Things I've Learned as a Geek: Theory #7

(this is a Note i put up on Facebook a while back that i thought i'd transfer over here for more easy reading)

The trading card game, or TCG, is a long-standing and time honored past-time among the geek community. I played the oldest and most respected of these, Magic: the Gathering, for about five years and would often spend hours perusing websites devoted entirely to theorycrafting and strategies.

As with most TCGs, M:tG is played using a deck of cards which you create out of your personal collection and pit against an opponent using his own personal deck. As of February, 2009, there were over eleven thousand unique cards to choose from, with 600 - 1,000 being added each year. This tremendous card pool creates an almost infinite number of possibilities for making a deck tailored exactly to your play-style or fanciful whim.

The challenge, then, is to make a deck that eliminates, to the best of your abilities, the randomness factor inherent to the game's rules. Each game is started with a seven card hand and a new card is drawn on each of your turns, so the likelihood of drawing exactly the card you need from your shuffled deck is dependent entirely on the construction of your deck.

This project is what makes a good player; a finely-tuned, 60-card deck will handily beat the 100+ card monstrosity that the kid down the street is always toting about with him. What makes a great player is the playing, or "piloting" of said finely-tuned deck.

The final effort in minimalizing the random factors of the game comes in playing your hand in such a way as to set yourself up for good luck. A short-sighted player will, when he finds himself in a bind, go all in, hoping that a final onslaught will be enough to secure victory. A more patient player knows that there exists in his deck a card that will save him; he only needs to survive long enough to draw it. This is what makes those "lucky draws", when they appear, seem so miraculous. They don't always show up, but when they do, the pro is fully prepared to take full advantage of the situation.

"Jeff, wtf are you talking about?"

It is impossible - short of holding a gun to the head of a person with a strong sense of self-preservation - to make anyone do anything. People, and situations, are outside of our control. The only variables we have any say in is our own actions. It is best, then, to live our lives so as to maximize our gains should favorable situations arise. We cannot count on Luck to come along and give us everything we've ever desired, but we can put ourselves into situations that increase the likelihood of us seeing it.

Play smart.

(Trev is tagged because he introduced me to Magic.
Tim is tagged because he taught me to play.
Nate is tagged because he was my punching bag in learning how to properly construct a deck. His usual strategy of throwing monsters the size of skyscrapers at my face left little room for error and made me quickly discover the holes in my stratagems.)

Step Off, O Ye Grinning Bastard

I am focusing myself.

Recently, during the in-between minutes of the night, right on the edge of my vision, i've been recognizing Depression rearing its dusty, smirking head. This is nothing new, but its been wonderfully absent in my life for several months now and i was just beginning to get used to a new status quo, emotionally.

Depression is nothing to get excited about 'round these parts; its just part of the family dark. A recently learned that i had a great aunt who stepped in front of a bus one day without explanation. Most of my extended family (on that side) has had at least a brief episode with depression and we generally come out of the experience all the better for it. But still, i suppose its never something to be taken lightly.

The important thing to remember about depression, for those who don't suffer from it, is that it is not just being very, very sad. Sadness is normal. Sadness is a sharp, localized pain that is easily targeted and dealt with. Depression, on the other hand, effects all areas of one's life and is, more than anything, exhausting. It drains your energy, your passion, and, if not overcome, your will to live. It is ennui to the Nth degree.

I have always been what i refer to as a "Depressive" personality. It is common for me to wake up one day and simply feel quiet, delicate, contemplative. Rainy days often provoke such moods and i do not shy away from them. Once, when i was younger, i questioned why "depression" got such a bad rap and decided to embrace and utilize the effects of such moods for artistic purposes. Several years, a short stint on Lexapro and a lot of experience later, i realize that my occasional dark moods and actual depression are two entirely different beasts.

This time 'round, i resolve to cut the beast off at the pass. I know his tricks, and i know his effects. I've seen him coming and i'm taking measures to make sure his arrival is a most unpleasant one.

You can't scare me any more, Mister What's-the-Point-Getting-Out-of-Bed. I broke your wrists last time we fought, and you'll not get hold of me or mine again.

You Spin My Head Right 'Round/Turn Turn Turn

Summer. Really, she's great. I have nothing against Summer, per se. She's warm and bright, energetic and affectionate. She gets so excited about even the most mundane things. Its hard to look at things in the same way you used to when you're around Summer. Vivacious to the extreme.
This is, of course, why i can't stand Summer. There's only so long you can take everything being "fun" before you kinda want to shove a beach ball down her throat. You know that feeling when you wake up in the morning, having slept poorly the night before, and have to deal with that person who is some how, some way, manage to be eternally, morbidly bubbly? That's what its like to deal with Summer all the time.

Autumn is a lovely girl. Spending time with her is soothing, comforting somehow. While not quite as "warm" as Summer, she's very friendly and genuine, and when she cares, you can tell. She loves life and trying to find the beauty in the world around her, especially when its a little harder to find.
Cynicism is my biggest complaint with Autumn. She's seen enough death and pain in her life that she has come to recognize it all around her. It is by its contrast, however, that she is able to truly appreciate the beauty in the cracks.

Oh, my dear Winter. Winter can find truth in chaos, beauty in garbage. Winter has infinite hope and infinite insight. She has seen the worst the world has to offer, and still gets out of bed in the morning.
Poor girl is easily given to bouts of depression. Too proud to be pitied, its best to just avoid her during such times; she'll be fine. She's strong and resilient. Its just that sometimes, you need a little attention, too, and Winter is not one to often give it.

Now Spring - Spring is a delight. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who is more refreshing to be around. Her smile comes easily and effortlessly. Her manner is enigmatic, coy, yet somehow inviting; imparting the first clues to a wonderful journey of firsts. Spring reminds you what its like to be a kid again, just by going about her daily routine.
There's nothing wrong with Spring. And so, there's nothing wrong with her. But that's good, i guess.

Golden Rations

I really should have gone into some kind of mathematics. My father would be so proud.

The longer i live, the more i realize that almost every aspect of human existence lies somewhere on a giant bell curve. Having a shitty day? Start keeping a log and i will guarantee you that you have just as many crap days has you have really good days with a whole mess of mediocre days in between. Feeling like you never have any time? Turns out, a vast majority of your time is spent sleeping or working with only the tiny edges being devoted to the things you really want to be accomplishing. Think that person is a jerk? You're probably right.

Unfortunately for my father, an accountant of no small skill, my mind has never had a propensity towards numbers, so my recognition of these patterns lies almost solely in the sociological forums. After interacting with the hundreds of thousands of people in my life, it was almost inevitable that i'd start to pick up on the similarities within the intricacies. Human beings, like snowflakes, are unique; no two are completely identical. Like snowflakes, however, they all share a huge number of similarities. It is the beauty of the individualism that drew first drew me to my brief time studying psychology and the simple, logical nature of their similarities which makes them so easy to understand. Much like how i assume numbers make sense to my father.

"X" is still not a number, Dad.

Your personality can be plotted on a bell curve. The edges are the little minutiae which make you unique while the larger area you share with most other folk. Whether it agrees with the self-esteem programs we are taught in school or not, a huge majority of people will respond in a predictable manner when presented with a certain set of predetermined circumstances. It doesn't make you less of a person, i promise.

Stereotypes are generally formed because of the bell curve. Young kids are usually snotty. Old folk are often poor drivers (for a great many varying reasons). Babyboomers like The Beatles. Mac users think they're better than you. The trick, then, is to acknowledge that the edges of the curve exist and to give everyone you meet the benefit of the doubt. Don't assume. Use the Golden Rule.

I mention this, my reader friend, not to try and describe some great Truth that has been heretofor remained undiscovered. I am simply attempting to explain one of the ways i look at the world. One part of my Family Dark is a certain depressive nature which, while often lending itself to a lovely artistic bent, just as easily propels the sufferer in front of a bus. For me, i strive to make the world understandable. Once i ascertain a certain Truth about the nature of humanity or society or politics or physics or anime, i can become comfortable with it.

As Murphy once famously stated, 90% of everything is crap. There's not a lot you can do about it. Personally, i take comfort in that knowledge. Its just another fact of life to be dealt with or ignored as you see fit.

Always remember that its the 10% that makes life so amazing. Make the most of it.

Houses & Homes, Pt. 3

The summer sun beat hard down on his upturned face as he mopped his brow with his shirtsleeve. The burning eye in the sky told him that it was noon and he plopped down on the slowly growing pile of wood next to him and lit a cigarette, closing his lighter with a small flourish.

The winter had been a long one, leaden with tears and heavy glances. She had not understood his epiphany, that the house they had built was built in error – out of a need for security more than a desire for satisfaction. She had screamed, cried, pleaded, thrown things at him, upturned furniture. In the end, he had been forced to drive her from the building and back to her parents' home, her pack and belongings slung over his own shoulders, her weeping being their traveling tune.

The rest of the spring was spent cataloging the nature and quality of the house. He didn't spend another night in its walls, but pitched a shelter on the edge of the woods and cooked his repasts over an open flame. Once the meticulous lists were completed and he was sure that he had learned every error and how it had come about, he began deconstruction; the first day of summer.

Plank by plank, nail by nail, pillow by chair, the house was torn limb from limb and thrown into a great pile. The burn in his arms was cathartic, the sweat on his brow soothing to his bruised mind. As the pile grew, so to did his satisfaction with this new-found life he was “building” for himself. Every board felt like a small revelation, the naked wood underneath describing the nature of all the falsehood he had inadvertently found himself believing. When the pile stood as high as he and the remains of the house little more than a skeleton of sun-bleached timber, he finally felt whole again.

Cigarette finished, he stood, took up his hammer in his belt, went back into the carcass. Climbing, monkey-like, muscles taut and straining, he ascended the structure to the apex and began the long – but last – step of disassembling the framework from the top, down. Overtaken by the fever of determination, he did not stop for rest or sustenance until he finished, leaving only the foundation posts in place. Two days he spent crawling over the final remains and he finalized the entire enterprise by hewing off the last posts at the base.

The garden had long returned to its natural state, as if it had never felt the touch of the hoe; the fence surrounding it had been removed and cast into the pile. The entire structure removed, the ground where it had once stood was now level and bare, the only visible evidence of its existence the expanse of dirt in place of the surrounding grass. The paving stones that had once made up the walk were pulled up and planted, on edge, in the earth around the pile, creating an uneven circle about it. The pile itself, meanwhile, had been carefully altered, with certain longer boards and pieces replaced so as to protrude out- or upward. On some of these poles, furniture was skewered. On others, blankets were stretched or other boards lashed. This final effort produced a horrific effect on the ramshackle monolith. It stood halfway between the woods and the empty plot, grinning insanely, an ominous warning to passersby of events unknown.

Avuncular, Yes I Am

I paced around the waiting room in a frenetic sort of mania. My mother sat calmly at the little round table, reminiscing with her friend about their past pregnancies. I tried to sit at my computer to find a way to fritter some time, but the communication between my mind and the information i was taking in was muddled. I couldn't concentrate. It took me forever to finagle a wireless connection.

A friend came and met me. I smoked a cigarette outside, calmed by the action and her presence. The unholy amount of nervous energy coursing through my limbs quieted, slowed to a trickle.

Back in the ward, i found out i had missed Steve coming out. Everything was going fine. Allyson had been given an epidural and was calm and pain-free. Radius of dilation indicated that our wait would not be long. We settled in for the home-stretch.

Heh. Yeh, right. My nervous energy came back full force in no time and i was soon forced up from my computer to patron the sidewalk outside. I predicted - based on Murphy's Law and my own piss-poor luck - that the baby would be born while my friend and i were gone. I was almost right. Shortly after i finished my smoke, my phone vibrates:

From: Steve
Check your email!

We run back upstairs, i gibber something about emails and Steve to my mom and log into Gmail. Lo and behold, what should my eyes see but this little angel on my monitor:


And dear me, what a sight.

Houses & Homes, Pt 2

“Home”.

The word continued to ring in his head. Something about it felt wrong. False. He replayed the argument he had had with her over and over again on his long trek back from the annual meeting in the glade. She hadn't wanted him to go, claiming that their journey was over, that they had built a home for themselves and he had no reason to return to his old life, his old friends. The fight had been long and bitter and, in the end, he had slung his pack over his shoulders and slammed the front door shut to block out the sound of her weeping.

He felt alive again on the trail, in his old ways, to see his old friends. He had hunted, reveling in the game; the chase, the kill, the blood on his hands. The taste of meat, after almost a year of nothing but vegetables and bread, had revitalized something deep and forgotten inside of him. He arrived in the glade full of good spirits and to the triumphal thunder of his comrades in wandering. For seven days they sat around the fire, swapping stories and sharing their meals. The musician had sacrificed valuable pack-weight to bring his guitar, and the music harmonized them. The brute had brought a jug of his best whiskey, and the liqueur cheered them. The lover had brought his best stories from the far reaches of the land, and his words challenged them. He himself had brought a sample of the tobacco he had been growing that year, and the smoke soothed them. All too soon, though, their time was over and they bid each other bittersweet farewell and went their separate ways.

Smoke traced a spiraled, parabolic arc, dissipating slowly, following the path of his discarded cigarette. His house was in sight and she hated his smoking. He had finished the last of his meat, not bothering to hunt so close to his property, knowing that he'd not be allowed to keep any of it. He sighed, readjusted his pack, and walked up the path to the front door.

His reception was terse, but civil, and the cold shoulder only lasted until dinner, which consisted of a simple fair of vegetable stew and sourdough. He ate two helpings and didn't taste any of it.

The moon rose on their bodies entwined, her pale skin turned to porcelain by the ghost light. She was warm and passionate, burning for his presence, his arms wrapped around her. He prayed she didn't notice his hollowness. The motions were right, each caress practiced to perfection, the words coming in just the right order, at just the right time, but his mind was in the sitting room.

The sitting room was cedar.

The outside walls were sided with oak. The bedroom was cherry. There was no stonework. No willow. No ebony. This was not his house.

And he knew, in that moment, that this life was over.