Jed pointed me to a…

Jed pointed me to a really interesting article on Wizards of the Coast -- particularly interesting to me because Kev and I used to play test for them back in Philly, in '94 or so. Kevin knows some of the original developers, I think, and some of his friends made quite a lot of money by buying in early. Heck, if I'd had money to invest back then, I'd probably have invested in them and made a lot of money too. Ah well. Anyway -- interesting piece on business, sex, ideals, and geekiness.

The day is feeling kind of odd -- I think because I'm being forced to read a book I don't really enjoy, Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, for class, and am thus interspersing tiny bits of it with chores and e-mail. I feel very disjointed today. That's okay, though.

Mostly working on bits and bobs of SH stuff today. The author focus on Emshwiller is starting to come together, which is cool. I'm trying to organize my files a bit more, so that I know when various ads are going up, for example. I'm answering e-mails, sorting through the remnants of discussions started and dropped, trying to create order out of chaos. I do that a lot.

There's a part of me that really hates entropy. Life is good. Life, in all its pain and misery and stress and angst is still a good thing, in my book. I want mine to continue, and I want life to continue in general. Even if we went up in a nuclear holocaust, I'd take a little comfort in the last minutes that there was still life elsewhere in the universe, that something was going on. Which is why the fact (as far as we know at any rate) that it's all going to run down into a cold cinder is deeply frustrating to me. It used to drive me crazy when I was younger. I think it's a lot of what drives me to build things -- to create like mad, make things that are solid and strong and beautiful. If I had another life, I might try coming back as an architect, or an engineer.

(When I hung out on the Mucks, I was a builder, and that was the role that made me happy. It wasn't enough just being a player, enjoying other people's work -- I really wanted to build things. And I didn't actually want to be a wizard, who stood above it all and could take it all down if they wanted. Too much knowledge for me, back then. I just wanted to build things.)

A builder, a maker. That's me. And I suppose it would be easy to despair at the thought that everything we build will come down in time, that you can never build tall enough, fast enough, strong enough to resist the heat-death of the universe. Eventually, everything will end.

Somewhere along the way, that stopped bothering me. In fact, in an odd sort of way, I think I approve. The fact that it will all end is, in a strange sense, what makes it matter. Beauty can be enduring -- up to a point. In the end, it's all transient, from a particular sunset, to the face of the boy you once loved, to the rock formations in southern Utah. Shorter, longer -- it all ends. And because it ends, it's valuable, significant. Enjoy it while it lasts, because it won't last for long. Nothing does. And if it matters, it matters only because someone cared, for a little while.

I think one of the greatest crimes, in my book, is indifference. What a waste of time, of life.

Care
Love
Hurt
Hate
Grieve
Ache
Care
Love

Live

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