more black, really).
As a result, I'm considering applying this newly-acquired arcane knowledge toward my own instruments. Not the All-Star, of course, because that bass has had everything but the bass replaced, and I don't want to risk putting any more holes in it. It will have to be a new instrument, and that means either building it from parts, or hacking a production model up inside. The former is not nearly as formidable as it sounds. Companies like Warmoth and Stewart Mac will sell you all the bits and pieces to your specifications. So say I wanted to put together a Beast-style bass with one single-coil pickup wired directly to the output, I could do that. It turns out to run about $600, which is a good price for a bass made of decent parts assembled exactly how I want them.
But the downside is that I would have to assemble it myself, including drilling holes for the neck, and that gives me the willies. It's not so much that I'm incompetent--I've done my share of woodworking--but a slip of the hand on either the neck or the body, and I could be out a couple hundred bucks. I get a little nervous just thinking about it. So I think the second option, subverting an already-constructed bass, is the best way to go. I can replace the wiring and pickups to get a great sound with little investment as long as the instrument itself is well-constructed. Luckily, there's a company called Rondo that specializes in just that--well-made basses for cheap that just need a little electronic work to be truly excellent (they do this, apparently, by paying their workers a decent wage, and not offering any different colors or customizations). I'm looking at the SX-SJB75. The wood is alder, a good strong choice, with a natural finish that I really like. It has a bridge cover that would conceal the removed/disconnected bridge pickup, and the controls could easily be removed and the holes soldered shut, for my perfectly streamlined instrument. Plus I dig the block inlays.
I mean, who doesn't like block inlays?
12:41 x Thomas x /music/tools/bass x link x 1 comment
"A fool and his money are soon parted." --Thomas Tusser
At the amateur level there is an inverse relationship between the skill of a musician and the amount he or she has spent on equipment. I realize that as a musician who carries at least three effects pedals and a DI box at all times that this may be a dangerous statement to make, but the truth must be dangerous sometimes. And frankly (this is the part where I'm looking the guilty party in the eyes, gravely, like a stern father-figure), the cost-to-musical-quality ratio is getting way out of hand here. Something must be done.
When I was in an actual, functioning, multi-person band, I used to have people come up to me all the time and ask to take a look at my equipment. I've always owned a lot of pedals, but my bass is a cheap Yamaha. My amp was either a second-hand Fender or a non-descript GK, chosen more for portability than for cool. The conversation invariably went something like this:
Me: Well, it's a mid-level at best, but it works for me. I put a new bridge on it, and that helped a lot.
Them: (holding the bass at a completely ridiculous angle and peering down the neck as if it could be used for a wood-paneled gauss rifle) Uh-huh. Neck's a bit warped though.
Me: Really? Because it looks fine to me. (a closer examination reveals that the neck is, in fact, perfectly straight.)
Them: Yeah, I just got a Jackson myself.
Me: I see.
Them: It was $3000, but it just sounds... awesome.
Me: That's great. Are you playing out anywhere?
Them: ...uh, no, not yet. I'm gonna try to put something together, though. I've got a lot of ideas.
Me: Uh-huh.
It is important to note that people who spend too much money on musical equipment always have a lot of ideas. I imagine that these fantastically pricey instruments must come packaged, not in foam wrappings or shipping bubbles, but in the soft cushioning of pure idea. Perhaps they have an inhibitory effect--most of the great music I've heard strives to have as few ideas as possible. Occasionally, someone with "a lot of ideas" will succeed anyway, but then it's an artist like Yanni and we all really wish they hadn't.
Nowadays, since I mainly go to open mikes, I don't see as many of these instrument fetishists around. Those that I do see are curious about my pedal setup, but once it becomes clear that I'm prioritizing sound and ease-of-use over cost, they often lose interest. Interestingly, the few big spenders that I do see at open mikes are often the ones playing seven minute jazz-funk-blues-folk instrumentals. I figure they don't want to learn any words. They're looking for shortcuts in all the wrong places.
It's only natural that a musician might want to take a shortcut. Learning to play music, even popular music, is a long and difficult process. It requires hours and hours of time, and at first you won't sound very good. You may not even sound very good after those many hours, and you will probably never be happy with your tone. Part of being a matured musician is buckling down to find the practical realizations that only come after you've played in front of people for a while: dynamics, pacing, energy, and other more subtle concepts. The assumption that you can "sound better" just through the expenditure of cash is not only foolish, it's actually harmful to your musical development.
I'm not a virtuoso by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I think people may get the impression that I'm better than I really am after all of the looping and effect-tapdancing I do onstage. It looks complicated, but it's really not that hard--a properly trained rat could no doubt manage it just as well, despite the evidence of my disastrous Rodent Roadie experiment. But I like to think that when people are excited about my equipment or my odd technique, the reason they're really interested is because I'm creating good music--not because of the price tag. Even when they get out into the open, the boutique bunch won't ever feel that satisfaction.
12:13 x Thomas x /music/theory x link x 1 comment
Lunch in the Golden Triangle: The Burro
I think I've written about The Burro before, in passing. It is on the very edges of what I personally consider the Golden Triangle, located as it is at 2000 Penn. However, since it's become a staple of my diet at the World Bank, I think it deserves mention. The Burro is cheap, relatively savory, and not completely unhealthy. It's the baseline from which I measure other budget eateries around here.
The Burro sells burritos. There are quesadillas also on offer, and I think there might be tacos, but no-one takes those seriously. If you go, you're going to get yourself a burrito. The Burro's selling point is freshness, instead of variety. Everything is very fresh, and it tastes that way--the lettuce is crispy, the tomato has a nice juiciness, and the chicken isn't overly salty or dramatic. As a drawback to all that new-grown goodness, The Burro isn't very big on spices. The burritos are fresh, but they're also a little plain. The sour cream and chili pepper topping delivers a little kick, but not a lot. The fajitas definitely have more heat with their mix of onions, fresh peppers, and zucchini, but I don't eat them very much since I have to pick the latter out.
Perhaps this relative blandness is meant to inspire the use of the homemade salsas available off to one side. These are "salsas" in the real meaning of the word--more of a sauce than a runny pico de gallo. In contrast to the burritos, they're spicy but not subtle. I haven't paid much attention to them, because I don't usually get the chips and I don't feel like pouring anything on my burrito (which tends to be a little messy by nature anyway), but that might be worth a shot if the flavors of the regular entrees aren't lighting your fire.
Whether you're willing to take the zest-for-freshness tradeoff, what is undeniably great about The Burro's approach is its lightness. These are not small burritos, but unlike Chipotle (which tastes great and sits like a lead Buddha in the stomach) they don't overfill. The reason may be that The Burro doesn't use rice in its burritos. This does leave them a little bit runnier, since the juices don't have anywhere to be absorbed, but you should be washing your hands afterward anyway.
I recommend The Burro if you're close by. If not, consider giving it a shot, but don't go out of your way. If you do stop in, consider stepping across the street to actually eat your meal. There's a fairly nice lawn as part of George Washington University there, and usually there's at least one bench free. It's a nice place to read a book, relax in the sun, or listen to the kids talk and feel old.
00:00 x Thomas x /dc/golden_triangle x link x 0 comments
The Electroplankton series has been delayed for a couple of days, since some of my hardware experimentation proved ambitious enough to short out the mic jack completely. This is the price of progress. It will continue by the end of the week.
In the meantime, we've got an Iraqi constitution coming up. And that's cool, right? Probably not. Juan Cole translated the draft version, and it looks like it is not only a legal nightmare but will also probably implement shariah (Islamic law) as its basis. The New York Times also elaborates with an article largely on the new rights for women. No wonder Iran's grinning so much lately--the new neighbors are looking awfully friendly. Perhaps they should take over a casserole as a welcome gift.
In other news, which I mention purely as a matter of course and not in any kind of thematic way, the LA Times has a report on The Statesmanship Institute, a fundamentalist (not the same as evangelical) Christian program for congressional aides on the Hill. Like the deeply frightening Patrick Henry College not far from DC, the Statesmanship Institute focuses on turning religion (in this case, a particularly rancid sect of Christianity) into policy. In some cases, that's not really too atrocious, although I still find it wrong-headed. I may not agree with religious quarrels over abortion and stem cell research, but I can theoretically understand the reasoning. But did you know the bible apparently opposes global treaties, and supports the Bush tax cuts? "Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" is so last century.
In fact, these movements are really the tip of a religious iceberg. Take the Patriarch movement--please! [Note: that link goes to liberal blog World O' Crap and her coverage of Patriarch's founder. You can get to the original article from there, but it's easier to read without the verses and parables.] The Patriarch movement will openly admit their belief that homeschooling just doesn't go far enough. Instead, they insist, a decent American (read: Christian) family keeps its sons and daughters home until their arranged marriage. The women spend their time canning fruit, growing vegetables, cooking, and doing secretarial work. When their father does find a good, godly man for them, each has a dowry chest as a reward (read: bribe) for the husband. Neither the men or women go to college, because that would be too much exposure to the outside world (although it goes without saying that the women must be sheltered more than the men). Now that sounds kind of familiar: women kept in traditional female roles, arranged marriage, lack of education, and a near-sighted obsession with religion... Where have I heard this before? And where did this casserole come from?
My left-leaning readers are possibly wondering when this will trip the separation of church and state part of the First Amendment. Unfortunately, thanks to a kind of metaphorical judo practiced by the fundamentalist movement, the Establishment Clause doesn't necessarily act as a deterrent to theocracy. There are those on the right, of course, who despite the evidence will insist that the Establishment Clause is being misread--Jefferson and the rest weren't really deists hoping to create a secular state, they cry, choosing this as the one instance where they'll openly reinterpret the cold, dead words of a founding father.
I don't really worry about that argument, because I think it's patently ridiculous. The believers who disturb me are the Christians who embrace the Establishment Clause because they think that it protects government sponsorship of their religion. They have no problem creating religious laws or funding religious activities with public money as long as the technical freedom to worship exists. The idea that atheists or other faiths might find government-funded Christianity offensive or discriminatory is perplexing to them--they honestly can't even see the argument. This viewpoint is often tied into the fundamentalist persecution complex, which portrays the secular state as a big bad boogeyman, forcing innocent Christians into sin.
The weakest plot point of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, which describes a Patriarch-style society in future America, is that it never really explains the mechanics of the takeover. One day the characters wake up and all the women have been disenfranchised. In reality, there's practically no chance of that happening. More likely is a gradual creep, based in subversion of the Constitution's clear protections into alternate meanings. Two factors will contribute to this process. The first is an insular religious community that distrusts outside thought. The second is an active process, as embodied in the Statesmanship Institute and Patrick Henry College, to embed the doctrines of that community into government, where they will apply to everyone.
21:09 x Thomas x /politics/national/congress x link x 1 comment
As time machines become more common, the Time Police find themselves working harder and harder. Their job is to maintain the internal consistency of history, and to halt or amend paradoxes caused by overzealous time-travelers. When chronological disaster is detected on the mightly Hourglass 3000's quantum circuitry, the Time Police swing into action. Using subterfuge, ingenuity, and highly advanced technology, they redirect the river of causality back into its natural path. And then, for what they claim is poetic justice, they kill the time traveler's grandfather.
Oh, not before he or she is born. No, the Time Police would never invite paradox that way. Instead, they travel back to the meddler's childhood, to a time when youth and grandfather are sharing a private moment together. They shoot the elder, and to the time traveler-to-be they utter four words, which he or she will never forget: "This is your fault."
Research is as of yet unclear on the number of time travelers inspired by feelings of childhood guilt and filial duty.
11:02 x Thomas x /fiction/micro x link x 1 comment
Wednesday, August 24, I'll be at Stacy's for the open mike again. Just in case anyone wants to drop by. I think I'll be performing around 8:30.
Wednesday, August 31, I'll be performing at IOTA in Clarendon, instead. The sign-in for that open mic starts at 8:45 and I think actual performances begin at 9pm. I'll try to go early so we're not all there until the cock crows.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/performance/gigs/open_mikes x link x 1 comment
Composing with Electroplankton, Part Three: Beatnes
In the second part of this series, I said I planned to contrast Beatnes and Rec-Rec against each other. I was overhasty to do so. Although both Electroplankton modes have a lot in common on the surface, their musical purposes are very different. As Kathy Griffin would say, let me walk you through it:
When you load up the plankton, you'll see what look like five floating kites against a blue/red background. Each of the plankton has a head, a tail, and eight segments in between. The head and tail play short sound bites from NES games. The middle eight segments are diatonic notes, starting with the lowest at the bottom (so for the key of C major, from bottom to top the segments would play C, D, E, F, G, A, B, and C). The notes are the same across all five columns.
After a little chirp, the star music for Super Mario Bros. will begin playing. Pressing the select button will scroll the plankton offscreen, replacing them with a new set against a different colored background. Unfortunately, there is no "blank" background. Note that all the modes share the same loop length (8 beats), but have different sounds, key signatures, and beat patterns. In order of selection, here are some of their individual features:
| Coin | Jump | 1-Up | Powerup | Pipe Down |
| Koopa Hit | Fireball | Block Hit | Jump? | Mario Damage |
| Coin | Laughing Dog | Shot | Hit | Duck Flight |
| Notes Up | Notes Down | Missed | Explosion | Score Chime |
| "Left" | Score chime | "Up" | Arpeggio Up | "Right" |
| "Open" | Item chime | "Down" | Arpeggio Down | "Close" |
Like Luminaria, Beatnes will quantize your sequences for you to the nearest 16th or 32nd note, so that nothing will be off-rhythm. Between the waving motion of the segments and the automatic quantize approach, however, the notes may sometimes trigger a 16th after when you think you keyed them in. Because you can't stray from the tempo, they won't be too jarring, but it may add a little accidental swing to your lines. Luckily, you can alter the tempo of the Beatnes by pressing left and right on the d-pad. Altering the tempo does not change the pitch of the samples or sequences. Like all the Electroplankton, you can also pause the song by hitting Start (Iwai has cheekily labeled this "Intermission").
Between the two primary drawbacks of Beatnes (limited memory and preset drum patterns from familiar NES cartridges), it can be hard to integrate this into original music. Since you can't access the samples without the intrusive background sounds, you pretty much have to use these ridiculous drum patterns, even if you just want to use the synth functions. Depending on your audience, this will either make you the hippest girl or guy at the party, or you'll be accused of copyright infringement (more on that in a later installment).
The role I can best see Beatnes play is as an extra electronic instrument, perhaps played by a vocalist or multi-instrumentalist. The player would need to have an A/B switch handy, in order to match the Beatnes tempo to the song using in-ear monitors, much like a DJ. Once that's done, it could be used to build a nice cheesy synth solo. You could also use Beatnes as a portable synth band-in-a-box--but you're not going to get very much variety out of it, and it's unlikely that you could play it and sing/play another instrument at the same time. Although I originally thought Beatnes had a lot of potential as a jamming tool, I think the NES source ultimately limits it too much for use by aspiring electronic musicians.
00:00 x Thomas x /gaming/society/art x link x 0 comments
Composing with Electroplankton, Part Two - Luminaria
Luminaria pose an interesting problem for musicians compared to the other Electroplankton. First, they are the only exhibit with a definite beat but no way to change the tempo. Luminaria tunes must all run at the same speed. It's really too bad, because this is probably the busiest and most musical of the plankton types, and by far they are the most accessible. Luminaria are well suited to fill in background space, since they basically generate cyclical chord patterns in the key of Bb major.
Speaking of the grid, it's a 6 by 6 space composed of arrows, each aiming a plankton to one of the eight surrounding grid points. The arrows will wrap the screen on all four sides, so a plankton can exit left and enter right, for example. Arrows can be set manually by tapping on them, in which case they'll increment clockwise with each tap, or they can be set to spin automatically with the 16th notes by holding the stylus on them. The latter basically creates a random effect, but since the spin is regular (completing two full spins each measure) it can be predictable. You can use the randomness to sort the plankton across overlapping paths, since they'll hit it at different times, but since it is hard to time precisely, you won't necessarily know which plankton will end up on which path.
It's also possible to adjust the arrow pattern with the d-pad. Up and down will cycle through set patterns that may be useful, although they may change the time signature, since the paths change lowest common denominator. Left and right will align all the arrows in the same direction, starting pointed up. Arrows set to spin automatically will not change with the rest, but will keep on spinning. The arrows will remember their last aligned state shift and base their mass rotation on that, ignoring all other changes and set patterns made since the last left/right press.
As I've said, Luminaria are tuned to Bb (which makes them well suited for band and orchestral instruments, particularly clarinets and other woodwinds in the key of Bb or Eb). There are five octaves contained in the note grid, with the lowest in the upper left and highest in the lower right. They increase in pitch reading left to right, just like text. The following table details the pitch of each grid point. I've colored the starting points for each plankton.
| Bb | C | D | Eb | F | G |
| A | Bb | C | D | Eb | F |
| G | A | Bb | C | D | Eb |
| F | G | A | Bb | C | D |
| Eb | F | G | A | Bb | C |
| D | Eb | F | G | A | Bb |
I should note that because of the locked rhythm, defined key, and easily-abused set patterns, Luminaria compositions will tend to sound very similar. Using manual, point-by-point settings will help avoid this tendency, as will active involvement in the paths for the plankton. Remember that you don't have to use all four at one time, and grid spaces can be occupied by multiple moving and stationary plankton--use the d-pad to shift arrows underneath the corners if necessary. Setting up new paths for the plankton manually before you start them off will also break up the monotony.
Next up in the series: I plan to explain the contrast between Rec-Rec and Beatnes for sequencing and drum patterns. I'd also like to talk about hard-to-use plankton, such as Tracy and Lumiloop, and their role as musical accents.
00:00 x Thomas x /gaming/society/art x link x 0 comments
Portrait of the Solo Artist as a Young Man
I'm very proud to announce that, after another fine open mike at Stacy's Coffee Shop, the management has asked me back to play a set all by myself. Although it's short notice, I'll be performing there this Saturday (August 20) at 7pm, striving to fill an hour and a half with a meager handful of originals and an oddball list of covers. Additionally, after I return from Paris, I'll perform again at Stacy's on Friday, October 28, at 7pm. Mark your calendars now.
I realize that it may come as a shock to many of you that I am so quickly rising to musical fame and fortune. Rest assured that even after I have become like unto a heavily publicized god, I will still remember the little people I once knew, and shower them with rewards for their loyalty.
17:12 x Thomas x /music/performance/gigs x link x 1 comment
You may notice that the last few posts have been assigned much more specific categories than actually exist in my toolbar to the right. I have discovered that one of the flaws in how I have been looking at Blosxom-based blogging is assuming that it will sort itself. The software doesn't use a database, you have to organize it yourself if you want it to be more manageable. This can be a blessing in disguise, frankly. It does make it endlessly flexible--if I decide that I want a category just for political posts on one person, it's easy to create that but still contain it in a larger heirarchy. It does mean I have to think ahead a little, because posts that are moved between categories using the tools I have will end up being "reposted" when they get a new date stamp. There are ways around this, which I am exploring. Likewise, I am exploring intriguing possibilities for comments. Give it time.
00:00 x Thomas x /meta/blosxom x link x 0 comments
When I first sent Corvus an e-mail saying that I would take place in this Round Table on "Innovation in the FPS Genre," I thought "Cool. I love shooters. This'll be great."
A few moments later, I realized that the most recent shooter I'd played was Halo, on the PC, purchased months after its sequel was released on the X-Box. Before that, I'm pretty sure my most cutting-edge experience had been with Unreal Tournament... not 2004, the first one. Right now, I've got both of those, plus Half-Life (the first one), Alien Vs. Predator (also the first one), Doom, Quake, and Blood installed on my machine. These are all, I'm ashamed to say, pretty dated games.
And the reason for that, conveniently enough, is precisely because of FPS innovation: since Unreal Tournament, it's all been graphical. I've only had a desktop machine capable of serious gaming for a year, and although I built it myself (or perhaps because I built it) I don't really want to go through the hassle of upgrading anything other than the RAM and the hard drive. More importantly, I don't really have an incentive to. So instead of playing a few tweaked gameplay modes of UT2k4 or running through the corridors of Doom 3, I play the originals and I don't feel like I'm missing anything. They were pretty much arcade games then, and they're pretty much the same now, although they're much prettier.
I'm not going to try to toss out a bunch of fresh new ideas that will revolutionize the industry, because I'm sure that there are a bunch of game designers out there who are smarter than I am, and they've probably already tried and rejected them. What I will say is this: just as the advances in FPS games have all been graphical, many of the major innovations have revolved around its viewpoint. Wolf3D and its generation moved the camera from outside the maze to inside of it. Doom gave us a better camera and one that was fallible (relying heavily on the darkness for the game's thrill). Quake implemented the mouselook for a player experience that really took advantage of the 3D environments. Half-Life used the player's point of view to create a "story" based around a mix of passive observation and active destruction.
This is not to say that everything in the genre has been camera-oriented. However, in many ways these other advances have merely involved playing catch-up. Doom's networking (and Quake's Internetworking) were simply the only viable ways to implement first-person multiplayer, something that third-person games have had for years. Duke Nukem 3D set a standard for environment interaction that was gimmicky, but still not really matched. Half-Life 2's physics are a great step forward, but they're being implemented everywhere, not just in shooters. As far as I can tell (and I could be entirely wrong, since as I said I haven't played the game) the much-vaunted gravity gun is really just a greatly-expanded Force Pull from Jedi Knight. It's nice that you can stack crates, but it's not really rocking my world. The whole design feels stale, and so I haven't bought any of the recent games, even though I love the genre.
In order to break out of those doldrums, I think I'd like to see the FPS genre lose the "S." My feelings on guns in games aside, the reason I have always played first-person games is because of their immersiveness--and a great deal of that comes from the perspective they offer. I'll always love Virtual On, MDK, and Jet Grind Radio, but they don't pull me in quite the same way. I don't lean away from the rockets roaring past, or crane my neck around their corners. There's a feeling of detachment in a third-person games that excuses limits on interaction with the world. In contrast, the feeling of immediacy and transparency from an FPS, with their lack of an "avatar," is what keeps me coming back.
Now, I know that just a few paragraphs up I made it sound like the focus on perspective has been a weakness for this genre--and I really do believe that it is, as long as developers are simply more interested in putting a more realistic shine on that crate before I throw it at a zombie. We hear a lot of lip-service paid every year to gameplay over graphics, but we're still just deathmatching in a more brightly painted concrete corridor. So maybe by abandoning the floating forearms clutching a weapon--by abandoning the "Shooter" emphasis--a developer might be able to step back from convention, bringing us just a little bit closer to the virtual experience we know the FPS might be capable of. It might require a different input style (could the much-maligned control glove finally see its day?) or a smarter mapping of the mouselook we've got, but just a few extra verbs for the player could go a long way (and already has: what is the gravity gun, really, except a clumsy hand that can only push or pull?).
In other words: I know this sounds hackneyed and trite, but where's my VR?
We have the technology. We've got the viewpoint, the scripting, and the graphics--it almost feels like you're right there. But even after years of advancement, despite all the immersion we've managed to accomplish, the only thing we can reach out and touch... is the trigger.
Who else wants to talk?
16:31 x Thomas x /gaming/roundtable x link x 1 comment
Composing with Electroplankton, part one
I started a one-man rock band for four reasons.
Now, some of the DS's best software, oddly enough, is audio-focused--and I'm not talking about shrapnel like Meteos, even though the sound design for that is brilliant. In Japan, two games have been developed expressly for music/audio: Band Brothers (soon to be released here as Jam with the Band) and Electroplankton. I'm still waiting anxiously for Jam with the Band to show up stateside, because it comes with a fully-functional MIDI sequencer built-in, and that sounds just about perfect for my purposes. Electroplankton, on the other hand, is not anticipated to show up in the US, so I imported it a couple months back (my impressions are here). The purchase was largely inspired after I saw Toshio Iwai and his daughter perform an Electroplankton-violin duet at a developer's conference (that video and links to other creative uses can be found at the Electroplankton Wikipedia entry). Go watch it, because it really is amazing.
I'm considering something along the same lines. I tried a little bit last night, and I'll continue to write up my experience as I learn my way around it. Here are my first few thoughts:
13:40 x Thomas x /gaming/society/art x link x 1 comment
I know, I know, it's been All Bass All the Time here at Mile Zero for about a week now. Sorry about that, but such is the nature of my little obsessions. In the meantime, I offer the following microfiction, reprinted from a certain online writing circle. The theme for the day was the number 5.
And since that point I've had five traffic accidents, five murder attempts (two stabbings, a shooting, a strangling, and a poisoning), and five bounced e-mails. My doctor says I've got five times the normal risk of sudden onset amnesia. Once each day this work-week, there have been bomb scares near my office. Five of our biggest clients have pulled their contracts, leading to a five-percent pay cut for all staff.
But you know, I'm still "increasingly popular and well-liked" ...in bed.
Not bad.
00:00 x Thomas x /fiction/micro x link x 0 comments
Second verse, same as the first
Another week of open mikes? Don't mind if I do! Details the same as last week, here. Hope to see you there!
00:00 x Thomas x /music/performance/gigs/open_mikes x link x 0 comments
Editorial Correction (first in a hopefully short series)
When I went on my first job-interview blitz, right before I graduated from college, I had one interviewer ask me the difference between a degree in communication and one in linguistics. I tried for about five minutes to explain, using all kinds of metaphors and examples, but I'm not sure the point ever made it across. I'm not going to try again. If you are confused, trust me. They are very different fields.
In any case, I absolutely do not have a degree in linguistics, and although I mumble my way through a couple of different languages, that doesn't necessarily make me any kind of expert. Example: in a previous post, I referred jokingly to openmikes.org as "incorrectly spelled." The site's developer (Paul Roub) has written a quick post, in which he refers me to this unbelievable smackdown by an actual Ph.D. in Linguistics, detailing why the spelling "mic" is an abomination before god and country.
Wow. As is only right and proper, I acknowledge my mistake--open mike it is.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go spend some quality time with my AP Stylebook. I'm feeling a little faint.
00:00 x Thomas x /meta/corrections x link x 0 comments
Important items to remember at your next open mic
Because I'm nothing if not obsessive.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/performance/gigs/open_mikes x link x 0 comments
Words from the bottom of the music food chain
Well, the first open mic has come and gone, and it went very well. I was asked by the management to come back next week (although they may just want me to pay my tab) and there was talk of a Friday set just for me. Although I was a little sloppy and had some technical issues, both songs ("Voodoo Funk" and the Talking Heads' "This Must Be The Place") were well-recieved, and I didn't screw up any of the more difficult pedalwork. This does wonders for my confidence, since it was my first gig without a band.
I'd like to talk a little about gigging out in general, because I think it's something about which non-musicians are a bit fuzzy (with good reason). Back when I was in a rock band instead of a pretentious solo project, we'd get occasional questions on how it worked. The main areas under question are money, getting gigs, and keeping the ones you have. I'll stress that my knowledge on this is gathered from about a year of playing out as an independent musician (i.e. not signed to a label with a recording deal). I'm sure there are other experiences out there and my friends in other parts of the country say the rules can vary, but I think most of this is generally applicable.
First, let me go ahead and say that most bands playing in bars and restaurants are not earning enough money to pay the bills. They all have day jobs. While it's true that almost everyone gets paid for playing at that kind of gig, it's basically a pittance. I've been paid two ways: the first is a portion of the bar tab, and the second is by the door (cover charge). I prefer the latter, if possible, because not everyone in the bar will drink, and you get paid even if they leave. Either way, however, as a short-lived band playing to small crowds at best, I never took home more than $60 for at least 3 hours of music. Eventually, with enough promotion and hard work, we might have made a couple hundred each, but it would take a couple of gigs reliably every week just to make a poverty-level living that way. The real money, as I understand it, is in weddings and large party bands--a much more challenging job.
There's a kind of debate, I think, on the importance of being paid as a musician. After all, you're playing because you enjoy the music and you want to share it with others. That's a reward in and of itself. However, if you're any good you provide a service to the venue by bringing people in and keeping them there (where they will drink and buy food), and that clearly has a monetary value. I think there's also a subconscious perception by a lot of musicians that being paid is a validation of the music. It may not be worth much, but it does give a hobby a non-zero financial value.
Besides, playing a musical instrument is expensive. The bare minimum of equipment to play in a bar setting will run a guitarist at least $300 for a cheap instrument and a 50 watt amp. A drummer can spend at least $500, and a bassist should be spending at least as much as the drummer to be heard (bass frequencies require more power to be heard than guitar, since they are lower). As a bassist, I can easily see spending a grand on the bass and more on an amp, just to get well-built and reliable hardware. Pedals run anywhere from $50 at the very low end to more than $300 each for handcrafted, and some multi-effects units are more like $600. Musicians love to spend money on gear. It would take a lot of bar gigs to repay this kind of money, but every little bit helps.
Before you can even think about getting paid, you have to have a gig in the first place. Typically, there may be a few venues in any given city--but they have limited space and time when they are open for live music, and they want the best bands they can get in order to pull in customers. And of course, they don't usually advertise or seek out bands to fill that space. So the job of getting gigs means doing a lot of footwork, visiting bars to drop off demo CDs and grovel. If you're lucky, this will eventually result in a few hits. Some places around the DC area hold try-outs for new bands, and those bands that can get the most audience response (meaning that they can bring the most people to cheer for them) will get a stage.
Really, that's what it boils down to when getting a gig: how many people can you convince to show up and pay money to the bar? When first starting out, bands often have to exploit their friends like crazy until other people start paying attention. It can leave a bad taste in your mouth, and isn't very good for your self-esteem. Frankly, your friends probably don't want to come hear you play music. They certainly don't want to come to multiple gigs, hearing the same songs over and over again in smoky bars. On the other hand, this is one way to sort out the people who are either A) truly devoted to you, or B) alcoholics.
If you're lucky, the whole band will contribute to the process of walking around and selling the band to skeptical bar owners. If you're unlucky (or have a control freak in the band) one person will end up doing it all. Should that person also be the one providing equipment, technical support, and musical inspiration for the group, disaster is probably inevitable (unless the band was arranged as backup for that one person, which does happen).
Now you have a time and a place to play! Congratulations! Hopefully, you go and Rock Out. There are three outcomes for you. First, the bar owner may be both impressed and open to a regular gig as a house band. This is the best possible result, since it both provides regular (if trifling) income and allows a good band to build a following, which you need to get more gigs and make more money.
More likely, in my experience, is that the owner will be fairly happy with both your pull and your music, and will tell you to call back later that week for your next gig. The good news is that you now have an in. The bad news is that you still have to work for your gig, and there's a chance the owner is merely lying to get you out of the restaurant. He or she may have no intention of ever inviting you back. You won't know until you call.
Of course, the worst case scenario is that you didn't bring enough people or the management didn't like your music at all. When this happens, you may be told to get in touch when you've got more of a following. As a starting band, particularly if none of your bandmates runs with the right crowd (remember the devoted/alcoholic group?), this is really frustrating. You can't get gigs if you can't pull people, but you can't gain fans if no-one will give you a gig.
Now, open mics get a bad name sometimes, both in the musician community and elsewhere. Of course they do! While there are usually a few good acts in attendance, there's almost always a lot of softly generic acoustic performers and endlessly noodling jam bands. I will, however, say this: in terms of comfort and workload, an open mic wins out every time. You may not get to play all night, and you won't get paid, but it won't be a job. Any stress I experienced last night was entirely related to the music and not to the finances. There's something to be said for that.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/management x link x 0 comments
Your humble host will be testing his music luck tomorrow night at an open mic, his first appearance as a solo artist. The ever-helpful (but incorrectly spelled) openmikes.org furnished a list of nearby venues, most of which are either inconvenient or (from my past band experience) run by a drunken lunatics.
Still, that's the music scene for you. So if you'd like to come out and hear my bizarre looping arrangements (or watch the spectacle as it all crashes and burns), feel free to join me at:
Stacy's Coffee Parlor
709 W Broad St, Falls Church, VA
The evening starts Wednesday at 7:30pm, or so they tell me. If that works out well, I may also try a Thursday night excursion in the most dangerous suburb of DC:
Dr Dremo's Taphouse
2001 Clarendon Blvd, Arlington, VA
I believe Dremo's opens their mic Thursday around 9pm, but I'll be there early to sign up and get lung cancer from the local denizens. At either location I'll be the punk with a Converse All-Star bass and a big bag full of effects pedals.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/performance/gigs/open_mikes x link x 1 comment
The following is an excerpt from the Audubon Guide to the DC Metro System, pages 12-15)
YOUR METRO DRIVER - A Rare and Hidden Species
Listen carefully! While riding the DC Metro, you may be treated to a series of squawks and bleats from above, perhaps even resembling human speech. If so, you've had the rare pleasure of hearing the exotic WMATA Driver. A solitary species, they are rarely seen out in the open, instead preferring to remain behind the glass of the front cab. Although this has given them a reputation as mere myth, we can assure you that they do exist, and a patient observer may reap the rewards of their strange and wonderful calls. Here we present a list of the various sub-species, identified by their sonic character:
Study this guide carefully, and soon you may be able to check off all four sub-species, completing your Metro experience. Note for superstitious readers: we here at the Audubon Guide to the DC Metro System have heard rumors of a so-called "normal driver" who reads the stops and only the relevant information in a pleasant and clear but not overbearing tone of voice. However, we have it on good information that this phenotype is, unfortunately, extinct or nearly so.
00:00 x Thomas x /dc/metro x link x 0 comments
In the middle of Charlie Stross's Iron Sunrise, I realize what annoys me so much about a lot of modern sci-fi authors: they never explain anything. The reader is cast into the setting, completely adrift, with only side comments by various characters and tiny throw-away sentences to explain what's going on. Eventually, you'll figure out what they're talking about, but by that point it's 200 pages in.
Stross is terrible about this. There's a lot of talk about light-cones and temporal causality, and nothing ever explains what the hell any of it means. At one point, without any further elaboration as to why, he states that the term light cone wasn't fully understood until FTL travel became available. Perhaps I have to go invent a warp drive before I can read this book, but I like to think that's a little excessive.
Dan Simmons builds whole books around uninforming his readers. Alastair Reynolds is bad with details, but will at least take the time to explain the hard stuff. Bruce Sterling straddles the line, as does Vernor Vinge, sometimes saying too much and sometimes too little. Cory Doctorow wants to write this way, but his characters are too chatty, and consequently a lot of exposition tends to slip in. Yet all of these authors are relatively new additions--Asimov and Heinlein certainly didn't delight in leaving you in the dark.
On the contrary, I see this style of SF as having two causes. The first is the cyberpunk movement--specifically, William Gibson. Gibson's novels will often deal with the technical aspects of the setting purely in subjective or poetic terms. This is because he isn't interested in the technology per se, he's interested in what it means (and because he's a great writer). I don't mean to denigrate that decision, because I actually think it's very important for the genre. It signalled a move away from technofetishism, and placed more stress on the human nature of science fiction. It also makes his work age better.
Which brings us to the second cause for this mystery meat of sci-fi settings. Namely, it defies explanation. Nowadays, after years of X-ray beams and nuclear hamsters, fans expect more than just a catch-phrase if there's an explanation offered. You can't just say that the "gamma particles" did it and move on--that's old-fashioned. Instead, writers have figured out that if they treat technology the same way we do in real life (where few people really understand or care how their computer or toaster or DVD player work), they can dodge the pressure to actually explain the strange things they're showing us.
(Of course, the third, and possibly most likely cause, is that someone started doing this, it caught on, and now it's just the hip thing for hot young authors--or aspiring hot young authors-to-be--to do.)
You could argue that the lack of intrusive exposition is good for story, and sometimes I would buy that. It's true that the minor character (a passing engineer or salesman, for example), who just happens to know how the Wormhole Squeezer or Nano-befuddler works, has become a bit of a cliche. This was the role that Geordi LaForge played on Star Trek. And it's true that the story becomes more realistic--for the characters. Meanwhile, I'm flipping back and forth around the pages, trying to find out there's a description for the Wormhole Squeezer or if I should just keep reading. It stresses me out.
Hence my firm belief that removing exposition just to make the prose read faster was a huge mistake. Anything that confuses your reader is a mistake. Confused readers do not enjoy your writing(the fact that this is my second Stross book to the contrary). And if you're good, the exposition is actually a reason to keep reading. Take it from the master, Neal Stephenson. The following excerpt is from Snow Crash, which I still describe to anyone who will listen as "rock and roll on a page." It follows the introductory paragraphs, which describe a sword-carrying, black-clad driver called the Deliverator:
So now he has this other job. No brightness or creativity involved -- but no cooperation either. Just a single principle: The Deliverator stands tall, your pie in thirty minutes or you can have it free, shoot the driver, take his car, file a class-action suit. The Deliverator has been working this job for six months, a rich and lengthy tenure by his standards, and has never delivered a pizza in more than twenty-one minutes.
Oh, they used to argue over times, many corporate driver-years lost to it: homeowners, red-faced and sweaty with their own lies, stinking of Old Spice and job-related stress, standing in their glowing yellow doorways brandishing their Seikos and waving at the clock over the kitchen sink, I swear, can't you guys tell time?
Didn't happen anymore. Pizza delivery is a major industry. A managed industry. People went to CosaNostra Pizza University four years just to learn it. Came in its doors unable to write an English sentence, from Abkhazia, Rwanda, Guanajuato, South Jersey, and came out knowing more about pizza than a Bedouin knows about sand. And they had studied this problem. Graphed the frequency of doorway delivery-time disputes. Wired the early Deliverators to record, then analyze, the debating tactics, the voice-stress histograms, the distinctive grammatical structures employed by white middle-class Type A Burbclave occupants who against all logic had decided that this was the place to take their personal Custerian stand against all that was stale and deadening in their lives: they were going to lie, or delude themselves, about the time of their phone call and get themselves a free pizza; no, they deserved a free pizza along with their life, liberty, and pursuit of whatever, it was fucking inalienable. Sent psychologists out to these people's houses, gave them a free TV set to submit to an anonymous interview, hooked them to polygraphs, studied their brain waves as they showed them choppy, inexplicable movies of porn queens and late-night car crashes and Sammy Davis, Jr., put them in sweet-smelling, mauve-walled rooms and asked them questions about Ethics so perplexing that even a Jesuit couldn't respond without committing a venial sin.
The analysts at CosaNostra Pizza University concluded that it was just human nature and you couldn't fix it, and so they went for a quick cheap technical fix: smart boxes. The pizza box is a plastic carapace now, corrugated for stiffness, a little LED readout glowing on the side, telling the Deliverator how many trade imbalance-producing minutes have ticked away since the fateful phone call. There are chips and stuff in there. The pizzas rest, a short stack of them, in slots behind the Deliverator's head. Each pizza glides into a slot like a circuit board into a computer, clicks into place as the smart box interfaces with the onboard system of the Deliverator's car. The address of the caller has already been inferred from his phone number and poured into the smart box's built-in RAM. From there it is communicated to the car, which computes and projects the optimal route on a heads-up display, a glowing colored map traced out against the windshield so that the Deliverator does not even have to glance down.
If the thirty-minute deadline expires, news of the disaster is flashed to CosaNostra Pizza Headquarters and relayed from there to Uncle Enzo himself -- the Sicilian Colonel Sanders, the Andy Griffith of Bensonhurst, the straight razor-swinging figment of many a Deliverator's nightmares, the Capo and prime figurehead of CosaNostra Pizza, Incorporated -- who will be on the phone to the customer within five minutes, apologizing profusely. The next day, Uncle Enzo will land on the customer's yard in a jet helicopter and apologize some more and give him a free trip to Italy -- all he has to do is sign a bunch of releases that make him a public figure and spokesperson for CosaNostra Pizza and basically end his private life as he knows it. He will come away from the whole thing feeling that, somehow, he owes the Mafia a favor.
The Deliverator does not know for sure what happens to the driver in such cases, but he has heard some rumors. Most pizza deliveries happen in the evening hours, which Uncle Enzo considers to be his private time. And how would you feel if you had to interrupt dinner with your family in order to call some obstreperous dork in a Burbclave and grovel for a late fucking pizza? Uncle Enzo has not put in fifty years serving his family and his country so that, at the age when most are playing golf and bobbling their granddaughters, he can get out of the bathtub dripping wet and lie down and kiss the feet of some sixteen-year-old skate punk whose pepperoni was thirty-one minutes in coming. Oh, God. It makes the Deliverator breathe a little shallower just to think of the idea.
But he wouldn't drive for CosaNostra Pizza any other way. You know why? Because there's something about having your life on the line. It's like being a kamikaze pilot. Your mind is clear. Other people -- store clerks, burger flippers, software engineers, the whole vocabulary of meaningless jobs that make up Life in America -- other people just rely on plain old competition. Better flip your burgers or debug your subroutines faster and better than your high school classmate two blocks down the strip is flipping or debugging, because we're in competition with those guys, and people notice these things.
What a fucking rat race that is. CosaNostra Pizza doesn't have any competition. Competition goes against the Mafia ethic. You don't work harder because you're competing against some identical operation down the street. You work harder because everything is on the line. Your name, your honor, your family, your life. Those burger flippers might have a better life expectancy -- but what kind of life is it anyway, you have to ask yourself. That's why nobody, not even the Nipponese, can move pizzas faster than CosaNostra. The Deliverator is proud to wear the uniform, proud to drive the car, proud to march up the front walks of innumerable Burbclave homes, a grim vision in ninja black, a pizza on his shoulder, red LED digits blazing proud numbers into the night: 12:32 or 15:15 or the occasional 20:43.
See what he's done there? Stephenson's just talking about Hiro's job, but already he's clued us into several important points: a) this is a future that's more technologically advanced, but more economically poor and globalized; b) the Mafia is now a pizza company, a move that has important philosophical/societal implications and which will be explained further at a later time; and c) this future is clearly a satire of current corporate/capitalist business, so there will be many points of congruity with the reader's own experience. More importantly, you got all that information from a passage that was fun to read.
You are never confused as to the setting in Snow Crash. You may find the ideas presented within to be far-fetched or even outlandish, but you never have to slow down or look back to understand them. Stephenson understands that his ideas are more important than a cryptic writing style, and he knows that's why we're reading his story. We want to see what he'll do next. Perhaps this is what's most frustrating about the likes of Stross and Reynolds: the ideas that they try so hard to obfuscate are not really that difficult to understand. We've seen omnipotent AIs, time travel, and nanotech before. I don't mind if the author wants to do something interesting with them or not--they can be scenery or scene-stealing, for all I care. But don't dress up the former in fancy costume and assume that we'll mistake it for the latter.
14:20 x Thomas x /fiction/writing/technique x link x 1 comment
Ikaruga, I used to tell people, is the perfect game.
I don't tell that to people anymore, but it's less because of Ikaruga and more because my jackass roommates played it non-stop for what felt like three million years, disturbing my sleep cycle and pounding the soundtrack into my brain. Despite that fact, I still own a copy for the communal Gamecube and every now and then I pull it out and play it. I rarely make it past the third level. It's one of the hardest shooters I have ever played--on par with the old-school R-Types and Gradii (how else do you pluralize "Gradius?").
Ikaruga isn't a perfect game because of its difficulty (which is, as I've noted, absolutely insane), its graphics (stylish, but not really breathtaking), or its depth (the game is basically a twitch shooter with a twist). I'm not trying to say it's the best game I've ever played (I'll take Beyond Good and Evil or Sam and Max Hit the Road any day), or even necessarily a good game. I think about the term "perfect" in this context much like a "perfect" number, which is the sum of all its divisors. A perfect number is a tight little mathematical bundle, self-contained and -referenced. Similarly, a perfect game is the sum of all of its parts, and you can't add anything at all to make it better.
Take Ikaruga, for example. This is a shooter that distills down the essence of all other shooters. There are only two weapons, a machine gun and a homing missile attack. The upgrades typical of post R-Type shooters are subsumed in the polarity mechanic, where enemy bullets of the same polarity (dark or light) as the ship are absorbed to power the missiles. If you tried to add powerups to Ikaruga, you would make the game worse. As it is, every bullet on the screen is simultaneously an attack and a powerup.
There are elements of memorization, but later stages subvert that strategy by literally filling the screen with bullets, forcing the player to adapt and find a safe path through the pattern even as their actions alter it. You can almost see the spare framework of it, as if the designers had gone in the first day and scribbled a few lines on a blackboard: these games are about shooting and dodging. Everything else is extra.
There are some great games that also display this characteristic. Tetris certainly fits my category of "perfect," and indeed most of the attempts to add to the formula have been failures. Many fighting games aspire to this ethic, and some of them succeed. It's not all about retro: modern examples that spring to mind include Ico, Metroid Prime, Virtual On, and Katamari Damacy. Common to all of them is a simple idea (or set of ideas) implemented with a sense of completeness, while discarding extraneous elements.
But should this be a goal for future game designers? I'm not sure. For some genres, it's those extra touches that make the games great. While Halo pared down its inventory and perspective conventions, in other areas it's still more than it technically needs to be. For example, do you really need the flashlight? Are the Marines really important for the game itself? Probably not, but you'd miss them if they weren't there. Modern RPGs are especially bloated, but attempts to streamline them (like Riviera) are as frustrating as they are intriguing. Indeed, many of my favorite games, like The Secret of Monkey Island, revel in their open nature. As video games attempt to become more realistic and less "game-like" we will probably see fewer of the perfect games, and that's not a bad trade-off. I just hope that every now and then a designer will stop, examine the genre, and produce one of these stripped-down packages for us to open when we want a respite from life's complications. Perfection is a nice option, in small doses.
15:04 x Thomas x /gaming/design/structure x link x 1 comment
Boy, do I feel lazy.
00:00 x Thomas x /random/linky x link x 0 comments
PIRATES 4 U CHEAP, NO PRESCRIPTION!!!
I got this today in one of my old mail accounts. The .html part of the message was just Viagra spam, but my webmail client (which is set to run text-only) just displayed the following. I'm guessing it's to fool my non-existent filters.
There's a kind of poetry in that.
You'll be sorry else indeed.
17:16 x Thomas x /random/tech/spam x link x 1 comment
12 Short Conversations About the End of the World
or, my scripted attempt to pretend I'm writing for McSweeneys
1. Fatalistic
John and Mary stand on a cold, dark stage, a spotlight the only illumination)
Mary: Well, I guess this is it then.
John: Yep.
Mary: The end of the world.
John: Darker than I thought it would be.
Mary: And colder. So very, very cold and alone.
Pause.
Mary: Well, I'm bored.
John: Yep.
2. Religious
John and Mary stand on a brightly lit stage, made to look like Heaven. They wear white robes with wings and halos.
John: Wow, Heaven is even better than I thought it would be!
Mary: I know! It's so clean and pretty, and we've got these great wings!
John: Funny, I didn't expect to see Nixon here.
Mary: Yes, but this is no time to be bitter. After all, now that we're in Heaven, there are no drugs, no casinos, no sex, no lies, no violence, and no puerile fiction!
John: Also no cable TV or spam!
Pause.
John: Bored yet?
Mary: Am I!
3. Comedic
John walks onstage toward Mary, and slips on a banana peel. Mary mugs toward the camera. Cue laugh track. The world explodes.
4. Avant Garde
John walks onstage toward Mary, and slips on a banana peel. Mary solemnly raises a kazoo to her lips and begins to play an atonal version of "Hail to the Chief," while John is carried off by men wearing signs reading "I am not a duck."
5. Realistic
John: $#@^ me, it's the end of the world!
Mary: What?
A nuclear flash vaporizes John and Mary.
6. Ironic
Mary: Congratulations, John, we've just managed to save the last endangered Jumping Poison Death Tarantula from certain extinction.
John: But Mary, in our fervor to preserve the earth, we didn't save its last remaining predator, the Seven-Toed Death Sloth. The Tarantulas will have nothing to stop them now.
Mary: How terrible that our zealous environmentalism will be our doom.
John and Mary are swarmed by a roving band of Poison Death Tarantulas and die, convulsing horribly.
7. Sci-Fi
John: Greetings, alien visitors! Klaatu barada niktu!
Mary: Do you come in peace?
Alien (to himself): Why yes, I do believe this will make an excellent narfle-farming planet, once we get rid of all these pesky two-legged monstrosities.
8. Dramatic
John: Mary!
Mary: John!
John: The world has ended as we know it!
Mary: Our bodies are now surrounded only by empty debris, oddly symbolic of our formerly wasted lives.
John: What will we do?
Mary: We'll survive, that's what! It's all we can do.
John: Hold me.
They cling to each other, gazing out over the desolate, smoking ruins. Fade to black.
9. Meta
John: Hold me.
Mary (facing forward): How was that?
Author: That was great. I really felt it.
John: You didn't think I played it too needy?
Author: No, no, it was great. You'll knock 'em dead.
John: Because I can play it less needy, you know. (Attempt at low, manly voice) "Hold me."
Author: Sorry guys, no time. We've got to get into positions for the next scene.
Mary: Oh, which one is that again?
Author: It's...
10. Romantic
John: Mary, the end of the world is near. Won't you admit that you love me?
Mary: Oh John, you're the only man I've ever truly loved. And now it's too late for anything but a few moments of happiness!
John (manly): Hold me.
11. Pretentious
John: You know, the end of the world really does remind me of the works of Bukowski.
Mary: Or perhaps Camus?
John: No! Not Camus! God, you're so pedestrian! Why don't you just go ahead and read Archie comics while sipping Coke and wearing pastels! What did I ever see in you?
Mary (hesitant): ...I'm sorry. I meant to say, maybe we could listen to some Sufjan Stevens?
John: Yes, all right. Fine.
12. Cliched
John bolts upright in bed, sweat streaming down his brow. His handsome eyes gaze hauntedly out into the darkness. Beside him, Mary stirs.
John: Then it was only a dream!
Mary: Honey? Get some rest. You've got a big meeting with the President in the morning.
John: Yes, and now I know just what I'll say. I've really learned an important life lesson, this time.
Mary (muffled): Love you, dear.
John: I love you too, Mary. I'll always love you.
And they lived happily ever after.
00:00 x Thomas x /fiction/short x link x 0 comments
