Find a Smart Partner

I heard James Watson, co-inventor of DNA, interviewed by Roy Eisenhardt for the City Arts and Lectures series right around the release of his book, Avoid Boring People. One of his lessons learned from a life in science, he said, was to work with a smart partner. He said he didn’t like being alone. He found that he always needed help. And science, at that time, was a frontier. You don’t want to find yourself in New Guinea alone, he joked.

For me, those words were tremendously powerful, although I had no real experience to verify the truth of them at the time. But this year, I’ve come to think of those few short sentences as some of the most profound I’ve heard as I’ve increasingly focused on my work and attributed professional successes and failures to the relationships I have with others. Maybe I don’t get out much or maybe I fell in love with Watson’s idea of partnership and then created a use for it, but whatever the reason, I have come to think of partnership and collaboration as the most important part of my life. No one person can really be their own power source, and if they manage it for a time, they won’t do it successfully forever.

I highly recommend reading Watson’s book and listening to his City Arts and Lectures interview.

What’s So Great About Fastmail.fm

Over the weekend, jhurliman and I took a trip to San Jose in order to attend a friend’s cat’s 6th birthday. I learned that eve that our friend has the strangest email address in all the land, “friend”@mm.st. Upon hearing this mystifying new email, I turned to the all-knowing jhurliman and asked, “jhurliman, what kind of email address is that? It’s the strangest thing in all the land!” jhurliman told me to ask “friend”. “friend” replied, “fastmail.fm”.

What was this fastmail.fm? I had to know. So I opened up a browser window and navigated to the strange new land. The land wanted money for email, *sigh*. Trusting in “friend” and his technical knowledge of nearly all things, I didn’t navigate back to Gmail immediately. I investigated. Upon learning that I could possess the email address of kdel@fea.st (KdeL feast), I decided that for $20, I would add it to my ever-increasing, shiny collection of emails. I laid my credit card number at the feet of the fastmail king, and 5 seconds later, I was in. What I found was truly astonishing.

Colors! White and blue.

Filters! Available in slews.

Notepad, Files, Options, oh my!

Help! If I require a clue.

It looked like Thunderbird, smelled like Thunderbird, and yet it wasn’t Thunderbird! No Gmail could compete. And the spam filter, oh the spam filter, few things are so lovely on the internets.

Actions! 25 available in a drop down. Copy to folder, and attach much bolder! It’s fastmail.fm.

Personal tech support, oh where does it end? How can I go back to Gmail again? A forum for email, oh what does it mean? I’ve neither heard nor dreamt of such a wonderful thing.

That’s it. I’m hooked. fastmail.fm.

I’m yours. Gmail? You’ll never see me again.

And the rest of you? You keep nasty Yahoo, nasty Thuderbird, nasty Google partnership page. Just cause it’s free don’t make it worthwhile.

Hello Africa. Goodbye Vietnam.

Loving me requires a lot of patience. About a year ago, I decided that the one thing I wanted to do more than anything else was climb Mount Kilimanjaro (Kili), where 50 percent of all people who attempt to summit fail, and a good percentage suffer from any one of the following potentially fatal and no fun ailments: AMS — Altitude (Acute) Mountain Sickness, HACE — High Altitude Cerebral Edema, and HAPE — High Altitude Pulmonary Edema.

Most people react to my profession of undying Kili love with, “Oh, joy. Here she goes again.” That was John’s response, combined with some eye rolling and a sneer, to my proposal that we climb what I affectionately call the Lonely Mountain (tribute to LotR of course, and also to Kili, since it is the tallest free-standing mountain in the world). Approximately 10 Kilimanjaro deaths are reported annually, but the actual number of deaths on the mountain is said to be twice that. Oh, joy is right.

As it turned out, John was up for the Kili convincing. Yes, we intended to vacation in Vietnam this year. Yes, I was excited about that. But Vietnam is not as tantalizing as Tanzania, in my view, and the Lonely Mountain loomed. (I’ve been feelin like Bilbo in the beginning of the Fellowship.) I’m not sure how it happened actually, but as of today or yesterday or last week, we are going to climb Kili in January 2009.

So there. That is the state of the de León/Hurliman household. We’re going to Africa. We need to get nothing short of a thousand fucking immunizations and if the mountain doesn’t kill us, a snake in the Serengeti or Malaria should pick up the slack. I’ve got my money on that glacier we’ll be sleeping next to on night 8 of the Kili trek though. Bets anyone?

WARNING: Talking to me about anything other than my recently purchased pink vitamins or Kili is a total waste of your time and will yield absolutely no results. I will only talk about Tanzania, the trek, the safari, and my sexist vitamins. Everything else is out of the question, so don’t bother pinging til February 2009 if you have diverging interests.

Ironic Vitamins

I’ve been grinding my teeth and clenching my jaw (Bruxism) while I sleep for as long as John can remember and longer than I can know. It’s not fun. I’ve been prescribed Vicodin and muscle relaxers, yay, but in general, my lower face hurts all the time. In an attempt to avoid a $1000 NTI-tss, I decided to buy some vitamins. After all, I can only assume that the reason why Bruxism is so common among women of child-bearing age is because we take birth control. Birth control = vitamin depletion. Throw in a moderate serving of drugs, a pre-birth control borderline anemia issue, and voila! Bruxism.

So as I was saying, after reading a healthy amount of research on my new(?) disorder or whatever it is, I drove 85 mph to the Vitamin Shoppe with a comprehensive list of everything I needed. As it turned out, a multi-vitamin would do it. I decided to purchase the “Female Multiple.” I was really taken by the fact that it was the only vitamin on the shelf that made the sex/gender distinction. See, “female” refers to anatomy or sex, whereas “woman” refers instead to one’s gender. One can be anatomically male and woman. One can be anatomically female and a man. One cannot be male and female simultaneously unless one is a hermaphrodite. Anyhow, I purchased “Female Multiple” and was pleased with putting my money where I saw sex/gender progressiveness.

I returned to the office, 85 mph, with Female Multiple in purse. I had to get those little vitamins into my mouth as fast as possible. I open the bottle and guess what? Wait for it. No, wait for it …

The vitamins were pink. How ironic.

So White

[16:19] Dave: omg
[16:19] Dave: i got an idea
[16:19] Me: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/
[16:19] Me: what is it?
[16:20] Dave: after we eat dinner
[16:20] Me: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/02/11/63-expensive-sandwiches/
[16:20] Dave: how about we go to a movie
[16:20] Me: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/01/18/3-film-festivals/
[16:20] Me: lol
[16:20] Dave: called Be Kind Rewind
[16:20] Me: Inventive
[16:20] Dave: which was made by Michel Gondry
[16:20] Dave: and stars Jack Black and Mos Def
[16:20] Dave: as they try and remake a bunch of movies that they accidentally lost from their rental store
[16:21] Me:  http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/02/17/69-mos-def/
[16:21] Me: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/02/17/68-michel-gondry/
[16:21] Dave: lmfao
[16:22] Dave: that’s fucking ridiculous
[16:22] Dave: they totally did that because of Be Kind Rewind
[16:22] Me: They were inspired
[16:23] Dave: fuck that site, I’ll be white
[16:22] Dave: so wanna do it anyway?
[16:23] Me: yeah

Battling Joshua Bell

Yesterday, I attended the Joshua Bell recital at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. The most extraordinary living violinist, it also bears noting that Bell won the Crystal Caliburn World Championship in 1996. Yes, he is a pinball wizard. And he placed 4^th in the National Tennis something or other as a teenager. Bell defines over achievement.

Joshua Bell is also a very mean man. Listening to him play the violin is a struggle and occasionally, a war. From the moment I seated myself, I felt as though I were about to engage in the Battle of the Hornburg, except the elves never show and Legolas wanders off somewhere. Bell is the antagonist, his violin the army, each note an arrow, a ladder, a spear. And there are 10,000 of him and 1 of me. I am no Aragorn. Instead, I am that little long-haired boy that has seen too few winters and doesn’t know how to wield a sword.

It might seem strange to refer to a Joshua Bell concert as a battle, but his violin is truly cruel. It will thrash you upside one movement and down the other. Throughout the duration of the recital, my body was tense, my palms sweaty, my neck stiff, and I had trouble breathing. Every angling of his wrist to lay the bow against the strings and every note that rang thereafter was an exquisite torment.

Yesterday, I passed 3 hours of my life in the most confusing state of anxiety and ecstasy. I could not release my body from the tension. I could not will myself to breathe with any sort of regularity. I could not stop my eyes from watering, and above all else, I could not help but mourn that it would be over. I would regain my agency, my breathing routine, my posture, my muscle control, my sanity. Being in front of Joshua Bell was like staring at the sun. Nothing could be more bewitching, more beautiful. Yet nothing would more certainly harm you. And then the recital ended. And even though I could breathe again, I felt utterly empty. And I yearned for the battle once more, yearned to stare at the sun and go blind.

As I stood in line, waiting my turn for a Joshua Bell signature in my program, it occurred to me that the recital was in fact a pinball game. I was the ball. Bell was the wizard. And each note he played was a vicious attack of the plunger or a flipper batting me onto a ramp and into a saucer. And each movement of Tartini, Prokofiev, Dvořák meant that I would be savagely thrust toward the target, past one way doors and ball locks. It was the most dangerous of adventures, and I was utterly helpless, at the whim of a musician who was most likely himself a slave to his own talent and skill.

I examined the wizard, sitting at the table, mechanically signing autographs for 100 after having played the violin for 3 hours. His pen-holding fingers betrayed no exhaustion, but his face was worn, his smile rote, his eyes constantly darting to the back of the line, his hand extended, shaking methodically those quivering fan-fingers. And all of a sudden, I didn’t care about the autograph. I just wanted to engage in one spontaneous moment with Joshua Bell, my integrity-filled, nemesis. And then it was my turn. I approached the table where he sat. I said, “Hi there.” He said hello and took my program. “So,” I continued. “Real tennis or Wii Tennis?” I had spoken the only words I could think of. He seemed confused and then laughed. It was an authentic chuckle. He was caught off guard. He hadn’t played Wii Tennis. I told him he would love it and took my program from him. He extended his hand, and we shook firmly. I thanked him and left. But the punishment, the resplendent castigation of his talent lingered.

Joshua Bell left lashes. And in a way that can only be characterized as sick, he ruined my life. He ruined my life in the same way that reading On Social Contract required a complete reevaluation of my mind and seeing Bernini’s St. Teresa in Ecstasy revealed the world as if my lids were opening for the first time. I had listened to all of Bell’s CDs, but on Sunday, I heard him breathe. I head him breathe halfway though Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 80. I heard him through the microphones at Zellerbach Hall. He was desperately gasping for air, and I understood. As he played his violin, Joshua Bell stared at the sun with me.

A Domain Name Play

This is a play. The characters are people and websites. The theme of this play was inspired by the weekend activities, which consisted largely of a total and complete friend renaming. Every friend I have is now called by their domain name where applicable. For example, John Hurliman is now jhurliman.org. What follows is a short recap of yesterday’s events.

Characters:

Jhurliman.org

Babasucks.com

Scene 1

Jhurliman.org enters from left-stage and sits in the chair opposite babasucks.com who is on the couch.

Jhurliman.org: Hey, babasucks.com. How goes?

Babasucks.com: Not bad. But I hear through libsecondlife.org that you have Badware.

Jhurliman.org: Badware? Impossible!

Jhurliman.org checks his email.

Jhurliman.org: Babasucks.com! It’s true. Jorymartin.com is reporting the very same thing on my Facebook wall!

Jhurliman.org checks his website.

Jhurliman.org: Ack! I have Badware.

Jhurliman.org begins investigating furiously how to rid himself of Badware. He discovers that he does not in fact have Badware and is bitter that his character has been attacked in such a vile way.

Jhurliman.org: Babasucks.com, I do not in fact have Badware. I will file my report at Stopbadware.org. Let’s go to the movie now.

Babasucks.com: Okay.

Jhurliman.org and babasucks.com exit stage right.

Scene 2

Jhurliman.org and babasucks.com enter from right stage. They are heading to the movie. They have chosen to see Juno, #57 on stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com. They sit in a paper prop car and begin to chat about how clever it is to introduce oneself by domain name, counting on the repetition to drive traffic to your site. Jhurliman.org ponders this as he recalls that Jorymartin.com never visited the website til after John Hurliman had undergone his domain renaming.

Talk about the weekend continues:

Babasucks.com: It was good to see donovanpreston.com.

Jhurliman.org: Yeah, it was. Hey, does he really have a website named donovanpreston.com or was he just kidding around?

Babasucks.com: Na, he really has one.

Jhurliman.org and babasucks.com exit left stage.

Scene 3

Babasucks.com and jhurliman.org enter from left stage as they arrive at the movie theater. They buy grossly overpriced Juno tickets, popcorn, and finally settle into their reserved seats.

Jhurliman.org: I’ve never seen donovanpreson.com’s website. I’m gonna check it out.

Jhurliman.org pulls out his fancy Samsung phone and dials up the internets.

Jhurliman.org: OMG, LOL.

Jhurliman.org flips his phone toward the audience. Donovanpreston.com displays just a plain white page with just two words and a comma. Jhurliman.org reloads to make sure that his internets haven’t failed, and that donovanpreston.com really says what it appears to say.

Jhurliman.org: Donovanpreston.com reads, “Hello, donovanpreston.com.”

Now speaking to audience:

Jhurliman.org: Not only do we refer to ourselves by our domain names, but our domains also refer to themselves by domain name!

Jhurliman.org ponders what the next naming fad will be as babasucks.com chuckles and the movie theater lights go down.

The curtain falls.

Lost Luster

I haven’t blogged in a bit. I have abandoned IRC. I haven’t picked up my phone or listened to voicemail in a week, and Twitter has lost most of its charm. Facebook? I think I remember Facebook, but I haven’t superpoked a friend in god only knows how long. I haven’t been at the bar, haven’t eaten out save once or twice, haven’t done coffee with friends in ages. Most recently, I have failed to watch my ritual 3 or 4 films a week, and the consoles at our flat are collecting dust. It’s not that I’m angry. It’s not that I’m overwhelmed. It’s not that I’m even busy. The truth is … *deep breath*, I’ve rediscovered Magic: The Gathering, and since last week when I put together my very first deck in more than a decade, leaving the house to do anything other than play Magic has become a trauma.

For what seems like forever, I have been inundated by technology. For the last year, I have worked in virtual worlds by day, played videogames by night, and watched films in between. Weekends were reserved for parties and bars and coffee and restaurants and friends who were also in the industry. Conversation rarely extended beyond shop-talk. Lately, I’m disaffected. Even the Sony Home beta, which many of us have salivated over for months and months, has quickly lost its luster. John was accepted to the beta, and his first Home interaction yielded the following: one avatar was dancing alone and obnoxiously bumping into objects; one avatar was running around in circles; one avatar asked John why he didn’t have a mic and followed up by insulting the avatar’s appearance and asking if John was poor. Virtual worlds have just felt like MySpace heavy in recent weeks, and my lack of enthusiasm for tech and gaming has never been so pungently present. Everything seems like a version of something else, some other game or virtual reality that also expressed the most pathetic and degenerate aspects of human nature, some other game or virtual reality that might have cured boredom were we slightly more imaginative as an industry.

The most exciting arrival in tech and gaming is Mass Effect, but the more I think about what makes that game so enthralling, the more I wonder what I’m missing. Mass Effect’s interactive storytelling makes it the most compelling game on the market, in my view. But what is interactive storytelling? It’s just a game with a great and partly self-authored story. I found myself wondering last week why I should bother to load Mass Effect or log into Second Life when I can just play a good old fashioned board game or pick up a deck of cards or take photographs instead.

My disaffection isn’t permanent. It’s a phase, and I think a healthy one for those of us who spend our entire lives in front of computer monitors, only to break away from them to fondle our consoles and watch movies. Now I will never, ever argue that technology is the death of healthy social interaction. I don’t believe that, and in fact, I will argue to the death that tech has facilitated greater and more rewarding social interaction between people. But lately, I’ve just been yearning for something else, something that feels different even if it is also just another version, something that feels like mental exertion and total exasperation. I’ve been yearning for anything other than the near total apathy I face with regard to the entertainment in my life. I’ve been yearning for the turn of a page, the touch of a card, the feel of little plastic soldiers and dice.

I’m not sure how it happened, but one day, John and I went to the comic store and bought some Magic: The Gathering cards. How I had loved Magic when I was young. The strategy, the long games that ended in the loss of my favorite card and utter despair, the ferocious and enormous pride of doing 7 points of damage to the best player’s favorite creature. It was … well, magic. And although I’m a decade older and a very different person, Magic is still the same.

Playing Magic: The Gathering when you are nearly 27 years old is like being a drug addict. You feel like you can’t tell anyone. You’re too old. You’re too tall. You’re too cool. Magic is for kids and losers, not people that eat at the best restaurants and wear designer jeans. What would people think if they knew about this Magic: The Gathering problem? You would fall from the grace of geek and plummet into the depths of dork. It would be shameful, and your friends would never understand, would never forgive you, would want you to seek treatment, would laugh at you. They would all laugh at you.

Since I picked up Magic for the second time, I have haunted game stores. Yes, most Magic players are 12, Asian, and male. But there are a few like me. The guy behind the counter at Gamescape was in his twenties, had his bridge pierced, smelled fine, and didn’t wear glasses. He wasn’t pedantic, didn’t scoff at my request for a common Magic card, and he offered John the Warhammer Fastasy schedule with a casual flip of his hand. And while Warhammer may be more respectable than Magic in most circles, to spend every other Saturday night for three or four months in the back of a game store fretting over your hand-painted Undead army isn’t exactly glamorous.

Now I’m sure that I’ll get over the feel of that card, the tearing of that plastic wrapper on Settlers of Catan, the turn of a page in that book I’ve been meaning to read for months. I’ll get back to gaming. I’ll make trouble in Sony Home. I’ll renew the Xbox Live subscription that we paid for weeks ago and haven’t used. I’ll drink with friends and talk industry gossip. But for now, I’m spending my evenings in the living room, huddled over a pile of red and black cards that have inspired more passion in me in one week than I’ve felt in ages. Quite simply put, it’s magic.

Blind Faith, Modding My 360

Yesterday’s thorough investigation of Craigslist led me to three potential Xbox 360 modders, none of whom I knew. After settling on the more local modder, John and I packed the Xbox into our trunk last night and made our way to the provided address. Not 15 minutes into the drive, I realized that the modder (whom I’ll refer to as George to protect his identity) did not live in the posh area that he had advertised in Craigslist, but that he instead lived in a fairly sketchy ghetto just south of San Francisco.

Sign 1: Modder does not live in professed posh neighborhood but instead lives in the ghetto.

We arrived at the location and George emerged like a eel from behind a gate. He seemed nice enough even if he was painfully thin. After 3 sentences had been exchanged, John dumped our 360 into George’s loving arms and hopped back into the car. We began driving away at 5 mph, and as I watched George in my rear view mirror, I noticed that he was not returning to the gate from whence he came. Instead, he walked around the corner and onto a different street. We noticed him double back as our car merged with traffic, but this new development left me mildly concerned.

Sign 2: Modder does not go back the way he came after retrieving The Precious.

I turned to John as we drove off into Xbox uncertainty and noted that George may in fact be stealing our Xbox. I suggested that George’s behavior was suspicious. He didn’t live where he said he lived. He didn’t give us any information about himself. All we had was a common first name, phone number and an address that looked to be illegitimate. Walking away with our brand new 360 would have been the easiest thing in the world for that George. Moreover, we just dropped it off and vanished. We didn’t wait for The Precious in the parking lot. We didn’t hover nearby to protect her. If she was about to be kidnapped, we had facilitated the thievery. I smacked my forehead, and looked at John helplessly. He shrugged. It was too late now. We just had to exercise some faith. This was life, and our 360, The Precious herself, was not exempt from the process.

Sign 3: We had no info about the modder. George was a complete enigma.

We returned home and one hour later began tracking back to the ghetto where our 360 either awaited or eluded us. We pulled up in front of the gate where we had dropped off The Precious. I held my breath. This was it, the moment of truth. John made the call.

George emerged about 1 minute later cradling The Precious. Not only had he done a flawless job modding it, but he charged us mere pennies, emailed us the firmware in the event that we felt like reverting one day, and offered to burn us games and update the mod if and when necessary. Turned out blind faith didn’t bite us in the ass after all. Instead, it served us quite well.

That George, what a winner. High praise to modders in ghettos everywhere.

Exit Music, My 360

On Sunday, January 20, 2008 at approximately 7:56 pm, it happened. The red ring of death docked in our living room. Our Xbox had failed.

At first, we pretended as if it hadn’t happened. We went into the other room, told ourselves that it was just a figment of our imaginations. We would go away for 10 minutes, come back, and everything would be fine. So 10 minutes later, we returned to the living room with the expectation that our Xbox 360 would be green as money and ready to play Mass Effect at a moment’s notice. I pressed that little 360 power circle and was prepared to scold myself for such a silly red ring of death Sunday night scare and partial meltdown. RED!

My face felt warm and wet. I looked in utter panic to John who shook his head. It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. But John’s expression told me that my worst fears had been realized. Complete hardware failure. The 360 wouldn’t come back, not if we wrapped her in towels, not if we unplugged her and tried to revive her. There was nothing we could do. It was over, the end of an era.

And then my whole world fell apart. The ice cream cake in the freezer, reserved for gaming nights alone, would go to waste. The Wii couldn’t provide us with Mass Effect! The Wii wasn’t cut out to play Drum & Bass! The Wii wouldn’t display Coen Brothers films! The Wii was only good for tennis and families, not young gamers with passion and ice cream cake! We knew what we had to do. But how would we accomplish the task?

And in the distance, I heard Thom York sing “Exit Music”:

Breathe … keep breathing
Don’t lose … your nerve
Breathe … keep breathing
I can’t do this … alone

If we hopped into the car, we would risk losing our highly coveted San Francisco parking space. It was cold outside and threatened to rain. But this was an emergency. We started the vehicle engine and proceeded to drive down Geary St. toward Best Buy. But a quick pull into the empty parking lot threatened to spoil our plans. As we suspected, Best Buy was closed. And then the panic began to leech out of my bones and into the car. It was Sunday. Of course! Everything was closed! How could we have been so stupid? I oscillated between self-loathing and exasperation for a time before deciding that if need be, we would drive 2 counties north to Walmart where surely a console awaited us. But no. A call to Target informed us that we had 30 minutes before close to arrive, purchase, and breathe again. Thom York sang:

Sing us a song
A song to keep us warm
There’s such a chill
Such a chill.

The San Francisco traffic gods took pity on us that evening as we drove south toward Target, toward salvation. The desperation was palpable as we pulled into the enormous parking lot. We rushed to the gaming area. Two college-age kids were ahead of us in line. They were asking for a 360. We listened in pain as the clerk said that the Xbox was sold out, nowhere to be found … anywhere. The news was not alarming. We had suspected that it might have been the case, and although the traffic gods had shown us mercy, we had clearly angered the console gods. We had to pay. And pay we did … for a PlayStation 3.

As we arrived back home, we could breathe. We had a lovely little PS3. It would care for us, play our DVDs, our D&B, and yes, there were PS3 games, many PS3 games to be played. And at the console gods, I heard Thom sing:

You can laugh
A spineless laugh
We hope that your rules and wisdom choke you
Now we are one
In everlasting peace

We were one, just me, John, the Wii, and the PS3, and it would be a new life, a new and exciting life.

But the week grew cold. The poinsettia died. And the PS3 was lovely, but Mass Effect lingered savagely in my mind. I had been waiting all that time for John to beat it before I played it for myself, knowing that once I went Mass Effect, I wouldn’t go back. And the opportunity had been cruelly taken from me by the console gods and their red ring of fucking death.

We hope that you choke … that you choke
We hope that you choke … that you choke
We hope that you choke … that you choke

And as Mass Effect nagged at me, Monday dragged. Specter Shepard, I wouldn’t become her. Tuesday I spent in spiteful darkness. And by Wednesday morning, the pain had become too much. I awoke for the third day in a row to Thom singing:

Wake … from your sleep
The drying of your tears
Today … we escape
We escape.

I looked over at John, who lay beside me. He had downloaded flOw. He had fondled the Home trailer lovingly. We had played Resistance and Uncharted. He was at peace with the PS3, had even grown to love him and his sleek black lines, sharp edges, effortless operation. And even though it would hurt both John and our PS3, I no longer had any choice, no agency, no will. I was defenseless against Mass Effect and the 360 that I longed for. The pain had to end soon.

And at lunch that day as I slipped out of the office, I looked at John before closing the door behind me.

Pack and get dressed
Before your father hears us
Before … all hell … breaks loose.

At 45 miles per hour, I raced to Best Buy. And there, so near the floor, so hidden from view, I saw her. She had been waiting. $350 later plus tax, I triumphantly threw the 360 in my trunk. It was mine. I would play Mass Effect! I would be Specter Shepard! I would fight Matriarch Benezia, and I would take Saren down! I roared in my victory over the console gods.

We hope that you choke … that you choke
We hope that you choke … that you choke
We hope that you choke … that you choke

And with that final curse, Thom York stopped singing.

Now we are one
In everlasting peace

But the next day, my wallet began crying, and I once again heard the deafening roar of the console gods’ laughter. I had won the battle, but they had won the war.