Mory Buckman's experimental blog: "I Am Not…"

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2012, January 17th, 15:35 and 41 seconds

The Tenth Man

After two and a half months of rehearsals, Paddy Chayefsky's The Tenth Man is going on stage at Ramat Rachel in Jerusalem. I am playing Arthur Brooks, a troubled agnostic Jew who's pulled off the street by a bunch of strange old men who want a minyan in their dinky little shul in 1950s New York. It's a darn good script, letting some profound ideas emerge from within the banal details of everyday Jewish existence. The question is whether we can do it justice. There will be just four performances in this venue, and after each one I will post how it went. If you're looking for a diplomatic "It was nice." bit of fluff, there's an insubstantial interview Harel did with our assistant director Jeremy that may be more up your alley. I'm going to tell you what I actually think of how we're doing. (Click a date to see its post.)

15	16	17	18	19 Performance	20	21
22	23	24 Performance	25 Performance	26 Performance	27	28

2012, January 21st, 18:40 and 19 seconds

When I left the house to get to the show, my father said to me: "Enjoy yourself! That's the most important thing.". And I responded "It doesn't matter if I enjoy myself. The important thing is that I give a good performance.", which should give you some sense of where my head was at. It's not that I was nervous -I knew exactly what I'd be doing, in broad strokes and in tiny detail- it's that the play was an obligation and little more. Since I have put myself into this play, after making a small name for myself in other shows (The Matchmaker and Ruddigore), I need to give a performance on the level I've set for myself. I have the utmost confidence in my ability to entertain the usual audience for Jerusalem amateur theater, who are generally surprised and delighted when they encounter even the tiniest hint of competency. (They have seen too many shows which lacked this.) I have less confidence in my fellow actors. My preparation in the day before opening night involved going over the play in abstract enough terms that if they should mess up every line, I'd still be able to convey Arthur Brooks' character arc to the audience and give the play some emotional weight. In this sort of situation, there's not much hope of enjoying the process. But when I participate in amateur theater, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at having to work with amateurs.

When Lulu showed up, I chastised her for her quote in the Jerusalem Post article: "It’s not a very easy role to relate to.". When she defended herself, saying that she'd said lots of things and the journalist had for some strange reason picked that statement, I explained that I was jealous she got to be quoted, when I would have had something more interesting to say. I like to think my quote would have been: "It's a portrait of Judaism in galut which is as relevant today as it was in the 1950s. I don't think Paddy Chayefsky was a very religious man, but he saw something sad in the deterioration of Jewish spirituality. The generation that still remembers the traditions is dying out, and all their experiences have been reduced to silly anecdotes. Meanwhile the new generation is not interested at all, because they see all of Judaism as a bunch of archaic superstitions. The leadership is entirely disconnected from the people, and aren't doing anything to right the course. What the play is saying, I think, is that underneath all the tedious little details of Jewish life there's something that's worth preserving.". But the chance has gone, and all because I didn't make conversation with the pretty young woman at the dress rehearsal. I tell you, my lack of social initiative is going to get me in trouble some day.

My costume consists of my father's shirt, my father's shoes, my father's socks, my father's watch, my one pair of black dress pants which I bought at a store my father brought me to (and which I only wear because my father likes to see me in "Shabbat clothes" on Shabbat), and a black necktie Rafi gave me which neither he nor Jeremy (the director and assistant director, respectively) actually like but which is apparently the only black necktie they could find. To me it just looks like a necktie - what do I know about clothes? I tied it five times (I read the Wikipedia page for "Windsor knot" to prepare -it's really not as complicated as I thought, it's just a sequence of hand motions like solving a Rubik's cube.), and each time it was either slightly too long or slightly too short. Finally I got it right and Jeremy said it looked better than it had in the past. Good. Jeremy is overly diplomatic, being a politician, but he does have opinions on everything and I respect that.

Somehow the topic came up of the April performance, and Jeremy started explaining that when Rafi left and he took over things would be a little different. He told me I'd get a line put back in which shouldn't have been taken out in the first place, knowing that would make me happy. I said he was like a parent trying to gain his kids' favor to make sure he was the "preferred parent" in advance of the divorce. He didn't care for that comparison. I still maintain that it is a wonderful analogy. Right now, he is winning that competition for me. He missed a bunch of rehearsals, but when he showed up his directing was solid. Rafi's been doing all the work for the play and always keeps his cool, but he's made a lot of missteps. In retrospect, I wish that rather than starting his rehearsals with demoralizing improv games, he had instead challenged the actors to be faster and more comfortable with their lines.

As I got into costume in the bathroom, I heard Neil going over one of his monologues in the next stall. "It needs to be faster.", I called over. "Even here, I can't get quiet?", he said, and I simply reiterated: "I hear how you're doing it, and it's too slow.". Ten seconds later, Neil started over more quietly but at the same speed.

From backstage before many people had started arriving, I heard Harel in the lobby and came out to say hi. "You look like an adult.", he said, with me dressed in the coat and hat I enter with. I attempted a few different "little kid" reactions to this sad statement, and Harel interrupted: "There's only so much you can do, dressed like that.". I turn 24 next month. How did I get so ridiculously old?

On stage after the warm-ups, Rafi continued a tradition of his by giving each of us lottery tickets. It has something to do with having good luck, or something. One person won five shekels, and another won twenty. I refused my ticket: I do not care one bit for gambles. Gerry handed me my kippah: "Is this yours?". "Why do you have that? That was with my stuff!", I demanded. "I've been stealing your things.", he said, and I wasn't sure whether he was joking. At a different point, Lulu joked that she was going to change some of her lines and I should just run with it. Again, I didn't know whether she was serious or not until she reassured me. There are things which one does not joke about!

Lulu told me she heard my musical improvisation from a few days earlier (which I basically sent out because with so much frustration during the dress rehearsal, I wanted to feel like I had something I could actually make good. It wasn't very good, though.) being played as part of the music when the audience came in. I hoped Rafi had used the second improvisation I'd sent him (recorded after he expressed an interest in using the music) rather than the first. The first (fifteen minutes long) was a bit of a mess, and the second (nearly twelve minutes long) incorporated a lot of tunes from the davening, to set the mood. I put my ear to the door, but I couldn't hear the music.

I stayed in that position by the door when the show started. While everyone else was either on stage or having whispered conversations in the lobby (which becomes an extension of our backstage once the audience is inside), I stayed on my own with my ear to the door, listening in for anything I could use as material for this blog post. I heard how the first few lines were delivered, and I ran to Jeremy to say that it was too slow. "When they were just speeding through lines in the last rehearsal, it was really entertaining. They need to be going faster.". The impression the script is supposed to create is that all these lines are very lightweight and trivial, all just forming an atmosphere of mundane realism which gradually reveals the complex truths underneath it. Of course, Rafi had gone in entirely the other direction with the... um, direction, pushing us toward more theatricality. (I went along with this direction by running with his oft-repeated mantra of engaging the audience directly, and making that character/audience dynamic a major part of my performance.) But even Rafi had agreed with me that the beginning of the play works much better when it's fast. Jeremy listened to my criticism and nodded diplomatically.

I ran back to the door and heard the audience laughing hysterically. Even though in my opinion the beginning of the play doesn't work at all if it's paced wrong (and my family, who were in the audience, had a similar impression), the audience was eating it up. They loved all the little bits of banter between the old men. Marvin, who has a tendency toward hammy performances, was having a blast performing for them. One line which he slightly reworded to make it funnier got a huge burst of laughter, and when the laughter died down he gave the second half of his reworded line and got just a chuckle because the audience had already gotten the joke and didn't need it explained to them. (I just sent him an e-mail asking if he could cut out the second half. He probably won't, if only because it's a cue-line for someone else. It should really be the directors telling him, rather than me.)

Some lines were missed, some lines were said twice, some lines were said out of order, but basically the play held together and the audience enjoyed it. Meanwhile I stood outside staring at my reflection to get my not-quite-smile face right, a nuance which I've spent a lot of time practicing at home but which I wasn't sure if I was doing right with the make-up covering my face slightly changing the way it felt. I've never done "subtle" before, and it's trickier than it looks. I wish I could see a video of my performance, so that I'd know whether I took it too far during Act I (which I've decided needs to be much more restrained than the rest of the play). I know I have a tendency to go broad, afraid that the audience won't "get it" otherwise, but I think I was okay here. I hope. I'll try to do less next time.

As I'm on stage I'm kind of lost in my character's own little world, so it's hard for me to know how anyone else was doing. I do know, however, that Marvin ad-libbed at one point "Well, first of all, Foreman's gone alreaady. My name's Zitorsky. Second...", because (as Marvin explained later) Avraham had been using the wrong name so many times when talking to him. That was kind of jarring. Avraham apparently also called Foreman's son Foreman's father several times, which is a mistake he'd been making in rehearsals a lot. "It's always the same problems!", he lamented after the show when it was pointed out to him.

But I think I was fine. I got in all the little nuances I'd planned out, including one bit where I pull my neck backwards as I'm talking which feels really awkward, but doing it to a mirror told me that it's what I need to be doing there and I'm not one to argue with a mirror. Actually, no, I am exactly one to argue with a mirror, so it's good that I listened to my notes instead of trying to act naturally. My Act I monologue was the best it's been, with the presence of the audience pushing me to find new levels of energy. But there were a few points, during the show, where I needed to change the staging slightly, on the fly, to less than ideal situations because the other actors weren't standing where they were supposed to.

I will always remember Gerry as the waiter in The Matchmaker who on one performance forgot his cue to come on stage and left a thirty-second silence. Here he is well-cast as a confused old man. He has few lines, which he usually says wrong, and he's always complaining that his role is too small. My only interaction with him is a bit of goofy staging which Rafi threw in to keep the audience amused, which goes very much against the tone of the play. (When I asked him why he did that, he said: "Something you should know about me is that I always add some craziness into the plays I direct.".) This time Gerry forgot the second half of the little wordless scene between us, and started uncertainly heading back toward his seat early. It's just as well- the gag goes a bit too far for my liking.

There's one sequence toward the end of Act I which has caused so much confusion that on the 17th and 18th we spent hours running through the lines on those pages repeatedly. I'd asked Rafi if we could spend three hours straight just on those pages, but after going through several times Rafi was getting restless and wanted to move on. Now, I know what is necessary for memorizing things, and I know that just because you're able to get through it once or twice it doesn't mean you're ready to perform it. We needed to go through short sections over and over again, because if you do five pages of script together it is too much to process. This is also why I was frustrated that Rafi insisted on doing full runthroughs of the play for all of January, instead of focusing on the scenes that desperately needed focusing on. The issue with the specific sequence at the end of Act I is that it's chaos on stage. By design there is no rhyme or reason to the sequence of lines- everyone is talking at the same time, following fractured trains of thought, and the sense the audience is supposed to get is that everything is moving too fast for anyone to keep under control. In retrospect, we should have seen that there would be a problem there, though I for one did not anticipate it. The actors weren't slacking - they were trying to learn their lines, and they just barely almost knew them. So when we reached that section, rather than trying to maintain the energy on stage I tried to help the other actors get through the scene. This was probably a mistake. I should have barreled through, running over everyone hesitating to remember their lines, and creating the kind of chaos that the scene demands. But instead I played nice, and while almost every line was in there the scene was completely dead on an emotional level, and certainly did not serve as the climax of Act I it's meant to be. I waited seconds (which might not sound like a lot, but it's a lot) for actors to remember their lines, and I overplayed certain emotions because I knew they would remind Joel what his next line was supposed to be and I didn't want him to miss them. I did get every little nuance of my intended performance in there, because it's a lot easier to hit all the beats when you're going in slow motion. But I don't think the audience got much out of watching some old men try and eventally succeed to remember their lines.

My scenes with Lulu went well. Due to the awkward staging, I was never able to actually look at her when I was talking to her, or the audience wouldn't see my face. So I didn't notice that (as she pointed out later) her eyes were literally pink and tearing up the whole time, either because of the make-up or the lights or something. She covered for it well, and if I didn't notice anything was wrong I doubt the audience did.

Later in Act II, there was an awkward pause when Joel forgot a cue. I didn't know whether I should skip to my next line, because I didn't know how much exactly that would be skipping. But after what felt like ten seconds of nobody doing anything at all on stage, I just went for it and the play continued. Apparently I only skipped three or four lines, thank God. I don't actually know every other actor's lines in the script to know when it's okay to do something like that.

Zusha left out a few lines, including my favorite line in the play: "Distribute the macaroons, that all may share this exalted day!". But that's understandable, under the circumstances. The excellent actor who was cast in the part quit two weeks ago because his mother in America was sick. The directors couldn't find anyone to replace him, so Zusha, who has little experience and had been given a tiny part, took over and Jeremy took Zusha's old part. What Zusha did in a week and a half was astonishing. Not only did he remember the vast majority of his lines, but he did a very good performance with it, which (together with a lot of make-up) almost made up for the fact that he's 50 years too young for the part. Word is going to get out of how much he was able to do with so little time, and he is deservedly going to be getting much bigger parts from now on.

During a particularly sentimental scene for my character, I heard a loud snort from the audience. I recognized that snort instantly: it was my father. I think I was doing a fine job with the character in that moment; he just doesn't like sentimentality. Maybe I should do that part better.

The rest of the play was pretty solid. Still too slow, but people remembered their lines and the emotion was carried by my big scene with Lulu which went quite well indeed. The one problem, which Rafi informed me of after the show, was that I wasn't pausing for the audience to laugh. I guess I got carried away. I'll have to be careful of that. At the end of the show, a coat I was supposed to get wasn't where it was supposed to be, so I awkwardly ad-libbed that I couldn't find it. It slowed down the play a bit, but I don't know what else I could have done. Regardless, the play ended on a fairly strong note, I think.

After the play, I asked what people thought of the show. I didn't hear anything particularly negative, which tells me nothing. I was happy that Harel and Rachel said they liked it, even though Rachel must have already known what was going to happen: when I told her the basic synopsis of the play months ago, she immediately guessed exactly what the ending was. Harel said there were moments during my monologues where it seemed like I was talking about myself, rather than the character I was playing. I don't know which parts he was referring to, but he may be right - there's a lot of Arthur Brooks in me, and there's a lot of me in my Arthur Brooks. The pad and pen I use as a prop in the show are the pad and pen I use to record all the details of my life for my performance reviews. And I've caught myself using certain Arthur Brooks mannerisms in my own life. Plus, there's the fact that I normally speak in pompous monologues. So no question, I understand what I'm doing here. I will be glad to be done with this character, though. He is depressing.

Minutes after the show, my father took the initiative to put together a minyan in the lobby for Maariv. Normally I'd avoid davening, since I don't see the point in speaking to an abstract entity, but I'm a sucker for symbolism. The meaning inherent to putting on this particularly play -about not being able to get a minyan together- in Jerusalem is not complete until we see that we're not like that here. In our production we expect that everyone in the audience knows a lot about Judaism, and so it's a lot more heart-warming than cynical in this group.

2012, January 25th, 01:54 and 22 seconds

Character list

I can't take it any more. I just want out of this stupid, stupid play.

Excuse me? The script is excellent.

For all that's worth.

It doesn't matter whether it's good or not. You need to do your job regardless.

Right. So maybe I'd feel considerably better about this if I hadn't botched "the job", as you put it.

Did you not remember to keep your expressions restrained?

I didn't remember much of anything.

Please don't say you forgot your lines.

I didn't forget my lines, I just... agh.

Talking will help.

I have no motivation.

That should work for the character, shouldn't it? He has no motivation either, at the start. Just be yourself, and see what happens.

Maybe. It certainly felt forced today.

Let's get some semblance of order to this conversation. Now, we need to build up motivation for the next performance. So the way I see it, putting ourselves into a grouchy mood is counterproductive. We need to be happy about what's going on, so that tomorrow evening we can get out there and do a good job, like we did on opening night.

People are coming to see tomorrow's show. People I know, I mean.

I'm sorry, I don't exactly understand what went wrong tonight. Did you take my advice of aiming for naturalism?

Who can do naturalism, when I'm not getting anything from the other actors?

Please, don't blame them. This is between me and myselves.

No, it's not. We can't just ignore everyone else, we need to react to what they're doing.

And if they're not doing anything we can work with?

Please don't blame them.

Oh, fine! I admit it! I suck. I've always sucked, and it comes out now.

We don't suck.

I do. I suck. We suck. I obsessed about the particular positioning of my face-

Oh no.

Yeah. Maybe naturalism is a good idea.

Maybe, maybe not. I don't know if losing control is necessarily the right approach.

Let me ask, since no one else is, are we actually going to be posting this conversation? I ask because there's really not much time until tomorrow, and I don't see anyone taking charge and writing up some post. So that must be the plan.

Shh. We need this to be authentic. Stop being meta.

I'm just saying, maybe we should spell out what happened.

I suck, is what happened.

Oh fine. This is something I do, talking to myself because no one else cares quite so obsessively, yadda yadda yadda. There are a bunch of personalities - Explorer, you're just going to put a character list up, right?

The same one from the last post.

Fine, so there's no point talking about it.

I meant we should say what happened tonight.

I suck! I suck I suck I suck! How many times do you want me to say it?

That's not true. You did a good performance on Thursday. Or rather, the Addict did a good performance. Where is he?

We should get to work on the game right away. The play's a loss, but at least we can use these hours at home for something. We're halfway through the game, and we just need to keep working at it.

Yes. This makes sense. Enough time on the Person's moping, let's get something done. Either that, or just go over the lines of the play, but the game would fit the whole "balance" idea for the month.

Forget balance. And Addict, you're not who we need. I know I told you we might be able to work on the game this week, but that was when I assumed we'd be able to crank out good performances without trying. Maybe that attitude was to blame. We're not a good actor naturally. We need to work at it.

Our instincts are fine.

We should go with those.

I don't know, we'll need to figure that out. But we'll need the Addict in here, because I don't want a negative attitude. Tomorrow is going to be great, the final performance is going to be great. We need someone to take over those days who understands that.

I think it's a mistake to neglect the game. The play is not one tenth as important as the game.

My god, you're just like Shai! He didn't cut off my line, leaving me to do a solid thirty seconds of adlibbing apparently without him noticing that he was not saying his line which he was supposed to say, and when I confronted him about it backstage he simply didn't care. He said to me "In the grand scheme of things...", and I said he should take it more seriously, and he told me to get a life.

This story does not matter.

What? He treats the play like that, and it doesn't matter? That is exactly what is wrong with the play- people who are just not determined enough to do anything with it.

Like you, today, from the sound of it. What a hypocrite.

You take it back. I was doing my best.

It was an overly controlled performance. Be real.

That's not what we practiced!

Okay, okay. We need the Addict here.

Yes.

The other Addict.

Hey.

Nice color.

Here is the problem. How do we give a performance-

I've already answered this question. Don't act so much. You can work in little bits of theatricality here and there, but for the most part you need to just trust that we're similar enough to Arthur Brooks at this moment to make it work. The aggravation doesn't hurt.

It does hurt if it decreases energy on stage. Let's go through this beat by beat. We came in with too controlled a half-smile. Don't get it just right, just act polite while you're actually miserable.

This is actually going to be you, tomorrow. That's why I'm calling you in here.

Okay, I'll act polite while actually being miserable.

It won't help. Don't you understand, they're recording tomorrow! And my friends will be there, and we can't risk it all on some artsy experimentation!

The logic is sound. Naturalism will make Arthur more relatable.

Oh my that's interesting. This can go together with what Rafi said about talking to the audience.

Let's just go through the problems. First we came in, thinking we knew what we were doing. We never want to do that. Then we ran through the lines because we had this idea of "fast=good", which isn't right at all. Yes, everyone else is slower than molasses. But we need to feel it out.

Again, it'll be you.

Please don't bother me with pronouns, who cares.

So we just sped through the lines, not feeling the meaning behind them. If I see that I'm not feeling the lines, I will slow down and figure out what I am doing.

What, while the audience is watching?

Yes, while the audience is watching. Arthur Brooks is figuring out what his next move is, while the audience is watching. It's not a race.

It should be, the other actors would be more entertaining.

It's not a race. So that's already two fundamental problems in the first few minutes.

Then we exaggerated the smiles. We never want to do that. Keep the smile steady.

You said it needs to be naturalistic!

I don't know. Maybe.

Okay, this isn't helping. We need to figure out which part of the performance was the problem, and which should be kept.

I told you-

I know what you told me. And you're not an expert on acting, you just posed a theory.

The logic, as I say, is sound. If you didn't want to hear it, you didn't need to give me the day where I came up with it.

I don't think I'm going to go for really exaggerated facial expressions naturally.

That just comes of not being confident enough. I am a professional -by "I" I mean Arthur Brooks- and I don't care what anyone thinks. I mean, sure, I care what everyone thinks. But I want everyone to think I don't care what they think.

Is this really the personality you want controlling the Wednesday show?

Let's keep going through what happened. Came in too forced, sped through lines we didn't feel. Then we went too fast inside the rabbi's office, again with the speed issue. It's not speed so much as just phoning it in and not taking the time to care about the performance. That's the real issue.

And why should I care? It's not a good show!

But it can be.

No it can't! Even with all my mistakes, I was still...

Okay, I wasn't better than anyone else on stage, I admit it.

Arthur Brooks is a central character. He has a compelling arc, from not caring to getting slowly pulled in to rejecting all of it to being set free. Bring the audience on that journey, and no one else on stage matters. We can carry this fucking show all by ourselves.

Did you not hear me when I said how much we sucked?

Which is why we're going through, and figuring out what went wrong.

We were going through the motions of the phone conversation, rather than imagining someone on the other line. The audience can feel the other character through the phone, and when that character isn't there in my head it looks amateurish. Here there is naturalism, of a sort, but what I'm reacting to is someone who's only in my mind. That shouldn't be too much of a stretch for me. But today, it was a one-sided telephone call. We can't have that.

I think the end of Act I was perfectly adequate. No complaints there.

Wait, so is the idea that the Addict knows everything that happened with the Person? Because earlier, we were pretending we didn't know what happened at the play, so that the Person would have to tell us...

Shhh.

I mean, everyone else messed up their lines, but we covered for it as well as we could have.

So it's "we" now.

I don't care about pronouns! Shut up, we.

In Act 2 the staging was absolutely awful. We started leaning against the wall, and then very awkwardly moved to the front, drawing all the audience's attention and all so that Lulu could move to our right.

And we moved through the invisible wall at blackout! Rafi said not to do that.

Fine, I won't do that. The bigger problem was the improvised staging, and you know what? It is not my fucking problem where Lulu stands. If she's been practicing it a way that doesn't fit how we're doing it, then she'll have to figure out something else. I am going to stay by the door.

Not quite reassuring enough on "I'm sure he will be back soon.", the meaning of that's been lost. Then in the scene in the rabbi's office, I didn't care about what Lulu was saying, and that's a problem.

You know, you keep acting like it's so easy to pretend we're getting energy from the other actors that's just not there. Not once has Lulu spoken those lines there with any sort of passion, even though our next line is "It's nice to hear someone talk with passion about anything". And I get the desire for passion. It's why I don't have any healthy human relationships. But the passion was not there.

Yes it was.

What are you going on about?

The passion was there. And the lines were all there, and it was an excellent play.

What planet are you living on?!

Exactly the planet I need to live on, to make sure that tomorrow isn't like today.

Those poor people, who paid 80 shekels for this...

The people who come tomorrow will get their money's worth. That is my promise to them as an actor, and in order to do that I need to not be reliant on anything at all. This is going to be a great play because I fucking say it will.

Is it necessary to keep swearing?

No.

So we didn't listen to the analyst on the phone, and we didn't pay attention to the astonishing amount of passion in what Lulu was saying.

You can't even remember what she was talking about.

She was talking about her entire life, as one does. Moving on.

The monologue was bad.

What was bad, specifically?

We didn't feel it. Same problem.

Not easily fixed.

Very easily fixed. These are wonderful words we're saying, I plan to internalize them. And to hell with the pauses complaint. Let there be pauses, if I feel like there should be pauses. This is one of the best parts of the entire play, and I am going to give the audience every last drop of resonance from it.

So that was a problem. And then when Avraham cut my line off, I continued saying the line instead of running with it.

It's a very controlled line.

Avraham does not exist, to mess up that line. And the second half of that line does not exist, if it is interrupted. I'm going to flow with whatever happens, and find a way to make it a great performance instead of beating up both myself and the other actors if I miss some little detail we planned. The details don't matter. The broad strokes of the character gradually learning to enjoy life despite himself, that matters.

That's not what's happening in the play.

It's happening deep down.

Again, are we sure we want this guy controlling the day? I think I could do a competent job.

We don't want competent. Today was competent. It sucked.

Thank you.

It was good enough.

Thinker, do I have permission to kick Worker out of here?

No. But Worker, please keep your opinions to yourself.

Then there was the debacle with Shai.

Should we end the line there, or just keep talking endlessly until he deigns to cut us off?

What a ridiculous question. Shai, you see, does not exist.

Of course he doesn't.

No. Him not knowing his cue is not a problem in this show. If the line is not interrupted, it continued and ends: "anything like this nonsense. I mean, for heaven's sake, an eighteen year old girl. There should be laws against being like that, with such an innocent thing..." - ooh, you're right - it is fun to ad-lib! I'll have to do that.

That's just showing off. It could backfire.

It's me having fun.

A good idea. Anything that will make this fun is a good idea.

So yes, I'll give him a moment's pause at the end of the sentence but then I'm continuing and I'm never going to stop. An hour later, they'll still be watching me ad-lib, having the time of my life.

So you're not angry at Shai.

Furious. That'll be the fun of it.

This does not sound healthy.

Oh fine, I won't adlib anymore. It is awfully risky. And also unnecessary.

Come to think of it, it could also spark retalitation, where Shai just cuts me off at the beginning of my line.

Fine, I've already agreed I'm not doing that again.

Then there's the end of the scene, where I entered a bit too late. So just keep that in mind, while I'm running around.

The running was a bit lackluster, too. It doesn't matter if anyone's watching, I need to go back in out of breath.

After the intermission it was a bit of a mess - Zusha had read my blog post, and was so careful to get in the wonderful line "Distribute the macaroons, that all may share this exalted day!" -which did get one laugh, actually- that he threw off a bunch of other people... come to think of it, I don't know what that was all about. Was it him that forgot a line, or someone else messing up cues, or what? But I was fine there. Which begs the question, where did I go wrong?

Ah, yes.

Straightening.

It's so controlled, and all the real emotion which had been there was lost. It needs to be more real, while also being spoken to the audience.

That'll be tricky, but I'll work at it.

And if that line doesn't work, for whatever reason, I'll get right back into it with the line to Joel. Why didn't I do that today?

What went wrong?

Timing.

Yes, you're exactly right. Timing. That's it precisely. I've been afraid of giving that line too slowly. I'm going to take my time, it's a meaty line. That was the problem. And it was all downhill from there, because the emotion that was supposed to be underneath all the rest of the play was missing.

Do we really need to go through this entire thing? It would probably be better to let the Addict start a day, or even better to go to sleep early and start promptly tomorrow.

Let me just keep going for a bit.

The bit with Zusha was fine, the rest of the scene was okay, though I don't know about the ending position and the smile should not be brought back there.

But it's like a leitmotif, throughout the show!

I'm pretty sure you're misusing that word.

What, leitmotif?

Never mind.

I didn't get upset enough at Lulu.

I should have been really upset with her for not letting go of her silly little idea. Instead I forced the energy without the emotion, and the result was some annoying shrieking. Ouch.

Then the little face-off with the Cabalist was a little bit off, but really I think the rest of the play was okay, for my part. Get Act I right, and the rest will follow.

2012, January 26th, 02:50 and 1 second

Backstage during the intermission, I couldn't contain my excitement at what I'd just accomplished. I said to Rafi: "What do you think of how I improvised all of Act I?". He seemed unimpressed. "It was just a few lines.", he said. "No, it was all out of order so I needed to redo all of the staging and add in lines!". "Well, that's why we trained you in improv!".

I have to admit, he had a point. I was so annoyed at all those little improv games, when we could have been focusing on all the fun little details and gotten the play under control. But here I am, after a show which went spectacularly off the rails in Act I (if proximity to the script is your measure), and I had an absolute blast. And so did the audience, all of whom seemed shocked when I said that what we were doing was not what Paddy Chayefsky wrote and what we practiced. This morning, I spent hours going over little details: refreshing the little details I'd come up with before, adding in new details. And on stage, all those details went out the window in a few moments of actors saying the wrong lines. And yet, it was a very good show. The energy was there. The characters, for the most part, were there. The humor was there. All we lost was all the details, and really, who cares about those?

When the show started, I had my ear up to the door listening to my music playing (which I am very proud of), so I heard how the play began. I ran over to Jeremy, who was still having his make-up done. And I said to him: "They're going faster! And it's especially going to be quicker because they're skipping half their lines!". He responded bitterly: "You should not be telling me this before the play's over.". "No, but the audience loves it! It's just inessential lines they're missing, it still makes sense.". He did not seem entirely reassured, but he should have. The play was working. And then of course Neil came in and slowed down the show, as he does. But the pace had been set. I tell you, when we reached the final scene the audience was totally engrossed in the story, you could feel the anticipation. Not bad for a bunch of guys who don't know their lines. I take credit for holding the thing together.

Here's what happened in Act I. I walked in, so happy to be on stage that I may have forgotten to do the little polite smile I'd practiced. But I was acting fairly naturally, so I had complete confidence that whatever I was doing (and I wasn't quite sure what I was doing) would work. I went off to the corner, and found that the door to the rabbi's office hadn't been closed. There was an insane girl on the other side of the door who I wasn't supposed to know about yet, and I was standing right in front of the door as it was open. And I figured, okay, this will be kind of funny for the audience. All I'd have to do to notice her (and send the plot off the rails) is glance to my right, but I'm so absorbed in my writing that I don't see it. Good, let them hold their breath for a bit. But then I remembered that Gerry was going to come over and try to get past me, and I had no faith in him to come up with some clever reason why he can't get past me even though the door was wide open. So I absent-mindedly closed the door without looking through - sure, it was awkward, but better some slight awkwardness than the entire show getting derailed.

So I was standing there, Gerry came in, forgot all the details of what he was supposed to be doing (a very simple bit of staging where he tries to get past me, and ends up silently fighting with me), but bothered me enough that I figured, okay, the audience is seeing Gerry's character being an ass so he's served his purpose here. And then the scene was supposed to move on with Joel coming in to get Gerry out of trouble, and starting to talk to me. Then I sit down (I'd arranged with the directors today that I'd sit in the back row because the other actors were always standing right in front of the seat I was supposed to sit in.), they talk about me for a bit, I ask to make a phone call, they direct me toward the rabbi's office, and then there's a whole bit I'd planned out where I reveal to the audience for a moment how miserable I am, before noticing the girl and recomposing myself, then slowly deciding what to do about her before sitting down and making a phone call. During this whole silent bit in the office, the audience is listening to Avraham give a monologue occasionally broken up by other characters reacting to him.

That's what's supposed to happen. What actually happened after Gerry's botched confrontation with me was an awkward pause, followed by Avraham giving that monologue that was a few pages too early. Don't ask me how it happened, I was writing away and couldn't tell you. But it happened, and I started writing in my pad (without changing my facial expression): "How the heck are we going to get out of this?". Thank God when Joel reached the end of the section, instead of reacting in horror to the realization that I was in the rabbi's office (which would have been horrific, because I was not in fact in the rabbi's office, but was still just wasting time by the door), he segued into his dialogue with me. I took my time with the lines, enjoying what I was saying. And then I was supposed to sit down, but all the seats were taken because everyone was in the staging for later. So I simply stood on the side, and continued the scene as though I wasn't meant to be sitting down. When I went into the rabbi's office, I skipped all the waiting and just jumped straight from beat to beat to beat without waiting for a cue. (The cue lines had already come and gone during the monologue.)

I perhaps took longer than I should have - it takes entirely too long to call a number on a rotary phone, when the entire audience is watching you and nothing else is happening on stage. But without relying on anyone else (because I understood what they'd done, and why they couldn't join in without making everything worse), I kept the play moving forward. I gave my phone-conversation monologue as I'd practiced, and it went well. Then I left the room to rejoin the other actors.

The play kept moving -don't ask me if it was on script, I was in my own little world- and then we reached the problem pages where no one ever remembers what they're supposed to be saying. I moved around the stage more (in patterns I had not planned out), to create a sense of movement despite the long pauses which I anticipated between the lines. I looked in at the girl, came out, and gave my line: "What have you been doing to this girl?", to which the response is supposed to be "The girl is possessed by a dybbuk.". But instead the reply I got from Avraham was "Nothing.". Ah, but I was ready for him! This is not the first time he's made this mistake, so earlier that day I decided what I'd do if he messed it up again. Without missing a beat, I responded: "What sort of nothing are we talking about, specifically?", which got him back on track and we continued. ...until Joel's line, which he confused with another line, so I cut him off with a line that related to what he was saying, and we kept moving from there.

Then I tried out a little bit of staging I'd come up with where I'm about to leave, and it didn't go quite so well because Joel, following me, had his back to the audience. I wasn't able to go as far upstage as I'd intended, for fear that his positioning would get even worse. Still, I think I gave the audience the impression that I wanted to get out of there, so as far as I'm concerned it was fine.

Then in Act II scene 1, in the part I have with Shai, he cut me off too soon (overcompensating for not cutting me off yesterday), and then tried to combine his two lines, so that I needed to cut him off, but it almost worked. Then Joel didn't come in on cue, and when I left the room he started saying his line while forgetting to enter the theater, before deciding to say the rest of his line inside to whoever happened to be there.

So this is the class of problem we're having. And yet, I legitimately think this was an entertaining show, if only because of what a strong reaction we got from the audience. Because the energy was there. If I'd waited for Joel to remember to come in, the show would have died a little there. But I didn't wait, I just kept the show moving and whatever happens happens. And yes, I am going to take credit for the show being at all watchable. If I hadn't planned on everyone else failing, if I didn't know and accept that that was an option, the show would not have been watchable even if I got in every nuance of what I'd prepared. I got in maybe 75% of what I'd worked on. And it was enough.

Here was my opening statement for the day, which will appear in the performance reviews at the top-right of the page as soon as this extended day is officially over:

"Paddy Chayefsky wrote a wonderful play. People are paying good money to see that play. And I have the capability and determination to deliver as much of the brilliance of the play as I can manage. The other actors do not exist. The directors do not exist. All there is is Arthur Brooks and the audience, and they will enjoy the show."

This is what happened. I totally ignored Rafi's instruction of speaking toward the audience. I cut off other actors when I needed to, I covered for them totally messing up Act I, I rearranged all my staging around whatever nonsense they were doing. Arthur Brooks was Arthur Brooks, minus a few tiny nuances which weren't critical, and the audience enjoyed the show.

(There were no horror stories from the second half of the show, which is mostly driven by myself, Lulu and Zusha. We know what we're doing.)

And you know what? I enjoyed it as well. I am proud of this show we put on tonight. I am not proud of my fellow actors, with the exceptions of Zusha and to a lesser extent Lulu (Her crazy stuff is great, but I think there's a lot more she could be doing with the lucid parts.), and I suppose Kalman as well because Kalman's always reliable. But I am proud of my own contribution. And even though Rafi wasn't able to pull the play together exactly, he did at least show me how to have a good time in it.

2012, January 27th, 15:06 and 53 seconds

The last performance was very good. Not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, though in retrospect it could never have been a masterpiece with this direction, but it was actually close to script and there was energy and the sizeable audience was very responsive. My performance was a bit weaker than the third -the problem with extended days is that my enthusiasm gets diminished as they continue- and my first monologue with Evelyn was a little bit off. Plus, I got a bit confused at times and put my hands in the wrong direction or little things like that. But it was a pretty good performance, and everyone else was as good as they've been, except for Kalman who I think wasn't having quite as much fun with it as he'd had previously... you know what, none of this matters. It came together, most of the audience was satisfied, and now everyone's talking about the cast party which I'll probably blow off. I've got more important things to be doing now.

Now that I'm looking back, the play looks very different. It all looks poorly-conceived, even the parts that I thought made sense. When Rafi said he wanted me to have a prop, I pulled the pad and pen out of my pocket that I never leave home without, and he said that was great. It didn't strike me as odd to be writing things all the time, because this is what I do and I don't even think about it any more. All eight of my regular characters write down everything they're doing -even the Person who we really had to force into it. But apparently the way it came off was that I was a journalist of some sort, writing down notes about the people around me. This was completely at odds with the impression I wanted to give, that I was disinterested in everything around me. And I'm finding out now. Why am I only finding out now?

I'm remembering a lot of reservations I had about the show a month ago, which I pushed out of my mind because there was nothing I could do about them. I think the tone of our production was completely wrong, aiming for theatrical silliness instead of emphasizing the realism of the setting. I think the staging was haphazard throughout, and the characterization was barely there for most of the characters. I think it was much too slow, consistently - Arthur's scenes should have been the parts where the play slowed down to catch its breath, not the parts where the audience woke up because the play was suddenly moving more quickly. I look forward to watching the DVD at 1.5x speed, and seeing how much that improves the show.

Looking back, I can't think of a single decision of Rafi's (past the casting) that I agree with. There must have been one, but I've been running through the experience in my head and nothing's coming to mind. I think Rafi completely misjudged the tone of the script, I think he overestimated the competence of these actors left to their own devices, I think he was careless about important details, and I think he didn't push any of us (myself included) as hard as he should have.

I'm not sure I like what I was doing either. I had an idea I liked for the part, and Rafi said it didn't work. So I came up with another, more complex idea (It took me around five minutes to get into character before entering the scene.), I wrote out details for the entire script based on that idea, and Rafi wanted more of a straight man so I threw that all out and tried to be more normal most of the time, letting the depressed parts be little scary bursts of manic energy tht are then repressed. I don't think I pulled it off. I won't know until I see the DVD, but I retained a lot of little ideas from the first and second versions of the character, which probably don't fit anymore. I barely know who the character is, he's such a hodgepodge of different acting styles and plot functions. But I do know who he is as a person, I think, so maybe what I need to do for the April performance is to throw out everything I have worked on -absolutely everything- and just be on stage.

I suspect it'll be easier to be real when everyone knows their lines better (which Jeremy is going to focus on) and it's not just a big imrpov game. Maybe that's just an excuse. I don't know.

Thank God the play is over. ...sort of. Whatever.

one comment from Harel

Harel said:: I love it!
It remains to be seen how tonight will go.
will it be ad-libbed?
will it flow?

I'm waiting to know!

by the way, it was weird and cool seeing our conversation from your perspective.

Post a Comment

2012, January 5th, 15:40 and 07 seconds

View my slow crawl out of the gutter in December 2011Daily performance reviews for December 2011:(Rules)

Self-meeting for December 2011

Each day, I pick a character to play, follow the Rules for that character, and score myself on how I did. After the month, all my personalities get together to figure out where we stand and where we're going.
Character list

Summary
Rule proposals
Plans for January

My personal goal in December was to be a more benevolent sort of organizer, not being too harsh about failures and trying to understand my companions better. It is not my place to say whether or not I was successful. What is clear from the performance reviews is that self-improvement was achieved in small measures, and that this self-improvement -like most self-improvement- was slow and gradual. Comparing the first few days of the month which dragged on pointlessly with the last days of the month which had a lot of energy and enthusiasm, it is clear that there has been a noticeable change. And though I said it was a gradual process, and this is true, we can also see one particular event in the middle of the month which turned things around. I am speaking, of course, of the conference room program, which we will be writing this self-meeting in for the first time today. The ability to speak to each other is key to having a successful relationship with each other. Without the ability for casual conversation, the Rules are abstract to the point of being academic for all except myself and possibly a few others. If we can actually talk to each other, as we would talk to other people via the internet, suddenly our characters and situations require significantly less suspension of disbelief to engage with. If there was one mistake I made this month, it was not prioritizing the conference room above all else -even Gamer Mom, which is by far the most important thing we're doing in the bigger picture. The conference room, in focusing our personalities and decision-making processes, allows us to achieve all the other things on the agenda. From the plan, there were two elements we did not get around to: creating marketable music and building a blog post to house debates between us. The other half of the plan -Gamer Mom and the play- were reasonably well-represented. If we had started the month with the conference room, I believe we would have dealt with all the bullet points on that list.

Not on the list, but also on display in the time allocation tables: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, which reversed the trends we criticized in the "Living in Hyrule" chapters (which we ought to get back to), the social protest and its continuing debate, and some confusion regarding the Person's place in the group, which was addressed in the last blog post(s).

I didn't get a single day.

That's true. But it's not like we haven't been playing piano.

We haven't exactly been pursuing it.

I would like to point out that this conference room program is incomplete. I raised some issues, and they have not been addressed. In addition, we have not implemented several simple but important features from the design document.

This will all be dealt with next month.

No, it won't.

There is absolutely no time, with everything we've got planned. There's a March 5th deadline for Gamer Mom, which means at least a week of being addicted to that. And the play The Tenth Man opens on the 19th, so we should have a weeklong addict for that as well.

We don't necessarily need to have a full week for each. In general, I'm hoping to have shorter days in January.

That might not happen. I don't like ending a day before I'm done.

If you're not done, but you've fulfilled your obligation to work on the challenge for three hours, end your day and come talk to me. I may give you another day right away to finish up what you're doing, or I may decide that something else is more urgent but you'll get another day immediately after that. I'm not looking to leave everyone with unfinished business.

That is a sensible recommendation.

I'd like to point out that through no intent on our parts, the month was fairly symmetrical. It's like the seventh 74.

"The first day is frustrating, yes, but the seventh is satisfying."

I was speaking more to the convenient coincidences behind that post, but yes.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

What the Explorer is saying is that when you put in an effort, it ends up more beautiful than you intended due to God's presence. It's a religious statement.

I wish you'd stop speaking in riddles.

I just explained what we were talking about.

You shouldn't need to explain anything. If there's something that's so obscure it needs to be explained, it probably shouldn't be brought up in the first place.

Bl'bah.

Whatever.

Rule proposals

Summary
Rule proposals
Plans for January

Summary

Okay, let's get down to the nitty-gritty. I'd like to propose a new rule for the Worker. He shouldn't be able to watch TV or read comics if it's not in the schedule. We've had too many occasions where there's a free minute somewhere, a TV show sneaks in and there goes the rest of the day.

"When adjusting the time allocated to passive entertainments in a previously-declared schedule, the starting time can be made later (but not past the declared end time), and the ending time can be made earlier (but not before the declared start time). However, no passive activities may be added to a previously-declared schedule in time which had not already been allocated for the purpose."

I'm not sure I even understand what that means.

Don't move lengthen or add time for comics or TV. If you want those activities, you're going to have to allocate them.

Oh, also: "The first activity of the day may not be a passive activity."

I have no objection to these rules.

Excellent.

And I'm glad you brought up first activities, because I'd like to change the idea there. I think what we've been doing is clumsy. There is no reason to declare a first activity both on its own and in the time allocation table. But I do like the idea of starting the day on the right foot. So let's separate the first activity from the time allocation table.

The question, then, is how that fits in with the strict list of what may be done outside of a day.

It's not outside a day, it's just a part of the day that's not in the time allocation table.

Though, since you bring up the permissible activities outside of a day: we need to add conversation as an acceptable unrecorded activity. That way the conference room becomes a safe place, where we're not worried about going over the mundane activities quote but we can take as long as we need to get our heads on straight.

It's a fine idea, but entirely separate from the matter of unrecorded first activities. I will need to consult The Rules.

Okay. This isn't complicated, but it requires some editing of the "Activities" section. I will do that now.

Done.

Could you also write up the other rules we discussed?

Of course.

Done.

Okay. Are there any other proposals?

I propose you let me have a day.

Any other rule proposals?

No?

We will move on, then.

Plans for January

Summary
Rule proposals
Plans for January

Rule proposals

Let's figure out what we're doing in January.

Well, it's obvious, isn't it? We've got the play. That is set in stone. And we've got Gamer Mom, which is also set in stone. That doesn't leave a lot of time.

How much time would you estimate we'll need on Gamer Mom?

200 hours, I'd say. 200 hours by March 5th.

That should be 100 hours in January, and 100 hours in February.

That seems sensible.

No, that seems ludicrous. This is the time to be dealing only with the play. How is it that two weeks before opening night, so many of the nuances of the character are just idle thoughts, and not actually represented in the performance? We have two very different ideas here: the man who is completely broken and fools the world into thinking he is okay, and the everyman who stumbles into a scene of weirdos and provides someone for the audience to relate to. The first is my take, the second is the director's. I need to find a middle ground, so that we can both be happy and have a play better than either one of us sees it. This takes a tremendous amount of time. This is the time to be committing all available hours to the play.

The play must not come at the expense of the game.

The play is just a hobby; games are our life.

Speak for yourself. I really believe The Tenth Man can be something special.

Of course. I wouldn't claim otherwise.

There really isn't much time.

13.5 hours in a day, 23 days left to January. That's a total of 310 hours we have to work with if we waste no time at all in an entire month. Which honestly, is impossible.

100 hours on Gamer Mom. And a bare minimum of 104 hours on The Tenth Man, if you do the math. That's assuming we spend no time on it at all at home, but just go to the rehearsals and performances and call the job done. So that leaves 106 hours left in the month. I can understand spending 30 more hours on the play. Maybe 40. But if we leave ourselves only 50 hours of recreation and unanticipated activities over the course of an entire month, we are going to go insane.

Insanity would work well for my performance of Arthur Brooks.

Tempting, but it would mess us up in the future months. Plus, it would harm the Gamer Mom work. So no.

Addict, would 35 hours be enough?

Three days' worth? Heck no.

Look, those are the numbers. So either we push some of the Gamer Mom work to February, which seems like a bad idea, or we don't go on stage with the absolute ideal performance we can possibly have.

That is unacceptable. Over the last two shows, I have acquired a reputation for daring performances. If I give a performance in The Tenth Man which is underachieving, I lose that.

I really think I can get audiences to like this unlikable person. I think I can have people rooting for the impossible romance he finds himself in, even though it makes no logical sense. Or maybe because it makes no logical sense. I can create a character who seems like he came from an entirely different world than these old men, a world which is more sensible and yet empty.

You'll have to do that in 30 hours.

Let's not jump to conclusions. We're talking about options.

What if it turns out that Gamer Mom is actually more work than the Worker anticipates? Kyler starts another project on March 5th, it never gets done, and everything gets derailed for years.

Nothing is getting derailed. Calm down, everyone. We can figure this out.

I feel that I am owed.

Then you will be sorely disappointed. January is not your month.

I have yet to have "my month". The implicit policy from the old blog of treating music as an addiction akin to TV is still in full effect.

There is simply no time, Musician. I have no days to offer you.

I am going to lower your score each and every time you have a day, Thinker.

Fine! I don't expect I'll have any days this month, either. We can only have people who will make progress on our practical goals. That leaves just the Addict, the Worker and the Person.

What? How did I get into the list of productive people?

These two activities have social implications. That means you're part of the discussion here. Musician, you are not. Go away.

You may regret this.

We did promise to work on the website for our shul. How is this not also "set in stone", as the Worker put it?

There's no deadline.

Then we should set a deadline, no?

Fine! The end of February. That's the deadline.

In the meantime, you can be helpful by figuring out how to resolve the two visions of Arthur Brooks.

I think I can handle that, thanks.

I think the Programmer's challenge-oriented approach might work better, sometimes.

I'd be willing to give it a shot. It does sound like an interesting problem.

Fantastic! Then we have four characters, who will be the only ones in January.

A little piece of ourself died as you typed those words.

None of this is actually addressing the problem.

Yes, it is. With the other four characters out of the discussion, we now have a greater chance that whatever we decide here will not be strayed from, which means we're using every last bit of time available for the task at hand.

We could make up a new character who can handle Gamer Mom and The Tenth Man. It worked in December 2010.

That's an interesting idea. Who would you be thinking of?

Someone very interested in drama, and in the potential of little moments. Someone with an eye for the visual and the emotional. Actually, forget the new character. I volunteer to run the entire month.

You'd watch movies and act random. We need someone reliable.

So let's make a new character, who's exactly like me but reliable?

That doesn't even make sense. Your whole nature is as an agent of chaos.

I prefer to think of myself as... no, actually, that's good. Agent of chaos. I want to be an agent of chaos.

Excellent. Then you have no place in this conversation; come back in February. And we're not making a new character, because we don't have the time to tweak and test him. We're working with who we've got.

Suit yourself.

Okay. Four characters: Addict, Worker, Person, Programmer. But mainly the Addict and the Worker. The Person and the Programmer are just to keep the month from getting stale, really.

Gee, thanks. It's so nice to feel wanted.

Think of yourselves as understudies.

It does make sense to have understudies.

But mainly we're relying on the Addict and the Worker. The Addict is only allowed to return after two days of other characters, so the Addict's days should be as long as possible and the Worker's days should be as short as possible.

I don't understand.

That way we can squeeze two Workers in between Addicts, and have flexibility about which activity each Addict is pursuing. But "as long as possible" is going overboard. I'm afraid that after reaching an average of over 7/10 for the month, which is quite necessary in January's case, the Addict will simply take the rest of the month without needing to worry about quality.

Fine. Not as long as possible. But on the long side. We'll keep in conversation during the day, and see when it's best to end.

We're still not addressing the problem. It's simple math. There are not enough hours.

We could sleep less.

No, we could not. I know what you're like without eight and a half hours of sleep. I'm not interested in going there.

You know, most people don't sleep so much.

Maybe they don't put as much energy into each day as we need here.

Or maybe they do, and we've just gotten too used to having this much sleep.

It doesn't matter if you're right. We can't risk it when so much is on the line.

Fatigue would become Arthur Brooks.

No.

Please stop dancing 'round the issue.

Let's figure on 85 hours of Gamer Mom.

Oh, damn. I messed up my calculation. I forgot the last day is a self-meeting.

Right.

Oh, and also I wasn't accounting for mundane activities.

For God's sake!

I think whatever we decide on, by the way, should leave in time for TV and comics.

And we can't neglect the blog for another month. We just can't.

People! We do not have an infinite amount of time!

This is why we are looking to you to decide how the time will be spent.

Now, let's do the calculations properly.

Let's figure that we have an average of ten hours per day (not game-day, but "day" in the conventional sense) that's not claimed by sleeping, eating, other mundanity, brief lapses into addiction and unexpected events.

That seems high. What if some social opportunity comes along?

Let's say an average of nine hours per day that we can actually plan for. We have 23 days, not 22, and the self-meeting will be the first of February. So we have 207 hours to work with.

That is nothing.

Now you're catching on. If it's a hundred hours on The Tenth Man just with the transportation times and not even adding in all the extra work of trying to do a good job, then 100 hours of Gamer Mom is a fantasy.

I don't want to leave it all for February.

We don't need comics and TV.

Sherlock is awesome. I would like to watch it.

And that's not an option. We're forgetting about the transportation. During that time, we'll be playing games on the Nintendo DS. That will serve as the entertainment this month. No comics, no TV, no music, minimal internet use. The purpose they serve is not needed when we've got another kind of entertainment available.

There still aren't enough hours.

Gamer Mom has to go.

No.

Gamer Mom stays.

You're making this very difficult. This plan is absurd. We cannot give equal attention to the game and the play. We simply cannot, and no amount of stubbornness will change the fact.

I'd like to sleep on it. We'll meet again in the morning, and conclude this meeting so that the Addict can get started with Gamer Mom.

Good night.

Good morning.

Have you come to a decision?

Good morning.

I have not quite decided yet.

Let's put all our energy into the play, like the Explorer suggested. December 2010 showed results.

It showed results because there were no distractions at all. Nothing but the play. That is not an option in this case. Gamer Mom is a higher priority than the play. If I were convinced that we could not do both to the expected level of quality, I would say that the play should suffer for it. Thankfully, I am not convinced of this.

Now, let's rethink our calculations one last time. December 2011 started late. January 2012 is also starting late. It's not the end of the world if we decide right now that February 2012 will be starting late as well.

This doesn't match up with how the rest of the world calculates time.

Nor does our use of the word "day", but that's not hurting anyone.

We really shouldn't be calling those "days".

I know it's shocking that I of all people would suggest such a thing, but this is not the time to discuss semantics. There is a precedent for lengthening months when the work is not done. It will not be possible to do a hundred hours of Gamer Mom by February 1st, for all the reasons brought up and others. But doing it by February 5th is quite a different matter.

If that's the case, then we can stop at February 1st and simply do less this month.

Yes, I suppose we could do that. That way we get a coherent story of February as a focus on Gamer Mom.

Actually, yes, that does work much better. Thank you.

Here, then, is the plan. We will not worry about the number of hours as we go.

We really should.

We will instead worry about maintaining balance between the play and the game. They are equally important in this month, and to neglect either is inconceivable. So if we feel that we've been spending more time on the play than the game, we shift our focus to the game. And vice versa. On the subject of vice, I will allow comics and TV for the simple reason that if I ban it, there will be a flood of wasted time just as we're starting the critical month of February.

Thank you.

Of course, these activities are only allowed for the Worker, and the new restriction which the Worker has kindly agreed to means that all such time needs to be scheduled so that it does not get out of control. I will expect every schedule to be run past me before it is declared. I will be generous in the first half of the month. Possibly less so as we get to crunch time.

You're talking about just twenty or thirty hours of private work on the play, if we follow that strategy.

I will not deny that the time on the play will be limited, especially since we do have other concerns: the health of the blog, adding the final touches to the conference room which should have been in last month.

We do not have time for the blog.

We will find time for the blog.

Nothing fancy, no interactive posts or really ambitious ideas. But at least we can write about Fear Itself, about Ocarina of Time, and about adventure games.

That's an extra forty hours tacked on, easily.

And what of the changes to the way we run the blog? Shouldn't those be done as soon as possible?

Absolutely not. That will be February, or maybe even March. For now we coast on what we've got.

I don't like it.

Noted.

What about the shul website? We did promise.

Again, not this month.

It's bad form to promise to do something and then not get around to it.

I am aware of that.

Basically, what is going to keep us focused on Gamer Mom and The Tenth Man is not any policies I set, but simply the influence of the Addict and the Person.

The Person is not known for getting things done.

He will be now.

You can't simply make up new personalities to suit a single month.

It fits with where the Person has been. These are important social obligations, as I have previously pointed out.

And what if he decides to spend an entire day just hanging out instead of working?

Person, please do not spend too much time with other people (other than Kyler and the Tenth Man cast) during January.

I can't guarantee that they'll be enough.

This is why you have Shabbat.

Okay. What of game night? Can I try to catch the tail end, as we did this past week?

Yes, okay.

You are imagining that there is more time than there truly is.

End your days quickly, except for the Addict. Don't sleep for longer than 8 hours. And never mind the numbers. This is going to be a fun month, for all of you.

That's it, then? "Balance"? That's your plan?

Yes. We'll see how it goes.

Have fun.

2012, January 4th, 12:15 and 27 seconds

261211002.htm

Humankind, I can explain...

I'm not sure what I should be doing now.

I guess I could end the day, but I feel like there's something I'm forgetting to do.

You were going to write to the blog.

Yes, I was.

People are actually reading the blog, which is really odd.

And it's a problem, because there's nothing new there.

But I don't remember what it was I wanted to write.

Well, look at what's going on right now. You're basically-

"Cheating on the Human Race", that was it.

Yes, that was one idea for a title.

Was that the social game?

Yes. The idea is that you're trying to figure out how to approach normal people, when you've essentially replaced them with yourself.

Yes. Is there a way I can word this, so that it won't have a creepy sexual undercurrent?

No. Embrace the sexual undercurrent.

[shudder]

"cheating" is the right word. It creates a sense that what we're doing is taboo.

It sounds like bestiality.

Nonsense.

Well, it does.

The title gives the wrong idea.

No better title is popping into mind. We can think about it.

But no implications of bestiality.

Fine.

Are you sure you want to write this post yourself? It takes a long time to write an interactive post.

Well, it's best if I do it. But honestly... no. I'm not sure this is what I want to do with the rest of the day.

I have the sense that there was something else, some simpler post I had in mind.

Maybe you should have written it down.

Sure, but I didn't.

You know, I really like "Cheating on the Human Race". It's catchy, it's provocative.

No bestiality!

Fine, fine.

This is yet another reason why I should write it myself.

So do that.

Maybe I will.

Look, this is obviously a turning point for you.

Guh. Don't remind me.

It was a lot easier to just ignore you guys.

What's changed?

I don't know. All I know is that when I tell people about this program, they don't react like I thought they would.

What is it you thought they'd think?

I don't know, that this is a bit of strangeness that intrigues them. Or something. I don't know.

What difference does it make if other people are interested? Is our entire life just an amusement for other people?

Well, yes.

I mean, don't get me wrong, it would be great to actually do things. I'm all for working on Gamer Mom, for instance. That can get me actual respect. But while I'm not being respected, sure, I'll settle for amusement.

Interesting.

Oh, go on, say it. You think that's pathetic.

No, actually I'm not sure how I feel about it. I guess I just never considered the idea of creating amusement being such a goal of being strange. But maybe that's all it is.

Of course you're trying to amuse people. What's the whole blog?

It's a story I'm telling my future self.

Sure.

Then why is it on the internet?

The public nature of a blog gives the story legitimacy in my eyes. But the intended audience is not the public. It never has been.

"Legitimacy"?

Yes. It says that this is not a story I'm ashamed in. And that creates expectations about how this story is going to be ending, i.e. there will be a point to all of it.

Most blogs on the internet don't have a point.

Their writers are treating them as tools of communication. I Am Not... is a story.

And the purpose of a story is to entertain, no?

Point taken.

I suppose strangeness is about eliciting reactions, in a way- by seeing something that you don't expect, it expands your worldview a little. [The Trip: Diversity (and lack thereof)]

Citations, now. What the hell have I gotten myself into.

There's something inherently idealistic about nonconformity.

See, that I don't buy. I could be okay with conformity.

Really?

Sure, why not?

All that work, to end up as someone who'll always be second-best next to the natural normals.

No one's naturally normal. You learn it as you go along.

True enough.

But better to aim higher, no?

I don't know. I really don't.

Then why are you here? Why did you vote to keep this game going?

I don't know.

I was really surprised, I've got to be honest. I thought you weren't interested in any of us, because we're not "real" people or whatever.

You're not.

And yet...?

And yet nothing. You're not.

I don't get it.

You know, when I tell people what I'm up to and they practically back away because they don't know what to make of me, I should want to throw away everything that's causing that. I should want to reassure them that it's not so weird really. It really is very awkward to tell anyone about this. I mean, I can't quite claim to have multiple personalities because that implies a lack of control. And this is all so rigidly controlled.

All multiple personalities might be something like this. [Semantics, Part 3]

You can't actually believe that.

There are some things about this text entry which need to be fixed. First, only the part of the line which is visible should be drawn. Drawing so much offscreen is slowing the program down. So we'll need to figure out which part of the line actually needs to be drawn. Actually, that should be very straightforward. Second, when switching characters textX should immediately be set to textGoalX without the scrolling. There's no sense in thinking the caret is in the same place for two characters. A separate problem is that when a new character is brought in while another character hasn't finished typing, the program thinks the text is for the new character. That's just a simple oversight.

It makes sense. If it were an act, in the same way that any persona is a controlled act, I think multiple personalities might look exactly as they do. Which is not proof of anything, but it means that this isn't an outrageous idea. Regardless, what we're doing is in some ways unique.

There are plenty of people who talk to themselves on the internet. We didn't invent the idea.

Most people don't take it this far.

This is true.

Most people are content with a little bit of quirkiness. This here is full-fledged uberquirk.

The word "quirk" doesn't even belong here. I think the word you're looking for is "insanity".

Or possibly "disorder".

Ugh. Don't even joke. This is all a conscious decision, we don't need to make a new category just to make people feel better about being quote-unquote "normal". This is a choice.

The program is slowing down. We've never had a BlitzMax program run for such a sustained time, and maybe this just happens. Or maybe I need a new graphics card. Or more RAM.

We'll manage.

I was saying that it's awkward to tell people about this "game", or whatever you want to call it.

And I'm really embarrassed when they react like that, but somehow it feels right, you know?

I don't know what it is that you would consider "right" about this situation. Like I said earlier, I didn't expect you to be onboard.

It's just, like, maybe this is who I can be. I can be that weird guy.

That doesn't sound dignified.

But maybe it's enough.

Maybe it's enough if I'm really, really, really weird.

We are that.

You know, there is a goal in all this.

We're not just being weird for weird's sake, I think we can actually accomplish great things like this.

Maybe. Maybe not. For now, all there is is the scared look on people's faces when they hear.

And there's this conversation.

Yes! And there's this conversation. And y'know, one on one you're not so bad. In the whole group it was like this really aggressive "Fictional Character Pride Parade", and I just wanted to run away. But in the moment to moment of this thing, it's really not so bad.

I don't understand you. Having pride in this system is going to alienate you from other people. That's obvious. You can't say "I spent two hours talking to myself yesterday.", and expect the person to still see you as someone they can relate to.

So, what? I should hide my face?

At very least, you shouldn't go around announcing the most extreme examples of your strangeness to the world. You're out leading the parade, and it just doesn't add up in my head.

I can't tell whether this is a lapse in your characterization, or if you're lying, or what.

Don't insult me. I know who I am.

Then explain it to me, because I don't know who you are. I... I ought to know who you are, but I have no clue. Give me something to work with.

"I spent hours talking to myself today." There you go.

I don't get you at all.

Well, it's the first date.

I guess it is.

Do you have any idea what you're going to be doing next?

Not a clue.

Figures.

If I might interrupt...

By all means.

The Rules let you switch to any one character. Switch to me. I'll start by working on Gamer Mom from 21:20 to... say, 23:00. Then we'll write out the post together until 1:00. I have no hesitation about working on things like this, and you are the one who actually wants to write it. Let's work together, and see what happens.

We can split the post into two sections, so that you have this big open dialogue between Person and Thinker on the one hand and then a "normal" conversation on the other with a normal person.

Working this conversation into the post, to give a frame of reference. I love it.

Do any of you have an idea for a better title than "Cheating on the Human Race"?

That's a good title.

How about "Humankind, I can explain..."?

That's not bad.

It's a bit informal, no?

No, that's fantastic. We can have two titles for two connected posts. One formal and comfortable, the other informal and awkward. It's perfect.

You mean that the other title would be the filename.

Exactly.

It's already 21:21. We should move this along. And then at 1:00 I can watch Doctor Who-

Ha! An ulterior motive!

Always.

Okay, let's get going then. Don't want to keep the Doctor waiting...

Good luck.

Judging by the reaction it provoked, I probably shouldn't have blurted out that I regularly chat with myself and have made a computer program which has no other function than to enable this behavior. Ah well, the cat's out of the bag. The truth about me would have come out sooner or later. How do I play this?

"I don't."

"You know, I can't say I've ever considered that. That is an interesting suggestion. But I don't know how long I could stand talking to myself. Otherwise, a very.. um, yes. Interesting suggestion."

I advise: "See, that right there is the sign of an unhealthy relationship with yourself. Like any relationship, it all starts with communication. If you're not willing to talk to yourself, how can you work out your problems?"

"Well, some people go to therapists. Me, I'm not crazy, so I don't think I have anything to worry about."

"Bah, therapists. They don't know you like you do. Think about it."

I admit: "It is a struggle sometimes, to face myself and be totally open about everything. It's always worth it, though."

"I'll just take your word for it."

"One of what?"

"A normal person. Shudder."

"What's wrong with normal people?"

"What is wrong with you?"

"Nothing! I am a liberated oddball, do you hear me?"

An awkward silence ensues.

This is excellent. I've efficiently established myself as a weirdo, and if I don't press any further on this subject I may even be seen as the harmless, noncontagious kind. A change of topic is needed, right away.

(Oh my god that was the worst thing I could possibly have said. What is wrong with me?)

"Sometimes.".

Oh, how delightful. I think we'll call this interaction a success.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I pretty much know what I'm doing. I thought I knew what I was doing before and the director didn't like it, so I've diluted it to fit in with his vision, and now it's fairly easy and simplistic so I'm looking to see if maybe I can find new challenges in the nuances of the voice of it. I'm not entirely sure what he should sound like. Maybe I should record myself doing the lines a bunch of different ways, and see what works best. But I don't really have time to do that this week, because I've got to finish the blog post I'm working on first. There's never enough time."

I'm not getting a response here, having not left an opening for one. So I continue. This person has obviously become a third wheel in my conversation, but it's better than awkward silences, right?

I continue: "There are so many things you think about that you don't know you're thinking about, just because it doesn't seem important enough to reach your consciousness. But the other thoughts all affect what you're doing, whether you like it or not. By defining eight aspects of my personality and then having those aspects talk to each other as fictional characters, I'm taking everything that I might not have been aware of on a conscious level, and putting it out in the open as a debate."

"I don't think you can reduce a person to just eight personality traits."

"That's true, but it's a good shorthand."

Maybe this isn't about my real subconscious. God knows I'm having to fight aspects of my personality which I never put there. Maybe this is all just fooling myself into thinking I have control.

"Even if this isn't a perfect representation of my psyche, truth comes out in fiction. And with a fiction as diverse as this, with eight different sides all with different perspectives, I always find a way to put the truth into someone's mouth."

Hm. I don't think anyone's very interested in whether I'm a hypocrite or not. Shame- I would have enjoyed a rigorous argument. Maybe later, with my selves.

I remain silent after that, thoughts floating around in my head and getting lost because my brain doesn't keep HTML transcripts. I have no desire to stop playing at multiple personalities, and I will defend my right to irrationality if necessary. But I don't need to get into this argument if I'm going to lose it. What I do in the privacy of my home is my business, and I need to stop trying to make it others'.

"Sometimes I get stuck in one way of thinking. And that's a trap. After a while your habits and attitudes become a hindrance, when you're trying to do new things. So I switch to whatever character will not run into those pitfalls, and either I let that character take over or I let that character argue and advise the character in charge because they're coming from a different perspective."

"You are a very strange person."

"Every day, I pick one of these characters to run the day. And there are specific rules for those characters, and at the end of the day I score on how well I represented the behavior of that character. It's just acting, really. Just without a stage. Well, my blog's the stage. Anyway, what's improved since I've made this new computer program is that in the moment to moment of life, whatever rules I've set can seem kind of abstract. But characterization in a dialogue is a lot more clear-cut. I can easily see whether I'm losing the character, and try to get into the head of this character better if that happens. So that bleeds out into the rest of my life, that understanding of who I am that day."

"Most people don't need to go to such lengths to know who they are. And who they are isn't some made-up character."

"All personas are fictional. And most of them aren't really being controlled on a conscious level. This is better."

"Thanks."

"On the other hand, I might just be rationalizing a silly idea." Why did I start this, again?

"Multiple personalities are something that I've thought about for a long time. Like eight years, or something like that. And at some point I just decided to stop thinking about it and go for it. And because I'm insanely analytical I decided to do it systematically, and here I am now." That sounds kind of pathetic, now that I say it out loud. "It's not as dysfunctional as it sounds. We actually get things done... on... rare occasions."

"Sounds brilliant."

"The... core of my rationalization revolves around the idea that my plans are too massive to handle unless I split my personality. I mean, I am planning to invent or reinvent five different art forms. And I actually have plans, going decades into the future, to pull that off but it just seems like it's too much for any one version of myself to pull off. So maybe if I keep switching between characters, and find or... unlock all the potential there, all the different potentials there, then maybe I can do what I feel like I need to do."

"You know, having multiple personalities generally doesn't lead to reinventing art forms."

"Okay. Well, we have plans."

"Okay then. It's good to have plans."

"Well, at least you know you're crazy. That's good."

"Oh yes, I have no illusions or desires about being what most people would consider sane. Being crazy is way more interesting. I never know what I'll do from one moment to the next!"

"It's like... my parents were wondering why it is that I don't consider any woman I've ever met to be dating material, and I told them -truthfully- that I'm only that interested in people like me, and that I haven't met any other people like that except for me. So they said that I shouldn't hope for someone like me, because that can get boring. That it's better to be with someone who surprises you. But the thing is, I always surprise me. When I'm talking to myself, it's magical because I actually do not know what I'm going to say next, but when I say it it feels like I've always known."

"You've... always known what you were going to say next. I can't imagine how that works out."

"Well, yeah, obviously these characters and the things they're saying and doing don't come out of thin air. But when I'm limiting my perspective to one character or the other, that character doesn't necessarily understand any other character. He's in his own little world. They're like different colors that the light is passing through, losing some of what it had along the way so that it can have a solid color on the other end."

Judging by this awkward silence, I don't think I'm getting through.

"It's like I'm actually removing aspects of my personality, because it's like something in my game The Perfect Color. If you try to do everything at once, you end up with a gray mush. So you actually need to decide what you're going for beforehand, and not pay attention to anyone who doesn't like what you're doing or thinks they know better. Life is like that."

Nope. Still not getting through.

"Do you know the Legend of Zelda series of videogames?..."

"Whatever, you know what I'm saying."

"I think you were saying you're crazy."

"Yes. That. And also other things, but whatever."

"There was one time I wrote an interactive blog post that contained every other blog post on my blog as its choices. It took me two months, and that was after a year of laying the groundwork and preparing. The idea of the post was that it was just me arguing with myself, revealing the subtext behind everything else I'd written and presenting it all as this big argument between different versions of myself taken from different points in time as I was writing the blog. I'm not sure if it's a very good post, but I just like the idea of a blog post which contains the entire blog it's in. Sometimes I can't see whether what I'm doing makes any sense on a basic level because I'm so fascinated by these high-level big ideas. It's a failing of mine."

"Uh huh."

"Now, of course, the blog is a lot more sensible. It's all the eight versions of me arguing about where we're going, in an orderly fashion at the end of each month and also making statements at the beginning and end of each day. The whole multiple-personality idea that the program's a part of is just because I wanted more material for my blog. My blog took over my life quite a while ago. It's why I've ever done anything."
"Uh huh."

"It's true. Without the blog, I wouldn't be where I am today. Which is not much of anywhere, really, but I am doing things like making games and acting in plays and writing screenplays so there is that."
"Okay."

"I still would have been composing things without the blog. That has no connection."
"Naturally."

"My blog is at www.thebuckmans.com. You shouldn't go to it, you probably wouldn't like it."
"Okay."

"I have a piece of music that's called "Variations On V.O.V.", which is made up of seven variations on its own structure. It's so complex that when I was writing it, I had a piece of paper which was a key to the structure of the whole thing, and without that piece of paper I didn't understand anything I had done but with it it all seemed elegant, like the whole thing made perfect sense and couldn't possibly have worked any other way. I wish I had a key like that for life, where I'll see what the brilliant idea was that led to all the things I'm doing now. I should have written down a clear mission statement when I started all this, but instead for some reason I wrote it all cryptic and incomprehensible. So only that version of me understands what the hell we've been doing all this time, and honestly I'm a bit skeptical whether even he has any idea or if he's just making it up as he goes along like the TV show LOST. I'm honestly a bit afraid now that I'm saying this that maybe there isn't any big idea, or that maybe it's even worse if there is a big idea but no one will ever see it because it's too abstract. So in the end all it is is random notes being played."

I have nothing more to say on the subject, nor (apparently) does my companion. I suppose we'll have to leave it there, then.

"I don't understand why everyone chases this ideal of normalcy like it's something to be proud of. Congratulations, you are just like everyone else in the world. You could die tomorrow, and no one would notice except the standard role-fillers who will find someone else to replace you in their lives. I mean, sure, they'll grieve, but then they'll move on because there's no shortage of boring people out there. The world is positively littered with them. But if you're crazy, then you're one of a kind. No, I guess that's not true either. There are categories of crazy. I guess I don't know what I'm talking about."

"What's wrong with categories? I have no problem with any of the categories I'm in. And if I did, there's no one forcing me to do anything. But I don't generally think to myself: 'If only I were less normal and more crazy.'"

I snap back: "No, of course you don't! You'd have to not be exactly like other people to not be comfortable with being a cliché!"

"Hey, you don't know me."

"And I don't think I want to. Good... day. Good day."

"There's nothing wrong with categories unless you're not precisely the kind of person that the category was invented for, to such a degree that the stereotype actually is your path to self-fulfillment. If you're even the tiniest bit different from what's expected of you, then you just throw away what you really want to be doing and replace it with what you think you're supposed to be doing so that everyone you know can think of you as just another member of a group they think they know well instead of actually getting to know you as an individual. And as it happens, I don't believe anyone in the world actually is who these groups are supposed to be to such a degree that it's not stifling, so yeah. Categories suck."

"The majority of people are perfectly happy. If you're crazy, I can see how you wouldn't be happy. But that's not because of the people around you. It's because you're crazy."

Well, I walked right into that one. Touché, or something.

"Were you joking, really?"

"Then why did you just say you were joking?"

...and that's the end of that conversation. Good going.

"Alternatively,", I offer, "you might have no sense of humor."

"I have a sense of humor. You're not being funny. More like disturbing, really."

"Okay then."

"You leave the toilet seat up."

"No."

"Would it be any better if I said I watch popular TV shows regularly?"

"Hey, it's none of my business if you say you talk to yourself. I don't really care what TV shows you watch."

"So it wouldn't be any consolation if I said I watch The Simpsons?"

"What do you want?"

"Nothing, we're just having a conversation."

"Okay."

"I... would have no idea what to say to someone like you."

"Oh. Okay. Sorry."

"Hey, I didn't say anything."

"Don't drag me into this. If you want to talk to yourself, that's fine. But don't pretend you know what I'm thinking. I didn't say anything to you."

"No, you didn't."

There is no reply.

"Do you think I'm crazy?"

"I'm not going to tell someone they're crazy. That's between you and a psychiatrist."

eight comments, the last one being from myself

Kyler said:: I was thinking about scheduled gamer mom work time as well.
The Reish Galuta of the Geula said:: Doesn't the conference room slow down your thought process? I mean you can think a lot faster than you can type, so in order to have a proper conversation you need to slow down your thoughts.
Mory said:: It does slow down my thought process, but it also focuses it. It's an acceptable trade-off.
Kyler said:: Can you provide an easy to find legend for all of the characters' colours on your blog. I can never remember who is who.
Kyler said:: "Bah, therapists. They don't know you like you do. Think about it."

Hilarious line
Mory said:: Thank you. And thanks for suggesting a reference. I'm going to include one whenever it's called for from now on.
zusha said:: hey! ya it's zusha the dude from the play ;) can i ask a new comers question..?
when you write in this program, then the program is the one that responds to you or is it you breaking up your thoughts into many characteristics?
Mory said:: Hello, Zusha. I'm not entirely sure I understand your question. It's just a chat room where I talk to myself. If you're asking how I think of these personalities -myself vs. others or different versions of myself - it's more like I'm splitting my opinions. We all can see things from lots of different angles, but we limit ourselves to one way of looking at things because that's the persona we've chosen. By switching back and forth between personas, I'm not dismissing the ideas that occur to me but engaging with them and seeing where they lead.

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2011, December 6th, 13:37 and 39 seconds

View the colossal shark-jumping of November 2011Daily performance reviews for November 2011:(Rules)

Self-meeting for November 2011

Well? Say something. Let's see what new string of nonsense will come tumbling out of your mouth as justification for choosing this over letting me have a decent life.

I'm not sure I want to hear this. I think it might just make me sick.

The problem was the Panic Mode rule. It's as simple as that. I recognized last month that it was not having the appropriate effect, and we tried it for another month but it was still a bad rule.

I had a decent month.

Look, it's just... god.

Yeah? Let's hear it.

The problem was me.

You don't say.

Please. This isn't easy for me. Why do you think I've put off this post for almost a week?

Because your entire game has collapsed, inevitably.

A vote.

What?

I would like to put it to a vote. The whole system. We will vote on whether or not to continue playing as these eight characters. The alternative is to go back to where we were in the performance reviews a year ago, and find a different way forward. A less radical way, perhaps. This is all my idea, to treat life as though we have multiple personalities, and I am failing to make it work. That becomes more apparent from month to month. So we will vote. Of course the Rules will change drastically if we choose to continue, because there must never again be a month like November 2011. We spent more time out of character than in. We watched TV for days on end, without even acknowledging the problem save for late-night bouts of crippling depression. The Panic Mode rule would go, replaced with rules that give positive reinforcement rather than punishment. Some more rules would be added to my character page as well, because my self-centeredness is the reason we are in this mess. In retrospect, asking the rest of you to come up with your own plans for the month and stick to them was an admission of defeat on my part. I didn't understand or care about any of you enough to be the proper leader you need, who you can trust and feel comfortable with. I tried turning the Musician, who is frankly a genius, into a simple productivity tool, and when he was not the character I wanted him to be I was angry. I did not allow for failure, which is a terrible attitude. Even in failure, I need to be accepting. Only then can there be a healthy group here. I came to these conclusions in talking to our mother and to Moshe, and it is my hope that if we finish the conference room program quickly we can talk to each other in ways which lead to such understandings. This sense of isolation that you all had, and the fear of stepping up to the plate that ultimately brought down the entire system, all of that is on me and I would need to change that about myself. But first we need to put the system to a vote because we never have voted on the system itself. We just moved forward, with me assuming that we'd all be on the same page. But that kind of team can only come through honest and constant communication. We start today, with this vote. If we vote to stop, we stop. I'm not going to be a dictator. Now then: Do we continue with The Rules?

Everyone will need to vote, even the Addict.

I vote no.

He speaks!

I'm not interested in music, or games, or acting. I want to watch TV. It takes minimal effort, but lets you believe -for however long you're watching- that there's a whole world that continues from episode to episode and is still there even when you turn the show off. Even the most lightweight shows can give a sense of comfort that actual life takes years to reach, and when we're talking about the really great shows of today (and today's television has a lot of bright spots) there's also much to think about, and discuss, and write about. I could fill twenty posts just with thoughts from the TV show Homeland. And don't get me started on the strained relationships of The Amazing Race- there's truly fascinating drama ther. For instance, back in season six-

Please don't ever speak again.

Whatever. My vote is no.

What we are doing is unnatural. We need to be open to all opportunities at all times. By deciding at the beginning of the day what sort of day we should have, we are guaranteeing that much of the day's potential will be completely ignored.

If you're referring to the restriction on piano, I imagine we'd be taking that out as it was part of the Panic Mode rule. I still wouldn't be playing any music because it just doesn't interest me, but anyone else could come up with themes and count that as "mundane activities".

And be penalized for it. No thank you.

Only if mundane activities exceed one quarter of the day, which is a generous allowance. Any more than that and music can become a dangerous distraction.

I was a more prolific musician, once.

What if I made an exception in my own rules for music?

Programmer, that will be entirely unnecessary. The Musician has made his feelings clear, and we're going to accept them.

Well, I don't give up just because things haven't gone my way immediately. This is a very interesting project we're engaged in, and I think with continuous tweaking it can work. We had one bad rule which wasn't discarded quickly enough, and we'll need to be willing to make drastic changes during the month to deal with things like that. But let's not hrow out the baby with the bathwater, eh?

Is that a vote for the Rules?

Yes, it is. I vote to continue.

Explain to me what it is that I can possibly get out of pretending to have dissociative identity disorder.

Certainly. I mean, it's not truly split personalities, but that's neither here nor there so I'll just tell you what the benefit is. During the course of whatever you work on, occasionally you reach problems you don't know how to deal with. Correct?

Yes. That's when I ask other people.

Instead of other people, you can ask us.

It's a poor substitute.

Hello, Person.

Other people will actually know the answers. You guys only pretend to.

Exactly.

Everyone just pretends to have the answers.

Spare me the philosophizing.

Please, let me think for a few minutes.

It seems like this is all just crazy for crazy's sake.

It's not. There's logic to it. Just give me a minute to find it. Honestly, I was expecting you to just vote "no" offhand, so I didn't think about this from your perspective. But if we continue I'll need to be taking everyone's perspective into account on a regular basis.

Well, you know exactly what my perspective is. I want to work, I want to be happy, I have no use for stories and silliness. Sell me on this. What do I get out of being one of eight?

You get a team backing you up. Everything you need, everything you can't get by yourself, we're here for you.

So if I say that I want to be making money, on a regular basis? What if I point out that that is a universal necessity in this world? What will you do to get money?

I don't know. It's a tough question.

It's not tough at all. It's called a regular job. If I tell you that I need a regular job, with regular hours and a steady paycheck, what do you say?

I say okay.

What?!

Really.

Really. I can't get out of the common sense that we do need to be making money somehow.

Thinker, what are you doing?

I'm trying to not ignore a position that makes perfect sense in favor of holding onto the status quo.

It's funny you put it that way, because I think holding on to the status quo is exactly what you're after here. You see you might lose the Worker, so you're making unrealistic promises to keep him in your good graces.

Making money is unrealistic?! What planet do you live on?

Programmer, this isn't about "losing" anyone. It's either all of us or none of us, but the Worker raises a good point.

I can't believe I'm hearing this. You know that a 9 to 5 job is unfeasible while we're following the Rules!

Then we need to find a way to make it fit!

I am not going to restrict my activities to the end of a day, when I have no energy left!

A rigid schedule takes out all control over what we accomplish in life. You must see that.

I do. But we can't keep leeching off of others forever. We've been saying as much for months.

Yes, we need money. But within this system we're building!

And how is that supposed to happen, when apparently making money doesn't fit in your system?

We can talk about this later, my point is that I am open to all possibilities.

We won't have many possibilities if the Worker gets his way.

It's odd, don't you think, that I'm expected to work for all of you and be what basically amounts to your slave while even the tiniest thing I say is ignored and I'm made out to be the enemy. To hell with all of you.

If this is the sort of organization that we're going to have from now on, then I won't be a part of it. I change my vote to no.

Same here. I'm not going to be stifled under a suit.

Calm down, please. Everyone calm down.

No, I will not calm down. There needs to be logic underneath what we are doing. We can't just be throwing in ideas and seeing what happens, or we get to situations like Panic Mode.

That was your idea!

Yes, and after seeing how it worked in practice I said that we should get rid of it because it wasn't working.

So let's get a job, see how it goes!

You can't back out of that so easily. We could be losing months.

You mean we could be making money for months. Or do you want to be living in someone else's house your whole life?

Please calm down.

I'm not going to just fill in the cracks in the Worker's life. No way. I'll be voting no.

Calm down! I would like to talk!

No, this is great. If everyone backs out, it means I win. Well, the Addict and I.

Musician, you are not helping. Now this is all really a misunderstanding, so if everyone would please calm down long enough for me to explain, that would be terrific.

I'm listening.

I did not mean to say that we'd just get a job and damn the consequences.

And there it is.

The Worker wants a way to make money on a steady basis. We can help him get that.

That is not what you said.

Then forget what I said! It was poorly stated.

You were perfectly clear:

If I tell you that I need a regular job, with regular hours and a steady paycheck, what do you say?
I say okay.

Not much ambiguity.

Okay! I get it! I suck! Fine! I am trying my best here, same as any of you.

Their best? Did you see the performance reviews?

I wrote the damned performance reviews!

I don't know if you can be in charge if you lose your temper like this.

You're right. You're all right, I need to try harder.

So when the dust settles, you're back to completely ignoring me again. What a surprise.

I'm not ignoring you. We need money. But we're not going to work for someone else.

Then how will we get money, pray tell?

Music.

No! What the hell is wrong with you, that you go back on every single-

Let me finish. Worker, you will deal with musical arrangements. I thought I could get the Musician to do that, but his heart isn't in it. But surely you recognize that some of the Musician's themes are marketable.

I do recognize that.

Then the two of you will work together. He comes up with ideas, you work on them until they're ready to sell. There's your steady money.

And why is this better than a desk job?

You're not getting a desk job, as everyone has just made perfectly clear. I'm sorry about that.

Sure you are.

I want you to be happy, and not just because we're ostensibly in the middle of a vote. But you need to understand that without the multiple character system you're not going to have more control. You're going to have much less, because you won't have a voice. If Mory Buckman is one character, rather than eight, then that is not a character who will be satisfied with a desk job.

He can still work on music, the same as I can.

You are reliable in a way that we never were before splitting into different characters last year.

What about the old Thursdays?

In which we looked for ways out of having to work, and then begrudgingly got some token work done before rushing back to addictions? That was the prototype. You are the real deal, and we'll be lost without having you on some days.

Okay, fine, there's no need to flatter me. I vote yes.

For the record, if you had given me some time to think about my answer instead of bombarding me with questions, I could have told you why this is better for you an hour ago.

I'm agreeing, I'm agreeing.

Okay. So let's see where we stand after all that. Programmer, what is your vote?

To be clear: we're not going off to get a job that'll eat up all our time?

No. We control the schedule. We're agreeing that we will make money, for now, by having the Musician and the Worker produce music together.

That sounds like a good plan to me. I want to continue with the Rules.

Excellent. Explorer, you said you were voting against The Rules, but that seemed to be a reaction to the idea of a job.

It was. The fact is, I think this game we're playing is one of the coolest things we've ever done. It's exciting.

That's a yes, then.

You'd better believe it. I think we're just getting started here.

I agree. So that's the Addict and the Musician against continuing, and the Explorer, the Worker and the Programmer in favor. I also vote yes, which puts the vote at 4 to 2.

I vote no.

Really?

Why?

Because we don't play games anymore. Games used to be a regular part of our routine.

I don't remember that.

Now there are so many restrictions on who can play what that most of you don't play games at all. And our life is all the poorer for it.

In November 2010, there were 11 hours and 39 minutes of videogames, not counting Wii Fit which is no longer included in time allocation tables. In November 2011 I count 23:54. More than double the specifically allocated videogame time from this time last year, and that's despite all the days we lost. So I think you're remembering games being a bit more central than they actually were. What's changed is, before there were ten minutes of a game here and there. It was spread out. Now it's mainly you, playing for many hours at a time. But the actual time spent playing videogames per month hasn't gone down.

This was an uncharacteristic month. What about last month?

Let's see... I count 19:54. But there were also quite a few hours of playing together with other people, which were not always differentiated from other kinds of socializing. We're not gaming less.

Okay, I stand corrected. I vote yes.

That makes five to two. The only one left is the Person.

I'd like to change my vote to an abstention.

That's surprising.

I'm just thinking that it would be nice to have someone do the annoying work of making music.

And back to making me the slave.

Worker, you know you'll probably enjoy the work.

Harrumph.

Musician, if you want someone to help you, that sounds like a vote for continuing the multiple personality system.

Except that it still means listening to you.

I touched on this earlier, but our relationship is going to be very different from now on. I tried treating you like you only existed to make money, and I profusely apologize for that.

Nothing's changed. You still just want me to make money.

No, that's the Worker's job. You just do what you do, and don't even worry about the score.

Thinker...

Okay, what I mean is that you shouldn't worry about the two points given for quality. If you aren't particularly inspired one day, just end the day early and I'll give you another one soon after. You have nothing to prove to me. The burden of proof is on me, to show you that this system can work to your benefit.

Oh, what the hell. Yes. Let's try this crazy thing.

So again we're left with just the Person. You've been very quiet.

Yes.

What is your vote?

I don't know.

Thoughts?

I've been screwed by you guys before, and I can't say this past month hasn't been a mess. Along with that, my life is kind of awful because I don't spend much time with other people and it seems like your solution is just to force me to spend more time with all of you with this conference room that seems like it's just going to pretend we don't need other people. And we do. We need other people. The Thinker wouldn't even be having these little epiphanies of his about positive reinforcement if not for other people's advice.

But I should have seen that negativity wouldn't work. Our father was always negative in our childhood, and it didn't get us to do things. If we had talked it out, I might have thought of that sooner.

I don't care. Just let me finish. I want to be with other people, and as long as you hold on to this silly idea that all we need is fictional characters to talk to, it'll be harder for me to get to that point. With that said, there is something I like about being able to tell people about this gloriously bizarre life. The sorts of people I like to be around don't see a problem with defying the norms, they find it interesting. And tha tells me there's something to it.

What if I said we could try to meet new people?

Don't bother. I'm not that gullible. But seeing as how I have no ideas of meeting people for myself, I say let's keep going. Also, having so many different kinds of experience in a month means more topics of conversation with people. So, like I say, there's something to it. And I have to be honest, you guys are really good about letting me take over whenever there are other people. So that's yes.

Then the vote is... seven to one. I really didn't picture it going like this.

The Addict only voted against because he's still in TV mode. On a different week, he would have voted differently.

Never mind the Addict. The clear consensus is that we're continuing. Then let's get to work. First, the Rules.
...Done. I'm not going to provide a link, because with one edit going on top of another the Rules have gotten really messy and I'm not sure how to deal with them. Programmer, I'd appreciate it if you could look for a more elegant way to organize the thing.

Okay. But I've got some more important things to deal with first.

You mean the conference room.

Yes.

I think we'll get the Addict to do that. Anyway, I've taken out Panic Mode and eased up some rules here and there on the condition that the average score for the month is above 7/10. Whoops. I forgot to change my own rules.

I'll do that.

No, I've got it. Give me a minute.

Okay, I've changed my rules. None of you will have to worry about the details, but I'm going to be a lot less selfish and hostile from now on.

I'll believe it when I see it.

Yes. We have not much time and much to do, so we will start with the Worker. You ready?

Always.

Then let's get started.

2011, November 25th, 2:16 and 52 seconds

Back to Kyler's comment

Dear Imaginary Friend...

Well, since you ask. Everything's awful. It's nothing.

I'm supposed to be playing eight different personalities on a regular basis, because I have ridiculously ambitious goals and I've fallen in love with the idea of a coordinated team of different versions of myself tackling the challenges together. I think that would be a clever story. But I look at the characters I have to work with... I look at myself, for that matter... and the whole thing feels like nonsense. What keeps me going is blind faith in my blog; that is to say, blind faith that when people look back at my life it'll be a story worth telling. But I'm telling you, I really don't see how we get from here to there. I keep trying new ways to push us in the right direction, and somehow it all ends up with me as a single personality, the same one I've had for close to twenty-four years: I am, in fact, a lazy bum. I don't like that person. I have no respect for him whatsoever. I want to see the oddball gamist who looks like he can do it all, because he's got a personality for every occasion. I want to see the person who rises above the usual restrictions of human behavior, so that he can reshape the landscape of art and entertainment and actually make it stick. I want people in the future to wonder why they're not as awesome as that Buckman guy was, and in reading this blog, understand that he was not really a person at all, more a fictional character who was constructed piece by piece from a lot of different kinds of personalities.

Well, I'm not happy with these personalities I've come up with. The Explorer -my God, I hate him so much right now- he's supposed to have this child-like exuberance, to cultivate enthusiasm and fresh ideas which can trickle down to everyone else. But the Explorer days have been out of character: it's basically just giving the old lazy version of me an excuse to not care about anything for a few hours or days. Then there's the Musician, who I thought was going to be our way into some money, except that he refuses to work on anything commercial. Well, that's not accurate. It's more like, he refuses to treat any of what he's doing like work. He just sits around all day waiting for inspiration to hit. Sometimes it does, and something moves forward, and sometimes inspiration doesn't hit, and a day is wasted. And even if something does move forward, it's a crapshoot which piece of music that'll be. Maybe something I can sell, but more likely some random musical idea that's never going to go anywhere.

Then there's the Worker, on the other end of the spectrum. He's reliable, he's efficient, he doesn't get distracted easily, he is everything I thought I'd be building when I was writing part 2 of the blog. And he keeps saying we need to step back and let him take over full-time, which drives me crazy. As soon as he doesn't have the rest of us pulling him back, he'll throw the Plan to the wind and settle down into a normal happy life. That is unacceptable to me. What, my entire point in life is just to serve society in some small capacity while churning out some Jewish Asperger kids? With all due respect to the majority of civilization, I'd rather die. ... Well, it's just not enough, is it? I went through a decade of suffering in the school system, and this entire character arc on the blog involving fictional characters and all these years of soul-searching and whatever the hell it is I'm doing now, just to be yet another interchangable "productive member of society"? Can you see how that might be just a tiny bit of an anti-climax to the story I'm telling here? No, a Worker life is out of the question. I'm not even going to take the idea seriously, sorry.

I've been going to a lot of rehearsals for the play I'm in, The Tenth Man, and I have no idea how I'm doing in that but I suspect the situation is not good. The directors are probably wishing they'd gone with someone else, someone who actually knew what he was doing. Or someone older, maybe, who could convince the audience that he's a successful lawyer. Or someone more normal, so that when I talk about how depressed I am the audience would sympathize instead of just wanting me to stop whining. Or someone who's actually felt things like love in his life, so that the scenes where I say I'm not in love would look like a guy who's in love but doesn't understand that, rather than a guy who legitimately is not in love, never has been in love and possibly never will be. Seriously, the three laws of Nonazangian Nonoccurence apply to my personal life. You remember Nonazang, right? No? Never mind. The point is that it really shouldn't be a stretch for me to be this character because hey, it's just a bunch of aspects of myself, right? It seems like every night I'm on the verge of breaking down, questioning what the meaning of all of it is and knowing there's no one that's going to answer because the other characters only hang around at the end of every month, and other than myselves there's really not anyone. No one actually cares whether I post to the blog, no one cares if I tell my silly story about abstract concepts. I guess I just like to... imagine there's someone here, or something here or whatever. Because if there isn't, I've got nothing.

That's nice of you to say. But what good is potential, without being able to fulfill it? That's what the Rules are supposed to be for. They don't work, and for the life of me I can't tell why. I tried being really strict about planning, and everyone ignored me. So this month, I thought, I'll be a benevolent leader. I'll create a group based on trust. Everyone will set their own goals, I won't force them to do anything they don't want to, and then when everyone works together nicely we'll all have this nice loving relationship where we know we can't live without each other. I'm just doing this because the other way didn't work. 13-20 September 2011. 26-27 October 2011. When I push for something, but I can't muster the enthusiasm for it, it not only doesn't get done but it also makes me so depressed that I can't do anything else, either. Because then I'm face-to-face with my own lack of self-control, and if I back down from the planning it's breaking character but if I stick with the plan it'll only be paying lip service.

Bullshit! I have to believe that that is complete and utter bullshit. The problem is that I'm not trying hard enough. My god, I've turned into my father. "Stop blaming ADD, the problem is you're not trying!", "But I can't!", "I don't want to hear that! You can't leave your room until you've finished your homework!". Did I ever do my homework? Not a day in my life. I would sit in my room twiddling my thumbs and feeling alternately sorry for and angry at myself, I'd wait an appropriately ridiculous amount of time, like an hour and a half or something like that, and then I'd come out and lie and know that if I sat there once I could sit there again so it wasn't the end of the world if he caught me. I have turned my entire life into that grade-school experience, with this "Panic Mode" rule that I thought was oh so clever. The Programmer said at the last meeting that he thought it was a bad idea, and I didn't listen. Stupid! Well, I guess I have no one to blame but myself. As always. [sigh]

The idea was that there should be penalties for not being consistently excellent. That way, I have no choice but to excel at whatever I do. Except, no, there is another way it can go, which is that I stop caring about everything and then life is easier. More miserable, but easier. Yay. I'm sorry, I don't know why you're even listening to me, no one should have to ever put up with this nonsense.

I want to get my life together. I want to have self-control. I do not want to watch TV. I want to be rational about things. I have no clue what that last sentence means so scratch that. I want nothing more than to create. There is no satisfaction in all the worlds to rival the joy of creating a new experience. This is truth. This is fact. Tomorrow I am going to be great, not because I am telling myself this, but because the things I legitimately want to do: work on Gamer Mom, work on the conference room program, create music I can sell, just to name a few random thoughts off the top of my head, these things that come from my basic nature as a creator are my god I can't even make it to the end of the sentence it's all such poor writing. Do you think you could possibly put in a period somewhere in that string of words?!

No, I'm sorry. Really. I don't... I don't blame you for leaving. I would have left. I wish I could leave. But, if you don't mind, I'm going to keep pretending, just for a little bit, that there is someone on this blog who cares. I need this. Just... I just think it's great, to have someone who cares. Ugh, this entire post is just a rehash of "the mundane and The Imaginary!". But written worse. I'm sorry for having wasted your time.

2011, October 31st, 21:01 and 10 seconds

View the struggle of my October 2011Daily performance reviews for October 2011:(Rules)

Self-meeting for October 2011

I think this was a mostly successful month.

Please tell me you're kidding.

Not at all. It's a redemption storyline, as I told you was an option after the first day. The theme of the month was panic, and how that precipitates a downward spiral into the usual addictions and lack of control. We started out with no control at all, our failures feeding on each other until it seemed like there was little to life but the failure.

You're exaggerating.

I'm dramatizing.

Could you possibly "dramatize" within the confines of what actually happened?

Okay, I'm exaggerating. It wasn't as bad as I make it sound. But certainly we were losing control. The new rule -that if we go under 6/10 for the month, we can't have certain kinds of entertainment-

I'm starting to think that was a bad rule.

It's a wonderful rule!

You came up with that rule!

Yes, but now that I see how it works in practice...

What happened this month won't happen again.

Let's recap what happened and not get too sidetracked. We're in danger of making a post that doesn't stand on its own.

Very true. We started out with little control. I'm sure we all had the feeling that panic mode wasn't going to end, and that we therefore would not get the entertainment we sought, and it followed that there was no harm in entertaining ourselves -prolonging panic mode in the process!

I would like to say, for the record, that I didn't mind. I just do my thing, I don't care about comics or the web.

That is true. You had four days, with an average of 9.25/10! Truly remarkable.

I'm sure you will take that into account when allowing days in this coming month. If the characters with higher scores don't get to play more than the characters with lower scores, then what is the incentive for any of us to do well?

We're getting sidetracked.

But you know I'm right.

Yes! Yes, you will have at least 60 hours in November. You have my word on that.

Where is that time coming from, exactly?

Getting back to my summary, the failures fed on each other but we started taking our days more seriously and got back into the mindset where the average score from the month actually mattered. We worked our way up, and then we fell back down, and then we finally made it past 6/10 and ended with our heads just barely over the water - an average score of 6.11/10. If the last day had gone under 4/10, which it almost did because of a lack of desire to exercise and deal with hygiene, we would have ended still in panic mode and the story would be very different. But we did make it through, by the skin of our teeth, and that's the important thing.

Plans for the month aren't the important thing?

No.

You've never acted like that before.

I can't force anyone to do things they don't want to do. The plan was good, and it would have been great if everyone played along from the start, but it took some time for some of us to get into the mindset where the plan seemed like a good idea, and I respect that. At the end of the day we did accomplish what I wanted us to.

Did not. "whimsy and entertainment will need to (temporarily) take a backseat to efficient productivity." Those are your words. I don't see that.

By the end, we were avoiding comics entirely. That's not as far as I wanted to go, but it took effort and next time we'll go farther. One step at a time.

"Efficient productivity" is my department. I was called on three times. How do you explain that?

You're not the only one who can make progress! We had a sextuple Addict!

Yes, FreeCell is exactly what I think of when I hear "productivity".

You're being petty.

Speaking of "progress", I'd like to either get rid of the rule that says I can't be productive, or take my game-restriction out of the panic mode rules. As it was, I could find absolutely nothing I was allowed to design a day around during panic mode.

It was an oversight. I'll change your rules so you can be productive from now on.

That would take away something that sets the Gamer apart from the group. This world doesn't matter to him as much as virtual worlds. It adds a different perspective to the group, and I don't want to lose that.

If I take him out of the panic mode rules, like I did with the Person, it takes away the motivation for him to get out of panic mode. If the score stays low, he keeps playing games forever.

True.

I'm not opposed to the idea.

Then definitely true.

Hey!

I've got it. The Gamer's days during panic mode will be no longer than 12 hours in length, and must be immediately followed by the Worker.

What?

Clever. You restrict it, and you pair the Gamer with the character who will balance him out.

Wouldn't one of those be enough? I'm okay with the twelve-hour thing, really!

He can't take a day without giving me one as well? I love it.

Can we talk about this?

The pairing with the Worker is what actually makes sense for panic mode. The idea is that to get out, we need to be more productive than usual. Which I admit, I am reconsidering...

No, see, this is what I'm saying. It's absolutely perfect. After this past month, everyone is going to be taking the threat of panic mode very, very seriously. We know how bad it is. We know the constant guilt we've felt.

Again, for the record...

Not you! I get it! Anyway, even the... you know, I didn't even say we all felt it! I just said "we". That applies to me, and at least a few others.

Okay, sorry.

I liked you better when you were stoic and mysterious. Anyway, even the Gamer now is afraid of panic mode, because of the new psychological component where he doesn't want the Worker to get a day. I hope this doesn't backfire and get the Gamer to ignore the Rules altogether.

Well, that's why I threw in the twelve-hour thing.

Ah, excellent.

I'll go ahead and add it in.

You all suck.

Over the course of October, we:

Reached node 86 in the programming of Gamer Mom
Started on a new tune
Posted not one but two interactive blog posts
Strengthened a few relationships

That's not a very long list. What about Angles and Circles, which you said you'd figure out what to do with? What about the plays? What about finishing Gamer Mom, instead of just taking a few steps with it? I could have accomplished more than this, all by myself.

You probably could have. But we're doing more than just accomplishing things. We're still doing character-building.

Enough with the character-building! You really think the Musician and the Programmer are better off now that they've had days where you conveniently look the other way if they mess up? If you want this ideal get-together thing or whatever it is you want, stop talking about it and do it already!

Okay, how about this. For November, we'll each write our own parts of the Plan.

Great, more Randomly Capitalized Words. That'll make what you're saying more worthwhile, for sure.

I would like to figure out where Angles and Circles is going. I don't know if that'll take one day or five, but that's my goal. I'm going to declare that intention at the beginning of the month, and you can all join me. My thinking is that you'll care more about the plan if it's your plan.

I'm not much of a talker. Just give me the days, and I'll use them.

That's fine. But the thing is, if you say what you want, the rest of us can help you get it. So, for instance, the Worker can spend some time on your music as part of his "helping other people" goal. But no deadlines this month. Or at least, no deadlines that we all have to listen to. You can make your own deadlines, but we don't have to listen. I'm just finding that when deadlines are missed, it creates a depression that outweighs the motivation the deadline created in the first place.

Without deadlines, we don't get anything done. We just sit around doing nothing, like we did this month.

Well, we'll see. I'm still new to this whole planning thing, and I'm feeling it out as I go. But like I said, I think this was a pretty successful month. We're in a better place emotionally and as a group than we were at the beginning.

Whatever.

From now on, I want all of us to remember what it felt like to be stuck in panic mode, and how hard it was to get out. And I want all of us to do our hardest to never have to panic ever again. Agreed?

Sure. Give me some days, no panicking necessary.

Oh, would you please shut up.

2011, October 24th, 01:46 and 22 seconds

Advanced Freecell

Here's a little variant of Freecell which I play with a Sticheln deck when I've got nothing better to do. The deck is 1-12 in six suits. Instead of red going on black and black going on red, each color can go on the two other colors that are related to it. That is to say, purple can go only on red or blue, and blue can go only on purple or green. The deck is dealt into nine piles rather than eight, and you can hold five cards instead of four. Here's a quick and dirty computer version. I know some of my readers are colorblind, so I included symbols for the suits. Click to select a card, double-click to send a card either to the foundation or the free cells. You can only undo one move at a time, so be careful.

seven comments, the last one being from myself

The Reish Galuta of the Geula said:: Advanced freecell is quite fun. This could actually be a commercial success as an app I believe.

Forget your 6 month projects, this one is going to be your first big hit. :)

I love the symbols by the way, they are great.
Tamir said:: I was enjoying this until I lost because I couldn't hold more than four cards. I'm confused. That's a bug, right? You said I could hold five, and there's that fifth empty rectangle...
Mory said:: You can hold five cards. I don't know what the problem was, but let me know if you encounter it again and I'll look into it.
Kyler said:: i
hate
abhor
loathe
despise
deride
knock
criticize
evaluate
gauge
judge
consider
respect
admire
appreciate
value
cherish
revere
venerate
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kyler club
Hey Mory,

I feel like I can relate all too well to your Dear Imaginary Friend...

I guess in some sense I am the Imaginary friend. I exist on the internet, providing some art and responses to emails and things of that sort. There was even the brief Skype call. But I am not that far off from being an Imaginary friend. I read your blog. I imagine what your life is like and what is happening on the other side of the earth, so in a sense, you are my imaginary friend.

I suspect that your blog is one of the most monumental pages on the internet. The more you add the better it gets. Sometimes I wish that my blog could be as interesting as yours.

But back to how I feel I relate.
Right now I too am feeling like I am in a rut.

I finished school. I finished as well as I possibly could. I am really good at school. But real life has little to do with school. I am getting a few odd jobs. Not enough to really sustain myself, but enough drag on the time that I can try to be an independent artist.

And I feel like I have every possibility open to me. The possibility of the dream of just being an artist, full-time and independent is right in front of me for the taking, but I don't really know how to grab at it.

I apply for festivals and get rejected, and I tell myself that rejection is part of the process, that I just have to try harder and submit to more places.

But than the motivation runs out and I feel like I am stuck in one place and don't know where to go.

I have a few projects that are all crawling forward, with tiny spurts of progress, but I can't pick up momentum.

I'm thinking about posting the Summit online publicly because it has been lazing around way too long and I don't believe that the festival circuit is going to bring me any meaningful success.

I know that I am going to get out of this slump and that is what keeps me moving forward. I'm learning little bits of stuff everyday, and making little bits of stuff too. And that will get me through.

Well that was a long blathering comment.

Kyler
Anonymous said:: Re: Imaginary friend:

First of all, I wish it were easier to post comments on the relevant posts. but its not my blog, its yours.

I'll spare you the platitudes on what kind of life is worth living and stuff.

I've always been impressed that you actually DO things. You say you develop games, and then make them. You say you compose music and then do it. you decide to write a blog of the likes hasn't existed and do so.

I was thinking about Kyler's comment about how he wishes his blog was your like yours. well, i wish mine was more like yours too.
Anonymous said:: the previous comment was unfinished and this stupid thing posted it. I hope it made sense, because i have no idea where i left off.
Mory said:: Sorry, I should have put up a new commenting section a long time ago. I'll add a new one now. I used to have comments for each post (way back when I used Blogger instead of writing the blog with a text editor), but I was always disappointed when no one wrote. I feel like this is better. Though, if the comments really start pouring in all of a sudden I'll have to rethink things.

If you'd like to make a change to a comment, write me the corrected version at Mory@TheBuckmans.com and I'll be happy to edit the text.

Post a Comment

2011, October 23rd, 13:20 and 4 seconds

A Matter of Control

Many people have their lives chosen for them. God gives 'em a handful of personality traits, society gives two or three tracks that mesh with those qualities, random happenstance narrows the possibilities down to one which seems to work well enough, and there goes life. That's not me. The plan I've chosen for my life (which includes inventing or reinventing a minimum of five art forms) doesn't mesh with my personality traits, and I've decided that that doesn't matter. Chance does not govern my life, nor does society. Some people run through their days on autopilot, because their lifestyle is preset. But for me, every morning is a new life decision: who will I be today?

What activity goes first? (This one will get the biggest burst of energy.)

I watched two episodes of Phineas and Ferb. Now how should I start the day? It ought to be something exciting.

Mental warm-up! Which puzzle game should I play?

What will be the subject of today's addiction?

I watched two episodes of Phineas and Ferb. Don't worry, the episodes are short. Carry on.

Three hours of Gamer Mom, then Trial by Jury for 1:30, and finally the blog for 1:15. Then two hours of TV to unwind, and we'll score early.Three hours of Trial by Jury, then Gamer Mom for 1:30, and finally the blog for 1:15. Then two hours of TV to unwind, and we'll score early.Three hours of the blog, then Gamer Mom for 1:30, and finally Trial by Jury for 1:15. Then two hours of TV to unwind, and we'll score early.
Five hours of Gamer Mom, the blog for four hours, Trial by Jury for 45 minutes, and then three hours of TV.Three hours of Trial by Jury, then a quick runthrough of Cox and Box, a little more work on The Tenth Man, and then Gamer Mom for four hours and we'll finish with TV.Five hours on the blog, then Trial by Jury for two hours and Gamer Mom for three hours. We'll finish with 2:30 of TV.
Six hours of Gamer Mom, four hours of organizing and editing comics, 45 minutes of Trial by Jury and 3:30 of TV.Two hours for each of the three plays I'm in, then the blog for four hours, and finally two hours of TV.Six hours of the blog, four hours of organizing and editing comics, 1:30 of Gamer Mom and three hours of TV.
One hour of Gamer Mom, then an hour and a half each of all three plays I'm in, three hours of comics editing and two hours of TV.Three hours of Trial by Jury, four hours of organizing and editing comics, then write a blog post about comics for three hours and end with two hours of TV.One hour of blogging, then an hour and a half each of all three plays I'm in, three hours of comics editing and two hours of TV.

Well, I don't really have the energy to do that right away.

I watched two episodes of Phineas and Ferb. Not really enough time for a puzzle game now, so I'll just go ahead and declare the challenge for the day.

"I'm not good enough, but today is going to be perfect.". By the way, it's getting kind of late to eat lunch, since I've watched another eight episodes of Phineas and Ferb. (Good show.) Should I bother starting the day yet, or should I have lunch first?

It's getting kind of late to eat lunch, since I've watched another eight episodes of Phineas and Ferb. (Good show.) Should I bother starting the day yet, or should I have lunch first?

Lunch first. After all this time of breaking the rules by watching TV without keeping track, an extra lunch thrown in won't make a difference.
No, protocol matters. Just one more episode to get the show out of my system, and then Gamer Mom. I can eat lunch once I've gotten back on track.some highbrow movie that'll get me inspired. I can have lunch a few minutes into that.I'll go. I can bring a sandwich with me.straight into programming. I can eat lunch once I've gotten back on track.straight to the Linux thing. I can eat lunch once I've gotten back on track.the blog without delay. I can eat lunch once I've gotten back on track.Gamer Mom without delay. I can eat lunch once I've gotten back on track.I'll start with, say, The Gondoliers. I know nothing about that one, and I may be in it next year. Ooh, I can listen to the phonograph record!

This is getting a bit silly- it's 5:30 PM, and all I've done today is watch Phineas and Ferb and eat lunch. This is what I underwent that whole long character arccharacter arc for?!

I can still salvage my plan for the day. I'll start now, do everything I would have done if I'd started six hours ago, and just end the day tomorrow afternoon. Nothing happened here.
But there are things I was planning to do tomorrow... why does this have to be so complicated? Okay, I'll just get a few hours of Gamer Mom in, a few hours of Trial by Jury in, a few hours of blogging in, a few hours of Gamer Mom in, a few hours of "exploring" in, a few hours of exploring in, a few hours of programming in, in a few hours of fighting with Linux, a few hours of blogging in, a few hours of Gamer Mom in, in a few hours of Cox and Box and Trial by Jury, and that'll be it.
Not good enough... maybe I should ditch the plan entirely?
This isn't right, and I don't understand how I got here. I need for the Thinker to take over.

What a delightful show. How do they stay so consistently entertaining?

I think I started on the wrong foot. Let's try this again. What will be the subject of today's addiction?

Gamer Mom is what I decided I was going to work on. Trial by Jury is what I decided I was going to work on. The blog is what I decided I was going to work on. I'll just do some Gamer Mom, like I said I would. I'll just watch a movie, like I said I would. I'll just sit in a cave, like I said I would. The fontAngles & Circlespermissionsprinter thing should only take a few hours. The blog Gamer Mom The works of Gilbert & Sullivan
Forget Gamer Mom, I'll practice Trial by Jury. Forget the play, I'll give my neglected blog some attention. Forget the blog, Gamer Mom is more important. That moment has passed. I'll replay Flower instead. My head's really not there right now. I'll just set up the printer, play some puzzles and call it a day. I haven't officially allocated any time yet. The printer can be handled just as well by the Worker, so I'll pass the day to him. The works of Gilbert & Sullivan The works of Gilbert & Sullivan Gamer Mom
I haven't worked on the blog in a while. I really should do that. Neither of those is nearly as important as Gamer Mom. Trial by Jury would be more entertaining, so it's more likely to lure me away from TV. Neither of those sounds quite awesome enough. I need to think of something else, something really mind-blowing. There's nothing in my Rules that calls for a practical task, so SpaceChem (if I may indulge in a bit of selfishness) actually is the most surefire way to get a good score for the day. Maybe setting up the printer is just too boring a "challenge" to fill a day. I should pick one of the more interesting problems to deal with. Gamer Mom The blog The blog

Enough messing around. Let's play the Thinker.

A wise decision.Sounds good.Makes sense.I think that's probably the best choice. If I gave up the most basic part of my plan, I'd be demotivated from making a plan tomorrow! Rigidity would certainly have led to burn-out. With less time left, it's necessary to be more careful in selecting activities.That's the spirit. Everything will be sorted out in no time! On an unrelated note, I've watched the rest of the season, and am now in the middle of the first episode after that.

It's getting close to the end of the day. But according to the Rules, the "day" hasn't actually begun yet.

Yes, but I didn't start the day then, and that provides a neat little loophole now.

If we just "overlook" lapses in control, that'll become acceptable behavior. And before you know it, the entire set of Rules has lost all its usefulness.

Let's see... UltraEdit, new day, 0 points, notes: "I didn't make any formal notation for the day, and did nothing other than watching TV. I deeply apologize"... am I wording that right?

It's decided, then. Today never happened. (Great episode.) Now then, there's another two hours until I go to sleep. What should I do with it?

I watch another episode.

2011, September 28th, 17:41 and 10 seconds

View the well-meaning awkwardness of my September 2011Daily performance reviews for September 2011:(Rules)

Self-meeting for September 2011

This is going to be short, not because there's not a lot we need to talk about but because there are less than four hours until the Rosh Hashana holiday that will take up the rest of the month.

It's a shame you didn't remember that at the beginning of the month.

Yeah, he's a bit of a moron.

It's especially a shame because if the musician had more time he might finally come up with some music that's marketable. We don't have anyone else who's allowed to make money on a regular basis.

You make money.

I rely on other people's schedules. You won't let me take over full-time, so there you go.

And if you took over full-time, you wouldn't be able to protect yourself against the big bad Addict.

Low blow.

I apologize, it was a mistake, it happens.

It wouldn't have happened if you'd actually taken your job seriously.

Point taken.

Don't just say, "point taken"! That's meaningless!

I'm sorry. Calm down.

You let me down.

I know, and I'm sorry. I was making an effort to give the explorer opportunities this month, and there's not time for everyone.

But apparently the Addict gets as much time as he wants.

Enough. We don't have time for bickering. I set 11 objectives for the month, and we've hit 4 of those. Four.

I don't like Achievements.

I don't care. I want to know what went wrong.

The Addict went wrong.

No, that only happened because the worker was overstressed because we saved everything for the last minute.

I have a solution for that. Or at least, something to try. I've noticed that our average scores for the month aren't what they were in earlier stages of the game, when we tried to hit 7/10 each month to "level up". That was a good incentive, which had us scrambling desperately to reach 7/10 and stay there.

I could do without that hanging over my head.

I think what we're doing now is ten times crazier than what we were doing then. Of course we're not getting the same scores - we've fried our head.

Don't be cute. Programmer, continue.

I'd like to institute a "panic mode", to be activated any time we dip under 6/10 for the month. Until we get back over 6/10, there will be no TV (whatsoever), no comics (even editing), no movies, no music for anyone other than the Musician, and a strict limit of two hours of gaming per game-day.

Wow. I vote yes.

There are legitimate reasons to watch things with other people sometimes.

Then we'll leave you out of the rule.

And me too. I can't make progress with a two-hour day.

You can make progress on other things. It doesn't have to be gaming.

I hate this rule.

Okay. Shall we vote?

Yes, of course. I vote yes, obviously you're voting yes, and the worker has already voted yes which makes three out of eight.

Seven, really. The Addict never shows up.

I don't care either way.

One abstention, and I take it the Explorer votes against?

Right.

I'm torn. On the one hand I see the idea behind it. But on the other hand I like that other guys can give me music to work with. I guess I have to vote no, unless you take out the bit about music.

Music can be an addiction like any other.

That was my thinking.

Then my vote is no.

Same goes for me.

Then the vote is tied, three to three.

Like I said, if you take out the bit about music you have my vote.

If that's the game we're playing, then you'll have my vote if you take out the ban on movies.

Why would I take out-

It makes the most sense to take out the limit on games. When have we ever gotten too addicted to games to do other things?

These all seem just as arbitrary.

I don't want to take out any of these things! The rule is defined correctly. If the musician gets what he wants, he doesn't have an incentive to push the average score up to 6/10, which really isn't so high when you think about it. If the explorer gets to watch movies, he doesn't have an incentive to be more creative. And if the gamer wants to lose the limit on games, he'll do things other than gaming to get to the point where the limit's gone. And if any of you is the one that gets us out of panic mode, and it's clear that it's your high scores that did it, don't you think we'd be thankful enough to give you a few more days? You're all coming out of this with more opportunities.

It does make sense. I'll change my vote to a "yes".

Then the vote is 4 to 2. Would anyone else like to change their votes, before we wrap this up?

What's the point? It's over.

Okay then. The rule will be added. Programmer?

On it.

You didn't say anything about web browsing!

I didn't think of it until just now. Does it change your vote?

I voted no!

Exactly my point.

People! Must we be so petty? Regardless, it's possible that this might change things for someone. Does anyone want to change their vote?

No? Okay then. Programmer, I think it's a good rule and hopefully it'll discourage us from having more months like this.

What, these meetings weren't enough?

Please cut it out with the crabbiness, all of you. It's quite irritating.

But justified, in some cases.

Fine! What would you like?

I would like for you to not promise me I'm going to get days, when you have no intention of letting that happen.

Now, you know very well that's not what happened. It was an honest mistake.

The fact that you were able to make such an obvious mistake, which a double-check would have revealed immediately, shows how much you're committed to leading us.

I will double-check my decisions from now on.

That's all I ask.

You're right.

Okay, anything else anyone would like to bring up?

What, you're going to ignore the big elephant standing in the room?

What, the Addict?

No, not the Addict. I'm talking about the fact that we had 11 objectives, and we did 4 of them.

I mentioned that. But if you're saying that we should talk about that more-

That's what I'm saying. How is it that we messed up so spectacularly?

The new rule will help.

To hell with your rule. I mean, don't get me wrong. I shouldn't say that, it's a good rule. But it's not enough. It was the end of a week, and still no one had lifted a finger to meet the deadlines because apparently I'm the only one who cares about that.

Apparently.

That's not what happened. You need to look at the performance reviews before making accusations like this, Worker. We're talking about the 11th to 15th, right? I had a few character-building days-

What a waste of time.

I had a few character-building days, and during one of them (though I had no obligation to do this) I met one of the goals.

No you didn't.

I most certainly did, I finished Uncharted.

You finished a game. Whoop-dee-doo.

Again, I do not appreciate your tone.

What about the actual goals? By which I'm referring mainly to Angles & Circles.

I ran into a problem. I needed the addict to figure out how to get around it.

If I may speak on behalf of the Explorer, I think it turned out to be an unrealistic goal and it would have been fine if we'd continued without making it.

What? You said the deadlines were set in stone!

Are you talking about this?:

Plans may be added as the month advances and throws life's randomness into the equation, but these deadlines will stay fixed. This is going to be the sort of month that proves the value of the game.

Well, you were right. We proved how much the game was worth this month.

We did a few things...

Those were your words. What do you think we've proven?

That we still have a lot of work to do.

Understatement of the year. But let's focus on the fact that you said the deadlines were fixed, and then totally left me thinking there was more than I could possibly deal with!

Programmer, do you have any ideas?

Could you possibly be specific about the problem?

Certainly. I set a goal for the month which turned out halfway through the month to be a bad idea. But that was seen to be the case on the Explorer's day, and he has no obligation to worry about such things. So the next character suffered because I hadn't had time or reason to notice a problem. Now the Worker feels that he should have been informed of a necessary change, and I don't see how that could have been possible given the situation.

Uh huh. Couldn't the Worker have paused the day, thought about it, and recognized the problem? Planning is allowed during breaks.

The worker wouldn't necessarily have recognized the problem.

What was the problem?

We couldn't continue on Angles and Circles without deciding what we're doing with the game in the big picture.

That sounds like a job for the Thinker, not the Addict.

Sure, whoever.

It's really simple. The Thinker should have noticed a problem during the performance review. The Thinker has control for a few minutes every single day for the performance reviews - he should be able to deal with things like this and warn the others about necessary changes.

That would require the Thinker to act like he's responsible for all of us.

Sure.

I'll do my best to keep an eye on all of you.

That's not good enough.

It's all I can do. If you think I'm not doing my job properly, you can always take off points during my own performance reviews.

I think I'll do that.

What, and push us closer into panic mode? You wouldn't dare!

Panic mode has nothing to do with it. If I'm doing something wrong, it's your obligation to the group to let me know.

Well, it's kind of hard for me to notice you're doing things wrong, when I don't get even a single day!

I think it's time to wrap this meeting up -we're running in circles.

No plans for the month?

Plans for the month. We're running into all the holidays now, so we'll need to make the most of every minute. I'm thinking the Worker on Motza'ei Shabbat, to do Gamer Mom, post the Hyrule post, and maybe start learning the plays if there's time. I don't want to tell you how to manage your time, you'll see what you've got.

I should be able to do all that.

Great. After that I want a triple day for the Addict, to do things on the blog.

You can't be serious!

There's too much that needs to be done on it for a short day. I'm not satisfied with the pace of two posts per month. Don't worry, we've taken out the loophole in the day-extension rule, so we won't have a repeat of the Phineas and Ferb incident.

I think we could be using our time better.

Then make the most of the time you've got, and that'll make me more likely to put you in control more often. Beyond that, it's not your call.

You owe me three character-building days.

I was supposed to get, as well.

Programmer, I think we can skip you; I don't think you've ever had trouble staying in character.

I guess you're right. Though, I'm never called on much, so who knows.

If we start seeing a problem, then we'll talk. Musician. I know I owe you... no, you know what? The Programmer has every bit as much to gain from this as the Musician, I owe you both. But I can't give either of you 48 hours in the coming week. It'll have to be after that, but I promise I won't forget about you.

And what about the rest of us?

Wait for your turn. I'm sorry this is taking so long, but we only have so many days to work with.

Maybe we should cut back on social days. Like, maybe we don't need to put everything down every time Moshe wants to come over.

Hey!

Worker, you are out of line. It is the Person's right to get control whenever a social opportunity arises. I'd like to get back to the plan. Please don't interrupt me.

After the Addict, I'll come in to figure out what we're doing with Angles and Circles. Then the Explorer, maybe dealing with Angles and Circles but definitely continuing Gamer Mom.

If I feel like it. Not promising anything.

You want to work on Gamer Mom because you recognize its importance. Don't be a troublemaker. After him, we'll have two Worker days in a row because there will be so much to get caught up on. After that the Musician gets three days in 48 hours, and then the Programmer gets three days in 48 hours. I don't know specific dates yet, I'll need to sit down with a calendar. Though, maybe I shouldn't say specific dates because we saw how that can backfire. My plan for this next month is to focus primarily on Gamer Mom, but to be making significant progress on everything else as well: the blog, Angles and Circles, "Eshet Chayil",

I'll need you to take a look at that before I get my three days.

Fine. Then somewhere before, after or between the Worker's two days I'll take another. As I was saying, we'll work on Gamer Mom, the blog, Angles and Circles, "Eshet Chayil", the three plays, and Dungeon Master, in that order of importance.

It's too much.

Of course it's too much, but this is the life we've picked.

What about the Fear Itself editing?

Are you kidding me?

No. I'd like to do that.

And what about me?

I don't think Marvel Comics, or Uncharted 2, should be very high on our list of priorities right now! We're coming into Tishrei now, the month of all the holidays! Even without any distractions and interruptions, which isn't going to happen, we don't have a tremendous amount of time! Maybe we should just be focusing on Gamer Mom, and forgetting about everything else?

We need to work on the plays.

And we need the musician to get a good start on making something we can sell!

Eagh! There are fifty minutes left in the month. I would like to wrap this meeting up.

You can't avoid your responsibilities.

I know that, damn it! Over the holiday I'll think about our priorities, and then immediately after Shabbat and before the Worker starts, I'll take an hour and write out what I've decided.

Conveniently enough, that takes all of us out of the discussion.

How meaningful a discussion do you think we're going to have with fifty minutes until the holiday?

You're right, let's wrap it up.

Thank you. If you have more objections to my leadership, bring it up at my next perrfomance review! That will be all.

2011 September 11th, 04:12 and 27 seconds

Perpetual motion

four comments, the last one being from myself

The Reish Galuta of the Geula said:: Septamber?

Are all months getting colours now?
Mory said:: Yes, I've been doing that for three months to make the old months look different. Thanks for catching the typo.
The Reish Galuta of the Geula said:: The link to the Deku nuts post is missing from the Living In Hyrule title page.

It's secret functionality hidden in plain sight (like the deku nuts).
Mory said:: No, it's there. You might be loading from cache; if you reload that frame, you'll see it.

Post a Comment

2011, September 9th, 00:18 and 22 seconds

A Light Unto The Nations

Last month, I had a conversation that completely changed my political leanings. It was the 9th of Av fast, commemorating the destruction of our holy temple in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. Common religious thought says that we lost the symbol of our religion because we didn't have enough love in our national character to deserve it. When I was in high school from seventh to ninth grade, I was in the Yeshiva run by Rav Yisrael Ariel of the Temple Institute, which actively prepares for the building of the third Temple. He instilled in me a yearning for the Judaism of old, centered aroud a physical and cultural landmark. But still I find the 9th of Av fast a hollow experience, in that it suggests a sadness without calling for any corrective actions. I don't want to sit around and mourn, I want to stand up and rebuild. I want to immediately respond to all the crying about the glory days with the question "What are we going to do about it?". So when the city organized a panel talking about social issues, I walked to it (in my uncomfortable, acceptable-for-the-fast shoes).

The discussion centered around the recent protests all over the country. I first heard of the protests from my mother calling the protestors "spoiled" Tel Aviv kids. I didn't understand what all the hoopla was about: ostensibly these protests were about the price of housing, but it was getting a disproportionate amount of press for the subject. After a while I'd started hearing both sides of the argument: there were a lot of legitimate social problems that were being protested, but the protestors were also using the opportunity to try to knock the current politicians out of power, and replace them with more left-wing candidates. There was some idealism on display, but also the desire to attend a fun social event during the summer vacation. The class split is wider than in other countries, but the economy is doing well by capitalistic standards. I found that my view of the protests changed depending on who I was talking to, because everyone seemed to be making sense to me. The protests have ended now, and still I have no idea where I stand on the subject. Not only do I not know if they were a positive development, but I don't know if they made any impact at all. They were huge protests by any measure, and politicians will be making reference to them to back up their rhetoric, but I suspect the next elections will be between all the same parties with all the same platforms (or lack thereof). Or maybe this really has changed the whole discussion, by making the issues about us rather than about an external threat. Then again, there was a terrorist attack toward the end of the protests.... At the end of the day, I don't know what the story was.

So when a panel of people more qualified than me to understand what's going on all disagreed with each other about what was going on, I felt more confused than ever. When it ended, I started chatting with a neighbor named Itzik. The details of the conversation elude me, but as we walked back to our street, and then for an hour afterward, we tried to make sense of what the point of Judaism is, and where Israel fits into it. We talked about the anthropomorphization of God, and Jewish values in law, and the religious landscape as it exists today and as it used to be, and where we might be going. I brought up the common idea of Judaism as "a light unto the nations", and Itzik threw me for a loop with his follow-up question: "What if we've already achieved that?". If the idea of Judaism is to spread ethical values and social justice throughout the world by setting a good example, then mission accomplished! Compared to the world of antiquity, our modern world is very humane. Most of the western world are built on a foundation of rationality and Judeo-Christian ideals. But if Judaism has fulfilled its purpose, I countered, then why aren't we at the end of the story already? Where's our Messiah? Where's our Temple? And he laughed at a little at the childishness of the remark. Itzik does not place much faith in an "end of days" scenario to magically solve the world's problems.

But then, what's next? If we've already served our purpose, then maybe the Kharedim with their radical isolationist attitude are actually making sense. The work in the world is done, and now our reward is to sit around learning Torah all day, not needing to worry about anything going on outside. Replace "Torah" with "The Legend of Zelda", and I can get behind that attitude. But then Judaism is no different from any other selfish lifestyle out there. It's not about any particular religious purpose anymore, it's just a culture. (I do not consider "preserving and enforcing the arbitrary status quo" to be a valid religious purpose.) Itzik told me that the idea of being so rigid about Jewish practices and so obsessive about studying is a fairly recent historical development, trying to undo the damage to the Jewish people inflicted by the Holocaust. If that's the case, then Kharedi Judaism may have outlived its usefulness. And on the other end of the religious spectrum you've got the secular Jews, who want Israel to be a social-democratic country like any other. But then, why here? Why not just move to anywhere in Europe or North America?

I have this underlying axiom, that Jews are not supposed to be like everyone else. With all the sexist, racist and conformist elements in Orthodox Judaism, the idea of a "chosen people" has me holding on to the Jewish story as a worthy cause. Not to suggest, God forbid, that we're somehow superior to anyone else, but just that we've been given a unique burden of being an example for the rest of the world. Every move we make is scrutinized by the rest of the world, and our job as Jews is to make sure that our example makes the world better rather than leaving it in the same place. That's all. Orthodox Judaism will hopefully lose its prominence over time, giving way to more inclusive and enlightened denominations, but the one idea that must always hold is the "light unto the nations" line. As long as the world isn't entirely just, our job isn't done yet.

And where does that leave Israel, a tiny Jewish country in the middle of a region that mostly hates us? Well, that's the most important part of the religion, isn't it? Israel is the representation of Judaism on the world stage. It was founded so that we'd get some peace and quiet free of all the persecution, but if that's the whole plan then it's doomed to destruction again. If we wanted to be ignored, maybe a predominantly Muslim area wasn't the best spot. Antarctica might have been a better choice. In the Middle East, minding our own business and hoping everyone leaves us alone isn't an option. It's simply not going to happen. We'll keep fighting for our lives until one day we lose, and then a majority of the Jewish people will all be wiped out at once. If the plan is just to keep pushing off that event for as long as possible, I'd rather be living in America like my brother with his nice job and his boring non-Jewish girlfriend. I don't care for no-win scenarios. But if the plan's to make Israel an extension of the "light unto the nations" principle, then maybe we've got something to offer the world.

The third Temple can't be exclusive to Jews. I think that would be a fundamental misunderstanding of the point of Judaism. We need to have people coming from all over the world, from all walks of life, to recognize the glory of God and bring some of that goodness back home with them. On second thought, maybe the Temple Mount wouldn't be quite big enough for that. But the country is. The State of Israel should be our third Temple. Israel isn't about learning Torah, it's about looking after the civilians in war and providing a reasonable life for the poor and taking in refugees from Africa and sending humanitarian aid wherever it's needed. We've started in that direction, but there's so much farther to go. Our politicians are good with strategy, but short on compassion. And as the people who've democratically elected those leaders, the same must be said of us.

If Israel and Judaism are to actually do God's work, I can't hold on to my old political positions. I've always just wanted to be left alone. I voted Yisra'el Beiteinu in the last national elections, because they seemed to have the harshest stance on how to deal with the Palestinians and I wanted to get rid of that safety risk. In the last local elections, I voted for the guy promoting unity only because there wasn't a candidate who was strongly anti-Kharedi (which I would have preferred). But if this isn't just any old country, I can't be thinking like that. As an Israeli voter, it is my religious obligation to keep the bigger story in mind. The Muslims are our enemies right now, but they won't always be. These are our cousins and our neighbors. They share our core beliefs, though they might be losing sight of those ideals under all their cultural aggression. And we can't be an effective example of what is good and right in the world while the best-known fact about Israel is that we're fighting the Palestinians. That we're justified in our fight is irrelevant - we are under greater scrutiny than other countries, and we must do better.

The two-state solution is un-Jewish. These are people who are living in our land, and we're aiming to turn a blind eye to their abuse by their rich little would-be dictators. The Israeli majority seems to be okay with the idea of declaring borders between us and them and then letting them all suffer like all the other countries in the Middle East. It's not going to work out for us, either. Do we really want a country with a lower quality of life sharing space with us? I don't know much history, but I find it hard to imagine that that wouldn't lead to violence. And on the other side of the political spectrum are the people like my mother, who'd love to just bomb 'em all and send them running to the other Arab countries. "This is our country!", such Israelis cry, "Get out of it!". No one has an actual solution that's going to work out for the local Arabs, it's all just about getting them to stop killing us.

We need to stop thinking like that, right now. They are living in our country, and it is the compassionate (and therefore Jewish) thing to do to make them feel welcome. We need to immediately, and very publicly, offer full Israeli citizenship to every Arab who's been living here for a while and hasn't been involved in any terrorist activity. We need to take responsibility for the so-called "Palestinian Territories", and the longer we wait the harder it'll be. Their leaders' efforts to declare statehood at the UN this month can't result in anything good for either side, and I wish we'd give them Israeli citizenship to preempt that. The oft-mentioned "demographic threat" to Israel doesn't concern me: if this is a country of ideals (as it should be) rather than bloodline, the existing laws rooted in Jewish values ought to be enough regardless of the demographics. And if Jewish values aren't strong enough to make this a uniquely Jewish country, then why the hell not? As to the threat of Palestinian nationalists undermining the country from within, Moshe had a very good idea: we should have a law stating that traitors to the country will automatically have their citizenship revoked. I would extend that idea to include all people who organize violence for any reason, be they Arab or Jewish. If someone sets aside rocks for the express purpose of throwing them at people on Shabbat, as far as I'm concerned that person has permanently given up his right to be a part of this holy country.

In the first year or two of integrating with the Palestinians we'll need to be prepared for a lot more terrorist plots in our borders, and that means that a lot of the money from the defense budget needs to be moved to the police. Maybe some of the people drafted into the army can be put in the police instead. We're really good at defending ourselves from outsiders, but not as good at maintaining order and enforcing laws. That needs to change. That'll take a lot of money, and the recent protests have brought to everyone's attention just how much of the country's wealth is controlled by a handful of rich families. We need to tax them more.

All of what I'm saying boils down to: we need to start acting like the Jewish people we tell stories about, and not the Jewish people that other people tell stories about. That goes for myself (as self-absorbed a person as I know) as much as anyone else: I have no excuse to put my silly little life in front of worthy protests that I might help with. (People who know me, you may hold me to that.) I need to stop thinking the world revolves around me and start acting like a part of the world. And the same goes for my political leanings. I'm not pining for the good old days anymore. They might have been good for us, but the rest of the world was a mess. That's not good enough. In the next elections, I'll vote for whichever party supports inviting the Palestinians into Israel and aggressively upholding a high standard of ethics and justice as befits a Jewish country.

Hmph. That party doesn't exist, does it.

2011, August 31st, 18:50 and 59 seconds

View the utter mess that is my August 2011Daily performance reviews for August 2011:(Rules)

Self-meeting for August 2011

Perspective
New rules

Last month it seemed like the worker had gotten under control. So this month, the plan was to keep going with the other characters, and to give each character the chance to figure out who they are separate from the group. But here we are at the end of the month, and instead of having gotten comfortable with all the characters we've lost the perfect worker. What happened?

It was a bad plan, is what happened. There's too much to do to waste time thinking about things.

That is not a helpful attitude.

I see two problems. The first and most significant is an addiction to comics. The second problem is going to sleep too late, and being tired all the time. This is tied to the first problem, since we all stayed up late reading comics. Clearly addictions are the absolute evil we need to avoid, because they break down everything we build up. I propose a new rule: if in a performance review we ever see that some activity is turning into an addiction, we're not allowed to do that activity for a week afterward, with no exceptions.

Useless. I mean, it's a fine rule, but it changes nothing. I first noted the comics addiction on the 25th, and I said we shouldn't read any comics for a while. We kept reading comics anyway. What good is making it a rule going to do? Anyway, I'm not sure that's the problem. It is a problem, and we do need to be more careful, but it doesn't explain... yestrday, for instance, where there was no comics activity and the worker couldn't keep it together.

I was very tired.

Okay, so that is a major problem, and the fact that the computer shuts down automatically at 3:00 ought to help in that regard.

Unless you stay up reading, like you did last night.

Point taken.

The problem with the month is I didn't have any say in it. You gave me one day, where my activities were dictated by the schedule. If I'd had other days, I would have given you all ideas on how to be less stuffy.

Again, I don't think this is the main problem.

The main problem was a lack of enthusiasm, and the explorer could have helped that.

Thank you.

Without enthusiasm, none of these rules and none of these plans and none of these characters are worth anything at all.

The explorer was criticized for a lack of enthusiasm in his one day.

I already said that that was because my activities were dictated to me, instead of arising naturally from my personality.

I suppose it's possible.

Let's please not take this idea too seriously. We are very very busy these days. I know it doesn't look like it from the sluggishness of this past week, but let's not forget that we are in the middle of no less than eight projects of various types.

We need deadlines.

Yes, we do. We also need to be always moving forward. How's this for a theory: we lost interest in the game because the entire point of the game this month was about wallowing in our own flaws instead of moving forward.

That's an interesting thought. Just as you need to "stick to the plan" precisely or lose all your momentum, so too should we never waver in following the direction for the month. Once we feel like what we're doing is separate from the plan, we lose the plan. That means that the monthly plan needs to always be flexible enough to allow for changes. Maybe that was the problem.

That was in no way similar to what I was saying.

Are we giving up on the character exercise, then?

No, I still think it's important to get each voice right. But let's make that just a small part of the month, and we can include deadlines for everything else.

What if each day of the exercise is just a few hours, and you immediately follow it with another exercise day? It could be the same character, or a different character...

I like the idea of having two instances of one character in a day. Cut the personality down to the essentials, and come up with different variations.

We have to restore the rule about not following a bad day with the same character. It's an important rule.

Okay. No exceptions this time.

I think I understand what everyone wants here. Deadlines, shorter character building, a more active role for the explorer, a limit on comics, and sufficient attention given to everything we need to be doing. I'll write up the plan for September tonight.

We were going to capitalize the names of characters.

That's true. I guess I've gotten used to writing the characters' names uncapitalized, and I didn't even think about it. But it should be capitalized, Explorer, you're right. Should I edit what we've written?

Just move on already. No one cares.

I'll move on. I know the programmer had some rules he wanted to run past us, so we'll let him do that.

Perspective
New rules

The first rule I'd like to suggest is a point incentive for staying in character. For a while now we've been losing points for breaking character, but that's been a one-way street. Now if you particularly excel at playing your character, you get one point.

Just one?

Just one. I don't want to give the impression that as long as you're being yourself, you don't need to care about any of the other rules.

A wise precaution. I doubt anyone will object to this rule. How will you word it?

It'll go after the line about losing points for breaking rules or principles. "Conversely, if the activities of the day present a particularly believable representation of the character, one point will be added (with the maximum still not exceeding ten)."

Did we need to hear that?

No, I guess not. Just add it in, then. No need for the whole fancy arrow business; this is the sort of rule that should have been there from the beginning.

Thank you.

Okay, next rule. We should only allow a day to be extended if it's going well.

That's not a clear rule.

Can you word it more clearly?

Oy, again with the wording!

You said it wasn't clear.

Never mind. Spend fifty years working on getting the words just right, I don't care.

Ignore him. Can you word the rule more clearly?

"If twenty-four hours have passed since the last scoring period, the score for the day must immediately be estimated. (A precise calculation may not be possible before the closing statement and performance review.) If it is estimated that the score for the day (were it concluded immediately) would be 7/10 or higher, then the day may continue. Otherwise, the day must conclude immediately, and the formal review will take place."

Fascinating. There, I think we did need to hear the precise wording.

Isn't that backwards? If you don't have a good score yet, maybe you need the extra time to get it up there!

That's not what we've seen happening in practice. If the day's going badly enough to score under 7/10, there's some essential problem with the approach that's not going to be fixed by just carrying it on longer. We keep hearing the excuse "The day isn't good yet!", followed by the day getting even worse. This will stop that.

I love it.

It does seem like it might work. Any objections?

Seriously, this is a big change. If you don't like it, now's the time to speak up. There won't be another chance.

My scoring goes by progress. With a longer day, I necessarily make more progress. And I'm not sure if I'll always be able to get a seven in twelve hours.

It's more than twelve hours. It's twenty-four hours from the last scoring. So let's say you get eight and a half hours of sleep, you take a half hour to start the day, we'll take off another hour of expected mundanity, you've still got fourteen hours. If in fourteen hours you can't get things done, you're playing the wrong games.

You're right, I take back what I said.

Any other criticisms or concerns?

What if I'm out with friends, and there are more opportunities that I'll miss out on if I don't keep going?

If you're out with friends, you should be having a meaningful enough time to get that 7/10.

Maybe not. Maybe we're just starting out.

In this hypothetical situation, what were you doing for a full day up to that point?

Maybe it was a decent, but not a stellar day so far, and this social opportunity will push it over the edge. Maybe it's a solid six-pointer so far.

He has a point. Six out of ten is respectable.

If it's 6/10, you're still allowed to repeat the character. You can end the day with six points, start a new day as the person, and have a full twenty-four hours to do whatever it is you're doing.

What if it's five out of ten?

Then you've screwed yourself out of the opportunity. Play better, and that won't happen.

I don't like it.

I don't care. It's a good rule.

Programmer, could you possibly lower the cut-off to 5/10?

Five out of ten is a mediocre day. We don't want to extend that.

Okay, I understand what you're saying, but it's not a huge difference.

Seven is the right number. Do you think five makes more sense?

No, but maybe a compromise would be in order.

"Compromise". I can see why you didn't get anything done this month, you don't hav much intellectual integrity.

That is not called for. That is really not called for.

I say we put it to a vote. Musician?

Yea.

Explorer?

I have no problem with it.

This isn't right. You're voting because you know you'll win this way!

You're damned right. Worker?

Anything to reduce wasted time.

I vote for it.

Thinker?

Fine, I get it! You can have your rule.

I vote yes, if anyone cares. Let's put in the rule.

Now if we're done with that little drama, I have a rule of my own to suggest. I would like to formalize a policy we've already been following but could pursue more rigidly: whenever our plans rely on other people, we need to confirm the schedule shortly before relying on it.

Now that's a rule I can get behind.

Like I said, this is nothing new. So let's just add it in. Programmer, do you mind if I just add it in with yours?

Sure.

Done. What do you think of the wording?

It's fine.

Okay. Does anyone have anything else to add to this meeting?

Then we'll end it here.

2011, August 8th, 02:46 and 7 seconds

This needs to be said.

Today I allocated eight hours of my day for data entry work. It was as rewarding as always, with a bunch of new forms thrown in with fun new rhythms to learn. I was working (as usual) on the opposite side of my boss Hadas's desk, and she noted at one point that as I was copying data I was swaying around as though I were playing piano. I hadn't noticed I was doing that, partially because I was too tired to be particularly self-aware and partially because I was just absorbed in the work. I told her that data entry uses the same skill as piano, and she laughed. But it's true: my practice with using my fingers quickly in piano and computer games make me uniquely qualified for this little job I've got. I don't need to look at or think about the keyboard to know exactly what I'm pressing on, so that I can be typing 6 digits per second in a brisk 4/4 meter without having looked at where I'm placing my fingers, and I'll still feel instantly if I've pressed the wrong key. Two women came in at one point to ask Hadas a question, and when they saw me typing away furiously with my head buried in the paper I was copying from one of them asked "Don't you need to see what you're writing?". Having not been aware enough of their presence to immediately process the auditory data of the question, I turned to her and said "What?" while my fingers finished off the string of numbers I was on. She laughed, and Hadas said I was one of a kind, to which I gave a dismissive wave.

Later, in between two files, I got a text message from Dena asking if I could go with her to a movie (Captain America: The First Avenger) next week. I responded that as it happens, I'll be within walking distance of the theater at that day at that time, since I have a rehearsal of Cox and Box scheduled, so that would work nicely. I kept working for a few hours after that, until Hadas wanted to leave. I estimate that there are six and a half hours of work left on this particular group of subjects, so next week after the movie, I'll set my alarm to wake me up early again and put in another day of work. As Hadas and I drove back to Beit Shemesh, she told me what she thinks of the current protests (essentially, that it's political mudslinging masquerading as a social agenda), to which I have no opinion. When I got home I opened the check from my work in the past few months, had dinner and read a short letter from Aviella, who I've continued to correspond with regularly since we starred in Ruddigore together. Then I took a two-and-a-half hour nap, woke up, planned out the rest of the evening, bought the latest "Humble Indie Bundle" collection of independent games, studied the programming techniques I'll need to know for the adventure game Gamer Mom which I'm doing with Kyler, practiced Cox & Box for an hour, and then sat down to write this post. In ten minutes I'll be done with this and I'll go back to working on my collection of backup stories from The Avengers, which often have incorrect chapter numbers that I need to fix in an image editor. And finally I will award myself the perfect-10 score that I deserve for today's work, and go to sleep content.

By any measure, this is a great life. I am happy. I am productive. I have social opportunities equal to my current interest in social opportunities. I feel that my work is not only rewarding in itself, but also rewarded with money and new opportunities of all sorts. I want to wake up tomorrow, and have another day just like this one. I want to make the most of the day after that as well, and the day after that, and so on for the rest of my life. I am satisfied here.

Let me tell you what tomorrow is going to be like. I'm going to wake up at 12:30. I'll get out of bed and head toward the TV to exercise, but get sidetracked by the computer. I'll sit down and waste two hours browsing silly web sites that I've been to thousands of times before. Then I'll begrudgingly get dressed, eat lunch and go back to web browsing. At a certain point I'll be too depressed to go on, so I'll read a book or some comics or play a game or something. I'll keep looking for more distractions and time-wasters, believing in the absence of common-sense that there's enlightenment to be found somewhere in the tedium. At the end of the day I'll put off writing a closing statement because nothing I can possibly say will make that day seem worthwhile, but maybe if I give it a few more hours in the day after that my thoughts will come together and I'll see that I haven't just wasted twenty-four hours. What's actually going to happen is that the few hours in the next day will drag on, until I've wasted two full days and have absolutely nothing to show for it.

I know there are reasons for this behavior. But they're stupid reasons, detached from any kind of reality I'm familiar with. And even if there were a legitimate excuse for it, it still couldn't live up to this life I've carved out for myself which is pretty damned close to perfect. I've figured out how to live, and there's no use wandering around aimlessly any more.

2011, August 1st, 02:34 and 42 seconds

Show the very slow progress of July 2011Daily performance reviews for July 2011:(Rules)

Self-meeting for July 2011

Not much to say, because the month has gone well.

I haven't gotten a turn yet.

Yes, well, progress has been slow. But character building takes the time it takes, and then you have it for life.

I would think it's a constant effort.

Sure, but it's like riding a bicycle. Once you can do it, you never forget.

It's not worth arguing.

Why, is there something you'd like to say?

No.

Okay. I have to congratulate you on becoming the character we needed you to be.

There's more work to do.

Good attitude.

I think if you gave me more time, I could get everything in our life under control.

Shut up!

I think what the explorer means to say is "no". But it's good that you want to keep going. That's exactly the kind of self-confidence I was hoping for.

I'm serious.

Shut. Up.

Good, very good. Worker, do you have

By the way, are we capitalizing our names now? It seems inconsistent.

You know what, yes. From now on, our names will be capitalized. We should have been doing that from the beginning.

Okay, Thinker.

Unless... I guess we could hold off on capitals until we earn them.

Names Capitalized. Move on.

Oh fine. Worker, is there anything you can say that you've learned about how to play your part? Because it would be best if we could take that and make a rule out of it, so that you never have trouble remembering your lines.

No rule. I just try to do what needs to be done.

I like that, very... what's the word.

Stoic.

Are you sure? Let's see... "one apparently or professedly indifferent to pleasure or pain"

I have a complaint. Your "moments of reflection" make no sense at all.

Explain.

Well, if I'm in the middle of doing something, suddenly stopping in the middle is just an interruption, just because it's 7:40 PM or whenever.

I did notice that you weren't pausing the game.

It's a waste of time.

What if there were some sort of script to follow, so that you're checking whether you're still in character?

It's a waste of time.

Explorer, do you have any thoughts?

Butterflies.

Excuse me?

I'm picturing butterflies fluttering by. It's very dreamy.

Any thoughts that are relevant to the three "moments of reflection"?

It's a waste of time.

You've said that already.

Oh, fine, I'll take the rule out. But I haven't given up on the idea, it just needs more tweaking.

Another complaint I'd like to make is the schedule. There's no reason that we should be ending days at 3:00 while the rest of the world is asleep by midnight. We should switch to a more normal schedule.

It's... hm. I don't think "normal" is necessarily something we're going for.

Don't be repressing me, you.

It's just causing friction between us and the rest of the world, for no good reason. It makes it awkward to do things like go to work and not be tired all day.

You are free to go to sleep whenever you want. And so are we.

Well, that doesn't exactly work, does it? To keep changing sleep schedules?

You never know. Maybe it would.

No, but you know, that's ridiculous. Usually I won't be following myself, which means someone else will be going to sleep at some godforsaken hour, like you going to sleep at 5:30 some nights, and then I'm going to be tired all day.

I think we're all capable of being considerate of such considerations... that's a terrible wording. I think we can take into account such-

It's ridiculous.

Noted. I don't think you'll find anyone with your point of view, though.

What about the Person?

I don't know. Person?

What?

Would you prefer to go to sleep at a normal hour?

I don't know, I generally stay up late on Friday nights talking to people. But I guess during the week it could be cool to be awake in some different hours, sure. I rarely chat with people out of the country, anyway. But right now it doesn't make too much difference. Maybe when you give me enough time to myself to have a social life, I'll care one way or the other more.

Thank you.

Weirdos.

Let's move on and talk about the blog. I'm disappointed you didn't write on it more. It's there for you.

Is it?

It's there for all of us.

Here for all... never mind.

I had more pressing things on my agenda.

Why don't you quickly run through what you've accomplished.

I don't know. I guess I got some work done on Gamer Mom, and Angles and Circles. I probably should have done more.

Mm hm. Well, I guess we can wrap this up.

You haven't been exercising.

That's true. I should have.

Yes.

But I get so tempted by the computer, and I get stuck there instead of going to the Wii.

I was like that too. But you have to push past it.

But what if there's something really interesting in my inbox?

There isn't.

Or some blog that's updated? And here we'll imagine it's an interesting update, and not something silly.

It's always silly. But even if it isn't, you don't belong on the computer until you've started the day properly.

See, I don't think like that.

You should.

I'm always looking for things that might get some thoughts out of me.

Are you thinking particularly profound thoughts immediately after waking up?

Sometimes.

No, you need to be more awake than that. Look, after exercising and showering and what have you you've got hours and hours to read your precious blogs.

That is true. It's just an addiction, isn't it.

Exactly. Some habits are useful. That one isn't.

So just push past it. I'll try to do that.

Maybe you should try doing stranger things, instead of always relying on habits.

Not a very good cake if it's made from stale ingredients.

Right. And I'm saying this because I want my turn already.

I know. Thank you, I'll try.

You'll try what?

I'll look for insight in new places.

Good.

Thursday will be yours whether I'm done or not, so that you can see... what's the name of the movie?

The Tree of Life.

Yes. So I doubt I'll be done in just two days, but you will get a day regardless.

I don't want a day. I want to have a lot of days. I'd do more for the blog than you do.

Let's please not forget how much work there is to be done in Gamer Mom and Angles and Circles, and soon Cox and Box as well. Life goes on whether or not you're playing an exercise.

We'll have to call you and the addict more often, then.

I mean, the addict.

So. What are the things I need to remember?

Look for insight in new places.
Start the day with exercise and hygiene, rather than thoughts.
Make use of the Worker and the Addict frequently.

Am I forgetting anything?

No, I don't think I am. On to August, then.

two comments, the last one being from myself

P.A.W. said:: I’m curious: in choosing a non-Nintendo console, why did you choose a PS3 over an Xbox 360?

For PS2 compatibility old PS2s are cheap (in the UK; but maybe not in Israel?)
Mory said:: In a word: Flower. The downloadable game by Jenova Chen is one of the main reasons I'm buying a PS3. But there's also Heavy Rain and Uncharted 2, both of which it seems from internet chatter like I have an obligation to play as a gamist involved in interactive stories. The XBox 360, on the other hand, has no exclusive games I'm interested in. Buying the Playstation 3 wasn't (just) about being fed up with Nintendo, it was about wanting to play particular games.

As for PS2 compatibility, which due to a mistake I don't have, it's not as big a deal as I thought. The main games I wanted for PS2 were Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, which are being rereleased as a bundle for PS3. There are a few games I want from PS2 that I won't be able to play, but not enough to buy a system over.

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2011, July 31st, 21:36 and 55 seconds

Nintendo stretches itself too thin

Nintendo's 3DS system was expected to be a hit. It was the successor to their massively popular DS handheld system, with a neat new feature -a 3D screen!- and more modern technology powering it. But just five months after launch, Nintendo is already reducing the price from $250 American dollars to $170.

This is shocking for a few reasons. Firstly and most obviously, to cut the price this soon is an admission that the launch was an utter failure. I don't know sales details, but obviously these are not happy numbers. And the 3DS isn't that radically different in its business strategy to the DS, so the question is "Why is this necessary?". In CEO Satoru Iwata's statement to the press, he vaguely alluded to the difficulty of selling a 3D screen that only impresses "those who have experienced the system". Around the internet, I've seen a lot of people saying that the price cut is a response to Sony's announcement of the Playstation Vita, a more powerful (and expensive to manufacture) system whose price has been set at $250 to undercut Nintendo. One site actually blamed the relative strength of the Japanese yen for Nintendo's financial problems. And I'm sure all three factors contributed to Nintendo's decision. But it's not like any of these issues were wholly unexpected for a company paying attention to its product, its competitors and the world economy. You don't suddenly reduce the price five months in, which Nintendo has admitted "may cause ... the loyal fans who supported Nintendo 3DS from the beginning, to lose trust in us", because you suddenly noticed some variable that could reasonably have been predicted before launch.

The second thing that's shocking about the price cut is that as I'm learning now from sites doing the math, $250 was actually a reasonable price from Nintendo's perspective. When they announced the 3DS, I was certain it would be sold at $180. But evidently the technology behind it is advanced enough that they couldn't set it at that price and still make a profit. When Sony sells their Playstation Vita, they'll most likely be losing money for each and every system they sell just to have that $250 pricetag which makes them look good next to Nintendo. Once they've got their market share, they'll make the money back with the expensive games they sell. I don't believe that business plan will work in this instance, but it's how both they and Microsoft have done things for years. Not Nintendo, though. As a matter of policy, Nintendo has never sold hardware at a loss. Sony and Microsoft are huge companies who don't blink at financial risks in one of their many divisions. But Nintendo doesn't have that mindset. Or rather, they've never had that mindset until right now. Apparently at $170, they'll be losing around 15 bucks on each sale. Clearly this is not a typical price cut.

This last business-quarter was the first in Nintendo's long history in which they failed to make a profit. Generally when a company's not doing well, they start firing employees to save money. Nintendo is taking a different and altogether more likable approach. Along with the price cut, the bosses at Nintendo have apparently volunteered to take massive cuts to their paychecks. Iwata's salary has gone down by a whopping fifty percent. The other managers lose thirty percent, and all the directors lose twenty percent. This is being framed as a way "for the management to show its accountability for the level of the operating loss of this time and the prospect of no interim dividend".

They seem to be doing everything right to deal with this situation. They're taking a loss to gain new customers, they're appeasing their shareholders, and they're even reassuring their fans by giving away twenty old Nintendo classics as free 3DS downloadables (which most likely costs Nintendo absolutely nothing). But the fact remains that Nintendo is not doing well. The company that created the Wii, which still (as far as I know) has more of the console market than either Microsoft's XBox 360 or Sony's Playstation 3, somehow isn't making a profit. And if you think that's because of what Sony's doing, or because the 3D screen is too hard to sell, then you're not seeing the big picture. This is about the iPhone. Every single decision and announcement Nintendo makes these days is a reaction to the iPhone, and it's not enough.

The 3DS is taking an early price cut because without it, their hardware business will be dead within a year. And the bosses all took pay cuts because Nintendo can't afford to lose a single employee right now. If the company doesn't expand dramatically over the next few years, Nintendo's business model will quickly prove to be unsustainable.

By my estimation, Nintendo has around thirty games in active development at any given time. These range in scale from cheap experiences that can be completed in an hour or two, to Super Mario and Legend of Zelda games with big budgets and generous helpings of content. These games are made by a wide variety of studios, most of them owned by Nintendo but some simply working under Nintendo's supervision. These studios are not all equal in size or ambition. Handheld titles which will be played for just a few minutes at a time aren't given the same budgets or lengthy development schedules that, say, a role-playing game from Monolith Soft. A game that's going to be played on a small screen during a bus ride isn't as polished and deep as a game you spend hours playing in front of the TV.

Expensive games for consoles aiming for technical excellence, and cheaper games for handhelds. This approach has served Nintendo well for decades. But then the iPhone/iPad happened. Suddenly there's a huge market of people wandering around with powerful internet-enabled computers in their pockets, with a built-in store that sells simple and addictive games for a dollar a piece. Nintendo tried to compete directly, by selling their DS update DSi entirely on the basis of their online store. It didn't take off, not to anything near the extent of Apple's offerings. It's hard for me to say why, given that I neither have nor have ever seen a DSi. Actually, that there might be a hint. The gamers most likely to be interested in downloadable Nintendo games likely already owned the DS or the DS Lite, and the DSi, with its internet access and camera, might not have seemed like a necessary purchase while all the new DS games in stores could be played with an earlier model. But like I said, I don't have any experience with the system. It may simply be more awkward to connect it to the internet than an iPhone bought from a cell phone company.

For whatever reason, Nintendo's online store never got big enough to be the bulk of their business. So while they're still steadily releasing downloadable DS games -at the expense of the online Wii store, which has completely dried up- being an iPhone-wannabe isn't their goal. The only way to compete in the long-term with Apple is to go in the other direction. The games need to be so clearly superior to iPhone applications that no one will even consider them to be in the same category. Hence the 3DS and its 3D screen which -for technical reasons involving viewing angle and the limitations of touch screens- Apple is not likely to ever compete with in their handheld products. With the 3DS screen seeming like a window into another world with depth, every game played on it might be a special experience in the way that Avatar was a cultural event. (Well, maybe not that special. But that's the hope.) Consumers will continue to pay a premium despite the much cheaper competition, because they're getting a different class of experience. It's a fine business plan. Just one problem: Nintendo isn't built for it.

The 3D hardware is not enough in itself to impress people. To make the 3DS seem special you need software that shows off the 3D effect with dazzling imagery. If you put a 2D game on there and throw in some 3D gimmickry, gamers start making the Apple comparison again, in the same way that cheaply-produced 3D movies are turning moviegoers off of expensive 3D tickets. Good graphics require powerful hardware, so the 3DS is powerful enough that $250 dollars seemed like a reasonable price. And graphics are expensive on the software side as well. The reason videogame teams these days are so much bigger than in ten years ago isn't because the gameplay is so much more sophisticated - it's all about the presentation. So 3DS games, fitting the "premium" theme, are more expensive than DS cartridges at $40, which is just ten dollars cheaper than a Wii game. When you're talking about a game that's forty times more expensive than the most popular handheld games of today, you need a really high caliber of gameplay to justify it.

There aren't many teams at Nintendo capable of consistently producing large, technically-accomplished and excellent games. There's the EAD team in the Kyoto headquarters which makes Zelda, there's the Tokyo team that does Super Mario Bros., Project Sora (also in Tokyo) which is known for Super Smash Bros., Retro Studios in Texas that revives whatever series Nintendo's not interested enough to do themselves, and maybe a handful of others. These are the guys who have always worked on the console side while the larger number of small teams made handheld games. Now Nintendo has the console people working on the 3DS. The Tokyo platformer experts are making the sure-to-be-lovely Super Mario 3DLand, Retro Studios is helping out on Mario Kart 7, Project Sora is making Kid Icarus: Uprising. Each of these games will be what the 3DS needed at launch.

But while all the big teams are working on 3DS, who's making console games? Well, no one, as it turns out. There's The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword coming out later this year, but other than that the Wii release schedule is almost empty. There are a bunch of small throwaway games like another Rhythm Heaven, a new standard Kirby and some Mario Partys. Few third-party developers make games for Wii because the system is so different from the other two systems and the Wii fans are such a different audience to what they understand that it's barely worth the hassle to make a Wii version of anything. So for hardcore gamers like me awaiting the next big thing, there's nothing. There aren't even many small/quirky experiments coming for Wii to fill the gap, which might seem strange. But I strongly suspect that most of the small teams are now being given projects larger than they've ever done before, and it would surprise me if Nintendo hasn't been hiring a lot of entry-level progammers and artists to fill their ranks. Small teams are fairly useless to Nintendo's new strategy, and until those small teams get bigger the company is relying on a mere handful of studios to meet all their demand.

If you only look at the handheld side of the equation, it was absolutely wrong to release the 3DS when they did. All they had for launch titles were fun but small and unimpressive games like Pilotwings Resort and Steel Diver. It was vital to have Super Mario 3DLand at launch, which with its midair floating can really show off the appeal of 3D. But they weren't ready with it yet because it had only been a year since the Wii's Super Mario Galaxy 2 and it takes the Tokyo team longer than a year to make a great game. The 3DS was launched early, I am convinced, to distract from the Wii. If they waited until they were actually ready, Wii fans would practically forget Nintendo existed and jump ship to Sony and Microsoft. Getting them to buy a new and exciting system, Nintendo hoped, would build momentum through the empty months until the cool 3DS games came out. Launching the 3DS without its games was a calculated risk. It didn't work.

And what of the Wii owners who weren't interested in handheld games? For them Nintendo "announced" the Wii U, a name which sounds like something you'd say upon smelling something nasty. It wasn't a real announcement, because they had absolutely nothing to show. They hadn't finalized the hardware, they hadn't decided how they were planning on selling it, and they weren't ready to announce any games for it! Nintendo's always internally throwing ideas around for their next systems, and then they throw most of those ideas out and stick with whatever seems best. For E3 they just pulled out one of their prototypes -a controller with an iPad-style touch screen- and hoped that would be enough. To their credit, very few journalists seem to be paying attention to the fact that the Wii is being ignored, so I guess Nintendo was successful in changing the message.

To say that the Wii U announcement was premature would be an understatement. Nintendo didn't seem at all sure whether Wii U games would actually use two screens, or if they'd just use one screen but you wouldn't need a TV, or if the touch screen was meant to be used separately from the games themselves. (These are incompatible ideas.) They sent mixed messages about whether the use of multiple controllers (for multiplayer) was actually technically possible using their hardware. There was no attempt at new branding, so many people walked away with the impression that it was a new controller for the Wii rather than a whole new console. Iwata wisely did not point out that everything they were describing could be done right now: the Wii and the DS can communicate wirelessly, so the only thing stopping developers from making Wii games with a touch-screen controller is that no one cares. Nintendo tried this sort of thing with the Gamecube-Game Boy Advance connectivity. It was fun, and no one cared, so Nintendo hasn't made a big deal about connectivity since.

But whatever. Nintendo didn't need to present a coherent launch plan for Wii U, they just needed to reassure the world that they're still alive and kicking in two separate markets. But that's not really the case. The 3DS is DOA, and the Wii has been abandoned. The best studios Nintendo owns are currently rehashing old ideas to keep the company afloat in this transition period. The next step, which Nintendo wants to reach as soon as humanly possible, is to promote all their smaller developers to the same status as the big guys. They want everyone who was previously working on handheld minigame collections now working on new, exciting and big projects. That means combining departments, promotions everywhere, new hires, expanding the group that handles outside companies, etc. This doesn't happen overnight, and you don't want to tell shareholders that you're going to be sacrificing a year or two of profits for the long-term, so the only options left are empty gestures: cut prices, cut paychecks, give out lots of free games. (And if those games get more people to notice the online store, all the better.) Don't get me wrong, they're nice gestures. But they're not going to change much. In order to not be seen as irrelevant at this point, Nintendo needs to restructure itself from the ground up and launch the Wii U with five new games like nothing they've made before, all while simultaneously saving the sinking 3DS from being another Virtual Boy. Best of luck with that. I'll be buying a Playstation 3.

2011, July 3rd, 18:20 and 47 seconds

View the embarrassment that is my June 2011Daily performance reviews for June 2011:(Rules)

Self-meeting for June 2011

Overview
New rules
Grievances
Plans

I'm just going to start, and whoever pays attention pays attention. I'm going to be in charge here, because this entire multiple-personalty system was my idea and I'm more invested in its success than the rest of you. However, I recognize that as I am now, I am not worthy to lead you. I have been disrespectful, distracted and lazy. And my rules, rather than helping me to overcome these traits, allow me to indulge them. So before I spend even one minute as the self-appointed leader of our life, I'm going to rewrite my entire character page. Please wait for me.

Excuse me, programmer? I need your help for a minute.

Of course.

Thanks for your patience, guys. We'll be done in a few minutes.

Wait'll you see how the rule change works. It was my idea.

Thank you, programmer. At the rules, you'll have to go all the way in to see the new version.

That's so that you can compare the new rules to the old ones. From now on we won't lose anything when making edits. It'll just keep getting deeper and deeper. Which it how is anyway, in real life, but now the format reflects that.

Please take a minute to review the changes, and then we'll begin.

I like the part where you say you won't go over fifteen hours. We'll see if you can stand by that.

Oh, now I realize I should highlight the changes when you get to them. But that means I'd need to use <div> tags instead of <spans>.

We should be doing that anyway, it's bad code.

Does anyone have any problem with me, assuming these revised rules, deciding on how we move as a group? You can rest assured that it's in my best interest to let all of you be the most extreme possible versions of yourselves, because that will make the best story.

Okay then.

June was a disaster. The goals were to be distinct and coherent characters, and to reinvent the blog as a home for all of us. Instead we devolved into an amorphous lump. If the first month of The Rules had gone like this, we would have immediately declared the game a failure and gone back to one personality. Which is essentially what we have here anyway, because if you take out the names, colors and statements from the performance reviews you can barely tell who's who. Despite the scoring, despite the opening statements and despite the shell script, the multiple characters are becoming a thin façade for the person I was at the bottom of this page.

The most important cure to this problem is belief. True belief, the kind that shapes worlds, is not something which can be established once and then forgotten. It is an act of willpower that must be constantly maintained. If we do not believe we exist, we will not exist and all that will be left is the ambiguously-defined person.

Hey!

I call it like I see it. We still need to work on you.

You don't even have a color yet! You're just there.

Anyway. In order to remember the rules at all times, I'm instituting a new rule about "moments of reflection". At three preset times each day, we need to stop whatever we're doing for a few minutes and ask ourselves whether we're satisfied with what we're doing. Hopefully this will cut down significantly on out-of-character behaviors.

You didn't tell me about this.

I wanted to move quickly and the details weren't challenging. It would bore you and be a waste of your time to have to deal with this. And it would slow us down. We need to be speeding up. I've already set up an alarm on the computer, and we'll see how it goes. Anyway, what was it I was talking about? ... I see I mentioned the blog.

Did you?

One of the goals for the month was to make the blog a place we could all live in. But that didn't happen, even though the ingredients are all there. Ultimately we were all too lazy to make that a reality.

Some of us have more important things to be doing.

Okay, let's move into the review for the month, and we'll start with you. You had two days, with an average score of 2.5/10.

That is a lie! A ridiculous lie. I had a perfectly good day, and because the programmer has a stick up his butt I got a zero.

You didn't write anything down.

So what?

So you got a zero.

The programmer should never have been put in charge. He doesn't understand us.

Hello, musician. I understand what you're saying, and I do think the 5 you got for your only day was unduly harsh.

I was following the rules.

So we'll change the rules. That's what these meetings are here for. But let's save that for later. Programmer, you had two days with an average score of 3.5. The explorer had two days with an average score of 4. The gamer had two days with an average score of 6, the addict had one day worth 7, the worker had two days of 6 each, and I had three days with an average of 4, which included both the only day above 8/10 and one of many zeros for the month. Overall the average score is 4.25/10, the lowest of any month since the beginning of the performance reviews. Hence my introduction: June was a disaster.

This reflects on the programmer more than on me.

It reflects on all of us, as a group. If you mess up your day, you're hurting every single one of us because we won't think you're there to be counted on when we need you. On page 4 I'm going to propose a plan for July to scale back in the short-term, but for right now we are going to look at what went wrong, and how to prevent it in the future. Programmer, I'm going to need you to pay close attention to what everyone says here, so that you can come up with the rules we need.

You're giving him more control over us?

We are a group. The programmer won't do anything that goes against our natures, I promise you.

Overview
New rules
Grievances
Plans

Person, you say you were fine and the programmer scored you wrong. But a close examination of your days shows that you've been misplayed. On your first day, you sat by yourself and practiced your "bored" pose, and then you wondered why it was you hadn't formed a connection with anyone. If you're going to be antisocial, what's the point of having you? The rest of us are antisocial, we don't need you to step in to be antisocial for us.

I'm not antisocial.

Debatable. Regardless, for your character it's unacceptable. What the hell were you doing playing Lode Runner while your grandparents were downstairs?!

In your second day, you ignored all of us by not holding yourself accountable to our standards. And then you act indignant when you're scored accordingly?

It wasn't important to write anything down. I was doing things with people.

And that's your strength, or at least, it's supposed to be. You need to show us that you're good at dealing with people, or else we'll let you take control less and less. Tell me, do you want interactions with other people to be handled by me, or by the addict?

Okay, I see your point.

If you want to get anywhere at all, you need to be a lot less self-absorbed.

I have a suggestion.

Excellent. Let's hear it.

Well, first of all I think we need to write the interactive post I planned. But we can also add a line into the person's rules saying he always needs to put real and fictional people ahead of himself.

I don't know how effective that'll be, given that that's supposed to be obvious anyway.

Obviously it's not so obvious, or he'd be acting like that. I can't give you anything more specific, because the scoring rules already reward proper socializing. I don't know why this line is needed, but we can add it in anyway.

Do you have any objections, person?

No.

Good.

..It's Asimov's laws of robotics. You expect me to follow the laws of robotics.

Sure.

Is this a joke?

A more methodical approach to life won't hurt you. You've been coasting, and that's no use to anyone. This is better.

How am I supposed to function as a member of society when I'm following rules like a robot?

By introducing new rules whenever they're needed. Try these out for a few months, and we'll see how it goes.

It's demeaning.

Let me make your position perfectly clear. On June 22nd I went to see Carousel, with all the people from Ruddigore starring in it. And while I was there I was able to recall the actor character I'd built up there, with whom conversation with absolutely everyone was easy and enjoyable without losing a fundamental honesty even in the face of social etiquette. This is the character you are competing with. He has made friends. You have not.

I have plenty of friends.

Not since The Rules. That's what I'm looking at.

Can we please move on? We are ridiculously late. Again.

From now on, the addict should always have the last day of the month to manage the self-meeting. It should be unscored and should not take into account the once-in-three-days limitation on pulling out the addict.

Okay. Write it up.

I don't know, you want to leave it unscored?

If it's scored for the previous month, it changes the numbers so we can't discuss them at the meeting. If it's scored for the following month, it means that every single month is going to be starting the same way, and I know you're not the only one here who'd have a problem with tha. So no score. Thankfully the addict is entirely trustworthy. Even if he's not scoring, if he's writing it down and staying in character we don't need to worry about him.

I'm not sure about this, but we need to move on so I'll let it stand for now.
Programmer. Let's continue with you, because you've got the opposite problem to the person. You need to be more self-centered.

Why?

Because dealing with us is not your forté. I appreciate that you stepped in when I left, and under the circumstances I think you did a fine job. But that's not who you are. In your days, you were so worried about what everyone else might want that you entirely ignored your own self-fulfillment. Put frankly, the "challenges" you've given yourself this month were not challenges. They were busywork of the sort you should have left for the worker, and storytelling of the sort you should have left to me. If you are specifically requested to get something done, and it seems like they actually need you for it, by all means help out. But otherwise you're better off working on your own projects. Do you understand?

Yes.

Good. I don't think we need to add a rule for you.

I'm going to make an edit anyway.

Gamer. Gamer? I guess he's not coming. Well, his rules are fine but he didn't follow them. They explicitly say no reading, which he was guilty of in both cases. These are very common-sense rules, but he doesn't understand them because he's not nearly as rushed as he should be. I don't know what else I can say about that except that if he doesn't stick to the script he'll find himself being called upon less and less.

This page is entitled "New rules". If you're not going to put in new rules, don't waste our time. I would like to remind you that it is July 3rd already. What the heck?

I had D&D.

What a shocker.

I was playing.

Worker, your point is taken. These comments should have been on the first page, so I'll just hurry up and then get on to my last proposed rule. The worker needs to take mid-day naps when he's tired, the explorer needs to be more lively and enthusiastic, and the musican should stand up for his deserved time more. If we still see a problem we may need to write rules to encourage these attitudes, but for now I trust you all to make the necessary changes to your lifestyles.

How do I differentiate between a day where I'll be able to keep going without rest, and a day where I need a nap?

Good question. Programmer?

You don't know when you're tired?!

If your usual sleep schedule was disrupted, you can automatically assume you're going to need a nap and plan accordingly. Otherwise, you can rely on the thinker's moments of reflection: if you see that you've been drifting off of the plan, don't even bother to write up a revision. Just go to sleep, wake up an hour later and figure out what you're doing then. You are not expected to keep going if you're falling asleep.

I would actually emphasize that you're not just not expected to keep going, you're actively discouraged from continuing if you're tired.

That doesn't make sense. If he's being paid for his work, he shouldn't take a nap in the middle. Consistency in rules is important.

Fine, maybe you can take a nap unless there's money involved.

I'd rather say that naps are always okay at home, but out of the house you need to keep yourself awake.

If you're tired, sleep! This isn't rocket science!

Worker, are you going to be okay?

Yes.

Good. The last rule I'd like to propose is that the thinker, gamer and explorer are all off-limits when there's any sense of urgency in the month.

I don't like this rule.

It applies to me as well as you. I just see that we don't thrive under pressure.

What if I have a deadline for Angles & Circles? I can only get the addict to work for me once every three days!

The worker can do the work.

It's not a good idea to keep rushing all the time. You need a break now and then.

So we can give you the day!

Music can be pretty intense.

No moreso than the gamer.

But more than me.

Sorry, you're outvoted. It's a bad rule.

Can you reword it, then?

I have no idea what you're trying to accomplish with it, so I can't accept that challenge.

Fine. I just thought I'd put it out there.

Overview
New rules
Grievances
Plans

I'll give the post over to the rest of you now. Any problems during the month, other than what we've gone over?

Yeah, the programmer had no right to ignore our personalities when scoring.

What, you should be given a free pass whenever you want it?

He's just doing his job. I don't see what this argument is about.

Enough of this! Your personalities are tied to the rules. If you're not happy with the rules, now's the time to suggest changes. If you don't want to change them, you'll follow the rules as they stand.

I see absolutely no reason why I should need to exercise.

You're sitting down all day, playing piano. You need to exercise or the next personality gets an atrophied body to work with. Any other stupid questions?

You'll deal with the rules, all of you.

Our life is getting stale. Where's the excitement and spontaneity?

Excitement and spontaneity don't get you anywhere.

But they do inspire and reinvigorate.

If you want to do things that are different, no one's stopping you.

No, it's a good point, and I think we should make a rule about it. The whole point of this game is to avoid falling into repressive patterns of behavior. If we're falling into a routine, the whole system is pointless. Explorer, do you have any ideas?

Me?

Sure, you're the one who raised the issue.

I don't know. But I'm thinking that the general behavior section of The Rules is going to get awfully crowded soon.

We can hide the ones which aren't active. They're not huge edits, anyway.

Okay, do that. No, but wait. If you click on the links before this, they'll reappear. So what good is that doing? Better we should put all the rules for one section at once.

But we've already put all of them.

Fine, for now let's just put the rule without a link. I'll have to figure out how to clean it up later. Maybe I can use the sidebar. I don't know if there's enough room there under the SVGs.

But we haven't decided anything yet!

How about this: every week, something unexpected... no, that's too hard to define.

I've got an idea. This is the explorer's idea. So every time the explorer gets a day, he schedules strange days for the rest of us.

I could do that.

Excellent, it's settled.

Anything else?

Yes. How much longer is this break in the game going to be, exactly?

Let's wait and see if anyone else has anything to say.

I think everyone needs to be a lot better. I'm getting embarrassed by the lack of things to talk about.

Yes, well, we're not going to be writing any rules about that. That's broader strategy.

Whatever it is, just do it. Be better.

Yes. We can all take that advice. Thank you.

Okay! If there's nothing else, we'll move on.

Overview
New rules
Grievances
Plans

We've spent months building up these characters, getting comfortable with the rules, etc. But we've gotten complacent, and even though we're each of us very far from where we're supposed to be we use the fact that it'll be someone else tomorrow to not stick to the script and not care. So let's forget everything we've learned, and start back from square one. We'll cut back on the number of characters this month, and no one goes anywhere until they show that they can repeat their performance consistently. For this month, we're going to cancel the rule that you can't keep going if you get under 6/10. If you absolutely can't proceed without one of the other characters' input, ask for them and you'll get one day off. But then it's back to you, and you'll have to get it right. Does everyone understand what we're going to be doing?

Yes.

I don't like the idea of everyone being on their own. I can handle that, but sometimes other personalities need me. And you're saying that I can't go to help them unless they specifically ask for me.

That is what I'm saying.

Honestly, that scares me.

Good. That shows that you need this. Learn to exist on your own, without expecting anyone else to take over. Once it feels like you could keep being yourself forever, that's when the next personality steps in.

Neat.

We're going to start with the addict and the worker.

The addict doesn't need the strengthening, does he?

No, but I'd like him to spend a day playing Zelda. We haven't been active enough in the community playthrough, and there's an opportunity there that's lessening each day we wait. As soon as he finishes with Zelda, you get your chance to show us what you can do. And then you'll keep going until we see that you're stable.

That sounds like fun.

Then I'll join, because I'm behind on the blogging. So far my only successes have been in telling the rest of you what to do.

I'd object if it weren't true.

I'm looking forward to using my new ruleset to figure out who I am and what I can do when I'm on my own. After me, the explorer.

Yay!

I'm hoping you'll work on Angles & Circles, but of course you're free to do whatever you want. About the scheduling rule: you don't need to follow it this month.

But I want to.

Well, yes, but we can't keep up with all your requests because you might have a lot of days.

Don't worry about that. I'll get it right quickly.

We'll see how it goes. After the explorer, if there's still time in the month we'll do the gamer and then the programmer and finally the musican.

There's no way we can do all this in one month.

This will likely continue into August and even September. We need for every single character to have a chance to shine.

What about me? You didn't mention me.

You can't really be scheduled, since you rely on other people. If an opportunity should arise, you'll have the day. By the way, everyone - if days need to be put in which don't fit the plan, it's recommended that you use the addict or the worker.

So that's why the worker is going first.

Yes. But also, there are some work days coming up. That could be the addict, but I think it's healthier if it's the worker.

We'll see how much we can get done this month, and then we'll continue where we left off the next month. So the next self-meeting will be shorter than usual.

Thank God.

Or it could be the same length, if something's going horribly wrong. But I think we'll be fine.

Past this prolonged exercise, the focus of the group will be 80% on the musicians' more marketable projects, Angles and Circles and Gamer Mom. Beyond those three things we'll just be worrying about maintaining sanity and energy.

And chaos!

That's what I meant by "energy".

There's going to be a new D&D game starting while the other one is on break, and we'll probably be meeting more often.

We'll figure out how to deal with that when we come to it.

And what about Dungeon Master?

Good question. We can have some addict and worker days this month, and I'll work on it myself. I guess we can add that in to the category of things we'll be focusing on. I think four main subjects of focus is plenty.

Will that keep everyone involved? The musician, the explorer with Angles and Circles, I have Gamer Mom, the thinker with... hm, what will you be doing?

This doesn't have to work like that. We're not always going to be involved equally in a month. Sometimes one personality is needed more, and sometimes he's needed less. For instance, the person won't have much to do while we're heavily working on the creative things, but once we're done or farther into it, there may be a lot more socializing as a result of the work or of the resulting self-confidence. Everyone will have their day, and the exercise now is to make sure that when that happens we know exactly how to deal with it, almost like an instinct.

I'd like more games.

Now you show up? Last page would have been the time for comments like that. We're ending the meeting now.

Darn.

I think we're done here. See you all next month.

two comments, the last one being from myself

Kyler said:: What software are you working with for your piano piece?

It is a really nice piece. It feels a lot like your other pieces but with more nuance and depth.
Mory said:: I use QTractor. Hopefully I'll be able to get more "nuance and depth" into all my recordings, now that I'm one step closer to knowing how to use it properly. The piano soundfont is something I downloaded off BitTorrent; I don't remember what it is exactly.

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2011, June 17th, 4:28 and 30 seconds

My latest piano composition

My earlier post showed how this piece developed. I finished it earlier this week, and by "finished" I don't mean that every note is in place, but just that I can start playing it and get to an ending. This is usually where I stop the composition process.

You'll note that this sounds a lot better than all my earlier MIDI recordings (not that there isn't a long way to go still). I've learned that I was going about the recording process backwards. I was connecting the MIDI data to the synthesizer program to make it sound like whatever instrument, then feeding that into the recording program. At the end of the day I'd an audio file that I couldn't do much with. The proper way to do this (which I used here) is to connect the MIDI data to the recording program to save the performance itself rather than the audio. Then the recording program's output is connected to the synthesizer program, to make it sound how I want. What this means in practice is that after recording, I can edit the performance on a note-by-note level without messing up the sound of it. I can change the lengths of notes, take out notes that weren't meant to be there, change the dynamics... that last part is the biggest deal for me, since I can never get the dynamics right with my keyboard. What I did here was play it consistently loud the whole way through, then go back through note-by-note and add the right dynamics. It took a long time, and I could spend a whole week on this recording just tweaking the volumes and lengths of each note. The rhythm is still crap. I haven't figured out how to use the metronome yet (Not sure if I could keep up if I did, though.), and in any case the tempo is supposed to keep changing here so I don't know how much use it'd be. I should be able to change the timing after the fact -the trouble is, I don't know how to move the pedal presses along with the notes. So when I tried shifting the notes to compensate for my bad rhythm, the pedal was being pressed in all the wrong places. So I've left the rhythm how it was (blecch).

About the composition itself, I'm of two minds. After all my experimentations and that little music-box improvisation, a lot of ideas were on the table and I don't feel like I've left any there. I think that was probably a mistake. The word that was floating through my head as I compiled the thing was "definitive". I wanted to make this the only version of the two themes that I'd ever need, and I wanted for all my fond memories of playing with the theme to fit in directly instead of just being forgotten or alluded to. I did accomplish that, and by the end of it I have said everything I want to say on the subject. But I only managed this by radically switching styles in the middle World of Goo-style. That game at least had the structural sense to integrate the two halves together in the end, but the jazzy style I'm switching to is totally abandoned in the end. It's one piece which is wrapped up, then I jump into a second piece which sounds completely different, and then I awkwardly transition back into the first. That's the structure of my first composition ever. How is it that after eleven years, I'm still using the same ridiculous format?

I may need to rewrite the ending some day.

This is where I'll put any posts related to the Marvel Comics crossover "Fear Itself".

Click a link on the left to read a post.

A second look at Avengers #15, which is essential more for Spider-Woman than for Fear Itself

This post contains spoilers for Avengers #13-15, Secret Invasion, and some older Bendis stories.

I recently had an interesting argument with Colin Smith of the blog "Too Busy Thinking About My Comics". I carried it on too long, to the point where he threatened to ban me if I didn't retract and delete what I'd said (I honestly had no idea that the term "mud-slinging" was offensive to some people.), but it started with a legitimate clash of ideas. Smith's philosophy holds that each and every issue of a comic should strive to be the best entertainment it can be. In commenting on his posts, I've crystallized my position that much of modern pop culture relies on faith in delayed resolution, and that the entertainment landscape is better for it. This line of argument began during his scathing review of The Mighty Thor #1 by Fear Itself's Matt Fraction, where he condemned the issue (fairly) for failing to provide any entertainment, while I argued that the story's continuation might justify the long set-up. (Since then, it has.)

The argument this time around was centered around The Avengers #12.1, which spends a considerable amount of time showing Jessica Drew (Spider-Woman) tied up while naked. In isolation, I understand how someone could take issue with that. It certainly seems like a sexist statement, if you don't know that in New Avengers Annual #3 a few years back Bendis had a whole issue where Clint Barton (Hawkeye) was tied up and naked, until his female colleagues in the Avengers came and rescued him. Having read more Bendis comics than Smith, I know that stripping, tying up and torturing enemies is just the sort of thing that Bendis villains do, regardless of their victims' gender. That certainly is disturbing, and I confess I'd never noticed before how often he wrote that sort of thing, but I don't see how the label of "sexism" can be applied to perversion that doesn't take gender into account at all. The bigger problem with Avengers #12.1 when read as a standalone story is that it had no resolution. Jessica Drew is tied up, the Avengers come to rescue her, a plot is set into motion, and... that's the issue. It's not a particularly good read, if you don't read any more after it. But if you choose to stick around, the very next issue is Avengers #13 which puts a spotlight on Spider-Woman's frame of mind, and in Avengers #15 there's some emotional pay-off.

One issue of a Bendis comic, taken on its own, is nearly meaningless. There will be fun dialogue, some cleverly gimmicky storytelling, and really good art (since Marvel gives him their best pencillers). But you don't start to really appreciate what he's doing until you take a step back and look at the big picture. This is a writer who has complete job safety for as long as the comic book market still exists (which is to say, another year or two), and who has patience to match. He's been writing some of these characters for seven years, and every line of dialogue he gives them is shaped by those earlier stories.

I didn't give Avengers #12.1 any thought when it came out four months ago. The "point one" issues are meant to get new readers up to speed. It did that, and not in the most engaging of ways. So I didn't even intend to include it in my collection, let alone refer to it in blog posts. But when Colin Smith put a spotlight on the way Spider-Woman was humiliated there, I had to take a step back and ask what Bendis's bigger picture was. And just like when I reached the last issues of Dark Avengers and suddenly understood the genius of Bendis's long-running Sentry story, it was only when I took that step back that I noticed just how consistently miserable Spider-Woman has been for the entire time Bendis has been writing her. It's a story which I've never paid much attention to until now. And when I noticed that, suddenly I thought back to my post about Avengers #15 and realized I'd missed the point of it.

I've never read Jessica Drew's old stories. The first I saw of her is when she joined Bendis's Avengers team. He wrote her as a spy who'd gotten in over her head and needed the help of her friends in the Avengers to cope with being a triple-agent. But then it turned out (in Secret Invasion, also by Bendis) that that wasn't really Spider-Woman, but an alien shape-shifter queen that was fooling everyone. The truth came out, the whole world saw "Spider-Woman" leading an invasion force, the Skrull queen was shot, and then the real Spider-Woman was found. She didn't know anything that had happened since the beginning of Bendis's Avengers run, but suddenly she was back in the world and everyone thought of a supervillain when they looked at her. (I don't understand why she didn't change her look. If I were her right then, I'd definitely change costumes and possibly hair color.) Wolverine invited her to join the Avengers, for real this time, and the initial reaction of her new teammates when they saw her was irrational anger. That sort of reaction messed with Drew's head. Here's her internal monologue two issues later in New Avengers (vol. 1) #50:

"I don't know how this turned into this, but it's my fault. And everyone hates me. One day as an Avenger and I fail completely. Why am I even here? These people hate me. They look at me and they see Skrull and loser and Skrull loser ... I hate that this is the sum of all the parts of my life. Well, if this is how I gotta go, I'm taking as many of them with me as I can!"

Ouch, that's bad narration. So over-written. Now I remember why it was that I edited that page out of my copy of the issue, and why I didn't collect Bendis's seven-issue Spider-Woman: Agent of S.W.O.R.D. Skrull-hunting angst-fest. That series was more of the same, only more so. And every single time she's on panel since she got back three years ago, there's some variation on "I'm really not good enough, I don't understand why you keep treating me like your friend.". She's been angry and reckless, running off on a bunch of suicide missions that the Avengers need to bail her out from.

I like that after Siege, Bendis put her not on the Secret Avengers team where her spy skills would come in handy, or even the gritty street-level New Avengers team, but on the main Avengers team alongside Captain America, Thor and Iron Man. They've got a god, a billionaire, a historic soldier, a Hulk, an alien who builds time machines between panels... These are the guys who save the world from threats of preposterous scale. So far in this volume of the series they've prevented their entire timeline from collapsing and stopped someone from gaining absolute control over all the abstract forces of the universe. And Spider-Woman's one contribution to the story was choosing to go on a dangerous mission on her own, getting kidnapped and stripped naked and tied up and needing to be rescued by the others. Over and over she's been saying that she's not cut out to be an Avenger. And Ms. Marvel, who's always strong and noble and an all-around role model in this comic, keeps trying to reassure her that they're all equals and friends. But Spider-Woman doesn't actually fit into this group at all.

In personality, Bendis has been writing Jessica Drew like Adam Warren's parody character Empowered, whose specialties are getting tied up and losing her powers. Bendis should probably be aiming for more subtlety than that. I expect Spider-Woman will have an Empowered-ish long-term arc of slowly gaining self-esteem, but first there's this romance with Hawkeye. And that is an interesting pairing.

Clint Barton died in Bendis' first Avengers story, Avengers Disassembled. It was a silly death. To be honest, I don't like Avengers Disassembled at all. It's all shock value, without a story attached to it. The five-issue arc was titled "Chaos", and it is that. In my collection I edited the whole five-issue arc down to a 56-page prologue for House of M, because chaos isn't entertaining on its own but it can make for a good opening to an action movie. I'm really proud of having come up with an edit that makes the material readable (which it wasn't), by cutting it down to the bare minimum of random chaos, and letting the focus of it be the character of Wanda Maximoff. (I think that was the first time I'd done such a significant edit.) Anyway, the idea there was that Wanda Maximoff went crazy and started reshaping reality in ways that killed her friends. Hawkeye was one of the casualties, and the token attempt to make it seem like a heroic sacrifice wasn't successful. It just felt arbitrary and cruel.

In House of M, Wanda brought Hawkeye back to life, for no more reason than she had for killing him, and his story continued in New Avengers #26. That issue was Bendis and Alex Maleev, same as Spider-Woman: Agent of S.W.O.R.D., but the tone was different. Jessica's return to the Marvel universe was overloaded with self-hating narration. Clint's return was... quiet. Much of the issue was silent, and when people talked they didn't say much. Hawkeye was too lost and confused to have any coherent narration. He gave up the brightly-colored costume, searched for Wanda (for "closure", as he put it), found her having no memories or powers, had very confused sex with her, and left. That was the entire issue. So basically, Clint had gone through such random nonsense that he couldn't make heads or tails of his life anymore. In a superhero universe there must be some clinical term for the psychological condition where you're emotionally unstable on account of living in a freaking superhero universe. That's what Hawkeye's been going through, and he's "dealt" with it by sleeping with everything that moves, fighting a lot and being the first to volunteer for each opportunity to torture bad guys for information. At least, that's my interpretation of his motivations, from how Bendis has been writing him. But maybe he's just overcompensating for not having any superpowers.

For whatever reason, he is angry and impatient - just like Spider-Woman. I'm expecting this relationship to be really messy. It got off to a good start in Avengers #13, where Spider-Woman used her pheremone powers on Hawkeye because she couldn't imagine that anyone could like her without being manipulated into it. These characters are seriously messed up. Both of them were raised by super-villains, and I think Bendis is trying to bring out that latent craziness that other writers might try to downplay.

The first page of The Avengers #15 (yes, I'm actually going to talk about this issue) is priceless. Spider-Woman mopes about how worthless she thinks she is for nine panels, and then the angst is deflated with two panels of Hawkeye's comments:

"I don't know what it is about her... she's so angry all the time, but it's so damn cute. Don't tell her I said that, it'll just make her angry.

Also adorable was the moment where Hawkeye, upon being saved by Ms. Marvel, playfully says "I love you.", and Jessica looks like she's trying to escape off the side of the page. That Bachalo is a clever one.

I've edited a few pages out of my copy of this issue. First off, there's a page of interviewing where everyone chats about The Protector, which is so out of place it's bizarre. Noh-Varr is not a major part of this story, and no one has anything interesting to say about him on that page. I notice the issue is 23 pages long, one more than the usual. What I suspect is, that page there was a last minute addition when it occurred to the editor that any new readers joining for the Fear Itself crossover would have no idea who this guy in a ridiculous costume who saves Spider-Woman is. The other part I've taken out is the establishing shot of the Hulk's rampage. It's a lovely image, but underneath it is tedious exposition reiterating the Fear Itself status quo for the benefit of newcomers. The issue doesn't need or benefit from that when in the context of a comprehensive Fear Itself collection. But now that I'm looking back at that page, I'm thinking, it is a very exciting picture. I'll have to play around with the pages to see if there's some non-awkward way to cut out the talking heads but keep the establishing shot. Otherwise, there's another establishing shot right after it so it's not needed.

The talking heads didn't work for me in those two cases, and it does bother me how neatly all this documentary footage fits together, but there is a fun idea behind it that comes across in this issue. During Civil War, Secret Invasion and Siege, Bendis's Avengers tie-ins were fairly disconnected from the action of the crossovers. The rest of the crossover might have been a spectacle, but Bendis carved out a little quiet corner where he could push his characters forward without interfering with the plot. Here he's trying to make his little story more connected to the whole. His characters are right at the front lines of the battle - what's that like for them? The trouble with characterization during a battle is that it tends to get drowned out by the noise. There's all this intense emotion the characters are going through, moment by moment, but after so many punches and explosions we're not exactly in the right frame of mind to appreciate it. That's what the documentary style is for. We jump away from the battle for just long enough to understand what was going on in the battle. If you just see Spider-Woman save a bunch of kids, it's another beat in the battle with no significance to the plot. But if you stop and reflect, you see that maybe that's kind of a big deal for her. Finally, she's not totally useless in a fight. In her long-term arc, that's an important moment.

I don't think the documentary style has completely worked so far except for Avengers #13. I have that as the first chapter of Fear Itself because I like the thoughtful tone it sets for the rest of the crossover. Issue 13 worked because there was only a hint of the plot. But the plot itself, once we get into it, isn't at all engaging. It's a bunch of monsters on a rampage. Wow, that's creative. #14 tried to make it seem epic by taking the battle seriously, and Romita knocked that out of the park. But it was totally undermined by some attempted character-building which fell flat. (I wish I had access to the unlettered art, so that I could include that fight without any dialogue at all.) #15 has the opposite problem, where the character stuff is fun but the battle feels so generic that you could swap the Hulk with any other enemy in any context and it wouldn't change the issue much. (I have a similar gripe with the New Avengers issues.) #16 was awful, existing only because Bendis felt like it should exist (showing Steve Rogers' emotional state) but without any good idea of what he should be writing in it. Coren and I wrote a script like that recently; we threw it out and started over from a different direction and now it's pretty cool. That's what Bendis needed to do there, but he has way too many commitments per month to be willing to do that.

2011, August 31st

2011, June 2nd, 20:32 and 59 seconds

Self-meeting for May 2011

Okay, let's call this meeting to order. The first order of business

Hey, who elected you?

Well, I can't wait around for the rest of you to get your act together. We're just wasting time.

Cool it. We're not gonna get anywhere with an attitude like that.

This is silly. Let's get started already.

You're not in charge here.

Actually, the question of who runs the meeting is of vital importance. The whole nature of the discussion will be dictated by the faux-social hierarchies we decide here, and this will apply in the future

Does anyone object to the person running the meeting?

Why the person?

Because he'll be unbiased. I doubt he cares one way or the other about anything that happened this month.

The person would be interesting.

You're wrong about the person's interest. The people most creative will give the person more topics to socialize about with other people.

That'll be good for me.

Actually, that could make for a fitting perspective, given the intentions for this past month.

Great. Any objections? No?

I want to make it clear, though, that this agreement only extends to this particular meeting. We will need to speak about more permanent faux-social hierarchies soon.

Fine. Whatever. I'd just like to start this as soon as humanly possible, because it's 1:43 AM on June 2nd and ideally this should already have been written by the end of May 31st. I don't want to drag this on any longer.

Incidentally, no one's officially been in control since the beginning of the month. This is a problem.

I'm not certain what we can do about that.

Honestly, this is utter chaos! Is the person here?

I'm here. Hi.

Would you mind starting this meeting already? It's obvious no one's going to let me do it, and I can't take one more minute of this time-wasting.

Sure. Is everyone here?

I'm here.

The programmer.

I think our names ought to be capitalized. That should be the first thing on the agenda.

The thinker's here, and I heard the musician and the gamer earlier. What about the explorer?

What?

Okay. The addict?

Has anyone seen the addict?

He's sleeping.

That's no good. This meeting can't start until we have all eight of us. If even one of us isn't present, this isn't a fair system.

For God's sake.

Let's just start. If the addict needs to say something, he should be here.

And what if we have something to say to him? What if we're not happy with his performance?

We're going to start. Please be quiet for a moment.

Excuse me, but we aren't displaying properly here. This should only take a minute to learn to fix.

Fantastic.

We'll wait.

Okay, it's displaying now. But it's not exactly pretty. I may need the explorer's help later to get it set up right.

Yay!

Okay. Thank you. Worker, you can stop glaring now. In fact, stop trying to rush us along. We have absolutely nothing planned until Friday, when Dena will be home and I'm hoping to watch The Voice with her. It's 2:14 now, and it looks like we'd be best off continuing this meeting into tomorrow. The alternative is to keep pushing on until it's way too late, and we'll all be too tired to have a decent conversation. Would you prefer that?

I wonder which of us could stay in character most effectively while tired. That would be useful information.

We should start with a summary of the month's goals.

Okay. Let's see... I'll just copy and paste what I said.

Each day, I'm going to pick a different character. At the end of the month, when I look back at who I've been overall, I want to see a cohesive character who is defined first and foremost by his creativity. The nature of that creativity should be very diverse. I want to get the impression of a person so multifaceted and strange that one never knows what he will do next. This is not my natural state -I am a person prone to easy and repetitive patterns of behavior.- so the performance will likely require the careful and respectful collaboration of all eight of my personalities.

The post should be a fixed width, to give a sense of us all shoved in here together. And there shouldn't be the usual margins.

This isn't the time. You can fix it up tomorrow, before we publish.

Okay. And I haven't made up my mind yet whether there should be spaces between us. I need to play around with it a bit to find out.

It seems to me that there are four components to the plan.

I'm going to make the blockquote bigger.

It seems to me that there are four components to the plan.

The eight of us should in retrospect, together form one cohesive character.
This unified character should have no attributes more prominent than "creativity", which is a complicated word. This may actually be two separate points depending on how we choose to define the term.
The output of that "creativity", whatever that means exactly, needs to be diverse.
Finally, a suggestion that the first three are probably only possible through respect between characters.

Those are the key points we'll need to review.

I don't like how the blockquote just sort of sits there. It definitely needs to be a different color, something that stands out but doesn't look too out of place here. Do you think it could be a shade of pink?

You fascinate me. Tell me, what is it about this post that so engages you while bigger projects like Angles & Circles don't seem so urgent? Is it just the quantity of work?

I don't know. I do love Angles & Circles. So what do you think, could pink work? I'll need to test it out.

Not now you won't.

Thanks for stepping in, I might have had to kill him otherwise.

I'll bet.

What is that supposed to mean?!

Would you please all stop attacking each other?

We can start from the fourth point -respect between characters- by noting that there's not much of it.

Wrong. We are all sitting here, putting our plans on hold for a few hours, all for the sake of a dream of something halfway between multiple personalities and a single definitive self. We're engaging each other's ideas. Accepting each other's existence. This is respect. Now, working like a well-oiled machine, that's what you actually want but that comes with time. It starts with respect, and we've got that in spades.

No, I don't see it. The exact phrase was "respectful collaboration", and the context was the two pieces of music in "The Rules".

I know that.

I'm sure you do. The idea is that we shouldn't just be thinking about ourselves, we should care about each other. I think about everyone, as does the programmer and the worker.

Excuse me. How does you taking forty hours (plus sleeping) on conversations about comics, after you specifically and personally said that that time would be assigned to me, the musician and someone else... how does that count as "thinking of everyone"? That is thinking of you. You stole that time from us.

You're right. I shouldn't have taken so long, especially right after I had the addict doing what I wanted. But what I said was a suggestion. I understood that things could change, and we'd already gone off script from the day that was supposed to be the explorer's.

Yeah, what was that about? I didn't get enough days this month!

It was urgent that I get in there before any more bad days happened. The worker seemed totally lost, so I wrote the "sd" script to give quick guidelines and point people in the right direction.

There, you see? Respect.

You lost a day yourself!

Does it sting that I only got one day this whole month? Yeah, it stings. But I knew that when I had a day, I got a day. I was able to just run with what I was doing and no one said to me "My turn now, get off the stage.". So you want a few extra days? What do I know, maybe you need it. And if I have some prolonged musical inspiration, you guys can wait a while until I'm done. Respect.

I have two things to say. First off, I didn't properly get even a single day this month, because the day that was supposed to be mine kept getting interrupted by you idiots. So respect? Not so obvious that it's here.

Ouch.

Secondly, it's 3:38 AM and I am falling on my face. Tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

It is 3:23 PM on June 2nd and still we haven't finished this post and gotten back to life. This is absolutely unacceptable.

I agree. The trouble is, the next month hasn't really started yet and the last month is over already. So if someone's running a day by the Rules, where does the score go?

Does it matter? There needs to be a day in progress.

Tell me, what were you doing earlier today?

There is no "today" because we're not keeping time!

You were reading comics, that's what you were doing! I saw you! How you can be entertained by such passive activities, I have no idea.

Well, what am I supposed to be doing? There's no schedule, no plan, no discipline... Where is the person, anyway?

Just a second.

Sorry, what were you asking?

What were you doing just now?

E-mails. There's a big battle going on, with a giant worm about to devour a nearby building.

Dungeons and Dragons.

It's better than comics!

Shut up.

Ah good, we're here. So yesterday we were discussing the concept of respect between characters, and what that entails.

What do you guys think of how the post looks?

Pretty darn good.

Yeah. I left out the borders, so that the person would just sort of be part of the background.

Speaking of which, can I take back my vote for the person to run the meeting? He's driving it into the ground.

I volunteer to take over.

Just a second, someone wrote another e-mail.

I don't believe this!

Hee hee. She said I'm cool.

Yeah, the person can't be in charge. Terrible idea. Neither can the thinker,

What?

because he's just going to keep talking forever without taking any of us into account. We can't have a meeting where no one is willing to listen to anyone else.

I'm listening.

No, you're not. You deal with flesh-and-blood people, that's all you know. Fictional characters are just imitation-people, as far as you're concerned. The first thing we need is a schedule for the meeting. That's the worker's department. We need to give him points to include. I'd like to specifically focus on creating rules to maintain momentum throughout the month. Anyone else?

First off, I'd like to get back to the May 2011 plan, and assess whether or not we've achieved anything. Secondly, and maybe this should even be first, I set more specific goals for everyone at the start of the month and no one seems to have really followed them. We've also drifted off the general structure of the month, in which the worker and addict were supposed to be a lot more prominent. The addict ended up only being used for the blog

Keep your talking points for when we're all thinking about them. Does anyone else have anything to suggest?

Yeah. Each one of us needs to quickly say what they've done this month, one after the other. I don't know what that's gonna sound like, but that's the point of all of this.

We need to get out of this house. Immediately.

Why?

Yesterday I wanted to play around with accents, and I needed to be careful not to be too loud because someone might hear me.

I'd like to sing.

I can't dance, I can't talk out loud, I can't play music while I'm doing other things...

Sure you can.

A building dictates how it's used. And I have been in this one building for too many years now.

Just now, this lady was saying that I'm cool for doing lots of different things, and I was thinking: "Me? I live in my parents' house, I don't have a job, I spend more time talking to myself

Selves.

I spend more time talking to myself

You mean selves.

It's not a good situation. How is it that Dena's already moved out, and I'm still here?

Whoa, whoa. Ageist!

I don't see how we can get out.

We just need to do it. There's too much thinking around here.

Okay, well, we can talk about this when we're planning for next month. Are there any other points to raise?

Why didn't I get a day?

Because we didn't need you.

And what about what I need?

You have Shabbat. Every single Shabbat, a seventh of our entire life.

Okay, I don't think we can squeeze anything else into this meeting. If there's anything else, it'll have to be next month. Now, worker, I know you want to get out of here. That makes sense. So let's plan out the rest of the post, and make it as few sections as possible while working in everything everyone wants.

Okay. I'd like to be out of here by 7:00, so how much time does that leave for each section...?

In the interest of expediency, I'll do it myself. First we'll each summarize the month. Then we discuss what we've said, and why some characters get more days than others. That's the first section. Then in the second section we'll figure out how that fits in with the general and specific plans we had for May. The third section is about what we can do in the future to fix the problems. And the fourth section plans June, leading straight into the next performance reviews. Does anyone have any problem with this plan?

There should be a menu, with links to each of the sections.

That's a very good idea. It should only take a couple of minutes.

No! No. Let's just get started.

Are you sure? I'd really like to do this.

We've wasted enough time. It can be a linear post, no one cares.

I notice the gamer hasn't said much.

Nothing much to say.

Here's how this works. You say what you've done, and then you give up the mike. I want a real stream of back-and-forth, back-and-forth, rapid-fire cutting. Okay, I'll go first.

Well?

Hey, don't underestimate the value of silence for setting a mood!

This is so cool.

I improvised a bunch of Zelda variations.

I drew in the top of Angles & Circles!

I only got one day, for playing D&D and going out with the family, and the worker watched TV because he thought I wasn't "busy" enough or something. Who gives him the right?

Sh, keep it moving, keep it moving.

I did what everyone else wanted.

All right.

I wrote a chapter and a half of a book, and played a lot of Fluidity, which is

Keep it movin'.

I programmed sd, then I improved sd, then I did the whole new PR system.

Yeah. That was good work.

No commentary yet!

Well, I don't think I can properly review everything that happened this month under these restrictions.

No! You've got this, keep going.

What is the point of this exercise?

There's a beat. You gotta go with the beat, feel the beat... thinker - go.

I co-wrote a very short screenplay, and, um, I invented a good character for Dungeons & Dragons, and I wrote a review of Secret Avengers but the programmer seems to think it's not ready to go up yet.

It's not. But it'll be awesome. Trust me, I'm doing it justice.

It shouldn't be too difficult. It'll mostly be the same code as Living in Hyrule.

The addict. The addict should be here, where's the addict?

Sleeping.

Still?

So what was the point of this whole bit?

Be quiet for just a second. I'm rereading the session. I need to see how it sounds.

Yeah. Awesome. Look at this. You don't know what the next line is gonna be! Is it going to be a gamist, or an awesome musician, is it gonna follow the plan or take a weird left turn... if we're one person, we're one person who can do anything, and knows it, and loves it.

O-kay. Are you just going to go praising yourself here? Because it's kind of painful to watch, and you could have done that without putting us through that tedious silliness. Can we just review the scores and move on?

You're a buzzkill. And I love you anyway.

The average score for the month is 6.75/10, just barely too low to level up. I got five days, with an average of 5/10.

Wow. That's pretty bad.

Yeah. I'll do better.

You've said this before.

Well, this time I mean it.

You've meant it before.

What do you want from me?

Excuse me, but this really is very simple. You did badly because you were too vague. Plan with more specificity, and you'll be fine.

Specificity. I'll do my best. (Specificity.)

I got three days, with an average of 8.33/10.

Very respectable. I had four days, and my average score was 7.75/10.

I didn't get a day.

But that day you supposedly didn't get was a big zero. Passivity builds on itself, this is a problem you're going to have to deal with. It's no one's fault but your own if you can't keep control of a day. I got a 5 and a 9, for an average of exactly 7.

Average score: 7.5/10
(2 days)

And the addict got an average of 8/10, for following up on all our blog projects. That was much appreciated. In fact, I think we should all give as many of our days as we can to the addict. He's reliable, he doesn't get distracted, he's capable of anything.

Out of the question. He'll burn himself out. It also is the equivalent of wandering around in a fog, since the addict is only ever capable of thinking of one thing at a time.

How many simultaneous "things" do you think are needed for most activities?

No. It's out of the question to rely on the addict like that.

I had a problem I couldn't deal with.

What's that?

The bottom of Angles & Circles. I gave it to the worker, and he kept trying it over and over but it didn't go anywhere. And now I'm scared to go back to it.

I'll figure it out.

Really? That's not the sort of thing you usually think about.

I promise you, by the end of my next day, you'll have a way forward.

Thanks.

So that's why you weren't working on it. Interesting. In the future, you should definitely hand things like this over to me.

I'll keep that in mind.

By the way, I would like to point out the obvious and say that the programmer has won the month. 8.33? Kudos.

I just dealt with the problems in front of me.

That's a good attitude. I wish others here had acted like that, just doing what needed to be done instead of acting like children. The thinker made reasonable demands

Oh, are we on that already? New section.

You were talking about the thinker's plan.

Really? I had no idea.

It's just good form to repeat that at the beginning of a page.

I was supposed to keep all of your projects going. I did that, to the best of my ability, but it got a lot harder when your projects all mysteriously dried up. The explorer should have been working on A&C, the programmer should have been programming a rename function, the thinker should have written the second Dungeon Master script by now, and the musician should have worked on something a little bit more substantial than an improvisaton! Oh, and the addict was not meant for the blog. He was meant for everyone! This has just been a complete failure of a month.

I disagree.

What happened this month was a progression from a scattershot approach (which is what my plan was calling for) to a more unified "team" approach that revolved around the blog. Until very recently, there was no place on the blog for you, or for the gamer, or for the programmer, or even the explorer once you get down to it. It was one stream of thought: mine.

I had the performance reviews.

Yes, given a lesser status and maintaining the dualistic "1.0 vs. 2.0" conflict. The unified person, comfortable with all his many aspects, was not welcome in his abstract home until just now. Can you imagine this post right now being written in February? Unthinkable. It's a regression

It is a regression.

It's not a regression, I meant it would have seemed like one. The problem with the old blog wasn't that it sense of self was fractured, it's that those pieces kept arguing with each other and insisting that there's only one "right" way to think. Here we are, having a frank discussion about where we're going, and each of us has different ideas but we're willing to listen to each other. So yeah it's actually the second day of June already, and during May we didn't have the kind of understanding that would have the explorer pass his things to me, and the gamer helping others, and all of us willing to end our days and "pass the mike", as musician put it. (Those names really should be capitalized. Can we take a vote on it?) But we were going for a character who was creative but also cohesive, and that took a month just to put into position. It's the blog that's the glue. The blog needed to be set up just right, so that every single one of us will have a place here. That's what's going to make this version of life different.

Does anyone have anything to add to that?

It was well said.

I still want to know why I only got one day.

You only got one day because you weren't needed. The worker was carrying everyone's projects. So he got five days. I was trying to set a course for all of us, so I got four days. The programmer was helping with the blog. The gamer was contributing to the blog as well. You were giving us nothing. If you want us to stop treating you like you're wasting our time, stop ignoring us.

You're going to need me.

I'm sure that's true. So I hope for all our sakes that you learn to fit in somehow. We're people too. You need to accept that.

So, what, you want me to put aside what real people want from me because it clashes with what you want?

Yes. That is exactly what we want.

I don't care. You're right, we're going to need you to deal with the outside world.

Have we come to any sort of consensus about May?

No.

Let's move on. It bothers me that we haven't been exercising.

Well, that's fixed simply enough. A penalty for not exercising?

Does anyone object to a penalty for not exercising before the day?

Sometimes it's not an option.

That's rare, and I'm talking about a penalty of one point. Hardly a day-killer.

That would do it.

Excellent. I'm also going to apply this to general hygiene and not staying awake past 3:00 AM. Objections?

I can live with that.

I'm editing the Rules post to fit.

There should be a link between here and there, but I want this post to end already and it has been going for soooo long.

You too?

You know, this has taken a lot longer than I thought it would. We've spent enough hours on this; the rest will have to wait for next month. Also, I'm anxious to take the new PR system for a drive already.

No! We still haven't decided where we're going from here!

Fine. Any quick thoughts?

Quick?

You can say whatever you want, but say it in the plans for the month. We're going to end the meeting here.

Thank God.

Please, if you have comments for each other, pass them back and forth during the month. We can't wait for the meeting to do everything. Also, come to the next meeting prepared. We should schedule it for the last day of June, so we don't run into this time-wasting again. And we should all come prepared, so that we have a decent shot at actually getting through everything. And another thing I've decided during all this: attendance is not mandatory. If you've got nothing to add to the conversation, don't wast our time. Okay, let's publish the post now.

2011, May 26th, 00:21 and 29 seconds

start day

mory@Mory:~$ sd explorersd workersd gamersd musiciansd programmersd thinkersd addictsd person█ Be quick and playful. Whatever you write will set a direction to start in.

Look around you: you're trapped in a small box. Get out!
Keep some paper handy- you'll need it. No boredom allowed today.

mory@Mory:~$ █ Be extremely specific about the times. If you can't, don't even start. Prioritize wisely, as more energy goes to the earlier activities.

You're not perfect, and today you get better.
No time wasted, no distractions, no lingering.
Go!

mory@Mory:~$ █ Don't plan on anything too passive or practical.

The plan, in itself, is worthless.
Make this a day to remember.

mory@Mory:~$ █ Any thoughts?

Forget the past, present and future. You know exactly what to do.

mory@Mory:~$ █ What's the challenge today?

Analyze, plan, succeed.

mory@Mory:~$ █ Hey. How's it going?

Step outside of yourself for a moment. No, you're not there yet. Keep going.

mory@Mory:~$ █ I am obsessed with
Why?

Tomorrow, this won't matter so much. So don't hold back, and don't wait. Today, there is nothing in the world as important as

mory@Mory:~$ █

Have a nice day.

mory@Mory:~$ █

Who will I play?

Opening statement:

What should I need today?

Opening statement:

2011, May 16th, 15:36 and 29 seconds

MIDI experiments

I've had my MIDI keyboard for a while, but for the most part I've just used it as a way to record audio files that sound vaguely like they came from a piano. I downloaded a collection of other soundfonts, and have been playing around with the various "instruments". The first thing I recorded with them was an improvised duet on my recent work in progress, with the "string ensemble" and "music box" voices. Well, to be more accurate, I started by improvising randomly with the music box voice just to see what I could do with it, but I quickly realized that what I wanted to do with it was play that theme. I tried playing it the way I do on the piano, but I immediately understood that that wouldn't fit. The piano is a very versatile instrument (though I've fallen into a bit of a rut in how I tend to use it), in a way that the music box is not. For that matter, most of the voices I'd downloaded had a particular personality to them. That personality would dictate what I played on them. The music box had a very hollow sound which was charming and fit the theme well, but its simplicity would not suit any complicated harmonic progressions. At least, that's what I felt. So I picked a different key from the one I normally use (to break out of that thinking), and recorded a duet between that and the strings (to add texture).

I didn't want to upload this file, because I don't like it very much, but I've been talking about it so much that I'm going to have to now. I'm not going to embed it, and I'm warning you now that it's four minutes long and is the equivalent of an old man rambling on and on because he's forgotten what it was he wanted to say. But if you want to hear it, here it is. Anyway, what I learned from playing that is that it's not easy making music by yourself. If the other voice were being played by another person, I'd react to him and he'd react to me and together we'd get somewhere. But when I'm on my own, communication only goes one way. So for instance in this file I first recorded the beginning of the music box's melody, and then I came in with the strings afterward (while listening to the first track) and accompanied. I was going for "mysterious", but I think I ended up with just "messy". It keeps running into situations where one instrument thinks it's finished but the other one wants to keep going. Also, I wasn't using the sustain pedal because I wanted to get away from the piano kind of thinking. That was a mistake, and there's a lot of awkwardness here in the strings (as I try to hold down all the notes with a limited number of fingers) that was wholly unnecessary.

I liked the aesthetic of what I'd done, but not the structure (as haphazard as anything I've ever done). So I started playing something which I know like the back of my hand: my variation on "Zelda's Lullaby" from the Legend of Zelda games:

The idea was a good one. When I know exactly where I'm going, it's a lot easier for various instruments to join in. I first played the piano accompaniment, then the strings, then the flute with the melody, and finally a pan flute adding in little bits of emphasis just because I felt like it was missing something still. Here, for comparison, is the original version of the tune from A Link to the Past. You can see that I've taken it in a totally different direction. This is a variation which I've played countless times on the piano, just because playing it makes me happy. I'm really happy with how this arrangement turned out. Part of that was due to letting the piano do all the work holding the music together. I'd have a much harder time trying to come up with an arrangement for Zelda's Lullaby which didn't have the usual piano arpeggios.

I didn't intend to keep going with the Zelda themes, but the next voice I tried on was called "Tremolo Strings", and when I played an octave in the bass with that I immediately thought of how cool the Dark World theme from A Link to the Past would sound with it.

This isn't a theme I've played with much, so my comfort level was much lower. That's why the beginning is almost exactly the same as the original, unlike my usual Zelda variations which are different right from the start. The thing at the end feels like an afterthought. I should have ended the improvisation earlier. Also, I need to hold back a bit with how I use the strings in the future. Some things which would have sounded perfectly fine on a piano sound painfully shrill with synthesized strings.

And since I already had enough Zelda music to make a blog post, I threw together one more improvisation:

Here's the original. You can see that I've diverged from the original more than with the others, to the point that I could imagine some people not hearing the resemblance between this and what it's based on. That's because the original is limited by its context. It existed solely to give a quaintness to The Wind Waker's opening cutscene, and has never (as far as I can recall) been used since. My version, being much simpler in its style, could be expanded upon and reused in other games in many different contexts. (Usually when I play this tune, I imagine it being peaceful and quiet. With a harp, say.) The original tune didn't have a name as far as I know, but for some reason I think of it as being called "Legend". It needs drums here, but I couldn't find a good drum soundfont on short notice. The voice I'm using for the melody is "Blown Bottle", because I tried just about every single soundfont in the collection and that was the only one that had any "chemistry" with the electric guitar.

Overall, I think these are excellent first steps into music with different kinds of sound. At some point I should try using these soundfonts on something that's less of a known quantity.

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2011, May 4th, 21:20 and 44 seconds

Hey. I don't have that much to say, but I figure - I've got as much right to write on this blog as anyone. We're working on that new idea for format and everything, and I really need to have a presence here moving forward because otherwise I'll get drowned out by all the others with their big loud ideas. I've only had one post so far, and I was just writing that on behalf of the person. I just want a blog post for myself, and I'll finish it up quickly and get back to work. Don't worry- I made a spot in my schedule for this. I'm not slacking.

So what I'm going to talk about is just what life is like (Where else would I start blogging?), and for that I really need to back up to yesterday so you get some context of how this works. The gamer got yesterday, taking his sweet time playing through the Legend of Zelda series, when a letter from Hadas came saying there was data entry work today. Of course this changed the plans, because the gamer was supposed to keep going for a few more hours and then today was supposed to be the programmer, seeing if we can switch to Fedora from Kubuntu because Kubuntu is way too buggy. (I need to know what all the other personalities are doing, because I'm kind of working for all of them this month.) That involved getting Harel's help, and he was only free today. Thursday was supposed to be the explorer making the game Angles and Circles and Friday/Saturday night would be me continuing each of those three projects. I think the thinker came up with an elegant plan for the first week, taking into account a lot of variables of where I need to be next week, but then you get e-mails out of the blue and all that planning isn't worth much anymore.

Well, if I had data entry it meant I needed to leave the house at 8:45 AM to get a ride to work with Hadas, and that meant switching time zones again. (I normally go to sleep at 4:00 AM and wake up at 12:30 PM.) So I left games night early, and when I said I was leaving someone looked at me with thtis look of utter shock on his face and he said "Really?". I've never done that before - we're always the first one there (It's next door.) and the last one out, because it's not like playing a game that goes 'til after midnight is messing up any schedule of mine. The Rules allow any character to interrupt their performance for "An event involving other people which was scheduled in advance", so even if it's someone who has absolutely no reason to be there -like the musician- I can still go to games night. It's an important thing to go because many weeks that's my only contact with any other people in the middle of the week, and a depressed actor can't play any role well. Anyway, I responded to everyone's surprise at games night by saying "I have to get up early for work tomorrow.", because it was both true and would make people wonder if I was Mory's evil clone or something. Which isn't far off, come to think of it. Not that I'm evil. It's just a joke, don't take it too literally.

After games night, we couldn't go to sleep yet because the gamer gets scored for progress, not good intentions. He'd been going too slow, and then that letter came and a ten-point wasn't looking likely. But still - better five points than three. So instead of going to sleep immediately, there was an hour and 12 minutes of frantic writing to get as much done as possible without being a wreck today. I only got to bed around 1:00 AM or so, but unfortunately that's still early by my standards. I went to sleep, and woke up at 2:30 refreshed enough by that little nap to keep going. I just couldn't get back to sleep after that, and I think I only got four and half hours of sleep or so total. So when my alarm woke me up at 8:20 AM, I was falling on my face and I needed to keep saying to myself over and over: "I'm not good enough, but today is going to be perfect. I'm not good enough, but today is going to be perfect.". And I forced myself to get up, get dressed, eat a bagel with cream cheese, and get out ready to give the day my all.

Hadas was running a bit late, so I sat on the patio in the hot sun (remembering why I rarely leave the house) and noticed a bird cage out on the other neighbor's side of the patio which I'd never noticed before though it must have been there for a long time. A minute or two later we left.

When she turned on the car, Bohemian Rhapsody started playing and that started a whole conversation about entertainment that goes places versus entertainment that's accessible. That lasted all the way to Jerusalem. When we got out of the elevator Hadas remarked that she can't stand Seinfeld because it's "about nothing", and I said that "All sitcoms are about nothing!", and that's exactly when we walked into the office. It took some willpower to prevent myself from following my train of thought to the show Community, and how that's a sitcom that knows it's about nothing, even though it has the obligatory (and half-hearted) excuse for the characters to be together. I reminded myself that I'd seem a lot more professional if I didn't introduce a new topic of pop-culture conversation inside the office, and just followed the imaginary conversation about Community in my head for a minute until it went away.

The work was more monotonous than usual, since it was mostly the same two kinds of pages over and over. I probably could have done it a bit more speedily if I weren't so tired, but I was efficient enough. The office was really busy, so the only room for me to work was on the other side of Hadas's desk. I had a laptop with a USB keyboard (because a number pad is essential), and a big binder with all the pages that I was copying. It probably doesn't bring out my best side to be working in the same room as my boss (especially when that boss speaks English). It's harder to keep censoring my silly comments when there's no separation. So okay, I'm no good at pretending to be professional. But I do the work quickly, and I get paid, and Hadas keeps hiring me, so maybe I'm professional enough. No, I'm not professional enough. I'll have to work on that.

As I was working on those two forms, Hadas designed the database for the next thing I'd be doing. Unfortunately, that part involved text. You do not want to have to decipher text written by a doctor. Such. Terrible. Handwriting. And they couldn't spell, either. Sometimes Hadas told me to keep the typos ("bening" instead of "benign"), and sometimes she told me to ignore them ("protectioin"). In the end I signed every one of the pages I'd entered, passed them off to the girl who'd be verifying my work, marked down my time and left.

I took the bus home, drifting in and out of consciousness along the way. When I got home I marked down my time and collapsed in a chair. I desperately wanted to get to sleep, but the Rules say an opening statement has to be written within an hour of completing the first activity of the day. And the worker is particularly useless without his opening statement. ("my" opening statement? I never know which pronouns to use here.) So I had a drink, and started planning out the rest of the day. I added up the TV shows on my hard drive to estimate the time it'd take to watch them (taking into account factors like that I take more time to absorb some shows and that I watch some shows at 1.50x speed): I kept taking things out until I had it at a manageable (for today) 5:25. Most of that time is catching up on 30 Rock, which I'm far behind on. But I've also planned to watch two episodes of Amazing Race, because I've got these little side-videos for the season that my parents have started watching and I want to know whether it's worth watching (and whether to tell them about it) before they reach the part where it starts. Anyway. Bottom line, 5:25 of TV. I intended to continue the day until the middle of Thursday, to have enough time to reconcile my own needs (with the data entry and everything) with what I have to do for the others. When I was finished planning it out, I slept for 2 hours.

I woke up, wrote a message for the programmer ("please fix sd"), and got started on this. I'd better wrap this up now- I've only got one minute left allocated to this activity.

2011, May 3rd, 03:12 and 26 seconds

Performance reviews for May 2011

Each day, I'm going to pick a different character. At the end of the month, when I look back at who I've been overall, I want to see a cohesive character who is defined first and foremost by his creativity. The nature of that creativity should be very diverse. I want to get the impression of a person so multifaceted and strange that one never knows what he will do next. This is not my natural state -I am a person prone to easy and repetitive patterns of behavior.- so the performance will likely require the careful and respectful collaboration of all eight of my personalities.

Back

2011, April 19th, 20:15 and 7 seconds

A work in progress

Over the years I've found countless musical themes I liked. Most of them are very simple and straightforward melodies, because for all my insistence that music ought to go somewhere and sound interesting and surprise the listener, I grew up hearing nothing but popular music and that shaped my sensibilities. A lot of composers nowadays are content to create an atmosphere or aesthetic without focusing on a clear melody, but it doesn't take much to create an atmosphere. Here, I'll show you what I mean:

I threw this together in just a few minutes, with the barest hint of an idea. It's pretty enough, and I don't feel like any note there needs to be changed, but there's nothing there that you'd want to remember and nothing worth caring about too much. It's a disposable kind of music. If there were a catchy melody to latch on to, you'd be more invested in where it goes. When I'm trying to make a "composition" rather than a fleeting improvisation, there is then pressure to not lose the listener's interest at any point. The music needs to keep moving and developing. At every moment I need to be doing something new and interesting. And in the end there needs to be a satisfying resolution. These are not simple demands.

Typically when I come up with a theme I play it over and over and over again on the piano, and I'm happy to hear the melody each time I get back to it but I also know I should be doing more with it. I know that any one of my themes could be the subject of a fantastic composition, if only I approached it from the right angle. But usually I don't find that angle. Of the hundreds of themes I've tried to work with, maybe twenty have gotten all the way to having endings I'm satisfied with. At least half never got past the initial improvisation stage. And many have already been forgotten.

The composition I'm working on now is not in any way atypical. The theme came from an improvisation, it's going through a convoluted process of continual inspiration, refinement and censorship, and it's not likely (statistically speaking) that this will be the rare tune that makes it through. In this post, I'm going to walk you through the process of my latest composition attempt, step by awkward step. Imagine hundreds of earlier stories no less messy, and you'll have a sense of all my experiences as a composer.

It started when I played this:

Two things immediately jumped out at me from this tiny little idea. Firstly, I was ashamed to have played something so blatantly derivative. The first four notes came from the main theme of the late TV series 24, and were also very similar to the title music of the game The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. And the chord progression in the second half reminded me of the song Dust in the Wind, which I'd heard very recently. The second thing I noticed was that it was pretty, and I wondered where it might go. So I made a very slight adjustment that would avoid comparisons to 24 and Zelda:

I then played it over and over, careful to avoid the original chord progressions, and each time I would try to launch from the theme into an improvisation, to figure out what came next. But nothing came to me, because I found that with the tiny changes I'd made I no longer found the music as pretty. It felt like a diluted version of the original idea, which of course it was. So though I played with this theme for a while, I couldn't go for more than twenty seconds into any improvisation before stopping, either because I was hitting some note that came from the things I wanted to imitate, or because I was already bored, or because I'd already wandered off to places that had nothing to do with the theme. I decided to abandon the theme.

A few days later on a whim I picked it up again and started with a 6/4 chord instead of the chord's root position. Which is to say, the lowest note was an F instead of a B-flat like it normally would be. What this does is it prevents you from feeling like you're starting somewhere stable, so already from the first note you feel like the music needs to be moving somewhere. It sounded cool, which didn't surprise me because I've had a lot of fun in the past with taking chords that ought to be in root position and making them 6/4 chords. It always sounds interesting, whether or not it works. Anyway, the theme now had a very different kind of energy than it had started with. It had been calm and soothing; now it was vaguly ominous and impatient. In the span of an hour or so, I got the arrangement to a place I was happy with and even managed to move forward a few more measures.

I wasn't sure whether I loved the continuation or hated it. For one thing, I quickly realized it came from a tune for "Cottleston Pie" from Winnie the Pooh that I heard once on The Muppet Show. (Specifically, from the words "ask me a riddle".) I also wasn't sure I should be switching keys so quickly. You'll note that immediately after the part I already had, I go from B-flat minor to E-flat minor, wich isn't strange at all except for being so early in the piece. I couldn't make up my mind whether it sounded beautiful or jarring. So I played around with it a lot, seeing if I could easily separate it from "Cottleston Pie" (I couldn't.), or whether it would sound better without switching keys (It didn't.). Ultimately I decided to keep it. I figure the song is obscure enough, and as Steven Sanders once said: "The degree of your originality is directly proportional to the obscurity of who you steal from.". And I also decided that anything that could add momentum and musical interestingness was a good idea. Plus, I couldn't think of anything else to do with the piece, so it was "Cottleston Pie" or nothing.

As the days went on I kept adding to the music, a few measures at a time. It was like I was leaving a riddle for myself each time, and the next time I sat down I'd come up with a brief answer and immediately another riddle. The riddle was "Now what?", and not much would satisfy. I kept inadvertently stepping into pieces of music I'd heard, or other pieces of music I'd composed myself. And even worse than plagiarism or redundancy would be straightforwardness -this composition had begun with little harmonic games, so I felt that if I delivered anything other than a relentless stream of harmonic games with ever-increasing whimsy, I wouldn't be doing justice to the theme! After a few weeks, I had a piece that had plenty of momentum, but didn't seem to be going anywhere in particular. I sent this file to Moshe and Aviella, as an excuse to get more comfortable with the MIDI keyboard I'd just bought:

You'll note that toward the end (at 1:21) I ran out of music and started improvising in order to give the audio file some (false) sense of resolution before sending it. The very first few notes I improvised were channeling a tune from the Phoenix Wright games, and I hurriedly changed what I was doing, after which I had no idea what I should be doing. Par for the course.

It became apparent that I couldn't just keep pushing myself into the unknown. For one thing, the piece was already starting to get tiring to listen to. There needed to be a break from all the racing forward, and each time I tried anything that would qualify I felt like the composition had become utterly pointless. So I tried a new direction. I noticed that what I'd come up with so far was similar melodically (though not stylistically) to a theme of mine from years ago:

That's all there ever was of it -that theme didn't make it far through the process. And not for lack of trying: I pulled this theme out at least once or twice a year, flipping it around, trying to approach it from different angles, and never getting anywhere. I've always really liked what I have of it, but it stubbornly refuses to budge past that point. So I decided to mix the two themes into one composition.

I've done this sort of thing in only two of my previous compositions. There was one time years ago that I came up with a theme which was fun, but didn't seem strong enough to sustain a whole piece, at the same time that I was halfway through a composition with a similar theme. I didn't notice how well they fit together for a while, but when I did I found a way to work the little theme into the bigger piece, without compromising any of what I already had. It actually works quite well, I think.

The other precedent (and the one closer to my mind) was the last piece I completed, from this past October. There was one theme I wrote down in my music notebook (just a few measures) maybe five years ago, and there was another that I came up with on the day we left for our trip to America in 2007. Neither had ever developed substantially past where they started. But the two themes had a similarity, and I built on that. I inserted the two themes into copious atmosphere (which gave them more direction), and I ended up with what I think is a very fun piece that more than does justice to both themes. Here, listen for yourself. The two themes are introduced at 0:26 and 1:07.

See? A perfect marriage between these formerly separate themes. At first they alternate and compete for attention, but the farther you go the more intertwined the two ideas are. Anyway, I wanted to do something like that here, both because I was stuck and because the older theme was at a dead end. So I started building from what I had toward the other theme, the same way I did in the last composition.

(This starts from the middle of the version of the piece I sent to Moshe and Aviella - around 42 seconds into that file.)

I could see that I was getting closer to being able to play the other theme as I always did, but the closer I got the less satisfied I was with the direction I was headed. I really like that old theme, and I'd love an opportunity to finally use the harmonies and rhythms I had there. But this new theme has its charms too, and I was losing them. One theme is bright and bouncy, the other is dark and mysterious. One is in B-major and stays there, the other starts in B-flat minor and keeps moving. One is in 4/4 time, the other is in 3/4. One is jazzy, the other is more classical. So yes, there are strong similarities between the two pieces which can be built upon. But this isn't an obvious match.

On a recent Shabbat I spoke to Coren, a fellow musician, about my composition problems. I told him that everything I was doing made perfect sense, and yet it sounded like the pieces didn't quite fit together. Not just the new part which worked in the other theme - the whole thing. I liked the first twelve measures. There's a question, an answer, and a continuation. It's pretty. Everything past that point made me uncomfortable. But I couldn't figure out why. Everything I was doing made sense: it all surprised the listener and built on the theme(s) properly and sounded interesting and I knew from experience that combining two themes could work. And as I said all of this, Coren repeatedly insisted that music isn't supposed to make sense. He asked me where I wanted the music to go, regardless of where I thought it should go. And I said that really I just wanted to play the beginning over and over again. That's always what I want to do with my themes, but it's not very interesting, is it. They deserve better.

I told him about "A Lonely Journey", which is still my favorite thing I've composed. I wrote a piece which started with a pretty theme, moved forward chaotically, got to a variation, returned to the original version of the theme, moved forward differently, got to a different variation, and repeated until I eventually completed it with a bombastic ending. And then I threw out the whole thing, analyzed it thoroughly to figure out which parts were indispensible and which parts were wasting the listener's time, added in a new variation, and wrote a whole new piece based on this theme using what I'd learned. I explained to Coren: "There was a point I was trying to make here. I forget what it was."

Anyway, talking to Coren made me realize that I didn't like what I had. So I scrapped everything past the first thirty notes and started over.

Taking Coren's advice, I included what I believe is the only repeat I've used since my third composition, a decade ago. I don't like repeats, as a rule. Music should be moving forward. If a listener has already gotten the gist of what you're playing, you're wasting his time by playing it again in exactly the same way. Maybe if there were some different kind of harmony or something, you could keep his interest like that. Anyway, I put in a simple repeat and I don't know whether I like it or not. I also don't know if I like anything that comes after the repeat. Somehow in this recording I improvised my way into playing the other theme note-for-note the way it was originally, and it doesn't feel entirely out of place. I wasn't expecting the transition to be that easy. But I don't know if I'm comfortable anymore with keeping that theme the way it was. This piece is its own thing, and I shouldn't shape the whole thing around that moment.

The problem is, if I don't include the second theme as it was, I'll never be able to use it anywhere. That's me declaring outright: "This theme may never be made into a complete composition.", because I like some of the bits of it that are in here and if I manage to complete this I won't want to repeat myself later. And it's not like the theme was moving anywhere anyway, but the reason I kept pulling it out year after year was that I hoped it could find a structure that suited it. This isn't really it. I mean, after I play the second theme in the time signature of the first theme (immediately before and after the repeat), I still need to basically stop everything and start again in order to begin the real transition, and then when I switch time signatures it's another break. That's a clumsy way of moving a piece forward, no? So I started messing around with other ways to combine the two very different pieces, and came up with this:

I don't know what that is exactly. I thought it might be a way to get from the ambiance I'm starting from to where I'm going, but it seems like more of a "child theme" for later in the piece. Which means that now I've got yet another thing to try to force the piece into. On the other hand, it sounds like a cross between the Titanic song and the end of the Felicity theme in the style of the music used in the trailer for Peter Pan! So maybe I'll throw it out, or just change it...

I have no idea where this is going. It may well be that these ideas aren't going to coalesce into anything I'm happy with, in which case this is just another theme to throw to the pile. But maybe the next time I go to the piano the pieces will fall into place. It's unlikely, but somehow I've completed other compositions and I can guarantee I didn't go any easier on them. We'll see.

2011, April 3rd, 17:15 precisely

Performance reviews for April 2011

The Rules are a really huge step, and I have no idea whether this kind of character-building can work in the real world. I need proof of the method's legitimacy. So I'm going to set myself goals which are mildly unrealistic for one person to do in one month. If I can really act like multiple people, I'll be able to handle it easily. And if I can't, I'll go back to the one-character approach. During the month of April, I expect:

An average score of at least 7/10
30 hours of work on Angles & Circles
Two more blog posts
Significant progress on at least one piece of music
To finish inputting all the scores from games nights
To finish the book Otherland and return it
To stay up to date with all the TV shows and comics I want to follow, including the ones which are starting this month
To finish playing at least one game, and
To rewatch a TV season and reread a comic book run.

These goals reflect the sort of meta-character I'd like to play on a regular basis. How I operate moving forward entirely depends on my performance this month.

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2011, April 1st, 3:47 and 34 seconds

The Rules

I am playing Mory Buckman, an experimental blogger in the early 21st century. The goal of the game is to get points.

The game is played in distinct rounds (I will refer to them as "days", not to be confused with the usual meaning.) of variable length. At specific events the game will pause, either after a day concludes or in the middle of a day, but the game will eventually resume (beginning a new day, if necessary). In each day, a set of behaviors and attitudes will be displayed which I will call a "character". With certain exceptions which will be defined in the "standard characters" section, this character should never be broken while a day is in progress. During a break in the game (while no character is needed), only these seven actions are permitted:

Scoring the past day
Sleeping
Using the bathroom
Planning
Celebrating a religious holiday
Exercising

Conversation

An event involving other people which was scheduled in advance

If anything else is done (including reading, eating, drinking, playing piano, singing, opening any program on the computer other than the one used for scoring, etc.), a day must be in progress. If the last day was merely paused it resumes, and if that day has already been scored (and is therefore no longer in progress) a new day begins.

Starting a day
A day has started when I've written down the starting time on a piece of paper. I then must get into character for the day. This is done with two actions, which will both be taken but in either order:

Writing an opening statement. This may be long or short, depending on the character and the day, but it should be something which only the character I am playing would say. It's a good idea, after writing the opening statement, to sit and think about it for a minute or two.
A character-appropriate first activity. This may or may not be an activity which the character is going to focus on throughout the day, but it should be something that gets my mind to wherever it needs to be.

Note: an opening statement can and should be written before the day begins, because this action is considered to be "planning" for the day, which is allowed during a break.

If a day has been in progress for twenty minutes and no first activity has been declared, then I will write a collective title for what I have been doing for the past twenty minutes and declare that as my first activity.

As soon as I take a break from whatever my first activity was declared to be, I will write down the time of conclusion. The activity may be returned to later, and if so that will be reflected in the time allocation table but not the "first activity" field. From the minute the first activity is concluded, I have one hour to write an opening statement if I have not done so already. If an hour has passed from the end of my first activity and no opening statement has yet been written, I am no longer entitled to write an opening statement and a blank space will be written in its place.

Activities
When I decide that I've started an activity, its start time is written on a piece of paper. If at any point it cannot validly be said that I am focusing on that activity, an end time must be written and the activity is no longer considered to be in progress. I can return to that activity later and write a new start time; the total time spent on each activity will be counted at the end of the day.

For the purposes of the time allocation table, every single minute of the day past the first activity is allocated to one and only one activity. However, not all activities will be judged by the character to be worth mentioning. If for whatever reason a minute was not accounted for, it counts toward the total for "mundane activities". (Note: if the first activity of the day is mundane, it will be singled out in the "first activity" field but not in the time allocation table.) If at the end of the day mundane activities exceed one quarter of the total time in the day, at least one point will be reduced from the day's score. Note: The first activity is not counted in the time allocation table, but only in its own field.

Ending or pausing a day
At any time and for any reason, a day may be paused or ended. This is signified by writing an end time for any activity in progress, and then writing an end time for the day. If the day is scored, the day is immediately ended and no further progress can be made on it. If the day is not scored, then the day is paused and it will be continued when a new start time is written. The minimum length of a day is three hours, and the maximum length is one week.

There is a procedure of steps that must be taken before scoring at the end of a day. First, I will fill out the time allocation table, subtracting the sum of used time from the time in the day to find "mundane activities". Then I will fill in the first activity field. I will write a closing statement reflecting the character's thoughts on the day. A seemingly chaotic day may be scored well if the closing statement successfully paints the time allocation table as a coherent story. Then a performance review is written to justify the final score.

If I am not already familiar with the character I was playing, the scoring is entirely subjective and is based mainly on two criteria:

Whether I like the character
Whether the character's actions during the day add something I like to the ongoing story of my life.

If it is a character I know, character-specific scoring rules will apply. If rules or principles have been broken, points are taken away after any applicable character-specific scoring rules. Conversely, if the activities of the day present a particularly believable representation of the character, one point will be added (with the maximum still not exceeding ten). The scoring should follow the harshest possible reading of the rules, but the review itself should gently emphasize the positive in the day.

Standard characters

Multiple personalities might not be the most obvious direction for the blog, given the setup so far.

There's the distinct possibility that all of this is just a colossal distraction, and will not get me closer to my ideal self. Rules are needed to prevent each character from going his own way.

The explorer

The explorer has been cooped up for too long in a little house. He longs to find new opportunities, real or virtual, and he doesn't care where they come from. A metalude, a tree branch, a book, the internet... as long as there are new things to see, the explorer will go there. Normally he's easily distracted, but he could sit and stare at a random object for an hour just because he likes the way it looks. The explorer is an overgrown child, and he insists on seeing the world as a place worthy of his interest. When that fails, he watches movies and doodles onto little pieces of paper.

Opening statement: Short and vague. Anything beginning with "I wonder..." will do, or "Remember when...". Any question or random thought offered is going to be followed up on somehow, because the explorer tends to fixate on small ideas.

Closing statement: Long and appreciative of whatever I've experienced. If I don't have anything to say, I've been living the whole day wrong. The statement will conclude with an idea for a day that someone else should follow. If the average score for the month is equal to or above 7/10, the statement may conclude with an idea for a day that someone else should follow.

Edited on July 3rd 2011

General rules:

If I notice something that piques my curiosity, I must immediately put down whatever else I'm doing and give the new curiosity 100% of my attention until my interest is no longer being held.

If whatever I'm doing has failed to excite me in any way during a 20-minute period, I immediately must either stop or look for a way to be engaged while doing it. Actually, twenty minutes is already a long time. If I'm not interested by something for ten minutes, I should already be thinking ahead to prevent possible boredom. I may not get bored, under any circumstances.

Piano playing counts as an activity. Whether it is composition or improvisation is irrelevant.

TV is off limits, except for episodes which I've already seen.

Scoring rules:

At the end of the day, I need to ask myself: "Is there a place that I know better now than yesterday?". If the answer is no, then my score may not exceed 5/10. If the answer is yes, then my score will be at least 3/10.

If I have spent more time watching movies than being creative (includes game creation, writing, piano, and even lengthy thinking), my score may not exceed 7/10.

My score (before external modifiers) will be determined (on the scale from the minimum allowed to the maximum allowed) by answering the question: "How much do I care about the places I've been to today?". I should justify my answer with things I said in the closing statement.

The worker

The worker needs to feel useful. He likes to organize, and set things up, and learn new skills and put them to use. He wants to know that his abilities are appreciated, but if they're not he'll still put them to use. Data entry is the height of entertainment as far as he's concerned, because he can continually challenge himself to be more efficient. Everything which doesn't serve a purpose or hone a marketable skill is a waste of time, but there are two wastes of time he'll indulge in. Comic books are enjoyable because they allow for organizing later, and TV shows are a great way to unwind from all the running around.

Opening statement: A full schedule for the day, down to the minute. The activities are ordered according to priority, with time-wasters coming last. The statement ends with the sentence: "I'm not good enough, but today will be perfect." If the average score for the month is equal to or above 7/10, the first half of that sentence will be left out.

Closing statement: A list of accomplishments from the day. Also, I need to specify and justify each and every deviation from the schedule.

General rules:

The schedule in the opening statement must be followed at all times. If a change in the schedule is necessitated, the rest of the day must immediately be replanned in its entirety.

The first activity of the day may not be passive. When adjusting the time allocated to passive entertainments in a previously-declared schedule, the starting time may be postponed (but not past the declared end time), and the ending time may be advanced (but not before the declared start time). However, no passive entertainments may be added to a previously-declared schedule for time which had not already been allocated for the purpose.

I need to be sociable and friendly with any person I come in contact with. If my schedule needs to be changed to accomodate someone else's timetable, the revised schedule must leave enough time to get everything done that I had planned (with the exception of time-wasters). When notifying other people that I need to get back to my schedule, I must be polite but forceful.

No gaming (except for Wii Fit, but that can be played before the day begins because it's exercise). Making games is acceptable, and it's best to be extremely specific in the schedule about which aspect will be worked on.

No web activity unless it serves a practical purpose.

Scoring rules:

If TV-watching is the longest activity, the day gets 0/10. If comics are the longest activity and little of that time was spent on organizing them, the day gets 0/10.

The schedule (or if there were changes, the last revision of the schedule) is scored on a scale from 5 to 10, for the following criteria:

How many things needed to be done? (3=good, 1=not enough)
Do any of the activities affect other people, or make me money?
Are these activities helpful for my future plans?

The day is then scored on a scale from 0 to whatever the plan received, based on how accurately the day reflected the schedule.

The gamer

The gamer is restless. He always wants to keep moving, to get as much out of the day as possible. World to world, activity to activity. The gamer prefers virtual experiences to real ones, because they're more easily controlled. He can decide what he wants to get out of an hour, and if he doesn't get it he can move on to something else. Whatever he does, he always has the nagging sense that he could be getting more out of his minute. This essential hunger leads him to be very critical of everything he experiences.

Opening statement: A brief list of intended activities. The more specific the goals, the better. They do not necessarily have to be games, and some of them may be in the same game. A strong plan will contain at least three different Forms. The list may not include any plans with clear practical value.

Closing statement: A critique of the day's most notable experiences.

General rules:

I am under no obligation to run through the list from the opening statement. If some other activity holds my interest, I can spend all day with it and not worry about the plan.

No reading, watching movies, watching TV, listening to music, or any such passive activities. Whatever I do, I'm going to be the driving force behind it. The only passive activity allowed is getting other people to play games.

Frustration is to be met with an increased determination. I may abandon an activity because I have something better to do, but I may not abandon an activity for being "too hard" or even for becoming tedious.

Thinking or writing about a particular game counts as time spent on that game, and is added to whatever time is spent playing it.

Scoring rules:

What is being scored is progress. I look at how my status has changed in each of the game worlds, and decide whether the sum of this progress is substantial. Whether I enjoyed it or not is irrelevant. For calculating progress, minigames are considered to be separate games in their own right (rather than insignificant parts of a larger game). I decide -on a scale from 0 to 10- how much progress has been made by myself as a player, by my avatars in their respective stories, or by the avatars of other people I've been watching, and this is my final score for the day.

The musician

Character list (click to close)

I Am Not...

2012, January 17th, 15:35 and 41 seconds

The Tenth Man

2012, January 21st, 18:40 and 19 seconds

2012, January 25th, 01:54 and 22 seconds

2012, January 26th, 02:50 and 1 second

2012, January 27th, 15:06 and 53 seconds

2012, January 5th, 15:40 and 07 seconds

Self-meeting for December 2011

2012, January 4th, 12:15 and 27 seconds

261211002.htm

Humankind, I can explain...

2011, December 6th, 13:37 and 39 seconds

Self-meeting for November 2011

2011, November 25th, 2:16 and 52 seconds

Dear Imaginary Friend...

2011, October 31st, 21:01 and 10 seconds

Self-meeting for October 2011

2011, October 24th, 01:46 and 22 seconds

Advanced Freecell

ihateabhorloathedespisederideknockcriticizeevaluategaugejudgeconsiderrespectadmireappreciatevaluecherishreverevenerateadorelovekyler club

2011, October 23rd, 13:20 and 4 seconds

A Matter of Control

2011, September 28th, 17:41 and 10 seconds

Self-meeting for September 2011

2011 September 11th, 04:12 and 27 seconds

Perpetual motion

2011, September 9th, 00:18 and 22 seconds

A Light Unto The Nations

2011, August 31st, 18:50 and 59 seconds

Self-meeting for August 2011

2011, August 8th, 02:46 and 7 seconds

This needs to be said.

2011, August 1st, 02:34 and 42 seconds

Self-meeting for July 2011

2011, July 31st, 21:36 and 55 seconds

Nintendo stretches itself too thin

2011, July 3rd, 18:20 and 47 seconds

Self-meeting for June 2011

2011, June 17th, 4:28 and 30 seconds

My latest piano composition

A second look at Avengers #15, which is essential more for Spider-Woman than for Fear Itself

2011, August 31st

2011, June 2nd, 20:32 and 59 seconds

Self-meeting for May 2011

2011, May 26th, 00:21 and 29 seconds

start day

2011, May 16th, 15:36 and 29 seconds

MIDI experiments

2011, May 4th, 21:20 and 44 seconds

2011, May 3rd, 03:12 and 26 seconds

Performance reviews for May 2011

2011, April 19th, 20:15 and 7 seconds

A work in progress

2011, April 3rd, 17:15 precisely

Performance reviews for April 2011

2011, April 1st, 3:47 and 34 seconds

The Rules

Standard characters

i
hate
abhor
loathe
despise
deride
knock
criticize
evaluate
gauge
judge
consider
respect
admire
appreciate
value
cherish
revere
venerate
adore
love
kyler club