Saturday April 2, 2005

MAKING THE GRADE – KINDA SORTA

Just when I got done telling Frank (Burns? Furillo? N. Furter?) that nothing was going on in my life, something started going on in my life. Well… in a way. Ironically, it’s related to HeroClix. Here’s the haps:

A month or so ago, maybe longer (I can’t remember) I saw an announcement over at the WizKids site asking for submissions for ‘Scribbling Strategists’. These would be people who would write some of the deathless prose that accompanies each figure graphic posted on their site. I imagine the job doesn’t pay anything (I don’t know for sure) but, well, who knows, it could possibly be some sort of foot in the door to something bigger, and it’s not like I was doing much else with my life anyway.

They wanted a piece of sample text, and to make life hard on the applicants, they asked people to write up a glowing and useful description, with some kind of interesting and effective tactical advise on the deployment of… Black Manta.

For those of you who don’t know, Black Manta is pretty much a joke among HeroClix players. The comics character himself is kind of a loser, too… he’s the only known supervillain in history who has ever killed a hero’s infant child. The fig is, well, not awe inspiring, to say the least.

Anyway, I figured what the hell, and I sent in the following letter of application:

From: docnebula01@juno.com
sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 9:32 PM (wow, a month and a half ago)
To: some guy at WizKids
Subject: HEROCLIX SCRIBBLING STRATEGISTS APPLICATION
Dear Some Guy At WizKids,
I'd love to write for WizKids. My name is Darren Madigan. I don't have a WizKids Player ID, and if that disqualifies me, well, then, so be it. But I love HeroClix and I'm a very talented writer. Deadlines are no problem; I type very fast and I have no life. ::grin::
As to writing a playtip paragraph for Black Manta, wow, you guys don't make it easy. But I LOVE Black Manta! He killed Aquababy! You have to give the guy mad props for that! He controls gigantic robot duplicates of undersea creatures! I mean, how cool is THAT? So, let's DO it:
"You gotta give it up for Black Manta. How many figs weild a giant fork in combat, have a soup tureen for a head, and are Arch Enemies to a guy with a harpoon on the end of his arm? Only this one, baby. Proper deployment of Black Manta requires subtlety, by which I mean, rank deceit. Remember, every experienced HeroClix player thinks this fig is a joke. Use that against them! One of the greatest things about Black Manta is that there's so little variation from one version to another. He's ALWAYS got that 6 range and 9 attack, he's always got Incapacitate! Surround the rookie Black Manta with three vet U-Men and he's a 4 click, 6 range killing machine, and the whole team costs less than 100 points! Use his Incapacitate to knock even the toughest figs off their first one or two clicks of Impervious, and then hammer them into dust with a sudden blast o' Enhanced Manta rage! U-Men look like they should be walking around at the bottom of the ocean anyway; it's perfectly legit! Black Manta and His Underwater Men! If you camouflage this tactic by throwing in one or two other figs people will focus their attention on, you can move Manta into position, then suddenly bring up the U-Men for a fast, devastating shot! Remember, Enhancement is a free action; they can all move up around Manta and then Manta can blow Aquaman right out of the water! Put in a cheap TK fig to suddenly move Manta into position and you've got an underwater cannon on your hands! And the Rookie Manta is only 24 points! Is this a deal or is this a DEAL? It's like pirate gold!"
Hope you like it. Let me know.
D.

And, well, as the date on my note indicates, that was like a month and a half ago, and I forgot all about it. Until about an hour ago, when I found this in my mailbox:

Dear Applicant,
Congratulations! You've made it to the next stage of the Scribbling Strategists application process. A lot of great writers applied, and only the best out of that group made it this far. In the end, we're going to be looking for approximately five writers. The competition will be fierce, so give it your best!
What we need from you is another writing sample. This time around, grammar, spelling, and factual information will all count 100%. Don't end a sentence with a preposition. That's points off. :)
Once again, we need one paragraph about all three versions of a figure. You've made it this far because your writing sample had something a little extra: great strategy, an interesting insight, or the right mix of humor. We're looking for all three of those things.
The figure is Moon Knight. Here's a link to the Rookie. http://www.wizkidsgames.com/heroclix/marvel/figuregallery.asp?unitid=457
4 100 words max. Make it funny. Make it good. Make it stand out. Get it in by next Friday, the 8th. Send it to this email address.
Thanks,
Some Guy At WizKids
Communications Manager
WizKids, Inc.
11040 Main St., Suite 100
Bellevue, WA 98004
(425) 818-9349 (voice)
(425) 641-2802 (fax)
www.wizkidsgames.com

And here’s what I sent back:

Dear Jason,
Aha! Little do you know that I've been a huge Moon Knight fan since he first showed up in WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, lo these many... er... moons... agone. I've followed Mark Spector through all his various guises, several different solo series, and even a brief stint in the Avengers. I'm not sure if he's actually a good character (he seems to be loaded down with a whole lot of baggage, what with the multiple secret identities, the Fist of Khonshu thing, and all the rest), but he is one of my favorites. And his REV is one of the best things, I think, WizKids has done, in terms of both accuracy and utility.
So, here we go:
“In terms of bang for your buck, it’s tough to find a better deal than Moon Knight. His rookie sports 5 clicks of life, an 8 Speed and AV, Stealth, a 15 DV, Willpower, a 4 range, and 2 damage, all for 18 measly points… jeez!. After the first slot he goes to straight Leap Climb for all but his last click, giving him very high mobility, but it’s that first click with Stealth and Willpower that makes Moon Knight so sweet in all his incarnations. Position the Silver Sentinel correctly and unless your opponent has a Spector detector up their sleeve, they’re going to get beaned! Moon Knight only gets better with Experience. This is the West Coast Avengers era Moon Knight, which is reflected by the Avengers TA, giving him a free movement, and Super Strength on his first two clicks, the consequence of Mark not watching where he put his hands carefully enough when fighting a rabid werewolf. Speed goes to 10 and AV goes to 9, and if you place this Moon Knight carefully enough, he can hurl dumpsters and motorcycles at people from relative safety. All this for 27 points! I’d play ten of ‘em on a tournament team if the refs would let me. The Vet Moon Knight loses the Super Strength but, as he’s grown craftier over the years, he picks up Incapacitate. His defense climbs to 16, and like all his predecessors, he’s still got that same sweet Stealth and Willpower combo on his first click. The Veteran Moon Knight once more has no team affiliation, but all that other lunar goodness only costs a paltry 34 points! If you’re building a team and you have a few points left over you don’t know what to do with, you can’t go wrong with Moon Knight!”
Hope you like it. Let me know.
D.
You know, I didn’t even notice that ‘max 4100 words’ thing the first time through. My playtip comes in at a cool 303 words, so I hope these guys think brevity is a virtue. I’m not sure exactly what all else they’d want someone to say about Moon Knight. I do like the character, and the fig is useful for the points, but I really don’t see any way to make him particularly effective, except in a low power game. At least, without doing the ‘surround him with U-Men’ gimmick again.

I don’t think I ended any sentences with prepositions. However, I’m not entirely sure what a preposition is. I write mostly proper English, but I do it more or less instinctively, as I’ve supersaturated myself in the English language through a love of reading and writing from an early age. I honestly could not tell you what a preposition is, and have only a vague idea as to the definition of an adverb.

Even if I get the job, there will be problems involved for me. If anyone at WizKids has heard of Doc Nebula’s House Rules, chances are my term of employment there would be short and not particularly sweet. Even if they haven’t, writing playtips demands great familiarity with the actual rules. I hate the actual rules, and try to ignore them as much as possible, so familiarizing myself with them on an expert level will be onerous.

Nonetheless, it’s cool to have made the first cut, and should I be offered the position, that will be even cooler. It may not last long, and probably doesn’t pay a damn thing, but hey, after the way my writing submissions are generally received, this is a very pleasant change.

WHAT DOES NOT KILL ME MAKES ME SNIFFLE

Good ol’ Frank wants more grim n’ gritty real life details from the Ongoing Adventures of A Brown Eyed Handsome Man. So, okay, let’s see:

Since Tuesday of this week, I have been mostly prostrated by what seems to be a reliable annual allergy attack. I didn’t know it was an allergy attack at first, as it presented exactly as a bad head and throat thingie, with my sinuses stuffed solid and my throat all raspy and scratchy. I was afraid for a day or so I might have strep throat, which would have sucked profoundly. But, a call to my mom (after suffering for two days) garnered the info that it’s orange blossom time down here in the hellish murrain most people refer to as Florida, and everyone with pollen allergies has exactly these symptoms. So I started popping some generic Claritin a friend of mine bought for me when I was doing through this crap last year (something I’d forgotten all about by now until I was reminded) and I’m slowly recovering. My throat now feels fine. I’m still a little stuffed up, and my normally lousy sleep schedule has been further shot to shit by all this congestion and discomfort, but I seem to be getting over it.

Even while reeling from the Attack of the Evil Airborne Seed-Spores, I’ve accomplished a few things this week. I had set a few personal goals, and managed to actually get well ahead of them. I can’t tell you a damned thing about them, as they have to do with stuff that will, hopefully, be happening in a couple of weeks. But if you were to make a wild guess that they might have something to do with me talking to lawyers and taking care of some necessary legal tasks towards filing a lawsuit… well… I won’t argue with you. I won’t say you’re right, either. I can neither confirm nor deny at this point.

A good friend of mine has had some excellent news regarding her own personal progress in getting her own life together in a far off state, and I’m very happy for her. And my brother Paul has just moved, apparently to some place much closer to me, as he called me last Saturday and bitched at me for quitting work. Apparently it took him that long to hear about it, which means to me that he must be really disconnected from the grape vine, because I sent my letter of resignation out to every APM on the floor, and I’d have thought one of them would mention to him that his older brother was no longer working there.

Paul exclaimed that now that he lived closer to me, he wanted to spend a lot more time over here, which translates as, I still have a lot of Silver Age comics he hasn’t read, and he wants to. All I can say is, he needs to get his ass in gear, because if things go as I am hoping they will go, I may be heading back up north to dear old Yankee Land fairly soon. (That’s ‘fairly soon’ in Old Folks Time, where, in direct opposition to what Spock once intoned over an open com-link, days can seem like hours. In 5 Year Old Time, I could linger here in the Land Where We Have A Right To Die Unless Tom DeLay Can Get Votes By Saying Otherwise for just this side of forever. But I’m only five years old emotionally these days, so hopefully it won’t seem like all that long.)

My God. To live in a blue state again. My heart just swoons.

I’ve been playing a lot of Knights of the Old Republic II, but Frank will yell at me again if I go into that, so I won’t.

Well, other than to say that apparently, the guy I bought the game from is correct, and the Dark Side storyline is much more complex and rewarding than the Light Side storyline. I started over with a new character and played him bad to the bone from the very beginning, and, well, he’s had a lot more cool stuff to do than my Dudley Dooright With A Light Saber ever stumbled into. Of course, it’s mostly concerned with stealing stuff, smuggling drugs, roughing people up, intimidating folks, and occasionally outright killing them (one of the NPCs in the party recently asked my new character ‘are psychotic urges all that drive you?’, which I thought was pretty funny), but still, it’s more stuff to do.

There are bad parts about playing evil in this game, the most prominent one being, I don’t like doing it and most of the time it isn’t any fun for me. When a non player character comes up to me and asks for my help, I want to say yes, because, well, I like to help people, and I want everyone to like me. Playing evil requires picking the nasty response instead of the pleasant one, and I just don’t like to talk that way. But, well, it’s just a game. And you do get to kill a lot more people this way, including some real bastards that you otherwise have to simply put up with, when you’re trying to be a nice guy.

Other than that… hmmmm. Mike Norton sold all my extra HeroClix for me. I didn’t get quite what I wanted for them, but when you have no steady income, Money Is Good, and I’m enormously grateful to Mike for all the effort he took on my behalf.

I should probably note here that about a month ago I got another royalty check from PublishAmerica, for $2.14. Yay.

While I’ve been out wandering aimlessly through town like some drunkard, I’ve seen all these big ass recreational vehicles whipping around, and lately the thing seems to be that they’re all towing smaller vehicles on a hitch behind. Sometimes the vehicles are only comparatively smaller (they are generally SUVs), but still, I’ve been seeing this a lot lately. I guess someone must have held a seminar on it or invented a new towing hitch or something, because this is the first winter season in Florida where I can remember seeing this more often than not.

I find it mildly irksome, mostly from a pedestrian point of view. See, vehicles which take up a great deal of space on the road are aggravating to those very few of us who still get around on foot, because they will inevitably pull up directly in front of wherever it is I am trying to get across the street, and then end up stopped by traffic. Normally when traffic stops for a minute or so, it’s a great opportunity to get across a busy street, but when one of these land cruisers pulls up in front of you, it’s a ten minute hike to get around it. And with an SUV stapled to the back of the fuckers now, well, it’s just so much worse.

Mostly it bugs me because it just seems to me that in some way, the people driving these things have exhausted their reasonable individual space allocation. I mean, they’re pushing it just by owning a twenty five or thirty foot long land cruiser. Tack on another eight to ten feet of SUV and these guys are just being really obnoxious. It simply seems to me like grotesquely conspicuous consumption… “Hi, we own this gigantic land cruiser, and, by the way, in case that’s not enough to piss you off, we also own this gigantic SUV, and even with gas at $2.25 a gallon, we can afford to fill them both up whenever we want.”

On some primal emotional level, it just offends me, if only slightly.

On that subject, I had to chuckle a few days ago when I was coming home from a walk across town (I think I had to go pay the water bill, or something) and I saw one of these land cruisers towing an SUV – and mounted on the back of the SUV were two very expensive looking mountain bikes.

Now, if the mountain bikes had just had in line skates or a skateboard clipped to their carry racks, and then the skates had had tennis shoes tied to them…

All of which makes me wonder, and in fact, petulantly demand, where the hell is my jet-pak? It’s 2005. I’m supposed to have a jet-pak, or a rocket belt, or at least a personal gyrocopter harness, by now. Robert A. Heinlein told me I’d have one. Or at least whoever created The Jetsons did.

Although, come to think of it, one of those cool antigrav bikes that are the only good thing in Return of the Jedi would do nicely. (I’ll take a light saber too, if you’re passing them out, and the ability to do Jedi Mind Tricks on the weak willed would have come in awfully handy with my former boss and a few of my teammates at my last job.)

You can keep the jet powered skate boards from Back To The Future II, though. I’d kill myself on one of those. Real fast.

You know, if I could actually do Jedi Mind Tricks on the weak willed, I would fall to the Dark Side of the Force so damn fast I’d have skidmarks on my ass.

I’d have overworked myself into an exhausted stupor last year around election time, too…

RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, "Wow, I didn't recognize you in men's clothing". According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I'm reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I'd take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here's The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people's blogs, you MUST NOT:

(a) seem smarter than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(b) be funnier than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(d) be correct when you point out some manner in which the person writing the blog you are posting comments to was wrong, and/or

(e) Upset The Wimmenfolk On The Blog.

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin's Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron's blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don't really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren't related to me by marriage, I'd most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I've learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don't care if you:

(a) seem smarter than I am, I like people who are smarter than I am, as long as they're not jerks about it;

(b) are funnier than I am, then I get to laugh at your witty remarks, and hey, that's all good;

(c) are a better writer than I am. Although I'm in a peculiar place as regards writing skills; good enough to be better than nearly all the amateurs out there, not good or lucky enough to be a professional at it. So if you are a better writer than I am, you are probably a professional writer and therefore do not have time to post comments on other people's blogs, so this probably doesn't matter, as relates to this blog;

(d) correct my mistakes; unlike apparently 95% of the remainder of the human race, I am under no illusions as to my own infallibility and simply don't care if someone points out that I am wrong about something. Being wrong about things does not strike me as either a character flaw or a shameful embarrassment; we are all wrong about a lot of things every day of our lives, and that's just how that works;

(e) Upset My Wimmenfolk. Well, actually, I shouldn't say I don't care if you upset my wimmenfolk, I do, the very thought deeply offends me. However, it's just that the wimmenfolk at this point on this blog are my mom, my cuz in law, and my sister in law, and if you do something to upset them, I strongly doubt the authorities finding what's left of you will be able to identify you without a DNA comparison. My mom, and any woman who marries any of the males in this family and stays married to him for any length of time, are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. So offend them all you want; it's a self correcting problem.

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I'd get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don't Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I'm not a likable guy. I'm not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It's simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don't like my opinions or my blog, don't read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I'm not going to say that this time around, because I've realized that what this is basically saying is, 'if you don't like what I have to say, tough, I don't want to hear it, don't even bother to tell me, just go away'.

And that's actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country... for a little while longer, anyway... and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I'm not sure that's a right when you're doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don't feel like reading... and I'm really quick with the delete key... as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don't like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance... these things are only worth my time and attention if they're entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough wit, style, and/or panache to amuse me... try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.