TaleWeaver as lightweight RPG system? Doh!

I got a really nice email from a fellow who just bought "TaleWeaver" over at Amazon.com. He's using it pretty much as intended -- to generate group story sessions -- with some friends and his kids. But his wife is using it as a lightweight RPG system! Holy crap! Why didn't I think of that. I didn't get many details from him, but I can see a couple of ways of going about it. I may end up going back and editing the main book at some point to include some ideas on that subject.

I may also go back and reformat the book and re-self-publish with Lulu rather than Booksurge, as the latter takes a much larger chunk of royalties. I'm only really with Booksurge (which is owned by Amazon) because it was bought by GreatUnpublished.com, which was started by a friend of mine (Hi, Jeff!), who asked me to throw TaleWeaver up in a marginally publishable format in order to put it on the shelf when GU went online back in... er... 1999 I think it was.

So TaleWeaver may get a few more chapters on "Use me as an RPG," some reformatting, and a new publisher. Also... I'm looking for a way to easily, cheaply, happily, smartly produce the card deck as CARDS for the love-o-pete. Right now they're embedded in the book, since "publishing" cards at either Lulu or Booksurge is impossible. If anybody out there has any good ideas about how to do that, I'd love to hear 'em. I've been buying off-set print as part of my day job for years... but I don't fancy dropping a couple grand to have a a crate of 500-1000 copies sitting in my basement for the next twenty years. The best thing about Lulu/Booksurge is that they are just-in-time. As of yet, I haven't been able to find a just-in-time, custom, card deck print service. Mugs? Yes. Mouse pads? Sure. T-shirts? Of course. Cards? Not so much. Ping me at awhavens (at) sanestorm (dot) com if you have any ideas. Or any thoughts on "TaleWeaver as RPG." Thanks.

"Elastic Loaves:" Best. New. Band. Name. Ever.

According to an AP story, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "banning" the use of "foreign" words. Love it.

Love it. Love it, love it, love it. Loved it when the Académie Française (founded by Cardinal Richlieu!) tried to keep English out of French. Because "the box that has pictures and sound it in," is sooo much more intelligent and sexy sounding than, "le television."

Love it for a couple few reasons. One, it's a giant waste of time. And if Mahmoud is wasting time on trippy little crap like this, it means two things: 1) he's not focsing on building WMD, and; 2) he's becoming a more modern leader. Modern leaders in the 21st century focus on BS issues like gay marriage, flag burning, "freedom fries," violence in videogames and the horrible, horrible problems that can be caused by using a word for something that somebody else in another place came up with. Because, God/Jehovah/Allah knows, we can't have thoughts in our heads (or crap in our garage) that has been labelled by the people who invented it. Or by the people who popularized it. Or by anyone who looks different than we do. Or by me.

Also love it because it shows that Mahmoud is inching closer to "Tree Dwelling Loon" on the "Patented Andy Havens' Scale of Bug-Fuck Crazy Leaders." Now... you may think it's a bad thing to have the first Middle Eastern nuclear power (second if we count Israel, but she's soooo coy about those babies) led by a nutter. But, really... the quicker he goes totally yabba-dabba-doo, the quicker we can have some more Ruin in the Dunes. We've just about screwed ourselves into a hole too deep to get out of in Iraq, so it would be FABULOUS to have a really compelling reason to go, "Hey! We HAVE to pull out of Iraq! We need to get all those troops over to Iran immediately because their leader has just holed himself up in a rural "small room" and is lobbing various large incendiary devices all over the Holy Land. That would be cool. So. Crazy language policy = one step closer to "Iranian Stalemate." Or whatever we call our next Military Industrial economic bolstering maneuver.

But mostly love it because the new Iranian term for "pizzas" is "elastic loaves." And this, from a social, anthropologic and linguistic standpoint is what just cranks my noodle wide open and gives me a big grin. Pizza is... what? Traditionally, an Italian food. Made very popular in the great Satanic America. Variously, depending on the thickness of crust, you can apparently still have the Hated Western Devil Chicago Style Elastic Loaves (thick crust), or Godless Roman Infidel Crispy Elastic Loaves (thin).  Though the latter is a bit contradictory in syntax, as the Roman pizza / elastic loaves I've had is about as "elastic" as a Wheat Thin.

Iran has not called a jihad on the food. But on the words for the food. In the war for the minds of people, this means you have lost. You can not TELL people what not to think. From a memetic point of view, it's impossible. Because while telling them what not to think, you've just delivered the viral communicative load you're hoping to prevent.

Love it. And my next band is SO going to be called "The Elastic Loaves."

Welcome, Etsy shoppers!

For some completely oddball reason, my Etsy shop has made the front page of Etsy. I set up a shop there a few weeks ago called "Strong Words." I won't describe it. Click on the first link in the previous sentence to see it for yourself. But...

If you're reading this, there's a good chance you just came FROM Etsy. How can I tell? Because my traffic stats for this blog went through the roof as soon as it happend. For the few of you who came from elsewhere, you can go to my shop and see that I put a little tag at the end of my items that reads, "For author's writing samples, see: www.TinkerX.com."

Since what I'm offering on Etsy are writing service, that seemed only fair.

I have yet, after a month of having the shop up on Etsy, to sell one item. [7/30 UPDATE: I sold a "Previous Life Bio for Your Cat" yesterday; my first Etsy sale. A great experience. I was very pleased to do the work, and the customer was pleased, according to her feedback. More props to Etsy.] Which is OK. As I set up the shop as a lark. The site really, really appealed to me. It's a great example of social networking + web store + art + reverse auction thingy. Very cool. I wanted to participate. Problem is... I'm not very crafty. I do a few things -- I've built two duclimers (which would make no sense to sell or do again for money, as they take forever), I've taught arts & crafts, I like to do stuff with Dan (my nearly 7-year-old)... but it's not part of my "I do this for other people" geshtalt. Writing, however, is.

But... damn it! I wanted to participate at Etsy. Thus, "Strong Words." Worst case? I make a fool of myself and the owners of the site say, "Dude. That's not on brand for us. Tear down your silly store." Which I would have done with no complaints, as "words" aren't really (to be fair) right up the main street of what they're doing. I'm not doing any harm... but I'm not really moving their ball forward.

Best case, though? They put me on the front page and I get 10-times the hits to my blog as normal. Thanks, Etsy!

So. If you've come here for additional free writing from me, here are some more links:

Some poetry:

Winter Triptych ~ Visit in Summer ~ The Glass Bed ~  Shadowlamp ~ Thinspun ~ Lightshow ~  Fifth Season ~ Outside-in ~ Pause ~ Getting In ~ Recess ~ Exchange of Hunger ~ Wear White ~ Stucco Thicket ~  The Blower-Man Must Die

Some prose:

Fourth Wall -- A longish short-story, or short novella. Maybe a screen-play in short-story format. Near-future fiction with a slight cyberpunk flava. Read it online or download the PDF.

The Delicate Pattern -- Getting a friend to the church... on time and alive.

Jesus is a Liberal -- An essay originally published in the now defunct online magazine RouseMag.

The Age of Content -- Content as the central engine of vale in this, our current age. Primarily a marketing essay, but the point is one that bears consideration for other disciplines.

A creativity system

If you want to write stories yourself, check out TaleWeaver. It's cool and fun and I've now sold over 30 copies on Amazon! Only 999,968 to go and it'll be a million seller!

Way too much more

Basically, every poem I've ever written (that's worth even a glance... and some that really, well... let's just say they're experimental) and a bunch of other stuff can be found under my author page at Lit.org. Knock thyself out.

And if you've come from somwhere else, and don't know nothin' about Etsy, go check it out. They're good people who, apparently, have a sense of humor. Which, in my book, makes them even cooler than I thought before I set up my goofy store.

And if you HAVE come here from Etsy, and you do enjoy writing, reading, commenting, etc... leave a comment. Go over to Lit.org and join up and get in on the fun. Drop me an email. Something. It's not really about the money, see. It's about the words. And if they stop with what I've written, and you don't chime in... well, that's the end of the story, eh?

Why you must podcast... and worship John

Turns out my brother John has talent.

Which I've known for years, but now we have independent confirmation. Besides his IMDB page. Besides the fact that he was in a for-real Broadway musical, "Steel Pier." (see #12, "Harmonica Specialty"). Besides the fact that he's an amazing writer and has finished an historical fiction novel. Besides the fact that besides harmonica, he plays amazing guitar, drums and banana.

He's a good kid. For a younger brother, that is. Anyway...

Independent confirmation of his talent comes from the fact that he has now been named the About.com guide to podcasting. He makes money when you go to that page, click on things and leave comments.

So go do that now. I'll wait. There's a prize for you when you come back.

Did you do it? No. I didn't think so. Go do it. Then there's a prize.

If you did it, the prize is that your karmic burden has been lightened, and I love you more. See? A blog with free prizes inside. Isn't that nice?

Anyway. I don't ask for much. But you need to either send an email to everyone you know and point them to this blog post, or to John's About.com podcasting page (simple link, easy for cutting and pasing is):

http://podcasting.about.com/


He gives some great advice and information on podcasting, and I swear he puts the banana down before recording any of his shows.

Economists are really, really not marketers

I love Cory Doctorow and BoingBoing. But they've got a recent post about a NYT article (subscription required) called, "What the Naïve Consumers Don’t Know, Can Help You." And, while interesting, it's so wrong it's just funny.

The basic point of the NYT article (and the MIT and Harvard economists whose research it's based on) is that since some customers buy low-end, low margin products... other customers must be supporting that behavior. Or, as the NYT writer puts it, "...sophisticated consumers have somehow learned how to game the system by having enough naïve consumers around to subsidize them."

Here's one of the examples given:

For example, you see an offer for a room at Nontransparent Hotel for $75 (which costs the hotel $100 to provide). The guy checking in behind you also rents a room, but will rack up $70 in fees from the minibar, the phone and garage parking (all of which cost the hotel $20 to provide). You, on the other hand, were not tempted by the minibar, used your cellphone for calls and took public transportation to the hotel. The other guy subsidized your room.

I love economists. How is "the guy behind me" in this example unsophisticated? He wanted a relaxing drink in his room, didn't own a cell phone (which costs me $150 a month), and had to park his $45,000 car. Which makes my main point... value depends, greatly, on perception. NYT say, "naïve." I say, "four times my income."

If you go on to read the rest of the article, you'll find such nuggets of wisdom as:

• It’s a perpetual battle between the firm that fools consumers into paying fees and the smart consumer who can avoid them


• Now that the world is more complicated with more products, there are more opportunities for people to make mistakes


• Outsmarting companies is hard work


• Consumers responded to direct costs more than to shipping costs


• Even the most sophisticated people find it hard to game the system when it comes to fees


• Even the most knowledgeable people make really dumb decisions even when provided all the information

Right. Because we don't make buying decisions with an Excel spreadsheet and actuarial tables. We make them with our gonads. We are sitting in a hotel room at 11:42 pm on a business trip. We cannot sleep. We cannot go out, because we need to be up at 6:30 am to catch our flight tomorrow. We are bored. It is probably a little warmer (or cooler) than we would like. There is no "good" cable in this farglisher hotel. There is something on HBO that we would rate as a "2" on a scale of 1-10 in terms of our interest level. The bar downstairs was noisy and smoky (they still allow smoking in bars in this state?). What are we watching? "Grease 2?" Is there a minibar? Please, God. Please. For the love of Mike... Let there be a minibar. I think it was behind the fold-down... YES!  Minibar! Score! We will drink not one, not two... but all three Coronas in there and, maybe... maybe... get to sleep before 1 am.

I don't give a fat rat's ass about “Shrouded Attributes, Consumer Myopia, and Information Suppression in Competitive Markets" -- the name of the economists' paper that appears in The Quarterly Journal of Economics. You suppress NOTHING in that hotel room that matters. You want a beer, you want it now.

It ain't about the economics, professor. It's about "Grease 2," getting to sleep and the satisfaction that comes from knowing that the company will reimburse for any expenses under $25 a day without a receipt. Myopia that.

Best. RSS Reader. Ever.

I rarely pimp for a particular product or service except within the framework of a lengthy post on all kinds of other pointy-headed stuff. But every now and then ya just gotta show love.

I've tried about two dozen or so different RSS readers / aggregators. I am, I will admit, an information junkie. Or at least a headline junkie. I like to scan lots and lots of headlines and then pounce! like a mongoose on the ones that interest me. Until recently, I had been using MyYahoo. It integrated with other stuff I do at Yahoo, and I had high hopes that they'd pull del.icio.us (which I love, and which they bought) into the UI really well and interestingly. Not so much thusfar. Oh well.

So I've been trying on new RSS readers. In the process, I made a list of what features the perfect one, for me, would need to have:

• Separate panes for feeds, article headlines and article summaries/bodies


• An indication of how many articles are unread


• The ability to import/export OPML (as I am WAAAY tired of trying out new readers manually)


• The ability to share settings, feeds -- the whole mess, actually -- between multiple computers. I do lots of stuff at home and at work, and having to update or match two sets of feeds is a pain.


• Tagging of feeds and individual articles
  


• Bookmarking / saving of individual articles
  

After a bunch of unsatisfying experiences, I came upon Alesti. It's a free, web-based RSS reader / feed aggregator that does all of the above. Because it's web-based, you can log in from any computer and view your feeds. It's got the panes, the indication of unread articles, OPML export/import, tagging, etc. I'm thrilled. And it's still in beta, and looks like it's just getting started.

So help these guys out. Go join up and make sure it keeps on keeping on, because I like it and don't want it to go away.

New poem posted: "Not So Much"

Not So Much

If I could change color
would you love me forever?
If I could change color
would you love me like an angel,
like a hero, like a god?
Not "color" as in "ethnic,"
like Caucasian, Asian, African...
Not color like a tattoo,
or a sunburn or a tan.

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