GenCon 2012 Report

This post is a little late, as I've arrived home from GenCon in Indianapolis a week ago, but I had to catch up on a few things in the hectic circus that is my life. Anyway, this is the fourth year in a row I've attended GenCon, and attendance seems to grow each year. A few things changed during this year's sojourn, however, some good and some not so good.

Like last year, I brought my girlfriend along. What I find uncanny is how she actually enjoys gaming and all of the juvenile geek crap I do. Finding a woman who'll tolerate your cartoon collection, library of RPG games, Xbox and other hobby paraphernalia indicating a state of perpetual arrested development is a sure sign things are meant to be. Geek girls are hot.

We stayed at a different hotel this year, one a little farther from the convention center, and had to take a shuttle. Other than the distant hotel, the thunder storm on the first night, my girlfriend tripping and hurting her hand and me not being able to connect with a few people I saw in previous years, GenCon was a blast. Agents of Oblivion, a spy/horror setting from Reality Blurs, was nominated for an ENnie, but didn't win, however attending the awards ceremony in a restored Victorian train station was awesome, not to mention seeing and chatting with friends from the gaming industry. Just being nominated was an honor, and I congratulate all of the winners and nominees.

We ate like hungry pigs. Indianapolis has a collection of superb restaurants, and our appetites were not disappointed. This year we dined at The Ram, the Old Spaghetti Factory, Harry & Izzy's and Buca di Beppo. Part of going to the convention is snagging good food and relaxing. I deftly accomplished both objectives.

Did I mention GenCon is the largest gaming convention ever?

The highlight was meeting Wil Wheaton and Nichelle Nichols. My celebrity encounters are rare, and I've wanted to meet Wheaton since his GenCon appearance in 2010, and this year I can confidently say I made that dream come true. Wheaton is the only man in the world who could wear a kilt and an octopus T-shirt and still garner undying accolades and respect from his legion of fans. He saw I wore my Reality Blurs polo shirt and immediately began complimenting the company's game lines, especially Agents of Oblivion and Realms of Cthulhu. I informed him about Ravaged Earth's second revised addition dropping later this year and he said he'd check it out. That brief conversation made the half hour wait in line totally worth it.

(It's also great to have a girlfriend with an iPad to record this momentous occasion for posterity.)

Saturday I attended the Pinnacle Entertainment Group's panel, where Savage Worlds licensees (like Reality Blurs) had the opportunity to discuss what products are in the pipeline. I plugged Ravaged Earth, and even showed some sample artwork and plot-point outline to a few people after the event. During Savage Saturday Night I ran my Ravaged Earth adventure, "Dutchman's Fortune" for six lucky gamers. The pulpy adventure had a treasure map to gangster Dutch Schultz's loot, which contained a Martian artifact. Our intrepid heroes had to battle Lucky Luciano's gangsters, break an inmate out of Sing-Sing Prison, collect two halves of the map, fight rocket marauders and a Martian spy before searching the woods in upstate New York. The grand finale really had them fighting for their lives against a supernatural menace.

I snagged some dazzling plunder this year which shall satiate boredom during those frigid winter nights. Deadlands: The Last Sons, Hell on Earth, Redneck Life, Star Trek Catan, Wench! and some really nifty metal dice.

The older I get, the more I lament my fleeting youth. Stuck in the doldrums of a perpetual grinding wheel existence, I find moments of levity among the things I enjoyed when I was younger. Now that I'm a middle-aged relic, I have the freedom to indulge myself in gaming, comic books, movies and other fanciful diversions. What used to be a blemish of shame is worn as a shining badge of honor. I'm happy in this geek life. As a game designer and creator, I'm fascinated with people's experiences playing RPGs, the characters they create, the hard-fought battles, the banter around the gaming table and the way a bunch of polyhedral dice sound when rolled. It's a world I entered late, but one where I'm most at ease. Thanks for making me feel comfortable, friends. To me, GenCon is family. One big, silly geeky family.

The Rednecking of America

"I am a redneck myself, born and bred on a submarginal farm in Appalachia, descended from an endless line of dark-complected, lug-eared, beetle-browed, insolent barbarian peasants, a line reaching back to the dark forests of central Europe and the alpine caves of my Neanderthal primogenitors."
- Edward Abbey "In Defense of the Redneck"


The twisted cultural depiction of so-called rednecks from the Southern United States is sapping our collective consciousness as a civilization. Like a virulent plague, the over saturation of selfish and destructive behavior on TV is having a negative effect on our internal psyche, as if the American zeitgeist is forced to listen to Travis Tritt while banging its cousin.

Early depictions of rednecks in popular culture were ones of good-natured fun. Popular entertainment showed them as backwoods and inept, and blissfully ignorant of anything other than hog sloppin', moonshine-swillin' and makin' babies.

In short, they were stereotypes.

Negative stereotypes, but stereotypes nonetheless. As far as the effete Manhattanites were concerned, rednecks remained clutching their Bibles and guns and stayed confined to their trailer parks.

Remember the Beverly Hillbillies, Hee Haw, the Dukes of Hazzard and the Grand Ole Opry? They proved to be popular, yet there was a cultural divide. Rednecks were still looked down upon in those early days.

Popular culture's influences remained centered on Hollywood and New York and if you were a college-educated snob, you prospered on TV. The archetype of articulate, suburban or urban educated people dominated the airwaves.

All that changed with the rise of blue collar comics like Foxworthy who showed pride in his southern upbringing and did a brilliant bit "You Might be a Redneck If..." in 1993.

Suddenly, the representation of uneducated poor people from rural areas became widely circulated in popular media. The rise of country music in the mid-1990s to mainstream audiences, and the image of rednecks as "poor but happy" folks who were always surrounded by family became more widespread. Their comic milieu explored themes of laughing at life's absurdities, and recorded the universal struggles of the everyman, both were accessible to everyone, hence their growing popularity.

When George W. Bush became president in 2000 America had a Commander in Chief from Texas with a southern drawl, and redneck mania heightened. NASCAR became popular as a sport. The derogatory stereotype of the poor farmer became highly visible thanks to reality TV.

Comedians such as Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy and Ron White brought the trials and tribulations of redneck-hood to mainstream audiences.

Then, something happened.

We went overboard, and the rednecks shown in popular culture went from being friendly and kind to being total assholes.

There was an influx of redneck culture in mainstream American society. Stupid shit such as the show Jackass hit the airwaves, followed by a steady stream of shows featuring rednecks. All of a sudden, television became a smorgasbord of cussin', ignorant people whose behavior reflected badly on the rural South.

Southerners are proud of their heritage and culture. They're friendly and helpful to strangers, are God-fearing people with a strong sense of community and tradition.

This tradition is cheapened by American Hoggers, My Big Redneck Wedding and Redneck Riviera.

Yes, these are all real shows.

But the worst offender is a show called Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. The show - and it's more like a nightmare vision of what America would be like if Fred Thompson were president - follows an obese family of rednecks from McIntyre, Ga. This dysfunctional family consists of daddy "Sugar Bear", ogress mother June who resembles Brian Baumgartner from The Office, and their fucked up kids, the star of course is Honey Boo Boo, who reminds one of a possessed demon doll.

Yee Har.

Honey Boo Boo, whose real name is Alana, is a beauty pageant contestant who appeared on Toddlers & Tiaras, a show which is akin to abusing your child by tying them to the basement with bungee cords and broadcasting every painful second. Honey Boo Boo talks like Jodie Foster from the movie Nell. Most of the time, you can't understand what this kid is saying. She rocks her head back and forth, gurgles some unintelligible garbage and acts like she either has ADD or some mental disability.

This is on The Learning Channel. Learning. As in 'education'. The only thing anyone can learn from this show is that our standards have shrunk. 

Remember when the extraordinary and talented would receive much-deserved acclaim and kudos from a public? Now TV has become a freak show, a circus of deformed, uncouth and uncivilized misanthropes who degrade themselves just to gain a piece of the spotlight. They're not entertaining. Their exhibitionist scum performing for the jaded voyeuristic public. We're a nation of moronic hedonists getting off to Hillbilly Handfishin' and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. 

We're wallowing in the shallow end of the pool.

And that's what the rednecking of America is about. We're so blithely ignorant, so rotten to each other, so uncivilized. I know several people from the South and all of them are mannerly and treat people with dignity and kindness. But rednecked America? That's just a mean place, where if you're different, if you think and speak with clarity and conviction and have something intelligent to say, you're openly mocked as being a snob.

Our current political climate is scary, where guns are brought to political rallies and discourse has degenerated to guttural grunts. Is it any wonder why political ads have gotten so vicious on both sides? Is it because it's easier to manipulate people when they've become conditioned not to think critically or question anything?

The only thing you need to remember is America is a Christian nation and anyone not like you is an enemy. It's a time when words incite violence, when shouting someone down is better than listening to them and rebutting and when Honey Boo Boo is a plump little TV diva.

All hail our crass, unshod bumpkin overlords!

National Lament

I see people, wild-eyed and frothing at the mouth, seduced by the Machiavellian machinations of a political system slaking itself on corporate money, jingoism and ignorance.

I hear what passes for debate today, high-pitched banshee wails, schoolyard insults and idiotic prattle spoken from the mouths of talking heads and partisan puppets, mean-spirited drivel crafted towards inciting hatred and division.

I speak for moderation, kindness and tolerance, but am branded some radical subversive, a socialist, a communist, a freethinker, a liberal, even though I'm not. My words add to the deafening cacophony shouted through every talk show host’s microphone, drowned out by the recalcitrant and inflexible dullards plodding towards their work stations, padding their bank accounts with blood money.

American beauty is withering and dying, shriveling and blackening like a rose petal left in the sun. Its majestic hues turning grey and grotesque, its sweet fruits turning bitter.

We’ve traded hope for harshness, generosity for greed. Once we blossomed, now we decay.

I see people abandoning reason for dogma, tripping over their feet on the way to the altar, stumbling towards rallies with their signs aloft, scribbled in a hideous language barely resembling English.

I see the ghosts of Lincoln, Kennedy and Reagan filing into a McDonalds, evaporating at the screeching banality of reality television and the latest tabloid sleaze belching forth from whiskered editors blaring headlines ridiculing the American Dream.

I smell a bonfire of burning flags and Qurans, a funeral pyre for a lost generation scared out of its wits, beaten to submission, tattooed, frightened, miserable. They scream profanities at the full moon, and like some frenzied cultists in a midnight pagan rite, dance beneath Washington’s stone columns and marble edifices.  

Their tongues knotted with lies and half-truths, their warchests brimming with ill-gotten riches, our leaders rush with flaming torches toward Moloch’s open maw, feeding the beast the frayed parchment of the U.S. Constitution.

The multitudes swarm into mass confusion, stampeding each other for the latest iPad, crushing their ribcages for an iPhone or shiny toy, some petty triviality, mind candy for the starving. This unstoppable juggernaut rolls over itself, flesh tearing and blood flowing like sangria into the gutter.

And the owl, watching from its lofty branch, emits a chuckle, as the destitute sportingly descend.

Whosoever holds the golden skeleton key to unlocking our utopia, remains dead and buried, felled by an assassin’s bullet long ago, silenced for all time, leaving his children to wander clueless and blind, and at their own pitiful folly.

Heavy chains around his neck, drowned fathoms down, he is one for the ages, a murky example of greatness felled by hubris.

I see America wrestling with doubt, teetering over a deep precipice, on the verge of extinction. Its poets, artists and writers all gagged, their mouths muzzled for the greater good. Its intellectuals lobotomized and drooling on white tiled floors. Its businesses locked in metal vaults, suffocating and gasping for breath. Its scientists muted by a lack of funding, beakers and test tubes gathering cobwebs.

I see its potential raped and strangled and stuffed into the trunk of a Chevy Impala and driven into the icy waters of the Potomac. No escape for the last generation.

Our final act plays out amid bunting, balloons and a chorus of the “Star Spangled Banner. Confetti bathes the crowd like red, white and blue rain. We move, stupefied, and fall before the crumbling walls of Jericho.

Plagues plummet from the sky, and over the airwaves, and in our quiet, manicured tree-lined suburban streets. Shysters delivering us liberty and freedom packaged in Styrofoam and chocked full of high fructose corn syrup.

We are the scions of our own destruction, the humble few who cower in coffee shops, under tables and in basements. We see the eagle crying as its wings are clipped. We shout out to the mountains not to recede, for the oceans to remain placid.

Yet our dream, like our frail bones, must turn to dust.

American Massacre

71.

That’s the number of victims in a shooting in Aurora, Colorado, when Jason Holmes, 24, entered a movie theater armed to the teeth and unleashed a spasm of violence.

12 people were killed and 59 injured.

It’s the largest mass shooting in U.S. history.

As a writer, I feel like I should record something about this tragedy, but I have no words.

The stunning thing about this is how little this senseless massacre has on me. I’m not shocked or surprised.

I’m numbed by the frequency of violence in American society, to the point where such insanity is almost commonplace.

That, my friends, terrifies me.

We are inundated with daily acts of barbarism and rudeness, or anti-intellectualism and hatred for our fellow man to the point where the normal operating procedure has been severely compromise and perverted.

America is a civilization in decline.

Our morals, our sense of reason and our treatment toward one another are teetering over that dark abyss.

The news media has a massive, dinosaur-sized erection every time gunmen like Jason Holmes strikes. Suddenly, the story isn’t about the violent act. It morphs into a heated national dialog about gun control, a psychoanalysis of the gunman’s motives and a dozen or so pseudo-issues which ratchet up the fear and paranoia of an already schizophrenic country.

We’ve fallen down the rabbit hole into a 24-hour news cycle where killers are transformed into cult icons, Robin Hoods with Uzis, deluded antiheroes raising the body counts all in the name of ratings.

One article I read postulated whether the comic book hero Batman inspired the murderer, since the film showing at the time of the incident was “The Dark Knight Rises”.

This nightmarish landscape of the lone wolf prompts politicians and bloviators in the media to create a hue and cry over how such a tragedy could happen. We don’t need these empty rhetorical questions, rather, we should be trying to such slaughter from ever happening again.

Jason Holmes is just one ghoul in a rogues gallery of killers, who transform tranquility into chaos and life into death.

On January 8, 2011, six people were killed including a nine-year-old girl and an Arizona District Court Chief Judge when Jared Lee Loughner targeted people at a political event in Tucson. U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head but miraculously recovered.

On Nov. 5, 2009, 13 people were killed and 29 wounded when Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan targeted his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas.

On March 10, 2009, 10 people were killed when Michael Kenneth McLendon targeted members of his family and others in Geneva and Samson counties in Alabama.

On April 16, 2007, 32 people were killed and 17 were wounded when student Seung-Hui Cho rampaged through Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va.

On March 25, 2006, Kyle Huff entered a party in the Capital Hill Arts Center in Seattle and killed six people and wounded two. Five of the six killed were under 30.

On April 20, 1999, two friends, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, killed 13 people and injured 21 as they stormed through Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Harris and Klebold, both students at the school, killed themselves following the massacre. The school’s name became synonymous with school shootings.

On Oct. 16, 1991, 23 people were killed and 20 wounded in Luby’s cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, after George Hennard drove his truck into the restaurant and began shooting.

On June 18, 1990, James Edward Pough killed nine people and wounded four in a car loan office in Jacksonville, Fla. The day before the massacre, Pough killed two people and wounded two more.

Mass murder isn’t solely an American phenomenon; it exists around the world. There are brash egomaniacs with guns and rifles pounding out their own murderous manifestoes to justify their bloody deeds.

Polite society scratches its collective head and muses grimly, “Guess the guy must’ve been off his rocker. Yep. He probably just snapped, his grey matter scrambled to goo. Guy’s not playing with a full deck.”

Then we bury the dead and shuffle back to watching “American Idol” or “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” and don’t contemplate the frail skein of mortality until another ogre snaps and butchers a classroom full of children or a family on vacation or a crowded movie theater.

Then the experts crawl from the woodwork and begin talking about gun control and what a horridly violent society America is and why can’t there be adequate treatment for the mentally ill.

It makes me wonder if anyone really gives a shit about humanity, or are we conditioned to be automatons craving the next season of “Mad Men” or “America’s Got Talent”.

What I see is a massive disconnect between Americans. We’re paranoid, cynical and bigoted towards each other. Neighbors don’t look out for each other anymore. Children don’t play unsupervised. This is because it’s human nature to guard and protect what we love.

That sacred trust we put in our fellow man has withered with each massacre, each sexual predator and each lunatic who believes God speaks directly to them through a pet.

We’re fractured and broken, and as a result, we don’t spend time face-to-face. Communication devolved to a few texts, Tweets and Facebook status updates.

We approach every tragedy with a healthy dose of gallows humor and wry skepticism, knowing that sometime in the future, another gunman wielding another grudge will create an even larger stack of bodies. 

Thus it goes on, a cycle of random violence, casual murders and spree killings.

And we’re so jaded by the whole thing.

Until we see others as fellow human beings and not superficial labels or vague stereotypes, this species will continue to devour itself. 

Guess Who's Moved In?

It's been two weeks since my girlfriend moved in with me and I haven't abandoned all hope, changed my name and joined a cult in Wyoming.

 In fact, having her live with me feels refreshingly comfortable, like slipping on a well-worn overcoat that keeps you toasty warm in the winter.

 Sure, it was an initial shock dealing with the oddities of feminine hygiene products and cluttering the spare room with all of her possessions. And having to wash an abundance of pink clothing was weird. And the various odors wafting from the bathroom. Yet, the benefits of cohabitation far outweigh any disadvantages.

 Initially, I thought the loss of space and privacy would be problematic, yet our work schedules ensure we will both have our private time. I need a few hours to write, while she needs a few hours to watch Judge Joe Brown and Maury Povich.

 You know; the important shit.

 Plus, she cooks delicious, healthy meals and tidies up the apartment. It's like being married, but with sex.

The strangest thing is, having her live with me has been good for my cat, who spent most of his time alone in the apartment while I was working. Poor kitty slept, stared out windows and moped about like an angsty emo teen. All that changed when my girlfriend moved in. The cat now cuddles with her on the couch, curled into a loving, purring furball.

 Now I haven't lived with a woman since I was married, so I'm not used to bunking with crazy. However, my girlfriend is different from the psychotic shewolves I lived with in the past. She doesn't flip out at the most innocuous things, nor does she throw tantrums, cry or snipe at me like some hormonal Tazmanian devil. Putting it bluntly, she's what I need right now.

When one reaches middle age, one has a boorish tendency to romanticize the past, to evaluate previous accomplishments and shuffle through memories. I've reviewed my life and weighed the trials and tribulations more frequently now. I can say that I need her now more than ever. She came along when she did for a reason.

I'm not saying its some grandiose cosmic plan, or a predestined eventuality slated to occur which in turn will align the stars and bring harmony to the universe. I am saying that it begins a new chapter in a life that's been pretty boring up until now.

 Maybe she's a reward for years of loneliness and dealing with sluts and harpies. Maybe she's just what I need now to keep the crazies at bay. Whatever it is, we love and respect each other, even if her hairs clog the sink.

Mr. LaVoie

Today my mother called me.

"Mr. LaVoie died," she said.

The words took time to register. I was driving to my girlfriend's house to help her move into my dingy and unfashionable apartment, and what turned out to be a tedious chore became an existential lesson in mortality.

I looked the obituary up online and it was sadly true.

Roland E. LaVoie died on June 13. He was 68 years old.

Mr. LaVoie was my high school English teacher. Although most of my teachers through the years morphed into a faceless rogues gallery of nagging, incomprehensible stereotypes of pedagogical authority, Mr. LaVoie distinguished himself above the rest.

He was my mentor, someone who kept teaching even after classes were over. From him, I learned about the complexity of Shakespeare, who could've been a psychiatrist if he lived today, a grasp of the human condition like no other playwright before him displayed. "Ol' Will", as Mr. LaVoie used to call him, would be fascinated with the indelible mark his work left on western civilization.

When we read "The Canterbury Tales," Mr. LaVoie said Chaucer, despite living in an age of absolute horror and death, celebrated life. That's true, especially "The Miller's Tale," one of the most uproarious and outrageously funny things I've read up to that point. I mean, who had time to think about the Black Death when you were reading about some poor schmuck who got a poker up his ass by a suspicious husband?

And the fart joke in that one was priceless.

But it wasn't just "Macbeth" and O. Henry and Carl Sandburg I learned from him. As the faculty advisor to the school's literary magazine, "Demogorgon", I learned how to write, specifically, to construct short stories and poems in such a way where people wanted to read them. I also learned the sting of criticism and being told my work wasn't Shakespeare or Fitzgerald. A mere neophyte, I grappled with a plethora of things. Far from crystal clear prose which lit the page, my writing back then was clunky, a stinking miasma of trite idioms. From Mr. LaVoie, I learned to refine and re-read, and thanks to his influence, I was able to improve and land a spot on the school newspaper.

Here's what he wrote in my 1988 high school yearbook: "I've watched you grow from a new talent into a DAMN good writer, and that's a real reward for me!" He described me as the "next Kurt Vonnegut."

So it goes.

Yet it wasn't just writing I learned from him. Mr. LaVoie loved movies, especially collecting movies on videocassette. Okay, so this dates me a bit. It did happen in the late 1980s, after all. He made a copy of a movie called "The Train," the 1964 Burt Lancaster flick about smuggling art aboard a train during World War II. I still have it somewhere, with his handwriting on the label.

Speaking of trains, Mr. LaVoie was a Lionel train nut. He went to several model railroad shows, working the circuit with other passionate Lionel train aficionados. He even wrote several books on model trains. His first published book, "Greenburg's Model Railroading with Lionel Trains." Pleased that his hobby brought him a chance to write, he gave me a signed copy. On the first page, above his signature, he wrote, "Since I was a teenager, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I dreamed of someday being a published author. This may be a small book in the grand scheme of things, but for me it's the realization of that dream. They do, after all, when you believe in them and persevere! It will be that way with you, too. Never be afraid to dream - that's what makes life such a great experience!"

Mr. LaVoie took time for his students. He chaperoned a class trip to the Stroudsburg, Pa. where a busload of us toured the Stroudsburg Railroad museum. After getting our fill of the locomotives and boxcars, we had a picnic. I have photos of him, cooking kosher hotdogs while wearing a conductor's cap and smoking a pipe. It was still a time when men smoked pipes and resembled knowledgeable fathers from a 1950s sitcom.

The most treasured things Mr. LaVoie gave me was his insight into philosophy and a deeper understanding of life. Whereas most teachers only taught what they were required to before clocking out and getting drunk, Mr. LaVoie was not apathetic. He truly wanted us kids to become freethinking citizens. I recall some very deep conversations we've had. I asked him if he could have a dinner party and invite three people living or dead, who would he choose. After mulling it over, he replied, William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer and Jesus Christ. I also asked him to name the three greatest books he'd ever read. To my surprise, he didn't tick off three works of classical literature. All of his books were about science: Jacob Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man", Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" and Jospeh Campbell's "The Power of Myth". The latter volume left such a deep impression upon me that Mr. LaVoie presented a copy to me on my 21st birthday. I still have it on my shelf. He wrote, "Dear Eric: This absolutely amazing and beautiful book will change the way you look at your world. Enjoy it!"

In "The Power of Myth", Campbell presents a concept of "following your bliss" in an interview with Bill Moyers. It has been a defining ethos in my early 20s, to not settle for anything less than what I wanted. Campbell said, "If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are - if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time."

To many of us, Mr. LaVoie resembled the Robin Williams' character, John Keating, from "Dead Poet's Society", a unique teacher who instructed life lessons instead of only the usual classroom pablum. I'm not suggesting we ran around the school shouting "carpe diem!" or referred to Mr. LaVoie as "My captain!" Incidentally, Mr. LaVoie said he disliked that movie because the students lionized Keating instead of what he taught.

To him, teaching was everything. Imparting lessons with quirky humor and sharing bits from his own history through letters or postcards only made us former students who knew him richer in spirit.

Mr. LaVoie was in his early 40s when I met him in 1987, the same age I am today. Our friendship continued to about 1995, when I received a final letter from him. I was a numbskull in my 20s, trying to make sense of life while beginning a career as a newspaper reporter. As I recall the important lessons from "The Power of Myth" and from conversations I had with Mr. LaVoie about politics and philosophy, I realize just how blessed I was for our paths to have crossed.

Throughout the years, I thought of him and wondered what the old guy was up to. I knew he retired from teaching many years ago and was probably living out his golden years writing about model railroading or spending time with his family.

If he were here today, I would thank him for showing me kindness and teaching me life's most important lessons aren't learned in the classroom.

He taught me never to suffer fools gladly, the necessity of humor and the importance and value of the written word.

His was a life richly lived, for he reached out to his students and gave them an understanding of literature and the world around them.

And I miss him.

Superheroes and Lemmings

I fucking hate writing the news. Well, I actually adore writing, since it's my stock and trade and gives me inner satisfaction. Creating worlds with words, constructing characters and fashioning dialogue and plot is something akin to an architect designing a building or a sculptor working in marble.

Yet it's this whole writing the news thing that seems like drudgery.

It's work.

I get it. Its a paycheck. It's my profession. It's what I studied in college for four years to do. Yet the best journalism school in the world can't prepare you for the soul-crushing, eventual burnout.

That's what's going on with me now, amigos. It's this senseless grind of repeated interviews, reading documents and stringing words together at a fifth grade level that's utterly jejune and frustrating.

The other reporters in the local news organizations must feel this way, because each one of them looks as lifeless as a zombie extra from Romero's "Night of the Living Dead".

Long hours, low pay and a position in society that garners as much respect as a back alley abortionist.

Yeah, journalism is really fucking fun!

Problem I see, and I've repeated this ad nauseam, is the journalism business - nationally and locally - is a lemming circus. News agencies are stepping over each other to cover the most ridiculously trivial stories. They're giving the public information the public shouldn't know but information they want the public to know.

Stories about celebrities. Stories about political sniping. Stories about mundane bullshit you could care less about.

Petty, trivial, mental ephemera so easily forgotten.

Usher in the age of the superficial journalist, chattering gossip columnists repeating whispers down the lane.

A glut in technology means messages can be delivered at lightening speed, but what messages are we reading?

We are transforming from a population of enlightened, curious citizens into a rabble of uninformed partisan troglodytes receptive to only what we care to see.

Far from enlighteners of the masses and muckrakers sifting through documents to bring the public what the need to know about their government and world, journalists are becoming partisan propaganda machines.

The Fourth Estate should hold government accountable, not be an apologist for the left or right.

There needs to be balance and impartiality, because the people demand it. There's a trite maxim there's no such thing as an objective journalist, that all people have some sort of political leaning or bias in their writing.

If that's the truth and objectivity is a myth like unicorns or centaurs, then let's abandon it. Let's claim the corporations and media conglomerates have triumphed and you, the reader should be given only the news you want to consume in neat, digestible portions. There would be no need for punditry; reporters would be pundits, regurgitating opinion shamelessly and not bothering with facts.

Historically, this worked well under Hitler, Stalin and Mao.

In America, it feels scummy and unclean, like a truck stop bathroom or adult book store. After viewing CNN, Fox or MSNBC, I feel like I need a shower.

Reporters should not just pretend to be objective. They should cast aside their biases and report the news accurately, without prejudice or predisposition.

The public needs investigative reporting to vivisect government and cut out the rancid innards, removing the festering tumors or corruption before they grow. Without scrutiny, bad people will only continue to prey on the innocent.

Such an idealized comic book view of the world is pie-in-the-sky nonsense, mere fantasy in a jaded age of push-buttons and flashing screens.

Yet there's a crazy calling to what journalists do. We're jaded antiheroes on society's fringes, outsiders looking in. We have a sense of justice, a notion that wrongdoers should be punished, that America is not a dying swan, but a butterfly emerging from a cocoon.

Now more than ever the media needs to be vigilant and start working hard for the good of the people, not a superficial segment of the population obsessed about Dancing With the Stars and the Kardashians.

We need more superheroes, not more lemmings.