I was lucky with my own bandmates, actually; I was always the least reliable, least talented member, so disappointment tended to flow reliably in the opposite direction. I only played guitar at a couple shows, ever. I mostly just brought a microphone, or put it in someone's bag at practice so it would arrive without effort on my part, then hit the bar before the show to down a Snake Bite to sand the edge off my nerves. Then I'd hand a drink and a blank cassette to the guy at the board, and after the show I would listen to the tape on the way home, and make a thorough accounting of my failures.

They are available! I am by no means a golf expert; I come mostly for the buffet and the intensely shared fellow-feeling. For your calendar:

Last week I attended a special "Art Night" at my kid's school. I ended up spending the evening drawing with elementary school kids and had a great time. Here's some of my doodles:

So, last time, I was worried that between Destiny's immediacy and my belief that there was some mystically optimal condition under which to play The Witcher, it would end up sort of like my Steam library, in a list more akin to a list of achievements than of time played or work considered. But that is not true. Having secured 32 Light in order to make myself marginally less worthless to my Fireteam, I had a chance over the weekend to plow through the "Witching 101" portion of The Witcher 3 and into the game proper, which isn't an epic roleplaying game at all apparently but a card game called gwent.

I forgot to post my Throwback Thursday art yesterday. It was a hit last week and I intended to do it again but just spaced it. So to make up for it I'm gonna post two incredibly embarrassing pieces of artwork from my past!

Gavin came up with AirDND at lunch, and it was too good to leave on the table. Utilizing long-forgetten alchemical techniques, including those we have transmuted this notion into a comic strip.

Ask us questions, anything you want, completely asymmetrically! This is the new ritual for the Q&A panels, and it has made them diamond-dense with premium info. Drop a Q in there, and we will deliver an A several months hence.

The strip is hyperbole, I mostly felt like the perspective needed to be made available. I find the show very hard to watch right now, though; I guess it partly has to do with content, insofar as it's just the weight of it. Hitting play on that show right now feels like rigging up a Sword a Damocles and then sitting directly beneath it.

I talked about it on an upcoming podcast, but I absolutely did wholly extemporaneous open poetry readings in a Converted Church Goth Club Coffee Shop Arcade Basement. Shit's real, kid. I was all about that stuff.

Another Monday, another look inside my sketchbook. Nothing special this week just lots of doodles.

As a generality I try not to engage in "do you know who I am" antics when it comes to trying to get free shit, I think I've talked about that before. Of course, sometimes "who I am" is the precise reason I can't have something. If you ask me, I've been perfectly reasonable throughout my eighteen year stint - deploying precision rhetorical munitions only when absolutely necessary. It's entirely possible that I called Epic's Mark Rein a "Liar-King" who "scuttled out of a rotting log," but sometimes its vital in a dialogue to suggest that your opponent is some kind of grub. It's... you know. Aristotelian, or whatever.

I don't social media very well but I've heard that Throwback Thursday is a thing. I know generally you're supposed to post an old picture of yourself but I thought I'd embarrass myself by posting old artwork instead. This was the very first drawing I ever did for Kara back in 1997. That's right I tried to woo her with my mad watercolor skills. We're still married though so I guess it worked.

Robert did a fantastic interview over on Geekwire about PAX ticket sales. Obviously with Prime selling out again in record time there's a lot of talk about the systems we use and lots of suggestions. Well Robert breaks down his strategy in this interview and it's pretty interesting.

Tickets to the 5th Annual Child’s Play Invitational are now available! This is always a super fun day on the course and it all benefits Child’s Play. Just like last year we’ll be holding a Mini golf tournament alongside the normal scramble style tournament. You can also get a spectator ticket and just hang out in the shade drinking cocktails and still join everyone at the BBQ afterwards.

At some point it became clear that if I ever wanted to play a videogame with Gabriil again, I'd have to take up Destiny. So I did, purely as a medium of communication. I thought of it as being something like going to a bar I didn't especially like because it was my friend's favorite bar. And maybe I don't have a high opinion of my friend's opinion on this bar. He doesn't even drink, he eats here. On purpose. He only likes this bar because he can sub tots for fries at no additional charge.

"Doomed cycles" form the scaffold off which so many dork narratives hang, and this one - the generational doom - is an especially potent one.