GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Life

  • Discontent in the internet age

    On the one hand we have so much media available to us in all forms, and yet there is a lot of noticeable discontent about the state of media today.

    We have the entire world at our fingertips, which means we also have all the discontent within earshot.

    It isn’t that discontented people should pipe down, but that we should occasionally take stock of what we do have.

    Growing up in a pre digital age, our options were much more limited. But we also didn’t hear about the erasure that such limited options implied.

    Things are looking better, even if it doesn’t sound that way.

    But please do look, the passive algorithm is quite a concern.

  • torrent of information

    I woke up to write a blog post.

    But then got sidetracked…and sidetracked…and sidetracked.

    Fifteen minutes later, a crying baby snapped me out of this “reverie”.

    It’s an odd world we live in. All the info at our fingertips.

    But brains that aren’t very good at discerning what’s fit to read.

  • Survivor Bias

    In any endeavor, the folks that go all in for an extended period will say it is super duper awesome.

    The quitters just anonymously disappear.

    So while it’s worth hearing out the fervent adherents, it doesn’t hurt to look for the silent majority that found better things to do.

    Sometimes grit is the answer. Sometimes moving on is better.

  • Visit from the sister (games!)

    My sister and brother-in-law visited Vegas this week so it gave me a chance to play some games between chasing the kids around.

    Innovation (twice)
    Circus Flohcati
    Aton
    No Thanks (twice)
    Times Square

    When you have a limited time budget, it’s interesting what came out to be played.

    I’ve always acclaimed Carl Chudyk, the designer of Innovation, as a “minor deity”. And this assessment hasn’t changed. His ability to have a completely chaotic game result in a memorable gameplay experience, is really something to behold.

    As for the other games, Aton and Times Square are both excellent, albeit slightly 2 player fussy games.  Aron is a gridded area control game and Times Square is a linear tug of war, but both games have multiple levers to push and pull constrained by the card draw making for great 2 player experiences.

    It was also a lot of fun to introduce No Thanks and Circus Flohcati to my sister and brother in law. Just fun light fillers, easy to teach but with meaningful decisions.  Both well designed games, also by Thorsten Gimmler and Reiner Knizia respectively. My daughter even joined in for No Thanks and enjoyed it well enough.

    Interestingly, all of them were card games, as were almost all the other games I would have thought to pull out. Amongst the board-dice-cards categorizations, I definitely lean towards cards.

    But honestly, my daughter had the most fun of all when we played hide and seek in the house.

  • The interpretive lens

    “Let me be clear, I am Muslim not because I think Islam is ‘truer’ than other religions (it isn’t), but because Islam provides me with the ‘language’ I feel most comfortable with in expressing my faith. It provides me with certain symbols and metaphors for thinking about God that I find useful in making sense of the universe and my place in it.”

    Reza Aslan

    This quote encapsulates some of what I’ve been thinking about lately. I no longer identify as Christian but I’m not anti-religious either. I don’t practice the religion but I see enough good people practicing it in its multiplicity of forms to respect that it does good in this world.

    In this middle state I’m realizing that my years in church as a youth is baked into my mental DNA. One good thing about growing up a hardcore fundamentalist is that it’s almost impossible to slip a biblical reference past me that I wouldn’t catch.

    However, I’m coming to a nascent theory that every religion has two “books”, the texts that are held up as sacred and the interpretive lens that is used to read these sacred texts. I’ve shed the Calvinist Reformed Baptist lens years ago, even though I’m still deconstructing some lingering subconscious moods and stereotypes.

    But I’m also starting to realize coming that I most likely won’t ever be not-Christian. It’s not that I intend to return to church or participate in its rituals, and I’ve definitely shed the interpretive lens of one radical sect within the religion, but this constant reading of the Bible for my first twenty years means that this book is still a major part of how I see the world. A few months ago I read the Daodejing and Zhuangzi but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was still approaching it from a Christian perspective.

    I’ve heard there is a Jesuit saying “give me a child till he is seven and we’ll have him for life.” Maybe that makes me one of those despised “nominal Christians” from the pulpits of my youth, but here I am.

  • Trapped in paradise

    My in-laws have a peach tree in their back yards, and to keep the birds from eating all the peaches, they wrap it in a net.

    The net got compromised and three birds ended up dying in the summer heat before we realized what was happening.

    There are many colloquialisms for what just happened.

    But mainly it’s sad.

    And a warning to the rest of us about life in general.

  • Topsy Turvy

    We recently picked up a rotating compost bin and I’ve been depositing the goods every morning.

    Our local ants have discovered this new treasure trove in the backyard.

    I wonder what they are thinking when everything goes spinning around for ninety seconds before settling back into normal until the next morning.

  • Christmas shopping in August

    Summer does not feel like the right time to shop for Christmas, but August is only a few months away from the holidays.

    Aside from picking stuff up from sales, my main christmas presents are boardgames and books.

    Books are a dime a dozen (actually 50 cents a pop at the local library) so I got plenty of those ready for the holidays, but we do have limited shelf space so I need to be careful with my game purchases.

    It seems that I need to do a purge of my wishlist on boardgamegeek, but more importantly, I need to rank my games by age, so I can buy the appropriate games at the right time.

    That is still easy while the kids are young, but once they hit the 10+ range, the whole world of gaming opens up to them. At that time, I just need to be judicious.

    Not an easy thing in this hobby.

    Or maybe it will be easier because honestly, my whole collection is geared to big kids, so I really don’t have to buy anything at that point.

    Then again, I don’t “have to” anything at this point either.

  • Two foil balloons

    Driving up McLeod after lunch, I noticed a man on a bicycle with a couple foil balloons.

    One each side of him were his two kids.

    A trio in the heat, slowly heading home from the dollar store.

    The practical man questions such fleeting luxuries.

    The father in me knows he’s done right.

  • Fox Hill Park

    We watched the fireworks at Fox Hill Park last year and this year for July 4th. It’s a bit far from the action but you have a panorama of the city.

    There were a bit more folks this year around, presumably because it more people know about it, so there was a nice energy in the park.

    Adding to the festivities, the local Las Vegas Tribe decided to have their drum circle on a knoll by the parking lot.

    Next to us was a family that tried to have a birthday party at the park, but the day was so hot, apparently nobody came.

    I feel for the parents and the kid, but they did seem to appreciate the cosmic compensation of being invaded by a bunch of hippie hand drummers.

    Friends are hard to come by in this world, but friendly accidents abound around us.