Scientific American offers up a short survey of apocalyptic visions to supplement their September issue, which I haven’t seen yet. Did your favorite apocalypse make the list?

Meanwhile, Web Urbanist offers up another slew and a half of apocalyptic visions, with lots of great (and horrific) imagery to back it up. I’ve had this tab open for more than a week. I just keep going back to it as I make notes for Razed.

After mentioning this all over Twitter and Tumblr yesterday, I forgot to tell you, dear blog readers, that my newest bit of writing is up at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. But now I have done that, so as you were.

From Hyperbole and A Half, which I had never heard of before this comic, which landed right adjacent to my heart.

The Alot is an imaginary creature that I made up to help me deal with my compulsive need to correct other people’s grammar.  It kind of looks like a cross between a bear, a yak and a pug, and it has provided hours of entertainment for me in a situation where I’d normally be left feeling angry and disillusioned with the world.

For example, when I read the sentence “I care about this alot,” this is what I imagine:

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You’re reading The Gist, a blog of troll markets and other underground magic bazaars.

Earlier this week, a stranger on Flickr wrote me to ask about using this photo of Borough Market, which I took during last year’s trip to London. She wanted to draw it for her art class and was looking for a version bigger than the default Flickr size. Of course I said yes — it’s nice just to know that a photo of mine has reverberated with a stranger somewhere. Hopefully she’ll send along her sketches or finished drawing when she’s done.

This is the second time someone has found a photo of mine on Flickr and asked to used it for a project. (The first time I was invited to be the album cover for a local band, but I couldn’t find a big enough version of the image for print.) In both cases, I’ve tried to say yes as happily and as quickly as possible, if only because it’s what I would want if I was in their shoes. It’s nice to know that someone actually is seeing and enjoying some of the material we leave behind us as we meander across the Internet, and that it’s not always being mocked or derided by mean-spirited anonymites.

I’m trying to put out what I want to get back, more and more. And, yes, I fail at it sometimes, but I’m trying to do more good than harm.

Thanks for tuning in this week.

Photo © Will Hindmarch

Of course you’ve heard it already by now, but this still strikes me as suitable blog fodder: A new song from Reznor’s post-NIN band is out at Pitchfork’s website. If you haven’t heard it yet, go do so and let me know what you think. I’d embed it here if they’d let me.

In general, I don’t post at RPGnet anymore. I still stop by to read things, now and again, but my experiences posting over there haven’t been real rewarding in recent years. On Twitter, I have a standing rule: instead of posting at RPGnet, I punch myself in the face. It’s just faster.

Yet still I post over there, sometimes, when I think I can jump the tracks and offer actual praise or first-hand clarifications that will do another poster some good. I try not to encourage or correct the sometimes staggering amount of hate and vitriol over there, and I don’t write to score points for pithiness. The general rule on an web forum, after all, is that one sentence of sass trumps a paragraph of substance — but I ignore that when I post, and so I get ignored in return. Works out for everybody, I guess.

Or, like late last night, sometimes I post when I just get the itch for writing purple melodrama like I did back in my Vampire: The Requiem days:

So, you distract or placate the Beast by getting your Blood going as if you were on the hunt — the hunt for this foe, the hunt for his data — and making a move like an electronic predator, prowling through the Internet like an alligator in a swamp, tracking your prey, and getting that much closer to the moment when your work will warrant Blood, when your digital hunt will yield up real Vitae.

That’s how your character placates the Beast long enough to let him get his cerebral work done. How he plies the Beast into riding along with him, for a change, and feeling the animal thrill of the prowl.

RPGnet is free to be the constant competition for wit and snark that it sometimes likes to be, but I’m much happier and more productive since I stopped trying to, you know, correct the Internet.

XKCD: Duty Calls

Took a half hour today to revise some of the category and tag management on this old blog, and moved comments around so that maybe they’re within easier striking distance near the end of posts. I’ve been told by prolific web users and knowledgeable designers that expecting people to scroll back up to the top of a post to comment is unrealistic, and I’m finally putting that lesson to use. (I’ve dabbled with these changes before, but have only now come up with a look and placement that I can live with.)

While writing this, Pandora has given me Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice.” You can go with this or you can go with that, indeed.

Something I won’t be doing: going back and adding tags to the 998 (as of this writing) existing posts here on the site. Some of them were tagged in previous lifetimes on Blogger and WordPress.com, but there’s no time and little benefit to re-tagging those posts, so I’m not doing it.

As it is, I’m pretty sure I only added tags so I could make the kind of tag jokes that John Hodgman makes on his imitation blog-like device — the same sort that are common on Twitter. Totally worth it.

Saturday is my day to catch up with Caprica (on Hulu), but I haven’t been writing about it here. This isn’t to say I’m not into the show anymore — I am.

The U-87 Cylon rips off its own arm, by Daniel Graystone's command, in "There Is Another Sky."

Rather, I’m not usually sure that I have much to say to you beyond recommending composer Bear McCreary’s weekly reports. His entry on the episode, “Gravedancing,” is especially great, blending source music and score as it does (with a free song, “Was Love,” there for the downloading), but be sure to check out the two newer entries, as well: “There Is Another Sky” and “Know Thy Enemy.” Always fascinating to get a look behind the scenes with Bear — and I hardly know anything about music. What I do know is characterization and world-building, and McCreary’s music is all about both.

Beyond that, I’ve simply been savoring the show, hoping that it’s slow burn turns into more of a boil. I’ve been sipping it across my palate, trying to appreciate it for both its bitterness and its burgeoning sweetness, and hoping or a second bottle.

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When I’m running an RPG, like Razed, I make CDs to play during the game session. They help set the tone for key scenes and, just as importantly, they help me pace the story out during actual play. (If I’ve only played two or three tracks after an hour and a half of play, I know I’m in trouble.) Here, then, are some songs that I’ve been playing during the writing or playtesting of Razed, my new post-apocalyptic survival RPG coming from Pelgrane Press.

This is no complete list — my main Razed playlist, right now, has 186 songs. This is just an hour’s worth of material available for sale individually on iTunes. (Note: I don’t get any money from this — it’s just a nice way to give you samples of what I’m listening to if you don’t own some of these tracks.)

Some of these (like Tom Waits’ “Earth Died Screaming”) are meant to indirectly evoke the vibe and character of the setting — visions of apocalypse and aftermath. Other songs allude to favorite apocalyptic tales of mine (as “The Court of the Crimson King” alludes to Children of Men). Some are quiet mood-setting pieces for safe havens  from the terrors of the razed world, like Andrew Bird’s “Yawning At The Apocalypse” and Bear McCreary’s “Elegy” (played on a busted piano for the post-apocalyptic future-past of Battlestar Galactica). Meanwhile, others are action cues I’ve played during fights and chases. I just dig the mechanical rattle and momentum in “The Harvester Returns,” for example, and the weird machine voice of “The Invid Attacks.” And, of course, if we’re talking about music that I write to, I had to include multiple hits of Bear McCreary and Nine Inch Nails, in one form or another. (I skipped “The Day The World Went Away,” here, in favor of a couple of Year Zero remixes.)

I think this gives a little bit of a clue as to the kind of setting Razed will ship with. At the very least, I think it hints at where my head’s at, in terms of tone, right now.

Thanks for listening.