For some fucking reason I decided that I should try my hand at model making.  This is something I was big into when I was a kid.  The problem then was one of patience - I wanted to assemble them and play with them as soon as I got the pieces out of the box.  This led to a lack of the little things, like, you know, painting and gluing and such.

This, my friends, is a Mitsubishi A6M2a Zero Fighter Type II ‘China Theatre’, made from a Hasegawa Hobby kit, and instead of a single frantic night, it took about two months to assemble.

If you so desire, you can click on the picture for a link to a Flickr photoset with a bunch of pictures.  It should also be noted that while the instructions came with marking and painting schemes for both the 14th Naval Flying Group (Oct. 1940) and the 12th Naval Flying Group (Sep. 1940), I completely ignored these and did whatever I damn well pleased.  And I think it mostly turned out OK.

Next?  Oh, I just don’t know.

As anyone who pays attention to my Twitter account probably knows, I’m mildly obsessed with Brushes, a paint with finger(s) app for the iPhone.  This is the third-ish picture I’ve made with Brushes, and is a direct result of my playing way, way too much Fallout 3.  Hence the kind of ..  bleak .. landscape.

As an aside, completely unbeknownest to me until an hour or so ago, the latest version of Brushes automatically stores a recording of every brushstroke you use to create an image.  It could be entirely naracistic, but I thought it was kind of a kick to watch.  You’ll need the Brushes Viewer, which is, unfortunately OS X only.

When WDFN purged all its local talent several months ago, I was sad.  For years, I listened to the usual cast of characters - Matt Shepard and Sean Beligian and Stoney and Wojo - as part of my daily ritual.  They were sports talk radio, and even though I am not the most hardcore of sports fans, I was completely addicted.  Yes, even Matt Shepard, who often made me often want ram my toothbrush into my ears, had me tuning in.

Radio is a cut-throat thing.  We listen to these people every day.  When something big happens, we tune in to hear what they have to say.  They keep us company while we’re stuck in traffic.  We form a relationship of sorts, even though it’s a mostly one-sided relationship - and then, one day, they’re gone.  There’s no goodbye, no closure, no nada - one day you get in the car and turn on the radio and there’s an unfamiliar voice and any on-air mention of what came before is verboten.  It’s all very 1984.  That’s the nature of the game, I guess.  A dying industry in a dying town in a dying state does what it can to endure.

So in February WDFN cut the wheat from the chaff, and in its new slimmed-down visage it switched to an all nationally syndicated schedule.  Some anonymous Fox Sports chump in the early hours, Dan Patrick and Jim Rome during the day, more anonymous talking heads in the afternoon, and that was that.  Even though I was angry and sad, you gotta listen to something to fill that drive time void.  Simply, I adapted to these new voices and new personalites and life went on.

Yesterday I crawled out of bed and stumbled into the shower and flipped the dial on my trusty shower radio and was shocked and delighted to hear Matt Shepard back on the air, pontificating on MSU’s crushing defeat to UNC in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.

“Yes!” I said, pumping my fist.  “Shep’s back!”

This feeling of elation lasted for as many as 30 seconds before it became clear he was the only one who was back.  This was not some spontaneous return to form or strange temporal anomoly.  Then he did what he always does - he said one thing that annoyed me, then another, then another.  I remembered in a crushing flush of insight why he bothered me so much in the first place, and before my shower was over I had turned the radio off in frustration.

I want my anonymous talking head back.  He was vanilla, for sure, but he never made me want to strangle someone.

World of Warcraft is, in large part, a game about killing things. There’s that famous quote that goes something like, “Join the Army! Travel the world, meet interesting people, and learn how to kill them.’” World of Warcraft is a lot like that, except you don’t have to get out of your chair. Instead, a character of your creation explores the varied continents of Azeroth, meets a variety of interesting creatures, and slices most of them into tiny little pieces. I’ve been playing the game, on and off, since its launch in November, 2004. In that time I have killed plainstriders, dragon whelplings, cleft scorpids, corpse eaters, nightmare scalebanes, vilebranch shadow hunters, deeprot stompers, noxious slime… you get the idea. Every monster I zap gives my character more experience points, and every experience point makes my character a more deadly soldier. It is a cycle of violence that makes Israel and Palestine look like kids in a sandbox.

Some people play World of Warcraft with other objectives in mind. Some people make their way through Azeroth concerned about things like fishing or leatherworking or exploration or engineering. These people are pussies. They should go play a game called World of Pussycraft.

You Will Be A Minister Of Death

Combat in the World of Warcraft revolves around two simple, related, essential concepts - “aggro” and “threat.” Aggro is a short-hand term for aggression. When a monster attacks you, you’ve pulled aggro. If a monster continues to attack you, you’re holding aggro. If someone manages to pull a monster off of you, you’ve lost aggro. In layman’s terms, the giant sludge beast you’re battling with your friends is going to try to eat whoever has aggro. That sludge beast decides on aggro by consulting something called the threat list - a programming contrivance that does its best to model a compelling artificial intelligence. Generally speaking, whoever is at the top of the threat list dictates who a monster decides to attack.  Every combat action in WoW generates threat. As you might suspect, powerful attacks generate more threat than weaker attacks. The level 80 Mage over there slinging giant meteors of apocalyptic death is probably causing more damage than you are, because you probably suck - and that means the sludge beast probably wants to chomp on his wand and leave you alone - for the moment. And this is, essentially, how they are related - the higher your threat level, the greater your chance of pulling aggro.

If you play the game by yourself, this is all relatively meaningless. You’re the only one on your threat list. Have fun. However, some of the best treasure (or loot) in the game comes from tackling dungeons and gigantic monsters (called bosses) that can require anywhere from 5 to 40 people working in close coordination to defeat. These dungeons are, really, where the rubber meets the road for a World of Warcraft player. While some are trifling, others require tens of minutes of white knuckled mouse clicking - and that’s only after hours of looking at diagrams, watching videos on the internet, and reading strategy guides; acting, in other words, like a complete dork.

We’re Mean Marines, Sir

There are lots of races and classes and talents in the World of Warcraft. Go crazy. Regardless of what you are, what you do, and where you spend your talent points, you fit into one of only three basic game-play roles. All three roles must be represented in a group of adventurers (called either a party or raid) for there to be any chance at victory.

TANK

You’re not going anywhere without a good tank. Or two or three. A tank is a masochist. They pile on lots of armor and a fancy looking shield and run headlong at the boss. Then, for the rest of the fight, their job is to stand there and get hit - get hit with stuff that, if it was hitting anyone else, would result in a quick and painful death. A tank generally doesn’t do that much damage, but have a unique set of abilities that allow them to generate lots of threat. Inventively, these are called taunts. In a perfect world, they use this threat generation to stay on the very top of the threat list, thereby holding aggro.

DPS

DPS is an acronym that sees frequent use in the World of Warcraft. It stands for damage per second. Every weapon - every sword, every axe, every mace, every wand, every crossbow, every gun - is evaluated in terms of how much damage it deals to an enemy every second. Some DPS classes do their damage up close and personal (melee), with, say, a poisoned dagger or a giant fucking sword that glows orange. Other classes stand back and reign down destruction from afar (ranged), like with a barrage of icebolts. DPS players are there to do as much damage as they can, as quickly as they can. As such, they generate a lot of threat. Fortunately, most DPS classes come with spells and abilities that help them reduce that threat. DPS players and tanks work to find a balance. DPS classes must do enough damage to win the day, but they must not generate enough threat to pull aggro from the tank. If they do, they’ll likely die.

As an aside - it is largely understood that most players who choose a DPS role are retarded. Every DPS player eventually, inevitably becomes so obsessed with doing more damage than the guy next to him that he pulls aggro, and in doing so unleashes a series of catastrophic events that result in everyone dying. They’re kind of a necessary evil.

HEALER

A healer isn’t concerned with dealing damage. A healer is concerned with keeping everyone alive. As such, they come equipped with a variety of spells that restore health. Most of the time, their attention is focused on the tank. This is a thankless, awful job that comes with an almost constant drubbing to your self confidence. No one congratulates you when everybody stays alive, but the minute someone gets their head sliced off, it’s all your fault. While they’re yelling at you, they, of course, fail to notice the sixteen other people you’re keeping alive,or how everybody seem to be going out of their way to take as much damage as possible, the stupid fucking knobs. My main character is a healer. It starts to wear on you.

Sir, Yes, Sir!

Every major monster, or boss, in World of Warcraft is different. Each one has a unique set of spells and abilities. Giant spiders like Maexxna try to eat you. Giant dragons like Malygos the Spell-Weaver, Aspect of the Blue Dragonflight (I swear I didn’t make that up) try to explode you. Giant abominations like Patchwerk try to mash you into a fine paste. Each encounter requires its own strategy to survive. Groups who attempt to substitute raw firepower for a plan - and there are many who try - generally meet a bad end. With that in mind, let’s discuss the most fundamental strategy you will require to be successful in World of Warcraft, the Tank ‘n’ Spank.

A Tank ‘n’ Spank is built around the most basic of boss encounters. It assumes a monster who deals damage to one target at a time, and who decides on that target based on who is at the top of the threat list. To execute a Tank ‘n’ Spank, the tank will engage a boss, using his threat generating abilities to grow and hold aggro. He will do this for the duration of the fight. A healer will heal him as he takes damage. That’s the tank part. DPS classes will let slip hell. That’s the spank part. DPS classes don’t have to worry about taking any damage, unless they manage to pull aggro from the tank. That’s as straight-forward as they come. And in that way, the Tank ‘n’ Spank is like the Mitochondrial Eve of World of Warcraft boss strategy. It is the beginning. It is an uncarved block of wood waiting for the knife of a sculptor. Strategies for more difficult bosses riff on it, like an old jazz standard - taking the underpinning concept and twisting and playing with it. Some bosses, like Gluth in Naxxramas, inflict ever increasing damage to the tank. This requires that a party have two tanks, and have them taunt off one another so the other can recover. Other bosses, like Feugen and Stalagg (who precede Thaddius), have a special ability that will periodically reset the threat list. If a DPS player isn’t careful, they can easily pull aggro before the tank can recover. And of course, there are plenty of bosses that throw the Tank ‘n’ Spank script right out the window - it is, after all, only a blueprint.

That’s a primer on dungeon content in the World of Warcraft. I’m sure it’s also a mildly flawed primer. I know that, somewhere, someone who knows what he’s talking about it is, at this very moment, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose and gesturing to his parents, with whom he still lives, declaring, “Read this! This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about!” Nerd. But that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. In fact, forums on websites like elitistjerks.com get so into figuring out the math behind it all, it gets a little scary. I mean, I’m not positive, but I think I saw calculus. That said, my contribution is, in spirit - if not in principle - correct. Enjoy.

Every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday morning I stop at the Biggby Coffee up the street. I get a grande coffee. I can’t get a medium coffee, because at the Biggby there are four sizes, and medium only works with odd numbers. I also sometimes get a scone, bagel, muffin, or, if I’m feeling particularly industrious, a small breakfast sandwich.

There is something in the experience beyond providing fuel for the morning fire. Even though I am incredibly lazy, I could probably stand to brew my own cup of coffee and butter a slice of toast or eat a grapefruit. For slightly more effort than that, I could probably up the ante to eggs, with like, bacon. When I start to think about how much money I’ve spent on coffee and cinnamon scones over the course of the last 18 months, I start to get a little nauseous. I have hellish daydreams sometimes about Suze Orman beating me violently with a bat or crowbar. All that, and I’m not even sure I like coffee that much.

So far, that’s not a very compelling case for being a Biggby customer - but I am. I think, in a lot of ways, I’m paying for something intangible - an experience. There is something satisfying in chatting with Daman and Erin, the regular morning people. We have an antagonistic but friendly relationship, and one time they spotted me when I forgot my wallet at home. I guess at the morning trivia question, but mostly cheat by using my iPhone to look up the answer. Daman tries relentlessly in a strangely endearing way to sell me new coffee promotions that I do not want, and, frankly, often sound disgusting. Erin tolerates him. We exchange quips. It’s almost like I get to be part of my very own mini-episode of Friends for a couple minutes every morning. When I make toast in the morning by myself in the kitchen, I am part of a much less interesting sitcom.

I guess that’s worth however much money - an amount we must never, ever think about.

During the late 90s, there was this kind of ubiquitous running gag that Starbucks was taking over the planet. This idea reached its zenith, I think, when someone made a picture of a Starbucks in the bathroom of another Starbucks. It’s all been downhill for our Seattle brewmasters since then - which brings me to this morning, when, upon debarking on my morning commute, I saw that the new Biggby Coffee was open. The one in the strip-mall around the corner. The one with a drive-thru. This Biggby, being less than a mile from my usual haunt, strikes me as a worrisome sign that a new company is trying to undertake an old (and failed) experiment - and in doing so, will transform - ala Anakin Skywalker - from plucky underdog to corporate death machine.

That being said, I pulled into the drive-thru to give it a spin. For being one of their first customers, I was gifted with free coffee, a free coffee mug and a sheaf of coupons that may very well last me for the rest of my natural life. As an added bonus, I didn’t have to get out of my car - or, for that matter, even add the cream and sweetener to my coffee. And my scone was wrapped in plastic - a new addition that bothered me at first - but had the unexpected benefit of not leaving the front seat of my car covered in a fine grist of cinnamon baked good.

It was, all in all, a fantastic experience. During the ride to work, I indulged in an elaborate fantasy wherein I leveraged the two coffee shops against one another - making them both supply me with an increasingly ridiculous array of gifts and perks in order to keep my business. Ultimately, though, my new Biggby experience left me empty. I guess talking to a metal box and passing my credit card through a window isn’t a very fulfilling sitcom either.

This morning I was back to my old routine. I slid one of my newly appropriated coupons across the counter to Daman.

“Don’t ask where I got it,” I said, feeling slightly guilty.

“Oh, I know where you got it,” he said with a look of disgust. “Traitor.”

It was good to be home.

Simplify Media is an application that streams your home music library to remote computers and mobile devices. If you use a program like iTunes, the ability to stream your music library to other computers is already built-in (well, mostly), so, you know big deal. What really drew me to Simplify Media was the promise that I could stream my home music library to my iPhone. This is cool for a number of reasons. First, if you have a lot of music in your library, you may not be to fit it all on your iPhone. Simplify Media solves this problem by streaming content. Second, look - it’s just neat - and you either get that or you don’t.

The first version, some months old, required you to jailbreak your iPhone or iPod Touch. It also only worked over WiFi. It was also kind of lame and prone to not work. However, an “official” version of Simplify Media showed up on the iPhone App Store the other day. I gave it a try and was pleasantly surprised. Not only does it actually work, but it’s no longer limited to WiFi. I am happy to report that Simplify Media now works over your EDGE/3G data connection. I haven’t had opportunity to test EDGE performance, and I never, never, never want to - but I did take my iPhone out with me while I went jogging the other day, and streaming content worked flawlessly over 3G after five or six seconds of initial buffering, and that’s kind of awesome. AT&T will probably cut off one of my thumbs or something, but hey, go technology!

So this altered my fragile reality a little bit today.

You know that movie The Longshots? It’s entirely possible and probable that you do not. If, as I suspect, that is the case, I implore you to watch the trailer. If you watch it, It will make what’s coming approximately a billion times more insane. If you are too lazy to watch a two minute movie trailer, I will briefly provide the salient details: It is “the true story of Jasmine Plummer who, at the age of eleven, became the first female to play in Pop Warner football tournament in its 56-year history.” It’s a rollicking feel good family film starring Ice Cube. Unfortunately, Mr. Cube plays the role of irascible uncle with a heart of gold, and not action quarterback Jasmine Plummer. That would’ve been a hell of a movie.

Anyway, that’s all well and good and predictable, but get this - and please, sit down and make sure your mouth isn’t full - TL (as it’s known in the industry) is helmed by Fred Durst. Yes, that Fred Durst. Yes, used to front nu metal suckfest Limp Bizkit and maybe had sex with Britney Spears and then had a sex tape leaked onto the net Fred Durst. By the way, because I’m a pervert, I totally watched that video when it came out. Imagine how bad a sex tape involving Fred Durst could possibly be, and I assure you, it was worse than that. As an added bonus, now whenever I see the trailer for The Longshots all I can hear is Fred Durst commanding a subservient blond to touch his balls. Yeah.

And if that weren’t enough, The Longshots isn’t even Fred’s directorial debut. That would be The Education of Charlie Banks, which was obviously awful because it was directed by Fred Durst. Wait. What’s that, you say? The Education of Charlie Banks premiered at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival to universal acclaim? Seriously? It’s like I fell asleep and woke up in a bizarro world where everything is fucking crazy.

I don’t know. I don’t know if this is bad or good or anything at all. He’s a guy making his way, just like everybody else. I just know it feels strange and unnatural and confusing to me, like when Obi-Wan Kenobi felt the destruction Alderaan.

There’s something unsettling afoot.

One of my prouder moments finds me sitting in the corner of my local Big Boy, openly sobbing over my fish and chips while I soldier through the end of Cormac McCarthy’s incredible novel The Road. When my waitress comes by to see if I need anything else, I mumble, “No, no thank you,” and she moves on briskly, made uncomfortable, I would guess, by the guy sitting in the corner eating fish and weeping.  I watch her go and I turn another page - but what I really want to do is to run after her, to hug her, to shove my face into her heaving, tattooed bosom and feel her warmth, to feel something - because The Road is a long, dark journey into, frankly, some seriously fucked up shit.  It’s a beautiful, powerful, moving journey, but it’s also a journey that, undertaken at the wrong time (say, in a corner booth at a Big Boy, alone, at night), can leave you empty and yearning for nothing more than a human connection - any human connection.

For those of you not big on “reading” and “words”, you will be pleased to learn that the heartrending experience of The Road will soon be available in movie form.  The idea being, I guess, that human tears can only make popcorn more delicious.  I was browsing io9 today and saw that the first set of production stills from the film, which stars Viggo Mortensen, have been released.  Judging by the the oppressive sheen of dead that seems to coat them, I’d say they’ve done a pretty good job of capturing the grim finality of the book.

Now excuse me while I crawl under my desk and cry.

I’ve always enjoyed baseball in a detached, romantic sort of way. I like the idea of baseball. I like watching movies like The Natural. At the end of The Rookie, when Dennis Quaid gets called out onto the field, I cry like a little girl. I appreciate the game - the tradition, the rivalries, the struggles - as a bona-fide piece of Americana.

Tragically, though, as a game, baseball has always been lost on me. I want to like it. I mean, I like it in concept, so I’m already half-way there, right? But seriously - have you ever tried to actually watch a game of baseball? I don’t mean a movie that has baseball in it, like Bull Durham, but an actual game of baseball. This is boring stuff! A guy tries to hit a ball. People stand around. Someone in the dugout makes a joke and the guy next to him laughs. If you could hear the joke, that would be something, but you can’t. Occasionally, something happens, and everyone will run around for a couple seconds. They stand around some more. This continues. Also, it turns out that it doesn’t matter whether you witness this spectacle in person, or on the couch while playing World of Warcraft. Yes, baseball is boring and impenetrable in either place. The only difference is that when you’re at the ballpark, the seats are made of hard plastic and are overly small, making it an even more unpleasant experience.

This used to be America’s past-time? Really? At least in Nascar there are crashes sometimes, and those crashes entertain me by way of the hilarious sport blooper reels they inevitably comprise.

Except, then, something happened to me.

About a month ago, I was flipping channels when I stumbled on Detroit Tigers game. Normally, I would have proceeded up the dial, in search of an episode of Law and Order. Instead, my finger faltered and then, suddenly, failed.

In my head, something clicked.

I don’t know. Maybe most men are genetically predisposed to like a game where people hit things with sticks. Maybe it’s like being a Cylon or a member of the X-Men - a chip, a latent genetic marker - one day it just turns on, and then it doesn’t turn off. Or, maybe in the absence of any other sport, save the WNBA, I simply adapted my sports addiction to another fix.

I don’t know that it matters. What does matter is that something profound happened to me. I suddenly found myself totally and completely engaged. I watched for an inning. I watched for two. I watched the whole game. Then, I watched the series.

One night Nicki walked into the living room and eyed the TV.

“So now it’s baseball?” she said. “Jesus.”

I started to watch the schedule, to follow the race for the pennant in the AL. I started to learn the rules, the jargon, the strategy. I started to appreciate the skill in a 100 mph bullet fastball, a stolen base, a double play. I started paying attention to sports-talk radio.

The Detroit Tigers became my team.

Players slipped their names. Ivan Rodriguez became Pudge. Kenny Rogers became The Gambler. Dontrelle Willis became Shitty Dontrelle Willis.

It wasn’t as cool as learning I could fly or that I was a robot, but it was something.

Suddenly, I got baseball. I appreciated baseball. I loved baseball.

And, having watched baseball for a month or so now - having adopted the Detroit Tigers into the wheelhouse of feeling I reserve for puppies and rainbows and Barack Obama, I feel completely justified when I ask, what the hell?

I mean, at first it was OK. Largely, I think, because I was still enthralled with the newness of the thing - like after you saw The Phantom Menace for the first time, and you all stood around in the parking lot and talked about your favorite parts. After watching the Tigers get swept by the Rays this weekend, the curtain was pulled back and a truth was revealed: this shit is fucking ridiculous.

And where to begin?

The illustrious Tigers, who are now seven games back from first place and a game under .500, seem to be hitting - I mean, sort of, I guess. After all, everything’s relative. Compared with their pitching, Tiger batters seem to be wielding toothpick splinters from the very World Tree, infused with the magic of the Old Gods. That is to say, their pitching is really, really, really bad.

Let’s see if we can peg the Sarcasm Meter here for a second. I mean, I’m glad to see we got rid of Hall of Famer Pudge Rodriguez for bullpen relief from Kyle Farnsworth. He only gave up three runs - including two home runs - in his one inning of work in yesterday’s 6 to 5 loss to the Rays. Also, stellar, fantastic, absolutely top notch work from new closer Fernando Rodney, who has blown four of his five save chances. He not only managed to hit Shawn Riggans square in the chest with a 95 mile an hour fastball, possibly clinically killing him for several seconds, but he also walked three - including, and this is great - the winning run!

Sometimes, to fit in, I will lie, and say things like, “Boy, when he made that catch for a touchdown, I was really hollering at the TV!” This is not the truth. I’ve never really been one to yell at the TV during sports. I am a tense, pensive type, and while watching sports I tend to alternate between states of brooding and cautious optimism. On Sunday afternoon, watching the Detroit Tigers implode, I actually began shaking my fists at the TV while screaming, “Fernando Rodney, I will eat your children!”

But, hey, have no fear! Nate Robertson is pitching tomorrow against the White Sox. What’s that, you say? He’s got an ERA over 6 and a 6-8 record? Fantastic! Incredible!

This, sports fans, is vitriol that can only be sparked when a first love turns cold, when an innocence is corrupted. A switch flipped on a Tuesday in July, and I’m a Detroit Tigers fan now, for better or worse.

It’s looking a lot like worse.