My Fantasy Role-Playing Game now

Hi everybody. I've decided to create my game as a paper and dice game instead of on computers even if it doesn't make any money that way. I've got the rough part of it finished already because I have a lot of experience with designing those kinds of games. I found a couple of people to play with me and right now we're doing a Mayan campaign where I've become inspired to let the right answer to every problem magically turn into their best guess about how to solve the problem. It's like, the prey runs to the hunter. It seems more Mayan that way, not using a European style map, but rather a map coming closer to that 200 page boardgame with signs in the heavens and events on Earth changing each other. We start Monday and I'm really excited. Today I have to go a barbecue at work and I'm not looking forward to it and I'm 2 1/2 days quit of smoking (except I smoked one this morning. Dammit. I'm so weak sometimes) and I just don't want to go and be bored around people who some of them are smoking cigarettes, because I feel really tempted and depressed and anxious today. Wish me luck.

Tim

New Post 8/10/11

    Hi Folks, I'm not reading about Cortes right now but have begun reading the travel accounts of an archaeologist sightseeing in Southeast Mexico and Central America in 1854 and he's pretty hilarious and I'm also reading this amazing book that you can't check out of the library but I go back each day and read it bit by bit. It's called "2000 Years Of Mayan Literature" by Dennis Tedlock. He reproduces many of the glyphs side by side the translations of the works he presents and there's a lot of his commentary to wade through, too, but I find it helpful and I'm not sure I'd have the patience to sit with the originals as long without his commentary to help me. My understanding of the texts would also be more dry and less playful and idiosyncratic. There is one chapter in the book about a Mayan book that is entirely devoted to a chart representing the travels on the one hand of planets in the heavens and on another level humans on the earth and the whole thing looks like a 200 page boardgame. I'm really dying to get to that chapter, but when I flip ahead to it I can,t make heads or tails...The most important idea he presents is that Indio literature is ongoing and being written right now, even if thousands or millions of the older texts were burned up as heresy by the Catholic Church at one point. Even if that was a tremendous loss to modern Mayans, it doesn't mean they don't still have just as much history as anyone else. Or more. I think when I'm done with the book about the archaeologist I'm finally going to get around to reading Carlos Castaneda, even though Don Juan was Yaqui and not Mayan. I was reading Millman's book The Way of The Peaceful Warrior and I hated it. I am beginning to become almost as nutty about Mexican stuff as I can sometimes be about Ancient Greek stuff. And it's fun having strangers call me "Amigo" when they see I'm reading a book about Mexico. I get into these really mystical conversations, even with people who are presumably non-Mexican. Peace, Tim

About The Book I'm Reading Right Now

   I'm actually trying to read about six books at the same time. I've made about a hundred pages of the way into a very blow by blow history of the career of Fernando Cortes. It's pretty heartrending in places. It was written in 1865 and does a good job of both being an exhilerating action story and a very morally ambivalent piece of work. Unfortuneately, the lies are laid on pretty thick, but how could it be otherwise? Every single page has between six and twenty contradictions of itself. The writer refers to a lot of first hand accounts that he is working from and it's all battle scenes, so it's no wonder there are so many contradictions and downright lies. What he doesn't whitewash is what he calls mixture of  "war, religion and rapine" that he says characterized that period in European consciousness. At one point-- and may Mexican readers forgive me if I detail this wrong or report it like it's just another story-- the conquistadores are in a huge Aztec city and the Aztecs ask permission to have a ritual dance, minus the human sacrifice. The conquistadores give permission and all these Aztec nobles start dancing in all their gold and the conquistadores suddenly attacked and slaughtered them all! One report is they just couldn't resist seizing all that gold, but another report is they had heard a rebellion was about to happen. Then a battle started where the Spanish became really sorry they had done that, because they were outnumbered maybe thirty thousand to one, but somehow they escaped the capital. But Moctezuma was so sad to be in the Spanish camp under those circumstances that he refused medical treatment for a serious head wound and basically let himself die. It's just an awful set of events and probably happened more or less like it says in the book. Reading and thinking about it makes me rethink a kind of generalized outlook on Mexican Indian response to Christianity that I wrote about here under the heading "Templo de..." It was certainly a very naive and whitewashed article I wrote. I think the reality was just so awful and morally weighted on behalf of the Indians that it is hard for someone of European descent like me to read or write about it without feeling descended from monsters. But there you have it. At least I can keep on learning and writing while I learn.

I'm working on a game& please be patient, those who want more of the Orpheus story

7/19/11

       I'm trying to invent a video game that is, at best, a very exciting and ambitious project and, at worst, gave my therapist a feeling of nausea when I was explaining it to her. It's called Pacifism, it's set in a militarized fantasy world with swords and "monsters" and wizards and so on, and although it's easiest to solve problems violently in the game, it's not always as good an idea as negotiating, haggling, begging, running, etc, and you really get rewarded with both experience points and gifts and so on if you can put your character's life on the line to work things out in a win-win way, though at the lower levels of character ability the chance of succeeding in this is slim. I've made kind of a list of skills a negotiator character has (which are more like just another part of warfare and not pacifism) and also a set of skills for the peacelovers which you learn by biting the bullet and trying them out. I'm trying to make it just as good both as a fighting game and as a non-fighting game and I think it's successful, though I really need to learn what format a video game company might want it's unsolicited scripts to be written in before they're sent in for the reading.Advice, anyone?
      One more thing, Readers. If you've been in confrontations you were able to survive non-violently and you feel like it's not such a sensitive subject for you that you would mind me discussing it on this blog or incorporating its lessons in my game, then please write me a comment here or email to congertimothy@yahoo.com. Likewise if there's anything, good or evil or whatever, you wish you could see in a video game, but it hasn't happened yet, or at least you haven't seen it yet, and you don't feel like writing up in a video game script of your own. As for fiction ideas you'll never write yourself, you should write them! But I'm really in need of brainstorming and if someone can actually be a consultant for me we can talk about what's a fair and legal way of divying up the loot if this makes money. But I can't guarantee I'll work with you closely unless we can play well together on a brainstorming level. I think I can see this through without any help at all, except just evaluating for myself people's reactions to these ideas I'm throwing out there.
      Anyone who wants to use ideas or text I've posted here, consider it like anything else that you've seen published somewhere. Use it, give me credit for what you used, and we're good.
                     Signing off for today, Tim Conger

On Work

       I used to hate work, but I liked to be helpful and to pitch in when everyone was doing something for the sake of the party atmosphere that sometimes happens ( not often enough). I also had hobbies that would absorb me for days if my stepmom didn't scream at me to go get a job. This last bit happened when I was only fourteen and it's a little cheap of me to tell the world now, because she's probably sorry she did that. I guess on the good side is it wasn't hard for my parents to get me to care about not relying on them too much for money, even though I've always relied on them for money anyway. My peer group kind of kept me honest in that way. You know, I really think if a check comes for me in the mail or is given to me or deposited in my account and it's addressed to me, it's good money. It's important to tell myself that because I receive SSI (for the international crowd: SSI is a kind of government money that is given to people with disabilities, including but not limited to chemical imbalances or emotional illnesses that don't require medication) and eveyone in liberal old Santa Cruz is so fond of telling me it's not my money and that I'm "lucky" and I just tell them it's not that hard to get put on medications.

    But I still haven't said anything about work. I always had enough empathy and restlessness to do volunteer jobs after I couldn't do paid work anymore. I have done that pretty damn consistently for the last twenty years and I'm kind of proud of that. Now I do paid work and I really like it and I never would have been able to take the pressure before, but I do all right with it now. I really like to work now and I owe it all to SSI. Thank you, Kind Strangers of the World! You kept me alive in the belly of the Beast! But that's enough for now. Really, if a society can't keep its weaker members of alive why do we even belong to one?

    Tim Conger

The Haunted Teapot

Okay, you thought the last entry was trivial...I bought a red Chinese teapot last week that looks really amazing, but was nonetheless made in a factory and isn't really precious or anything, just unusual for being glazed red. Anyway, I was marvelling at it while I drank out of one of the three matching teacups that came with it and feeling this really insipid pride-of-ownership thing like I get sometimes and I remembered my friend Alejandro Eclarino once told me red Chinese teapots are meant to be unlucky because they house a demon. had shown me some of the cursed objects he had at the time (that was more than a year ago) and I came to see how you know if an object is cursed: it pulls this desire to possess it out of you as if you were five years old and looking at the best toy in the whole world and were told you couldn't have it. The difference is, sometimes you can have these things as an adult, but he more you desire them the more it just proves the object is too strong for you--Like what the martial artist woman said to the girl with the magic sword in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Anyway, Alejandro doesn't remember telling me that about red teapots and I didn't find any legends like that when I googled "teapot legends." But what's really cool is three days in a row I've come home in the afternoon and all three of the teacups have coffee stains at the bottom and need to be washed out, as if my three dolls were having a coffee party. I live alone so this is very cute. That's all for now.

Earrings of the Queen

    Here are a couple of plant stories. I was sitting on the curb outside my girlfriend's apartment last week and her neighbor, Eleutheria, came by with these weeds in her hand that didn't have flowers, but which had big triangular seed pods at the end of each stem which made the weeds look kind of beautiful to me and I guess to her too. Eleutheria said the plant is native to Greece, where she was born, and that the king and queen of Greece had stolen a lot of the state treasury and fled the country shortly before the invasion of the Nazis in World War Two. The queen had always wanted the earrings of Marie Antoinette, though she never quite got them. Anyway, after the war, the king and queen wanted to come back and the Greek people said, "No," and so the king and queen were without a country. I don't know if the plant  got the name, "Earrings of the Queen," because of that event or not, but my guess is it was called that beforehand, because the queen had in fact thrown away the right to call the weed hers when she escaped the country with treasury money at the hour of greatest need. I told the story to my coworker, El, and she really liked the story and she told me she likes to go with her friends when they go wine-tasting, because rosemary always grows in the vineyards in the Napa Valley and she finds the smell of the rosemary wonderful to rub on her hands, because of the differences in light and soil and moisture and location that the rosemary grows in. I do not lie. Anyway, that's my plant stories.

Templo de San Cayetano de la Valenciana--Guanajuato, Mexico

     I'm going to try to post sometime a picture of the cathedral in my calendar whose name is the title of this post. The picture I have on my wall shows how this church was built out of bricks taken out of the walls of a pre-Columbian temple that was there before by Indian slaves. A friend of mine, Angel, once asked me, "Do you know why we are born? I know why we are born. Do you know why we are born?" I gave some mealy-mouthed comfortable answer and he said, "No. I learned from my ancestors why we are born and this is it: We are born to die." He then proceeded to tell me the other thing he got from his ancestors, according to him. He said in Mexico there were churches built by slave labor by bricks taken from native temples, and he said the locals had a name for the slaves that did the work. They called them "Living Ancestors." Now is that profound or what?
     I sometimes aspire to be a living ancestor when I appropriate a bit of the bad around me and try to turn it around into food for the embryo of a better world I hope is forming. As for being born to die, I watched a Time/Life video a few years back called "Aztlan," in which historians said many of the indios the church encountered in what is now Mexico were actually enthusiastic when they heard Jesus had died for the sins of the whole world. Their native religion had forever commanded them to cut themselves and slaughter prisoners and have open heart sacrifices just to have a harvest and a sunrise and victory and basically just to keep life at the same crummy level it always is. The native religion had recognized the impossibility of an individual's ever repaying the debt of what has been given him and her and the message of Jesus was the piece that was missiong and everyone was initially ecstatically happy. What is so very tragic is how the conquistadores and the Church and then later the French and the US and the various revolutionary governments proceeded to take such advantage. What is interesting is most modern Mexicans and US citizens of Mexican descent still don't want the old gods back in quite the same way they had been here before. Most are fiercely anti-Church, but just as devoutly Catholic, in what can only be called a "Mexican way." One woman I used to go out with was convinced she was going to Hell, but she still loved God with all her heart. I kept telling her she was crazy as if that was going to help anything, but now I find that paradox beautiful. She was being a Living Ancestor. I wish all religious people could be so courageous and good.

The Louvre--Intriguing idea for a museum.

  The Louvre was an intriguing idea for a museum, if memory of high school history class serves me right. Wasn't it originally a dwelling for the kings and queens of France? I think it's pretty sad what happened to all those high-born people, but the museum idea is interesting. Sometimes there's mention in 21st Century contemporary art of ideas that sound like an advocacy of the use of the guillotine here in the States. One laughs, if one has a sense of humor, and maybe feels angry agreement or disagreement, but making museums out of old buildings that used to be monuments of fear is pretty cool. I want peace on Earth and goodwill to all and feel we're nowhere near there yet...I feel the way oif achieving it is not simply voting for it, and yet the solution is far from military. The people putting flowers in soldier's guns confronting them had the right idea, but discretion too is important. One does not want to sacrifice oneself to no purpose. I read an idea put forth by a Talmudic writer once who said that it is important for people who would wish to escape the sins of the world to instead use meditation to enable them (us) to "turn back warfare at its very gates." This is quite the opposite of a martial art. It is the courage to try to break up a fight without concern for whether one gets massacred in the process. Well, one does care a little. It's good to know a little First Aid. I took a class in it at the Red Cross, for example. I'm trembling in fear as I write this, but it's just cute, because none of it is illegal or anythiing or treasonous yet, so I'll just hit "SAVE NOW" and

Commentary on "Axe" deodorant products

   Axe-- "Axe" sounds like "Ask" and so it could be saying, if you buy it, "I'm so secure in my masculinity I need you to ask me if I'm feeling it, too." It could otherwise be saying, "I'm man enough to work with my hands, to go to the YMCA, to shower and wear deodorant, and I'll still ASK your permission before I touch you if I don't know you that well." On the other hand it could be saying something altogether different; it could be saying, "This is my way of asking. I'm asking now," as in, "I'm just dying to have you run up and grab my butt." I think that what's most likely, though, is this chain of reasoning, though I'm afraid I come out looking like a creep by it.
  Woamen say, "Ask before you touch me," because they want you to work with your hands, go to the gym, take a shower, and put on deodorant before you touch them. For those of us creeps who are still doing none of those things, there's "body wash," which only exists because the name is code for "Wash your body." For those of us creeps who still aren't washing our bodies or using deodorant there's "Axe" body wash, which means, "Put me out of my misery." Anyway, I'm just trying to be funny and experiment with what we learned in my art history class is called "hermeneutics", which means the belief that something is trying to really say something else. It's a doubtful assumption, of course, but it can make for interesting writing and reading.

Brillo

  Thanks for asking. This is a visual and tactile media, word, music, food and package culture commentary blog for anyone and everyone to contribute to. A friend once told me, "Don't write me a book." What I say is, "Write me...Not a book exactly, but the equivalent of two or three typewritten pages is fine." The only stipulation is if you write about a painting, you have to include a picture of the painting or at least describe the painting thoroughly enough that we know why you feel the way you do about it. And I really don't want to hear about an entree in a restaurant that cost more than twenty dollars! Let's keep it cheap, Folks! I hope that doesn't hamstring anyone.