Cannibal Hat

Work has been keeping me extremely busy. Extremely, extremely busy. I am leaving town in the morning for a few days, then coming back home finally to catch my breath. Between the startup and the work from my existing channels, I’m having a great time – I’ll admit that I’m ready for a break, though.

I did have time to take a picture of myself as an angry wizard for you all, though.

Feel the fire.

To balance out my karma, here’s me as a happy wizard.

He Who Must Be Hugged

When I first saw that picture, I Googled “shrinking thumb” (because I thought my thumb looked small in proportion to the rest of my hand) and came across this video. Sorry for the total non sequitur, but I totally remember watching cartoons just like that when I was a child. I saw an episode of David the Gnome the other day and had this same thought – what kind of incredible acid was I eating as a child to get on that level? Adult me had no clue what he was talking about most of the time. And adult me does not immediately know how to parse a thumb-sized child bathing in a benevolent lumberjack’s cupped hands. That phrase just looks out of place outside of a police report.

Something about the way video poker works makes me feel like a billionaire when I hit. I just won $250 and feel like I could buy yachts and joust them.

I think the most amazing thing about this whole town is the fact that it’s basically built on a foundation of crushed dreams. Every person who came out here and fed a quarter into a machine hoping to win it big, just to go home empty-handed, laid a little part of a brick out here.

This is a rather pointless post, but I am excited from winning dollars and also deciding that I’m going to learn php or something. Woohoo!

What’s the first thing that runs through your head when you wake up on a Monday morning? Work anxiety? The “I-don’t-want-to-be-up” chant of the damned? The last legs of a hangover?

The first legs of a hangover?

I am an utter nerd, but when I woke up this morning and rolled over to look out the window at the Vegas strip the first thing I thought was “I hope the Jarl is okay.”

I will claim a half-asleep brain as a partial excuse, but it doesn’t cover me fully. My beautiful and tiny wife bought me Skyrim for Christmas, and I am pretty sure it’s the greatest thing of all time. I may be getting overly attached to the game, but it’s…so vibrant!

So when I left town for this trip, I left poor Soren sitting in the middle of Whiterun, completely exposed to the elements. He hadn’t slept for three or four days beforehand, because of his duties with the Imperial Legion and the ongoing struggle against the Stormcloaks. Things are going well, but there are many battles ahead.

With Soren’s nudging, the Jarl of Whiterun accepted Imperial help in repelling the rebel invasion. It was briefly after this battle that I had to leave – reveling in the glory of victory, I felt sure that my digital self would be comfortably partying for a week.

Then I remembered, this morning, that I haven’t advanced the damn main quest at all and there are dragons everywhere. Whiterun is made almost entirely of wood and starter fluid from what I can tell, so an attack would be devastating. And poor Soren, standing dumbly in front of the blacksmith’s shop day and night, is ill-prepared for the onslaught. With the twin threats of civil war and dragon invasion, all he holds dear is endangered.

I hope the Jarl is okay. He seems so nice.

The view out our window now is pretty great. I would take a picture, but my phone is dead and charging on the other side of the room. Walking to pick it up is a lot of effort. Luckily, we have words.

We are on the 18th floor at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, looking down on the water show at the Bellagio. We switched rooms three times to get one that looks over the fountains, because Tiffany enjoys them, but without my glasses on it looks more like a blurry blob of light than anything else. It’s a nice blob, though.

The strip is fairly lit up at night, less so tonight (Sunday) than it was yesterday when we arrived. This has evidently been a busy month here – a couple of prostitutes earlier mentioned that this has been one of their busiest weeks in recent memory. The Consumer Electronics Show, they said, brought in an impressive tide of business. I bet those were some educational lays.

We are here for ten days, which is five days longer than anyone should ever be in Vegas. There are a tremendous number of things to see, do, and talk about here – but, since I am a very old man already, I am exhausted. I have worked 60-80 hour weeks for the past several, and this vacation is a working trip as well. There is a whole world out there that seems far too exciting for someone as old and tired as me. I am twenty-six. Jesus.

Maybe tomorrow.

Look at this stock photo I found of a kid riding a bike.

First off, his wheels are clearly not connected to his chain drive or any axle mechanism.

Second, I am extremely jealous of his youthful enthusiasm. He is loving that bike. How old is he? Like eight? Probably eight.

For some reason, when I was a kid balance was an ungraspable concept. My parents bought me a tricycle, but I was completely incapable of staying on it. It would tip over every time I gave a passing thought to doing anything other than sitting motionlessly atop the seat. I don’t know how badly you have to piss off gravity to make a tricycle that unstable, but whatever the reason, I couldn’t ride it.

However, being a difficult child, I insisted on having something to ride around like all of the other cool kids. They all had sweet tricycles – some were even graduating to bikes with training wheels – while I was stuck with a banged up helmet and a dead ego.

My parents, desperate both for me to get the hell out of the house and for me to fit in with someone my own age, bought…this.

A child-sized dignity crusher. Mine had pedals.

It is a testament to how shitty I was at everything that I was overjoyed to own this. I hopped on it and immediately began motoring around the neighborhood. I looked like an idiot, but at least I could keep up with everyone else. I was probably in first grade or so at this point.

One day, my tractor and I went on a brave journey all the way across the village where I grew up. I felt as though I had reached out and touched the horizon. I had soared. I even went through a traffic light on that thing, which, looking back, I should not have been allowed to do. It was the greatest achievement of my young life.

The next day, at lunch, I sat across from this girl in my class who was – and let’s call a spade a spade here – a bitch. I will never forget the look on her face as she told me how she’d seen me scooting around her neighborhood on my tractor. How she’d seen how big the smile on my face looked. And, of course, how she thought I was an idiot and that I should be able to ride a bike like a big kid.

Twat. Also, looking on Facebook, I can’t help but notice she works at a fast-food seafood restaurant now, so I win.

That evening, I went home and put my tractor away for the last time. The other kids slowly took off their training wheels, and rode their bikes around town like child-kings. I walked.

The next year, in second grade, I won the school-wide spelling bee because I am more brain than Krag was. The first prize was a bike, which was undeniably sweet. Second prize was a boom box which, it being the 90s at the time, was not as stupid as it sounds. I painted myself as the grand hero – with boundless generosity, I offered my newly won bicycle to the second place winner in exchange for his prize. He accepted, deliriously happy. I accepted the adulation heaped upon me for my graciousness, and hid my shame away.

At age twelve, I’d finally had enough. Under cover of night, morning darkness, the brief lull between the time I got home and my parents did, and whenever else I could find a moment I tried to ride my mom’s three-thousand year old fixed-gear monolith. I fell off countless times, and spent as much time trying to conceal the scrapes as I did trying to learn to ride.

It took a tremendous amount of work, patience, and blood, but at long last I was able to get my wobbly wheels under me and roll forwards without injuring myself.

What a glorious moment! Oh, joyous day! The world was stretched out before me, and I could…

…

It was then that I realized that I was, and in fact had been for twelve years, living in Woodbine, Georgia. At the time, the town had a population of well under a thousand people, one traffic light, fourteen churches, and precisely jack shit to do. I had finally conquered bike riding, and had thusly afforded myself the opportunity to go nowhere more quickly.

The moral of the story, I guess, is that when you’re working hard to achieve a goal, you should probably stop and first verify that your goal is worth accomplishing. A secondary moral would be fuck bikes.