MySpace was ugly, but at least there was individuality. I miss the old web and the way it showed our creativity. Before we had powerful tools, we were forced to design our own websites.¹ Everything had its own custom touches. I remember looking through the weblogs that Lloyd linked to and seeing how each one was different.

Then, facebook came and wiped out creativity. We were all given a profile and they all looked the same. White and blue. Boxes. At least we got our own picture. The old frontier was replaced by the pre-fab web. I guess it was better: MySpace was godawful ugly. Glittery gifs for text, unreadable backgrounds, sparklies following the cursor, and pop music that automatically switched on. Yeah, I don’t miss that. But we’ve still lost something.

WordPress came along. Customization became picking someone else’s theme, instead of making something of your own. Even now, my own weblog is some default theme. Unremarkable. A lot of corporate websites re-use the same themes and start-ups use the same styled landing pages.

Now everyone’s switched to Tumblr, and we’ve moved from the pre-fab web to the primacy of the feed. No one actually visits anyone’s tumblr. Instead, they get a stream of posts from different sources.² So, we can pick a theme, but no one will see it anyway. Individuality is stripped away, and we’re all lumped into an equal pile. Well, except the corporations that pay for sponsored posts. The same is true with facebook. Before, you’d visit someone’s profile and post on their wall. That was how you’d send a message. Even though it was pre-fab, at least it listed our interests. Now, we don’t care for that. Just give me a list of everything from everyone, please.

Of course, the feed age is even worse than that. We can’t even be bothered to post original content anymore. No more reflection. Let’s just repost a funny picture someone else made. (Oh and this picture is a drawing of someone else’s characters, who are actually from a remake.) Individuality gets stripped from our pages, and then it gets stripped from our content.³

The nostalgia becomes most potent when I see my own weblog. I look at the default theme and cringe. If I’m going to rail against this sort of thing, shouldn’t I at least take the time to not be a hypocrite? What happened to my individuality?₄ In the frontier days, I designed (and then redesigned) psycho-ward.org from scratch. I suppose that some time in the near future, I will need to make this weblog into something that better reflects who I am right now.

¹This is a narrative, so it is a lie. There was Geocities back then and Frontpage and all sorts of options to make websites easier for the less tech-savvy.

²Again with the lies. This has been around since RSS.

³Then again, so many of the original popular blogs collected links to other content. They were aggregators themselves, not creators or artists or even writers.

⁴Much of it was channeled into my comic. Some of it was taken offline due to the demands of needing a professional persona. More importantly, while I have made modifications to themes in the past, this blog has never really been that much of a creative outlet beyond the writing.

My abilities to forecast the future are very limited. When I was in high school, I imagined we’d all have TiVo by now. On-demand streaming never occurred to me (probably because dial-up was still a recent memory). Nor did the iPad, which is now my primary screen for consuming television. Here we are, 8 or so years later, and we still have cable TV, and we still have network TV (and I watch it more than ever). The models that were supposed to be disrupted are still around. Perhaps people think they will inevitably die, but some of those prognosticators have been saying the same thing for years.

The Smart Home was inevitable back then. All our appliances would talk to each other and regulate themselves. Nonetheless, my fridge isn’t hooked up to the internet, and I still must manually open it to check what’s in there. And despite the plethora of electronic list keeping options, I mostly use pen and paper for a grocery list. I’m curious to how inevitable it really is because I don’t want my home to rely on my fickle internet connection to function. There are more security concerns. The home becomes more fragile because unconnected devices have been replaced with connected ones. So many disadvantages. Plus, if I don’t need internet in my fridge, and I won’t pay for it, then why should anyone manufacture it on a ubiquitous scale? The inevitable seems less inevitable.

One of my favorite jokes is how instead of our wrist watches becoming phones, our phones became pocket watches. It so delightfully captures our inability to predict the future. There are some wrist watches that emulate phones, but they’re less easy to use and they do less stuff. The technology exists; sadly, no one uses it. Part of the problem, as I mentioned, is usability. Tiny-ass buttons. And who wants to shout into their wrist? One, it’s not the most ergonomic option, and two, voice commands aren’t as good as touch. I don’t think this is merely because of the limitations of voice technology. Touch interfaces are inherently more usable. (This is something I’d have to do more arguing to back up, but that’s another conversation for another day.)

When we imagine the future, we tend not to envision how it’d really work if we used it everyday. Usability requires testing, but our ideas of the future tend to be untestable. They sit in our minds as Platonic ideals, untested by the real world. So, in movies, we see a “Minority Report” interface as the future. We’ll be waving our arms around, swishing them through thin air. Of course, the keyboard and mouse already fuck us up with RSI. Let’s now use our imaginations to think about how terrible our arms would feel if we had to do that all day everyday just to make a fucking spreadsheet.

Ebooks are inevitable, as well. They’ll replace our heavy textbooks. Books themselves will because artifacts only for collectors. And yet… Students will often prefer the hard copy when they use it to study. We can’t encode ebook information spatially, as we do with books. Thus, it becomes harder to keep the information in one’s memory. It’s harder to flip back and forth between multiple pages. Ebooks have their own inherent limitations. Cui bono? The companies that make devices that read ebooks, and the publishing companies that have decreased margins but still put a ridiculous markup on the ebooks. Not necessarily the students. Ebooks may replace so many books, but that may not be because they were superior. VHS wasn’t better than Betamax either.

Google Glass may be as inevitable as the flying car, or maybe it’s as inevitable as ebooks. Maybe it’s a terrible idea that’ll never happen. Perhaps it’ll never overcome the inherent limitations of voice interfaces, and so it’ll stay a niche product. Or, perhaps it’s not even that great a product. It’ll lessen our human interactions because of the barriers between us. It’ll Hulk smash our 20th/21st century concept of privacy, giving over more information to governments and corporations. Yet, there will be some benefits and it’ll become ubiquitous despite the obvious flaws. I don’t know.

I do not know the future, but I still have an opinion on Google Glass: I hate it. And I’m allowed to hate it beyond merely being curmudgeonly because Google Glass is not inevitable, as far as we know for now. I think it looks stupid. I think a phone is just a way better computing device. I would never play games on Glass. (There’s a reason we still have consoles and not the inevitable immersive helmets that wrap around our entire heads.) I think the way it takes pictures and videos is sometimes stupid. First person POV can be useful sometimes, but I’d hate to see it all the time. Imagine if every movie looked like a first person shooter. Ugh. I hate the idea of augmented reality. I don’t want a fucking overlay when I take a walk; that’d defeat the purpose of clearing my mind with a walk. I don’t want reminders popping up when I’m trying to have a conversation. And most of all, I don’t want assholes walking around taking videos of everything and being completely distracted.

Perhaps that’s a bit harsh for a product I’ve never tried. I’m exaggerating some things. Still, I’d think we’d all be worse off if everyone wore it all the time. Luckily, that future is not necessarily inevitable. Facephone isn’t anymore inevitable than wristphone. Let’s keep our computers in our pockets and off our faces.

Warning: There be spoilers ahead, potentially.

My favorite part of Star Trek Into Darkness was how it commented on the drone issue. The moral thing to do was capture the criminal and have a trial. The immoral plan was extra-judicial murder via remote missile (into someone else’s territory, no less). Bravo for that.

I’m going to list some of the games my friends and I currently play, so future Shawn can look back and reminisce:

Board/card games:

• Sentinels (looks like we’ll be playing the new expansion with the time travel stuff next Tuesday)
• Resistance (the game I’m currently most obsessed with, played with TIC people too, uses my best skill in gaming: talking)
• Dominion (fun, but I feel like I haven’t played enough to get good at it… I haven’t won a game yet)
• Pandemic (another co-op game like Sentinels, I don’t like it as much as everyone else)
• Magic (I’m listing this because even though me and Vic don’t play, everyone else plays about every week)

Video games:

• PlayStation All-Stars (similar to Smash but different type of game play, once you get used to it not being Smash, it’s pretty fun)
• Balanced Brawl / Project M (two Brawl hacks, I’m the only one with a working Wii, so I started inviting people to my place to play)
• Soul Calibur V (we stopped playing for a while, but have recently picked it up again)

Looks like Go On was canceled. I never watched it, so I don’t have an opinion. Here’s what my friend Richard had to say about the show before it was canceled:

“It’s not the worst thing on TV.”

“I’ll watch it when I run out of other things to watch.”

Oh wait, I do have an opinion. When this show was initially getting previewed on TV, it looked like the second worst thing ever (after 1600 Penn). I got the impression that this show was supposed to be Community-lite, a more accessible wacky ensemble show. But now Community is Community-lite, so I guess they didn’t need it anymore.

Given that the show was at least watchable, perhaps it should’ve gotten a chance to get better in its second season.

Had a dream where the main character, someone I hadn’t seen in a while, mentioned he was cold. Woke up. Rewrote dream (in my head) so that the main character was a ghost. Increased number of times the main character mentioned he was cold. Thought this was genius. Fell asleep again.

Sleepy me gets some weird ideas.

I read Jason Collins announcing that he was gay. This is a pretty big deal since he’s the first active player to come out in one of the major sports in America. What made me really happy was seeing this collection of tweets reacting to his announcement. Our culture’s changing.

In the past, I’ve been rather cynical about the ability of a simple tweet or facebook post to change things. I satirized clicktivism before the term was coined. On the one hand, some cynicism is warranted. A lot of times campaigns can be lazy, and focus more on awareness than action. Afterwards, there’s no follow through. Who remembers Kony? CISPA passed, even though the predecessor was defeated.

Yet, the problem with cynicism is that its only antidote to apathy is… well, more apathy. “It doesn’t make a difference what I do, so I won’t do anything,” goes the thought pattern. By doing nothing, you tacitly uphold the values of the dominant viewpoint. However, by tweeting support and changing your facebook profile to an equal sign, you’re helping to create an atmosphere of acceptance. It isn’t doing nothing; it isn’t purely slacktivism. It’s encouraging and empowering to see your feed flooded with a message of tolerance.

This is especially important when there is still so much intolerance. If we’re quiet, then all anyone hears are those loud-mouth bigots and fuck them.

This is probably one of the most important things I’ve read online: The Meme Hustler. Seriously, a large portion of what I read online quickly disappears from my mind. Evgeny Morozov’s take-down of O’Reilly’s (Tim, not Bill) techno-utopianism is great reading for those of us who defend democracy. This will stay in my mind for a while.

Sitcoms are comforting; that’s their main feature. We develop a connection with the characters, we enjoy the rhythms of the jokes and emotional beats. Pilots are almost universally terrible and usually it takes several episodes before a show finds its sea legs. But then the characters grow on us. Even the characters once grating have now become charming. This comfort eventually entraps the sitcom and it kills itself if the network hasn’t already killed it. A sitcom can only go on so long before the grooves wear out and you’re left with something flat and untextured. The characters become caricatures. The rhythms that were once comforting become too predictable.

There are other deaths though. An event may force a change in the show and then it is no longer what it once was. That counts as death… from a certain point of view. That’s what happened with Community. Dan Harmon was fired, and now the show feels different. It feels off. Sitcoms are about familiarity, and this show lacks some essential element (or elements) that make it feels like Community instead of some zombie show. But what is different? I mean, each season has a distinct feel, and I never really complained about their differentness before the disappearance of Harmon. So, it’s not just that Community feels different, but that its DNA has been fundamentally altered. It no longer feels familiar.

I have one hypothesis I’d like to test. I recently read Harmon on story structure. You can find it here: Story Circle. Everything goes in a circle and there are very specific steps. Old Community adhered to those story beats, and I’m guessing new Community doesn’t. Of course, I’ll have to test this hypothesis. I mean, I think the German might adhere to this structure, but it was still rather low on the laughs. This means I’ll actually have to rewatch season four episodes, which I don’t look forward to.

Other hypotheses: The jokes just aren’t as funny. The types of jokes are different or the pacing is different. The music is different. The editing is different.

I’m guessing there’s a combination of things, but it would feel so much more comforting if the story structure hypothesis turned out to true.

I’m still doing the faces thing, despite never having mentioned it again on this blog or anywhere else. I downgraded it from 500 faces (10 a day within 2 months) to 100 faces (3 faces a day for a month). Perhaps I’ll share them here or on Tumblr. They’re not very good, which makes me reluctant to do so. The drawings are for helping me practice, and I’m not sure that needs to be publicized. A majority of the faces are copied from other sources. I’m still at a phase where I need to copy a lot before I develop my own style. Hopefully that end result will retain something from Chalkboard Manifesto.

In case I never get around to in-depth thoughts, I just wanted to create a record of things I’ve recently finished.

• Safety Not Guaranteed – This was new on Netflix. It had 3 different people from 3 different TV comedies that I like, so I gave it a shot. I told Stevie, “It has April [from Parks and Rec], Nick [from New Girl], and the mid-wife from Mindy.” I don’t have much to say about it. I was expecting a comedy, but I got something different, and I still enjoyed it. I was surprised that Mark Duplass was actually a good actor, since I’ve only seen him in The League and The Mindy Project. Aubrey Plaza was basically April.
• 3 seasons of White Collar – This show is really, really fun. There’s an escapist element with all the caper stuff. There’s also good chemistry between the two leads. They also created some nice emotional stakes in their season-long story-arcs. If you’re a girl or gay guy, there’s a lot of fan-service. The only real flaw is their blatant product placement for Ford. Seriously, there’s one scene where they’re in the car racing somewhere because I think someone was kidnapped, and they take some time to talk about how the car is eco-friendly.
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – The book takes you on an adventure told through the point of view of an autistic child. It does a good job making you empathize with the way he thinks.
• 2 seasons of Mad Men – This show is as good as people say it is. It is slow, so if you don’t like that, don’t watch it.
• All of Parks and Rec – This might be the best sitcom ever. Or it’s second to Arrested Development.
• All of Freaks and Geeks – This show is just as good as Mad Men, if not better. Amazing storytelling.

“As someone who just finished spending the majority of his life in prison, what happened with Legos? They used to be simple. Oh, come on, I know you know what I’m talking about. Legos were simple? Something happened out here while I was inside. Harry Potter Legos, Star Wars Legos, complicated kits, tiny little blocks? I mean, I’m not saying it’s bad, I just want to know what happened.” — Professor Kane, Community

I recently had a circus-themed birthday party. It was lots of fun; pictures will be on facebook soon. A few days later, there was a knock at the door, and when I opened the door, I found a mysterious package. It was labeled “Lego.” At first, I thought it was a mistake, but I checked the label and it was addressed to me. So I immediately — well, actually first I washed the dishes because they were piling up and I’m somehow amazingly patient with surprises — opened it up to see what was inside. There were several boxes of Legos along with a note from my friend who had missed the party. A sweet gesture. She works at a Lego store.

One of the sets was a Star Wars A-wing fighter. This was the first set I opened, and I was confused at first. The bags had numbers on them: 1, 2, 3. A look at the instructions solved the mystery. You opened the bags in order, building only with the pieces in one bag at a time. It made hunting for pieces less hard because you had a smaller set to look through. I remember how I used to dump all the bags into a pile and spend a lot of time searching for particular pieces. I don’t know if I liked it; a small level of difficulty adds to the fun.

The A-wing fighter was the first relatively complicated Lego set I’d built in a while. (Maybe since high school.) It was weird to see such a big change.

I haven’t been as productively as I’d like to be. Part of this traces back to bad habits I developed when I was injured. Pains leads me to engage in distracting activities rather than more intense, productive ones. Back in high school, I once had a headache and cured it by distracting myself with Minesweeper. I guess that association stuck because I still find games a good way to distract me from pain. TV and mindless internet surfing are other bad habits. (Although I’m the least guilty about TV than anything else because it’s my primary way of consuming narrative. Some of the best writers of our generation are in TV. Seriously, I could write a whole blog post about this, so I should stop now.) I stay in bed far too long, which is a perk of working from home, but I think I am more productive in the morning. But now that I’m (mostly) free of pain, I want to crush these habits. That’s why I’m up at 8 in the morning, blogging. I have so many self-improvement projects that got derailed, and I’d like to get them back on track. (Hooray for unmixed metaphors.) Before talking about these potential projects, I’d like to note that things aren’t quite as dire as I make them. I still managed to put out a rather complicated app during this time and host several parties. Alright, time to get off the negative thinking and move on to thinking about projects.

One thing I’d like to get back on track with is learning how to draw. I’m not sure how far this will go. I don’t feel naturally gifted in this area. I was a band geek in high school, and my comic consisted of stick figures, which means my drawing skills haven’t progressed all that much since middle school. I’m also not that visual of a thinker; I don’t imagine pictures when I read. However, I believe I can at least make it from terrible to mediocre. Maybe even further. In college, I liked taking classes in different subjects so that I was exposed to different ways of thinking. Even if I turn out not to be gifted in the area of drawing, I will benefit from thinking a different way. I am also worried about how my comic, because it’s only stick figures, may be limiting my growth, but I think I need to just stop worrying about that and just start drawing. My idea for a project is to do something like “500 faces” where I have to draw 500 faces in two months. March 1 seems like a good start date.

Another area I’d like to improve is blogging. As you can see from the monthly totals on the side, I don’t blog as often as I used to. Every once in a while, there’s a short burst of activity. Then, I disappear again. There are several topics I want to write about — observations about my own life and thoughts on TV shows I’m watching — so maybe this will be a more prolonged burst of activity. Lately I’ve been binging on writing by Film Crit Hulk, and I feel inspired. I’d rather have him and Ta-Nehisi Coates as my models, very thoughtful and empathetic writers, and move on from my previous adoration of Hitchens. I have some talent in polemic, but this kind of writing will feel more honest. That said, I won’t discard polemic. I’m sure that despite this blog becoming more pop culture centric, I’ll still want to touch on torture and other political topics. Topics: Legos, beauty pageants on TV, The Walking Dead game (again), Community season 3, the idea of grading episodes on TV.

The last “thing” is programming. I put thing in scare quotes because it’s more than one thing. I want to improve my skills and market myself. I also want to be involved in more projects than just Sticky Pics. I’m going to start a separate blog for writing about code and for re-posting some of my better entries from here. I could do some programming quizzes and show my thought process. I could also brush up on some fundamentals and post what I learned/re-learned. I’m also teaching a web development class at ATDP this summer (aka AIC), and I can post about that. As for the other projects, I’d like to work on another app, find some contract work, and contribute to an open-source project. It all seems like a lot, so I’ll have to narrow this down.

I recently played The Walking Dead game, and I enjoyed it enough to force Stevie to play it. I played it on iPad, but it’s also available on Xbox. The game takes place in during a zombie apocalypse. You play as Lee Everett, a convicted murderer (this is explained more in depth during the game), and you have to take care of an 8-year-old girl you find who has been hiding out alone. Gameplay is simple enough that anyone can pick it up. Basically, the bulk of it is making choices. You have to make tough moral decisions, which sometimes meaning picking who lives and dies. You choose whether to lie or tell the truth, threaten or reason. You’ll decide how you treat the girl, how you treat everyone else, whose side you take in arguments. Not only do these choices affect how the game goes (to an extent), but they also reveal a lot about you. It’s fun to compare with other players and see why they made certain choices. Interspersed with the decisions are story, some zombie shooting and smashing, and relatively simple puzzles. It’s enough to get your blood pumping and your mind active. The best feature of the game is a compelling story with excellent voice acting. You really get sucked in.

Now, I want to talk about some things in the game, so here’s a fair warning:

******** SPOILER TIME!!! ********

Carley or Doug? I picked Carley because she had a gun and knew how to use it. I thought that was the best skill. But I also thought Doug was brave and was sad I couldn’t save him. Stevie cracked me up when she said she picked Doug because Carley was too stupid to know how to put batteries in a radio. Most people picked Carley because she’s a hot chick with a gun. I wonder how things would change if certain attributes were switched. What if Doug was the attractive one and Carley wasn’t? What if their personalities were the same, but their genders were switched? I’m curious if that would change anything.

Consequences. When I looked online, I saw some disappointed at how the choices you make didn’t affect the game more. That is, you’re stuck to a fairly linear storyline. Some choices don’t have that big a consequence. It does detract from some of the replayability of the game, insofar as you already know what will happen. However, a lot of the decisions are moral ones, like choosing whether to take from the abandoned car or not. Often moral imperatives exist independent of the consequences. Not all decisions have to result in different gameplay for them to be fun or interesting. On a similar note, some people would’ve liked for there to be some type of consequences for your character when you make tough decisions, like deciding to kill Duck. Your character would get more stressed, and it’d build some type of meter. The reasoning is that when you are playing the game through, you can only imagine that making Kenny kill Duck would make him more likely to snap, while your character will never snap. I don’t like that as a possible mechanic since it makes it too game-like. The fun comes from making your decisions based on your relationships with the characters and how you’d really react.

Ben. I hated Ben so much. I dropped him from the tower. I was surprised at how many people decided to save him, considering that he was such a liability. Then again, I’m not sure I would’ve done it if he had begged me to live. I only wish I could’ve never found Larry’s medicine, that ass. (I told Mark that Larry was a racist, haha.) Ben caused the death of so many people. He fucked up at the Motor Inn and so basically caused the deaths of Duck and Katjaa. He also got Brie killed when he took that axe and nearly killed the rest of us. I also really hated him when he ran away from Clementine instead of trying to help her. In his defense, perhaps, he was just a kid, as Chuck and others noted. (I mean, now that I’m 25, I think it’s ridiculous that I considered myself an adult at 18.) But, come on, you need to man up, Ben. It’s a motherfucking zombie apocalypse; grow the fuck up. I also voted for him to get left behind even though Clem wanted him on the boat.

Sticky Pics is now available in the App Store! Go download it now! And give us a good review, please =)

This is my first app. I’m pretty excited to finally see it in the store. Now, on to version 2.

The new season of Community starts tonight. I’m excited, but I’m also worried that the show won’t be as good since Dan Harmon was fired. The “Hunger Deans” thing, from one of the season preview trailers, didn’t look that promising.

But we’ll always at least have seasons 1 through 3, some of the best comedy on TV. (Arrested Development is my favorite sitcom, and Community is second. Though, I do have to re-watch Arrested Development and see if Parks and Rec can overtake it.) Remedial Chaos Theory is my favorite episode of anything ever, including Arrested Development. Season 3 ended with a conclusion that gave us enough closure that we can pretend season 4 never happened, if it comes to that.

That said, I hope season 4 is awesome.

I am literally the King of Scramble.

There’s something about cold mornings. Even when you wake up early, you can never get out of bed.

I was pretty devastated when the 49ers lost the Super Bowl. I thought it’d take a few days to get over it, but I’m already mostly over it.

Yes, yes, I know it’s only a game. I don’t think football is that much fun unless you’re emotionally invested. That’s part of the reason why fantasy football makes games interesting that you otherwise wouldn’t be interested in; you have something to root for. I let myself get caught up in the game for the fun of it. I have no control over it, so I guess you could call it a form of emotional gambling.

So far I’ve only seen my favorite teams lose championships. I watched USC lose to Texas in 2005. That close loss is actually what made me a fan. I don’t feel too bad about rooting for a really good team now, since I’m seeing them suffer through (unjustly harsh) sanctions. Still, since it’s not my alma mater, I’m not a huge fan. That is to say, I don’t like them as much as the 49ers. The 49ers have followed the opposite trajectory: They were a laughingstock, and now they’re great. Jim Harbaugh is a fantastic coach. It’s really cool going into each game expecting a victory.

I spent a bit of time looking at some ESPN articles and scrolling through comments. It’s weird seeing some people think that if it wasn’t for the blackout then the 49ers wouldn’t have been in the game at all. I guess the theory is that the blackout caused a change in momentum. Of course, last week, the 49ers didn’t need a blackout to blank out the Falcons in the 2nd half of the game. They make good adjustments. Plus, if the blackout changed momentum, why did the 49ers punt right afterwards? It’s just something really stupid to think. Oh and I think the absence of Ngata probably changed “momentum” more than anything else.

The refs made a bad call at the end, in my opinion. Overall, though, I don’t think the reffing was too bad. That is, I didn’t feel like the 49ers were cheated. Crabtree should’ve run a better route and never even got locked up with the corner. The Ravens also took advantage of Kap’s inexperience with their blitzing.

People are also criticizing the playcalling at the end. On the one hand, I am really disappointed that Gore didn’t get a carry. When LaMichael James ran for a few yards, I was joking that if it was Gore, he would’ve carried all the tacklers into the end zone. While it is a jest, it is also true that James doesn’t pick up a lot of yards after contact. Gore does. Despite the emergence of Crabtree and Kap, Gore is still the best offensive player on the 49ers. After all he’s done, he kind of deserved a shot to win it. On the other hand, Roman’s playcalling got them in position to take the lead. He also had a great play coming up when the 49ers almost took a delay of game. Chris Brown (of Smart Football) described it as a QB counter on twitter. I am convinced that had they got the play off in time, they would’ve scored on that play. I also thing Kap could’ve run to the pylon instead of throwing the ball away on second down. Greg Roman has installed an awesome, creative offense, so it’s worth the occasional bad series.

Brown also pointed out that the 49ers kicked field goals instead of scoring touchdowns. Sando, of ESPN’s NFC West blog, showed that Alex’s stats were much better than Kap’s in the red zone. Considering that Alex improved a lot since last year, I think Kap can improve next year too. They’ll also really need to work on getting the play off in time. That pissed me off so much, and like I said earlier, I think it cost them a touchdown at the end of the Super Bowl. I think the offense will be better next year, providing Gore still has another year left of tread on his tires.

I am concerned about the defense. Ever since Justin Smith went down, the pass defense … sucked. Granted, Aldon was also ailing, so the drop in the pass rush wasn’t all Justin. Still, Justin Smith is the MVP of the team, and he’s already relatively old. If he can’t get back to form, the 49ers could face a lot of deficits. Their secondary is pretty ordinary. I’ve heard DT/DE is pretty stacked in this draft, so I hope they get someone to eventually take over Justin’s job. They also need an upgrade at safety.

The Seahawks will be good next year too. I’m looking forward to those battles. I wonder how the 49ers will contain Wilson. I think Wilson and Cam Newton will be bargains in fantasy drafts with people looking to take Kap and RGIII before them. I might still overpay for Kap because I’m a homer.

Back to the Super Bowl… I enjoyed the game. It was such an emotional rush, even though there was the letdown at the end. I’m glad my favorite team got to the Super Bowl. They were a good team, and they were lucky to get there… just not quite lucky enough to win. I think the game could’ve gone either way. I’ll enjoy the fact that the ball bounced their way enough times for me to root for my team in the Super Bowl. It’s important to savor moments like that. (After the game, we played some Soul Calibur V. When I won a match, I took the time to savor it, even though we were playing 2 out of 3. It was my first victory of the night, and I had to take a moment to enjoy it.)

I don’t know if they’ll get back any time soon because of the luck thing, but I know with Harbaugh at the helm and Kap at QB, they’ll be in the hunt every year for a while.

Finally, I’m convinced that Alex Smith is good enough to be a starting QB in the NFL. Even up until the playoffs, I wasn’t fully convinced that Kap should be the starter over Alex. I’d see Kap make mistakes and say, “Alex wouldn’t do that.” But then, he’d run for 50 yards or through a laser to Crabtree, and I’d have to admit, “Alex couldn’t do that.” I saw the potential, but I was worried about the downside. The downside cost them at the end (when the play clock almost ran out), but with Kap’s arms and legs, they never would’ve been able to come back from that deficit. After seeing Kap set an NFL record for rushing as a QB, I’m convinced he’s the answer. Alex Smith doesn’t have that elite ability. But he’s smart, emotionally tough, more athletic than you think, and has an ok arm. I think he still has a good career ahead of him. I don’t think he can carry a team, but he can do well when surrounded by the right pieces. He won’t make mistakes. He won’t always make the big plays, but he can make enough small plays to get you a win. He can lead a come from behind victory. I wasn’t a fan for so many years, but he convinced me during that New Orleans playoff game that he was good enough to lead a team. One day, I think Alex Smith will be a great QB coach or offensive coordinator, or maybe even a head coach. I hope he gets traded somewhere and does well, as long as he isn’t playing the Niners.

Update: I forgot to say that the announcers were terrible. At the end, they were saying San Francisco was unprepared for the safety, but missed that everyone was being held. Not that it mattered in terms of the game, since the penalty would’ve resulted in a safety anyway and not restored any time to the clock. However, the announcers could’ve mentioned something.

The Mayan Apocalypse is coming up on December 21, 2012, and I’ve been seeing a lot of stupid crap on the internet. I decided to take some time from complaining about my fantasy football team to debunk some myths about the Mayan Apocalypse.

Myth #1) The Mayan Apocalypse is a myth

Not true. The Mayan Apocalypse is real. The Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012, and it will be the end of the world.

Myth #2) If you prepare, you can survive the coming apocalypse

Also not true. We will all die and there is nothing you can do about it.

The Equalists were eliminated officially in Week 13. I got the win, and I needed at least 1 of two teams to lose, but they both won. It was a team that was 3rd highest in scoring during the regular season; it looked better on paper than it performed in actuality. I mean, I had two top RBs: Alfred Morris and Ray Rice. I had a good QB in Stafford, although he underperformed a lot. My WRs were also decent: I had Demaryius Thomas and Wes Welker. Solid WR1 and WR2. I never got good production out of kicker or defense. My team didn’t struggle that much with injury; losses of Fred Jackson and Antonio Brown shouldn’t have hurt that much. I finished week 14 with a loss. My team was 6-8. Still, I was 5th place. This was the only year I didn’t make the playoffs, which officially makes it my worst season ever. I do have a 5th place finish in another league last year, but that includes a playoff appearance.

The league was a disappointment. We had to replace 4 teams in a 10 team league, and the draft was postponed at the last second. Two of the replacements were good owners. I was happy to introduce Calvin to fantasy football and all its frustrations. I also had my nephew playing, but it was difficult to essentially manage his team for him, so he had a lot of inactive weeks. I think Tommy was swamped between a crazy amount of credits at school and graveyard shifts at work. Overall, we had 4 inactive teams. Hope we can make it more competitive next year.

My other team, Drowned Men, won the last game of the regular season and made it into the playoffs as the 5th seed in a 12 team league. It was also the 2nd highest scoring team. This team improved after trading DHB and Roddy White for RGIII and Demaryius Thomas. I thought Thomas was a WR2 with great upside; instead he morphed into a reliable WR1. So, I improved at QB and stayed the same at WR. Carson Palmer was a top 12 QB, but RGIII’s upside saved me in many games. I thought about trading Palmer at the peak of his value. I saved him in case RGIII got hurt, which he has…

Last week I won my first playoff game, I won despite RGIII getting hurt. My opponent had Adrian Peterson, and I thought my team was done after his 30pt game. Then, the Seattle defense had a monster 45pt game! They destroyed Arizona, who were starting Lindley and Skelton at QB. I had a strong performance from Randall Cobb and Jason Hanson. I started Chris Givens over Stevie Johnson, which was a mistake. Brandon Myers also did nothing for TE. Still, I had enough points to outlast Aaron Hernandez’s two TD game.

I’m proud of this team I made. I created it through that good trade, and by picking off other teams’ castoffs from the waiver wire. Specifically, I spent a waiver claim on Cobb, and nabbed the Seattle Defense. I also replaced my kicker with Jason Hanson, after someone dropped him. He’s been on fire.

Let’s see if I can win this week. The opponent’s team is better, and I don’t have RGIII. I should have an advantage at defense, but Chicago has kept Green Bay scoreless so far. Rodgers missed Cobb on a sure TD.

Time to whine:

I had almost the worst possible outcome this week. Despite having the Drowned Men having the 3rd highest score in a 12-team league, I am going to drop from 5th to 6th place this week. The team with the highest score was my opponent, and the team with the 2nd highest score was the team one spot below me in the rankings.

I get blown out because: BenJarvus Green-Ellis goes over 100 yards and scores a touchdown, making this his one good game this year; Lance Moore has 2 touchdowns on only 3 catches (thanks Raiders defense), which doubles his touchdowns for the year; and Gronk is Gronk.

Going into this week, I was 5th place, but sharing the same 6-4 record as the 2nd place team (and 3rd and 4th). A victory could’ve helped move me up. Now, the 6th place team, which was at 5-5 is going to move ahead of me. We’ll both have the same record, but he’ll have more points since I decided to bench Stevie Johnson for Brian Hartline.

Despite all this, I could have a playoff spot all but locked up if Michael Bush outscores Frank Gore in another game. Yeah, probably not going to happen. All the other teams would be at least 2 games back with two games left to play (and me well ahead in points) if this were to happen. If it doesn’t, there’s one team that could win out and take my spot if I lose both of my next games.

Of course, next week I get to play the number 1 seed. Probably a loss. Luckily my Week 13 game is against the team that would need to win out to take my spot. I still control my own destiny. Well, as much as you can in fantasy football.

***

In my other league, a loss last week and a loss this week has knocked me out of the playoff picture. A win last week would’ve taken me from 5th to 4th. I needed a win this week to maintain any hope. Matthew Stafford underperformed, which about sums up my season. Drafting him kind of ruined my season. It hurts especially since I passed up on my draft-crush Jamaal Charles to draft the QB. In the chatroom during the draft, I was urged to follow my heart. I didn’t, and the fantasy gods have made me pay the price.

This ends a streak of I don’t know how long playoff appearances. Definitely 3 years. I mean, I followed two titles with a #1 seed last year. Probably 4 or 5. Maybe even since I started fantasy football. I don’t know if I’ve never made the playoffs.

***

Oh wait, I recalculated this, and I’m not entirely out of the playoffs. There are 3 games to go, not 2 games. I can still get to 7-6. It’ll take a few miracles, but I’ve had miracles happen before.

I went crazy with Contre Jour a while back and worked my way up to #18 on Game Center. I checked today and I’m still #20 out of over 300,000 players. Not bad.

Now that I have strained groin (and went through a pulled stomach muscle a few years ago), I feel like I can better identify with NFL players. Except instead of playing through intense pain, I sit in bed and surf the internet on my iPad.

Bored, so typing out hypotheticals…

Best case scenario for USC:

USC wins out. Beats Oregon. Crushes an unbeaten Notre Dame. After the Beavers nip the Ducks, USC beats OSU in the Pac 12 Championship.

Florida is upset by Georgia. But the Gators still win the SEC East. Then, they’re upset by FSU. They face an unbeaten Bama and manage to eke out a win after forcing 4 turnovers.

KSU wins out.

USC is ahead of FSU based on strength of schedule (having taken out 1-loss Notre Dame, 1-loss Oregon, and 1-loss Oregon state). The humans also vote them ahead of Alabama after that clunker in the SEC championship game.

The championship is set. USC vs. KSU.

USC crushes an overrated KSU team, as Heisman winner Matt Barkley breaks his own record and throws for 7 TDs.

The SEC cries because they’re left out of the championship game, forever whining about how that would never happen to an SEC defense.

Matt Barkley goes first overall in the draft and has a better NFL career than Andrew Luck.

Worst case scenario:

Texas Tech upsets Kansas State.

USC loses to Arizona while looking ahead to the Ducks. Then Oregon comes to town and shuts out Matt Barkley and the rest of the offense, 49-0.

USC then loses to Notre Dame when the Irish nail a last second 51-yard field goal.

Oregon loses to Oregon State, which goes on to defeat Pac 12 South champion Arizona State.

There are 3 undefeated teams left: Alabama, Oregon State, and Notre Dame. The human voters hate Oregon State, so unbeaten Notre Dame climbs to #2 in the BCS rankings.

Manti Te’o wins the Heisman.

Notre Dame faces Alabama and wins 7-6 after Alabama misses a last second field goal.

Notre Dame wins the BCS Championship and goes into the preseason ranked #1.

Matt Barkley falls like Jimmy Clausen on draft day, but still manages to get drafted by the Browns. He is third on the depth chart after Colt McCoy.

Although I may not have fully articulated it, I think this was the plan: Learn to draw, while continuing to update The Chalkboard Manifesto for a year. So far, I’ve failed on both counts. I haven’t been practicing drawing all that much. I have a lot of excuses, many of them legitimate, but I will not enumerate them here. I’ve also neglected to update my comic for about a month. There’s also a reason for that.

There are two mismatches going on. First, there’s a mismatch between the comics I want to make and the style of The Chalkboard Manifesto. I want to play with multiple panels and draw more expressive faces. I don’t want my comic to be merely a twitter account with stick figures. Or worse, to be like those shitty quotes people post all the time on facebook. I should be telling actual jokes, writing weird things, and conveying emotions. I have a bunch of post-its with jokes that I’ve written, but I don’t know if they accomplish what I want to accomplish. They don’t satisfy me. And I haven’t been able to fill more post-its. There’s a kind of writer’s block going on. I do have some jokes I like, but they are of the longer variety and don’t fit the style. Plus, there’s the second mismatch going on.

The second mismatch is between my skill in drawing and the types of comics I want to draw. So, I do want to draw better comics, but I don’t yet have the skill to make something I’d like to share on the web. My people look flat when I try to draw them. I’m not even sure I should try to make them chalkboard style.

I’m stuck between drawing comics with jokes I’m no longer satisfied with, or putting up comics with drawings I’m not satisfied with. I thought I’d be able to avoid this. I thought I’d still be satisfied with the old jokes, so I could still post comics. In the mean time, I’d be training so I could manage a transition to better comics. But this plan isn’t working. This means I need a new plan.

I guess there are two options. Both options involve getting over my embarrassment and posting my crappy drawings. I’ll let myself evolve in public instead of private. I am a child of the internet age, after all. The choice becomes the vehicle. Do I do this on The Chalkboard Manifesto? Or do I kill my comic and get a fresh start with a new tumblr?

Any opinions?

I have been in pain for so long, that I think I’m graduating from 2 pills to 3 pills. I wonder when I get to be like House and start hallucinating.

(continued from Part I)

11. Procure water bottle from car and duct tape from closet.
12. Create wasp trap and bait it with a concoction that will kill the wasp.
13. Realize that the attempted poison has one ingredient that smells too strong. The laundry soap overpowers the sugar.
14. Say “Oh well fuck it” and put the trap on the windowsill.
15. Wait.
16. Empty out trap.
17. Wash trap thoroughly.
18. Really thoroughly.
19. Try baiting with sugar and water.
20. Wait.
21. Check trap, find it still empty.
22. Search entire room for wasp. This search is futile, of course.
OPTIONAL: Over the course of the day, find a bunch of moths in the rice and a spider in the couch, but still no fucking wasp.
23. Make educated guess that wasp is hiding inside the top bar of the blinds.
24. Sleep in guest bedroom instead of dealing with ninja wasp.
25. Toss and turn because futon is way less comfy than Ikea bed.
26. Think about baiting trap with something new, but don’t, because today was really frustrating and ugh who wants to deal with a stupid wasp.
27. Have girlfriend bang on wasp hiding spot with screwdriver to the flush the wasp out, but it still decides not to grace us with its presence.
28. Question sanity.
29. Sleep in normal room, expecting to find wasp on face in the morning.

To be continued…

Step 1) Discover wasp in bedroom.
Step 2) Trap wasp in room. Escape with iPad, but no pants.
Step 3) Tweet about it.
Step 4) Have the most productive day coding since you started working at home. Avoid the wasp.
Step 5) At night, search entire room for wasp. When there is no trace of the wasp, assume you were mistaken and the wasp was outside the entire time. (After all, it’s not the first time.)
Step 6) Hear wasp in the morning and confirm that it’s inside.
Step 7) Don wasp-catching gear. Put on hoodie and jacket over hoodie. Put on thickest socks and pull over pant legs. Put on shoes. Put on oven mitts.
Step 8) Grab a jar and some cardboard to catch the wasp.
Step 9) Go back in bedroom and discover no sign of wasp.
Step 10) Research wasp traps on the internets.

To be continued…

I do think the SEC has been the best conference for the last 6 years, but I don’t think it’s been as dominant as everyone thinks. Let’s review the last 6 BCS Championships:

2006 – Florida defeats Ohio State <- Doesn’t count, Big 10 sucks (Ted Ginn was hurt, but he can’t catch anyway, so it’s a wash)
2007 – LSU defeats Ohio State <- Doesn’t count, Big 10 sucks
2008 – Florida defeats Oklahoma <- Win
2009 – Alabama defeats Texas <- Colt McCoy injured, so not so dominant
2010 – Auburn defeats Oregon <- Auburn wins on a last second field goal after a fluke non-tackle (that should’ve been called down), and the Oregon defense is better than most of the SEC defenses they went against
2011 – Alabama defeats LSU <- SEC is 1-1 in championship games this year

I only count when game where the SEC dominated. One year, the SEC also lost a game. One year, they beat a team without their superstar QB. One year, they won on a last-second field goal. The other years they beat the Big 10, which doesn’t really count.

So, yes, the SEC is probably the best conference. (Or at least, at the top, they’re great. If you root for a team like Ole Miss, I don’t think you get to have any conference pride.) However, I don’t think the consecutive championships prove that the SEC has been as dominant as people think.