centre of the universe - the dreaming

I love you all. You know that, because I tell you all the time.

Buddy Holly, you were my first boyfriend. Coincidentally, you were also my first dead boyfriend. You know what? I'm not going to harp on little imperfections like not having a pulse.

What can I say to you, Johnny Depp? Oh! A little lower, please.

Gary Oldman, I never wanted to have to do this, but...it's just not working out. I will always think fondly of you, and we'll always have Sid and Nancy. I just...I've moved on. And really, what did you expect? You haven't returned my calls in years. And, since you'll probably ask anyway (yes, I do know you that well), I AM seeing someone else. Hugh Laurie. He and I share a birthday (on the BEST DAY OF THE YEAR), and, well...he's FUNNY, Gary. He plays piano. Have you even ever SEEN his work with Stephen Fry? Yeah. Well. Not to mention in Blackadder. I think it's hilarious, for the record, that someone who played predominantly awkward twits in Britain is cast as a brilliant dickhead in the States. Anyway, Gary Oldman...that's why you haven't heard from me lately. It's because I'm with Hugh Laurie now. If y'all feel the need to engage in an EPIC CAGE-MATCH BATTLE over me, let me know. I'll wear something more comfortable.

I know you and I have known about each other for a long time, Keith Moon, but it's really been in the last couple of years that we've been getting serious about each other. And, just let me say, you make me *very happy*.

Wolverine, you're beautiful. No one could ever replace you. And that thing you can do in Yoga because of your skeleton made of SOLID ADAMANTIUM...well, this public forum isn't the place, but suffice it to say...wow.


You and I have spent many, many sleepless nights together, Neil Gaiman, and I think it's obvious to everyone that as my International Literary Boyfriend, you have quite a big responsibility in our relationship. I'm not difficult to please, as you know; just remember, I'm not going to kick you out of bed for eating crackers, so please bring the tasty onion-flavoured ones next time you're by.

Robert Kroetsch and Donald Sutherland, as my Canadian Literary and Canadian Performing Arts Boyfriends, I expect the two of you to get along. Donald, just sit nicely while Robert reads; Robert, Donald would do a Wonderful treatment of voicing your work. Also, I think both of you do the chess?

Now, the main reason I've mentioned all of you is because i have something to tell you. It shouldn't surprise you, and it certainly doesn't change anything between us.

His Nibs is pretty much unsurpassingly awesome. I love hanging out with him (you'll know that, Keith and Johnny, because you've spent time with us together. **Think what you will, dear reader.**), and he pretty much rocks. Even when he's being a jerk, I love him. You know when you have friends and they get in to a new relationship, and they're all annoying and smoodgy and snuggly and disgustingly cheerful all over the place? Yeah. Well. I kind of turn in to a brainless teenage girl around His Nibs most of the time. Until he pisses me off.

Anyway, yeah. Doesn't change anything. I just wanted to make sure you understand that while I love each and every one of you, His Nibs is my HUSBAND.

We can still make out, though.

Labels: Button Theory, His Nibs, living in a tree, strings

I've been thinking a lot about theory. All kinds of theory: literary theory, music theory, soup theory, game theory, education theory, social theory, scientific theories...etc. etc. etc.. It occurred to me that I might not at all be thinking about theory, depending on what you mean by theory versus what I mean by theory. So I'll break it down a bit: I've been thinking about the way I think about these things, and the way other people think about these things. I've been thinking about the way these things are explained, and the methods by which these things are done or get done...I've been thinking about ruling or guiding principles evident in these things. So I really mean theory not in terms of a theorem, nor in terms of something which needs to be proved or disproved, but rather in terms of methods and principles. If you will.

Maybe this is just a thinkin' time for me; I'm not sure. But seriously; I'll read something, and I'll think, "what led the author to say this in this way, and what are the implications saying this in this way has on the reader...and could it have been said differently, and if it had been said differently, I wonder what the implications might have been in that circumstance on the reader. I wonder what these symbols actually *mean*, or whether they have meaning at all." I've been thinking about little tiny particles, and how there's no way at all we can know what exactly it is that they do; I've been thinking about particles vibrating and twisting around and folding back in on themselves through time and space. Then I start thinking about all the numbers and mathematics involved in this, and I go a bit boggle-eyed and move on to music.

So what I've really been thinking an awful lot about, it occurs to me now that I put this down on pape...um...screen, is game theory. Now I've never studied game theory (I have studied aspects of most of those other kinds of theory), but I've done an awful lot of gaming. I also don't mean 'game theory' as in the branch of mathematics and economics which tries to define behaviour in strategic situations. I mean 'game theory' in terms of 'theory about games, and gaming in particular'. But that being said, there are some similarities. There's talk of a 'zero sum game', where one player or group of players succeeds at the expense of another player or group of players...and that does come in to what I've been thinking about. As does the idea of equilibrium.

I've put in a fair share of time and effort and emotional investment. I prefer, when given the choice, to participate in LARP (Live Action Role Playing, in case you've forgotten, which I know you haven't). So I've been wondering why that is. I've been wondering why it is that I like a certain style of gaming, and why other people like different styles.

I was about to say 'feel free to wander away at this point and then come back near the end', but I've decided against saying that because it might give the impression that what I'm going on about isn't important, and I think it is, because it has deeper ...erm... thingies.

So.

First. In Game Theory (big letters = the mathematical/social/biological terminology I said up there I wasn't necessarily going to discuss), there is a distinction drawn between 'one-player games', which basically means a single person making decisions that, in theory, only affect their own self. And I haven't really thought much about that, so I'm not going to talk much about it except to say that what I've been thinking about has much more to do with the other sort of game; the two-plus sort of game.

Infused in traditional Game Theory (which may or may not actually have to do with "games") is this insistence that there must be a binary win-lose outcome. I find that ridiculous. Correction: I find that supposition ridiculous in terms of the games I play. Now you know that I'm a competitive person (something which I only just discovered about myself within the last few years. Duh.), and sure, when I'm playing cribbage or Sorry! or any of the multitude of board games or card games or darts games out there, or some competitive sports, I understand the basic win-lose tenet. It's simplistic, and, in my opinion, for the most part it's boring. The fun of those games is not in the outcome, but in the process.

Moving along to RPGs:
The win-lose outcome is now stretched...it is no longer so clear who is the winner, if there is a winner. If you get a TPK (Total Party Kill...different from a Total Buzz Kill), have you 'lost' the game? OR have you encountered an insurmountable force working against you that necessitates your making new characters? Is the need for making a new character a sign of 'loss' or 'failure'? Or is it a new opportunity to solve the mystery/mysteries proposed by the GM (Games Master, in case you'd forgotten)? Or does it have to be one or the other? RPGs are terribly interesting because they become, if done well, a collaborative storytelling process, and if you have the right people sitting around the table (people with whom you feel comfortable enough), it does become a somewhat immersive experience.

Which is to say, when you play a game of chess, you're not really *immersed* in the game. You might be intensely concentrating on it; you might have an intent of focus that blocks out other stimuli. But you're not *becoming* a part of the game. You're analysing strategy. To me, strategy analysis in RPGs is, to put it bluntly, boring. And unnecessary. There is no real 'winning' in RPGs, unless you're playing in a contest or tournament. Which is why I don't play in contests or tournaments. For me, an enjoyable gaming experience is one where I can immerse myself in the story. I do not believe that the mechanics of a game are paramount*.

Let me be clear about something: I don't mind competition. I don't even mind competitive storytelling, or competitive acting, or competitive improv. But competition is not what drives RPGs, in my opinion. A friend of mine once described TT (Table Top) gaming as a 'direct competition with the GM'. I don't think of it that way. And I think I'm paraphrasing when I say that same friend described LARP as a 'competition against the story itself'. And this conversation included discussions of mechanics and rules and guidelines. My friend said that the rules (again, I'm paraphrasing, so I might not have the point exactly right, but I think I have the gist of it) are there to provide a framework by which players can compete in a relatively "equalised" or "normalised" environment - if everyone understands the same rules, they then understand the paramaters within which they can play the game.

To me, that's a game's setting. If elves can fly in my world, that's kind of important information to know when planning a strategic retreat from a battle. If the supernatural being you're playing in a LARP can regenerate, but only by taking the life of another human being, that's important information to have before you play a character who's lost his arms, legs, and buttocks seven times a year since he turned eight. Setting does not equal rules or mechanics. That's pretty straightforward.

...but I go on, don't I? Maybe tomorrow's installment of 'cenobyte's gaming theory' will have to do with rules and mechanics specifically.

Labels: Button Theory, gaming

I don't study a whole lot of Buddhism, or Taoism, although I am familiar enough with both to feel perfectly comfortable to insist I admire some of the practices both forms of spiritual enlightenment provide. In fact, a long time ago, a Very Wise Man told me, during a particularly difficult time in my life, that one of the teachings of Taoism is to learn to bend like the reed in the river, *with* the current, but to be unchanged *by* the current (compared to the rock in the river, which is gradually worn away to nothing). That Very Wise Man also told me, that like the scene in The Tao of Pooh, I was looking through the entire forest for a particular pinecone, without realising the pinecone I'd been looking for was right beside me. "You're looking too hard," he told me. "Just be."

These are things I have taken (and I feel a bit guilty about having taken them, even though they were freely offered) and they have made me, if not a better person, then certainly a better lover, a better wife, a better mother. That particular man told me that sometimes, you need to just let what needs to happen, happen. In retrospect, what I learned from his teaching is a skill at that time, I did not have. It was the ability to let go. The ability to recognise that everything happens in the manner in which it is supposed to happen, and there is no sense losing sleep over it.

Particularly if it's something that happened in the past.

So when my computer stopped being able to boot last week, and wouldn't show any image at all on the monitor, I thought I must have acquired some kind of nasti virus, and so I tried using the restore program the computer folk had installed. When I purchased the computer, the fellows told me that you had to be very careful with the restoration programme, because it could reformat your drive. If you knew what you were doing, though, you could restore just only your OS and settings and leave your data alone. Eventually, I came to the realisation that in fact, I had to take my computer to the fixit place.

They did a "full restore" on my primary hard drive.

I lost all of my writing
I lost all photos and videos of our children from about November 2007 to Christmas 2008
I lost all of my email, including addressbooks
I lost all of my children's writing
I lost all of the game stuff I have been working on for the past year
Also, because my system was still covered under warranty, we lost all of this "fer free".

But here's the deal. In fact, I have much of my writing saved externally. Sure, I lost some of it, but the thing about writing is that you can always make more. And sometimes, starting fresh on something really embetters it in the long run. We have all of the photos and videos of our children from BEFORE December 2007, and much of it on disc, and a bunch of the 2008 photos in print. Most of what I had saved in email probably wasn't really integral for me to have saved...

My children will continue to write witty, brilliant things, and we have a hard copy of The Captain's novel study that he wrote for Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone.

The really *important* game stuff is saved externally. I lost the program I use to edit it, but I'm sure I can figure something out.

So, really, when I look at this thing, it's kind of annoying that things happened in the manner they did. But that being said, it's certainly not like my house burned down or my cat peed on dinner or anything. Little jerk. Anyway, it's one of those things where you realise that if you spend too much time fretting over something you can't change, or over something that really doesn't change your life in any really momentous way, you're going to waste a big chunk of your time on a whole lot of nothing.

I've decided it's not worth my time nor my effort (which is pretty dear, these days) in upsettitude.

Labels: Button Theory, computers, taoism

Okay, this is the thing.

I have a few things I'd like to talk about; a few posts to make. But there's a Porblem. And the Porblem is that I just haven't gobs of time to physically sit down and write them.

And my co-worker has just come up with the Best Thing Ever: Einstein's theory of special button relativity. Which is closely related to the problem of Shroedinger's button hole. Maybe some day, I can explain these concepts to you.

Then again, maybe someday the roast will cook itself.

It's been an odd day, Marcy. An odd day.

Labels: Button Theory, Einstein, Odd day, Shroedinger