Old Work

If anyone wants to know how I wrote when I was 27 ... while unpacking today, I stumbled across an old scrap book of mine and found this:

Yes, that really is me.

The text reads,

"Every year at this time, I take a lot of abuse for committing murder.  Soon it will be autumn and I will be hunting.

"There are those who will read the above and immediately categorize me according to some invented stereotype.  This infuriates me, because there are so few people who understand what I'm doing when I'm out traipsing all over the countryside.  Their imaginations conjure up visions of butchered animals and 'poor little birds,' though I would wager that few of these individuals have any real appreciation for these things.

"A hunter knows what he hunts in the same way that a farmer knows his land.  Each year, I pay $45 for the right to harvest my allotted 'crop.'  I pay this money to Alberta Fish and Wildlife, a government institution whose purpose it is to ensure that I (in obeying the law) cannot adversely affect the environment.  For each animal I remove from the pool, my money goes to the care of many more.  How many people do you know who give an equal sum to the eco-system?

What is more, when I am in that environment, I am responsible for reporting any violations, such as trespassing on posted land, burning cover, and so on.  Since, year after year, I hunt the same areas of Alberta, I know these lands well ~ I know what the animal populations are, I know the farmers who live there, and I know what to look for.  I am in effect a caretaker ~ and every fall I do more for the environment that the majority of sofa-bound, self-righteous bleeding hearts who would outlaw me.

"There are two things that damage the animal population.  The first, and certainly the one of lesser importance, is the habit of poaching.  Of course, I look at poachers in the same way that a rancher looks at rustlers.  Fish and Wildlife does, however, when setting their kill limits, take into account the number of animals that will be taken illegally; therefore legal hunters suffer.  What's more, a ban on hunting (something I know many people would like to see) would not eliminate poaching, while it would seriously undercut the economic viability of a provincial wildlife association.

"Far more insidious are the habits of numerous farmers who inhabit the land.  In burning off their fields during the fall, cutting out foreste areas to expand their crops, or filling in slough bottoms, they destroy the water table and make it impossible for many animals to live year-round.  The duck population, for example, was seriously damaged through the early '80s hrough such actions, not through hunting.  Only because of groups like Ducks Unlimited and projects like 'A Buck For Wildlife' are populations just now reaching levels they held 20 years ago.

I do not apologize for killing animals, any more than any other animal tender.  But I will not be accused of being a red-neck, beer-guzzling butcher.  My gun is a tool and not a toy, and because of that I am not interested in 'sport.'  What I crave is an opportunity to enjoy and take advantage of that wilderness which so many desire to protect."

I'm impressed the text holds up this well.  I probably haven't actually read the piece in 20 years, though I remember I did provide this book as a portfolio when I started with BusinessEdge News Magazine in 2004.  At any rate, I'm also pleased to say I stand by those points today as I stood by them then.

Except for the Editor [Nikki something] employing that damndable Oxford comma, which I would normally edit out but which I've left here, for historical accuracy.

Chuck Wagon Racing

Few people outside Calgary know this, but as I write we're in the seventh day of the Calgary Stampede; I grew up in Calgary and I've had my fill of the event, so every year I avoid it like the plague ... but just for a change, I'll write about the part I liked most when I was a kid.  The chuck wagon races.

It's one of those things on this earth that's hard to grasp in its full capacity without seeing it in reality ... and truth be told, the closer someone is to the track, the more frightening the event is.  I went around looking for some video; there's plenty of it from nowadays, with high resolution and proper camera work, but the race has been changed quite a bit from what it was when I would see it live.  I wanted some video from the past, when there were more outriders, when the barrel that sat in the wagon was loose and could bounce onto the track, when safety regulations amounted to, "Don't be stupid."  That was the race I first watched when I was four or five.

Here is a Canadian National Film Board documentary from the year of my birth, 1964.  I apologize for the schlocky bad writing ... but if you'll jump forward to 04:30 in the video, it will help give a sense of the mayhem.

Feel free to compare that with races from Friday, July 6th.  You can see clearly the riders are sitting on a bench, there's no belt holding them on the wagon, there's no stirrup for their feet and they stand up occasionally while riding.  There are a lot of horses out there moving at the same time (there were more when I was a kid) and deaths were common.  Horses still die; a horse that suffered an injury Wednesday night was put down.  Every year now, the race fights a steady battle not to be put down itself.

There are a lot of stories that make their way around about how the chuck wagon races got started ... but the most consistent is also my favorite.  The story goes that in 1919, during the Rodeo and Stampede (which began in Calgary in 1912), there were two cooks who served barbecue in front of their chuck wagons, the early 20th century version of food trucks.  At the end of the day, the two cooks would race: first to get their equipment into their wagons, and then to get their wagons across the fairground, where they could stable their horses and store their goods.  The loser paid for the drinks that night.

As the two competed over the 10 day course of the Show, bystanders started to take notice and the cooks began to attract a crowd.  Eventually they attracted the attention of "Wildhorse" Jack Morton, who brought it up to Guy Weadick, the creator of the Stampede.  Chuck wagon racing became an official event of the Stampede in 1923.

As can be seen on the 1964 film, there used to be a big cage that hung out the back of the chuck wagon.  At the start of the race, a small barrel was thrown into it; it was called a "stove," and represented the cook's gear that had to be stored in the wagons before the real race began.  During a race, the stove was free to jump around ... and would occasionally bounce onto the track, amid the feet of all those horses.

As the race started, the stove had to be loaded before the wagon completed the top barrel turn (talking about the big barrels on the ground); you can see from the video that the wagons all make a proper figure 8 pattern before running onto the track.  Not getting the stove loaded was a time penalty.  Not having the stove in the wagon was a severe time penalty, not to mention a terrific danger to horses and riders.

That danger was stopped with that big rack was gotten rid of.  For a time the stove sat in a cage on the back of the wagon (couldn't find an image), so that if it "feel," it dropped to the bottom of the cage and did not actually fall on the ground.  Looking at the newest videos, I can't see a stove at all, though the rules still indicate that there is one.  That particular danger, however, has been legislated out of the race.

Chuck wagon racing was once very dangerous.  Rod Glass, who was a member of the Glass family of racers, going back generations all the way to the beginning, was killed as an outrider in 1971; I seem to remember being there, but I was seven and maybe I just heard tell of it.  George Normand was killed in 1994 while chuck wagon racing at the Ponoka Rodeo (Ponoka is a tiny town in central Alberta).  According to Wikipedia, there have been five human deaths related directly to the Calgary Stampede; the link on Wikipedia, from the CBC, July 4, 2005, is broken.  The last was 1999.

Has the sport been ruined.  Probably, yes.  It's not what it was.  Still, watching any horseflesh flying at breakneck speed has always been enough to grip my attention.  Horses are beautiful animals, particularly when they run.

But as a dark little cloud who wants to ruin things for everyone, this is how it had to be.  Like the embedded video says, the horses of 1923 were not the thoroughbreds of 1964.  The original concept for the race was already gone after the first forty years; the race was growing more competitive, more expensive and faster ... and the potential for a some truly horrific accident was inevitable.  So steps were taken, year by year, to keep adrenaline junkies from offing themselves in large numbers in front of an audience that included children, for everyone's own good.

There's only chuck wagon racing now because the money behind it is in the hands of old ranchers and owners who, like me, remember the glory days of the 1960s and don't want to let go of it, no matter how many horses die.  But those voices will be removed from the equation actuarially.  And the race will quietly, mercifully, disappear.

This, then, Dear Readers, is how to write a blog post about something that we did not create ourselves.  Write what you know.  Give enough information to explain it to people who know nothing about it. Show film and then comment on that film.  Provide background.  Discuss the key issues.  At the end, give your own opinion about what you think matters, and back that opinion up with your personal morality.  Take your time and write everything you can think to write, that might matter to someone reading this.  Get people interested enough that they will go and investigate some things on their own. ADD something to the discussion.

Don't phone it in.

Find Some Hustle

Since early yesterday morning, I've been arguing with myself not to write this post; but I've lost that fight. So now I'll try to write it with decency.  We'll see how that goes.

In a comment on my post Tee Ball, James remarked rhetorically, "I guess I shouldn't be expecting a review of 5e from you anytime soon?"  That is correct.  I won't be writing a review about any edition, or a review about any adventure module, or campaign setting, or any RPG product of any kind.  Which should be fine.

Yesterday and today, Dyson's Dodecahedron wrote a post about the Proving Grounds of the Mad Ogre Lord; From the Sorcerer's Skull wrote about The Aberration; Barking Alien wrote for a second time about his idea for a campaign based on the Incredibles; Frugal GM wrote about Beyond Skyrim Bruma; Inkwell Ideas wrote another post about 5e Creature Decks; Tenkars Tavern wrote about the White Ship Campaign Kickstarter; Calvin's Canadian Cave of Cool wrote a critique of Noah's Ark; Brighton Roleplayers wrote about 4th Edition; Dungeon Fantastic wrote about the Status of the Ken Shabby Memorial; and No School Like the Old School said a few words on the Lovecraft E-Zine Interview of Joe Salvador.  There's more.  Took me a few minutes to find these.  And this is a typical two day period in the blogosphere.

We ~ and this describes some of us more than others ~ spend our time writing about what other people make, what other people say, what other people do and what money other people want to raise.  It is the flesh, blood and bone of the RPG blogger publishing industry [we can call it that now, more than half of us are sorta doin' it for coin].  It flies because readers will read it.  That's all it takes for journalism to fly: readers.

Coffee and journalism have an immortal bond;
to keep writing, we keep drinking ~ while the readers
drink to keep reading

Writing about what others do has been a time-honored tradition since coffee shop-magazine journalism truly got on its feet with the Restoration ... so I have no complaints, no complaints.  It is certainly a way to make a buck.

In terms of the internet, it is called mainstreaming.  Off the internet, mainstreaming is a perfectly acceptable practice of making things acceptable to the mainstream population.  As a slang term, however, it is "the act of a vampire trying to fit in with human society, such as drinking synthetic blood while being able to be around the human population." [urbandictionary.com]

To put it another way, blogs want the cachet of appearing to be journalists, by pretending to write reviews or call outs of things in the RPG culture.  Unfortunately, it really isn't journalism.  Tenkar's Kickstarter post, linked above, is barely a 30-second radio spot, with Tenkar acting in the role of some actor from a recent high-rated sitcom pitching a coffee bean brand.  Barking Alien's ideas for an Incredibles Campaign is hardly more than a series of spoilers feasting off the familiarity his audience is bound to have with a very popular franchise.  Joe Salvador's name appearing on NSLTOS is a cocktail party name drop from someone pretending to have met the man once at a coin laundry.

That's not meant to be mean.  I only want to stress that these "journalists" are phoning it in.

Journalism is research.  It is explaining something to an audience who does not recognize the name or the product being dropped, who deserve to be informed.  It is relying on details: what is the product, what is it meant to achieve, how is it applies, how does it matter to the reader and why should we care.  Most of these questions are simply passed over, et al, you know who Salvador is because you're a gamer, you care because you're a gamer, you know what the product is for because you're a gamer, it matters because you're a gamer and so on and so forth.  Once the crutch, "Because my readers are gamers" becomes the final word, the requirement to write an explanatory, in-depth, perspective-giving examination of the product, event or person is easily dumped in the trash bin.  The reader already knows all that.  Why bother?

I don't expect to change the status quo.  Most bloggers have nothing else of importance or interest to write about, are basically fan-boys gushing over material that releases dopamine or seratonin for themselves and their readers, and are not legitimate writers beyond the work they were expected to produce in high school for English credit.  The blog is a low bar and it's fun to write, and see visitors, and get comments, and pitch for regular readers to donate a little here and there.  It is great to be liked, and to do something we're liked for.  Blogging offers a sense of proprietary wealth, of ownership, of purposeful self-possession of one's thoughts and feelings.  It doesn't require much skill to get the benefit of what the platform mostly offers for most people.

However, I urge those who want to excel to do a little more research than you're doing.  To think a little more about what you're writing than you have.  To write a little more about the subject with each post.  And thereby, to make each post more valuable to the reader.  This will be, I promise, to your benefit.

The reader is a very bored entity, wandering the internet like a prospector, looking for something that will glint among the rocks.  And while wandering, the prospector will turn over a lot of rocks just to view what's there.  Most "views" are nothing more.  Just a bored reader turning over your rock, only to drop it and move onto the next rock.  To the reader, it's a disappointment.  Is that really the journalism you want to provide?  A means to disappointment?

Come on.  Work a little more.  Be a little more engaged.  Offer more visuals.  Draw them yourself if need be.  Move ahead of the hundreds of blogs that can't be bothered.  Getting ahead of the competition isn't as hard as you think.

Journalism has always been a cutthroat business. The losers have always been those without hustle.

Blemished Frame

Zoe Quinn.

Having written that name, everything I now say is suspect.

Legitimately so.

I have no opinion of any kind on Quinn except those opinions offered by the woman herself on the site linked.  I take her entirely at her word.  That is because her opinion is the only relevant one being put forward by anyone who's name, history and investment in the matter is actually known to me.

I had never heard of Quinn until reading the Cracked article.

Yesterday I wrote a post on the difference between fame that is given by others and fame we give to ourselves.  Those 'others' need not be managers or talent scouts, they need not be publishers or patrons.  'Others' can be a horde of prideful, inventive internet whores desperate for any target that can be identified, aimed at and exploited.  Just as I am doing right now, merely by starting this post with her name, the link and my disgust.

This, for those of you who may not be aware, is the fundamental principle of journalism.  The ideal is to take something that has happened, conveniently so far as your use of it is concerned, determine a few so-called 'facts' that can be twisted to entice the reader or viewer, then exploit the ever-living shit out of it.  The less personal involvement you have with the actual event, the better, for this entitles you to claim an 'unbiased' viewpoint.  See?  I have nothing invested in this particular lurid murder, car-crash, impending war or evidence of bodies strewn over the desert.  I'm disinterested.  Now allow me to tell you what I think.

This ludicrous perception that, once you've chosen to write about something, that you are in some way not tainted by it simply because you don't know the victims personally has sustained journalism for four centuries.  It allows newspaper reporters a semblance of self-respect, even piety, as they shove mics into the faces of hapless persons recently bereft of their family members or as they glory in the downfall of the mighty.

There are still many 'traditional' journalists today who express distress and fear that 'responsible' journalism is dead.  I put these words in quotes because these are totally bullshit words, invented for the purpose of egotistical puffery.  There is a difference between old timey journalism and what we have now.  Newspapers and television exploited pain for money.  The average, ordinary person exploits pain from petulance, priggishness . . . and boredom.

There's no real way for an ordinary, puritanical snob to make money from repeating the phrases or making up shit about viral content.  At best, all one has is their internet connection and the number of facebook friends they've accumulated through hours invested in the creation of interesting spam. Unlike Fox, there's very little advertising money to be made in a few hundred viewers willing to let their eyes glaze over while staring at someone's facebook or google+ page.  It takes the FCC or some other approving government agency before you can get your dick in a knot and be paid for it.  Small-time journalists have to make due with the warm, glowy feeling of seeing the number of likes or +s climb.

Small-minded people in the world have rebuilt the system so that we're all salesmen now - as sickening as that reality is once it's fully realized.  The real plunge, however, comes when you comprehend fully what it is we're all selling:

The certainty that the buyer is just stupid enough to believe we know what we're talking about. Especially when we don't.