“No giant two-headed hermaphrodite demon unicorn avatars were allowed. Not on school grounds , anyway.”

- Ready Player One

One thing that I promised myself that I would do in 2012 was Read. More. Books.

Seeing as I spend an inordinate amount of time waste-deep (…and I mean that) in Douthatnania and McArglebargle and Halperinanity, I thought I owed it to myself to occasionally get some  joy out of reading what I actually want to read. Last year was kind of a lost year with not too much memorable or enjoyable (with the exceptions of James Wolcott’s Lucking Out, Brian Kellow’s Pauline Kael: A Life In The Dark, Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers and Tom Shone’s In The Rooms which I just finished the other day). The fact that I probably acquired about five books last year for every one that I actually got around to reading means I have quite the backlog to get through.

I was fortunate to start off the year with Ready Player One which is basically Charlie And The Chocolate Factory for gaming geeks and eighties nerds. I’ll  let  author Ernest Cline explain it all to you from over on John Scalzi’s blog:

I spent a lot of time thinking about the future of the internet and how it might evolve. I’d grown up reading science fiction novels like Neuromancer and Snow Crash, and I was still a recovering EverQuest addict. To me, it seemed inevitable that the Internet would eventually evolve into a three-dimensional space, a sprawling virtual reality that was part MMO and part social networking playground. But unlike in movies like The Matrix, I didn’t think humans would become unwitting prisoners inside this new virtual universe. Instead they would retreat into it knowingly and willingly, en masse, to escape the ever-growing troubles of the real world. Which doesn’t seem too different from the way we use the Internet now.

I was imagining what sort of person would create a virtual world on that scale, and then I remembered Warren Robinett’s first Easter egg. And that was when I got my Big Idea.

What if an eccentric video game designer, sort of a cross between Howard Hughes and Richard Garriott, created that ubiquitous virtual reality platform? And what if he decided to find a worthy successor for his company by turning his last will and testament into the greatest video game Easter Egg hunt of all time? It would be an epic treasure hunt, in a simulated universe that contained thousands of virtual planets. And those planets could be modeled after fictional worlds from other novels, films, comic books, and TV shows. It would be the ultimate storyteller’s sandbox.

The concept grabbed hold of me immediately and never really let go. I even had the perfect title, Ready Player One, taken from the message that used to appear on old coin-op video games. I began to fill notebook after notebook with ideas for scenes and characters, scribbling as fast as I could.

And when I started to ponder what sort of puzzles my eccentric video game designer would leave behind for his potential successors to try and solve, that was when I got my second Big Idea.

They tell first-time novelists to “write what you know.” Well, what I know about is being a huge geek.  I grew up consuming mass quantities of science fiction novels, Dungeons and Dragons supplements, comic books, movies, and video games. And I never really outgrew any of it. Like most geeks of my generation, I still adore all of the pop culture of my youth.

What if the puzzles left behind by my eccentric billionaire nerd tested people’s knowledge of all the pop culture stuff he loved? It felt like a very geek thing to do.  What could be a better power trip for a massive nerd than using your vast fortune to blackmail the entire world into studying and treasuring all of your favorite pop culture icons?  It would be the character’s ultimate tribute to his obsessions, and would immortalize them for all time.

If you’re interested (and how could you not be?) boingboing has a downloadable pdf file of the first three chapters. It’s pure unadulterated fun to read. Highly recommended.

Hey!

Over here!

First Random 10 of the ye—

Hey! I’m talking to you…. over here. Excuse me….

Random ten-ish song thingy..

Cherry Blossom Love – The Wailin’ Jennies
Asleep On A Sunbeam – Belle & Sebastian
Too Many Miracles – Badly Drawn Boy
Pussy Liquor – Rob Zombie
Sol Tapado – Thievery Corporation
Going Fetal – Eels
White Folks Blood – House Of Freaks
Hurt – Johnny Cash
Down Home With Homey – Wynton Marsalis Septet (Live At The Village Vanguard)
Chasing Heather Crazy – Guided By Voices
and… Do Miss America – Ryan Adams

I’d try talking about some other things right here but I can see  that I would probably be wasting my time.

You guys…

“I’m Running for Office, for Pete’s Sake! I Can’t Have Illegals!”
-Mitt Romney, criticizing his genealogy

In the ultimate flip-flop, Mitt Romney will soon be announcing that he is not an exxxxtreeeeme white guy, but is instead … a Mexican:

Heading into the New Hampshire primary, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has a strong lead in the polls as he continues his effort to become the Republican nominee challenging President Obama in the fall. That would mean, of course, that the 64-year-old Romney would be closer to The White House than any Mormon ever has been.

If Romney secures the nomination, he would also be the first presidential nominee whose father was born in Mexico.

It’s a little-known fact that there’s a whole branch of Mitt Romney’s family living south of the border, including his second cousin Leighton Romney, and about 40 other relatives descended from religious pioneers who first traveled to Mexico 125 years ago. These days, the Romneys of Mexico enjoy pleasant and productive lives in two remaining settlements: Colonia Juarez and Colonia Dublan, just 175 miles south of the border.

“He’s got a great pioneer heritage starting with people that crossed the plains going from Illinois to Utah, and then on from Utah down to Mexico,” Leighton Romney told NBC’s Mike Taibbi in an interview to air Monday night on ‘Rock Center with Brian Williams.’ “So there’s a great heritage there of people that had to fight for what they believed in and for people that had to travel to different places and learn different things. I think there’s a vast amount of experience that he could draw from there.”

Viva!

In his public life Mitt Romney has said and written little about his ancestors’ history in Mexico. In one oft-repeated quote he said his family left the U.S. for Mexico to escape persecution for their religious beliefs.

In fact, Romney’s great grandfather, Miles Park Romney, led that first expedition to escape not persecution but prosecution for polygamy, or what Mormons called ‘plural marriage.’ After polygamy ended, the family remained in Mexico.

For those keeping score at home, “plural marriage” is like “opposite marriage” but one louder; not that it matters because it is every bit as bad as gayhomofag marriage if you ask Rick Santorum. Needless to say Mitt will soon be referring to himself as ‘El Mitt-O’ as is the custom of white people when confronted with the mysteries of that crazy moon-man language that we call Spanish.