In defense of grinding
From Wikipedia:
Grinding is a term used in video gaming to describe the process of engaging in repetitive and/or boring tasks not pertaining to the story line of the game. The most common usage is in the context of MMORPGs like Final Fantasy XI, World of Warcraft, Tibia, Lineage and Dragon Quest IX in which it is often necessary for a character to repeatedly kill AI-controlled monsters, using basically the same strategy over again to advance their character level to be able to access newer content.
It’s not unusual to hear someone using the term grinding in a pejorative sense. The implication is that killing fifty furbolgs is not an interesting or particularly useful way to spend one’s evening. I would counter that ridding the virtual world of fifty furbolgs makes that world a better place, at least for the fraction of a minute it takes for those furbolgs to respawn (randy bastards that they are), and thus good for one’s virtual soul.
Some critics argue that grinding reflects laziness and/or a failure of imagination on the part of the game designers. I disagree. I feel that I’m closest to an otherworldly in-game experience when I’m grinding, since grinding is so much like real life. Quest-design, now THAT is where laziness and failure of imagination plays a huge role. Escort quests drive me nuts, particularly when the NPC* I am escorting purposefully blunders into enemies, can’t or won’t defend himself, and has next-to-nothing in the way of hit points. For example, I’m currently stuck on an escort quest in the game Bully, wherein I play an obnoxious punk who would sooner head-butt, melvin, and wet-willy you than ask you for help on his algebra homework. He has to escort one of the chubby nerds from the library to a bathroom. Easy, right? Wrong. There’s a timer, so if you don’t do it fast enough, the nerd will wet himself. And it seems like every other bully at school wants a piece of him, so you have to fight off something like five other guys to get your nerd to the bathroom. The nerd has zilch in the way of hit points, and the bullies all target him, not me.
I haven’t succeeded yet. He keeps getting knocked out, or he wets himself, or both, and then I’m time-warped back to the library and we have to do it all over again. I’m not sure if I’m trapped in his hell or he’s trapped in mine, but it’s not fun.
And then there are the countless World of Warcraft quests that involve killing X number of (fill in name of beast here) to recover Y number of (body parts). You would think killing one zhevra (think zebra) would yield four hooves. Strangely no. Killing named NPCs, destroying plans, lighting signal fires etc. are all variants of this quest type. Quests that are neither escort quests nor “do this action X times” are few and far between.
Grinding, however — that’s honest work. Sometimes a guy wants to nothing more than snipe furbolgs all night long, you know?
D.
*Non-player character, AKA “meat” or “wand-fodder.”
Internet down
Cut out on us a couple of days ago. The (modem?) (magical thingie that provides us with the bounty of the internet?) has all the right flashy lights, but it’s not working, so go figure. We’re all suffering here. I took the precaution of locking away the cutlery, but you’d be amazed at how many common household items can be converted to weapons when a family’s internet is down.
I’m writing this on my office computer. On company time, no less (my 8:00 patient is late). I suspect I’m violating any number of company policies, but doctors are allowed indiscretions that would get lesser mortals fired. I’d have to do some pretty serious sh!t to get into trouble . . . I recall hearing that one doc was fired for using his office computer to look at kiddie pr0n. Serious yuck. But I wonder whether the unforgivable sin was the kiddie pr0n itself or using the office computer to view it.
Our 4th was uneventful. We were back in the heat and we stayed indoors, listening to the explosions outside. From our front yard, we have a decent view of one of the local displays, so I did watch for all of about a minute before yawning and going back indoors. It wasn’t so special that I felt like standing outside and sweating. Yeah, it was still that hot.
D.
Back to Bako
Back to 105 degree heat, and the dust, and all that. Back to our critters who no doubt missed us but would never let on. (Our surviving ferret Bueller, the little twerp, knocked his water bottle over sometime this weekend. Hell of a way to try to kill yourself. Still, he looks none the worse for wear.)
With the exception of that first night, our meals were excellent all around. I think the most memorable dishes were the sesame cake-scotch semifreddo at Cass House, and the corn pudding that sat below my seared scallops at Black Cat. I’ve found several recipes for corn pudding on the web, and I’m eager to start experimenting.
Of the two towns we visited, Cambria and Cayucos, Cambria is the more upscale of the two, but that just means that instead of innumerable antique stores selling cheap shlock they had innumerable art galleries selling expensive shlock. Yes, yes, art is subjective, but you’d think I would occasionally see something worthwhile at a seaside art gallery. Nope.
I haven’t checked my weight yet. Made no effort to stay on the diet, so I won’t be surprised by the worst.
D.
Coastal eating, one for two
I’ve mentioned Hoppe’s before (see #9), site of our Best Meal Ever. They’ve moved from Morro Bay to Cayucos, so on our first night on the coast we decided to stay in Cayucos and indulge in Hoppe’s. Well, they’re not Best Meal Ever territory anymore, I’m afraid. We think the son must have taken over from the father, since one of the menu listings (my main course last night, matter of fact) was “My Father’s Roast Duck.” And the son is not the father.
One of the things we liked about the old Hoppe’s was their consistency. Bread, appetizers, main courses, even the side vegetables were all spot-on excellent. The new Hoppe’s, not so much. Our appetizers (a cheese platter and raw scallops in a spicy sauce) were great, but the main courses . . . um. My roast duck was tasteless. Sort of a duck confit, inasmuch as it seemed like someone had simmered the duck in duck fat for a few days, but not tasty like a confit. Honestly, it didn’t even taste like duck. Karen had pheasant, and it was tasteless too. Even salt didn’t help. Jake had the only hit of the evening, a perfect bouillabaisse.
The dessert was kinda sorta interesting — a baumkuchen, which sounded a lot more interesting in its Wikipedia entry than it was to experience up close and personal.
You can’t go home again, or at least you cannot count on it. Kinda like my experience with La Pergola’s, a North Beach restaurant that had amazing scampi in 1982 or 1983, and just so-so scampi by the last 80s. Haven’t been back since.
So we were oh-for-one last night, and we went to Cass House tonight with some trepidation, since it’s more than a bit on the pricey side AND we had just been burned by Hoppe’s. But we needn’t have feared. Everything was perfect tonight (although the watermelon consomme “palate cleanser” wasn’t really to my taste), and I’d have to say I enjoyed tonight’s four-course price fixe than The French Laundry’s twelve-course lunch, which lacked only a vomitorium.
I’ll add some specifics on the meals, maybe in the comments. Time to relax into this food coma.
D.
Vacation
We’ll be on the road to Cayucas today (on the coast, a bit north of Morro Bay) with every intention of eating some amazing food tonight.
Hat to Lyvvie for this one:
D.
Think fast!
I hadn’t been to this location of my gym in several months. The In Shape on White Lane tends to be less well air-conditioned than the other locations, more crowded, or both. But I had business on this side of town. Food business. The guy who runs medical records (a man who knows his food) told me there was a new market nearby, supposedly a “Mediterranean” market whatever that is, and I wanted to check it out. And a good butcher nearby, too. So I had two reasons to sweat my stuff at the White Lane gym.
Everything looked a little new or different. I wondered if they had remodeled, or if I had simply been away too long. When I went into the locker room, I was sure they had remodeled. Painted the lockers, perhaps? I didn’t know. The place looked a whole lot cleaner than I had remembered.
I’d gotten out of my pants and into my gym shorts when a woman (fortunately fully clothed) walked over to the sinks.
My first thought: The lockers have gone co-ed here? Whoa.
Then: Think fast. Did you see any urinals when you walked in?
Sadly, no.
“Um,” I said, “this is the women’s locker room, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure anymore,” she said.
I contemplated telling her how it was all okay, since I was after all just a lesbian trapped in a man’s body, but all I managed was, “Whew. That was close,” and I grabbed my pants out of the locker and retreated to the men’s locker room, which was just as nasty as I had remembered.
But I read the Locker Room Rules this time, and you know what? I didn’t do anything wrong. They have rules against taking photos with cell phones and rules against allowing opposite-sex children over the age of five into the locker room, but no rules against allowing creepy balding almost-fifty-something men into the women’s.
They really ought to do something about that.
D.
In case you missed it.
Shadow of the Vampire (2000) is not your average vampire film. The (IMO brilliant) conceit of the film is that German expressionist filmmaker F. W. Murnau found a real vampire to star in his classic Nosferatu — but as far as the cast and crew know, actor Max Schreck is some dude who takes his work really, really seriously. Call it method acting circa 1921.
John Malkovich stars as the obsessed F. W. Murnau and delivers a memorable performance. I blow hot and cold on Malkovich. I love him in this movie, and I thought he made a damn good Ripley. In Being John Malkovich, he convincingly played himself, which can’t be easy for an actor. But his turn as Kurtz in Nicolas Roeg’s Heart of Darkness sucked big time, rivaling the bloated lameness of Marlon Brando’s Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. Bottom line, I think Malkovich does best when he has free rein to chew the scenery, AND the movie’s subject and tone is compatible with said scenery-munching. Shadow of the Vampire fits the bill.
One of the reasons that Malkovich’s scene-sponging thrives in this film is that he is well and truly upstaged by Willem Dafoe, whom (unlike Malkovich) I almost always love (though I found him just meh in those Spider Man movies). This role must have been a blast for Dafoe. Just watch. Although I like Malkovich in this movie, Dafoe is the main reason to rent it.
Interestingly, the movie Nosferatu had a checkered history. Bram Stoker’s widow successfully sued Murnau for copyright infringement, and the movie was ordered to be destroyed. Were it not for some bootlegged copies, the movie might have been lost. It’s a hoot, by the way, and well worth seeing. (I don’t know about you, though, but I need to be in a particular mood to want to watch a silent film.)
Shadow of the Vampire is a good one for a dark night, thunderstorms, fire in the fireplace, giant bowl of popcorn, and mass quantities of (insert drug of choice here). Or enjoy it with a clear head. It’s one of those movies we watch whenever it’s on and never seem to tire of it.
D.
I suppose there are worse things to worry about
Jake is a scant two years away from college, and if things proceed in typical fashion he’ll no doubt be at a school where “dorm living” (an oxymoron, that) is mandatory for the first year. “Dorm living” requires “dorm eating,” sad to day. And that’s what Karen brought up tonight. How will a kid who has been raised on my cooking manage to survive dorm food?
She has worse memories of dorm food than I do. She recalls “fish patties” where the chef forgot that bit about gutting the fish before using it as a food stuff. I remember decent meals at International House during my freshman year, but I’ve conveniently blocked out my sophomore (dorm) year. Although I do recall that the most special thing about Special Dinner was that it was edible. We had one per semester, if I remember correctly.
Jake likes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I hate to think what nutritional deficiencies one would develop by subsisting entirely on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Oh, and pizza, of course. Is there any readily available fast food that is also wholesome? We had a Good Earth in Berkeley, and one of the first meals I had in Berkeley was a vegie burger at Good Earth. We had a delicious vegetarian Chinese restaurant, too, and they made the most amazing sweet and sour walnuts. (But Jake hates it when I cook with nuts. So strike that.)
Even as a freshman, I tried to make wholesome food for myself. I had to fend for myself on the weekend, and I honestly don’t know what I did with my electric frying pan. Russ, my roommate, went home to Novato on the weekends. His reputedly awesome-cook-mother took care of him. But I had to take care of me. I remember only one of the meals that I made for myself, mostly because it was so very disastrous. I bought a big hunk of fish and breaded it and fried it. Which would have been fine, had I not decided that bran cereal would make a fine material with which to bread fish.
I do remember eating out. A lot. One of my favorite memories from Berkeley was the time I ate three hot dogs at Top Dog. I’m quite sure that today, this would kill me. But back then it only left me with a warm spot in my heart and a glistening smear of grease on my upper lip.
Once Jake gets an apartment, he can cook for himself. I intend to teach him enough about cooking to take care of himself. But what will he do during that dorm year? Worst comes to worst, I suppose we can give him enough money to live on restaurant food . . . which is not a particularly healthy option, but it may beat the alternative.
D.
Am enjoying . . .
John Dies at the End by Cracked writer David Wong. This is one of those novels that surprises me over and over again. The sort you don’t want to spoil for people (but I can at least tell you that it’s funny enough that I wish I had written it, and it’s scary too, and it’s FRESH). It’s also the sort of book that makes you say, DAMN this would make a great movie, and guess what — they are indeed making it into a movie (according to a sub-page on the link above). Paul Giamatti is the biggest name in the cast, and Don Coscarelli (Bubba Ho-Tep) is directing.
I’m not sure you should watch the video on the John Dies at the End website. I have a bad feeling that I just got a walloping dose of spoilers. Funny video but, jeez, part of the joy of this book is the seemingly endless series of surprises.
So what are you reading?
D.
