The Garden of eZen

I finally got around to firing up Diablo 3 earlier this evening and was actually able to play it for a couple of hours before the servers went down.  Anyone who expected better on the game’s launch day was… well, let’s just say they were overly optimistic.

According to one of Blizzard’s community managers (“Bashiok,” the ugly fellow at right):

We are aware players are experiencing issues logging in to Diablo III, remaining connected to the Battle.net service, and using in-game features. We are currently working to address these issues and will provide further updates as they become available.

Thank you for your ongoing patience as well as your reports.

[Update]
We’re continuing to work on the issues currently affecting the Americas region, which are resulting in failed login attempts and service issues. While we’ve identified the causes and are working to resolve them, we expect our efforts to require an approximate two hours to complete. We expect game services to fully return by approximately 11:45 p.m. PDT. We apologize for the downtime, and appreciate your continued patience.

Blizz probably already had that announcement in the can well before launch day, along with a number of other apologetic announcements about various intervals of downtime, and Bashiok probably only had to select it from a menu and press a couple of other keys to paste it onto the public info screen.  I’m not complaining, really. The process of launching any MMORPG is staggeringly complex, and Blizz is more competent and well-organized than most other computer game developers.  Plus, the servers get a larger user load on launch day than they ever will again on any single day.  It’s a wonder they stayed up today as long as they did.

Just in case you’re wondering what Diablo 3 is all about (when it’s actually working), this cinematic trailer is a good intro:

The people who made that trailer came about as close in the last minute or so to successfully crossing the Uncanny Valley as anyone else ever has, in my opinion.  The actual gameplay animations are more cartoony, of course, but still very impressive.

Let’s see, is it 11:45 p.m. PDT yet?  Nope, still a little while left to go…

Back when I was (a) more addicted to computer games than I am now, and (b) more irreverent, whenever anyone asked why I played them, I’d reply, “They help me stay out of bars and churches.” Nowadays I think the bar part was right, but I probably would’ve stayed out of churches anyway. Furthermore, it sounded too much like I was recommending that people stay out of churches, and I always felt a bit uneasy about that even as I was saying it. Maybe it was because Momghost didn’t approve? Yep, that could well be it. She might also not have approved of my spending as much time playing computer games as I once did, but oh well. At the time, they did help me stay out of bars, at times in my life when it would’ve been a bad idea for me to spend much time in them.

Seems to me Momghost just said, “Hmmph. Well, if you say so. I’ll leave you to it, then.”

But that might just be because it’s now 11:45.

In the shade of the Earth, that is, at 8:30 last night here in the Valley of the (temporarily blocked) Sun.  But it didn’t feel that hot when Abbie the Wonder Pibble took me out for our usual evening walk.  Didn’t feel that hot to me, anyway, but she was panting a bit by the time we got back.  Maybe after more than 30 years of living in this area, I’m finally getting acclimated to the Vulcan inferno we call summer hereabouts?  But then, it’s not really summer yet.  We’ll see.

Adsila at Above the Norm was grumbling yesterday about the prospect of going through another AZ summer with the added burden of hot flashes.  I’ll have to take her (and Mrs. Stone’s) word for how burdensome those can be.  On the other hand, Adsila evidently lives in Prescott, which is somewhat cooler during any season than the Phoenix area.  On the gripping hand, she’s also evidently a zombie at least part of the time, which might make her more sensitive than a part-time rock.  Further research is needed…

My previous modus operandi during the summers here has been to spend most of my leisure time indoors, playing computer games.  But that might not work as well for me this year, because World of Warcrack seems to have lost most of its hold on me, even though I still use my Orgrimmar mug for just about everything I drink.  Last night I was going to stay up until Diablo 3 went live at 12:01 a.m. PDT, but finally said the even-deeper-hell with it around 11 and hit the sack.  I haven’t yet fired it up this morning either, even though I pre-installed it weeks ago and it’s just waiting for me to hit the light-the-pyre button.  Has my inner child finally caught up with the rest of me?

[a moment of deep thought]

Naahh…

After all, I’m still posting in this blog — more often than ever, in fact — and blogging is like the ultimate sandbox.  The little shovels and pails are a little more complicated, is all.  Which reminds me, I have an unfinished Photoshop project waiting for me to finish this entry.  A landscape thingie, multiple layers, color gradients, all that cool stuff.  I love Photoshop’s Magic Lasso and Smudge tools, although I think they should’ve called the latter “Smear” instead.  Anyway, I’m sure I’d benefit from taking a course in how to use the program, and The Lurking Daughter is strongly encouraging me to do so.  I suspect her brain is getting a bit sore from me frequently picking it.

I feel the need to say something conclusive in this sentence, so I just did, and here it is again:  “something conclusive.”

In an earlier post I mentioned that my earliest coherent memory was of running away from my mother on a crowded sidewalk, thinking, “She has a new baby inside her, so maybe she can’t catch me this time!”  The new baby was my younger brother, so I was about three years old.  At that time Mom was 23 and only had about 25 years left to live.

She’d had a defective heart valve since childhood, evidently from rheumatic fever, serious business back in the 1930s.  Although she was only 48 when she died, I think she was at peace with herself, the world, and with Whoever or Whatever else there may be.  When I last saw her, the doctor believed (or at least said) the valve replacement surgery had been successful, but I suspect Mom knew better.  As I was leaving her hospital room and looked back at her for the last time in this life, she was sitting up in a chair, gazing out the window at the small lake on the grounds.  There were ducks in it, she’d pointed out earlier, and she’d reminisced about a political battle she’d waged a few years before with a faction in our town who’d wanted to rid the municipal lakes of ducks because they were “unsanitary.”

Mom liked ducks, sanitary or not.  She also liked stray cats, and sometimes stray people, but she called the latter “shut-ins.”  After Dad died unexpectedly in 1969 and she found herself with too much time on her hands, she’d appointed herself to visit a number of them in our town on a regular basis.  Once when I was home from college for a weekend, she took me along to visit one of them, an elderly widow who lived in a rambling house on the town’s outskirts.  One of the interesting things about her house was that there were beds in nearly every room, almost wall-to-wall, almost no other furniture.  The old lady informed me that she and her late husband had never slept in the same bed more than one night in a row, except during their first year of marriage, when they’d only been able to afford one bed.  She also informed me that if I had a girlfriend, I was welcome to bring her next time.  The two of us could stay as long as we liked, and change beds as often as we liked.  Mom thought that was very funny, or maybe she was mainly laughing at the expression on my face.

Mom had a lot to do with my decision to join the military in 1971.  I’d drawn a high lottery number and therefore had no fear of the draft, but I had other issues at the time.  Dad’s untimely death had derailed my life more than I consciously realized at the time.  I’d not only dropped out of college, I’d also quit my night manager job at a Taco Bell and had no plans to look for other legitimate employment.  What little life plan I did have involved a feloniously large quantity of amphetamines I’d acquired from a local wholesaler (a former high school partner in crime).  I was sure that a large retail market was to be found among the local college students, strictly for late-night studying purposes of course, and I planned to supply that market.  However, before I could put that plan into action, I came home one afternoon to find that someone had jimmied the lock on my apartment’s front door, and presumably the same someone had found and removed my merchandise from what I’d thought was its secure location, behind a couple of loose wallboards.  It was a mystery, but Mom dropped by several days later to tell me she’d been the someone.  She told me she’d defeated the cheap door lock with the table knife she’d brought along for that purpose, found the pills without much problem, flushed most of them down the toilet forthwith, saving only a couple to take to a local pharmacist for identification.  She also told me that if I had ambitions to become a drug dealer, I’d better find another town to do it in, maybe another state while I was at it, maybe another country, etc.

I was nearly 21 years old by that time, had theoretically been in charge of my own life for nearly three years, so I felt somewhat put upon.  If the term “helicopter parent” had been in use at the time, I’d have called her an attack helicopter!  After she left I actually thought about calling the police and having her charged with breaking and entering.  But fortunately I had just enough sense (even during that crazy/hazy period of my life) to realize that the probable results of such a call would be more infelicitous for me than for her.  It’s even possible I had enough remaining sense to realize she’d probably done me a favor in the long run.  As for the short run, I reviewed my available options and chose the one which seemed to offer the easiest and most immediate way to (1) make a living, and (2) get very far away from her.  Or maybe (2) was actually (1), but whichever, I soon paid a visit to the local USAF recruiter, took some tests, and since the military wasn’t picky during the Vietnam era, I was on a flight to Lackland AFB the very next day.

Even the Air Force’s relatively mild version of basic training can be a relentlessly effective detox regimen, I found.  Home on leave afterwards and somewhat squared away for the nonce, I asked Mom how she’d known about the amphetamines.  She wouldn’t tell me, or even talk about it at all, but I suspected she’d somehow extracted the information from the wholesaler, whom she’d known for years.  She’d also disapproved of him for just as many years, but I further suspected she was protecting him from my possible wrath on the off chance she might need him again as a snitch at some point in the future.  My suspicions were strengthened by the guy’s later response to that suggestion — though he looked at me with blank amazement that I could even suspect him of such a betrayal, his amazement was just a bit too blank, his eyes just a bit too shifty, and his forehead just a bit too beaded with sweat.  I doubt he was much scared of me, but Mom could have that effect on people sometimes, even at a distance.

As I’ve said, my earliest coherent memory was of trying to get away from her, and I spent much of the next 25 years still trying to get away from her in one way or another.  But then, all too soon after I left her with the ducks that day in the hospital, there was no longer any reason for me to keep running from her.  And I then had to ask myself:  had I really been running from her, especially during the previous ten years, or from myself?

Both, maybe.  In any case, I started cleaning up most of the rest of my act.  Though I’d mostly gotten away from illegal drugs after joining the military, I’d replaced those with a significant drinking problem, and I knew it was time to bring the Stone’s Lost Decade to a close.  Part of it was that I no longer felt I had to run from her, myself, or anyone else.  But the longer I’ve lived since then, the more convinced I’ve become that the main reason I no longer felt that way was because, free of the flesh, she’d finally caught me.

Thanks, Mom!

Last night after listening to JC & Laney sing Follow Your Shadow Home at the XB, I realized that I’d entered a clear meditative state without even trying, and also realized then that this often happens when I listen to their music (even though their songs contain lyrics, which for me generally interfere with entering that state).  So I’ve deleted one of the other tracks (Emptiness) from the .mp3 sidebar widget to make room for Follow…

It’s the final track from their latest album, Heartbreak & Paradise, and my favorite song from that album.  But I also like the others, especially I Wish You Well, For No Apparent Reason, and World for Two.

If you’d like some info on the other tracks on the sidebar widget, you can find a summary in the blog’s archives at this link.

I feel kinda sorry for all the people in the world who weren’t at the Xtreme Bean last night to hear JC & Laney perform.  But on the other hand, all the people in the world wouldn’t have fit in there. 

Jim Pipkin, "Sour Mash for the Soul"

It was a memorable night for Mrs. Stone and me in more than one way, because later the duo introduced us to a fellow named Jim Pipkin, also a musician, who’ll next be appearing in the Phoenix metro area on May 19th (next Saturday night) at 7 p.m. in the DownUnder Wine Bar in Gilbert.  Jim has a website subtitled Sour Mash for the Soul, and you can hear one of his songs (Rebel Souvenirs) by clicking on the “slideshow” link about halfway down the home page there.  Some people might reflexively dismiss that song as paying misplaced homage to the bitter remnants of an unjust society, but I’d suggest that such people should learn to listen more closely.  I find this verse especially thought-provoking:

Our ancestors farmed this land from childhood to their graves
Now we stock the big-box stores with the work of Asian slaves
Seems the more things stay the same, the more they disappear
Dark wood and ticking clocks and Rebel souvenirs…

Another of his songs I’d like to mention here is Fireline, downloadable from Amazon along with much of his other work.  In it Jim honors the Arizona prison crews who volunteer to fight wildland fires in this state, and he recalls the 1990 Dude Fire near Payson, which killed five inmates and a staff member from the Perryville prison complex.  Listening to that song brings back many memories of that incident for me, and I’m sure the same would be true for anyone working in the system during that time… probably for anyone who was an Arizona inmate back then, too.

On a lighter note, last night we were discussing (among many other subjects) the reprieve given the world by the recent discovery of a more optimistic Mayan calendar.  Jim, who’s an overflowing cornucopia of little-known facts, told us why the Mayan beer recipes found by archaelogists don’t produce good-tasting beer.  It’s because they preferred to ingest their beer (along with other mind-altering substances) through their nether orifices, so they weren’t much concerned with how it tasted.

I’d never heard this before, and not that I doubted him or anything, but I spent part of this morning verifying it.  If you’d like to verify it yourself, just Google “Mayan” and “beer” and “enema,” and you’ll get all kinds of hits.  I’m glad I didn’t know this particular fact during my late teens through late twenties (aka “The Stone’s Lost Decade”), because I’m fairly certain I would’ve tried to make practical use of it.  Of course, I’m much more restrained nowadays, hardly ever consuming beer even by mouth.  And as for all the other stuff I was ingesting back then, I shudder even to remember.

"Memoria del futuro," from http://www.racrufi.com/galeria.html

At some point during that time period I became convinced I was telepathic… actually, that I’d been telepathic since childhood without fully realizing it.  I was reminded of that conviction this very morning while reading a post about The Outer Limits TV show on Sharon Day’s website.  As I commented there about that post, everyone in my immediate family except my mother watched that show religiously every week during its run.  Mom was a born-again Christian and she may have believed it was against her religion.  Or maybe she didn’t watch it because she’d been raised as one of eight children on a 40-acre farm, and she thought watching shows like that was unnecessary for the maintenance of life as she grew up knowing it, and was therefore undesirable in general, because who knew how long slackers like Dad and my brothers and myself would continue to have time to loll about and engage in such frivolous pastimes?  She never said anything like that, y’understand, but I later came to believe that I’d known what she was thinking because I was telepathic.  I say “known,” even though at the time I thought I was merely speculating about what she was thinking, because… well, because it was naturally a scary thing to contemplate, being telepathic.

I believed for years I was telepathic, but I suppressed that belief and/or ability after marrying Mrs. Stone after the close of The Stone’s Lost Decade, because I suspected she was also telepathic and I was afraid of the neurological heterodyning (feedback screech) that might result if I didn’t suppress it.  As for her, I’m not sure whether she suppressed anything, because she claims never to have been telepathic or to believe she was.  I suppose she’d know, but sometimes I wonder…

My comment on Sharon’s blog turned out to be considerably longer than I’d thought it would be.  Almost long enough for a post on my own blog, so I figured I’d tack it on here to the post I was already planning to write about Jim Pipkin and Mayan mind-altering enemas.  I was sure there was some connection, and that I need only find it.  I went on to mention that I’d be including a link here to her Outer Limits post (here it is again).  I said I hoped it would be safe to do that… that no malevolent cyberbeings would be awakened by the resonance and eat our respective computer systems.  Or that if they did, they’d regard the hardware lunch as a sufficient sacrifice, and not go looking for something or somebody else for dessert.

Okay, now the only question is whether if I’d know if a malevolent cyberbeing ate me for dessert, or maybe even as the main course.  I mean, how can I possibly be sure it hasn’t absorbed my memories along with the rest of me, and that it isn’t actually the entity doing the typing right now?

No way to be absolutely sure of that, but I am sure I’d find no reliable answer in a Mayan enema.

(Addendum:  I realized just a few moments ago that earlier I somehow missed the opportunity to assure readers that I’m not just talking out of my butt here, and am herewith remedying that lamentable omission.)

This morning I heard on the car radio that a National Geographic expedition has uncovered a new (well, new to us) version of the Maya calendar in some Guatemalan ruins, and this one has dates thousands of years into the future.

Shazam!

Naturally I pulled over right away and called Mrs. Stone on the cell to let her know the world won’t be ending on December 21st of this year after all.  She said, “Oh, yes, I know.  I heard about that a couple of days ago.”

“A couple of days ago?”  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.   “And you didn’t tell me about it?”

“Well, I figured you already knew.”

“Grrr…”

Later back at home, looking at the list of news stories on the subject, I see that none of them are dated before yesterday.  So she probably only heard about it yesterday, and she admits as much with a shrug, but still.  She knows how much I’ve been tossing and turning and sweating at night, not to mention sucking my thumb and whimpering softly on occasion, as the dread deadline has been drawing ever closer.  She should’ve known that if  I’d known about this a couple of days ago, or yesterday or whenever, I would’ve immediately told her.  But I didn’t tell her until this morning, so ergo I didn’t know until this morning.  Q.E.D.

Just in case you’re wondering what “Q.E.D.” means, that’s short for quod erat demonstratum, Latin for “thus it has been demonstrated,” since I don’t know how the Mayans said, “So there!”  I also don’t know they said, “You should’ve told me the world isn’t going to end after all!”  But you can bet I’d say it that way to her if I could.  More than thirty years we’ve been together, and this is the way she does me.

Women can be so cold and cruel sometimes…

JC & Laney, tomorrow (Friday) night at the Xtreme Bean, 8:30-10:30

(You can find my first article about this duo in the archives at this link.)

How do you think you’d feel about ghosts if you’d been raised in a 250-year-old house which had been used as a field hospital by both sides in the Civil War?

I think I’d either be afraid of them or fascinated by them, but I’m not sure which.

Sharon Day was raised in such a house, she’s fascinated by ghosts, and she shares that fascination on her blog, Ghost Hunting Theories.  She’s fascinated by a lot of other off-beat subjects as well:  extraterrestrial visitors, Bigfoot, Greek mythology (notably the Medusa and Pandora’s Box legends), and fossil anthropology, to name only a few.  Browsing her site reminds me of the many nights I listened to Art Bell while working the graveyard shift in the Arizona prison system back in the ’90s.  Listening to the radio while on duty was technically against the rules, but sleeping would’ve been even more against the rules.  Not much chance of my dozing off whenever Art was on the air!

Sharon attended our writers’ group meetup last night, which is how I found out about her blog.  I’m mildly surprised I hadn’t run across it before, but cyberspace is big.  As far as meeting her in person goes, I learned this morning that we have been in the general vicinity before at the same time, during the 2011 Phoenix Zombie Walk (she has some videos of that event at this link).  But since there were about 4,000 other attendees, most of them zombified, it’s understandable that I don’t remember seeing her there.  She probably doesn’t remember me either, but I’ll give it a try anyway:  I was the big fat guy in overalls and a red shirt, green face, bloody beard, carrying a severed head impaled on a hook.  Ring any low, mournful bells, Sharon?

On the subject of zombies, she and co-author Julie Ferguson have a new book out:

In case you have trouble reading the back-cover blurb:

The toxic bomb apocalypse of the 1950s didn’t stop Stella and Liz. These housewives reanimated and continued their days as usual, only with a hunger for living flesh. Stella, the perfect housewife, continued her housekeeping in her zombie state and Liz, the drunken, slutty divorcee housewife, stirred up a Bloody Mary and fell into her usual stupor. This photo and resource book for all things zombie is a fun and playful look at the zombie-like existence of housewives through the ages and incorporates housewife tips and recipes, showcasing zombie artisans and listing lots of zombie resources for all those readers who love zombie-everything!

Sounds like a hoot!  I hope my copy arrives in time for next week’s meetup, and I also hope she’s there to sign it for me.

Hmm, let me see, was there anything else I wanted to put into this post…?  Oh yeah.  Before beginning it, I thought I might get into the ghostlier aspects of quantum physics, but now I’m thinking I’ll save that for another morning… or another midnight, depending.  “Particles that seemingly communicate by telepathy. Hypothetical cats that are simultaneously dead and alive…” (a quote from Taming Quantum Ghosts).  That stuff really creeps me out! 

Sometimes people ask me how I came up with “Scrolling Stone” as a nom de keyboard.  I tell them I like rocks and I like puns, not necessarily in that order.  I’m sure we’re all familiar with the centuries-old saying, “A rolling stone gathers no moss.”  Well, I may gather some moss, and maybe also some spiderwebs on occasion, because most of me doesn’t move around much whenever I’m on this computer.  But then, that old saying wasn’t the main basis for the pun.  No, it was my long-standing and still-growing appreciation of the music created by the rock band in the above video clip.

Back in the day I fully expected that most of The Rolling Stones (especially Keith Richards) would be at least brain-dead by now, if not completely dead.  But they celebrated their fiftieth anniversary as a band last month, and even if they never tour again, the fact they’re still considering it after the run they’ve had is unprecedented in the rock music industry.  Some might wonder why they’re still thinking about it.  Highly doubtful they need the money, and their egos were probably satiated long ago.

This particular video clip provides a clue, I think.

This rendition of Far Away Eyes is from Martin Scorsese’s Shine a Light, which was mainly shot during two appearances by the Stones in late 2006.  Beyond the excellence of Scorsese’s cinematography, I especially like it because it captures some of the long-term working and personal dynamics between Richards and Mick Jagger.

About a minute and 35 seconds into the song, Richards steps up to a standing mike to sing a harmony part, but soon loses his focus.  Jagger gives him a sidelong look which clearly says, “Bloody hell, his wheel’s off its axle again!”  When he shifts position toward Richards a few moments later, it’s as if he’s using an invisible force field to push the other man away from the mike.  Then about three minutes and 20 seconds in, Jagger moves toward Richards again, but this time it’s to share his handheld mike, giving Richards a chance to redeem himself.  Richards doesn’t blow it this time, and rests his hand on Jagger’s shoulder affectionately as if to say, “This man is a large part of the reason I’m still alive today.”

All the Stones have had substance issues over the years.  Even drummer Charlie Watts, whose personal values and lifestyle have probably been the most stable (he’s still married to the same woman after 47 years), went through a rough patch with alcohol and other drugs in the late ’70s and early ’80s.  Even heroin was on his menu for a while and, ironically enough, he credits Richards with convincing him to give that up after he (Watts) had passed out on the floor during the recording of their Some Girls album in 1978.

That album included Far Away Eyes, which is an irreverent song… some might even call it blasphemous.  As far as I’ve been able to determine, none of the Stones has ever credited any kind of religious “higher power” for his recovery from any kind of substance abuse addiction.  But as some 12-steppers are wont to say, even choosing a doorknob as a higher power can get the job done for some people.  The important thing, they say, is that said power must be something beyond the self.

For each of the Stones’ members, it appears that the group is their higher power, along with the the music that the group creates.

Many members of successful musical groups have learned after leaving those groups that their creative outputs and performance levels as individuals never again reached the same level of originality and excellence.  All the Beatles, even more prolific and popular than the Stones during the ’60s, are arguably the best example of that phenomenon (even if none of them ever quite admitted it).  And the Stones might well have been another example, if they’d ever gone their separate ways in so final a manner.  The evident difference with them is that they realized the greater value of the group before they ever split up.

So back to the question, why are The Rolling Stones considering yet another world tour at this late date?  Call it synergy, call it the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, call it whatever you like.  But I believe it can also be called love… not only love for the music they create together, but also for each other.

Money talks and bullshit walks, but love rocks!

Although I’m about as musically talented as a broken porch swing, this song has been kicking around in my head in various forms for the past week.  I woke up with the idea for it on May 1st, and I’m nearly certain no one else has ever written it, because Google has come up empty on all the search strings I’ve tried… for instance, “The road has its siren songs” and “If he followed that long flatline.”  I suspect it could be a country/western song, and if anyone sees this post and wants to put it to music and record it, let me know.  I’m sure we could make a deal… 

Flatline Angel

Too many hard miles
Too many late nights
The road has its siren songs
And the one he was hearing
As he lay on that gurney
Told him he didn’t have long.

(chorus)
He thought he heard an angel
She sang of life beyond time
She promised to be with him
If he followed that long flatline

Too many uppers
Too many downers
And booze along for the ride
He had tried being magic
He had tried being humble
Still it was all about pride

(repeat chorus)

Too many doctors
Too many nurses
Crowded in that small white room
They were doing all they knew
They’d seen it all before him
No strangers were they to doom

(repeat chorus)

Too many seconds
 Too many minutes
Leading him along the way
The needles were all empty
The paddles lying idle
Nothing left then but to pray

Then he did hear his angel
She’d arrived there just in time
She begged him not to leave her
So he turned from that long flatline

 (© 2012 by Scrolling Stone)

Another reason I’m nearly certain it’s my own creation is because even though I don’t normally think about flatlines, I started thinking about them recently after hearing JC Scott’s story about flatlining (see “Surprise!,” posted here on April 28th).  And then a couple of days later, Mrs. Stone (my own personal angel) came back from a 10-day visit back East.  Even though we’ve been married for more than 30 years, I’d missed her.  Or maybe especially because we’ve been married for more than 30 years?  Whichever.  I’d missed her.  A lot.