In this example, my daughter had to click a key, and then click a lock. The problem I quickly noticed was this:

When she clicked on the key, the cursor would “pick up” the key. She’d then try to click the lock using the picture of the key rather than the cursor.

I watched her try this a couple of times before saying, “You have to click on the lock using the cursor.”

“I am,” she replied, clicking the button while holding the picture of the key over the picture of the lock.

“No, the cursor,” I said, “The white arrow that you use to click on things.”

“White arrow?” she asked, putting her face up close to the screen.

“The triangle-looking white thing that moves when you move the mouse.”

“I don’t see it,” she said, shaking her head.

“There!” I said, pointing to the screen. “Right. There!”

It’s hard for me to articulate what happened next. She frowned a bit, tilted her head, and then her expression brightened.

“Oh! I see it! I see it!”

It’s my decidedly unscientific impression that this wasn’t simply a language issue, but rather that to a kid who started messing with computers at two, that little arrow was as invisible as the nose on her face.

First of all, let me say at the outset that I realize:

1) Hundreds of people have probably experienced this thing.

2) I know this happened because I was being dumb.

3) I’m sure there’s a web site with tips on how to not have this happen or whatever.

I’m fine with all of that. I just had fun and wanted to share.

If you haven’t played Skyrim yet, ignore this post. You either won’t know what I’m talking about or get spoiled.

I’m really tired, so this will be short.

I keep restarting the game, because I love making characters.

I decided to play a truly bad guy this time. I attacked Hadvar once we got past the archers.

Not only did he not fight back, but my weapons skill went up every time I hit him. I kept attacking him through the rest of the tutorial. By the time we left, I was at level three. It may have been because I kept sneaking.

Alas, when we started down to the circle of stones, a switch got flipped. He started fighting back, hard. I barely killed him, only he didn’t die. He stood up at full health again and killed me.

When I went back to the save point, I started attacking him again, with no problems. Unfortunately, this time the switch flipped even sooner. I ran to the circle of stones, chose the thief stone, and ran out just in time for Hadvar to catch up to me. This time I jumped into the river (yay Argonians!) and made it to Riverrun.

I was able to get the golden claw quest and tan some leather before I had the stupid idea of trying to find the blacksmith in his home. The blacksmith who speaking to fulfills a quest because Hadvar wants you to talk to him?

“We have company,” he said, then Hadvar drew on me and it was BAD.

I tried several fight plans, but none of them worked because everyone in the house attacked me.

Luckily, I can always jump in the river.

I got all the way to Whiterun and was able to pick up the quests from there, but now it’s late. I figure I can sneak back into Riverrun to turn the claw back in later.

At first I thought I’d have to stop playing, but I like the fact that there’s an unstoppable killing machine that wants me dead. I’ve got two other characters for playing the game correctly.

The Argonian was made for being a weird jerk.

I try to imagine I stop existing.

I’m not imagining dying. I’m not imagining my body dead in the ground, or loved ones grieving over me. I’m imagining my brain shutting off. No more thoughts. No waking up somewhere else. Not even darkness, just no more me.

Instead, my mind floods with images. Three dolphins, seen from a great height, fins sticking our of the water. Impossibly long grey humanoid shapes floating among trees, distorted ghost apes. A woman in a simple white dress, eyes red from crying.

It’s like my brain knows what I’m trying and attempts to distract me with the craziest things it can conceive. It works.

The closest I get is still not an idea of myself ending, but an impression of being trapped in a dark cave, in a pool of water. A sense of eternity accompanies the experience.

I actually find it all restful, which is why I keep doing it.

If I ever wink out of this reality, you can assume I’ve accidentally teleported there.

I think about when I was a kid, all of the mocking heaped upon those turning that age. There were black balloons, death-themed cards, good-natured notes reminding the birthday boys and/or girls that they were not only past their prime, but hurtling towards their demise.

I don’t see that so much any more. It may be that as I close in on the age, my peer group ages with me and so I don’t notice how far I am separated from youth. However, it also seems as though we’ve all taken an unwritten vow not to ape our parents in this fashion.

I’m sure there are plenty of people who keep the “forty is old” industry limping along. A sad insurance company office party may do it to be fun, or a group of people incapable of doing anything non-ironically may do it out of a hatred for all things bygone.

Regardless, I hope my friends and i meet our forties without such trappings. We’re old, but there’s no need to call it out. We can pretend to hold it at bay forever. I think I did myself a favor by keeping really horrible care of myself in my thirties. Between that and my sickly childhood, forty may see me at my healthiest.

That is if the world is still recognizable after 2012. I have to make it clear that I’m aware of the possibility lest one of you feel the need to school me. I’m aware of the impossibility, too, lest you seek to influence me the other way.

I’m getting too old to worry about how old I am.

Still, that’s a year and a half of waiting. I’m currently using it to offset the, “they grow up so fast!” effect of my five-year-old…no, almost SIX! Wow, they…hrm. Anyway, my daughter will be almost seven when it comes out.

Once it comes out, I hope to do a tour, make more books, and become the full-time writer/illustrator I was apparently wired to be. Again, though, a year and a half is a long time.

So, while the book does need my attention now and then, I have a day job. I wake up around 5:30am on weekdays. Three hours of my waking day is spent commuting to and from work on transportation not conducive to illustration. I spend about eight hours working, and when I get home I have about three hours with my daughter before her bedtime. After chores I get maybe an hour to work on a drawing before it’s time for me to go to bed.

The weekends are no better with regard to time. I wake up and am with my daughter all day, and then go to bed around the same time she does. I end up with about an hour of work time.

I work fast, so this often is enough time to fulfill a request from my editor. Some nights, however, my “work” consists of opening an art program, staring at it, and deciding that sleep is better than trying to work.

What I’m basically saying is that I haven’t played Skyrim yet.

Is it any good?

I was recently impressed by Bill Willingham’s excellent self-interview about Fables vs. Once Upon a Time. If you don’t know about it, see here:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=35737

If he can be so charitable, why can’t I? I thought this to myself, and then realized I’ve improved.

It started when I noticed but didn’t freak out about the similarities between the ending of this:

https://plus.google.com/111633929484999254830/posts/FuZkdagG7uN

And the ending of something I has made years earlier:

https://plus.google.com/111633929484999254830/posts/cBnTNmX2Vtj

In my twenties, I would have gone nuts. Literally bonkers. I didn’t realize things like this could happen by chance.

Most recently, I was reading the hilarious “That Is All” and noticed a section on magicians similar in tone to my “Arcane Secrets” comics, written a few years ago:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sgnp/sets/72157614684066241/

Yet, I’m positive Mr. Hodgman hasn’t seen them. In fact, if anything his works influenced me to write them.

As a younger man, I was preoccupied with the idea of people stealing my ideas. I used to think that the idea was the most valuable thing one can possess creatively.

As I’ve gotten older, my perspective has flipped. I can have ideas all day long. It’s making them manifest as objects that’s the real issue. It’s not thinking of the joke, it’s telling it. It’s not thinking of the cartoon, it’s drawing it.

You can’t hold on to your ideas. They must be shared, or have the potential to be shared.

The other thing I’ve noticed, mostly from Twitter Hashtag games, is that original ideas aren’t very original.

Here’s an explanation, if you don’t know how a Hashtag game works:

1) A concept is put after a pound sign like #CowDisasterFilms

2) You post a Tweet on Twitter that consists of an example of that concept, followed by the Hashtag, like:

The Mooseiden Adventure #CowDisasterFilms

3) Someone accuses you of stealing their Tweet, because they posted The Mooseiden Adventure at the same time as you.

I usually avoid step three by doing a search before I post, because it’s funny how the good jokes are often the most obvious.

Here’s the interesting thing, though.

Before Twitter, I would have even considered the idea of Cow Disaster Films my intellectual property. “It was my idea to pair cows and disaster films! Back off!”

Now, we invite others to play, even relish it when we see our ideas being used by many people. As such, they have become objects, however fleeting. They’re shared mental constructs, and often funnier than individual thoughts in our heads.

That’s not to say plagiarism is dead, or that it doesn’t suck when it happens. However, I now recognize that two people can have a similar idea independent of each other. When see someone I admire doing something similar to me, I am more apt to feel good that we’re on the same wavelength than to suspect them of stealing my thoughts.

It makes the world a much more pleasant place.

I’d love to do an experiment, but I can’t bring myself to attempt it.

Today was a huge news day. Some laws that may mess things up for a lot of people were passed. Someone some people liked and some people didn’t like died. Some people who some people like and other people didn’t like argued about things.

I’m wondering what would happen if I didn’t know any of it.

The news not only informs me of stuff that happens, it makes me think my world is much larger than it is. It allows me to be angry at the opinion of people I haven’t met about event’s I’ve never witnesses in places I’ve never been.

Fiction does the same thing, but at least it has the decency to remain completely fabricated. On that note, I’ve only got one episode of Terriers left. I enjoyed it immensely. The characters are “real” to me, but I know they’re not real. I almost don’t want it to end.

The news is like the biggest TV show ever and just like any show, if you ignore it you’ll still find out plenty from your friends.

My experiment would be to go out of my way not to hear any news for a week. I would do it they way my wife actively avoids trailers and discussions of movies she wants to see. If someone says, “Did you read the article…” or “Did you see the thing about…” I would bolt.

Would I be happier? I was fine wearing my headphones on the bus until the article about it making me a target for thieves. I still wear them, but now I’m nervous. Implanted fear.

It’s like the news gives us our scripts for our national dialogue, and our favorite sources give us our roles.

I say “news,” but in that I’m lumping blogs and Twitter as well. The “information about current events” engine I can’t escape.

Not that escaping would necessarily be a good thing. I would fear it. Participating in this national dialogue gives me much needed small talk fodder.

It’s one of the few things helping me pass as human.

Still, maybe some day me and my wife and kid will take a vacation in a yurt away from everything and come back with no knowledge of a week’s worth of current events.

Just my luck, it’d be a week so horrible no one would speak of it, and we’d be forever separated.

Tempting, still.

So, here’s my suggestion, if you’re contemplating doing the same thing: try to switch focus to your real life. Nothing in print or recorded. You’ll probably never escape all news, but let it roll off you. You’ll get a daily dose of disasters that have or will happen. People will die. People will make you mad.

Keep doing stuff.

Keep making art, going to shows, playing with your kids, whatever it is. I was taught we need to be stoic for the people going through troubles. Forget it. Have compassion, but save your stoicism for when the bad things happen to you and yours. The idea that you can’t be happy when there is something horrible going on in the world runs up against a problem: there’s always something horrible going on. You’ll find it if you look. Be an oasis
of positive action. Help out if you can, but don’t dwell on the horrible to feed on negative feelings. Don’t seek out those who disagree with you just to fight, because you’ll always find a willing partner. Move forward, be present for those around you, and keep doing stuff.

It’s how we’ll all stumble ahead.

10) I only got through half of Unit 2 of Pimsler’s Basic Hindi on my walk home.

9) An odd sense of awe that I didn’t need my gloves in the afternoon, even though I needed them in the morning.

8) The realization that the way to get myself to eat vegetables and salad is to not allow myself to eat anything else, and the further realization that this technique cannot be applied to everyone, as it would be cruel and unusual.

7) A mixture of sadness and relief when I exhausted the supply of “Dark Shadows” on Netflix.

6) Happiness that I taught my daughter to put her gloves in her pockets.

5) A teacher slowly closing the lid that goes over the piano keys while my daughter was playing them at a potluck.

4) I laughed out loud reading “That Is All” on the bus, twice. I can’t remember which part.

3) My daughter was interested in the character descriptions of Finn Family Moomintroll, but not the book, and I actually wondered if it was because it was the second in the series.

2) I was struck by the callback genius of Hodgman’s POFH. I didn’t laugh out loud. It went beyond laughter.

1) I ate a Brussels sprout and couldn’t remember if I had one before.

Vocal translation software.

This vocal translation software doesn’t learn so I am trying to learn instead. It’s sort of working.

I’m going to bed very early these days. I get up very early to go to work and therefore early bedtime makes easy for me to do so.

I hate setting alarm it freaks me out and normally interrupts dreams. Of course I meant to say setting an alarm. One of the things this vocal software drops his articles.

So right now I am in bed and my daughter is being read to buy my wife. Of course my wife is reading to my daughter. My daughter is not being read in order to purchase my wife.

I used to work nights which would mean that I would wake up and go to work and it would all be in total space darkness while everyone else was sleeping. I simply meant to say “total darkness” not space darkness although spaceguard miss would be cool.

Sigh.

So I don’t get to do a lot of the stuff that I used to do when staying up late like watching TV. I’m not playing videogames. I’m not doing any of that.

I am lying here in the dark it’s only by the screen talking to you and having my words translated heifer so poorly into this blog entry.

“Translated heifer?” I have no idea what I even said to make that come up.

Selling all of you are probably awake except that I know people all of the world now so he must be sleeping in the way thanks for listing.

So much accidental poetry.

Thank you for allowing me to speak to you through this flog medium. Again also if you like it I definitely will try to type something sometime.

I meant to say “although some of you like it” but everything seems to get rewritten.

Thank you for allowing me to experiment with you.

I’m getting a lot better at this. All it takes is a little perseverance and the ability to talk slowly and sort of what you’re doing. Delete last space sentence.

Okay I spoke too soon. Still, let’s talk about TV shows.

Now let’s just say that we’re talking about G game of T bro. Come on. Seriously? Game of thrones.

‘s boiler alerts all capitals

SPORLEDER alert

One more time. SPOILER alerts.

What a main character dies, I’m not even going to say which one, there is a little bit of a shuffling of the show. And when the shuffling happens, people could get upset. Why? Because everyone likes things the way they are.

That’s not say the change is not embraced by everyone. It is so proper of for example things can change a lot. However in the soap opera things also change very slowly.

Parentheses sorry voice recognition is sometimes hard and parentheses

You got to be kidding me.

Regardless of how you feel about changes in the soap opera you don’t notice the changes are happening because you’re given time to ingest. The problem people have with dramas that have very very very crazy changes happen quickly, is that people don’t have time to a Jott’s. Obviously that was supposed to be a Jost. I just. Address. I just. Spell a DJUST I just a DJ USC. Gerber you guys know the word I’m trying to say right? Gerber? Growl.

If you stuck with it this far the basic thing is this: riders have a chance to do something incredible when you take a favorite character of play.

Trying again: writers have a chance to do something incredible when you take a favorite character out of play.

if you can trust the riders a major shakeup in the cast is always a great thing. the writer’s trust the Rangers. Shucks, trust the riders to I suppose.

I am not worried about game of thrones or any other show getting rid of a character people love.

I am definitely not worried about voice recognition software taking the place of typing.

Oh sure you do that one perfectly half?

I’m never satisfied with you.

Not you, dear reader. I’m talking to the voice recognition software.

Thanks for reading. Hopefully I’ll get to a keyboard sometime soon.