Yeah, I’m pretty happy these days. This session actually led me into drawing part of the cover for book four (which is still a ways away, sadly, but it’ll be worth the wait). I’ve done a lot of art for book four over the past few weeks.
Click to make it bigger!
As an independent bookseller whose livelihood depends on fighting for users’ continually harder-to-get attention, I can’t exactly afford to shut this site down for a day in protest, but I want to make it clear that I think SOPA is a terrible, terrible thing that needs to be stopped. Read up on it and get involved however you can, even if all you can do is spread the word. Freedom of speech is, in my opinion, America’s best feature–something we can be proud of even on our darkest days–and we would do ourselves a grave disservice if we let our leaders curtail or limit it for any reason.
I’m sorry, but this game kind of sucks.
I wanted to like it–I really, really did. The Penny Arcade guys seemed to like it (though they didn’t write any follow-up notes when they finished it, if they finished it), and it got good reviews pretty much across the board. For a while, I thought I was crazy–what was I missing? How could so many people say that this game returns Sonic to his roots when it has more in common with Sonic Unleashed than Sonic and Knuckles? How can they say that Sonic’s “annoying” friends are downplayed in this game when they are, in fact, constantly present, and the few levels in which they are playable seem to be uniformly awful? How can anyone claim Generations is the best new Sonic game in years when it attempts to redo a stage from the worst Sonic game of all time (Sonic 2k6) and leaves me liking the original version better?
Hopefully. I was trying to get back in the habit of updating more or less every week for a while there, but I’ve been down and out since mid-December after an unfortunate bout of appendicitis. Are there fortunate bouts of appendicitis? I doubt it.
I can’t tell if it’s comforting or depressing that the site still managed to amass 1,024 spam comments (all caught in the moderation queue) while I was recovering. I know I’m not as prolific as any given high-schooler on Tumblr, but I’d still appreciate some real feedback now and then…assuming I could even find it if it existed, in this sea of watch ads.
I paid my second visit to Occupy Wall Street this past Sunday–some friends of mine were playing music there. It had been just about a month since my first visit, and the park was a much denser tent city than it had been before as the protesters hunkered down for the winter. The impromptu concert I attended didn’t draw much attention, but there was some polite clapping and a rotating cast of cell-phone photographers.
I tried to stay out of the way as OWS participants and coordinators flitted around, some cleaning up accumulated garbage and bringing it out to the curb, others passing out flyers or offering trinkets. Something about the unspoken energy there reminded me of my alma mater, which is perhaps the only place I’ve ever felt completely at home. That’s how Occupy Wall Street struck me–as a community, one I felt I could fit into, at least as a visitor–and I think that’s exactly the kind of atmosphere the park’s 24/7 residents were trying to create.
This morning, I woke up to images of an empty Zuccotti Park being power-washed by cleaning crews, shown as part of continuous live coverage by NY1. The police had descended and destroyed the encampment minutes after I’d gone to bed. Without its vibrancy, its voices, its tents, the park was barely recognizable to me.
I got the game today, and thought I’d share an early list of pros and cons. I’m three zones in; I haven’t fought the first boss yet.
Pros
For about a year now, I’ve been looking at New York Times real estate listings for their photography. I mean, I’m quite happy in my current apartment (much happier now that they finally turned the heat on in the midst of this freak snowstorm), but it’s interesting to see how other people live. Besides, who knows where I’ll eventually settle?
Anyway, just in time for Halloween, here’s a house that appears to have a screaming fireplace (courtesy of Sotheby’s):
NOTE: This version of the store has already been superceded by another. Use the link on the sidebar instead.
So Lulu, the service I use to print and otherwise sell the School Kids SG books, has changed my “storefront” over to a new format. Personally, I hate it–I have much less control over the page layout and how the items I want to sell are displayed. I threw together a temporary store of my own here on this site until I can figure out a longer-term solution. Please check it out if you have a minute–I put up previews of all three SKSG books to stroke your interest.
As you may remember from last year, September 7th is Woodvale Day–the holiday people in the School Kids SG universe celebrate as the founding of Woodvale. In honor of Woodvale Day 2011, here’s some world-building for you all, namely an update to the Towns of the Prattcorn Valley list. Enjoy!
Here’s a picture of the damage in my neighborhood:
Seriously, Irene was horrible in some places (my parents wound up with a river running down their street in New Jersey), but the hysteria in my neck of the woods was greatly overstated. To be clear, my neck of the woods is well inland and on a hill. Being prepared is always a good thing, but I never believed for a second that we were going to lose power here. I was only concerned about the wind–that’s why I made sure to park well away from any trees–but even that wound up being kind of understated, at least relative to expectations. Not that I’m complaining.
On the other hand, my windows leaked all night, which made for a frustrating lack of sleep. That wasn’t really the hurricane’s fault, though: my windows have been leaking for months (though I’d hoped the latest repair job would have worked…so much for that).
The biggest problem in NYC now is the lack of mass transit–with the way the MTA dry-docked its trains, it could be days before everything gets back to normal. I spied this LIRR train, dark and silent, parked on an overpass above the BQE:
So, yeah. I don’t expect I’ll be going much of anywhere over the next few days.
