At the airport — on the LAX side — I met Mike of GameDrinkCode. We hadn’t met before, although I’m a big fan of GameDrinkCode (I’m more of a GameDrinkWrite girl myself), and I’d been disappointed to miss his highspeed-development talk at the Triangle Game Conference. When he’s not posting on how to afford an indie game, he does iPhone games as Ludoko. (Yes, from the Latin.) Thought it was a good sign that the first person I met was an indie dev.

I ran into a guy in the elevator who asked who I was representing. I said I was freelance. He congratulated me on my successful BSing of the E3 media board.  That’s how I secretly feel, deep down,  about being a journalist, but sometimes I secretly feel like I’m gothly pale or a bit too pear-shaped, and I don’t think I want that pointed out by strangers, either.

I finally met my Twitter friend @CaptainCursor in person! His people over at Rifts went on Unattended Journalist Alert when I asked to see him, and then Nick came out and said hi and tossed me up in the air a couple times.

(Which was extra nice, because my friend who usually greets me by picking me up and swinging me around the room had the bad manners to move to Korea a few years ago.) The Rifts tour was pretty awesome too, thanks, Nick! And for a little while, I felt like one of the cool kids who already knew people at E3. Look, three full days of endless introductions can be pretty exhausting.

I ran into a guy in the elevator who asked if I was a booth babe. Aww! I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh hysterically or hug him.

I ran into another guy in the hotel coffeeshop, who saw my Triangle Games Conference bag, and asked if my husband was here for E3. I wanted to give him a one-finger salute,  but instead I gave him my card. And an icy glare!

I met up with the rest of the guys from DIYgamer at the IndieCade party for drinks and mutual admiration society. Guys, if I didn’t tell you clearly enough, I love your posts.

I was in a taxi on the way to the Scott Pilgrim kegger when some basketball team won something or other, and the whole city started cheering. Oh, yeah, and when I got to the party, the line went down the block and around the corner, but the  line was fantastic, tarted-up girls and posturing guys, all texting friends and comparing how drunk they got last night to how drunk they’re going to get tonight.  I thought it would be fun to post about how I couldn’t get into the Hollywood party, so I went to the front of the line, and said who I was, and asked if I was on the list. I wasn’t, of course, but here, go in anyway. This is either because A) I am famous or B) There weren’t enough girls inside. You decide!

The thing is, that once you’ve gotten inside, then you’re just a girl at a party who doesn’t know anyone, and that’s a bit annoying. Sometimes, as a journalist, you have to look at the line of kegs and ask yourself “What would Hemmingway do?”

I added an extra day to my trip to see the Getty Villa, because one nerd-dom just isn’t enough for me. Seeing the Getty Villa has been a dream since I first read about the Villa of the Papyri and the reconstruction. It was an awesome day for me. Then I caught the bus back to downtown LA. The route runs along the Pacific Ocean, so there’s a bus full of tired commuters and dirty vagrants… and me, jumping up and down and staring at the Santa Monica Pier.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

E3 Run-ins

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Nerd flu – (n.) – The post-convention malaise caused by flying across the country, not sleeping properly and touching the same game controllers every one else is touching.

(Wish I had made this one up, but I actually heard it from a guy in the press room.)

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Nerd Flu

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This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Jones Soda. All opinions are 100% mine. The people at Jones Soda and I agree that Simpson’s Paradox readers are all huge nerds will find this product interesting and amusing.

Jones Soda — yes, the people who came up with  turkey-flavored Thanksgiving soda — have just launched a new line of Dungeons and Dragons Jones Soda. I thought it was a joke at first, but Jones Soda’s Potion of Healing, Dwarven Draught, Sneak Attack, Eldritch Blast, and my personal favorite, Bixby’s Crushing Thirst Destroyer are all real flavors.

Which begs the question – what would a D&D soda taste like? I imagine a Sneak Attack would taste like a deceptively fruity and sweet girly drink, followed with a huge vodka kick when you try to stand up. And a Potion of Healing would taste like medicine –  I’m thinking  children’s Triaminic grape-flavored cough syrup.

I’m not really a soda drinker myself, preferring to take my sugar and caffeine through coffee, but I wonder if D&D soda will replace the official gaming soda, Mountain Dew, or if the limited-time sodas will be more like novelties, like the TruBlood bottles I saw at Hot Topic the other day.

And of course I have to wonder if they’ll be a second, third, third-and-a-half and forth edition of the sodas….

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Dungeons and Dragons Soda

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Stick and I went to Play! A Videogame Symphony at the Koka Booth Amphitheatre a few weekends ago. We joined the crazy quilt of blankets, over a carpet of drying pine needles, and unpacked our cheese, olives,  Nintendo DS, and those mini wine bottles I keep calling chardonnay shots. We must have been flying the nerd flag, because a fellow passing out flyers for a gaming and music fest in DC in a few months, came right to us. And after telling him no thanks, we realized we might actually be in DC in a few months!

Once it got dark, the performance began. The conductor opened by asking everyone to feel free to clap and cheer if they felt moved to do so, and everyone did. I was so impressed with the range of games chosen, with the wild shift from metallic beeps to symphony, and with the music in general.

Sometimes when I’ve lived abroad, I’ve had moments of glowing amazement that I was really in that place.  This is me, walking across the St. Catherine’s quad to go to a lecture in Cambridge, I remember thinking, or this is me, on the Great Wall of China. I’m always amazed to find myself actually at place I recognize from books, walking in the steps of history.  (Yes, it’s true, my self-centeredness knows no bounds.) it’s best when I’m traveling, of course, but even in Amherst, I would sometimes be amazed by real New England fall leaves! Just like in books!

In this past almost-year in North Carolina, I haven’t felt like that at all. Probably because it’s hard to feel any connection with the past in the brand-new sameness of Cary. It’s hard to feel amazement and wonder that I’m driving on a highway.

But finally, lying on the blanket looking up at the tall, skinny Carolina pines, and listening to the swell of the symphony and the applause, I felt amazed that I live here. This is it. The Carolina pines, the endless Southern twilight.  Just like in books! With the cheering nerd-crowd as an added bonus.  I sighed with total contentment.

“I think I felt a raindrop,” Stick said.

The other part of Southern summers in books are the surprise, torrential thundershowers.  Within moments, we were drenched. We tried to tough it out long enough to hear World Of WarCraft: Stormwind, but soaked jeans are not fun and we joined the mob running for the parking lot.

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Play! A Videogame Symphony

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I have a new piece up on In-game dating: Not just for basement-dwelling nerds up at TechCoquette.

Like online dating on Match.com, eHarmony or other matchmaking sites, couples who meet through World of Warcraft first connect entirely through their words. Game romance still holds some of the spontaneity of offline romance because gamers aren’t logging on to look for a special someone.

I sent it to my dad, who wrote back that he really liked the connections between gaming skills and relationships, but added that my mom is not too fond of the Colossal Caves style of courtship, which involves dropping one unique item in each room you pass through.

Via In-game dating: Not just for basement-dwelling nerds | TechCoquette.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Xyzzy

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I have mixed feelings about Colleen McCullough. On one hand, she wrote the well-researched and racy Caesar’s Women and other novels set in ancient Rome. On the other hand, I haven’t quite forgiven her for Thorn Birds.

Now, I love Pride and Prejudice.The story is an understated comedy of formal manners and romantic expectations, plus nerdy girls everywhere agree that Mr Darcy is a catch. I love it because it also shows that the clever use of sarcasm can make any difficult situation better.

I was excited for some more brilliant Elizabeth / Darcy banter, and I was interested in seeing how the relationship matured. Would seventeen years of marriage to Elizabeth get Darcy laughing and lighthearted, or would she find that the dark, sarcastic, brooding type can be hard to live with? Are Jane and Bingley cheated by every servant, as Mr. Bennett predicted at the end of Pride and Prejudice?

I was hoping that bookish Mary would have some bluestocking friends and perhaps meet a nice professor or author for her love interest. Instead, she is kidnapped first by highwaymen, then by Darcy’s brutish secret half-brother, and finally spends most of the book held hostage by, um, a human-sacrifice cult living in the huge underground caves near Pemberley! (The Darcys just have endless skeletons in their closets, don’t they?). I had to check a couple times to make sure I was reading an actual novel and not internet fanfic.

The understated comedy was gone. Instead, characters with the same names as my beloved Bennett sisters had emotional blowup after emotional blowup. A blunt and uncontrolled Elizabeth Bennett Darcy shouting mediocre insults? Huh? Antisocial Darcy — who goes by the cutesy nickname Fitz — is networking with the house of lords as part of his campaign for prime minister, and trying to keep both his thuggish half-brother and mad, alcoholic Lydia Bennett Wickham a secret. One clever moment, when Caroline Bingley is dispatched to deal with pushover Jane and Bigley’s unruly children, is canceled out by bizarre actions by characters we know and love.

Writing a sequel to such a well-loved story would be difficult no matter what, and subject to readers insisting that that’s not what Jane / Elizabeth / Darcy / Mary would really have done. But, come on, a human sacrifice cult? In Derbyshire?

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The Independence of Miss Mary Bennett

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For some reason, we’ve been having a problem in the apartment where we can’t both use wireless internet at the same time. Maybe there’s not enough room in the tubes for both of us? This is a crisis in a nerd household, so Stick got on his laptop to fix it.

“Meg, pick a number between 1 and 100 for the last digit of your dedicated IP,” he said, almost finished.

I told him.

He looked up from his laptop and rolled his eyes at me.

“What?” I asked. “You didn’t say integer.”

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Repeating Decimals

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We don’t have cable (we wouldn’t have a TV if Stick didn’t need it for his console games) so I had to find out about the national rickroll through Twitter.

It is so awesome to see a nerd joke make its way into the Thanksgiving Day parade.

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Cartoon Network Rickroll

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“Hi!” I said, after a short wait spent wondering when hold-music went out of fashion and enforced advertising came in. “I have a new phone and I’m calling to set up a password for online bill pay!”

“Ok, what’s your account number? Phone number? Mother’s maiden name? Paternal grandfather’s place of birth? Blood type? And what would you like your password to be?”

“*famous historical year*” (Note to Mom and Stick: NOT the one I usually use, sometimes I like to mix up my nerdiness. I’m wild and unpredictable like that.)

“Ok, it’s set. Try it now.”

“It’s not accepting that.”

“Refresh the page and try again.”

“It’s still not working.”

“Please return to the main page, follow the instructions, and try again.”

“Now I’m locked out for too many attempts.”

“Ok, I’m going to connect you to someone from technical support. Thank you for choosing Verizon Wireless.”

“I didn’t! I totally wouldn’t have if I’d known — oh, hello?”

“Hi, this is technical support. As a security feature, Verizon Wireless freezes your account after too many invalid attempts. To prevent this situation in the future, write your password down and store it in a safe place. May I have your billing password?”

“Um… I suppose there’s a chance it could be *historical year*”

“Ma’am, without your billing password, I won’t be able to assist you.”

“You’re just screwing with me, aren’t you?”

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Customer Service

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I really resented the vote-with-your-ovaries movement among Hilary supporters. A woman president would be nice, but I found the idea that women are a cohesive voting group who should all pick Hilary based on gender kind of demeaning. Not entirely sure why this bothered me so much, since I go out of my way to connect with and to support other women in the mostly-male worlds of China expats and videogamers. Hilary is all right, but I’d like more from a presidential candidate than shared bra-shopping experience.

Everything negative that Hilary and the republicans said about Obama’s lack of experience backfired with me. Probably not just me, probably other people disappointed by entry-level jobs and looking wistfully at the positions available to those with more experience. (Am I the only person who cringes at those success stories about slowly working one’s way from minimum-wage mail clerk all the way up to management? I’m not, am I? Tell me a lifetime of waiting for a promotion makes you feel just a little bit dead inside, too.) I think references to Obama’s lack of experience just make a stronger connection to twentysomethings.

Obama’s really made an “us” feeling with this references to growing up struggling, working while in school, and so forth. It would be great at any time to see an alternative to rich old men, but it’s even sharper focus with McCain’s recent goof about the number of houses he owns. That was an unlucky soundbite for McCain, but there’s just no “us” connection with someone who’s got so much stuff he can’t keep track of it all. I know Obama isn’t exactly struggling to put gas in his car now, but he’s been broke in his life. When I mentioned this to Stick, he said that he doesn’t feel connected to McCain even though they were both in the military because McCain was an officer.* And beyond Obama’s message, his use of texting, blogging and Facebook really shows a level of connection to everyday people** and not faceless corporations, without going the faux-folksy Bush route.

I know that an election race is 99% show, but I’m thrilled to see a candidate who cares to put on the show for twentysomethings. I’m a bit worried about whether the Facebook-friending college-age crowd will actually register to vote and show up at the polls, though.

*Hope it doesn’t ruin my feminist rant to add “And my boyfriend thinks…” in the middle.

** Everyday people  = Blog and twitter nerds

Related: My last political rant was Parallel Parking For Kerry.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Oligatory Election Comments

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