all about tom swift

I had submitted these lists to McSweeney's, but they turned me down.

TOM SWIFT, SR. TITLES THAT MAY HAVE BEEN EXCITING AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY, BUT ARE NOW EXTREMELY DULL
Tom Swift and his Giant Telescope
Tom Swift and his Giant Magnet
Tom Swift and his Talking Pictures
Tom Swift Among the Fire Fighters
Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel
Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight
Tom Swift and his Wireless Message
Tom Swift and his Motorcycle

TOM SWIFT, SR. TITLES THAT ARE JUST PERPLEXING
Tom Swift and his Chest of Secrets
Tom Swift and his Great Oil Gusher
Tom Swift and his Television Detector
Tom Swift and his Magnetic Silencer

TOM SWIFT SR.’S EXCELLENTLY NAMED MANSERVANT
Eradicate “Rad” Sampson

TOM SWIFT, JR.'S MOST HYPERBOLICALLY AWESOME TITLES
Tom Swift and his Atomic Earth Blaster
Tom Swift in the Caves of Nuclear Fire
Tom Swift and his Electronic Retroscope
Tom Swift and his Spectromarine Selector
Tom Swift and his Triphibian Atomicar
Tom Swift and his Megascope Space Prober
Tom Swift and his Repelatron Skyway
Tom Swift and his Polar-Ray Dynasphere
Tom Swift and his Subocean Geotron

what has sonia berren been doing this year?

The alleyway was dark. Sonia, wearing a leather jacket to protect against the cold (and make herself look more intimidating) fingered Mittens’ skull inside her pocket. She looked over at Ms. Jacqueline C. Mize, who was dressed in her spiky metal best. “One of those guys had better show soon,” she said. Sonia nodded in agreement. “I mean, I can understand Mr. Mysterious not showing up on time, but Adam? It’s not like he’s got anything better to do.”

“I resent that,” said a voice from over Sonia’s shoulder. She turned around to see Adam. “So when’s this guy gonna show up?” he asked.

“Don’t know,” said Ms. Jacqueline C. Mize. She checked her watch. “He said 9 P.M. over the phone. It’s 8:59 now… wait, no, now it’s 9 right on the dot.”

There was a cough from one end of the alley. Everybody turned to see a tall man in a trenchcoat and hat silhouetted against the light from the street. “I am here,” he said, in a deep, cold voice. “Identify yourselves.”

“I’m Ms. Jacqueline C. Mize,” said Ms. Jacqueline C. Mize.

“Sonia here. No last name until I trust you.”

“Adam Timios here. I guess you know my last name already.”

The man stepped closer. “I know all of you. Three? This will be hard. But not impossible.” He took off his trenchcoat and dropped it to the dirty ground. Then he took off his hat. Sonia cautiously took some wires out of her pocket and started to concentrate on the space between her and the man.

“My name is…” he paused, cocking his head slightly. He dropped his hat to the ground. “Not important.” He raised his arms, and bullets fired out of them like they were machine guns.

Sonia thought of the air becoming a wall, of all those little invisible wires bound densely together. The bullets hit the wall and stopped. “Drat,” said the man, and he charged forward in some kind of berserk football tackle. The wires broke, but Adam was at the ready with a gust of wind to knock the man off his feet and onto his back. But he was quick to get up.

“You reality deviants are a nuisance.” He stood up and shot a grenade out of his elbow at the fleeing trio. Jacqueline stopped, pivoted, and caught it, throwing it back at the man with startling reflexes. He dodged, and it exploded just behind him in the alley.

Everybody scrambled out into the street. Down by the industrial district, nobody was there to see them except for the streetlamps. Jacqueline, looking around for a weapon, found a chain-link fence and ripped out a post with surprising strength. Adam was preparing a fireball when the man jumped out and fired off a few more clips, full auto. Another wall on Sonia’s part rendered them ineffective, and Jacqueline moved in for a whack. The post wrapped around his head like it was made of solid steel, which Sonia imagined probably wasn’t far off. The fireball, so impressive in execution, did nothing either. The man just took it straight to the chest, and knocked Jacqueline back with a swing of his arm.

A general sense of “well, shit” came over the party. Jacqueline was down and probably out, and fireballs were no good. Muffins whispered to Sonia, “Hey, dumbass, you’re good with wires, right?”

Sonia was a bit busy dodging fast and powerful blows. “Yeah, so?”

“So what I’m saying is, this guy’s a cyborg.”

“SO?” Sonia was more than a little annoyed.

“CYBORG MEANS HE RUNS ON WIRES. Stupid b-“

“Shut the hell up, Muffins. I get you.” She focused her senses and, yes, he did have a lot of wires inside him. She could hear the power running from them. She took out a length of wire from her pocket, and imagined it as though it was a part of him. Then she snapped it in two. He stopped moving.

“Did you do that?” asked Adam.

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

“By the way,” said Sonia, going over to tend to Jacqueline, “if a mysterious stranger ever offers you info ever again…”

“Yeah. I get it.”

winter weather is the best weather: two vignettes of the past week

On Wednesday last, I was searching for a rock for my art project. The beach seemed a likely place for the size and color that I needed, and the buses took me to Alki Beach. On a lonely little bit of rocky beach, I found what I needed, stooping to pick up rocks while the seagull looked on. It was evening; the sun was setting over the hill and filtering none of its light to me. Satisfied, I went back to the bus stop, but found that the bus that took me there did not have a returning counterpart, and the next bus wouldn't be along for half an hour. The bitter cold sunk in, and there was no-one else around in the blueish light, just me and the waves and the fish and chips restaurants a few blocks down. Seeking warmth, I walked up the bus route, buying some battered cod and French fries in a vague attempt to stay warm. The bus arrived, but there was no connecting bus for some time to come. As the bus drove along residences and up hills, passengers got off one by one into the darkening night. Then there was just me and the driver. But the bus ahead of us was the one I wanted, with no wait, and soon the lights of the city returned and I was safe.


On Saturday, Erin had done her laundry at the apartment, and, as it was time for me to leave, I was giving her a ride back to her place. I opened the door, but discovered thick sheets of water between us and the parking garage. We had no umbrella and no recourse but to run, Erin bundling up her clothes-bag in her rain jacket. I dashed madly, becoming soaked in just seconds before reaching the shelter of the garage. I turned around to see how Erin was doing, and there was a flash and a clap of thunder from over the hill. On the drive to her apartment, the gutters were running in torrents, but the rain soon calmed. On the highway? The rain was thicker but I sped through the blackness, Sons and Daughters in the CD player like a punk rock ban sidhe, orange stripe on my left, white stripe on my right, the road curiously slickly visible. There were a few cars on the shoulder: stragglers that were too weak to continue on, I think.

being a gold farmer in wow is a fascinating profession

I find the tone of cyberpunk espionage in this article to be fascinating. It is a very complex world, the MMORPG.

guess how i did at state champs!

Round 1: He has Zur the Enchanter, Confiscate, and Copy Enchantment. Black cannot kill enchantments.

Round 2: He has 3 Call of the Herds in his opening hand. The next game, he has Stormbind. Black cannot deal with six elephants. It also cannot kill enchantments.

Round 3: R/W Storm is not a very good deck. I win!

Round 4: Creatureless Rack + discard is not a very good deck. I win!

Round 5: It's a mirror match, but I play stupidly.

Round 6: "Gain 4 life" is not fun for an aggro deck to hear in Standard. Also, black cannot kill Paladin en-Vec.

I drop.

rpg status update

While I have the 2nd act written, i need to script the action sequences, which is harder than you'd expect because I'd like to make them actually interesting. That's hard to do in turn-based combat. I also want to do little stories for what happens to the characters in the year between, but I have those about half done. Oh, and I need to make the 3rd act interesting. It could be much better. But these things will hopefully be done one day, and then maybe sometime Bryan and Young will start calling me back, and then we can play. Maybe.

some things

It's pretty much officially autumn now - the leaves are dying, the crows are out in droves, and there's cold in the air. This is pretty much my favorite season, but it's too bad I don't really have anything to do on Halloween.


A quote from Jen Graves, Stranger art critic and guest speaker in my Contemporary Art class: "Richard Serra has stopped throwing molten lead."


Games I've been playing reviewed alongside girls from my classes:

Jade Empire: This game is very Americanized Chinese. I mean, ornithopers? Scantily-clad women? Come on. It's too bad the combat kind of sucks, too. Other than that, it's very very pretty and Bioware is still good at characterization. Although there isn't a single female character that I care about in the game, so it sucks being a male character.

Angela: A Chinese girl in my Japanese class who is cheerful and somewhat interesting. We have similar taste in cute things. Facebook tells me she is a conservative Christian.

Chrono Cross: The bad thing about hard bosses in RPGs is that, if you lose, you can't learn how to beat the boss like you could in an action game. No, you have to make your characters stronger. I don't like that.
I stumbled upon a ruined futuristic city, and I was all thinking "Wait, this is going to be another Miyazaki ripoff like FFX now, isn't it? Technology is evil and all that." But then the futuristic city turned out to actually be from the future. Bravo, Chrono Cross. I applaud your ingenuity.

Sarah: I'm just going to put an 'H' on her name because I don't know how she spells it. She's from my Native American Art History class and I pretty much like her. She's pretty cute, bright, and interesting, although I wish I knew more about her. She likes anime, I guess, and is a better artist than I am, although that's pretty much true of everybody. Unfortunately for me, she doesn't seem to have a lot of free time, but I think she might have my phone number. Not that she's called me, mind.

Time Spiral: This is a pretty fun set. The best part about the timeshifted cards is that I keep forgetting what's in them. It's like a surprise every time!

Nat: Another name I'm not sure how to spell. She's Sarah's friend, with a pretty nice dry wit. We seem to end up talking about slash fiction more than seems logical.

Dead Rising: This game is pretty much the most fun I can think of having on the Xbox 360. Beating zombies is fun. Beating zombies with pretty much anything you can find is even more fun. Taking pictures of them afterwards is pretty much the greatest.

Swan: She makes her own jewelry for a living and she's extremely friendly. She lives in Beacon Hill and it's too bad that she has a boyfriend. Oh well. She's from my Contemporary Art class.

Just Cause: I haven't actually played this game, but seeing how it's Grand Theft Auto meets CIA-sponsored regime change, with parachutes and grappling hooks, it's pretty fun to watch. Stealing helicopters in midair is excellent.

Nabe: A communications exchange student from Seoul, in my Contemporary Art class. Her English isn't necessarily the best, but she's really friendly. And she apparently lives in my building, five floors up. But she has a boyfriend too, of course.

Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Sticking it to the Man is fun. Spraying grafitti is fun. I just wish it were a better game.


Also: I've decided to update weekly now. Tell your friends! And be sure to punch me when I don't update.