When I first started working at the game store in high school, there were a couple of guys about my age who were regular customers and occasional employees. One was named Brad, and one was named G.J. Brad had a fairly sunny disposition, was smart, had a good sense of humor, and I enjoyed his company. G.J. was kind of a dick; he took a long time to grow up, occasionally treated his friends badly, and was generally obnoxious. I didn't dislike him, he could be a nice guy when he wanted to--but he was difficult. Brad went on to work at the store for a few years back when I was the assistant manager, then moved on to other things. G.J. disappeared for a while, then reappeared looking for work one Xmas; I hired him to help in our seasonal puzzle store, he helped for a week or two, and then--as I remember it--quit. Later on I heard that G.J. had joined the military. Good for him, I thought--he's the sort that will be improved by a stint of enforced respect, organization, and responsibility. That was about 10 years ago.

In January, I unexpectedly ran into Brad. It was great to see him--he's managing a restaurant now. We caught up, and I told him that a few of our older coworkers had died in the last couple years. "Wow, that sucks," he said. "Did you hear about G.J.?"

Your premonition upon reading that sentence is probably correct. G.J. suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury in Iraq--but he didn't die in Iraq. It was a minor injury, he served out his deployment with increasingly bad migraine headaches. Then he came back to the states for treatment. He died in the Fort Knox "Warrior Transition Unit" in September of last year. He didn't die from his injury--the injury took place a full year before his death. He died from an accidental overdose of prescribed medications for his continuing pain and depression. He died in his bedroom at Fort Knox; no one checked on him for three days despite his failure to show up for mandatory roll-calls. He was apparently unconscious for a full day before he went into respiratory failure and died--during which 24 hours he could have been given treatment which probably would have saved him. They finally found his body because his increasingly frantic wife called the fort to find out why he wasn't returning her calls or picking up his messages. If you have a desire to read the full story of G.J.'s death and his family's fight to get answers from the military about how it happened, you can read it here.

This has been big news in the local paper. Our governor is demanding answers from Ft. Knox, Ft. Knox is blaming his doctor, his doctor is blaming the military, the military is complaining that they're shorthanded. For myself, I don't know if the military made G.J. a better person; from some things I'd heard here and there over the last decade, it probably didn't. Once a kind-of-a-dick, always a kind-of-a-dick. Still, it was his career of choice, and if he had died on a battlefield in Iraq or Afghanistan, I could have been glad that he'd died doing something he personally believed in and cared about. But the military--that band of brothers that promises never to leave a man behind--lied to G.J. They left him behind, when a 10 minute walk to his room by the platoon sergeant who noticed his absence at roll call could have saved his stupid life. Fuckers.

(crossposted to my other blog.)

I figured I should post something about E. Gary Gygax's passing. But I'm not a D&D player--I never really was, to be honest, I owned the basic red box set as a kid but plunged straight into Cthulhu in high school and soon after, Runequest and the Morrow Project all rolled into one. I met him once--which is to say we literally bumped into one another on the dealer floor at GenCon, and I kid you not my first thought was "dear god who let that dude in here?" He looked kind of filthy, had a noticable odor, and there was dried mustard in his beard. When I caught a glimpse of his nametag as we both recovered and parted ways, I was stunned and repulsed. *

But I do realize this was not all there was to E. Gary Gygax. :) I saw him at a subsequent Gencon and he seemed to have pulled himself together--I think he must have just gone through a rough patch sometime around 1997 or so. And while D&D is not "my game," I know that his creative energy, plus that of Greg Stafford and Sandy Petersen, has had a profound influence on my life. I did read the hell out of Keep on the Borderlands when I was 12, even though I never did play it. The pioneers of roleplaying games in the 1970's made my life a richer place in the 80's, 90's, and now, and I was sorry to hear of Gygax's passing. Gencon will be a little dimmer without him there.

* To be fair, I've met my own RPG idol, Greg Stafford, a couple of times at Gencon and he always smells like a combination of pot and B.O.

erink tagged me for a meme... 7 Weird Things About Me. Let's see here.

I. I love Roman Numerals and use them frequently when taking notes in meetings, or whatever.

II. I write with my right hand, eat with my left, and can throw or catch a ball with either one.

III. I have a thing for fountain pens; I wrote my bachelor's thesis with my first one, and was OCD enough that when I misplaced the pen my work ground to a halt til I found it.

IV. Like Erink, I love to play physical sports despite being terrible at them. (And I'll swear I'm a lot worse than she is.... She at least stays in shape.)

V. I hate spicy food. But I love horseradish.

VI. I have never seen a full episode of: American Idol, Survivor, Project Runway, The Apprentice, or any reality show that involves making a bunch of people live or work together under trying circumstances.

VII. My nickname in my office is "The Ninja." Yes, really.

I usually don't tag people for memes, so really, if you're reading this and you'd like to do it, consider yourself tagged!

So I've been having an interesting conversation on robinmckinley's LJ about books that shape us in our early reading years--not just books you enjoyed when you were a pre-teen, but books that genuinely changed or helped form how you write (if you're a writer) or how you think or view the world at large. Her own talking about the books that shaped her writing--and the lack of a large body of YA fantasy when she was at that age--prompted me to think about what authors and what books I was reading as a pre-teen and what that meant to me further down the line. I don't remember reading a lot of sci-fi or fantasy before age 14 or so... But I did read Lloyd Alexander when I was 9, Tolkien when I was 10, Watership Down when I was 11, and Robert C. O'Brien at 12. Ellen Raskin's puzzle-novels (Westing Game, The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon) also had a huge impact on my psyche, I think. I wouldn't say they influence my writing style--frankly, my informal writing style derives pretty strongly from TV influences like Monty Python, and humor essayists such as Dave Barry. But those authors did influence how I tend to think about everything I've read since to some extent, and everything I'm likely to read and enjoy in the future.

What are your formative books from those years? What did you read before you were 13 that affected you so deeply that you still find yourself thinking about it now and then?

Got this off a friend's MySpace post:

Here's how it works... go to Google, type in your name and the word needs. . and whatever is the 1st result to come back is what you post.

By that reckoning, Cathy needs... a panda!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/somesay/147281670/

She got me thinking about movies... I don't often see movies in the theatre these days, and when I watch TV it's 99.9% of the time documentary type stuff anymore. Looking at her impressive list, I got to wondering just how many movies I've seen in the last year...

On my own:
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavera (again and again and again.)
Jesus Camp
Tarzan the Ape Man
Tarzan and His Mate
Tarzan Finds a Son
Tarzan Escapes
Tarzan's Secret Treasure
Tarzan Ties His Shoes (just kidding!)
Tarzan Triumphs
Trail of the Screaming Forehead
Dead at the Box Office
Resident Evil
Deathproof
Knocked Up
MST3K Catalina Caper (ow)
MST3K Bloodlust (ow ow ow)
Harry Potter: Hooked on Phoenix
Beowulf (augh! my eyes!)
Golden Compass x2

Indiana Film Society Films
Schlock!
Devil's Playground
Double Dare (call me, Zoe Bell!)
Theramin
American Movie
Trembling Before G-D
Paris is Burning
League of Ordinary Gentlemen
Isaac Newton and Me
Central do Brasil
Elsa y Fred
Deus e Brasileiro (God is Brazilian)
Sol de Otuno (Autumn Sun)
Children of Men
The Indy Awards Short Films (12 of them, varying degrees of quality)

At the Indy LGBT Film Fest
The Gendercator (short)
Family Reunion (also a short)
Nina's Heavenly Delights

There were probably a few more. But that's a total of 27 31 33 (I forgot Deathproof and Knocked Up)--plus the shorts, which really is more than I'd have guessed. It's the film society that does it. This Spring's series is "Bridging the Gap: Films of Iran and Israel," and I think I'm going to try to catch most of them if I can.

As I'm too stingy to pay for photo hosting on LJ, please feel free to check out The Best Nativity Ever HERE.
Yes, those are my toys. Galactic heroes are courtesy my coworker Eric; photoshopping is courtesy coworker Jay. No, we didn't do this on company time. :)

1. And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Jabba the Hutt, that all the galaxy should be taxed...
3. And all went to be taxed, every one unto his own planet.
4. And Darth Vader also went up from Coruscant, unto Tatooine, into the city of Mos Eisley, which is called a wretched hive of scum and villainy
5. To be taxed with Padme, his GFFL, being great with child...
7. And she brought forth her first born, twins, and wrapped them in Jedi robes, and laid them in a manger, because there was no room at the Cantina.
8. And there were in that same country jawas abiding in the field, keeping watch over their droids by night.
9. And Lo, Master Yoda came upon them, and the glory of the Force shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.
10. And Yoda said unto them, "Fear Not! Tidings of great joy I bring you!
11. For this day born in the city of Mos Eisley a Jedi, he is! Hmmmm?"
12. "And a SIGN unto you this shall be; find him, you will, wrapped in Jedi robes, lying in a manger. And he has....a sister! Yesss.... there is another!"
13. And suddenly there was with Master Yoda a multitude of rocking alien band members, jamming and saying,
14. "Glory to the Force in the highest, and in the galaxy peace, and goodwill toward all beings, men and otherwise!"


Hippity happity holiday, everyone!

Yet another by popular demand (and by popular, I mean Carl and Robin.) It was my first week as a seasonal gardener, and I was assigned to work with the guy in charge of the zoo perimeter plantings, who we'll call D. D was possibly one of the laziest, most annoying people I've ever worked with; a large part of his job consisted of trying to find ways to avoid working. He eventually showed me all his boltholes where he'd take naps in the afternoons--seriously, the man had a nest behind an 8' high cotoneaster hedge where he'd hide on nice days. So not surprising that at the end of my first week working for him, he decided he'd leave a little early in the afternoon and left me to water the rosebushes out by the zoo entrance. He showed me the irrigation hookup, which is set below ground level with a lid covering it; you attach the hose to the hookup, then turn a valve which is also set down inside the hole in the ground, and you get a high pressure stream for watering. Fine. Off he goes. And I water, and water, and eventually get to the point where the very long hose doesn't want to reach because it's looped back a bit, and it's too heavy to just drag smoothly along. So I give it a good hard jerk.

Aaaannnnd... the torque effect of my jerking against the hose coupling down below ground level causes the pvc pipe at the hookup to snap. A spectacular fountain of water goes shooting up into the air about 4' high. I yell, "Holy shit!" and go diving onto it like I'm covering a grenade, completely drenching myself in about .2 seconds. Groping around down in the now completely flooded hookup box, I find the piece of the pipe and thinking maybe it just came unstuck, I try to muscle it back onto the valve. The water flow stops, I gasp with relief, and let go of the pipe... only to have it pop off and another jet of high-pressure water go shooting up, this time straight into my face (because of course I was leaning over the thing at the time.)

This happens twice more--without the straight in the face bit--before I decide that it really is BROKEN broken, and since I don't have a radio of my own I can't call for help. So I leave the fountain, which is rapidly flooding the entire entry to the zoo and roaring down the storm drain, and I squish my way over to the administrative building. I'm covered in mud, water, and bits of grass as I walk past some very nicely dressed people from the marketing and development department to get to the security desk and ask them to call the Curator of Horticulture so I can get some help. "What do you want us to tell her?" "Tell her that I... That there's water... look, just tell her to get over here asap, ok?" She finally arrived, surveyed the damage, and said, "The Waters staff told me about your penguin thing, you know." :) Anyway, they had to turn off the main water supply for half the zoo for several hours to fix it, and while I didn't get fired, I cemented my reputation for being accident prone and I believe they still tell stories about me.

Eel story to follow, later.

Many of y'all have heard this one in person, but by request I'm posting it here for the world to see. Every single word of it is true, I swear upon my life. I couldn't make up something this good if I tried.

( Read on, MacDuff )

OK, I admit it. This is purely a placeholder for my other blogs. But LOOK! A MONKEY! James Turner, of Beaver and Steve, has an LJ with an awesome sketchcast on it. Go look. And Zack, at Animals Have Problems Too has a great new T-shirt depicting the love of an octopus for a bear. Don't worry--it's nature's way. I love his oyster shirt, too, but he picked a really gross font for the text and I just don't think I can stand to order it. Dammit.