The first full version of FlySpy, “the world’s premiere GameFly queue management tool” that can monitor and manage your GameFly account, has been released.

The name has changed in order to protect the innocent, and also to avoid any potential copyright infringements. Inside however, it still has all the same goodness that my one brave downloader has come to expect, as well as the following new features:

• Supports all game systems in the GameFly library. This means that you can get a list of all 5,000+ GameFly games in one convenient location.
• Includes an options screen that allows you to specify what systems you want to monitor, and which systems you want to automatically add new games from.
• Includes a “Welcome to FlySpy!” screen for new users.

As always, you can visit the FlySpy project homepage or go straight to the newest release.

So until a 2.0, FlySpy, I kiss you goodnight and wish you a sweet (and hopefully critical-bug-free) rest. -Scott

Jeff Atwood has long maintained an “Essential Reading” list of books for developers. I’ve been chugging my way along it dutifully, and as I continue to do so, I remain stunned that he hasn’t mentioned the most important development book I have yet read.

UPDATE: He’s mentioned it before, just not added it to the list. He includes it along with another excellent book by Weinberg in his post “Leading by Example.” Plus he one-ups me by including the timeless R. Lee Ermey. Damn!

Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People is an incredibly great read. If you’ve never opened it, I know what you’re probably thinking after reading that title - it’s either awfully Machiavellian or awfully self-help sappy. I’ve recommended this book a bazillion times, and I hear that kind of response almost every time.

You’d be wrong on both accounts though. Once you start reading the book, it becomes clear that Carnegie really is interested in making you a nicer person. That’s pretty much his whole “win friends” philosophy in a nutshell: be nice and be considerate. That’s what he’s saying when he tells you to smile, or when he tells you to be genuinely interested in other people.

What about influencing people? There again, Carnegie writes from that same place, from trying to make people better human beings. His methods of “influencing” include such sinister motives as “Avoid arguments” and “Praise every improvement.” It’s all great, seemingly common-sense advice that I never would have realized but for his book.

So if this is great, general advice, why developers in particular then?

There’s a plethora of stereotypes about us nerds, almost all of them true. For instance, the development team here at the office recently went out for lunch, and a bystander saw this horde and said “You guys must be tech people, no one else dresses for work like they’re heading out to play softball.” Sure enough, we were all decked out in shorts and ironic and/or shabby t-shirts. No argument there.

But while that stereotype is true and mostly harmless, the popular notion of the socially awkward developer is just as true but much more harmful. That’s where this book comes in, because no matter how good a programmer you are, no one will care if you can’t communicate effectively. This book helps defeat that whole spectrum of developer awkwardness, including such favorites as:

• I am clearly so much smarter than you; there’s nearly no point in trying to explain myself. (The most common developer quirk that I’ve seen)
• Ugh, let’s get this over with quickly because I just need X from you.
• I want to make sure you understand me, so I will never stop talking. (my personal demon)
• I don’t quite know what I want to say or how I want to say it, so I will never stop talking. (Also extremely common)
• I’m going to sound dumb, so I’d rather not talk.

While I’m phrasing this in terms of conversation, Carnegie’s advice applies in nearly all forms of communication. There’s not a single email I start without considering how I can start it with something immediately relevant to the audience’s interest. “In order to complete that webpage you requested, I need to know XYZ” is so much better at getting a quick response than “I need to know XYZ.”

Unless you are such a staggering genius that you are paid to go away and think of things, your ideas and your needs are only as valid as they can be communicated. So if you haven’t read this one yet, I challenge you not to pick up something useful from this book and not to get your paltry eight dollars’ worth from it.

A genre-defining game like Diablo II is tough to follow, and the demands of gamers can’t make that any easier.

We nerds decided that is not enough for an action RPG (or as a dear friend likes to call them, “Smash Quests”) to be a mere duplicate of that classic sequel. If so, then a game like Dungeon Siege would easily be twice as popular even if, as a clone, it lost attributes like a gripping setting and compelling archetypes.

A true successor must instead do everything the original got right as well as perform a few new tricks for our amusement. The long list of Diablo clones and also-runs demonstrates the surprising difficulty of duplicating a game I’ve heard described as “left-click; repeat.” Demonstates, that is, unless there’s any die-hard Darkstone or Nox fans that would like to debate me.

You would imagine then that the man behind Diablo II would know how to best it. Unfortunately for Bill Roper and Flagship Studios however, that’s just not the case. Hellgate: London does manage a few innovations (mainly to items and crafting), but as I mentioned we gamers are a prickly, demanding bunch.

We need new classics to be everything from the past and more. When I was fighting torpid, isolated enemies in endless ruined streets and tube tunnels, it was clear that this otherwise decent game was still far short of the mark.

This isn’t really about Bill Roper & Hellgate however; if you want more on that, he’s done so many interviews at this point that you can probably flip over your breakfast cereal to see a few choice words from the man.

Instead, I want to know this: Who really does get it? Who understands how to surpass Diablo II at what it does so very, very well? The answer, beyond possibly the City of Heroes team (which I’ll talk about another time), seems to be Surreal Games’ Patrick Lipo.

The proof is not just in Lipo’s inspired X-Men Legends game he helmed, but also in a very thought-provoking analysis of Diablo II.

It’s a thoroughly fascinating read. In it you can see just how carefully he must have considered this classic before working on Legends. It’s a stark contrast when Flagship’s summation of Diablo II seems to have been just the word “loot” written a few times on a whiteboard.

While Lipo has a fair bit of praise for his subject, he also takes the game to task for static environments. It’s an criticism you can see he definitely had in mind when creating X-Men Legends. While your Amazon or your Barbarian in Diablo 2 was known only by their trail of dead, the typical Legends level would end with an absolutely battered and immensely satisfying husk of a map behind you.

But enough of my rambling, go read it yourself. It’s a rare opportunity to get inside the mind of a careful, deliberate designer. This document serves as a brilliant reminder that there is still so much untapped promise in this genre, whatever you may think of the current Stuff Questing it-game.

Once I was playing this RPG on my computer. The studio behind it had made a few other games about which I had extremely mixed opinions, but I loaded the game’s four CDs up and played.

The game certainly was interesting. You played a corpse in a world that looked like every architectural style from 2500 B.C. to 4140 A.D. had been forcefully combined into one cramped, sprawling city by a team of architects commissioned by Satan himself. Things were going really well.

And then I came across a cave full of rats. And died. And died. And died. Meanwhile, these rats kept getting more and more powerful until I was getting in one swipe, dying, and then winding my way back to this cave to repeat the process.

Fortunately, I tired of this process and uninstalled the game. Unfortunately, I never played Planescape: Torment again. Through the years, I’ve been reminded time and time again of just how great this game is supposed to be. It wasn’t until I read yet another article hailing Torment just this weekend that I realized I need to finish this game, especially since I discovered Torment is not by quite the same people behind Baldur’s “YOUR LIFE IS IN GRAVE PERIL!!! Now go out into the woods and kill bears for an hour” Gate.

But it started me thinking about all of the times I’ve come pretty close to not finishing an otherwise good game because of really inane, stupid segments. Exploding restaurants, forced single-player portions of multiplayer games, that kind of thing. Those are the moments that, when you recommend a game, you have to include a disclaimer for. “Just keep playing - I promise it gets better.” So with no further ado, I present my list of the Top 5 Worst Moments of Good Games:

Sokoban on Speed, God of War (PlayStation 2, SCE Studios. 2005)

I hope that every other development shop in the world was taking notes during the opening level of God of War. You start out pleasuring multiple people aboard an Athenian ship caught in a vicious sea storm and it keeps getting crazier from there. It’s only moments from that unforgettable introduction until you’re in the middle of a rainstorm reducing your foes to bloody heaps strewn about the deck. It’s so instantly stylized and fun that it’s easy to miss that you’re actually in a tutorial.

Wait, but now there’s this crate. All of this great action and pure joy is put on hold to protect a crate from archers. All my awesomeness from before disappeared, replaced by an innumerable attempts to push the damn thing far enough before it’s shattered by one stray arrow. More infuriating is that it is a sequence won not by skill but by luck. You can pull off every move without a single mistake in your timing, but you’ll still need to hope that one particular arrow towards the end probably misses.

This one totally bogus scene stands out vividly as the only bum note in an otherwise beautify symphony of destruction.

Don’t Bring a Gun to a Knife Fight, Bushido Blade (PlayStation, Lightweight. 1997)

Bushido Blade was famous for being a rather punishing fighter. Whereas you can be hit by a broadsword the size of a house in Soul Caliber and keep on fighting, it took just one well-timed swipe of a slim katana to finish a fight in Bushido Blade.

When you actually made it to the bosses, you felt downright godlike. You knew the timing of your death pole of choice well enough to wait for just the right opening to strike. If you followed the way of the Bushido to a fault, then you had an unrivaled level of self-discipline to make it this far. You were ready for anything, ANYTHING!

And then you get shot in the face. Seriously. Shot in the face. All because you square off against “Katze,” who wields a handgun and doesn’t hesitate to use it.

So what about everything you just spent seven fights and lord knows how many retries mastering? Well, unlearn it pretty damn fast because it takes every cheap trick you can muster (or a suitably fast character) to close in on Katze before he caps you.

Should bosses be difficult? Sure. But they should be difficult by cranking up the difficulty of what you’ve learned to 11, not by arbitrarily changing the rules of the game. Even then it’s be one thing for a frustrating change-all-the-rules character to appear in a game, but doing so when the game is nearly over is beyond frustrating.

Did Lightweight learn from this one? The fact that a revolver, an M-16, and bombs are all on the weapons list of Bushido Blade 2 answers that question. I wonder if they would even have bothered with swords if there had been a third game…

Don’t Fear The Reavers, System Shock 2 (PC, Irrational. 1999)

I feel bad commenting on this masterpiece. Anyone who hasn’t played System Shock 2 is wasting time doing whatever you’re doing with your life. It’s legendary in many ways that it’s spiritual successor Bioshock simply isn’t.

So much of this game is casually brilliant, from the gameplay to the backstory to even the minigames you could play on your “GamePig” device. I’ve beaten this game twice now and I still feel that I haven’t experienced all it has to offer. I still wouldn’t say I completely know the enigmatic character that becomes the greatest gaming villain of all time.

What keeps me from playing this game more often, especially in the outstanding multiplayer mode, is that I know I have to enter the Rickenbacker. Without giving away too much, the game up until this point has entirely been made so that you can tackle it however you like. Like machines? Hack the machines to do your bidding? Tend to sit in the shadows brooding instead? Use you psi powers to manipulate the environment around you.

Then, just like with our previous examples, the rules change. Enter the Rickenbacker’s last level and it abruptly becomes a game of delivering as much pure firepower as you can. Specialized in something else, have you? Too damn bad, because you’re going to have to deal with giant rooms chock full of enemies you can’t avoid, can’t hack, and can’t dissuade.

It just breaks my heart to think of that sequence. It stands out not because it is bad (as long as you’re prepared, it’s a decent if typical FPS level), but because everything else in the game is so pitch perfect, so brilliant in every decision.

Well, every other decision.

History Repeats Itself, Half-Life & Half-Life 2 (PC, Valve. 1998 / 2004)

Once upon a time, first-person games without “Ultima” or “Shock” in the title weren’t very interesting or innovative. Then in 1998 came Half-Life from Valve Software. It offered a bevy of elements like innovative combat, superb level design, and creative gameplay that was different than nearly everything else on the market. Gone were artificial, annoying levels that led up to arbitrary boss fights. Instead the challenges were of a more organic, free-flowing nature. You never felt like you were wandering down “just another corridor” like in so many other games.

Finally you make it to the last level, a throwback to innovative shooters circa 1995. My only guess is that Valve ran out of time and subcontracted the alien planet “Xen” to the same developers that made Blood 2. Gone was the great level design and the innovative gameplay. Instead we had stationary, brainless AI that killed you the moment you made it past the arbitrarily difficult platforming section.

The community cried out in agony. Many people didn’t even bother completing the game and instead filled up many an internet forum with their complaints. Valve listened, they said. Things would be different in the next go-round, they said.

They said.

True, the last level of Half-Life 2 wasn’t crazy platforming and instant death. Instead, it was the complete opposite - endless repetitions of drab, identical corridors and a pointlessly overpowered weapon. Hooray, the ending just went from frustrating to dull. The end result though is the same as yet another masterpiece ends on an incredibly bad note. Well done, Valve.

Don’t even get me started on the entirely lame final cut-scene in HL2 that makes the last moments of Halo 2 look like Hamlet by comparison.

And the worst is…

Truth in Advertising, Fallout 2 (PC, Black Isle. 1998)

Fallout 2 was everything a sequel should be. The game world was larger, the number of things you could do were greatly increased. Want to get married? Go for it! Want to then pimp out that loved one? Why not? Gamble away your savings, run drugs, and of course, get involved in the illicit “iguana” trade.

The shame of Fallout 2 is that many people will never know that it’s a great, brilliant sequel. Because the game starts off with the worst level I’ve ever played in any otherwise great game, the aptly-named “Temple of Trials.”

For a game that is based upon the freedom to do basically whatever you want, starting you off in a loooong tunnel poking scorpions with a stick is a peculiar choice. There’s some backstory justification for it, but does anyone honestly remember any of it once the Temple of Trials has sucked the will to live from you? Even without the absurd level of difficulty, this sequence is just so uninspired, so tedious.

However, everything so far falls within the realm of the merely annoying. To grasp why this is one of the worst design decisions ever made in a good game, you have to understand the character creation system of Fallout. Between your skills, perks, and traits you could make all kinds of crazy characters and specializations. The gameplay even encouraged this with most quests involving multiple solutions. However, you had to pick a few skills to specialize in at the onset of the game.

Since the Temple of Trials was literally the first thing you did after starting the game, you were forced to make one of your specializations either Unarmed or Melee Combat to stand a chance of living through the encounter. By forcing that decision, you take away a massive chunk of the customization options available to the player.

In other words, this one level changes the entire game. It’s like being forced to pick RSTLNE in Wheel of Fortune; it makes life easier but not interesting. If I want a pathetic fighter who can patch up his wounds without difficulty, spin lies with the best, and pick locks like a fiend, I should have that choice. I certainly did in the first Fallout.

Not in Fallout 2 however. A sequel that expanded upon the original in every other way actually took a step back, which is a real shame. It’s why the original Fallout will always be the better game without contest.

Lessons Learned

All of these examples have one common thread - create a level or moment which clearly violates the established “rules” of the game world. Yes, there are ways to tweak the rules and play with the formula, but have a damn good reason for doing so, please.

Making sure it’s still fun wouldn’t hurt either. It’s hard to playtest “fun” though.

When I was sitting in a darkened movie theatre contemplating gouging my eyes out, I would never have guessed that I’d fall in love.

That’s just what happened during the Chicago Underground FIlm Festival when we recently went to “Galaxian,” a collection of experimental short films made with video games. We had just sat through a criminally boring video made from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. As far as I can tell, here’s what happened: someone hooked a VCR up to their TV and turned on GTA, hoping to make a totally sweet video. Then they got a phone call, went out to lunch, or engaged in some sort of high-speed pursuit, I don’t know. I just know we sat through about 10 minutes of Carl “CJ” Johnson staring at flowers as a result. It drained my will to continue.

So it was a disappointment when the next film turned out to be made with Second Life. I had tried it a long time ago, but didn’t find it particularly captivating. So if these auteurs could make GTA boring… well, I was having difficulty deciding between suicide or a murder-suicide to also save my date from such a cruel fate.

That was before I saw a three-way sex scene between a male, female, and bear where the woman’s neck forcefully spewed blood throughout the experience, courtesy of Valerie Brewer’s Untitled #2. As the camera switched from being an observer to shooting the scene from the hollow interior of the woman’s ever-flowing neck, I was gripped with a child-like wonder.

I never knew you could do this in Second Life.

While I have no desire to replicate that scene per se, the fact that such a thing is possible in SL made me beyond curious. So today I finally managed to find the time to try it out.

Apparently Second Life was bound and determined to give me bizarre semi-sexual experiences however, as my first sight upon entering the training world was two entirely gray women-oids doing, well, something to me and someone else. Or I to them, not entirely sure.

So far the game seemed like what would happen if David Lynch woke up one morning, decided he was tired of short films about rabbits, and instead started designing a video game.

Eventually though, my clothes and skin appeared and some help text popped up. True, I could only see every third or fourth help screen, so I’m certain I missed a few things. The charm was already wearing thin however, and the interface matched only by the retchedness that is Ultima Online was aggravating. Regardless, I guessed-and-checked my way to the last of the tutorials, the “what to do in Second Life” tutorial.

My hideous uber-blonde avatar looked on upon a stage, showing different “events” that I could partake in. Behind a stage was a slideshow of eHipsters just sitting around. In front of that was a rotating selection of avatar examples.

At this point, I feared I had only looking pretty and standing around in my future. Most people discover I’m phenomenally bad at both within the first 90 seconds of meeting me, so I was less than thrilled about the prospect. It was with a heavy heart that I left tutorial island and instead teleported to Welcome Island, the first “real” area for most SL players.

My first sight upon entering the “real” world was gently bouncing, flat images of Mario proclaiming “its-a-me, Mario!” before each one spawned several more which proceeded to do the same, ad infinitum.

I knew in an instant what I was seeing. Having played a variety of online games, this was clearly griefing. Normally it takes the form of team killing, spraypainting of pornography across every surface, or the typical stream of expletives yelled in the unmistakable high pitch of 10 year old boys that sends dogs running everywhere. Stills from the Super Mario Bros cartoon show? That’s entirely new. That’s almost clever.

I hunted after these flying Marios and Luigis with a childlike wonder, looking for their source. They would drift through the sky and I would fly with them, taking in the sights as I went. Finally I found their creator, a series of giant spinning cubes sending smaller versions shooting throughout the world. It was incredible, and incredibly creative for griefers. I followed them around for quite some time, seeing how these endless cubes and rectangles caused everyone to disperse in a hurry.

Despite watching two hours of “experimental” film in a theatre, some 14 year old in his parents’ basement came up with somethng more visually interesting, more beautiful than any machinima I’ve seen.

Once I saw that great rotating phantasmagoria of plumbers in the sky, I knew that I was going to love this place.

Played in a woefully-underused setting, 1992’s Castles II: Siege & Conquest supposes that a civil war breaks out in France in 1311, about a decade before the Hundred Years’ War was due to start. So rather than a century of grudge matches between the English and a unified French, we get a vicious battle between five claimants to the French throne: two internal powers (Valois & Anjou) and three mostly external agitators (Burgundy, Aragon / Spain, and Albion / England) who all have their own equally valid claims to the title.

They all start the game off roughly equal, but their starting positions on the map of France actually unbalance them quite a bit. Albion is generally the easiest to play, as a smart player can use diplomacy to focus on one target at a time. Burgundy and Anjou generally have it the worst, as they will always start the game off bordering too many opponents at once.

You play as an administrator-in-chief rather than the traditional micromanager-in-chief, making decisions and then waiting to see how they are carried out in a quite hands-off manner. Tasks are divided into three broad categories: Administrative, dealing with resources and castle construction; Military, directly related to all things aggresive; Political, or pretty much intelligence-gathering. You’ll combine all of these abilities to control territories that can produce one of four key resources. However, the goal is not neccessarily to control all of these territories, but to gain enough points (respect) to make a claim to the throne and then hold it for a period of about five months. Once you do so, you’ll be crowned King of France by that ever-blasted Pope.

What makes this game interesting is that all actions have a downside, and that you never have the time or ability to do all the things you would like to do. It’s rather like some of my favorite board games like Colossal Arena or Vinci in that way. It makes some definitely goofy design decisions (I have to send a scouting unit for a month just to see who owns the piece of land across the way?) and castles end up being kind of death traps for the defense if you run your own battles, but the game’s depth in other areas makes up for it. Consider the play session below, picking up about midway through a recent game…

The Tale of the Most Noble Poet-Warrior Count of Valois Here’s the situation: I’m facing the losing end of a three year war with the vile forces of Aragon. Early on, I found myself surrounded primarily by gold-producing territories and went a little nuts acquiring them. I let those other posers worry about territories that could produce crap like timber or even food.

As a result, I had a filthy-rich and filthy-tiny empire with a near-constant starvation problem. The constant invasions were only making us tinier and starving-er.

Even with a neverending Merchant mission to my only friend down in Burgundy (see earlier note about Burgundy being perpetually weak. VALOIS IS BEYOND REPROACH IN OUR DECISION MAKING, HOWEVER.), I scrounged up enough food to feed my peeps and build an army that could just barely hold the line. See, way back in the day, I had built a monstrously-large super-castle “Castle DeathEagle” well in my own territory, mostly in a bad-ass, Ozymandias sort of way.

Beyond impractical when it was built, Castle DeathEagle was now the only reason my empire continued. The stonemasons working on repairing the damage from the last seige would sigh and depart as they saw yet another advancing Aragon army pissed off about the latest messenger I had returned to them in pieces purely on principle. We’d then proceed to fight with the only serious losses being Castle DeathEagle itself. The stonemasons would return, looking ever more down-trodden, and continue their never-ending repair work.

I have to give it to those Spaniards though, they’re clever. Seeing the futility in further Super-Castle Super-Seiges, they then started pounding Burgundy. Normally I wouldn’t shed a tear over one less competitor, but seeing as all of my citizens’ food came stamped “Made in Burgundy,” this presented a teensy problem. I had at most a year to go from losing this war to re-entering it pretty aggressively if I wanted to avoid people feeding people to people.

There is one spy in the service of Valois who will have statues erected all over the good land of France for his discovery. Children will grow up knowing his legend to the point where Joan of Arc won’t mean shit next to this guy. Why, you ask? Well, it was right about then that he turns in a fairly standard report: Aragon has twice as many territories as you, about 2/3 more soldiers, and a Happiness of 4.

Wait.. a Happiness of 4?! You see, in Castles II each nation’s populace has a happiness rating from 2 to 9. It affects a variety of things like how difficult you are to sabotage as well as how effectively your men fight in battle. It turns out that even though I wasn’t making any kind of dent in Aragon’s army, each time I forced his army to retreat from the shattered hulk of Castle DeathEagle, his people grew increasingly despondant. It’s one of two things that will decrease the happiness of your land.

To make a long-story short, I spent the next year doing everything I could to make my people drunk with pleasure while the people of Aragon awoke to each day more sullen than the last. Constant saboteur raids meant that Aragon had to constantly and harshly police his own populace with his military. Meanwhile the people of Valois were having so many festivals and national celebrations (of what I can’t imagine. “Hooray We Have Food” Fest?) that it made Japan’s holiday calendar seem downright stingy by comparison. So when the food train from Burgundy finally did stop a-runnin, my people were near-euphoric with their fervent nationalistic glee.

“Zeal” was nothing to describe my 14-unit army when it finally took the field of battle against an army of 24, an army demoralized by a year of midnight raids and policing.

We stomped them. Burgundy may have been a fond memory by this point in time, but they were avenged by the sheer tonnage of Aragonian blood spilled that day. They entered with 24; they left with eight. By contrast, we lost two units.

The war would drag on, with Aragon even attempting to claim the throne of France at one point, but even the ever-blasted Pope had to eventually meet me at Castle DeathEagle to recognize my right to rule.

The Impact of Castles II Upon Me

Is Castles II even one of my favorite games of all time? No, not really. Only the midgame is really very interesting - the initial landgrab is always the same and the time difference between when you know you’ve won and when you actually win is far too long. Also, despite the story above, almost always the game turns solely upon army size and who you have as friends. For instance, if you’re Albion and you form both a decent army and a strong friendship with Valois, you’re pretty much going to win unless you’re playing on Impossible difficulty.

Additionally, the battle engine is pretty well broken. You can technically control your troops in battle, but it’s a death sentence to do so. If you want to win, you have to let the computer simulate the battles for you. So it’s definitely a game with flaws.

However, this idea of strategy games where you don’t have direct control over every action of the empire, but rather just what actions are being taken has stuck with me. While some games like Civilization have come close to this in certain regards, it still remains something I look for in many games.

The only game that really implements this is KOEI’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms IX, which is strange since KOEI isn’t really known for innovation (cough DYNASTY WARRIORS cough). It also remains one of the reasons I’m excited about playing some World in Conflict `ere long, as it seems to offer a similar level of abstraction over “uninteresting things” like resource gathering, etc. etc.

I misspelled “your” today in a business email. I won’t go into the messy details; it’s too painful right now.

You may forgive me, but I’ll never forgive myself. I should add my name to the List o’ Shame I keep in my office.

I feel a self-loathing-fueled alcohol binge weekend coming on. Time to channel my inner Hunter S. Thompson.

Panda Express: “You may not leave full, but you won’t leave hungry!”

Six brave men faced the Panda today. Their heat-lamped delicacies claimed three victims. A fourth is missing, presumed fed.

But man, Orange Chicken. We’re still not convinced there’s any meat in it, guessing rather that it may be just some Fried fried. I’d order more people to their doom in order to investigate but we’re running low on intrepid investigators. Besides, I can’t even order online groceries, let alone people.

To think one of the jobs I turned down was directly above a Chipotle! I wonder if I could have set up some sort of direct pre-tax burrito spending plan…

Day three of the One Month of Daily Writing pledge and I’m already feeling it. This has become my own personal Lost button. Writing an article on here just pushes back the clock to 24:00:00. Does existence wink out if I fail to write? Will that strange woman I left at the altar in the flashback I had last week suddenly awaken and start looking for me? I hope not; she crazy. Maybe I’ll get ice cream and a good nap instead. Who doesn’t want that?

That reminds me: Lost watchers, is there still a button at all? Or was this replaced by a strange Englishman walking around the jungle in a tophat, or maybe a coconut tree that is strangely dropping coconuts made of waffles. I don’t mean to be as condescending as I sound, but let’s review facts here.

Q: What’s out in the jungle?
A: A hatch.

Q: Oh, well that’s kind of interesting, I guess. What’s in the hatch?
A: A button.

Q: A button? Hmm. Well, okay, they can do neat things, right? Maybe a really cool, kick ass button. What’s it do?
A: Prevents a really bright light and the hatch collapsing.

Keep in mind that I just summarized some 44 episodes. Sure, there’s some other details thrown in around there too. People argue, a church is or is not built, drugs, babies, and flashbacks flashbacks FLASHBACKS! If Lost is a four-star meal (and given my appreciation of four-star dining, it may well be), then those details are kind of like the little fig leaves and tulip-shaped radish garnishes; while nice, they aren’t really the point.

Why do I keep beating up on Lost week after week on this site? Because I WANT IT TO BE GOOD. This show started with what is perhaps one of the best pilots in the history of pilots, and I think the gap between that inspired beginning and every subsequent episode has widened considerably and continues to do so. I want to tune in every week again, to have that eery opening sound effect get my psyched like it used to. In short, I WANT TO BELIEVE.

Hope is on the way though. Last week, our favorite island drama was beaten in ratings by CBS’ crime drama Criminal Minds. “What,” you say, “CBS is airing an overly-serious episodic crime drama about an elite unit that solves crimes single-handedly, ending each episode with a confession?” I know, contain your shock.

Anyhoo, Minds scored 16.7 million viewers to Lost’s 16.1 million. Certainly not a crushing blow, but considering the show has been down in ratings about 25% from last season, this is making more than a few people nervous. There’s rumour that there could be a shakeup coming for this show. Maybe it’s J.J. Abrams actually showing up on the set of his darling program once in awhile; maybe it’s something else entirely. But in an interesting twist, the more we aren’t watching this show, the more likely it is to get better.

This theory isn’t entirely without precedent. The West Wing began hemorrhaging viewers between its fourth and fifth seasons, and the abysmal ratings that led to its cancellation also led to what some call its best season. However, for every Mission Impossible (whose falling TV ratings also turned the quality around, at least quality by that show’s standards) you can cite an X-Files or Buffy whose rating woes led to fairly terrible dramatic changes, but I still hold out hope. What else can be done?

So do us all a favor, and tune into Criminal Minds on Wednesday. I hear they have this one about a bunch of people trapped in a hole and they have to kill one and it’s a desperate race against time and …

A recent journal entry:

Had an interview here in November. Saw the Best Buy and the Crate & Barrel next to the landfill & incinerator. Got stuck in 5:00 PM traffic. That’s Chicago.

Came to look for an apartment. Found one with no A/C, hardwood floors, and park view. Picked this over one across the street that had new everything and carpets. A park view is more Chicago. Hardwood floors are more Chicago. But I don’t live in a park view, and the mice that have apparently lived in this apartment for several winters have enjoyed the hardwood floors more than I have. That’s Chicago.

It’s 2 AM on a Tuesday in April. I’m riding the train home after a night out. More precisely, I’m taking the train to a bus to a street corner to walk to my apartment. I’m listening to two girls chat, one debating whether or not to sleep with someone she met tonight. She would, but she has class tomorrow. I think back to my own college days. A year earlier, I was a college student in a small town with no dreams or desires beyond remaining a college student in a small town for some time. My life has become so different, I think. It’s been a good night out with good people. I play with my phone, thinking of several people I’d like to call, but it’s pushing three A.M. now. So I listen to two girls discuss casual hookups instead and watch the city go by. That’s Chicago.

Cut to now. That’s why I don’t post journals online, I think to myself. Too melodramatic. You’d think I don’t like Chicago, which isn’t the case. There are so many great times to be had, and so many great people with which to do it with. But these fall into the category of “my personal life”, and one of my golden rules I’ve followed since I started writing online was to keep my personal life out of it as much as possible. Watching sunsets through skyscrapers on Lake Shore Drive, biking through Evanston at night, the iO, music, nightlife, rain on the beach, you get the idea. All reasons I love Chicago.

When I moved to Chicago, I knew one person in the area. I asked her “How long did it take you to get used to the city?” She sighed, and replied that she hadn’t. She had lived here for years. I had to think long and hard about that response, about whether or not I’d made the right decision to come here. Mornings at church and evenings with walks on the beach.

Moving to Chicago was no mistake. But I have to find a balance between activity and quiet. So far I haven’t been doing a good job of it. Evidence: I have to schedule phone calls; I laid down for a nap and woke up over 3 hours later; comments haven’t worked on this website since April. I’ve been an avid reader for some time, and I’ve been buying books in Chicago based upon my previous reading pace. The fact that I have 7 books I haven’t so much as opened should indicate how I’m handling this balance issue. I love Chicago and I love the activities here, but I’m realizing that I also need to have down time. Not neccessarily time alone, but just time not spent out on the town. Chicago isn’t going anywhere, and I’m not going anywhere for the immediate future at least, so there has to be balance then.

This is why I don’t post journals online. Too melodramatic. Sorry if you read this - I just had to ramble I guess. For something entertaining, try Patton Oswalt’s A One year full of Kick-Ass Movie Pitches by Erik Blevins.