The Robot Uprising is already happening. And Humans want it bad.

     The robot uprising is a great plot point for science fiction writers. The astounding rate at which technology has advanced in my lifetime has me philosophical about what could be coming next. I have spent some time toying with the idea of artificial intelligence, (I totally intend to write a sci-fi novel someday) and with all my research and brainstorming, I came to the terrifying realization that one could easily make the argument that the technological singularity has already occurred. (I am not alone in this, thousands of people discuss it through social media daily)

    For those of you who don't know, the technological singularity, usually just called the singularity, is the theoretical point at which technological advancement becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, forever changing the course of human society. So when exactly the singularity will happen (or happened) depends on your definition of technology. Most consider that moment to be the birth of AI, the moment when technology can act truly independent from any human influence. But I have also read arguments stating the singularity occurred the moment man first used a tool to till the earth.

This is a picture of the most advance artificial intelligence (so far), Sophia. Please note, they gave her (it) a human name and face.

    

    I think that humanizing the robots we create makes us feel more at ease with what we are doing. I can imagine its a lot easier to work to improve this gentile, feminine looking husk than if it looked like Ultron from Marvel. (BTW, the Avengers movie totally botches Ultron's origin story, but I digress) I recently noted something like this happening in my own home.

    My wife recently bought a Roomba vacuum. It is an extremely useful piece of technology, and our house has been noticeably cleaner since it was set up. But I also noticed my wife and kids (heck maybe even me to an extent) have been treating this vacuum like it's another dog. They affectionately watch it go about it's business while commenting things like "There he goes!"  or "Uh oh, he's stuck!"

    

    How the vacuum was determined to be male, I don't know. But more important, this is not something the manufacturer put upon us. No owner's manual or marketing ploy gendered this vacuum. We did it ourselves, to make ourselves feel closer to the vacuum. 

 

One of these will suck up anything you drop on the floor and improve every aspect of your life. The other is a vacuum.

    As consumers continue to demand technology that takes more and more tasks from our daily lives, what we don't realize is that we are becoming more and more dependent on these machines. Our every day activities are changing to accommodate these computers. I realized to my chagrin that I was doing this to my car. Our Subaru Forester has a new feature called the driver monitoring system. It is a safety feature they invented that gives you little beeps and warnings if it catches you doing something like looking at your phone, or looking into the backseat while moving.

    

    This radically reduced the amount of texting while driving my wife used to do, which is magnificent, but the other day I realized that I had actually changed my posture while I drive to get fewer of these notifications from the damn car. I actually changed the way I sit, the way I hold the steering wheel because a piece of software told me to. I now turn off that particular feature when I drive.

 

    The next terrifying step in technology is closer than you think. My brother-in-law, Canuckis Maximus (as always, names have been changed to protect those who claim to be innocent) pointed this one out to me. The next step in technology will of course be installing these devices inside humans.

    Think back to the 90s. If someone said they were going to put a computer chip into you, you would be horrified. It is the exact kind of thing conspiracy theorists have been spouting since the invention of computers. In fact, I once worked for a company called BioScience Laboratories, and as it turned out there was a conspiracy locally that in our labs we were chipping people for the government. (we weren't doing anything that cool.)

    These days however, people are lining up to volunteer as test subjects for this kind of technology. Elon Musk, the well known tech guru and richest man on earth, has a company called Neuralink dedicated to researching how to communicate telepathically with machines through chips in your brain.

This is not photoshop. This is real, and voluntary.

    And so to my final thoughts. In 1996, a domestic terrorists by the name of Ted Kaczynski (better known as the Unabomber) was caught after almost 20 years of bombings. He left behind stacks and stacks of coded journals laying out a manifesto decrying the advancement of technology and the loss of human independence. That was nearly 30 years ago.

    

    I've seen the manifestos of mad men (not first hand, research. I swear I'm not crazy) and they always come off as rambling and insane. But if you look at the stuff Ted Kaczynski was writing, not only is it disturbingly coherent for someone that did the things he did, it paints a very bleak picture of the future we are running into.

    I think that we have already passed the singularity. We have already reached a point that we cannot function without the technology we integrated into our everyday life. Put your smart phone away for a week and prove me wrong.

I'm Going on an Adventure!

    One of the great things about Montana is the incredible amount of options you have for outdoor recreation. In the winter, you're screwed, (see my previous blog complaining about the never ending winter in Montana) but from June to Early September, there are all sorts of amazing things to do and see under the big sky.

    Growing up, I did none of those things. My parents were not outdoorsy. In my youth I never went camping, hiking, hunting, fishing, or any other sort of outdoor activity, and that was just fine by me. Outside is a messy place, full of things that can make you sore, uncomfortable, or late for supper. I used to spend every available hour of my time in a dark room, glued to a TV or computer screen. I was extremely pale, and spent so little time in the sun, my friends used to call me 'the vampire'.

I still use this line when I'm feeling particularly lazy.

    Since meeting my wife, the ever lovely Princess Consuela Bananahammock, (as always, names have been changed to protect those who claim to be innocent) I have gradually gotten over my phobia of all things out doors. I camp, I hike, I float the rivers, and I ride the trails on my four-wheeler.

    It is that last one that I am writing about today, because yesterday I went riding in the mountains, and things... didn't go well. Have you ever been in a situation where something happens and your brain switches from 'What will I do when I get home?' to 'How am I going to make it home?' 

    Maybe you were at the airport and realized you left your wallet in the taxi. Maybe you broke down on a rural backroad with no traffic. I have had that internal dialogue several times in my life, and it's never a fun scenario. 

    This was my first time out this year. The quad had been sitting in my garage all winter without being used. So, of course the first thing I had to do in preparation for the ride was to pull the four-wheeler out and jump the battery. (BTW, the battery on this thing is in the stupidest possible spot. Tremendous pain in the ass to get to.) It started right up, I drove around for maybe 30 minutes to make sure it was good and charged, then I loaded it up on the truck and headed to the mountain.

Delmoe Lake, just outside of Butte, where I went riding.

    As a point of safety, I want to point out that you should never, ever ride alone. I met my friend,  Duke Amazeballs for the ride. Things went great for the first three or so hours. We got a good 17 miles from the trucks before we encountered anything remotely treacherous on our ride. 17 miles up trails so narrow that it is only possible to ride single file. Then suddenly, for no reason either of us could discover, my engine dies. Dead battery.

    A lifetime of owning piece-of-shit vehicles, and a wife that loves to leave the lights on has given me the habit of always carrying jumper-cables with me. We were able to jump my quad using his, but as I said, my battery is in a god awful location, underneath the vehicle, and to access his battery, he had to take apart several components. All after maneuvering two ATVs side by side on a trail only wide enough for one.

    After the jump, we were all too eager to get back to the trucks. But perhaps maybe half a mile later, same problem. Dead battery. Dead four-wheeler. Right about then was when my brain did the switch. How could I possibly get this 800 pound vehicle back to the truck? Duke Amazeballs saved the day, that's how.

    Luckily, my ATV has a winch package on it. Of course, the winch runs OFF THE BATTERY! So we had to jump the ATV again, just so we could let the winch out. As it turns out, my winch has a length of eight feet. Duke towed me through seventeen miles of uneven, rocky terrain on an eight-foot tether. It was rough, and at times terrifying. Every pebble, every stick he hit got shot right into me.

    But I made it back. I am writing this from the comfort of my computer, inside my well-lit, temperature controlled home. I think I'll stay put for a while.

    

Beauty is Pain!

     Gentlemen, turn to your lady and give her a hearty thank you for all she does to make herself look good. She doesn't  do it for her, she does that for you. It's a part of American society that we don't really pay attention to, and it is ingrained in us from a young age. My daughter will dutifully sit in my wife's lap for hours getting curlers and product put into her hair; being tugged, pulled, and primped into the perfect hair style. If you so much as approach my son with a hair brush he runs screaming because, "It hurts my head."

    That is some gender inequality right there. And I won't even get into the crazy shit that grown women do for the sake of appearances.

If you don't think beauty is pain, take a look at any ballerina's feet.

    American women spend on average $3,756 a year on their appearance. Surprisingly, men aren't far behind. Men spend an average of $2,928 on their appearance. I can promise you I am well below the average. (Sorry, dear wife.)  So, when your wife or girlfriend comes home with a new look to show off, there is only one acceptable reaction, and that is "You look great, I love it."

    This is marriage 101 of course, but after 16 years of marriage, I sometimes forget the basics. (sorry again dear.) I was reminded of this because I recently made a change to my appearance, and things...didn't turn out well.

    I don't change my look. I don't know why, but once something is established and comfortable, I keep it as long as humanly possible. There have only been three times I can think of in my entire life that I have made a real change to my style.  When I was in Elementary School, I had a bowl cut. I looked nerdy and eerily similar to Alfalfa from Little Rascals. 

    

It's like looking into a nerdy little mirror.

    I kept that haircut all the way through 7th grade.  First day of Eighth grade I strut into class with a buzz cut, and received rave reviews. I got complemented on how good I looked by several girls I liked, and apparently that was all I needed to hear to rock that look for the next 24 years. I would style it here and there between cuts, but I always buzzed it back down when it got too long. Full disclosure - I did attempt to bleach my hair my Junior year. Eminem was new and SO COOL, I just had to try it. (As it turned out, my hair was too dark and the over the counter kit just left my hair an orange/bronze color. My friends called me copper-top for months)

    So for the last decade and a half, my wife has been living with me and my buzz cut, and she has been begging for me to grow it out, or to "PLEASE DEAR GOD JUST DO SOMETHING WITH IT!". So for the last several months, I have been growing my hair out, and just yesterday, I got a perm.

    

Not a picture of me. His perm looks way better.

    

    A perm! Big change you say. Well, as it turns out it was a lesser change that I made that ended up being the big news. I have always had dark head hair, and my facial hair has always been much lighter, almost blonde. It was a travesty when I was in high school, mourning that I would never have facial hair as dark as my head. I always wondered what I would look like if my facial hair matched my head hair. So, while I was getting my perm done, I had the stylist dye my facial hair too.

    After months of growing out my hair, after years of my wife telling me how much she likes curls and positively begging me to get a perm, I strutted confidently home for the big reveal.

    My wife laughed until she cried. My kids teased me, while howling with laughter. The dogs barked at me. They were so blown away by what I'd done to my facial hair that I had to point out I had gotten a perm. I gave it a day, I thought with time, they would get used to it and maybe even like it. Didn't work. I actually had to shave it clean to stop the tormenting.

    So back to the original point. When somebody you love does anything to their appearance, no matter how hideous, break it to them gently. As soon as the perm washes out, know what I'm doing?

Getting a buzz cut.

The Batman

     I have been a huge fan of comic books for most of my life, but my favorite has always been Batman. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think he seems more human and relatable than most comic book heroes. Batman can't leap tall buildings in a single bound. He can't run faster than a speeding bullet. He's a human man with human weaknesses. 

    Batman was first seen in May of 1939. It was Detective Comics, issue # 27. Written by Bill Finger and illustrated by Bob Kane, The dark knight would go on to create an entire superhero universe, years of animated and live action television series, video games, and dozens of movies - some of which are still considered among the best movies ever made. As the opening to the 2017 LEGO Batman movie says, "DC, the house that Batman built. Yeah, what Superman? Come at me bro."

I actually have a surprisingly large amount of batman art in my house.

    My personal obsession started in 1993 with the story of Knightfall, the story arc in which Batman is broken  and defeated by Bane. (DC comics got on this kick in the early 90s. The death of Superman storyline also happened in 1993) Bane is a criminal mastermind, one of the few villains to work out that Bruce Wayne is Batman. He is infused with an experimental drug called Venom which gives him superhuman strength. In film he is usually portrayed as a dim, even incoherent villain sidekick, which irks me to no end.

    Like most people who have read the books before seeing the movie, the inconsistencies between the two always bug me. When I see characters with grand story arcs that are completely ignored, I get hot under the collar. For example, I refused to watch Iron Man 3 because of what they did to the Mandarin and Iron Patriot. (I mean really people Iron Patriot isn't even a hero, he's a villain.)  And I haven't watched a single movie with 'Batfleck' (the common derogatory reference to Ben Affleck's time as the caped crusader) because he uses guns. The biggest rule about Batman is no guns. 

I can't fully explain how much this picture ticks me off.

    For me, the trilogy starring Christian Bale as the dark knight will always reign supreme, and rightly so. 2008's The Dark Knight is #3 on IMDB's top movies of all time. (Behind The Shawshank Redemption and The Godfather mind you.) Tragically, Heath Ledger would not live to see the success of his portrayal as the Joker. When word released that Heath Ledger had died shortly after playing the Joker, my first thought (callously, I know) was how great this movie was going to be. In the comics, the Joker has a storied history of being so insane that he causes mental illness in those around him. So when I heard that the man playing him died from causes related to mental health, I knew we would finally see the Joker portrayed as he should be.(like I said, callous, but true. And he received a posthumous Oscar for the role.)

    I bring up all this Batman nostalgia because I just recently finished watching The Batman, the latest film adaptation starring Robert Pattinson as Batman. Like many fans, I was apprehensive at the casting of a man best known as a sparkly vampire to be the dark knight. (Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the Twilight books, but this is important stuff here.) But after seeing the film (twice) I've got to say, Pattinson kills it. He plays a darker, more violent Batman than other iterations, but it was his portrayal of Bruce Wayne that really got me.

    For the first time in movies or comics, I felt that this Bruce Wayne couldn't possibly be Batman. Bruce Wayne is usually portrayed as a ripped, charismatic socialite that spends lots of time in the spotlight of Gotham's elite. There have been many times when I see a Bruce Wayne and I think (with an eyeroll) 'Seriously, no one thinks that this guy is Batman?'

     

Really think this guy looks like Batman?

    Pattinson's sullen, emo Bruce Wayne is the first time I ever felt like this guy could never be Batman. I greatly enjoyed the movie, and I look forward to the next installment, which I think may be the 'No Man's Land' storyline based on the way the first movie ends. But no spoilers here! 

For more information on Batman, visit your local comic book retailer!

One Hour Photo

     Sorry for being late on this update, dear readers. I  was out of town for the week of spring break, Princess Consuela Bananahammock (as always, names have been changed to protect those that claim to be innocent) and I took the kids to Grand Forks, North Dakota to visit some old friends we don't get to see nearly enough. The second winter in NoDak sucks every bit as much as second winter here. (I find it ironic that I posted a blog about the weather in Montana only to immediately go visit someplace that turned out to be worse.)

    While we were out of town for that break, we had some renovations started in our home, and I returned to find the house torn to pieces and without access to indoor plumbing of any kind. Over the last few days, we have slowly been putting rooms back together, and the renovations are almost complete, but the last room to be finished is the laundry room. (long aside here. A quick google uncovered that the goddess of laundry, actually the goddess of cleanliness in general is Hygieia. [Her name is the source of the word 'hygiene'] So from now on, when you face a mountain of laundry, you can shake your fists at the heavens and scream "DAMN YOU HYGIEIA!!") 

Nothing says 'Hygienic' like feeding a snake on your lap.

    There is a perfect storm of laundry in my house right now. With the laundry room out of commission, four full suitcases of dirty laundry, and a week (or two) of procrastination on my part before leaving for NoDak, we are very nearly out of wearable clothing. (I am, in fact, at this very moment wearing basketball shorts as boxers because I have no underwear.) None of this has anything at all to do with the story I want to share today, just explaining why I'm so late posting this.   

    This particular event happened a few years after Princess Consuela and I got married. One thing that anyone who knows Princess Consuela will tell you, is that she likes to take pictures. Like lots of pictures. Of everything. She was taking pictures of her food before it was cool. 

    In late 2009, we were living in Havre Montana. Princess Consuela was doing her clinicals at the hospital, I was taking a few courses at the local University, but mostly just being useless. The princess had been contemplating getting her digital pictures printed for several months. (This was during that nebulous time with cameras when people would still print most of their pictures they wanted to keep, not just shuffle them from device to device forever.)

Gone forever is the dramatic reveal in the darkroom.

    At this point, we had been together for 6 years. That's six years of road trips, barbecues, birthdays, holidays, new outfits,  basically anything you could imagine, captured as ones and zeros on her hard drive. (to this day, one of her greatest fears is losing all her photos in a computer crash) One fateful day, Princess Consuela decides the time has finally come to have all of these pictures finally printed out, so that she can make a full encyclopedia's worth of photo albums and scrapbooks.

    So she does some internet searching, and she discovers that the local Walmart has a feature where you can upload your digital pictures directly, and pick them up printed from the store. (convenient right?) So Princess Consuela uploads all her photos to Walmart. Literally thousands of photos. Every. Single. One. Then she clicks the little box that says "One Hour Photo" and hits 'Submit'. No extra charge, no file size limit. Just arbitrarily promised to be ready in an hour.

    At this point, I can only imagine the photo department Walmart employee losing their shit. I don't know who put that button their website, but mistakes were made.

    We didn't show up at the store 60 minutes later, demanding our photos.  We watched some TV, we had a dinner out. Perhaps three hours later we walk into Walmart, ready to grab a few groceries and pick up these photos. But as we walk in, we are stopped by a young woman. She places her hand on my shoulder gently and says, "Your order isn't ready yet."

    This woman wasn't wearing a Walmart vest, she didn't have the khaki pants and blue shirt, nothing that indicated in any way that she worked there. My mind went blank trying to think of who this woman was, how she knew me and how she knew I had ordered anything at all. But slowly, it dawned on me, Oh! This must be the woman who works in the photo department. She recognized us because she has been staring at us for the last three hours. She knows us, man.

    

Your order isn't ready and you should go.

    Another hour later, we headed home with our photos, laughing all the way home about the poor woman whose night we had inadvertently destroyed. 

    I will try to get next week's blog out on time. In the meanwhile, I've got lots of laundry to do. DAMN YOU HYGIEIA!!

'Spring' in Montana

     I love living in Montana. I always have. The stunning vistas, the open spaces, the lack of people - all great. But this morning, mid-April mind you, I woke up to find an inch of snow. And so I begin upon the one thing that bugs me more than any other about Montana, the weather. Today marks the 3rd 'false start' of spring so far this year. 

    Over the weekend it was sunny and 70 degrees out. I broke out the shorts, I got the yard raked and cleaned up. The wife and I started planning where we might take the four-wheelers, or where our first camping trip of the season should be. Instead I had to scrape the snow off the car and lament over all the things I'd left on the porch that are now covered in snow. (and Princess Consuela Bananahammock is not happy with me about that.)

It's a thing.

    To a lifetime Montanan, the weather channel is a 24 hour comedy network. I still find it so amusing to watch shots of some icy hill where car after car after car hits the same patch of ice and crashes into the ever growing pile of cars. And several years ago, there was a blizzard that brought 4 inches of snow to Atlanta Georgia, and the entire city had to shut down. a measly 4 inches and I was entertained for weeks. (seriously it took them weeks to recover from 4 inches of snow)

    As funny as I find it to be stranded by four inches of snow, (Tip for driving on the highway in a whiteout, put your right tire on the rumble strip and drive, baby!) I can only imagine how I would react if I were caught in a tornado or a hurricane. I doubt I'd be so flippant then.

Road Construction and Fire seasons last much longer than indicated.

    My parents eventually gave up on the eternal winter and retired to Phoenix Arizona. I seriously doubt my father has seen snow since. He refuses to visit us between the months of September and May. (there is a very good chance it will snow during those 8 months of the year, and a moderate chance it could snow during the other 4 months) And sure he doesn't have to shovel the sidewalk anymore, but now he has to deal with 120 degree heatwaves, which sounds much worse to me than an inch of snow mid April.

He continues to disagree.

The Greatest Movie Ever Made

     I have a great love for pop culture. Huge parts of my personality have evolved from the movies and TV shows that I watch over and over again. My wife has movie amnesia. (She will insist repeatedly that she's never seen a movie we watched together the previous week.) I have the opposite. I have an almost uncanny ability to memorize line-for-line any movie that grabs me in a single viewing. (In high school I once orated 'The Matrix' word for word to the kid who sat behind me in math)

    While there are many great movies, and the debate over the best movie ever will never truly end, my personal favorite movie of all time is The Big Lebowski. If you have not seen this masterpiece, stop right now and watch it. This article may contain spoilers, and you need to experience the majesty this great work of art has to offer. Go watch it now.

Best movie ever? That's just like, my opinion man.

    Wasn't that great? The movie is hilarious, but only through repeated viewing did I pick up a few of the greater one-liners in the film. (Brother Seamus? What, like an Irish monk?) I have seen the movie several dozen times, and phrases from this movie still make it into everyday conversations I have. (whenever I see some new decoration at a friend's house, I will tell them how it "really brings the room together") But after doing some research, I found that this movie has one of the most dedicated fan bases of all time.

    The movie was not a record setter by any means. It only made 46.7 million at the box office, off of a budget of  15 million. It didn't win any major awards, it wasn't even nominated. (though it is certified fresh on rotten tomatoes, and is on imdb.com's best movies of all time list)  Most of its popularity came after its release to home video, as word of mouth spread. 

    The reason that, to me, this is the best movie ever, is because it is still making appearances in pop culture, despite the fact that it came out almost 25 years ago. (The Shawshank Redemption is my 2nd favorite movie, but no one talks about that anymore) Content creators are still making references to this masterpiece, and they never fail to make me laugh.

A screenshot from My Little Ponies - The Dude's cutie mark is a rug!

    The more you dig into The Big Lebowski, the more there is to find, and the more impressed I am at how big an impact this movie made.(Side note: at this point, I had to take a break to make myself a White Russian.) Every year there is a gathering of like-minded people at a festival called Lebowski Fest. Members of the cast are known to attend the fest, with Jeff Bridges even performing music from the movie with his band. (His band is called Dude and the Abiders.)

    But this movie has gone beyond the physical into the spiritual. That's right, this movie spawned its own religion - Dudeism. Over 600,000 people have been ordained as Dudeist Priests, and the religion is pretty much exactly what you might expect. Their major tenets are relaxed lifestyle and pacifism. And of course, the dude himself shows these traits exceptionally well. Opening of the movie, two thugs break into his house, break a door frame and the bathroom floor, shove his head in his own toilet , and piss on his rug. And all the dude has to say in response is a few cutting sarcastic remarks. (Hey, at least I'm Housebroken!) I seriously doubt I could have responded so coolly. I would have been inarticulate with rage.

Dudeism.com - the official website of the religion if you are so inclined.

    My wife and I have this adorable(I think) habit of naming our pets after our favorite fandoms. We currently have 2 dogs: our oldest is Penny, named after The Big Bang Theory. Our puppy is now about 7 months old, and we named him Jeffrey Lebowski. Of course we call him the dude, duder, or el duderino if we're not feeling into the whole brevity thing. I love everything about this movie, and I intend to love it for the rest of my natural life. Well, I finished my White Russian. Be right back, I'm just gonna go find a cash machine.

Video Games have changed. It's good and bad.

     Christmas 1989, I was only 4 years old, but I can still tell you what I got for Christmas that year. That year, my brother and I got a Nintendo Entertainment System from my parents. (I think mainly my dad, my mom is still upset over how much time I spend playing video games.) It came with the standard 2 controllers, the Nintendo gun, and the Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt Combo game. The rest of my life growing up under my parent's roof was spent arguing with my mother about me playing too many video games. (see above statement)

Nintendo was founded in 1889 to make playing cards. They release their first video game in 1977.

    Buying video games back in the day was a risky business. There was no internet, and it was usually months before you could find any sort of reviews in print. (In Print!!!) There were lots of horrible games made. Games were released with catastrophic bugs in the code, or unintelligible game play, or sometimes just way too hard. (check out AngryVideoGameNerd on youtube for some extra-vulgar examples) 

    I had several of these titles on my shelf, stacked in the back corner of the entertainment center gathering dust. Every once in a while I would pull one out, blow out the dust, (remember when you had to blow on your video games to make them work?) and play around for a few minutes before remembering why it sucked so much and putting it back in the pile. There was a game called Dino Riki that we had for decades and I never once beat the first level. (and I'm sure I just called someone's favorite childhood game trash)

    Hundreds, if not thousands of video game companies rose and fell over the next several decades, but now the industry has settled into almost the exact format of the movie industry. We have powerhouse studios, and anything else created is considered 'indie'.(think 20th Century Fox vs Electronic Arts) The other, and largest influence on the video game industry, was the widespread availability of high speed internet.

Picture taken shortly before someone's mother got laid.

        I got in fairly early on the internet gaming craze. I played hours and hours and HOURS of Quake online. (that's Quake 1 mind you. low resolution, dial-up internet, and the peak of my FPS gaming affinity) I had a 15K dial up modem, and the bane of my existence were the LPBs (low-ping bastard, this used to be a cutting insult) from big cities that were the firsts to get broadband internet. Growing up in Butte Montana meant it was years (it felt like an eternity) before that same technology became available to us.

    When it did arrive, it turned out to be a bit of a curse. (to me personally.) My first truly high-speed connection to the internet was my freshman year of college, right out of High School. I failed out that year due to Halo and a little internet game called Gunbound. (for the whole sordid tale, see my first post)

    After failing out of school, I nursed my wounded pride with a little game called World of Warcraft. Here is a game so great, so all-consumingly fun, that it is exactly that - all consuming. WoW was, and remains to this day, the only thing I have ever been truly addicted to. There were years of my life when I would spend all day at work thinking about what I was going to do in WoW that night, and every waking moment not spent at work, playing WoW.

You owe me two years of my life back Blizzard.

    I was able to kick the habit years ago, but my wife and I still get cravings to play it. Thankfully, however, we have horrible internet at our place, and we cant run WoW on two computers simultaneously. (we tried 😔)Here is where (I think)the development of video games is both good and bad. The internet has become such an integral part of video games, that it is no longer possible to have a game that does not require internet. 

    One of my favorite parts of opening a new video game was opening the game manual and reading through your upcoming adventure. Game manuals went away a decade ago. Manufacturers decided it was much cheaper to simply put these manuals online. Now they have gone a step further. Now it isnt unheard of to leave the store, take your new game case home, open it up, and the only thing inside is a code to download the game.

    I live in a rural area, so far out of town, that the only 'high speed' internet available to me is microwave internet. (I'm in line to get starlink, but my order isn't expected until mid 2023) For those of you unawares, that means my internet connect comes from a signal a mile down the road. Days when it's raining, snowing, or just too windy, I have no internet. When I do get internet, I have to share my bandwidth with all my neighbors. It is so bad that I can't even stream a movie on Friday or Saturday nights.

    So when a new game comes out, to me it means two days worth of downloads before I get to play once. I really miss the days when the entire game arrived ready to play in the box you only had to pay for once. And industry insiders, if you are reading this, let me tell you, we all feel that way.

The Eternal Rewards of Being a Parent

     No matter your profession, no matter your success in your field, if you have children, you can't escape the job that is being a parent. It is a thankless job (in fact some day they may pay lots of money to complain about you to therapists) and it comes with unexpected trials that no one can possibly prepare you for. And if you somehow manage to prepare for trials A-Z, your kids will one day hit you with trial beta-sub-15 because you hadn't consider Apple Jacks could be weaponized.

Actually just googled 'tired parent hair'

    My kids are still fairly young. My son, Ricardo Shilley-Shalley is 6, and my daughter, Princess Buttercup is 9. (As always, names have been altered to protect the sometimes innocent) So while i dont yet have to worry about raging hormones or boyfriends with facial tattoos, I have to worry about saying "Don't touch that!" over one hundred times a day, every day.

    Sleep is precious in my house, and sleeping extra is highly dangerous. On weekends my kids will wake us up at the crack of dawn, fully clothed and hungry enough to chew through the cupboard doors to get at the food. On school mornings however, every piece of clothing they put on, every bite of cereal they take is an ordeal and a fight.

    One particular weekend, two or three years ago now, my wife and I thought it would be fine to sleep in an hour or two after the kids were up. They had access to Pop-Tarts and Netflix cartoons on a Saturday morning,  and we were in full just-five-more-minutes mode. But eventually, I had to get up to make sure the house was still standing.

    Ever come across a mess so big that you don't know where to start? I mean a mess so big you don't even get mad. A mess so unbelievably huge that you just stare, taking it in and trying to make it register. When I saw the Living Room that morning, I stood in awe for a good ten seconds, turned and went back into my room without saying a word to my kids. To my wife, I said, "Your children made a mess."

    

Yeah, like this kind of mess.

    What exactly had they done? Well, they had gotten into our pantry, taken out 4 boxes of dry spaghetti, crushed it down to confetti, and made it rain all over the living room. 

    "But why?" I hear you ask. (I know I asked that question many many MANY times that morning) Their answer, "Because it feels good when you break spaghetti under your feet on carpet."

    One of my largest regrets over the last few years is that I didn't take a video, or even a picture of the living room that morning. I will be reminding my kids of that mess for the rest of their lives, and I don't have any photographic proof of what occurred there that day.

    We spent hours vacuuming, sweeping, and disassembling furniture to try to clean up that mess. And as it turns out, we didn't even get it all. Last week, we replaced our entertainment center, and among the detritus that was underneath the old cabinets? Lots of spaghetti. 

    Next month we are finally replacing the carpet in the living room. That poor carpet has had so many spills on it. We have a 'no drinks in the living room' rule that no one follows, and Ricardo can't look at a cup of kool-aid without spilling it. (but only ever drinks that are 110% sure to leave a stain.) I expect that when we take out that carpet, we will find a lot more spaghetti.

    

Moths Are Tiny Spawns of Satan

     This is a story from several years ago, one that I shared on Facebook in just a few sentences. But it was actually the start of all of this. My father, enjoying the story so much, pulled me aside and convinced me to start writing. I told him about how I'd always wanted to be a writer, and he encouraged me to give it a go. Fast forward about three years and now I have finished my first novel, and I intend to at least finish this trilogy before I give up on a career as a professional writer.

Mottephobia - The fear of Moths

    I have a severe hangup on moths, as my wife and friends love to point out. While I've never been overly fond of them, my fear stems from my time working as a used car salesman (which is btw, the worst job in the world). During the summer the year I spent slinging Subarus there was some sort of mass-birthing event here in Butte Montana. Suddenly there were millions and MILLIONS of moths, and they stuck around for several weeks. But at night time, there would be clouds of moths around every street light in downtown Butte so thick thick that no light from the lamps could reach the ground.

    Thing was, when I arrived back at the dealership the next morning, all the cars would be covered in moths, some that had died during the night, but plenty that had just landed there and were napping. My job then became to sweep the moths off the tops of the cars.

    Here's the thing. Moths don't fly well. They zigzag haphazardly through the air and crash into whatever might be in their way, which extremely often ended up being my face. By the time I had finished brushing off two cars, I had diagnosable mottephobia, and the mere thought of sweeping off another car made me sick to my stomach.

    

Dumbest Magic: the Gathering card ever.

    I do have one friend that can relate to just how horrible moths can be, and his story is much worse. One summer night this particular friend was coming home from work. As he unlocked his apartment door, a moth careened into the side of his face, then proceeded to crawl inside his ear. He ran screaming into the bathroom and ran water into his ear, which caused the moth to dig in deeper, trying to avoid the wet. He ended up in the ER where a bemused and astonished doctor had to remove the moth forcibly with a pair of tweezers. (I was nearly sick when he told me this story) To this day, I have never seen him outside at night without a hat that covers his ears, and I do not blame him one bit.

    Fast forward to the moth story that started it all. 

    It was the tail end of summer, the leaves were starting to change, but it was still plenty warm enough that all manner of bugs were still hanging around, including moths. After work, I had some errands to do that required some cash. I pull up to my bank's ATM and roll down my window. As soon as I do, a moth comes fluttering by my open window. The sight of this one crazily flapping demon sends my fight-or-flight reflex into overdrive.

    In panic, I threw the item I was holding at the moth, trying to shoo it away. The item happened to be my wallet. It missed the moth and went flying out the open window. I had even thrown it so hard that it sped across several drive up bank lanes and scattered the contents all over.

    The moth proceeds to fly in the car and down under the steering wheel out of my sight. In further panic, I start to stamp my feet all over the floor beneath me. I had to take my foot off the brake to do this, and so while I am having this incredible freak out, my car is idling forward. (thankfully there was no one in line ahead of me.) Once I am sure that I have stomped on every inch of the floor in front of me, I threw the car into park and oh-so-carefully peek over the seat to look for the (hopefully now deceased) moth.

    Holding my breath, and pulling my shirt collar up so I can cover my face quickly should I need to, I lean forward to see....a dead leaf. I had probably the largest freak out of my adult life over a dead leaf wafting into the car. What could I do? I had to get out of the car and collect my wallet along with all of its contents while carfulls of other bank customers waited in line watching. 

    I'm not proud of it, but I did at least enjoy sharing the story for a few laughs.

It's a Great Time to be a Nerd

     Back in elementary school, I was the nerdy, awkward kid in a school full of jocks and overachievers. It was a brutal living, being bad at sports growing up. Those of us who grew up knowing sports was not our strong suit had to come up with other hobbies to occupy our recess time. I chose to spend my time reading, and playing with Magic cards. (Really old Magic cards. Like FML how did I lose those cards old.)

I always thought the alliteration of Hillcrest Hornets was fun to say.

    For a long time now, I've felt really sorry for my dad. He's a life-long jock who married a nerd, and had all nerd children. He's now in his 70s and can still whoop my ass at basketball. I once saw him play 3 rounds of 'Around the World' without missing a shot. He spent I don't know how much time and money on a concrete patio in our back yard with a basketball hoop. We almost never used it.

       But in middle school, I met up with other nerds my age.(Not to be a cliché, but it was in Band Class) Once I had my fellow nerds about me, things leveled out. And once my growth spurts started to slow down, I was even able to play soccer in High School, but none of the sports I grew up loathing.

    But towards the end of my high school years, nerdiness started to become more trendy. I like to thank that to 20th Century Fox(the first Tobey Maguire Spider-Man came out my Junior year) and J.K Rowling. Harry Potter was dragons and wizards right? That's nerd stuff!

    These days, the nerd industry has expanded to greater heights than ever before. The second highest grossing film of all time was Avengers: Endgame. Released in 2019, it made a whopping 2.797 Billion (that's with a B) dollars, and the entire last hour of the film is non-stop fan service.

    Big Bang Theory, a TV series about 4 huge nerds, was so popular it ran for 12 seasons. That's two more seasons than Friends (which I also love). Mainstream, A-list stars run podcasts about their D&D games. And a kickstarter from a well-known fantasy author recently became the highest earning kickstarter of all time, blowing the previous record away. It's a great time to be a nerd.