"That's how you investigate. I know, it's what I used to do."

I’ve been playing Skyrim for a while, as has the known universe, and along the way you pick up quests like stray dogs pick up ticks.  You can’t avoid getting a quest.  Talk to a stranger and they’ll hand you tasks by the armful, leaving Skyrim so helpless you wonder how they get anything done without relying on mute foreigners to do their work for them.
Thankfully, all of these quests are listed on your Quest menu, and when I’m between big quests I’ll try to fill out the smaller ones that I have, apparently, completed incidentally without even realizing I’ve helped somebody: “Collect the bounty from Raerek,” or “Return to Talen-Jai.”
Then I saw “Go kill the chief at Dragon Bridge Overlook.”
So I went off to slaughter him.  I didn’t know why.  I had no recollection of anyone even asking me to kill these people, nor did I have any particular motivation to do so.  It was just on my list.  And as I stood among the dead bodies, I finally realized:

I had become Leonard Shelby.

The 2011 Annual Greed List!

The time has come for my Annual Greed List – the large (and, yes, uncut) list of things I desire for Christmas in 2011. Why do I do this? If you’re really interested, here’s a brief history of the Greed List.
The briefer version, however, is that I think “What you want” is a reflection of “Who you are” at this moment – your music, your hobbies, your fandoms, who you are as a person.  And while I guess I could just toss all this on an Amazon Wishlist and send you over, why bother?  I want you to know who I am in this moment, and so I not only list what I want, but explain why I want it.
So here it is.  Here’s who I am this year.  And “Who I am” is a little sad, because generally Gini and I get pretty good gifts for each other, but this Christmas we’re not because of a$2,000 car repair bill that hit just before Thanksgiving.  So we’ve vowed not to exchange presents – which is probably going to be bent a little bit, but not much.  So I’m not planning on getting a whole lot this Christmas.  Alas.
Still, I’ve got Gini.  And as noted, “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth,” and part of the reason we’re broke is because I spent embarrassing thousands of dollars on my dental woes, so hey.  I got it.
It’s good.
King-sized bed.
Our bed situation is a little embarrassing.  Because we’re older.  And this really is a perfectly good bed.
But as I’ve gotten older, my sleep has rubbed thinner.  I’m twitchier, taking longer time to doze off, and waking up sooner.  And Gini was never really a deep sleeper anyway, so this is not working out.
The thing is, we love to cuddle, but our queen-sized bed doesn’t allow us room to thrash.  So  about twice a week, one of us gets up from the bed and grabs our pillows and sleeps in the guest room, rather than subjecting the other to a night of bumpy partners.  This feels like failure.
What we need is a king-sized bed – one where we can snuggle up to each other in the center, yet retreat to our far corners if we have to when the bad nights come calling.  It works in hotel rooms (with the obvious disadvantage of having to crawl across an endless Desert of Blankets to get to the end), and it would work here.
This was probably going to be our big Christmas gift to ourselves this year, but a King-Sized bed is pretty expensive.  More so when you consider the rock-like surfaces we need for our ancient backs to be happy.  So it’s not going to happen.
But it’d be nice to dream.
A Universal Remote.
Our Monster Penis System is legendary – a 55″ television with a surround-sound system that rattles the windows.  But it’s also a legendary beast.
To use the Monster Penis System requires not one, but five separate remotes – one for the sound system, one for the television, one for the Blu-Ray DVD (thanks, Dad!), one for the DVR, one for the X-Box.  And probably one or two for things we don’t even know.
So Gini and I joke about how much control we have at any given time – Gini has the sound remote, I have the DVR, and as it turns out we want to watch the DVD player and then we have to get up and track it down.  What I’d like would be one remote that controls our entire system at once, so that we can then lose that and be able to control nothing.
That’s what I desire for Christmas: one single, glorious point of failure.
Paiste Alpha Thin Crash 14″
I’ve started drumming again this year because I like having nice arms.  Pretty girls like nice arms.  And it’s a good form of exercise, smashing and thrashing away for forty-five minutes or so.
The problem is that while I like my drums (though I do fantasize about a full set), the cymbals I have are very one-note.  Which is to say that I started as a hard rock and punk drummer, and the cymbals I have are very big, angry, long-decay things where if I hit the crash it’ll still be vibrating by the end of the song.  I want a nice bright cymbal with a short decay so that I can vary the sounds.
Not that anyone but me will be able to hear it, of course.  But it’ll make me happy.  And stronger.
Awful Hawaiian Shirts
I used to want T-shirts.  Black T-shirts.  But in the past year or so, I… have become a Hat Person.
Which is to say that I have ceased my youthful ways of black shirts with clever slogans and black pants.  No, I have donned an outfit that can allow me into almost any restaurant, since it is a casual wear.  But there is a problem: I run out of shirts early.
Look, I have an entire drawer full of black T-shirts, but I only have about ten Hawaiian shirts. Which means that if Gini’s lax with the laundry, I’m back to square one.  I need garish shirts, the worse the better.
I mean, look, you know the shirt I really wanted to get?  It was in New Orleans.  It was orange. With green stars on it.  And in each star?  Alternating.  Young Elvis, Old Elvis, Young Elvis, Old Elvis. I consider it one of the greatest disappointments of my life that it was a size “small.”  So you know damn well that I’m going for garish.
Stephen King’s 11/23/69
Not that I haven’t been a raving Stephen King fan, but I’m not a Stephen King nutter.  I’ve gotten to the point where I skip his books unless they’re recommended to me – the lovely Megan recommended Full Dark, No Stars, and aside from his rapetastic set of novellas (which is not a ding in itself, but like spam, that was more rape that I’d planned for), and the OMG DISAPPOINTMENT after the stellar beginning of UNDER THE DOME, I haven’t purchased a lot.
However, his latest story – which seems cockamamie – presses all my buttons.  It’s time travel. The man goes back to Derry, for God’s sake.  And it’s been getting stellar reviews, both in terms of the New York Times liking it, and in terms of my friends going, “Yeah, this works.”
So we’re poor little churchmice now, and I am waiting patiently for Christmas.
Mail-Order Mysteries: Real Stuff From Old Comic Book Ads!
Here’s a Greed List first: I’m just gonna tell you to watch the video.  Here, check this amazement out:

If you grew up in the 1970s and read comic books, you’ll doubtlessly have wondered what you got when you ordered from those phenomenal ads.  I certainly do.  And with this book, I can find out exactly what level of disappointment I would have been in for had I ponied up the cash!  (Sea Monkeys, man.  Sea Monkeys taught me ads were a lie.)
Super 8 Blu-Ray.
Speaking of both Stephen King and reading comic books in the 70s, Super 8 was the best Stephen King flick in a long time.  Except it wasn’t actually written by Stephen King, and it didn’t feature a Stephen King ending, which may or may not be a good thing.  (Stephen King’s recent messes of endings versus Steven Spielberg’s sappy endings?  Depends on what your flavor today is.)
But the Blu-Ray comes with two hours of extras, and indeed I do love the extras.  So can I haz this?  Please?
Nitpicker’s Guide for Deep Space Nine Trekkers
One of the joys of this year is watching Deep Space Nine with Gini.  It’s an incredible time commitment – at this point we’re in Season 7, which means we’ve watched 115 hours of television – that’s five straight days of enjoyment.  And I’ve grown to love the characters.
The Nitpicker’s Guide is written by a guy who loves Star Trek so much he actually will wind up the tape and count how many floors went by in that elevator scene.  And compare it to the known schematics of the Enterprise.  And determine that according to what just happened, the elevator exited the spaceship and went about fifty yards into deep space.
I’ve inhaled all of the Next Generation Nitpicker books and even love the old Trek books, but never read Deep Space Nine because I heard it wasn’t that good.  Boy, was I wrong.  So I want to go over these stories again with a fine-toothed comb because I want to read the behind-the- scenes stuff.  And see what happened here.
Muppet Movie.
The new Muppet Movie – well, just called “The Muppets” – spurred a deep happiness at remembering how good the old Muppet movie was, too.  And I’d like the Blu-Ray version of the Muppet Movie, with two hours’ worth of extras and crazy stuff and sing-alongs… But I guess the Muppet producers didn’t think that a new version of the movie would sell to kids at, you know, Christmas.
I mean seriously?  What the hell, Muppet people?  You could have cleaned up.  It was waiting for you.  Why?
In any case, we’ve got the old version.  And it’s not like the movie isn’t good.  And because it’s old, you should be able to find it cheap.  If you want to.

A Central Truth

“Seems to me that when someone says, ‘That person thinks he’s better than me,’ what they are really saying is ‘I think that person is better than me and I don’t like feeling that way.‘”
I think she’s onto something here, especially given the emotional reactions to everything she’s noting.  A worthy read.  Check it out.

Coming To A Mall Near You: "Undercarriage"

Gini went to Teavana this weekend and almost drowned in pretention.
Teavana, if you do not know, is a store that doesn’t sell what you think it sells.  You might think it sells tea.  But what it actually purveys is an experience.  This is why the store is beautifully painted, and all the teas come in beautiful canisters, and when you read the descriptions of the sample teas available they sound like they’re a rare museum piece brought here by hand, from specially-trained Sherpas, from Mars.
It made me want to stand in the middle of the store and shout, “YOU’RE DRINKING LEAVES, PEOPLE!  LEAVES IN HOT WATER!”
Ah, but I cannot truly mock pretention, because there are things that mash my “Pretentious Douche” button hard.  Whenever I go to The Velvet Tango Room, home of exotic alcohol mixtures, I’m transformed into some snobby jerkhole who talks about top notes and his distaste for chartreuse… and I love it.  I love feeling like hundreds of people have slaved to bring me something rare and grand and noble that only We Fine Few can appreciate properly.  What I am imbibing – for a Pretentious Douche never “drinks” – is a heady blend of flavors and beauty that one must sit down to savor.  It makes me feel like a king of old, all for sixteen bucks a drink.
Done properly, I can cosplay Croesus on a George Bailey budget.
Clearly, given that Starbucks took something most of America used to view on the level of Twinkies and turned it into a four-buck-a-cup experience, one can take any drink and Experiencize it.  (One eagerly awaits the “Chill Assistance” store, wherein the various rare flavors of Kool-Aid are presented as magnificent subtleties for your tastebudding pleasure.)
The question is, is there anything we can’t Experiencize?  Is there anything humans do that we can’t apply the magic formula to?  The magic formula of:

• Take an ordinary, everyday thing;
• Create it from exotic, hard-to-find materials either shipped here from afar or grown locally and organically at great expense;
• Have copywriters describe the ordinary, everyday thing in sweeping detail, so you’re forced to pay attention to every detail and start analyzing bits about this experience you never would have before;
• Charge an assload for it, so it feels like this thing must be worth money now that you’ve paid ten bucks for it instead of fifty cents.

To verify this, I want to create a store called “Undercarriage,” a store devoted entirely to the sale of premium blends of toilet paper.  Oh, we all have our favorites already, don’t we?  Thick-ply vs thin-ply?  But what happens when you experience:

The French Curl: This rare moire watered silk blend was originally meant for Imperial usage only, famed by King Louis XIV as the only fabric smooth enough to satisfy his stylish brand of royalty.  An organza overlay gives this unparalleled cleansing material a hint of massaging purity as it excels at buffing away the clumpier waste materiel, and a hint of enfleuraged jasmine and sandalwood will leave you feeling like a monarch.  $20 per bundle, $7 for the pocketbook pack.

Think I’m kidding?  I’m pretty sure if I had the money to create a store where there were charts to find the perfect cleansing experience based on your diet, lots of references to ayurvedic medicine that mention speeding through such an essential element of life is why mankind is so stressed these days, saying that a stronger brand of cleansing material is needed to let you appreciate the sensuality of getting in touch with your body, and wham!  I’m an ass-millionaire.
You folks better hope I don’t become rich enough to start a store like this.  If I ever became rich, I’d make millions.

A Request For Psychiatric Help, Or: My Muse Is Killin' Me

I require your help because my S&M Muse hates me.
Which is to say that while others have a delicate muse that leads them gently to poetic fields covered in dew, I have a muse who grabs me by the ear and then jumps up and down on my stomach until I vomit out a story.
I’d like to tell you I have a choice in which tale I write next, but I really don’t.  My muse, subconsciously, has a knack for finding my weakest spot and forcing me to write a story that hinges on precisely that weakness.  Am I bad at characterization?  Write a story with next to no plot.  Bad at theme?  Write a story that doesn’t make any sense without the underlying theme to glue it together.  Bad at prose?  Here’s a tale that won’t work at all unless the ending is poetic and vivid.
In this case, my muse is kicking me firmly in the balls, because my weakest point overall as a writer?
My loathing of research.
I think that’s why I write fantasy and SF, because who’s to say I’m wrong?  Physics?  Oh, don’t get on me about physics, as long as the characters are compelling nobody will care if the physics are gobbledegook.  And magic’s just magic, you can’t correct me on that. I just wanna write, man, and Wikipedia’s right here, so why do I have to look anything up?
Except what I woke up with this morning was a horror novel about a psychiatric ward.  My muse wants me to do this.  And for this to work, I have to have that Stephen King-ish attention to detail where all the little bits are well-researched and fall out right.
I’m actually going to have to read books to do this one… which is where you come in.  Hopefully.
What I need are books on what it’s like as a psychiatric student in residence – preferably memoirs, so I can get not just what it’s like to learn to become a therapist/psychiatrist/psychologist who deals with patients.  I’m looking for books with not just a focus on dealing with the patients, but the experience of what it’s like to be with your fellow students as you take this journey – that pressure-cooker experience of “This is my life, starting” and the types of folks you run into along the way.  I’ve read tons of books like this about surgeons and nurses, but none in the mental health field.
So anything you can recommend to me on the topic would be good.  I’d be grateful.  Intensely grateful.  And maybe my muse would stop elbowing me in the back of the skull.