Archive for January, 2014

Yes, We Have No Stalgia

Wednesday, January 15th, 2014

We have no stalgia today.

For the past week, I’ve been reading a book published in 1966, in which the author reflects on the halcyon days of his childhood and laments how things used to be better than they are today. (Today, please keep in mind, refers to 1966.) And while I don’t necessarily agree with all of it, the one piece of nostalgia I find myself really connecting with comes not from the book itself, but the random piece of paper I’ve been using as a bookmark, which it turns out is a decade-old menu from the local Chinese place, advertising an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet for under $5. Now those were the good old days.

Speaking of nostalgia, today marks the final week of existence for the North Adams Transcript, and consequently my final column after 10 years of award-winning* weekly humor columns. I spent the column reminiscing over columns past, because that’s what one does at the End of an Era. As I’m not someone given to excessive drinking**, today is a day for excessive online gaming.

*Thanks, New England Press Association!

**Although I am given to excessive eating. But who wouldn’t be, if you grew up in a time of all you can eat lunch buffets for under $5?

Crappy New Year!

Friday, January 10th, 2014

Admittedly, the year did not start out particularly great for me. Part of this is because I’ve been sick, courtesy of some New Years Eve Party Favors. And part of this is because the North Adams Transcript, the newspaper in which my award-winning weekly humor column has run for the past 10 years, is ceasing production to be absorbed into the Berkshire Eagle. And part of this is because although I cannot officially disclose anything, if I were in a beta for a game that rhymed with Shmelder Shmolls Shmonline, I would have been downloading many gigs of patches and updates over the past three days and still be far from a full progress bar actually letting me play the damned beta.

So those are some things.

But it’s not all bad news. In the past two weeks my partner has cooked for me delicious dishes from around the globe, ranging from African fish stew, to Carnitas, to an actual Haggis.* And towards the end of last month I put up a review of Caverna: The Cave Farmers, which is easily one of the best new games I played in 2013. (It would be tough for me to choose between that or Terra Mystica as absolute best, but I think they’d be the top two.) And while I don’t make New Years Resolutions per se, even before Jan. 1 I had already resolved that by the end of this year, I will finish a draft of my next book, which will be about games. Here I am making a public statement about it, so you can all hold me to account: By the end of this year, I’ll have a draft of my new book about boardgaming.

Now I just have to get some more gaming in, for inspiration.

* “It wasn’t totally offal,” she said. “I love ewe,” I replied.