Thinking.

Hi there.

Things have gotten quiet around the blog lately, but that's to be expected. Lots of things going on in my personal life, and plenty of other projects I've been working on, all on top of the regular hustle and bustle of the holiday season.

Also, it's quiet because it's just me.

If you've been reading this blog for less than four months, you might not realize that, for four years, this was a tag-team effort. It was virtually unheard-of for me to post more than two, maybe three days in a row before my partner Alex picked up with a rant about the state of the publishing industry, or an enthusiastic review of the latest comics, or a thoughtful reflection on his time playing baseball. Or a call for me to go back in time and kill Grizzly Adams. You could never tell.

When work got busy, we started working out some ways to ease the burden of sticking to a regular posting schedule--like his weekly Waiting for Wednesday column, I initiated a weekly Sunday Spotlight column to guarantee that, at the very least, he'd never need to crank anything out for Sunday. From there, we relaxed our posting schedule so that we didn't have to post every day. Then, without any real fanfare, Alex simply disappeared.

The official story is that, on top of his day job, he'd plunged himself into the world of self-publishing. Once his book was published, he'd be able to return to the blog. Well, the book is published now: it's called Sarah Faire and the House at the End of The World, and you should read it. As soon as it's possible for people who don't know Alex personally to read it. At the moment, the book's website is very pretty, and very devoid of content, including how one would go about ordering the book.

"I know; I know," I can hear him saying now. But I digress.

We both thought Exfanding would be back to a two-man blogging crew by now. Once I got used to the idea of solo blogging--which took a while, mind you--it became easier to keep this blog afloat. I stopped stalling until Alex returned, and began treating Exfanding as my blog, while still keeping with the style and traditions that we established for our posts. Things worked out fine...until December.

Gifts for Geeks. A specifically Christmas-themed Christmas post. That HTML snow widget we always have. All overlooked. All forgotten. And our chances of collaborating on some New Year's resolutions, or compiling a joint list of our favorite posts from this year (or last year, for crying out loud), are looking slimmer and slimmer as 2013 approaches. Just when I was hitting my stride, December descended to remind me that, no matter what I post on my own, this blog isn't this blog without both of us leaning on each other to uphold tradition.

What I'm about to say, I've been thinking about for four months. This shouldn't be a surprise, either, if you've been reading between the lines every time I've written a post like this one. I keep dancing around the inevitable conclusion because I'm not ready to let go.

But I think it might be time to let go.

I'm selling you to the zoo.

Wait; no. That's not it. I mean, I think it might be time to formally, and very conclusively, go on hiatus.

A real hiatus. Not the kind where I say we're going on hiatus, and then I come back in a few days and keep writing. The kind where there are no new posts. Ever. Again. Until both of us have a post or two scheduled.

I'm not making that decision on my own, though. If we do go on hiatus--or if we ride off into the sunset and you never hear from us again--it'll be a decision that we both make. There's been no horrible argument or sudden boredom that's to blame for placing this possibility on the table; Alex is simply busy, and I'm debating whether to keep making new episodes of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show when we haven't seen Bullwinkle since the summer.

To be fair, if Alex is Bullwinkle, that means I'm voiced by a girl.

Regardless of whether we take a vacation, carry on as we've been doing, surprise you with Alex's sudden and triumphant return, or close up shop altogether, this post is not the end of Exfanding Your Horizons. I'm merely putting an option on the table. If you've got any thoughts, loyal Exfanders, the floor is yours.

While we're on the subject...

I realize we're already halfway through December and I've only written three posts for the month. (Well, four, now that this one is here). What's been going on, you may wonder?

- I am excitedly gearing up for an all-day Mega Man marathon on Monday, December 17 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of my favorite video game franchise. Similar to my 2010 marathon, I'll be playing through Mega Man 1-10, though if I'm making good time I may toss in Mega Man & Bass for an added dose of why am I doing this I must be insane.

There is a possibility that I might be able to broadcast the event over a live video feed on Twitch.tv; if that happens, you'll be sure to hear about it here. Joining me will be two of my best friends, one of whom also happens to be my wife, so whether the livestream is successful or not, this promises to be a good time.

- On the subject of Mega Man, I've been thinking more about Street Fighter X Mega Man, and it occurs to me that there might be a classic Mega Man-style plot twist in which Dr. Wily, much to everyone's astonishment, is actually the bad guy...and these aren't really Street Fighter characters, but robots made to look like them. In which case I am totally on board with this game.

- On the subject of video games, I've been putting a lot of time into Mr. Robot, a Steam game that's a delightful mixture of The Adventures of Lolo, Portal, Metroid, Mega Man Battle Network, and Final Fantasy. Unconventional, but it works incredibly well—push some blocks around, defeat a psychotic computer, search for secret passageways, and hack into the robotic enemies you can't dodge, fighting a series of virtual battles in cyberspace to destroy them from the inside. The RPG elements are somewhat repetitive and clunky, but that's the only real complaint I have about this little gem.

I've also discovered "social gaming" while playing on Steam; that is to say, I actually...talk...to people while playing video games. Mr. Robot affords you plenty of chances to pause and ponder your next move, so it's been easy to pull up the text chat window when there's a lull in the action.

- On the subject of "social gaming," I started playing Scribblenauts a few days ago, let my wife borrow it on a car trip, and since then we've been trading off the DS and regaling each other with stories of our hilarious successes and failures in this cartoony world where we solve puzzles by summoning almost anything our imaginations can conceive, which mostly involves dropping school buses on everything.

Despite the game's outrageously unacceptable flaws (which this article by Nikola Suprak sums up rather entertainingly, albeit more harshly than I would), it's been a blast to let my creativity run wild and see what ridiculous things happen, for better or for worse, when I use a black hole to clean up the garbage littering a public park. Comparing notes with my wife, and having one of us occasionally watch over the other's shoulder, has been a great couple-building activity; I think there's something to be said about playing adventure and puzzle games as a team, too.

- On the subject of couple-building activities, that trip to IKEA was only the beginning of our joint venture to transform our home into a home, identifying and addressing ways that we can take better ownership of our living space. This includes purchasing more shelving to accommodate our combined geek stuff, and unpacking the boxes that have been cluttering the guest bedroom's floor for over a year. I'm almost embarrassed about how excited we were to go pick out a new vacuum cleaner yesterday.

- On the subject of putting things on a shelf, I've been mulling over what might happen if I were to start phasing myself off the Internet in 2013...or, perhaps better stated, if I were to take ownership of my presence on the Internet the way my wife and I have started taking ownership of our living space.

I have this habit of being gung-ho about contributing something to the digital realm—be it a review, a video, or even a Facebook status update—and then discovering halfway through that it's taking far longer than it should to complete. And I am surprised by this every time. Every time. I need to learn to pick and choose my projects, and commit to a certain time frame for completion. "Sure, that sounds like fun" and "Whenever it's ready" are the two phrases that have continually sabotaged my ability to complete as many side projects as I'd like when I actually have the time to complete them.

I'm also starting to weigh the pros and cons of keeping my Facebook account active—my expanding Internet presence has made me aware of privacy issues in ways I'd never needed to think about before, and Facebook is probably selling my credit card info to some wombat trainer in Uzbekistan as we speak.

It seems to me that I've reached the same point as I was at the end of high school and the end of college—so overwhelmed by the things I've signed myself up for and have let myself get roped into that I need a break. A total purge. Give myself a chance to breathe again, and reexamine what I truly want to be doing with my free time. Which, more than likely, is everything I'm already doing. If you can step away from something, shake it up, tear it apart, and still want to come back to it, then you know it's worth coming back to.

For now, it's business as usual. In the next few weeks I'll be aiming to finish off as many outstanding GameCola projects and YouTube videos as I can. Depending on how that goes, "purge everything" might not need to be one of my New Year's resolutions after all.

Sunday Spotlight: IKEA

My wife and I paid our second visit to IKEA yesterday, the fabled Swedish furniture store. Perhaps you've seen it from the highway.

 Assuming your highway is in Singapore, where this photo from Wikipedia was apparently taken.

The problem with our first visit to IKEA a few months ago was that we really didn't know what we were in for. I thought we could walk in, pick out a shelf, and do some window shopping along the way. I was not expecting to go apartment hunting. We walked through a labyrinth of living rooms, dining rooms, bathrooms, each furnished with a consistent theme that prompted us to start categorizing these mock living spaces as, "wish we could have that," "wish we had a friend who had that," and, "meh." By the time we reached the end of the showroom floor, I was worn out.

Then there was an entire floor of rugs, lampshades, and picture frames that we hadn't counted on.

Followed by the gigantic warehouse where we actually picked up the box containing the assemble-it-yourself shelf that we had picked out a few hours before.

Followed by a checkout line comparable to the queue for a Star Wars premiere.

Followed by a small food court and a mini-mart with assemble-it-yourself Swedish food.

Followed by the trip across the bustling parking lot back to the car, and the realization that the do-it-your-shelf may or may not fit into the back of the car.

I suppose the huge food court at the entrance should have been a clue that you don't simply "go shopping" at IKEA. You're there for an afternoon, whether you're buying a potholder or a twelve-piece dinette set.

This time, we came prepared. We started our adventure by sitting down to a glorious meal of Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes, veggie wraps, and Mountain Dew. (The food was quite good.) We had a list, and we stuck to it: lollygagging was kept to a minimum by moving through the store with purpose, rather than the wonderment and promise of 50¢ hot dogs that characterized our first visit. We abandoned our previous mindset of, "find what's cheap, and then see if we like it," replacing it with, "find what we like, and then consider if it fits into the budget." Overall, our second experience was much more in line with what Jonathan Coulton sang about.

Now we're well on our way to making a home, as opposed to living in a place created by the haphazard mingling of trappings from our previous lives apart. Of course, that means I need to vacuum the carpet before we move everything into place. But that's a small price to pay for having somewhere that we can truly call ours.

Pulling the Pin

Why is everyone so angry?

Facebook: Still screaming about politics and social issues.

The News: Still screaming about politics and social issues.

That one review of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn I read at GameFAQs: Ranting about how worthlessly terrible the game is, because it's just like Golden Sun 1 and 2, which the author loved, except not as challenging and not as creative. Sounds familiar. The author gave the Gameplay and Replayability categories each a score of 1/10, which does not indicate "too easy and creatively disappointing"; that indicates the designers didn't finish the game and left it physically unplayable.

...Alright, so if that qualifies as "everyone," then my world is especially tiny. But I was on the Internet for all of five minutes, and most of that time was spent wading through a sea of vitriol. Which brings me back to my original question: Why is everyone so angry? Or, perhaps the better question is why everyone is so unable to express their anger in a marginally rational, halfway constructive manner?

We get angry sometimes. We shout and punch things, or clench our fists and grit our teeth. We complain about it incessantly to our friends, or take it out on people who don't deserve it. Maybe we blow our cool and say and do things we can never take back. But if we have any grip on our own humanity, we'll recognize when there's a real person on the receiving end of our anger—someone who can talk or smack some sense into us, or storm out and drive the message home that being that angry is not OK.

As soon as we sit down in front of a computer, we lose all sense of filter. We forget who's reading what we write—or we care even less than usual. I know from personal experience that is feels good sometimes to get my anger and frustration out on paper. Yet while my anger will eventually pass, the words I write are as good as set in stone once they're on the Internet.

My emotions and opinions may change, and the unpopular things I say can be debated and forgiven when I anger someone face-to-face, but anything I write will speak for itself every time anybody sees it—be it moments or years from now. Unless I feel like I can make my anger and frustration into something meaningful that other people will find amusing or thought-provoking or useful in understanding me as a person, I don't express it in a public forum online. I don't want to ruin your day unless I'm sure something good will come out of it.

I can't say the same of myself when I'm expressing anger or frustration in person. I don't think any of us can. That's why the a written medium is so great for being angry: we can take the time to sort out precisely why we're angry. We can make a case for being angry; we can win people over to our cause and righteously smite the offenders with our smoldering, justified anger. We can, but often we don't. Anger is a grenade, and too often we pull the pin before thinking about where to throw it. How many times have we blown ourselves up? How many times have we taken our friends with us?

Look, Internet. Be angry. It's healthy. Just watch where you're tossing those grenades. Anybody who's played a first-person shooter knows that a little friendly fire is bound to happen every now and again...but when you stop aiming at targets and start letting the grenades fall where they will, you're no better than the bad guys.

And, like a first-person shooter, the "bad guys" are just regular people who've sat down to play a game, and happen to be on the opposing side. Get angry at the issues; get angry at the game.

Love the people you're playing with.

Dream Routine

I feel like I just woke up from a dream. Not the kind of dream where I'm running down a hallway and encounter a giant fish head in the wall—I stopped having that one years ago—more along the lines of a dream so realistic that you have to pause and wonder whether it all really happened.

Over the last year I've fallen into a simple routine: weekdays are spent working at the office; weeknights are spent on light housework and geeky pursuits; weekends are consumed by road trips, entertaining guests, or catching up on heavy housework and more time-consuming geeky pursuits (and, on rare occasions, sleep). I am a creature of habit, so I like my routine. It's comfortable. It's safe.

Hurricane Sandy disposed of my routine two weeks ago. A friend's wedding, my anniversary celebration, a recording collaboration with my wife for a friend's D&D campaign, the Presidential election, and another recording session for The GameCola D&Dcast have kept me from settling back into a routine ever since. And I, the creature of habit, have been...

Thinking.

I tend to resist change the most when I'm already happy with what I've got. This upheaval should have me up in arms, grumping about how there's no time to write or play videogames or do any of the things I want or need to do. Yet, I've been doing all the things I want or need to do. Even when I've had to put things off these past two weeks, the anticipation of completing them has kept me motivated to tackle them at the first chance I get.

That includes cleaning the bathroom and sweeping the carpet. Clearly, breaking me out of my routine is harmful to my mental health.

What this suggests to me is that I really haven't been happy with my routine. Not that I've been unhappy—each day has its ups and downs, but the overall trend has been that things are positive. It's that, in addition to being a creature of habit, I'm something of a control freak. This routine I've been following has been shaped by a series of factors beyond my control, and even the factors within my control feel like there's only ever once decision I can make.

As power is restored and traffic flow returns to normal and my evenings and weekends open up again—and as courtesy and topic diversity in people's conversations return to pre-election levels—I see an opportunity to settle back into the old routine.

I'm not so sure I want to take it.

It has been most refreshing to have a break from my routine. I feel more like myself than I've felt for a long time. I feel...awake. And I'm not ready to fall back into the bed that is my old routine.

This time, when I inevitably settle into a pattern, I plan for it to be one of my choosing.

Taking a Look Around

It's gotten quiet around here again. The number of monthly posts has been dwindling, and it's clear that I've just been phoning it in for most of the last two months. From the look of it, Exfanding is dead; I've merely been playing Weekend at Bernie's with the blog.

Hm. Apparently, I've already referenced Weekend at Bernie's three times before on this blog, but in completely different contexts. Guess it belongs up there with toasters.

I look at posts like this one and this one, and despite their optimism, I keep hearing myself sound like the guy on the Titanic who's telling everyone it's just a scratch and the ship probably won't sink. I think back to our one-year anniversary celebration, and this particular question:


How long do you plan to continue with this blog?

Alex: That’s kinda like asking Frodo and Sam when they’ll stop their silly journey and go back to the Shire with all the dancing. Really. It’s just like that.

I wanna keep it going for as long as it’s fun for us to write (and read), and for as long as we have something to say.

Nathaniel: Ah, but in the case of Frodo and Sam, there’s a clear endpoint; I’m not sure that’s the case with this blog. Besides, if the alternative is dancing, then I have no intentions of ever stopping!


Honestly, I can't remember the last post that was fun to write. Cathartic, maybe; comfortable, sure. And fun to read? I do go back and re-read some of my posts from time to time, and my wife worries about me when I laugh out loud at things I wrote a few years ago. But most of the time when I look at my newest material, I think, "Huh. That post is still at the top of the page." Guest posts have been refreshing, but looking at my own work just reminds me that it's time to write something else. And when I do sit down to write, either the inkwell is dry, or I just don't have the energy to prognosticate the future of the Mega Man series based on Mega Man Xover or introduce this new anime series that I kinda liked. By all accounts, it's time to close up shop, admit we had a good run, and not Simpsons our way through another 15 seasons for no other reason than that we don't have to stop.

Good plan. But you're forgetting two things, Me: This is just as much Alex's blog as it is yours—he might not have the time to be writing right now, but at last check, he was still reading.

And you hate dancing.

There are days like today when I want to write, not just for the sake of writing but for this blog. There's a real Presidential election right around the corner, which means it's time to roll out the candidates for Fake President once again. I've got a beginner's episode guide to Star Trek: The Next Generation that I've been toiling over for months, off and on. There's a comprehensive guide in the works to becoming a better Mega Man player, and the only reason it hasn't been posted yet is because I need to take some screenshots. And I'll be darned if we get to 2013 without posting our Year in Review of 2011 first. I've been keeping our blogging boat afloat by patching it up every few days while it's adrift at sea, rather than bringing it ashore to plot a real course and hammer out good new material for it. And it's time to change that.

Exfanding Your Horizons is going on hiatus. Might be for a month; might just be until tomorrow. But when we come back, we'll have something worth reading. It might be silly, it might be philosophical, it might just be a YouTube video I forgot I wanted to share with you. But it will not be fluff. It'll be something we wanted to write, enjoyed writing, and will enjoy re-reading. Until such time as we're both able to keep up with this blog on a daily basis again, we'll be taking as long as we need to write another post. And once we've written another post, we'll be taking our time on the next one.

It's right there in the blog's charter: "We're both geeks. But we're both different kinds of geeks. We've joined forces to introduce, explain, discuss, and demystify various hobbies and fandoms to promote an understanding between geeks and to spark an interest in the things that interest us." Nowhere does it say we have to do this on a regular basis. Nowhere does it say the blog is over if we go too long without visible new content.

Maybe I'm not the guy on the Titanic who's saying the boat probably won't sink. Maybe I've mistaken which boat I'm on in the first place.

See you soon, Exfanders. And whether "soon" means tomorrow, or sometime next month, this is a promise I intend to keep.

Our blog rules.

Return to October Country

Here we are again. It's October. Halloween season. Election season.

Tough to say which is scarier, really.

For me, October is where I rely on other people to tell me the leaves are beautifully changing colors, because I'm color-blind. October is where I break out the comfy jacket to go along with the long sleeves I've been wearing for as much of the summer as I could tolerate. October is where I start thinking about plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and in doing so, realize I've once again forgotten my mother's birthday.

For this blog, October is always a time of anticipation and storytelling. There are conventions. There was even a Renaissance Faire, that one time. But more than anything else, October is home. Not for me, but for my absent blogging buddy, Alex. A few years back, he wrote about this time of year—"The October Country," as Ray Bradbury called it—and ever since, I haven't been able to think about it any other way.

Even though this country is the next one over from the one I call home.

Personally, I'm holding out for the turkey and mistletoe. I've always preferred hockey over football, sleigh rides over hayrides, and Classic Holiday Movie over The One Where Stupid Kids Get Killed Stupidly Because They're Stupid IV: This Time, With More Knives. Yet the earnest enthusiasm that Alex, my wife, and others have for this season starts to rub off after a while, and I find myself starting to appreciate aspects of this month that I previously thought little about or avoided altogether. I think, especially right now, October is good for my health.

I could use a change of season. Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, I could use a change of season. Fresh faces, fresh side projects, fresh air—fresh baked goods would do nicely, too, but I won't beg. This creature of habit is longing for a break from his routine, which means I need a change of season.

Even if it's nothing more than an excuse to finally watch Bubba Ho-tep this year, I'm looking forward to this trip through October Country.

Wake Up, It's Time For Bed

As I write this, it's 2:18 AM. At this point in college, if I didn't have an early morning class to wake up for, I'd be heading to bed about now; this would be the kind of night where I'd be playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic until not even another Zebra Cake could help keep me awake. At this point on summer break--any summer break, in high school or in college--I might be coming home about now from an especially long night of bowling and movies with my friends.

At this point, where I am right now, I should have been asleep three hours ago. However, I'm still on college time after all these years--realistically, it's only a little over an hour past my bedtime, given that I do have something to wake up early for. Amazingly, I function quite well on this schedule, even without being a coffee drinker.

I think about how active I was throughout school: choir, theater, anime club, video game club, and all that D&D, for starters. Now I'm supposedly a grown-up; the only real commitments I have are the practical ones that keep food on the table and clean laundry in the hamper. I've still got a social calendar and an extracurricular activity or two, but nothing I'm doing now compares to what I did in school--which makes nights like tonight feel all the more baffling.

In college, I'd be writing this post as a personal journal entry after a day comprised of catching up on webcomics over breakfast, three classes, walking all over campus, lunch with friends, a few hours of homework, an hour of D&D prep, choir practice, dinner with friends, twenty minutes of last-minute D&D prep as the players are filtering into my dorm room, a three-hour game session, a trip down to the cafe for a milkshake, and the aforementioned cooldown with SW:KotOR. As things actually happened today, I had breakfast at work, went to the grocery store after work, had leftover chicken and rice over an episode of Saturday Night Live on Netflix, read a chapter of a book, and accidentally took a three-hour nap when my body physically shut down on me in utter exhaustion, waking up just in time to go to bed.

What happened to me?

I suppose I can blame my collapse tonight on a particularly busy weekend: attending a wedding on Saturday that had me socializing or on the dance floor for about six of the eight hours I was there, driving across the state to get home by midnight, waking up early enough to be across state lines for a local fair by noon the next day, spending about six hours pressing through crowds of people to buy fresh apple cider and see the unnaturally large vegetables on display, making a detour to stop for dinner, driving home in the dark, and coming home just in time to go to bed for work the next day. Don't get me wrong--I had a blast. I also spent roughly ten hours in the car this weekend, and was on my feet for half of the rest of the time. So it's perfectly understandable to want to take a nap after all that.

What makes being an adult so much more exhausting than being a college student is that I spend more time driving than I ever spent walking across campus, more time maintaining my home than I ever spent maintaining my dorm room, and more time working than I ever did attending classes and doing homework, save for when midterms and finals rolled around. I'm spending more time doing fewer activities; that, I think, is why I feel so much more drained on a regular basis than I usually did in school. I'm just as busy and am having just as much fun as I was at certain points throughout college, but now I'm only juggling a few big activities instead of the bevy of smaller ones that, collectively, were equally heavy.

Still, eating leftover chicken and rice and falling asleep before you can put the dishes away is a pretty pathetic way to spend an evening.

That's why I'm still awake right now: There were too many things I still wanted to do with my evening for me to go straight to bed after my nap. My mind was abuzz with all the things I'd have to put off for another day if I didn't tackle them tonight. I stared at the ceiling for about five minutes before getting back up to do something with my evening. Now it's 4:30 AM (egad), which, when adjusted to take my nap into consideration, is just past my bedtime.

Perhaps one day I'll look back on this period of my life, and say, "Ah, 4:30 AM. You know I sometimes used to stay up until then writing blog posts?"

Sunday Spotlight: Guest Posting for Exfanding Your Horizons

As you may have noticed--assuming our content and layout haven't changed dramatically between when I'm writing this and when you're reading this--we've got a "Submit a Guest Post" link at the top of the blog, alongside some other neat stuff that we recommend you at least skim through. Little did I realize how much trouble such a simple link would cause.

If you're been following us long enough, or if you've been digging through the archives, you're almost certainly aware that we get excited about occasional guest posts, which have traditionally been written by close friends, family members, superfans, and coworkers. We like guest posts because they give us fresh perspectives, greater reader participation, and a day off when we don't feel much like writing. When we started having trouble meeting our regular, self-imposed posting deadlines, I began to publicize the fact that we do accept unsolicited guest posts, if anybody would like to participate and help us out.

Guess who responded? Two freelancers, within minutes of each other.

Now, we've got no problem with freelance writers. We're freelance writers, or at least we have been at one time or another. But we wanted fans, not freelancers. Our guest posting guidelines, as they were originally written, only conveyed the letter of the law, not the spirit; it simply hadn't occurred to me that anyone outside of our readership would care about posting with us.

Yet there it was, an e-mail request from a complete stranger with a beautiful prewritten post that followed our directions to a T, plus a hyperlink to some discount furniture website. I was not comfortable with posting this, but there was nothing in our directions that forbade it, and the freelancer was an honest-to-goodness person who responded tactfully and eloquently to my requests to establish credibility as a legitimate freelancer and not some spammer.

Revisions were made to the guidelines. Three more freelancers responded. Freelancers who, from the sound of it, didn't look too closely at the updated guidelines. Perhaps I was being too subtle. Also, looking back on it, my annoyance with how this guest posting plan was persistently backfiring was clearly visible in my writing. Another update.

Now, our guidelines look like this, which more accurately conveys exactly what we do and don't want out of a guest post. Assuming we haven't updated them again, in which case I have no idea what I'm linking to.

We're Still Here

We haven't forgotten about the blog, I promise. Despite all but completely abandoning our new posting model, and despite Alex's extended leave of absence, we're still here. I'm working on GameCola stuff, and Alex is working on literally every other thing on the face of the planet there is to do.

It's how I feel about Morrowind sometimes, with all the sidequests I pick up--"Hey, aren't you supposed to be out saving the world?" "Yeah, but first I've gotta solve this murder mystery and deliver this clay pot to somebody and follow a magical white guar into the hills." Writing for Exfanding is in our quest journals, but we're devoting more attention to other things at the moment.

Alex promises (and you can quote him on this) to return in a week or two or three; I promise (and you shouldn't quote me on this) that I'll at least continue with Sunday Spotlight and a minimum of one post somewhere else during the week in the meantime. That's our new new posting model. I.e.: subject to change whenever we feel like it.

It's refreshing, in a way, to not be constrained by a regular posting schedule. Conforming to a daily deadline for over three years was a great help in keeping us sharp, in practice, and dedicated to continuing this blog. Even if we go a few days at a time without posting nowadays, we've developed enough discipline to not let a few days turn into a week, a month, a year, and another abandoned blog. Would it be easy at this point to casually stop posting and let the blog fade out on its own? Sure. But we've got plenty more stories to tell, lots more fandoms to share, and a blog birthday coming up that we're definitely not going to miss.

And Alex still owes me his half of the Year in Review for 2011, so I'm not letting him go without that.

Even if you've been following us from the beginning, chances are good at least one post slipped by you at some point; we've got nearly four years of posts in the archives, and these frequent lulls between posts are a perfect opportunity to get caught up, and to marvel at how much we've changed over the years (for better, for worse, and for different). There's even one or two posts that I haven't read, because I'm holding off until I've read or watched whatever it is that Alex is spoiling in said posts. Who knows what you'll find?

Aside from the obvious, of course. You'll find almost four years of posts.

We're open to suggestions about posting topics, too, so feel free to toss some ideas our way. So, until next time...

Regressive Progress and the Crisis of Communication

I've been observing two trends recently that are causing me to become more of a curmudgeonly hermit than I already am. The first trend is one that's been going on for years, but I feel has really snowballed in the last two or so: a shift to a culture driven--not aided--by technology. The second trend is one I've only started to feel in the past few months: a shift toward a culture of mass outrage and mass hysteria over any kind of news--good, bad, or otherwise--frequently spearheaded by informed citizens.

I had an idea for a short story the other day where a grandfather is explaining to his grandson why everyone from the older generation is so hunched over: they had all been enslaved, and their backs have become permanently bent from the positions their bodies had been in for decades. At the end of the story, the grand twist was to be that the grandfather hands the kid an ancient iPhone or BlackBerry, telling him something like, "This is what slavery looked like to us." We have become a culture not aided by our devices, but ruled by them.

It was, what, the 1950s or so when dishwashers and vacuum cleaners first arrived? I'm no historian, but everything I've read and seen about technology from the postwar years was that the United States, at least, enjoyed a few decades of increased domestic prosperity and happiness thanks to machines that made work easier, or did all the work for us. More time for leisure; less time wasted on chores. The American dream, some might say. A dream that, from my perspective, is twisting more and more into a nightmare.

I followed a link from Facebook recently to a news article about this grand invention that detects when the milk in your refrigerator is about to spoil, notifying you with a light-up display and via text message. Thank goodness for that; I've always found the expiration date on the bottle to be so hard to read. I realize we've had inventions like this for decades, but something about this one in particular caused me to pause and sigh at the state of technology in our world, or at least this country. We are creating devices that improve the quality of life by consuming more time and money than we can save without these devices.

Time and money are two things I have been especially aware of in the year and a half since I proposed to the woman who is now my wife. Weddings cost money. Planning takes time. Maintaining a home costs money. Working the job to support it takes time. Spending an evening or weekend with friends and a now-expanded family involves both time and money, whether it's gas money or snacks for your D&D session. Making YouTube videos and writing posts and articles is free, but the equipment costs money, as do the forms of entertainment that inspire the content, and the time investment to see a project through to completion can be considerable.

As the administrator of GameCola.net's official YouTube channel, and as a staff writer and editor for the main site, I feel it's my responsibility (and joy) to keep up with everything my comrades post. I've been finding time to catch up on a video playthrough of Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations, and was stunned to discover that the last episode in a five-episode video series contains over eight hours of video footage.

In the time it takes me to watch that one episode, I could finish off an entire anime series. And when I start thinking that way about something that only takes a handful of hours, I begin to see entire months of my life disappear when I think about following through on my crazy plan to watch through the 35 years of Saturday Night Live that are available on Netflix. This is something I'm doing both for my own enjoyment and--as with any of the crazy plans I undertake anymore--so that I can share and discuss the experience with others...but it's staggering to think of how many 15-minute YouTube videos I could make in that same amount of time. (At the current rate of recording, about three.)

Even though the dilemma of what to do with my free time is shaped in no small part by the technology available to me, Netflix in particular simply makes it easier and cheaper to view the content I want than buying everything on DVD. In my mind, this is what technology is for: that 1950s vision of a more leisurely, more efficient way to live. Virtually everything I see around me today utilizes technology to make things different, and the increasing pace of technological developments--which require money to buy and time to learn--is driving a wedge between me and the rest of the tech-savvy world.

Where lifestyle-changing technology is involved, I don't do different. I do better. I'm more than content to stay on the sidelines while I observe the impact of new technology on the world before I consider jumping on the bandwagon. I did this with online shopping. I did this with texting. I did this with Blu-ray. I did this with Facebook.

I can no longer afford to be a few years behind everyone else and still expect to fit in with the culture of this generation. If I'm more than a few months behind, I'm archaic and out of touch. Things are changing too quickly, and I don't have the time, money, or interest to discover what's truly better until something is forced on me. Unsurprisingly, I'm discovering more and more that better is whatever I had before the forced change. I am a creature of habit, but more than that, I'm only seeing technological solutions to things that were never problems for me. Telephones shortened the distance between people in ways the postal service never could. E-mail opened up an additional means of communication that has many benefits over telephones. Now we've got technology that allows us to share everything we're looking at the press of a button, effectively eliminating the need to communicate at all.

That brings me to the second trend I've noticed: In a world where opinions are expressed with a Like button, we're veering away from meaningful discussions and unleashing our thoughts and feelings on polarizing issues in 140 characters or less. As my wife pointed out, everything good we post about is the best thing ever, and everything bad is the worst thing ever. Whether we're excitedly slapping up a link to this hilarious cat video or heralding the downfall of western civilization with whatever [pick one: Obama, Romney, Chick fil-A] did today, it's increasingly rare to see well-articulated opinions that take the extremist edge off of our concise gut reactions. We blow things out of proportion, or we present our completely rational and justified responses in such a inarticulate or reactionary way that we lose friends who would have at least tolerated us if we'd taken the time to explain ourselves over a cup of tea.

The trouble isn't just on an individual level, though: news travels fast through our social media-oriented culture, and our enthusiasm or outrage over something we post prompts someone else to retweet or repost the same content, adding their own enthusiasm or outrage. Repeat, ad nauseum. Now, instead of one person who's ecstatic or upset, everyone you know is ecstatic or upset. We are now statistics: X number of people think this way about animal testing, while X number of people think that way about it. There may be actual conversations that stem from the initial posts, but a quick skim through your feed tells you who you real friends are. In our solidarity, we have lost our individuality, along with our relative objectivity.

It has been unbearable to be around social media in the wake of the shooting in Aurora, Colorado that left 12 dead and 58 wounded. Unbearable to think about the loss of life, the suffering of the victims and their families, and how something so terrible could happen at all. Unbearable to think about it every hour of every day as new details emerge that encroach upon the personal privacy of the victims. Unbearable to have a flicker of concern about seeing The Dark Knight Rises on opening weekend because "midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises" was almost more prominent in the media's first news reports than the shooting itself. Unbearable because, from the perspective of someone who was not following the news and only seeing the headlines and snippets of coverage, the entire tragedy had spiraled into a nationwide Kickstarter campaign for actor Christian Bale to pay a visit to the victims in the hospital.

It seemed to me a surreal cause where the American people could demand the involvement of a celebrity whose only connection to the tragedy--as far as I knew from headlines and the one or two articles I'd read--was that he starred in the movie that was playing at the time. I know there's more to it than that. But my gut reaction to such a horrific event has given way to media fatigue and a sort of irrational indignation over how the whole country seems to be rallying behind a community that lost twelve people, while we remain silent on how, say, suicide is claiming almost eight times that many people a day in the U.S. Without understanding the full story, I'm just looking at the headlines and the numbers and the secondhand information, and forming opinions that make me sound like a bad person if you don't agree, and a worse person if you don't have the context of the rest of this post behind you.

So you can understand why I don't post things like this on Facebook. I couldn't even condense my feelings into a punchy blurb if I tried--but, as my wife points out, a punchy blurb is all we have to catch anyone's attention anymore. By the time you've written a thoughtful response, the Next Big Thing is here, and people have already forgotten what you're talking about. Yet writing brings clarity, and spilling my thoughts out on paper (or the electronic equivalent) allows me to sort through those gut reactions and come to a conclusion about why I feel as I do. Sometimes I need to say the wrong thing before I can get to the heart of why I said it. Sometimes I'm right, and "the wrong thing" is merely an unpopular, but valid, opinion. Sometimes I truly am wrong, which is why the door is always open for a civilized rebuttal.

My heart goes out to the victims in Aurora, and their friends and families. That there has been such a compassionate and supportive response speaks volumes about our culture. That I have mixed feelings about that response has me concerned. My willful ignorance of the full story, and my perception that social media and news media have inadvertently engineered such a massive response by skewing the story to keep Batman in the spotlight, make me worry that I'm becoming cynical in the face of something that clearly demands my sympathy. There's no question that we should care, but I worry that the media has needlessly emphasized the wrong information to draw out our genuine compassion for the right cause.

If someone on the sidelines can feel so conflicted about something so universally clear-cut, it's no wonder the people in the thick of debates about unclear issues such as politics and ethics can be so vitriolic toward those who disagree--they're probably all cynical, because people like me sound like idiots when they're firing off their gut reaction to an issue they're only partially informed about on their way to the hilarious cat video someone posted below you.

I think we'd all be happier if we started having real conversations again with each other, and started using modern technology the way it was meant to be used:

Sunday Spotlight: Toasters

Apparently, I think toasters are very funny. I've been looking back through the GameCola archives, and so far I've found two articles and one podcast in which I make a reference to a toaster/toasters in a humorous manner. Make that three articles if you count toaster ovens. On top of two posts here on Exfanding referencing toasters.

Apparently, I think toasters are very funny.

This one, however, has to be the funniest toaster of all:

That is all.

A Productive Evening

Here is what a productive evening looks like (well, to me, at least):

- Visit the hardware store

- Pick up milk

- Swing by the ATM

- Watch an early episode of Saturday Night Live over dinner with the wife

- Record more commentary for my upcoming YouTube playthrough of Space Quest 0: Replicated

- Clean the bathroom, inspired by the janitorial heroics of Roger Wilco

- Add search page thumbnail pictures to more of the articles deep in the GameCola archive

- Confirm that GameFAQs did indeed accept my screenshots from Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge

- Finish the Dragon Warrior IV music ripping project I started months ago, finally adding the soundtrack to my collection and deleting the folder that's been sitting on my desktop all this time

- Write the blog post I'd originally planned to write during lunch (except I got sidetracked with writing a blurb for this month's Q&AmeCola, and was also catching up on the Two Guys from Andromeda's talkthrough of Space Quest III)

- Probably play video games or something before going to bed at a reasonable hour

Well, hot dog! I think I like this flexible new posting model.

Sunday Spotlight: Being Angry at Everything

I probably won't be angry by the time you read this. When we're not posting two or three hours past our self-imposed deadline, we actually do aim to write these things in advance. That's how it is for me now: I'm writing this post in advance, and I'm angry.

There's nothing in particular that triggered it. I got up, went to work, came home, watched a movie with my wife, and started prepping for the weekend. Fine and dandy. But I've been angry all day. Lack of sleep? Anger-inducing dream I don't remember? Stressed about another weekend booked solid from Friday until late Sunday, no matter how fun the activities consuming it might be? I can't say. I'm just angry at everything.

To the casual observer, you might not be able to tell. I've still smiled and laughed and generally been myself. Yet my default position all day has been simmering anger--if that's even a position--and the little things have been much quicker to get under my skin, and good things need to be way better than average to feel all that good to me.

Bruce Banner says in The Avengers that his secret to keeping The Hulk under wraps is that he's always angry. I understand exactly how that feels today. And I really don't know why.

Waiting for Wednesday, Volume 4, Issue 20

Ya know, I don’t think I ever really understood the term “my fever broke” until last night, when I alternated between being freezing cold—literally teeth-chatteringly cold—and ridiculously hot. I had a couple of very strange dreams, which someone later pointed out were likely fever dreams.

Again, another term that until last night meant very little to me.

One of those fever dream things was particularly interesting, as for a little while there, I pretty vividly dreamt that I was a character in Game of Thrones, warding off a Lannister attack while riding on the kingsroad on my way back to Winterfell.

Aside from demonstrating how utterly clueless I am about a wide variety of things, my fever-induced insomnia last night made me realize that apparently even my fever dreams are dorky, which made me laugh.

Which then made me swoon a bit before laying back down.

Anyway, after the weird dreaming and teeth-chattering coldness of the night, I actually started to feel human again sometime around 4:00 in the morning.

Not to fear, though, because not only did I make it to work this morning—I was even about an hour early. Probably because I was still shaking off the effects of whatever the heck plague I caught last night was.

All this is basically to say that I won’t be posting much today about comic books.

You know, because of the weird fever.

Go Outside, Or Something

Haha, so I have to write a post for today. I had it in my mind that a GameCola recap was in order, followed by our Month in Review the next day to cap off the month, but apparently there's an extra day left before I can do all that.

So...posting, huh.

I've been totally disconnected from any substantial creative output this week. I haven't posted since Sunday, I haven't touched anything GameCola-related, and my focus on YouTube has been fairly minimal. I've been recharging from a fun and busy weekend of Dungeons & Dragons (which I hope to write about next week) and a L'Arc-en-Ciel concert (which I hope to con someone into guest posting about), and especially after the lousy Wednesday I had, I've been in a mindset to veg out.

What have I been doing with my spare time instead of writing and recording? Same thing I do every week, just more of it--movies, TV, and video games. I may also have glanced at the cover of a book once or twice. It's been relaxing to thin out my Netflix Instant Queue and to cruise the crime-ridden streets of Lytton in Police Quest III...but it hasn't been as satisfying as usual. I keep feeling this drive to get out of the house and do something if I'm not pursuing my creative endeavors indoors, but I have yet to determine what, specifically, that something might be.

Rejoining a choir? Volunteer work? Maybe just going out for a walk? I'm open to suggestions.

Deadline Week

It's, like, deadline week here. Complete this huge project for work by 10 AM. Post by 11 AM. Clean up the apartment before weekend plans begin. Watch these movies in our Netflix Instant Queue before their licenses expire next week. Finish this review of Out There Somewhere while it's still relevant (though, in my defense, nearly a week of technical setbacks kept me from finishing the review in time for the game's release).

Alex and I have both been in a rush. You can tell from the topics of our posts this week. You can tell from the lengths of our posts--we're never this concise, this consistently. Not to worry, though; we're starting to structure ourselves again: I've solicited a guest post for Saturday, and I'm rolling out a new column on Sunday, so hopefully we'll be in good shape going into next week.

Juggling Fatigue

I think...I just need some time to recover.

Extensive apartment cleaning. A Harry Potter marathon this weekend. More thought-intensive or generally draining comments here and on the YouTube channel than usual. More footage than I've ever had for a YouTube video, and more footage than I've ever needed to trim out. More ongoing work on detail-heavy writing projects than usual. More social interaction than I've had in months, outside of holidays and special occasions.

I'm not overwhelmed. I'm not even all that busy, compared to last year. I think...I just need some time to recover. Rather, I just need to bring a few of these ongoing projects to a close. It's tough to pick up a project after having neglected it in favor of other projects, but it can be just as tough to keep several projects moving, slowly, at once. I'd rather take more time to complete all my projects rather than focus only on one or two and risk forgetting about the others, but I can feel myself stretching a little far, and I could use a little time to recover.

License to Kill...Time

For the last several days, I've been locked into a cycle of relaxation and anticipation--I've been prepping myself for a weekend at home in which to hack apart my to-do list, all the while reveling in my complete lack of responsibility for anything out-of-the-ordinary during my evenings at home. No wedding planning, no Christmas shopping, and no packing of bags--just switching over the laundry, hauling out the garbage, and writing lazy filler posts (A.K.A. hauling out the garbage).

Even though the dawn of the New Year is already a week behind us, I still find myself caught up in my resolutions and goals. I've already talked about how this is a year of opportunities for me, and having nothing concrete on the calendar for the near future has energized me to focus more on the things I want to do and less on the things that have to be done before I leave. Most of the major items on my to-do list--writing wedding thank-you cards; finishing off the video recording I committed to--are holdovers from last year. If I leave them on the backburner during the week, I'm not destroying my chances of ever finishing them; if anything, I'm waiting until I'm in the right mindset to tackle them--which is typically before 5-6 PM on Saturday.

I find I'm more amenable to chores and Stuff That's Gotta Get Done if I don't perceive that they're cutting into my free time. Blog posts I've been gearing up to write all day, for example, can be fun and cathartic even if I'm up until Stupid O'Clock writing them. I am happily choosing to spend my free time writing instead of sleeping. On the other hand, if I stay up past midnight watching anime with my wife and then suddenly remember I have to write a blog post for the next day, I get a bit cranky because I already have it in my head that I should be going to sleep now. I clamor for my weekends not so much for the extra number of free hours, but for the ability to work on something for however long it takes to finish and still have at least a little time left over to goof off. It's a subtle difference, but an important one.

Thus, I find myself enthused the possibilities of not one free weekend, but multiple free weekends. If I blow all of Saturday on video games and movies, I've still got Sunday. If I work all Sunday and only knock one item off my to-do list, I've still got another weekend in which to do the rest. I'm a control freak and a procrastinator, an interesting combination that allows me to gauge exactly how long I can put things off before I'll no longer have control of finishing them in time.

Having so much free time at my disposal allows me to procrastinate long enough to eventually feel guilty about leaving things undone, which, in turn, gives me self-generated motivation to finish things. Two or three days of nonstop goofing off is just as likely to inspire me to work as any externally imposed deadline, and often my work is better for not having been pressured into completion. Not always, but certainly often enough.

So I'm locked into this cycle of relaxation and anticipation. I'll get to the big stuff soon enough--for now I've got time to sit back and enjoy life as it happens.

Status Quote

Given that it's taken us two weeks to get most of the way through our week-long Gifts for Geeks celebration, I feel a status update is in order.

At virtually any other point this year, any delays could have been attributed to the Big Life Stuff that was keeping me busy. This time, I am pleased to report, it's not my fault. As it turns out, Alex is the one with Big Life Stuff afoot, which he'll probably share through cryptic hints over the next few months until he finally writes a formal explanation, which he will either immediately discard after re-reading or hold off on posting until the Cubs win the Super Bowl.

And yes, I realize the Cubs only play in the Stanley Cup.

So, without Alex here today to dismiss or substantiate any claims that behind-the-scenes machinations are responsible for our slightly irregular posting schedule, I can only give a status update on what's going on in NathanielLand. I realize this will have nothing to do with why we keep putting off Gifts for Geeks, but hey, it's free admission.


- Life is gradually returning to normal (or whatever passes for normal 'round these parts) now that the wedding is over and weekend road trips have been scaled back to a more reasonable frequency. Consequently, I'm finding more time to tackle my long-neglected errands, housework, and creative projects. Productivity is happiness.

- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has been released and is consuming the lives of millions. True to form, I'm just getting around to playing The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

- With barely any time to enjoy it, my wife and I have finally set up our Christmas tree. Our 4' tall, chintzy blue Christmas tree.

In other news, we desperately need a more holiday-appropriate tree topper than a Dr. Wily action figure and an Enterprise NX-01.

- I inadvertently threw myself into a nightmare holiday shopping scenario, the likes of which I swore I try to avoid. The Saturday before Christmas, I head out to the mall. I realize it will be busy. I realize I may need to drive around a while before locating a parking space. I realize everything will be sold out by the time I get there.

I fail to realize I'm now living in a place where the mall is the size of the town I used to live in, and situated at the intersection of two major thoroughfares. I have a lovely 45-minute joyride around the mall before I decide that maybe a smile and a hug is all anybody needs for Christmas.

- The wife and I got out to see Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows in the theater this past weekend. We don't get out to the movies so often anymore--we watched J. Edgar over Thanksgiving weekend with my family; before that, I believe the last film we saw in the theater was Kung Fu Panda 2, back in May. Come to think of it, we've hardly watched any movies recently--it's been a lot of Star Trek and LEGO Batman instead.

- At long last, I discovered the option that allows me to organize the game list on my Backloggery. It was fun to tinker around a little bit and make some updates. I'm also pleased and amused to see that my GameCola article on The Backloggery is still the first Google search result that isn't the site itself.

- The Third Easiest Contest on the Internet, after sparking a good amount of initial interest, seems to have quieted down significantly. But, with a deadline of January 4, there's still plenty of time to follow us on social media and poke holes in our archives for a shot at a $15 Amazon.com gift certificate. See, it doesn't sound so much like shameless advertising when it's part of a status update, right?


Well, that should do for now. We've got a Waiting for Wednesday lined up for tomorrow as usual, followed by what we suspect will be a conclusion to this year's Gifts for Geeks. Stay tuned.