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A murder party with my monkey

Current Events, Leisure, Popular Culture 2 Responses »

Jan 292012

I was whisked away to Arabia last night. Beth hosted a murder mystery dinner party set in a market in the kingdom of Ardalan. I was an entertainer named Nihad, with a pet monkey named Sinbad. (Terri snapped this photo. I suspect others shall surface.)

Have you ever attended a murder party? I can access a vague memory of playing a drug dealer with slicked-back hair for one of these with an old girlfriend, but that’s been 20 years ago now. Further, I’m confident the scope of this one dwarfed the other, both in the game’s design and Beth’s quest for total environmental immersion when decorating for something of this nature. (Wow, what an effort, too!)

I’m really a pretty smart fellow, but to play this game well requires a degree of mental plate-spinning of which I’m apparently incapable. It’s necessary to keep up with three or four times the amount of information than I can manage. This manifests as a) one character asks me about trading information or items; b) I put him off so I can flip through my packet and see what he’s talking about; c) I figure out I need to do what he said; d) I go back to him and say let’s do it; and finally e) he’s already gone a different way. This happened to me at least twice. (I had most of what I needed to know well in advance, but the pacing and the amount of simultaneous interaction buried me.)

It concerned me enough that I pulled Beth aside and told her I was worried my ineptitude was messing the game up, but she assured me there was enough flexibility designed in to accommodate such. (You know, I can also generate some guilt thinking about the fact that she gave me an extroverted character that I never really did enough with because I was having to try too hard to keep up!) She’ll swat that down too, because she’s gracious and she’s my friend. Then she’ll say that she just hopes I had a good time, which I certainly did. It was food, drink, and lots of laughs with folks I enjoy very much.

If we do it again, though, I think I should probably tend bar.

Thanks so much for all of the trouble and the invitation, Beth. It was a blast!

Technology’s insidious cerebral assault

Current Events, Leisure, Memories 3 Responses »

Jan 272012

Our longtime friend Alex is an architect. As systematic as he is, he may be better suited to his occupation than anyone else we know.

So six or seven years ago, we were visiting over a beer, and he was telling me about his Saturday morning. He had a backyard construction project going, and he told me “so yeah, I thought I’d try it this way, and if it didn’t work out I’d just Undo it and try it another way…”

See what happened there? He spends his days mostly in software, where a mouse click or two wipes away a mistake. That mindset momentarily invaded his real world convincingly enough to plant an absurd thought.

I’d remembered that as an interesting anecdote and nothing more until today, when I realized technology had similarly compromised my thinking. I was listening to talk radio at lunch and wanted to hear something said, but hadn’t been listening closely enough. My immediate thought was “well, I’ll rewind it and…”

…except I can’t rewind the radio in my F-150, can I? Oops.

My DVR, and probably to some degree online video, have apparently wrecked my attention span. My default level of attention is now less than it ever has been, because I’ve been conditioned to believe that I can simply rewind if I want to truly listen to something.

You know, everybody worries about nuclear holocaust or environmental calamity as the cause of humanity’s potential extinction during its ontological adolescence.

What if it’s just that we’re eventually going to be unable to listen for thirty damned seconds in a row?

A few notes on Harry Potter, the wrong way

Consumption, Current Events, Family, Leisure, Popular Culture 3 Responses »

Jan 162012

Until yesterday afternoon, it probably took being a monk to know less about Harry Potter than I did. Lea and I didn’t have children when the books started coming out, and by the time the phenomenon was in the stratosphere, there was too much catching up to do. So, apart from trying 30 minutes of [...]

Review: Ruth’s Chris Steak House

Consumption, Family, Leisure, Popular Culture 8 Responses »

Jan 142012

Last night was our first date night in some time. Lea and I visited Ruth’s Chris Steak House, inside the Embassy Suites downtown, where you just kind of wander into it in the lobby. We’ve had our Ruth’s Chris in Huntsville for five years or so, and I’d heard about it probably that much longer [...]

Childhood buddies revisit Pecanwood Drive

Current Events, Leisure, Memories 6 Responses »

Jan 082012

I met my childhood friend David on Pecanwood Drive in Anniston at 10:15 this morning. Best we could piece together, we had not seen each other since 1984. The weather wasn’t entirely cooperative for our walk through our old neighborhood, but it was nothing umbrellas couldn’t mitigate. We examined our old territory lovingly and carefully, [...]