some good in the world

Look! I inspired a stranger to be proud of his geek tendencies! It's the happiest day of my life, ever!





PS: Damage bonues for missile weapons are based on a character's dexterity modifier as opposed to strength modifier.

   [ POSTED BY Steve Johnson @ 5:07 PM ] |

I just wanted to tell you how great Griffith Park is.

The park, five times the size of Central Park, was founded in 1882 by Colonel Griffith Jenkins Griffith. He came to America from Wales with nothing in his pockets and built a fortune in mining. Pretty heartwarming story, right, except Grifith wasn't a loveable immigrant made-good. He was a total bastard. His contemporaries described him as a pompous gasbag who loved to drink, torment his wife and generally act like he was better than everyone.

By the beginning of the 1900s, Griffith went mad. He started to believe all kinds of weird crap. He thought he could talk to the dead, and that his wife was in cahoots with the pope. He thought she and the Holy Father were working together to poison him.

In 1903 in a hotel in Santa Monica, Griffith ordered his wife to kneel and pray. She complied, and he pulled out a revolver and shot her in the face. But she didn't die. She lept out the window, landed on an awning and crawled to safety. Wifey lost an eye, and Griffith went to jail.

He was pretty rich, so he only served 6 years in San Quentin. He was more humble after his release, but still, when he died, no one came to his funeral.

Before his sensational, media-circus trial, Griffith had some pretty elaborate plans for his park, including a 20-story tower at the top of Griffith Peak (since renamed Mount Hollywood) and a railway to connect the observatory and the Hollywood sign. Los Angeles wanted no part of his money after the trial, though, so the development was halted. Thank god; the park is nice how it is.

It features a cool train museum, a zoo, a carousel, the Autry Western Heritage museum. Not only can you visit the cave frequented by Robot Monster,

if you know where to look, you can also tour an eerie, abandoned zoo featuring overgrown paths and graffiti-covered cages.


On weekends, the park's picnic areas and barbeque pits are taken over by families enjoying the weather, and there's even a hippy drum circle over by the carousel.

Most of the park's paved roads are closed to auto traffic but remain open to bicycles and hikers. Supposedly, they closed the roads because Griffith Park is a hot-spot for gay cruising, so the idea was to create less isolated areas for gay people to make friends.

Their loss is my gain. The mountain roads without cars equal good biking with little fear of death. The steepness of the hills means even the bicycle and pedestrian traffic is kept to a minimum, so it's possible to find a close approximation of solitude while right in the middle of Hollywood.

Robot Monster isn't the only wildlife, either. This morning I saw a deer and two coyotes on my daily bike ride.

   [ POSTED BY Steve Johnson @ 11:50 PM ] |

Great Personal Tragedy (tm)

When you keep a stupid blog filled with jokes and nonsense about the gay, meaningless crap you do in Los Angeles, it's hard to know exactly how to proceed in the face of Great Personal Tragedy(tm).

I'm a cynical person who routinely dismisses all the things people take comfort in, so it's hard to know exactly how to mentally "frame the debate" in times of Great Personal Tragedy(tm). You can't comfort yourself by being all, "Everything happens for a reason!" or "God doesn't close a door without opening a window!" when you think all that is bullshit, right?

I think life doesn't really teach us anything. I think lessons are for children. I think, in the final reel, we're just these animals who live on this planet and desperately try to keep from starving to death.

It's not very comforting, and I wish I had some belief in a grand design, but I just don't.

Not in some teenager sort of way, like, "I'll show you! I'll become an atheist!" But more like, "I've really thought about this stuff a lot, and it just doesn't seem very likely that there's a whole to all that nonsense."

   [ POSTED BY Steve Johnson @ 7:11 PM ] |