Writing Project - February 2017 Update

Last month I said that I for the rest of the year I would have to write one post per month with an update on what I’ve done with my writing project. Seeing as how today is the last day of February, I probably should publish an update today in order to keep to that pledge. My job has been keeping me extremely busy this month (in this week alone I’ve already put in more than 30 hours, and it’s not even Wednesday yet) but I can share three small things that have been accomplished.

First, and most significantly, I’ve closed a glaring plot hole that’s bedeviled me for a very long time. There are other plot holes that remain to be resolved, but this one was one of the biggest.

Second, one of the supporting characters that’s been nameless since the beginning of the project finally has a name. It’s nice to have something other than a placeholder to refer to this character by.

Third, I realized I needed to completely rethink a major event from the first story arc. While the way I originally had it wasn’t necessarily bad, it diminished the effect of another major event later on. I think I know how this event is going to be rewritten, but I’ve not typed it out yet.

Making peace with Mountain Dew

Many years ago, I tasted Mountain Dew for the first time, and I thought it was disgusting. After that initial experience I avoided drinking Mountain Dew and had no intentions of ever willingly drinking it again. Mountain Dew and I were enemies. Last month, however, everything changed when I was at a fast food establishment and waiting for my order. Standing before the soda dispenser, I saw that Mountain Dew was one of the available sodas, and I thought to myself that it wouldn’t hurt to try a small sip of it, if nothing else to confirm my longstanding bias against it. A half-second push on the Mountain Dew button dropped a very small dosage of it into my cup, and I took it down with a single gulp. To my surprise, it didn’t taste half bad. I put a little more Mountain Dew into my cup to try it again and make sure I hadn’t suffered a temporary lapse in the function of my taste buds. It still tasted ok. A week or two later I drank some more Mountain Dew with the same results. While not a first pick in my choice of sodas, or even a second or third pick, Mountain Dew had gotten itself off the bad list. I don’t think the chemical formula of Mountain Dew has changed since my first tasting all those years ago, so clearly something happened to me between then and now. Whatever the reason, Mountain Dew and I have made peace.

Believing without question

In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s election, social media feeds and traditional news outlets were awash with reports of hate crimes being committed across the country. A mass outbreak of racism, xenophobia, Nazism, and every other conceivable malignant social and political force was overrunning America, and obviously Trump and his supporters were to blame, or so we were told. As it turned out, however, nearly every one of these hate crimes that were reported around the time of Election Day were found to be hoaxes. The Muslim girl who claimed Trump supporters assaulted her, ripped off her hijab, and shouted insults at her? She made it up in order to have an excuse for breaking curfew. The Bowling Green student who claimed rocks were thrown at her, and the other Bowling Green student who claimed he was mugged by men shouting slurs? Also fake. The Chicago student who received hateful notes and emails from Trump supporters? He made the notes himself. The Muslim college student who said she was harassed on a subway while onlookers did nothing? All lies. The guy in Boston who said he was confronted by two white men when he got off a bus and was told that the US was now “Trump country” and then they threatened to lynch him? Total fabrication. The black church in Mississippi that was vandalized with “Vote Trump” graffiti and later set on fire? It was done by one of the church’s own members. The Texas family whose garage was spray-painted with a racial slur and whose truck and motorcycle were set on fire? The father of the family confessed to doing it himself. The various hate speech writings found on walls, stairs, and other public places? I haven’t seen one yet that wasn’t proven to be a hoax, or at the least remains uncertain.

Why did these people create these falsehoods, and perhaps more importantly, why were so many of us so willing to accept their stories without question? To answer the first question we’d have to get the individual answers from each of the perpetrators, whereas the second question we can ask ourselves. The state of social and political discourse has gotten so bad in our society that we are willing to immediately believe the worst about those whom we disagree with, even when the available data, as well as common sense, would tell us otherwise. Those of us who were anti-Trump should have been very skeptical of all the claims of hate crimes that were coming out in droves around Election Day, but instead, to our embarrassment, we bought in without a second thought. Even I, a person who is friends with Trump voters and knows better than to believe the lies that are perpetuated about them, was inclined to think that the Election Day hate crimes were real. Our minds are shutting down, our hearts are hardening, and I honestly don’t think the trend is going to stop any time soon.

Bolder Boulder 2017: Do I Partake?

To run, or not to run? That is the question before me. Since 2008 I have run the Bolder Boulder nearly every year. It’s become a tradition in my life, but arguably an odd one. I don’t like to run (or exercise in general) and my body is not well suited to activities like running that put a lot of strain and impact on it. You would think that I would have stopped doing the Bolder Boulder years ago, but each year I’ve felt strangely compelled to do it again. What’s different this year is that I don’t live in Boulder, so on Memorial Day I’d have to get up even earlier than previous years and drive into Boulder and find parking in order to participate in the race. Part of me is not too keen on the impracticality of participating this year, but another part of me almost feels obligated to maintain the tradition.

At the moment the decision hangs in the balance, with a slight edge going to the part of me that is inclined to partake in the race. Whatever my final choice, I want to make it soon, as the early bird pricing for the race will expire at the end of the month, and I don’t want to pay any more than I have to. Sometime next month I’ll publish a brief post with my decision.

Updating Writing Pieces

I hate updating my writing pieces. Maybe it’s laziness, but when I write and publish something I want it to go out into the world and stand the test of time. Sometimes, however, I am compelled to update things I’ve published to this blog due to new information or any number of other reasons. The most recent example of a writing piece that I’m going to have to update is last Friday’s post on Milo Yiannopoulos. I finished writing that post a week ago and published it on Friday, but Milo, ever the glutton for controversy, had to get himself into a whole new world of trouble, so now I need to add a few extra remarks to my writing piece on him. It’s like Milo knew I had written something about him and so he decided to troll me by doing something so outrageous that I would be forced to add some more lines to my work. [Begin Dramatic Music] Curse you Milo! [End Dramatic Music] The update should be live by the end of this coming weekend, and there will be a prominent notice at the top of that writing piece announcing the update.

New York City, Here I Come

My trip to New York City has finally been arranged. I’ll be flying out there on the night of May 17 and will be flying back in the late afternoon on May 21. Now that the dates are set, I’ve got to do more work on planning what I’ll be up to while I’m there. A four-day weekend isn’t nearly enough time for a place like New York City, so I’ll have to be careful with my time management, but at the same time maybe that will make a good incentive for a second visit at some point in the future. Hopefully I’ll return from New York City with some good stories to write about.

Whole Foods Experiment Concluded

Two weeks ago I published a post about a food experiment that I had been meaning to conduct for quite some time. For the experiment I would make Whole Foods the primary source of my weekly grocery shopping for five weeks and see if there were any noticeable changes to my health. The five weeks have now finished and I can’t say that my body is performing any better or worse than before the experiment began. My wallet, on the other hand, has seen a significant uptick in the outflow of funds as a result of shopping at Whole Foods. With no improvements to my health, and the fact that buying from Whole Foods is costing me much more than before the experiment began, I must therefore discontinue the experiment. I may still go to Whole Foods on occasion to purchase one of their specialty items, but they will not be my primary (or even secondary) source of grocery shopping.

With the Whole Foods experiment over, the question now is whether or not I’ll do the same sort of food experiment again, but instead with Walmart as my primary outlet for grocery shopping. If that experiment is conducted I’ll be sure to let you know.

Milo Yiannopoulos

UPDATE: This post was originally written and published just prior to the pedophilia controversy that Milo found himself in. I’ve made a few small adjustments and added a new section (in the bottom half, titled “Is Milo a pedophile?”) to this writing piece to reflect these recent events. Hopefully Milo doesn’t get himself into any more trouble, since I don’t want to have to update this post a second time.
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In my writing piece on Inauguration Day, I said I wasn’t going to do any more political posts for a few months, but in the time since then I’ve decided I’m going to make an amendment to that pledge. I’m not going to do any writing pieces related the Trump presidency until later this year, but there are other political topics that I think are worthy of being written about, so I’m giving myself leeway to write on them. That brings us to today’s post.

Like many people in this country, I watched in dismay as the University of California at Berkley campus devolved into rioting that centered around a planned speech by conservative writer and speaker Milo Yiannopoulos. The former home of the Free Speech movement of the 1960s was now home to a movement intent on censoring views that it did not agree with, and in one regard they succeeded, seeing as how Milo’s talk was cancelled due to security concerns. The protestors did not want Milo speaking at their campus and sought to prevent anyone from hearing him, but as I read and watched news reports it occurred to me that their efforts were likely going to backfire. The reason for this being that the rioting had gotten me curious to know more about Milo, and I probably wasn’t alone in my curiosity. I had heard of Milo about a year or two ago and noticed his name had appeared a few times in my online readings, but I honestly knew next to nothing about him. Most of the time his name had come up in the past it was accompanied by charges of racism, sexism, nazism, bigotry, fascism, and whatever other derogatory description you can come up with for a hated person these days. Apparently Milo was one of the worst human beings alive today, but having never looked into this I didn’t know if the accusations were true. So, I decided to do something really crazy—I decided to listen to some of Milo’s previous lectures and decide for myself if he really was the scum of the earth. Milo had been on tour at college campuses across the United States for the past several months and the audio from them was available on iTunes, so I downloaded six or seven lectures to listen to while at work, and at home I watched another two lectures on Youtube. After several days of watching, listening, and taking notes, I’ve come to few conclusions about Milo. Since I was trying to find answers to particular questions in my mind about him, I’ve laid out the first part of my thoughts in the form of questions and answers. After that are miscellaneous things I found interesting. Granted, Milo could be a completely different person in private, and I didn’t listen to all his lectures, so there are topics that I can’t cover here.

Fourth time through

With the upcoming release of Mass Effect: Andromeda, I’ve realized that at some point this year it will be time for another playthrough of the Mass Effect games. Specifically, I’d be replaying the two Mass Effect games I own—Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 (I refuse to play Mass Effect 1 again because I can’t stand the gameplay). This would be my fourth time working through the series, and I’m trying to decide things like which of the six character classes I should choose, what my morality will be, and who my character will romance. In each of my three previous playthroughs I tried to change things up a little, and this fourth time will be no different. That means that for choices like character class and romantic relationships I’ll opt for something I haven’t done before. I’ll also finally not kill Kaiden, since I killed him in all three of my previous playthroughs. Below are the basic details of my previous playthroughs and what I’m thinking about for the fourth playthrough.

First Playthrough
Gender: Female
Class: Infiltrator
Morality: Super Paragon
Romance: Garrus

Second Playthrough
Gender: Male
Class: Vanguard
Morality: Super Renegade
Romance: Miranda

Third Playthrough
Gender: Male
Class: Sentinel
Morality: Overall Paragon
Romance: Ashley

(Planned) Fourth Playthrough
Gender: Female
Class: Adept, Soldier or Engineer (I’ll probably go Soldier or Adept)
Morality: Overall Renegade
Romance: Thane or Kaiden (probably Thane)

A Taste of Freedom

Here’s the thing about freedom: once you get a taste of it, you’ll never forget what it’s like and you’ll crave it for the rest of your life.

Passport Renewal

I’m making a little progress towards the potential Japan and South Korea trip. My passport expired last year and this week I’m finally getting around to mailing it in for renewal. With the old passport I’ll have to include the obligatory paperwork, a check for the fees, and a new photo replace the one of the spry young fellow whose face graces the old passport. At some point in the coming weeks the new passport should show up in the mail, and I’m looking forward to holding it in my hand and being another step closer to Japan and South Korea. There’s no guarantee I’ll actually be traveling overseas this year, but it will be good to have the passport ready in case the opportunity arises.

Small Update on Nintendo Switch thoughts

We’re inching ever closer to the release of Nintendo’s next console, the Switch, and I thought I’d give a brief update of my thoughts on it. A lot of new information about the Switch has been released since I last wrote about it in November, which I won’t rehash here for the sake of brevity. At this point I’m still interested in the Switch, but not quite sold on it. The launch lineup looks decent, and the promise of new games from Nintendo’s flagship series is certainly a boon for the console, but it’s not quite enough for me to buy it at launch or shortly thereafter. Then again, I’m always late to acquire new technology, so I probably wouldn’t have bought it at launch even if the news about the Switch had floored me from the start. I’ll likely wait a year and see how the Switch is shaping up before I think about buying it.

Attila The Pug, 2000-2017

Yesterday, after an uninterrupted reign of nearly 17 years as the undisputed champion of his breed, Attila The Pug breathed his last. Goodbye Attila. I’ll miss you.

Videos added to four commentaries

When I finished Diablo 3 at the end of last year, it marked the end of Season 1 of Late to the Party, but I still had some time before my Gamefly account was to be closed, so I took the opportunity to rent again some of the games I played early in Season 1 that I didn’t have gameplay footage from. Maybe this wasn’t the best usage of my time, but I wanted to bring those older commentaries closer into line with the later ones in terms of the media viewable in them, so I put in the time to capture the footage, upload it to Youtube, and add it in on Blogger. Anyone who’s already read these updated commentaries won’t need to reread them, as the words haven’t changed, but if you’re curious to see videos of these games by all means check them out. Below are the four commentaries that have been updated with videos. Clicking on their names will take you to them.

Call of Duty: Ghosts

The Order: 1886

Killzone Shadow Fall

Watch Dogs (this one did have a single video already—I added three more)

Whole Foods

At the moment I’m in the middle of an experiment that I’ve been meaning to conduct for almost a year now. Since moving to Colorado over a decade ago, I’ve lived within a short driving distance of one of the outlets of the Whole Foods company, but only on rare occasion have I bought anything from them. This has been primarily because of Whole Food’s reputation for being a more expensive place to do your grocery shopping—it’s not jokingly referred to as “Whole Paycheck” for no reason. Still, despite my fiscal aversions to Whole Foods, I’ve been curious to actually try shopping there for a short period of time and seeing if there were any noticeable effects on my health from consuming their products. Originally this experiment was going to be conducted last November, but things got in the way and it wasn’t until last month that I got around to starting it. The experiment parameters state that I must do the vast majority of my food shopping at Whole Foods for a period of four to five weeks. I’m allowed to purchase some extra items from other stores, but my daily diet must be almost entirely constituted of things I buy at Whole Foods. When the four to five week time frame has passed, I am allowed to reassess how I’m feeling and decide if I want to continue shopping at Whole Foods or if I will revert to my old practices.

So far, I haven’t observed much of a change in my bodily health, but my wallet certainly has noticed a difference. There are still two more weeks to go in this experiment, so I can’t make a judgment just yet. When this is over I may give an update on the experiment’s outcome. Afterwards I might start another food experiment I’ve been meaning to try, which would be to buy all my food from Walmart. Doing that immediately after ending the Whole Foods experiment might make for an interesting contrast.

Logging Off

Last month, in my writing piece related to Inauguration Day, I suggested, as others have done, that people intentionally limit their social media consumption during this particularly toxic period in American history. Not long after that I took my own advice and stayed off of Facebook for an entire week. Twitter and Instagram were not proving as corrosive by comparison, so I was still regularly checking on them, but the normal five to ten minutes I would spend each day on Facebook were redirected to other concerns. In doing this, I was reminded of the fact that I got along just fine before Facebook was a thing, and if it were to disappear tomorrow it would be weird for a few days, but after that I’d hardly notice it. Don’t get me wrong, social media certainly has its uses, but it’s not the be-all, end-all, of our modern lives.

A week after logging off, I logged back on to Facebook and found the social media world much as I had left it. My more politically active friends were still overloading my timeline with every last offense committed by the Trump administration, my friends with spouses and children were still sharing amusing stories from their families, and others were posting random things from across the web. I quickly perused my timeline, sent a message to a friend, and then logged back out. I had gone a week without Facebook and was none the worse for it.

Star Wars: Rogue One

Last year my first “normal” writing piece was related to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Seeing as how we’re supposed to be getting a new Star Wars movie each year for the next several years, I’m thinking I’ll try to take it a tradition for the first “normal” writing piece of each year to be Star Wars-related. Today I’m going to give a very brief overview of my experience in watching Star Wars: Rogue One and my opinion of the movie. If you haven’t seen the movie you can relax—there will be no spoilers here.

I watch Rogue One last month, about four to five weeks after its initial release. It was a Saturday afternoon when I walked into the theater and when I came out I was quite pleased with how the movie turned out. Though not perfect, it does so much right that Rogue One will very likely be remembered as one of the better Star Wars movies. After the safe, and arguably necessary, play that was The Force Awakens, it was good to see a Star Wars movie that stretched out and told a story with a more unique feel to it. Rogue One also does what at first might seem impossible, in that it actually makes A New Hope better. I can’t tell you how it does this without going into spoilers, but I do think it will make people look at Episode 4 in a slightly different light. On the negative side I would say there are a few scattered scenes to could have been shortened or cut altogether, but this is a minor complaint. Rogue One is a great movie. After seeing it I’m much more confident in Disney’s handling of Star Wars and I look forward to where they take the series from here.

2017 Preview Finished

Today marks the end of the series of 2017 preview writing pieces. There’s a lot to look forward to in 2017, but now it’s time to stop writing about what will be done, and start actually doing it. On Monday the normal publishing schedule will resume, and I’ve already got a few short writing pieces lined up that have accumulated over the past month. Hope you enjoyed a full month of first looking back and then looking forward.

The Future of the 2016 Writing Project

If you were reading this blog last year you might remember that at several points I mentioned something called the 2016 Writing Project, which was a writing project related to a work of fiction that’s been in my head for over a decade now. Seeing as how I haven’t posted anything related to it since last September, some might understandably be wondering what ever happened to the project, so I think an update is in order. The 2016 Writing Project is still ongoing, and there have been bits of writing done in the preceding months—I just haven’t published anything about them. 2016 saw a lot of progress, but as a way to kick things up another notch and provide some accountability, I’ve decided that for the remaining 11 months of 2017 I have to do one post per month with some concrete information on what I’ve done towards the project. Also I really ought to rename the project, seeing as how 2016 has come and gone. Once I figure out what to call this I’ll let you know.

The New Website

This will be the year that I launch my new website. The content will largely be same, at least at first, but I will finally leave Blogger and start publishing on a service with fewer restrictions on what I can do. I’m not sure when this new website will launch, but its existence will soon be real. The name is more or less settled at this point. Thankfully the name is also not taken at the time of the publishing of this piece. Right now I’m trying to figure out which service to register and host the new website, and what platform to use for publishing content to the website. Expect a big announcement sometime this year when the new website is ready.