I had a friend of mine who expressed concern about talking with me, lest her personal issues end up in my journal. That's a reasonable concern, because I do give the illusion that I share everything in this journal. (I don't, but I share more than many people do.)

So let me list the things that I don't talk about in this journal:

I don't write about ongoing issues. I do often discuss the problems Gini and I have had in our relationship - but you'll note that those posts are on fights we had several years ago, and are invariably about problems we've solved.

But if it's an argument we're having now, I don't talk about it. There's no sense dragging people on LJ into a fight that neither of us have finished negotiating, for reasons outlined here (in Rule #4). Any sort of open debate does not get aired in public until it's absolutely closed, and Gini and I have come to the same conclusion about whatever it was that was bothering us. (Which is why I run all those posts by Gini first - she has veto power.)

Likewise, I don't discuss arguments I'm having with my friends. Being polyamorous, I've gone through three breakups in the time since I've had this journal - and none of that's ever made it to the page. I don't name names, I don't discuss specifics, I don't accuse. Breakups are painful enough without having to endure excoriations from strangers in someone's journal.

Until it's dead and trapped in amber, I don't write about it.*

I don't write about ongoing issues. I'm putting this as a separate bulletin point because it doesn't apply to just Gini: it applies to all my friends and their issues.

Now, I can see where it seems that I ignore this rule, because I do write about things my friends are going through. Often, though, those posts are just generic advice I've given to people that's not tied to anything in their lives.

But if I know they're going through a trauma that they wouldn't want debated in public, and the entry is on something where there's no question that it's them, I'll wait until it's something that's no longer bothering them. And then I'll change the details of their information. And, more often than not, turn it into an identical incident that I've gone through. (And if it never really ends, then I don't write about it at all. An entry isn't worth upsetting a friend.)

I've had friends read entries and not realize it was inspired by them three months ago. That's my goal.

Problem is, I have a lot of friends - and considering I often write about universal topics, it's almost guaranteed that my writing on someone's breakup two months back is going to be very similar to someone's breakup today. But there's not much I can do about that; all I can say is that it's not you.

I don't talk about anything that someone's specifically asked me not to talk about. If someone doesn't want to be talked about on my LJ, I won't. It's not that big a deal. If I know they're Internet-shy, I'll generally leave them off as well. This is my catch-all category.

(This is, I should add, not a letter of the law thing; I don't give universal veto power to anyone who says, "It hurts me when you talk about trees." With a large enough audience, almost every post is guaranteed to hit someone's button. But if it's personal and related to them, I'll usually avoid the topic.)

I don't talk about my children. I occasionally tell a funny story about them, or regurgitate some advice I've given, but their lives are their own. The things they go through don't make it here, and shouldn't.

I don't talk about work. Fortunately, I do actually enjoy my job, but on the days that I don't I keep my lips zipped. This is simple common sense.

I don't talk about anything that, to my judgment, would worsen the world. Which is not to say that I don't err in this occasionally, or make judgments that you'd disagree with as to what makes the world better... but in general, I want my LJ to be a positive force. So I try to avoid writing about things that are just complaining, and if I rant I try to have some underlying point. I want to write about topics that inspire people, not drag them down.

And that's it, I think. I reserve the right to add more things as time goes on. And I'll probably restructure my userinfo page to reference this.

* - I might write about my emotional state caused by the breakup, as in "I'm feeling really lonely and sad today and must listen to The Shins a million times," but that's a different thing.

Colorado was awesome, and freaking freezing. I made it home alive, despite my own premonitions to the contrary. (Though there is nothing like being utterly convinced you are going to die to make you really appreciate the marvels of modern technology.)

Off to Sonora for extended-hours family christmas tomorrow. Then a day of rest and probably gardening, then NYE, and then a few days to recuperate before heading back to work on the 4th. Zomg.

Secret critique amusements: when someone says you didn't foreshadow something enough for their liking, and then you discover that in their suggested edits they've actually cut out every bit of foreshadowing that you put in.

I spent about four hours yesterday playing DJ Hero, scratching and mixing, just enjoying the hell out of great mash-up songs and fun gameplay. And in playing it, I understood completely why DJ Hero tanked.

On the surface, DJ Hero has everything you'd want in a rhythm game: great songs, an iconic culture (everyone knows to scratch the records, man), entertaining game play backed by absolutely killer reviews. Yet it sold about half of what people thought it would, and it's largely considered a flop.

So what happened? A lot of things.

First off, there's the obvious point: as people dissecting the failure of DJ Hero have repeatedly mentioned, mash-ups of songs sound good on the surface, but you don't know what you're getting. Sure, Daft Punk remixing Queen sounds potentially awesome, but do you want to drop $120 on things that might be good? Whereas Rock Band and Guitar Hero may have less exciting tracks - certainly the repeto-stomp of "We Will Rock You" isn't going to be fun to play more than once or twice - but there's no question as to what song you'll be playing.

It didn't help that the two songs featured in the Best Buy kiosks were the weakest songs in the game. As it turns out, the Queen/Daft Punk is insanely good, and the Jackson Five/Jay-Z is even better. But what did they choose? Some easy, but really boring mid-tempo tracks lacking iconic sounds. If you want to sell it to the mainstream crowd, then when they see it you need to give them Rihanna, give them Queen, give them your biggest names - not the antiquated boredom of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" weakly mixed with Gorillaz.

That isn't the biggest problem, though. The biggest problem is that Activision's habit of catering to the hardcore gamers finally bit them in the ass.

See, for Rock Band, the instrument itself doesn't take too much for a newbie to understand. You know how guitarists play, and the mechanics are the similar: finger these buttons here where you'd play chords, and flick this plastic switch where you'd strum. Sure, there are other things you can do - whammy bars, star power, hammer-ons - but all of those are purely optional elements that merely enhance the game play. You aren't punished if you don't get it.

Furthermore, the two core mechanics are simple: fret and strum. That's instinctive.

DJ Hero, on the other hand? Well, what does the average Joe know about DJing aside from the fact that they wear headphones and scratch and do... something... with tracks? The mechanics of DJing are actually not nearly as well known, so you can't really imitate it.

So when you sit down, you have the three buttons on the turntable. And you have to press those buttons and scratch, sometimes in predetermined directions. And you have a crossfader, which has three positions (which are nearly impossible to see where it's seated upon first glance at the the screen) determines which track you're using, and if you don't then you fail terribly.

So when a novice sits down for DJ hero, they now have three separate and at-odds mechanics, none of which are instinctive. They know as a DJ that they're supposed to scratch, but the buttons? They're strange, and flip positions when you twirl the turntable. The crossfader switch? Sure, DJs use them, but how many of the unwashed masses are really aware of using them?

What you end up with is a huge disconnect between what's happening on-screen and what you're doing on the controller. I watched three people play it in Best Buy, and I still wasn't really sure how to play. It wasn't until I completed the tutorial that I really fathomed everything that was going on.

Guitar Hero has a guitar to be played. DJ Hero has an interface to be learned.

That's great... for die-hard gamers like me. I like mastering new control systems, and get satisfaction from accomplishing things that are moderately hard. But for a casual gamer, who is baffled by the two-control system of a plastic guitar? He's going to look at the buttons and the twirling and the crossfader and this twirly dial here and this flashing button and cry, "WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO?" And who wants to bother?

Activision wasn't thinking, "Wow, Guitar Hero really appeals to people who never play games. How can we do that for DJ Hero?" If they had, they would have found a way to simplify the interface, make it more apparent what control affected which part of the game. They would have watched Gramma and little kids as they scratched on experimental controllers, catalogued their reactions and really concentrated on feedback.

Instead, they said, "How can we make this a game with a lot of depth?" Which, to be fair, they did - but they paid for it in having too much of a learning curve, one that put people off when they saw it in stores. It looked like work because it was, like any hardcore game, and the people rightfully stayed away in droves.

Which is a shame. It's a fine game. I'm enjoying it as I master its control schema. But I can see Gini, bored in her chair, wondering why I'm spending hours finessing my scratching technique - and her casual gamer attitude is not only completely justifiable, but the majority of purchases these days. And so even if they did come up with a sequel to DJ Hero, it'd still use this clunky controller, then that would fail.

Boo. I love these mixes. I love this game. But I can understand why it's just for me.

Somewhere, in an alternate universe, the resident of 221 B Baker St, as imagined by Arthur Conan Doyle, is looking at his new roommate and wondering who the hell this is and why his parents were just as cruel as to name him Sherlock Holmes.

Michelle and I took her brother Kevin, father and stepmother to go see Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law tonight and I will say that it was a fun movie, if not exactly the smartest movie. However, I'm finding as I think about the movie more, the only thing that was necessarily off was the date; the villain makes mention of the American Civil War as a very recent thing, placing the movie in the mid-late 1860s or the early 1870s, and the books take place in the 1880s.

However, there are bits that do play true. The VR that he shoots in his wall while testing out his "gunshot silencing device" is a nice touch from the books. The drug use, the misogyny, apparently even the erratic behavior of Downey's performance, were all taken in some way from particular readings of the books. I think the only issue I have is that they made Irene Addler into a criminal; in the books she does pull a swindle on Sherlock Holmes, one of the few to ever outwit him, and earns his esteem (the picture in the movie is also a nice nod to the books as it was a payment for a job he did and one of his treasured possessions).

One of the things I liked about the movie is that it was very neat. Just as with the stories, by the end Sherlock is able to wrap up all of the details, all the way down to who did and why. The nod toward Moriarty is good as well and I hope this does well enough to get a sequel (which they very unsubtly hinted at).

Jude Law, as Watson, was actually surprisingly good and I liked that they placed the movie late in the duo's career, shortly before his marriage and partial retirement.

One aspect of the movie I thoroughly enjoyed was the supporting characters in Lestrade and Constable Clark. I think they added a very nice flavor to the story and I enjoyed the banter between the characters (and I was pleased that Lestrade was still the butt of all the jokes; "You know, in an alternate universe you'd be a criminal." "And in an alternate universe you would be a good police inspector.")

The things that I felt they got wrong was the clothing and the hygiene. Holmes was a very clean individual and particular in his dress, especially in his costumes. The entire movie he looks half put together and he has an exchange with Watson where the latter accuses him of stealing his clothing.

Overall, I think Downey did a good job of displaying the cold, machine-like side of Sherlock Holmes while being able to portray the emotions that did lurk behind his calculating exterior; his affection for Watson and his esteem for Addler were very apparent in the novels.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. It seemed much more...actiony then a Holmes movie should've necessarily, but I think that's a necessary sacrifice to the feel of the stories in order to hold people's interests; a movie too cerebral would've been dull. I will be buying it and I would recommend seeing this film, even if you have to pay full price.

It was a low key Christmas this year and one of the best. I'm sitting in my best friend's living room borrowing a laptop to write this, sitting by a fire merrily burning in the fire place. We are back from a Boxing Day party that was full of good people and food. Christmas itself was so low key as to almost not be worth noting except that I spent time with my blood family and the family of my heart. The only part I missed was my boyfriend. Had he been here to share it with me, it would have been perfect.

A friend of mine noted that Christmas is better for adults than it is for kids. I always used to think that it was the other way around, but this year I know it's true. When I was a kid, I never felt this *content* at Christmas.

Tomorrow is another day away from work, then another three day week for me. I intend to dance my way through New Years.

To all of my friends, family, and friends who are family: All my love, always.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/12/from-exact-middle-of-nowhere.html

Waving from the Middle of Nowhere, where there's no TV, my cell phone doesn't work and the internet is slow and klunky enough that semaphore might be more efficient.

Last night, I had one of those experiences that transforms your life. I have a lot of those. The difference is that I had it again.

Which is to say that I borrowed a friend's copy of Ray Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man" and read "The Veldt," and found it to be just as creepy, memorable, and shocking as it was when I first read it when I was, what? Ten?

It's rare that I go back to the well of my childhood and dig out something that holds up every bit as well as I remember it. Usually there's a few chunks knocked off the edges; Narnia's still a lovely place to visit, but I forget how sparse C.S. Lewis's text was. Isaac Asimov's characters are too simplistic. The special effects in the old Star Trek are a little hoary now.

But The Veldt? Even now, I can feel a master at work. Every bit as good as an adult as it was when I was a kid.

And so, since I asked about it on Twitter yesterday, I'll ask you all today: what seminal book/music/movie from your childhood is just as good to you today? It's rare that I get that thrill twice, and am ecstastic every damn time it happens.

(And yes, this is why I love Star Wars, why do you ask? Just the first movie, though. Empire's always a little sullied by the fact that I know Jedi is comin'.)

The china has been washed, dried, and put in the middle of the dining room table until we get back next week and can pack it back into the attic.

The left overs have been stored in the refrigerator and Jack and Maggie are happily noming away on their beef bones.

My dad, mom, and Michelle are watching Planet Earth in the living room.

And I'm going to go pass out I think. But first I must pack (we're flying to San Diego tomorrow at 8:10).

Merry Christmas.

I just carved the prime rib for Christmas dinner.

This is the first time I've carved the Christmas meal instead of my father.

It feels good...but weird.

Also, once again, I'm incredibly thankful that I married a woman who can cook. The prime rib is a nice medium with a hot pink center through the entire roast, with a beautiful, tasty rub.

And the lobster tails are about to come out (my parents and wissavix gave us some gift certificates to a local fish/meat market that let us splurge some this year) and also look amazing.

To all my single male friends: a woman who can cook is worth her weight in gold. I do not lie.

Last night in Hungarian! In the Land of Cleve.
http://tinyurl.com/yz2mgey

The house has been cleaned and cleaned by professionals.

All of the prep work we could do on food has been done.

My grandmother's Christmas/birthday cake has been picked up.

Presents wrapped and unwrapped. Michelle got me a Kindle and a new camera among other things. I'm enjoying the Kindle and have downloaded Dan Simmons' Drood among others thus far; I'm thinking it'll be nice to take on trips.

I think this is the most bittersweet Christmas I've ever had.

To you all, however you celebrate, whether it's Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Yule, or Naked Present Day (pharmakopp's favorite), please have a good day today and hug some people you love.

And get fucked up on boozy egg nog.

Because that's the real reason for the season. Family, love, and nog.

-Ren

Because I want to know: What's the best thing you got for Christmas this year?

My answer is crazily threefold, because I am so overcome with happiness I cannot decide:

1) My Mom got me a Roomba. So I will now have a silly robot vaccuuming my living room, which is great because I hate vaccuuming and hate messy floors equally.

2) I got the complete Seasons 1 through 5 of Mythbusters. Considering that Adam and Jamie are my comfort watching, this makes me extremely thrilled.

3) This is the one where I can't say how much I like the present yet, but it fills me with warm fuzzies; Gini and I have battled for months over DJ Hero. "It's another stupid plastic toy," she said. "I don't want it cluttering the living room. I don't like the music. And I really hate the gameplay. And I don't want more clutter in our living room!" So though I wanted it, I had resigned myself to not having it.

I felt that box in my lap. I was hoping. And sure enough, even though Gini personally hates it, she got it for me for Christmas because she knew it would make me happy. And that's really filling me with a sense of love right now.

This is a very good Christmas, though. My Dad got me a box full of awesome, too, and Eric and Kat got me a guitar shirt that you can play with your hands. We don't have batteries for that right now, but I'm not going to fret it.

Merry, merry Christmas! So what made you happiest under the tree this holidays?

I ask every year at Christmas: If you'd like to get me an inexpensive gift that will nevertheless make me do little happydances of joy, feel free to post cheesecake pictures of yourself in the comments here. (Alternatively, if they're spicy or you're shy, mail 'em to me at theferrett@theferrett.com.)

(And as always, every year I do this, some guy goes, "Oh ho, here I am! You didn't expect this!" and posts a picture of himself. And it's true that I'm straight, but a) I like seeing pictures of people anyway, b) I'm never shocked by photos of guys, and c) as far as I'm concerned, posting cute pictures of yourself where attractive people - potentially girls - can see them is usually a good idea. So it's like whoah, you sure are alternative, buddy.)

Merry merry!

Happy holidays to all! May your loot luck be excellent!

These past few moths have been hard on everyone it seems, so I just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a blessed and happy Christmas. No matter what holidays you may or may not celebrate now, no matter what the coming year may bring you, I pray you all are granted joy and peace.

Whether I talk to you all the time, or haven't left a comment on your journal in years, I count you as a part of my life. I read every entry that you post, and I hold you in my throughts and prayers.

My Love to you and God Bless you all.

I started in the same way that most of you did: totally ignorant. Some of you - I suspect most - had this rite of passage foisted upon you before you really had any choice in the matter, dandled over a father's knee while my mortal enemy played upon the tube. You were lost before you knew it.

As the years crept on, it wasn't anything I set out to avoid; had it shown on TV while I was drinking Jaegermeister and Schlitz with my friends, I certainly would have lost my strange virginity. But it didn't, and by the time I was twenty-five I recognized my status as a statistical anomaly.

So, I decided, I will go to my grave pure.

This is why, at the age of forty, I have never seen It's a Wonderful Life.

Nor will I. I walk out of the room when it's on, now, avoid parties where it might be shown. I've gone half my life without seeing this American classic, and since I've covered this distance inadvertently I intend to reach the goal purposely.

Thing is, I don't think I'm missing much. I did get to thirty without seeing Gone with the Wind, which I considered a lesser triumph - but when Gini found that I'd never seen it, she said, "WELL, YOU'RE GONNA!" and sat me down for four hours. And lo! The burning of Atlanta was actually more impressive than people had said. So I don't regret having her pierce that celluloid hymen.

But It's a Wonderful Life? I ask, "Is it worth breaking a four-decade fast?" and they hem and haw and go, "WeeEEEllll.... It's pretty good..." And I walk on. I have no time to waste on an okay movie.

So I stand alone. Others have not seen It's a Wonderful Life, I am sure, but I am the only one I am aware of who has made this a principled stand. You cannot make me see It's a Wonderful Life. You cannot break me. I will tumble into the soft earth of my grave with my eyes clean, to be greeted by a wingless angel.

Of course, I do have nightmares sometimes. I see myself in the old-age home, decrepit, bound to a wheelchair so I do not fall out. I am wheeled in front of the television to placate me, and just as the nurse deposits me before the screen, I hear through enfeebled ears, "THIS CHRISTMAS, TBS PRESENTS THE 'IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE' MARATHON! TWENTY-FOUR HOURS OF THIS AMERICAN CLASSIC!"

I rattle in the chair. I have no dentures, and I must scream.

Hoppie got me an Nintendo DS Lite for my birthday!

You may never see me again.

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