Saturday, August 09, 2014

| Murder She Wrote

I've watched a lot of Murder She Wrote as a kid, so this breakdown of how almost every episode went is  hilarious and totally accurate: Lonk

Wednesday, August 06, 2014

Man, we woulda had a thousand of those by now.

Tuesday, August 05, 2014

| I'm a little ashamed we didn't come up with this first

LOL, Dice Shaming

| Packing Rats for Life

I have always been fairly balanced in what I keep, but my wife is a different story. She has a tendency to be a bit of a pack rat. Her issue seems to be a mix of both your habits, a little of the nostalgia bug, a little bit of the "I might need this someday" justification. Drives me a bit insane because in both cases she saves way too many things, making our apartment very busy. But hey, what are you going to do? For better or for worse.

We did see Guardians this past Saturday. I liked it quite a bit. I thought the dialog was way better than most of the campy or soulless crap that usually gets scripted for comic book movies these days. I do tend to agree with eLzar about the stinger. It was okay, but not a big deal for me.

D>M>

Monday, August 04, 2014

| Elzar's Catalog of Lost Dreams and Adventures

I don't know why I hoard either (dragon in a past life?) but my reasons are usually the completely irrational "this might come in handy someday" argument. This broken plastic rear-cover to a remote control I no longer own MIGHT come in handy someday. Let me place it on this pile of newspapers/rat shit/bags of piss. (I'm not that bad of a hoarder.)

Idea for your gaming-collection hoard pile:
Take a picture of each game, then write a blog/tumblr/livejournal/website.net about each game and the memories it triggers, like you just did with that 'Nam game. Then, ALI FUCK SHIT UP, pack the game in a box for the next con to sell (or Ebay, or whatevs). I think it might be a nice cathartic experience that serves the dual purpose of getting you to creatively express yourself by writing about your past in a memoir style AND clear some fucking space in your present life. You don't need any of those old games and Wy isn't going to play them anyways (if that ever creeps into your mind as a reason to keep stuff). He is of the future where they will implant games directly into their neck-jacks.

If you want to be really ambitious, keep the blog of this project private till it's all finished, then publish it as some kind of geek memoir where you tell this overarching story of your angry-youts days.

It can be the true-life nerd-version of:
Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry
(I haven't read this yet, but it sounds kind of awesome and it's being made into a movie which sounds less awesome because, how would that even fucking work? Ugh)

Sunday, August 03, 2014

| I Know Why I Packrat

Maybe I always knew, but I think I figured out a big part of why I packrat games.  If I look on my shelves and I pick any game off the shelf, I remember a lot of personal history around that game.  Some of this stuff I would never remember or think about without some sort of cue, and all the shit in my office is that very cue.

Mostly this has to do with RPGs, and the more I have this a-ha I realize there were also some games that I've sold that I wish I kept just for the memory jog (I'm really only thinking about Assault on Hoth, because I think Jordan and Yukari played it against each other in my Pine room way back when and that's a nice memory to have given where they ended up :) ).

For example, "Recon".  This is some shitty Vietnam RPG by Palladium that is poorly laid out, has worse copy, unclear rules, terrible art, etc. - truly an RPG representative of the boom in the 80's.  I don't think I ever actually played it, but what I do remember is I bought it from Galaxy Comics on Aviation, I also bought my first complete set of clear blue 'crystal' dice in the tube with the orange cap at the same time.  Thinking about Galaxy reminds me of what the store looked like, how I ogled all the comics on the walls, what an adventure it was for me to track down all the Punisher appearances I collected when I was younger, and that I was living in my grandmothers house on the Strand in Hermosa while our other house was being built.

All of these little triggers remind me of so much more from my past that I feel like I would really be losing some of myself if I let too many of them go.  I might lose that one cue that is tied to a whole thread of memories I might never get to enjoy or experience if I sell or get rid of that certain game.  I think I've instinctively known this and have been reluctant to get rid my sheet for this very reason.

Anyway, who's to say there isn't another, less junky way, to remember this stuff, and maybe it's not that crucial for me to remember in the first place - maybe I should be filling my brain with new and important things but there's no room because I have too much of the archive filled with the layout of Galaxy Comics (which I just remembered had a Mighty Mouse on it's business card).

For better or for worse, that's why I have so much shit.