Cue the Toy Piano Music...

I call this opening photo "When HDR Attacks!". The photographer is Pat Kavanagh. There... proper propers proffered.

If days had soundtracks and/or music playing in the background, then my past few days would be accompanied by the tinkling sounds of a toy piano. Just kinda weird, surreal, off-center, quirky... nothing major, just a bunch of little things... keeping me on my toes, and a bit off-balance...

...not unlike this brave (stupid?) soul.

Of course, part of the problem might be that I put The Dragonbone Chair on hold before even cracking the paperback open, so I could read Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I can honestly say, I've never read a book like it before. I'm not sure a review will be possible, but I may give it a go. I'm tearing through it, it's a wonderful read, equal parts absurd, deep, heart-rending and hilarious, like the semi-coherent thoughts of a man who has endured incredible trauma and is on the edge of sanity. Quite amazing.

And I dove into Diablo 3 as well. A good, solid game, with far more positive attributes than negative. While I will withhold final analysis until I've dumped a couple dozen more hours into it, all things considered, I think I prefer Titan Quest and Torchlight a bit more. We'll see if that holds. I'm only in Act 2.

Here is something you've never heard/seen in your life. It is Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" performed by a full orchestra and a choir of 10,000 trained singers. Yes, 10,000. Put your headphones on, crank the volume, and feast your ears on this for a while...



I really hope this doesn't come across as uncool at all, but it seems incongruous to me for some reason, Japanese faces and trained opera voices. I have never put those two together before. Regardless, that was truly amazing to listen, if you stuck it out all 18 minutes, like I have (several times now).... if not, at least cut to 6:45 and get an earful.

So I've been making great progress on mapping out the storylines and character arcs for the fantasy novel I'm working on. The more I get things down on paper, the more excited I get. Frankly, I think the stories I want to tell are really very good. Of course, why wouldn't I think that? Once I get the notes more and more detailed, I hope to end up with a stack of index cards for each of the four main storylines, with each card containing a summary of a scene in the sequence. It is, if I may be so bold, extremely fun.

While I'm on the topic of writing, I've been contemplating what happens to writers who lose the use of their limbs, either through paralysis or dismemberment, etc. How to write if all I had access to was a speech recognition software? If I had to dictate it all through the spoken word, would the story and style be much different than if I hammer the text out on a keyboard? I'm half-tempted to try and write a short piece that way (or even a blog post or two), just to see if the sentence structure, word choice and presentation would be similar to typing, or radically different.

So, I was playing Battlefield 2 on my PC the other night, with Maggie watching me, and on a whim, I asked her to take over for me so I could run upstairs and talk to wifey about something. Maggie was stunned at the offer and jumped at the chance. I showed her the basic controls, and she put the headphones on and jumped in. Yes, she's six, I realize that! Still, I didn't think it was a big deal. In fact, when I got back, I fired up the iMac and launched BF2 on that system as well, and Maggie and I played together. We drove around in tanks and I let her blow me up a bunch of times. She loves the game. Therein lies the problem. It's all she wants to do now. She's hooked.

Not exactly my best moment, as far as parenting goes. She's always been into cars and transformers and blowing stuff up, so in a sense, it should be no surprise. But man, has she taken to the game. She's even flying the choppers around now, which is not easy...

Ah, well...

So my friend [name withheld] called me tonight to let me know that he won 13 grand on the slots at a local Indian casino. He said he was 800 ahead at the time, so man, did he rake it in tonight. I've been thinking, since he always seems to win at the slots, I should invest in him! Kick him a monthly stipend and let him go play it. I don't have the patience or the desire to do so myself, but hey, if he enjoys it and is good at it, I'll split whatever he wins with him!

Bah, I'd probably just waste the winnings at Starbucks anyway...

OK, I think that's it for now. Thanks for all of the input on the previous post. You are all awesome, every one of you. Say hello to your moms for me...

Dave the Off-Center