Let the Games Begin

So I'm still thinking muchly about Camp Nerdly and with what I came away from it. The connections between it and some of my other work--in a theatrical milieu--are striking. Here are some of my thoughts on this . . .

As Far As We Know: A show developed through the combination of elements from actual events and improvisational explorations of the ramifications of those events on the people involved. I was reminded of this show whilst playing Dogs in the Vineyard, what with the cultural fact/fiction overlap and the issues of faith and violence that are predominant to that particular game. I played a character taken from Mormon history, who believed in blood-letting being good for the purification of the soul. (This is based in biblical quotation, believe it or not. Mormons do not believe this now.) It was hard to find a way to play this character with sincerity, since his beliefs were so different from my own, and I feel very strongly about issues such as missionary work, the concept of sin and the pursuit of violent means for a peaceful end. Playing a soldier in As Far As We Know has helped me explore some of these issues, and so playing Dogs in the Vineyard was made more difficult for me given my inability to disassociate from the implications of its story. This difficulty made for a good game, because it's a game that thrives on conflict, internal and external. Rather like theatre.

In Bocca al Lupo: This isn't a show, but an entire program involving traveling to Italy, taking Italian classes and teaching commedia dell'arte to American students, all of it culminating in a show in that style performed in Italian, for Italians. The Camp Nerdly experience was reminiscent of last year's first contact with Italy, in that at first I felt incapable of contributing anything due to the language barrier, but eventually I learned to express myself to good effect. Moreover, I had two experiences directly relevant to the work I do in In Bocca al Lupo: I was constantly trying to pick up the rules as I went along, and I got to participate in an improvisation class as a student (whereas lately I have invariably been the teacher). There is much to apply from these experiences to my teaching. (Is there no word, in any language, to encapsulate the phenomenon between student and teacher in which both are constantly learning from one another?) Mistakes can be learned from in terms of improving one's craft, but still others can serve to simply blow the doors off conventional wisdom, and thereby make new rules. Game-playing generates desire in addition to goals, which in turn can fuel a performance. And what of the element of chance? We in theatre talk a good game when we spout off about audience interaction and ad lib dialogue, but most of our efforts at creating theatre are concerned with removing elements of chance. How many of us would be willing to trust a plot change to a chaotic mechanic element?

Zuppa del Giorno: This is the connection that felt most fruitful for me. In fact, it may merit an entire entry of its own some time this month, but for now a few observations. For our first show as Zuppa del Giorno (the mad-cap contemporary commedia dell'arte troupe) each actor was asked to build four characters from scratch, based on an appetite or desire and with certain details fleshed in. These characters were applied to a scenario we had already begun to conceive of, and there was a back-and-forth between the two as we tried to work out the entire show. It was a rather painstaking process, particularly because we were doing it for the first time, but eventually we developed a show called Noble Aspirations. Playing Inuma with Clinton R. Nixon while at Camp Nerdly, I and my fellow journeypersons created an entire world in under two hours, and somehow without once screaming at somebody for holding up the process. Now, that hardly compares--in terms of priorities--to the work of Zuppa. We have many additional pressures upon us, not the least of which is to create something accessible to a wide community of audience members. Yet there was something in the Inuma system that was highly effective, and which must be applicable. Our Zuppa shows are almost always created from very specific given circumstances (see the development sites for Operation Opera and the burgeoning Prohibitive Standards), just as the Inuma system works. Even putting Inuma aside for a moment, most role-playing games have something interesting to add to the method of creating a character, either from scratch or from the given circumstances of a script.

One interesting thing to note when comparing role-playing with theatre is a term used in the former's circles: conflict resolution mechanism. This term refers to the dice rolls, or the card draws, or what-have-you device used in determining things otherwise undetermined, such as whether or not you can succeed in leaping from a moving car and survive. In theatre, very generally speaking, there is no conflict resolution per se, apart perhaps from the comedies that supposedly end happily when everyone gets married off. Conflicts can transform, but the moment they become resolved is the end of the show, because the audience came to see a fight. "The show must go on" is not simply an axiom expressing an actor's work ethic, but the spirit of theatre in general. Is it any wonder that so much of our entertainment (including role-playing games) is motivated by battle or violence? It's a tireless metaphor for individual struggle.

If a "conflict resolution mechanism" existed in real life, we'd have nothing to tell stories about.

Stranger in a Strange Land

After work on Thursday last I hopped on ye olde Chinatowne bus and eventually found myself back in my homeland of Northern Virginia, or NoVa. Friend Younce picked me up from the heart of DC's Chinatown (something like a four-block area, but I was smack dab in the middle of it [forget it, Jeff; it's Chinatown]) and drove me unexpectedly to an IHoP in the center of . . . well . . . Centreville. There, much to my pleasant surprise, waited friends Davey and Mark. I had not expected to have time to see them, given the weekend's unusual activity. We ate pancakes, and were generally rowdy. They threw us out, in fact. Not for the rowdiness, so much as because we failed to realize that their "Open 24 Hours" sign referred only to Fridays and Saturdays, and at midnight we showed no signs of slowing down. What can I say? That's how we roll. We bid le IHoP and Davey and Mark adieu, and Younce and I went to rest up for our adventure.

I mean adventure rather literally in this context.

So Friday morning we were up-and-at-'em, headed directly to the Costco to purchase absurd amounts of meat and dairy products. This took some time, and we ended up visiting a great many grocery stores, for we were working from a very specific list. Then it was down to Prince William Forest for to begin said adventure . . .

Camp Nerdly(TM).

Yes: Camp Nerdly. The brainchild of Friend Younce and several other role-playing enthusiasts, Camp Nerdly is exactly what it sounds like. For a whole weekend, some nigh-on-seventy nerds, geeks, dorks, dweebs and INSERT DEGRADING-CUM-CHIC TERM HEREs gathered in the woods and did what they do best. No; no, neither awkward conversation nor mind-bending computer programming. Something else. To wit: role playing. In a vasty variety of forms, excluding (as far as my experience goes, at any rate) only the sexual variety. (In part to supplant this unfortunate connotation, many geeks refer to it as "gaming" instead.) I was there. I participated with enthusiasm. Hi. My name is Jeff Wills, and I am a nerd. Now, how in the hell did I get here?

Let me give you a little background. I was, for some time, one of those kids that wasn't good at sports, didn't wear cool clothes and couldn't really parlay my wit into regular entertainment for my peers. I like to think I was a dork. Some may have viewed me as a nerd (much more of a lost cause), others as a geek (I seemed, but never was, really that smart, though), but I stick with dork. The glasses pushed me toward nerdlydom, but I also had this compulsion to jump around and perform that didn't quite fit with that image. So: dork. So were my friends (Yes you were! Don't lie! You know it!) and around age eleven or so, the games began.

We started with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game (very big at the time), and rapidly gave it up for Rifts. When I got into high school my social circle shifted and widened, and it became overnight sessions of Dungeons & Dragons and a game simply titled Vampire. Toward the second half of high school, I started attending these sessions less and less. My time was getting taken up more and more with after-school and weekend theatrical adventures, and by the end of my sixteenth year I was being exposed to (and enjoying the exposure of) girls, which can of course wipe just about any slate clean. There were a couple more-notable gaming adventures thereafter, but college was the final nail in the role-playing coffin. I would turn all my energy to training to be, and eventually being, a professional actor. For about a decade, that would receive almost all of my creative energy. R.I.P., Rifts. Dust to dust, Dungeons & Dragons.

Turns out role-playing games are immortal.

Either that, or I only slew my appetite for them with a boffer weapon.

You have to appreciate that, at Camp Nerdly, the nerds are hardcore. Hardcore! I'm not kidding. I spent a good deal of the first twenty-four hours intimidated as hell, and I will own up to it. It would be easy to claim that I was surrounded by weirdos that I had nothing in common with, to chalk my awkwardness up to their unfamiliar eccentricities, but such a claim would ultimately be a ruse, and not the clever variety. No, I was intimidated by them: by their insider knowledge and their sheer mental acuity and flexibility. One of the first "games" I witnessed actually arose out of conversation between two of the Camp's organizers, Dave Younce and Jason Morningstar. Before anyone uninitiated had arrived (aside from yours truly, that is) Younce invited Jason to tell the story of how he had slain the devil to earn his last name ("Lucifer" translating roughly into "the morning star"--I knew that much . . . from comics . . .). Off they went into a conversation worthy of long-form improvisation you might catch at Second City or Upright Citizen's Brigade, tying together ideas as though they had known the connections all along, and roping in passers-by to reinforce the tale. They didn't get to finish it, owing to Nerdly duties, but it was my first hint of how different this experience was going to be from any I had before.

When I last gamed, it was a pretty simple formula. One guy (or girl [yes-so there were girls!]) would sort of narrate a story that could change to a greater or lesser degree by the actions of characters, each of which was dictated by a player. Normally the objective was to win glory or overcome adversity for this character you were playing, which is in keeping with most teenager's power fantasies. The element of chance (Sure you use your vorpal sword, but does it actually injure the dragon?) was brought into play by attributing numbers to a set of skills the character possessed, and rolling dice to gauge whether or not those skills succeed in a given scenario. (You need to roll a fifteen to twenty to lob off a wing, and...you roll a one. Um. You pretty much just jacked yourself in the jaw.) Lots of control there for the one leading the game. If he (or she) don't say it, it don't happen.

The games I played last weekend, however, were completely unlike that. In fact, only one game I played had an established story going in. Almost every story began and ended with the players. Dice almost never came up as decision-making tools, and rather than goals of glory or redemption, they were of a good yarn. To sum it all up, I spent a weekend hiking, chopping wood and sitting down with accomplished storytellers creating really engaging, collaborative fiction. In brief, here's what I fell into:

• Ganakagok - Man, did I luck out starting with this. It's a game set in an ancient Eskimo world, and we played it outside as the weather chilled and the sky darkened. Great stuff. Each person played a single, self-generated character, the game master gave us some elements to start off with and the rest was dictated by our choices and the drawing of cards specific to the game, each of which had an Eskimo word and various associations for it printed on it. We took turns telling our character's parts of the story, but each character could contribute within the system to another's tale. Blew my mind.
  
• City of Brass - A more sort of established card game, this was set in the first French explorations of Africa, which sounds heavy, but included challenges to overcome such as "Cobras!" So it was wacky fun, too. Each player had a stock role to play ("Explorer," "Doctor," "Naturalist") and we played them to the hilt. Lots of fun, betrayal, and flesh-eating bacterium.
  
• Inuma - Possibly my favorite, the first half of this game was a very effective system of building a world, or reality, starting with cultural standards (Alice in Wonderland, Professional Wrestling) and winnowing down to specifics. We ended up with a world that was an alternate dimension to our own, mostly water, with a sort of civil war between an oppressed, shape-shifting crow race and humans. AWESOME. We played in it after we built it, and I have rarely felt such a satisfying meld of understanding and discovery in improvisation.
  
• Improvisation Workshop - Yes! Jason Morningstar and Friend Remi have had improvisational theatre training (which explains much of their skillz) and they ran workshops in it. It was great to experience this from the student side again after instructing all the Zuppa del Giorno workshops. I went in imagining I could relax into something I finally knew. I came out appreciating just how challenging the essentials of my chosen craft are.
  
• Dogs in the Vineyard - This game is the one that had the most pre-planning, yet it still had a flavor of verisimilitude that some naturalistic theatre doesn't have. The world is a sort of fantastical/historical account of early Mormonism, in which the players play enforcers of the faith, or folks who root out evil in their midst. What's fascinating about it in the conflict system, which rewards one score-wise both for clever uses of character traits and for the experience gained from failure. Friend Younce ran this one, and his personal knowledge of Mormon history made it especially choice.
  
• Zombies! (UniStat) - My last game of the run, this one was a very relaxed sort of system wrapped around a very fun concept. The world was a dystopian society inured in zombies, and the remaining humans have become super-powered free-runners, or traceurs, to adapt. Lots of action and dark humor to this one, as though punctuating my experiences with a reminder that it's all in the name of fun.

You may wonder what I take from all this as an artist, or someone professing to value The Third Life(r). I mean, the people who typically play role-playing games are comfortable enough to afford the free time and invest money in supplies. Can they be the teachers of artists? I argue yes, and for two reasons. The first is that gamers are participants in The Third Life, moreso for their apparent and supposed "disconnect" from reality. They build worlds, and live in them, and it doesn't get much more Third than that. The second is that this fun, this "escapism," is intense work that takes as much talent as skill. And good gamers make it look easy. They're storytellers in the best sense, not only believing in their tales, but living through them. You're in their world every time you pick up a book or watch a movie or simply daydream. At my best, I'm one of them. And after this weekend, I'm really, really proud of that.

I'm a gamer. And I roll 20s, bitches.

Serving One's Country

Worry not. I am not about to chime in on the political a la Friend Nat (although if naughty words were permissible there, Nat would already be employed by The Nation). Rather I write to update the confused and huddled masses (Readership of Odin's Aviary now in the double digits! What what!) on the status of that collaborative project celebrating its second birthday some time soon. That one that I occasionally travel to Vermont/New Hampshire for, and what deals in large part with the war/conflict/mess-o'-potamia in Iraq. That Project, if you get my meaning, mentored by Moises Kaufman and occasionally exhibited in workshops around the Isle of Manhattan.

Why am I being so coy about the name? Because, dear friends, we have a new working title. Yay! I am so pleased. Telling people about The Torture Project had gotten old long ago. It reminded me of the conversations I have with strangers when I'm wearing my stilts. "How's the weather up there?" "You really drank your milk, didn't you?" Except it was usually something like "And is the project torture?" (Answer: No. Except when I have to hold the Shabaq position for five minutes.) Plus, the name just wasn't appropriate after about the first year of development. We got stuck on the word as a guide instead of a label. So the TP's new moniker...?

As Far As We Know

I like it. It sums up a lot about the show as far as we've developed it, and is less obscure than a previous consideration for a title: DUSTWUN - Duty Status: Whereabouts Unknown. But that's not all, folks! To add to the total anonymity of the project, the producing company has also changed its name. Joint Stock Theatre Alliance is dead; long live--

UnCommon Cause

I also like this name, but I'm uncertain as to why they changed this aspect. It may have been because the project itself is taking a dramatic new turn. It may also be that there is, in fact, already a Joint Stock theatre company out there. The only thing I miss from the old name is the word "alliance." Good word. UnCommon word, if you will, and it pretty accurately describes what the producing directors aspire to in their working style.

So what, besides nomenclature, has changed? Well, it remains to be seen. What has definitively happened is that our directors have received an almost unheard-of amount of input from the real hometown of Keith "Matt" Maupin. Last Saturday we met for about four hours, just to cover a fraction of the photographs and interviews they returned with. It was exciting and humbling, and made me wish I could have been along for the ride. There's promises that the entire company will make a trip out there soon, but that seems a pretty grand undertaking to me, and may take time. In the meantime, the next step is a series of biweekly (Wait...wait.... That means twice a week, not every two weeks, right? I'm almost positive...) rehearsals through June to explore new avenues in the--frankly--new show. Our first assignment being to take the transcriptions of interviews with assigned people from the community and present a short piece illustrating that person (or those people).

And I've been chosen to do two of Matt's commanding officers. This was the assignment I hoped for, though I have no idea what I will do with it creatively yet. I've spent so much time trying to imagine a military head-space that I'm eager to have actual examples. Also, these guys know Mat. They just do. It's insane to imagine. One anecdote sticks out from the Saturday session. They said Matt would carry around a rubber ball (I wasn't clear if it was like a bouncy-ball, or racket ball, or what) to play with to combat the urge to smoke. I don't know if I'll ultimately be playing the soldier character in our story--there's some concern that I look too old--but I carry a liberty dollar coin with me to combat smoking/nail biting, and it meant something to me that there's at least one, small commonality between I and my character's real-life counterpart.

There's something else, too. Patriotism. I fret sometimes over the distinction between patriotism and nationalism, but there's no use denying that I feel like a patriot--at least in the sense that I believe in my country in ways it doesn't always live up to. Now, if someone had asked me at age nineteen to serve my country by going to war, I probably would have turned them down. I fear bodily harm when it comes to flying metal, and would have felt ill-equipped for the challenges. Nevertheless, I believe hard in this idea called America. I grew up in the Boy Scouts, for f%$k's sakes. This is something I'm eager to explore in my work on As Far As We Know. What is it that takes people a step farther into patriotism, to the extent that they feel justified in killing and dying for it?

Of course, fanaticism and fear are powerful imitators of just about any conviction, and that can lead to really irrational decisions. (For example: Break me a freaking give.) People need belief as much as they need food and water. I just hope, personally, that belief is something that saves lives without taking them.

"I'm Not Even Supposed to Be Here Today..."

Everyone knows that one: Clerks. Why quote Clerks? Some of you may guess by the first sentence of the next paragraph.

Yesterday I took the New Jersey Transit to the end of the line (this particular line endeth at Long Branch) to participate in a reading of Justin Warner's play American Whupass at the New Jersey Repertory Company theatre. It's a play I've been involved in readings of for some time now, and I was lucky enough to fall in with Justin when he was just starting to do readings of it in his apartment. I say lucky because I really enjoy the script. It's not like As Far As We Know (formerly known as The Torture Project) or Zuppa del Giorno; there's no need for me to sell my first-born to make it happen. It's got its own momentum, and it's being spearheaded by Justin. I just show up and try to do the best job acting that I can.

The which is interesting work, because every time I read the script it's a little bit different, and adjustments are required. It's a comedy, with very broad (and occasionally coarse) humor, nevertheless Justin manages to make every character a believable person to one degree or another, mostly by way of giving them real objectives to fight for and real motivations for those objectives. It seems basic, but you might be surprised how many playwrights fail to do this. (Myself included.) The character I play, for example, is a new campaign manager on an incumbent senator's campaign. He initiates morally corrupt actions on the senator's behalf, but he does it and defends it with the utmost sincerity. He really believes it's for the best, whatever has to be done to get a good man in office.

That + professional wrestling jokes = Lot's o' fun per Jeffe.

So I take this seemingly endless (hour and a half) ride out to the theatre, and when I get off the train it is so non-urban I panic immediately. Will I understand the directions to the theatre? Will streets be numbered, or just named? Fortunately, 3rd Avenue is indeed 3rd Avenue (not even "Third," but "3rd") and I make good progress. As I walk, I reflect on my experiences of New Jersey, and begin to better understand it's reputation elsewhere for being a little, er, blah. The sections of town I'm coursing through are very reminiscent of those parts of Scranton that have yet to receive the benevolent wand of gentrificated (is so a word) commerce. Only with shorter buildings. It reminds me, at times, of the environment Clerks was filmed in. Which makes enough sense, seeing as how Kevin Smith and that whole crew hail from somewhere close by.

I finally get to the theatre--a modest enough building crammed full of performance space and show photographs--and am instantly reminded of several things I really should have thought of before making the trek. Specifically:

• The Laramie Project had its New Jersey debut there.


• Friend Briana worked there for an entire summer, thereby earning her Equity card.


• The core of UnCommon Cause (the artist formerly known as Joint Stock Theatre Alliance) probably attended this theatre whilst growing up in the Garden State.

So I go into the building, and am very kindly pointed back to where the actors are convening in the main space. There are only a few there yet, and I greet the returning actors, and I deal once again with not one of them recognizing me from previous readings (a regular occurrence in any venue, I assure you). Then I greet a new guy, and he looks familiar, and I almost start the inane "You Look So Familiar To Me Have You Ever Done Shows In The Yucatan?" game. But I don't. Some brain cell in me still operates to save my foot from being consumed by my mouth, occasionally, and fortunately it kicked in just then.

Because this guy was this guy.

Yeah. Brian O'Halloran was in the reading. As well he should be, because he works with the theatre all the time, and Friend Briana actually did another reading which I believe he directed shortly after her stint at N.J. Rep. So I should have put it together faster. As it was, I spent a good deal of time stealing looks and trying not to look as though I were trying to decide if he was who he is. Friends will attest: I am terrible at recognizing celebrities off the screen. Just awful. So I doubt the heck from myself at all times on such matters. Eventually the work of rehearsal took my mind off it completely, and then we broke for a ten. I was starving, having only had a light breakfast, but there was only time to get something from the theatre's concession stand. It was day time on a Monday, so no one was working it, and I could not espy me a money box, or jar, or bear-trap (Oh, you want to be a capitalist, do you? No hand for you!). Just as I was contemplating leaving me booty atop the counter, in swept Mr. O'Halloran to save the day. He took my money and handed me my Milky Way and presumably put the money where it needed to be. I only know one further thing about the experience:

Dante Hicks sold me a candy bar.

Yes. I have been officially Clerked. It was good for me. I'd do it 36 more times, if I could. But seriously, folks, it was at that moment, that divine conjunction of circumstances, that I became certain of his identity. Here's the thing: That's how down-to-earth he was. There was, as far as I observed, no mention during the day of his cult status, and he did a bang-up job with his part. His role was to play a variety of callers-in to various radio shows, and he made them each different in funny and convincing ways. To sum up: Modest, funny, talented and generally nice (insofar as one can tell over eight hours) guy.

And I managed not to ask him which he liked better, Jedi or The Empire Strikes Back.

The reading went very well, I think. I did feel I had done a better job in rehearsal than in actual performance, but we got a lot of of positive feedback from what we were assured was a very critical group. The whole thing was done in conjunction between Justin, N.J. Rep and a company also from New Jersey called Luna Stage. Apparently there's some hope that the show will be produced by one or both some time approaching 2008 (the big election year). It's interesting to consider a possibility so far in advance. Of course, I'm certain I would have to audition for a full production, so one never knows. If it was meant to happen, it will.

"A word of advice, my friend. Sometimes you gotta let those hard-to-reach chips go."

Come Back, Shane!

Come back!

We have closed A Lie of the Mind . . . long open A Lie of the Mind. Actually, I don't feel that way. That paraphrasing suggests that the show itself should continue ad nauseum, and really, it's not the most worthy of its ilk to aspire to perpetual resurrection. It's not the script I would see risen from the ashes, but the cast and crew. What a tremendous group of people to work with. I would leap at the chance to work with any of them again, and will probably harbor a fantasy of all of us reuniting for some show or other for a long while yet. My hat's off to you folk.

How did it close? (Friend Nat inquired of me when I was offline yesterday, no doubt in eager anticipation of this very 'blog entry [I am nothing if not entirely predictable].) I would say that it went out with a bang, though it was neither our best nor our worst show. So it went out rather like a bang in the distant woods, perhaps from a 30-30 caliber rifle. I believe we were all sad to see it go, in spite of some relief at being able to spend more time making money and just generally relaxing for a little while. That relief invariably turns to anxiety for me after a little while if I have nothing theatrical upcoming. Fortunately, this is not the case. But that is a subject for another day's 'blogitivity.

Now that it's all said and done, I'm glad I put all that time and effort into the show. It may not have been my best work (I daresay it definitely was not), but just on a personal level it was important work in helping me break through a lot of creative and personal rubbish that I was--consciously, at least--barely aware of. It seems rather awful to make a performance about such stuff, and I'd like to think I don't normally do that. In point of fact, I believe it was only thus in this case because the show challenged me and on some level I had been avoiding challenges in my life. Nothing like high stakes to flush out the delusions.

Interesting, too, how deluded I was when I started this 'blog. In a variety of ways. I began with the intention of keeping it about my professional life, of adding personal details only as they became relevant to such ambitions. I should have realized (just as I should have realized with avoiding challenges) that the sense of safety this aspect of my mission statement imbued was a delusion. It's not like I spend my professional life collecting coins or soldering pipe . . . though I'm fairly certain even in these fields one's personal life colors every aspect of one's work. Moreover, I'm an idiot about this whole "public journal" thing. THEY ARE WATCHING, STUPID! Everything you say can and will be used against you in a restaurant with your peers.

Interesting word: idiot. It reminds me of the word "id," in the Freudian sense, and I wonder if Freud had it or some related word in mind when he coined the term (<--actually, "id" means "it," [man that guy had a penile fixation {or is that me?}] and he apparently borrowed the term from an earlier psychoanalytical text). "Idiot" has roots in idios, meaning "one's own." I lambaste you with this irrelevant series of seeming connections because . . . well, supposedly one's id is the primary component of free association. (Which is probably the most apt sentence in this paragraph thus far.) AND I have to wonder just how much of an idiot I actually am when it comes to this here 'blog. Because, my friends, I have the sneaking suspicion that Odin's Aviary is a direct result of mys ids and mys super-egos co-collaboratin' behinds ma' egos's back. Here I am, happily free-associating on a regular basis, yet with an awareness that I have some responsibility not to write anything that might unnecessarily upset, deceive or otherwise put off someone who might read this.

Yet these things get written, and the ripples initiated by them return to me at the least expected moments. Exes express different views of the past. Directors salve my ego (in the vernacular sense of the word ["ego," not "salve"]) with compliments. Friends bring up subjects I hadn't realized I had approved for conversation with them, and they are startlingly well-informed, because I've already written out all my thoughts for them. It's not that I don't keep certain thoughts and feelings in reserve (Such as how hot I find it when women punch me . . .. Damn it! Did it again!), but I have often been surprised by the results of my 'blogasitude. Sometimes pleasantly, sometimes not, but always on the side of open truth. It's a good side to be on, and this little exercise is helping me appreciate that kind of disclosure.

So I've said it once, but I'll say it again: Don't lie to your mind; it's unkind.