Allyn Gibson

The Nintendo generation passed me by.

It didn’t make me cry. It certainly didn’t make me blue. But when my friends had the Nintendo Entertainment System, I didn’t. I didn’t really even care. That rectangular controller? All those buttons? It made no sense to me.

So, the whole appeal of Mario? I don’t get it. I just don’t.

Yes, this made working for EB Games for so long a little strange. I knew the history, and I could talk the history like I’d been a game-nerd my entire life. I could even fake the excitement of knowing the Konami cheat code. (Don’t ask me about it now; I couldn’t remember it if I tried.)

Games just weren’t my bag.

However.

When I see something like this, I just have to applaud.

A kid took a Theremin. And he turned it into a Nintendo controller.

A Theremin! That “instrument” that made “music,” the weird, spooky “Oooo”s that were common to B-movies of the 1950s and Mars Attacks! and Destroy All Humans! A Theremin!

Watch!

On the one hand, he has too much time on his hands. On the other hand, he’s a friggin’ genius.

A Theremin!

If only it still made music. I’d have loved to hear a Theremin soundtrack to Mario battling the mushrooms.

Work made my brain melt.

This happens sometimes. The problem is that there’s only so much cranial capacity, there’s only so much mental space that words can be drawn from. And what happens, on days that I have to write a lot (and this was one of those days), is that the gears in the brain overheat. Smoke pours out of the ears. The eyes glaze over.

The brain melts.

By 3:30, I felt mentally useless. So, I switched gears.

I did some more writing; I wrote an article about Mickey Mouse comics. I’ll be honest; it’s not a great article. I’m not even sure that it’s a good article. It’s just… there. But it was different than what I’d been writing the first six hours of the day.

Then, I did some proofreading.

At some point, the hamster that runs on the wheel inside my computer decided to die. My computer chugged to a halt, so I rebooted. But by this time it was 5:30, and the day was nearly done.

I’ll start fresh tomorrow. Write about toys.

I need to spend some quality time with Excel tomorrow, too. Oh, yay.

On a different note, did you ever imagine what would happen if paleontologists visited the Creation Museum outside Cincinnati?

Imagine no more! The New York Times has the story…

I haven’t done anything with the outline I wrote on Saturday as yet. It’s currently out with a few people for feedback.

I reread it this morning on the train, and wrote half a page of notes myself. The notes ranged from changing a name to planting a plot seed earlier to changing the story’s projected title.

The Cubs confound me.

The reason for the loss of channels 11 and 13 from Baltimore, and channels 7 and 9 from DC that I ranted and raved about?

It’s a longish story.

Prior to the official changeover from analog to digital, these stations were all broadcasting digital signals in the UHF spectrum.

After the official changeover on June 12th, they changed the frequency at which their signal went out. Specifically, each of these four stations changed from a signal in the UHF spectrum to the VHF spectrum.

Unfortunately, the VHF broadcasts these stations are now using are of a lower power.

Channel 13, for instance, will be installing a higher-powered VHF transmitter in mid-August. Channel 11 has no plans to increase their power that I can find.

Their loss.

A friend of mine passed this along recently.

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to 15 people (or not) and include me. Try not to repeat a song title. It’s harder than you think.

It’s not that hard. I did a similar meme with the Beatles about two years ago.

Pick Your Artist: Elbow

1. Are you male or female:
   Picky Bugger
2. Describe yourself:
   Asleep in the Back
3. How do you feel about yourself:
   Scattered Black and Whites
4. Describe your current boy/girl situation:
   An Imagined Affair
5. Describe where you currently live:
   The Long War Shuffle
6. If you could go anywhere you wanted to go:
   Strangeways to Holcombe Hill in 4:20
7. Your favorite form of transportation:
   Station Approach
8. Your best friend(s) is(are):
   Friend of Ours
9. Your favorite color is:
   Powder Blue
10. Favorite time of day:
    About Time
11. If your life were a TV show, what would it be called:
    Some Riot
12. What is life to you:
    One Day Like This
13. What is the best advice you have to give:
    Grace Under Pressure
14. If you could change your name, what would it be:
    McGreggor
15. Thought for the Day:
    Lay Down Your Cross
16. How I would like to die:
    Lucky With Disease
17. My soul’s present condition:
    The Stops

The other day, when I wrote that “I’m surprised I don’t make more music playlists, because when I do they usually turn out quite well,” I was referring to this list specifically. This wasn’t assembled as a playlist, yet I find that when I whipped up a playlist of these tracks, in this order, in Winamp, that it worked really well. It sounded cohesive.

Maybe I know Elbow’s music too well. Considering how many of these songs are B-sides, maybe that’s to be expected.

Fuck the FCC. Fuck the cell phone companies.

A year ago, I went out and dutifully bought a digital converter box for my television. Analog signals were going away, because the cell phone companies wanted the analog spectrum for who the fuck knows what reason.

I set up the digital converter box, and I had absolutely no problems with it. I got all the Baltimore stations crystal clear. I got all of the DC stations (except for two of the PBS stations) crystal clear.

Life was good.

Flash forward to mid-June. The transition from analog to digital was made, and stations recommended that people “rescan” their digital boxes.

I, not being a great television watcher, did not do so until Sunday, largely because I hadn’t watched any television since the finale of House.

So, I rescanned.

Whereupon I lost two of my Baltimore stations — channels 11 and 13.

This was unwelcome, especially at 7:45 in the evening, as I was looking forward to watching Merlin at eight on NBC. And one of those two stations was the NBC station. (I can’t keep straight which stations are which in the Baltimore market, unfortunately.)

And then I broke my antenna.

So, I watched a pixelated Merlin on Washington’s channel 4.

But I was determined to root out the problem, to figure out why I couldn’t receive channels 11 and 13. They’re fucking local. The transmitter is ten miles away.

Yesterday, I went to Big Lots and bought a new antenna. (They also had Animaniacs box sets for six dollars each.)

I went online, and discovered that channels 11 and 13 are well aware that many people in the Baltimore area cannot receive their stations now. They had some suggestions for reacquiring the signals.

I hooked up the new antenna, and rescanned.

Nothing.

For extreme cases, they recommended —

• Disconnect the antenna from the digital box
• Rescan. The box won’t find anything, which clears the memory.
• Unplug the digital box.
• Plug the digital box back in.
• Reconnect the antenna.
• Rescan. With the clear memory, you should pick up more stations.

So, I did this.

Whereupon, I found four stations.

Channel 2 from Baltimore has three channels. And I got channel 54.

The antenna’s knob had twelve positions. I tried rescanning on each of the twelve positions.

Now, I can be a very patient, almost Zen-like person. I can be like a rock at times. Surprising, I know.

I fucking exploded at the inherent idiocy of all this.

I found no new stations, in the twelve different knob positions, except for one that labeled itself as “38-3,” and I have not a fucking clue what the hell it was, as it never resolved to a picture. And I would either lose the trilogy of channel 2, or I would lose channel 54.

This was fucking bullshit.

Because this is not a brief process.

Finally, I took my old antenna base, the one where I had broken off one of the telescoping antennas, and hooked it back up to the digital box. I took the telescoping antennas from the new base and connected them to the old base.

I rescanned. I didn’t even bother with the “clear the memory, unplug” routine. I just wanted it done.

And I got everything back. Except channels 11 and 13 from Baltimore, and channels 7 and 9 from Washington.

The way I figure it, I now cannot watch CBS. But since I’ve never watched CSI, I can’t imagine I’m missing much.

And if I can’t watch Merlin tonight, I’m going to be seriously fucking pissed. And not in the drunken sense of the word, either.

Thank you so much, FCC, for bending over and taking it from the cell phone companies. You took something that worked quite well — over-the-air television signals — and have turned it into a source of endless frustration and insanity.

Suck on it, dickwads.

Yesterday I had a “barking mad” story idea.

It’s really not that mad. It’s not my insane desire to write a Doctor Who/Uncle Scrooge crossover, which I think would be absolutely fab. It’s more a case of “Why has no one ever thought to put this together with that?”

As best I can tell, no one has.

Yet, once the two ideas collided in my mind, I saw how brilliantly they would work together.

I worked out roughly the hook and some of the dramatic incidents last night. I pulled some books off the shelf and gave them a once-over, jotting down a few ideas. (Yes, I’m surprised I even had books on certain elements of the concept, but I’m a man of eclectic interests.)

Today, I’m taking a break from “THOD” to put a brief outline together. As I type this, I have seven Wikipedia articles open, and three books on the desk.

I think I can knock this out entirely today.

And then we’ll see if I can do something with it.

I don’t have a cutesy acronym for this yet. Why don’t we call it “TDH”? Thistle Downgrades Happiness.

ETA: Have I mentioned how difficult I find it at times to write an outline? And yet, that I absolutely need an outline?

We’ll start with the latter. I need an outline because, without an outline, I’ll flail. If it’s a story that I can write in a sitting or two — roughly, four or five thousand words — I don’t need an outline, because I can “see” beginning, middle, end in my mind. Otherwise, without an outline, I’ll write without a direction, and I’ve become disheartened, and I’ll lose focus, and I’ll give up.

The former. The problem I have sometimes with writing an outline is that I’m mapping out everything. So I have this big idea in mind, and in “skimming” over the ideas, I find at times that I really want to write the individual scenes, even though I know right now that I really shouldn’t.

Getting started on this outline was difficult. Each paragraph on the first page was slow-going. It’s set-up. Initial problem. Introduce the characters. Get them into position. Complications. Page two, however, was not so difficult. The characters are now in position. The conflicts virtually write themselves. The plot really kicks into gear, and the main character is learning some very interesting things.

Now, sixteen hundred words in, I’ve reached the top of page three. When I get to the bottom of page three, I should be done. There’s one important character introduction still to happen. One action set piece to write. And some plot strands to resolve.

I’ll finish this tonight.

ETA2: Done. The outline now sits at four pages and 3200 words.

The character introduction? Mid-page three. The set piece? Bottom page three. Plot resolutions? Page four.

Tomorrow, I may think it’s junk. Today? Right now? I think it holds up. It feels right. I don’t see any gaping holes.

Not bad. Not back at all.