Starting today The Blarg has been revived and will feature new content every Tuesday. This content will be a series of rotating articles written by four members of The Spoils staff, including myself.

If you’re at all interested in checking out the Blarg, or just want an idea of what is in store for its future, check out my introductory post here.

I happened to catch a few minutes of some news program that must run during the lunch hours. The particular segment I caught was some attractive woman doing a quick rundown of some headlines, appropriating about thirty seconds to informing her viewers of the news and then giving her own opinion on the subject. The first headline I happened to catch in its entirety was regarding Facebook.

As I’m sure most of you know, a little while back Facebook implemented this new Timeline interface for profiles. Nobody had to switch to it and people generally didn’t like it, but it was a new option. According to this NBC news program, a few weeks from now all Facebook users will be forced to switch to this new Timeline interface, whether they like it or not.

I don’t really care at all about Facebook’s Timeline or what it does with its users. I use Facebook and I certainly don’t like every change they have made. The fact of the matter, though, is that I have nothing to do with those decisions and there is nothing I can do it about it short of deleting my account. I’m definitely not a fan of Timeline but I’m sure I’ll get use to it.

My issue is that Facebook changing its user interface classifies as news. I understand that almost the entire world uses Facebook and that the information is relevant to pretty much everyone. But is it really news? Does it really deserve a minute or two on a news program? I’m extremely curious to know what this Facebook news edged out as far as importance or relevance goes.

I’m not going to get into a giant rant about the media and news programs as that is meant for another day when I’m focused on that particular topic. Instead, I’m using this story to segue into a piece I wrote during my senior year at St. John’s University.

The piece was written for a Fiction Creative Writing class and our instruction was to write a monologue in the voice of another person, real or fictitious. I chose to write in the voice of Spider Jerusalem, the main character of Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan, one of my absolute favorite comic series. The piece kind of exemplifies and shares some of the thoughts I have about the media and the government and how people see both entities, and this recent Facebook news bit reminded me of the piece.

I hope you all enjoy it. If you like it, or thought I did a terrible job imitating Spider Jerusalem, please let me know.

I’ll Give You An Interview
Jesus Christ! Are you trying to give me a heart attack? No, don’t apologize to me, just walk away. I don’t care who sent you. Did you not hear what I just said? I said walk away. This can only end badly for you. Didn’t you see what I did to the President?

Yes, I will do that to you, I don’t care who you work for. I’ll turn the setting to “prolapse” and fire away before you have a chance to even ask me one question. Fine, call the police, they’ll never take me alive and they know it. I’ll burn that precinct to the ground before they can judge me for anything, just you watch.

You’re a pushy little bastard aren’t you? I guess that’s why they sent you. They figured I’d take a liking to you because you don’t back down. Well guess what? I hate you, I truly do, but I’ll allow you to walk with me while I go get my breakfast. The moment we get back here, though, I’ll sick my cat on you if you haven’t disappeared.

No, put that notepad away. I’m going to do all the talking and you’re going to do all the listening. All those questions you would ask me are bullshit anyway. Who cares what my favorite color is? I don’t even care what my favorite color is, nor do I care what my favorite food, movie, or sexual position is. Actually, scratch that, sexual position is important but considering you will never see it I refuse to discuss it.

WATCH WHERE YOU’RE GOING, ASSHOLE! Did you see that? That jerk nearly just killed us both without a moment’s hesitation. That is probably what I hate most about this city. Nobody gives a damn about anything but themselves anymore. There is no such thing as human nature and good will, it died with the past. All there is now are jerks and liars who grab a hold of the little authority they have and squeeze it to their hearts desire, pissing and shitting on everyone else for no reason at all.

I mean come on, look at these streets. This city is literally buried in garbage because those schmucks are on strike because the company just recently allowed Transients to work for them. Who cares if Transients work at the landfills or on the trucks? Just because they have bigger eyes, odd hair, and gills doesn’t make them any different from you or me, yet there are riots and fires over that bullshit. With all of this technology and time you would have thought we’d move past petty things like civil rights but nope, we’re still stuck here wallowing in our own filth, literally, because everyone is out for themselves.

And you know what the saddest part of it all is? Nobody cares. People just feed themselves on the lies and bullshit that the government and media shits out as long as it is what they want to hear. Taxes can go down and people will be happy because the “people in charge” won’t tell you that the government could lower taxes because they recently received a lot of income from overseas terrorist organizations in exchange for military weapons. What, you didn’t know that? Of course you didn’t, the piece of shit rag paper you work for decided that that story wasn’t news and opted to post about that new porn video instead. Because that’s news.

Look at these people! They’re just sitting around, enjoying this gorgeous morning without a care in the world. I envy them in some respects, but the truth is I hate them all and I hate this city. All of these people can sit here and enjoy their breakfast in the park because our government is killing innocents and raping children and the people don’t care. They should, and you know what? I’m going to tell them.

YOU PEOPLE DON’T KNOW WHAT THE TRUTH IS! IT’S THERE, JUST UNDER THEIR BULLSHIT, BUT YOU NEVER LOOK!

That’s what I hate most about this fucking city – lies are truth and the truth is obsolete. They see me screaming at them and don’t even care. All they see is a freak with glasses spitting the truth at them but they’ve been so conditioned they don’t even recognize it. I hate them all. I really do. And I hate you.

You’re just a part of it! You’re going to go back to your editor and make up some bullshit about how I gave you a great interview and not a single word I’ve said is going to see print. You know why? Because this isn’t news. This is the truth. The cold hard truth. And you can’t stand it, not one word of it. You make me sick.

You know what? Get the hell away from me. We’re done. Tell your editor that I told him he can go fuck himself for ruining my perfect morning.

Weight Loss: Much to my own surprise I am doing very well with my dieting and weight loss. On the first day of my new regime I weighed in at a whopping 330 pounds. That was exactly two weeks ago, and I am proud to say that today I weighted in at 311 pounds. 19 pounds in two weeks is rather high and probably unhealthy, but there are two things to consider with that number: 1)I weighed in not long after I had my lunch that first day, so the 330 number was probably skewed to be higher than it should have been, and 2) everyone I have talked to/everything I have read has mentioned that you drop pounds pretty quickly when you first start a diet, then it levels out. This makes sense as my weigh in last week was 314, so that means I lost 3 pounds over the course of the week. That’s higher than the 2 pounds I want to lose a week, which is nice, but I definitely need to make sure I stay in the healthy weight loss range.

I also haven’t started exercising yet, which is something I need to add to my regime. My plan is to start walking more (no reason to drive to Grasshopper’s every weekend when it’s only 8 blocks away) and get myself back on my bike. I do need a new seat as the one I currently have is not comfortable for long rides, so I’ll have to put aside some spare cash for that. Also, once my mom and I tidy up the basement a bit, we are going to be putting an elliptical machine down there for her and I, plus some sort of weight set for my brother. I lost a good amount of weight when I was going to the gym regularly, so getting a machine in the basement should definitely help me reach my goals.

Reading: I set a schedule for myself to have the first four A Song of Ice and Fire novels finished by the end of March and i am on track to do that. I finished A Game of Thrones over a week ago and am just under 400 pages into A Clash of Kings. They are really great novels and if you haven’t read them I definitely recommend them.

Upcoming Project #1: Over the next few months I will be working with writer and artist Steve Walters as a proofreader and editor of his first published work, Suburban Folklore, as well as his upcoming projects. Steve is a great talent, both in writing and art, and it is a real privilege to be working with him on his pieces. I was a big fan of Suburban Folklore when it was first released years ago as individual issues, so I am really fortunate to have been brought on to work on it for it’s re-release. It ls also extremely exciting to be working with Steve on his upcoming projects, so be sure to check out his page (linked above, and on the Links page) for more details on his upcoming projects.

Upcoming Project #2:As some of you may know, I recently left my position as Judge of Great Justice for The Spoils. I could go into detail about why I left the company, but I fear some Spoils players and Spoils employees may read this, so I do not want to spread any information that should probably not be shared. Instead, I will just let you all know of my new project with the game. Instead of being in charge of the rules, judge program, and rules design, I will be the new content manager of their website. This means that I will be posting regular articles on their homepage, as well as revitalizing their Web Blarg with four new article series. I will post more about this when I have official dates, but be on the lookout for things to come.

Revitalized Project:A lot of people seemed to enjoy my contributions to my cousins website, Diannara.com Unfortunately for the site, my cousin has been very busy with work and life and hasn’t been able to keep up with the site as much as he liked, and neither have I. Expect to see the site revitalized in a few weeks, though, with regular content being posted by me and hopefully a few other writers.

New New Year’s Resolution: Everyone knows that I’m a big fan of hockey and the New York Rangers. I played a lot of hockey when I was younger, but stopped due finding my gaming hobbies as well as getting out of shape. Recently, though, I’ve had an urge to start playing again. I haven’t played a game of hockey in years, nor have I skated in quite some time, so one of my new goals for this year is to get back on the ice and remember how to skate. I wasn’t the best skater around, but I certainly want to get back to it and maybe pick up hockey again.

Hopefully my next post will not just be another update regarding my New Year’s Resolutions and I can get back to posting about writing and similar topics. If I don’t, be sure to find me and give me a hard slap in the face.

All of the resolutions I’m about to relay to you all are most certainly goals I hope to achieve throughout the tenure of 2012. None of them are particularly specific to being “New Year” goals, but instead I’m choosing the start of 2012 as my not so arbitrary start point for these goals.

Lose Weight – This is probably the only thing I have ever used as a New Year’s Resolution in the past, but this year I am hoping that I am much more serious about it than I have been in past years. As of this morning I weighted a whopping 330 pounds, and my current goal is to get that down to 260 lbs by my birthday, August 18th. That is 70 lbs over the next 7 and a half months, a high goal that I am going to do my best to achieve. After my birthday I am going to reassess my situation and see what my goal weight will be by the end of the year. I have no idea how low my weight can get considering my height and build but by then I hope I’ll have a much better idea.

Also, to clarify, I do not consider the number that corresponds to my weight to be the most prominent feature of this goal. The 260 goal is one that I feel is reasonable for my height and build and I will likely feel much better about my health and physique when I hit that number, which is more important to me than the number itself. I don’t even fret too much about the 330 I currently weigh as most people are shocked to hear that number anyway. Who knows, maybe my scale is broken. Regardless, losing weight is primarily about me feeling better and getting into shape so that I can enjoy life the way I want to, not to reach some arbitrary numbers set by the public because that is what is deemed good looking or appropriate.

Read 12+ Books – Ever since I graduated the time I spend reading recreationally has diminished year after year. I want to rectify that this year by reading at least one book a month. I’m going to start by finishing A Game of Thrones this week and then moving on to A Clash of Kings as my January book. After that I’ll finish up what is currently published of the A Song of Ice and Fire series and then move on to other works.

Self/E-Publish It’s a Love Story – There really isn’t much to be said about this. I simply want to do it and will do it, its only a matter of time and effort. Hopefully you all will be seeing it sooner rather than later in 2012, but it is coming.

Finish Punched – Similar to above, this one is pretty self-explanatory. I have been writing this book in my head for years (with some on paper) and it is really just a matter of sitting down and doing it.

Finish organizing my cards – Ever since my house burned down, a lot of my cards have been in disarray due to some them being ruined and/or the binders containing them were ruined. As such, I have a lot of my cards in boxes and they need to be bindered. I did a lot while living in the rental house, but there are still 6 or 7 boxes left. I think I can get it all done in a year, and if I can’t, that is really sad.

Finish organizing my comics – Pretty much the same idea as the cards (and for the same reason) but with my comics. I have an awesome plan for how to organize them, but again, its a matter of getting down there and doing it. I also need to build the shelving unit that will hold all the boxes, but that’s a day job once I get the materials together.

Do considerable work on the Ecto-1T – I can’t really put any goal on this one as it is very dependent on weather, income, and when my dad is available to help me with it. The Ecto-1T is not a project I can do alone and it requires a lot of materials, so there is no real way for me to be able to accurately predict how much of the project I will accomplish by the end of the year. At this point, if I could have the interior completely finished (it’s almost there as is), the rust sealed, the car sanded, the car painted, and all the materials for the roof rack together, I would consider that a very successful year.

I think that about rounds out all of the goals I have for the year. If I think of more I’ll be sure to update this post and let you all know about it, but for now I think these are the primary resolutions for 2012.

I have been a huge fan of Christmas for as long as I can remember. My parents and family always made Christmas a wonderful spectacle and it really stuck with me. From the moment Thanksgiving dinner is over my entire body is stuffed with Christmas spirit. I have so much Christmas spirit that I created my own custom red hoodie that resembles Santa’s outfit, which I only wear between Thanksgiving and Christmas of each year, and I wear it every day. I even go to great lengths to dedicate my car with lights, ornaments, a tree, candy canes, and the like, the spread Christmas cheer as I drive around the neighborhood.

This year, on top of my usual traditions, I decided to bring Facebook into the fold. I woke up on Christmas morning, opened gifts with my family, ate our traditional breakfast, and then sat down the computer with one goal in mind. I decided that on this Christmas I would start a new tradition, one that would see me write “Merry Christmas!” on the wall of each and everyone on of my Facebook friends.

It seems, however, that Facebook is not a fan of that.

Before I continue, I must make it clear that I do not think that Facebook has anything against Christmas. This is (probably) not the case, and I will make no argument that Facebook has any feeling one way or another about Christmas. It just so happens that the information I am about to share with you was revealed to me due to my new Christmas tradition. With that explained, I will continue on with my story.

To accomplish my task in an efficient and speedy manner I created a system in which I would open 20 tabs at once, each tab containing a friend on my friend’s list. I would paste “Merry Christmas!” onto their wall, click post, then move on to the next tab. After the batch of 20 friends is completed I’d open another 20 tabs and continue the process until I wished a “Merry Christmas!” to each of my 203 Facebook friends.

After roughly 80 friends, however, Facebook decided they were mad at me. When I clicked “post” on one friend’s wall a warning message came up that read:

“Warning: Please Slow Down
It looks like you’re using this feature in a way it wasn’t meant to be used. Please slow down, or you could be blocked from using it.”

This warning was accompanied by a captcha that I was required to fill out or the “Merry Christmas!” I had just posted would be removed. Needless to say I completed the captcha and then “slowed down” so that the message came up only a few more times. In the end I wished a “Merry Christmas!” to my 203 friends and nobody seemed to be hurt, and I definitely didn’t seem to piss Facebook off enough as I was not blocked from using that particular feature.

I did realize later, though, that the blocking I almost received would have been extremely frustrating. It would not have been because I Wouldn’t have been able to finish my task at hand, but instead that Facebook would be limiting how much I was allowed to say to however many people I wanted to say it to.

Some of you might be thinking, “Well, Terence, if you just post ‘Merry Christmas!’ on your wall, then everyone will see it in their news feed.” This, however, is not necessarily true. It is possible that some of my friends have particular news feed settings (like I do) and maybe my post wouldn’t pop up on there. It is also possible that some of my friends would not sign on to Facebook for hours or days after I posted on my wall, putting that particular post way down on the bottom of their news feed, likely to never be seen. I also have some friends who have upward of 500 friends on their friends list (I have one friend who is 3 shy of 1,500) and even if they were on their news feeds at the exact moment I posted there still would be a chance that they didn’t see it.

In short, I wanted each and every one of my friends to know that I wished them a Merry Christmas, and posting on their individual walls was the best way to do it. Facebook, however, attempted to deter me from that with captchas and the threat of blocking my use of the wall features. I’m still wondering what magical number or rate of posts I would have had to hit to get myself blocked.

From Facebook’s standpoint, I can understand why they wouldn’t want people using their wall feature that way. Maybe some computer genius out there would find a way to create a program that posts the same thing on each of his/her friends’ walls, opening up new ways of marketing/advertising that most people would hate. I can definitely see why Facebook would want to prevent that. My concern, though, arises from the fact that their effort to prevent something such as this almost prevented me from sharing something with my friends.

To understand my plight I need to explain that I choose my Facebook friends carefully. If you are part of my 203 friends on Facebook, you are someone that has significantly impacted my life. Maybe you’re family. Maybe you’re a girl I had a crush on. Maybe you’re one of the guys from Grasshopper’s. Maybe we went to St. John’s together. Maybe we worked together. Regardless of how I met those 203 people or how often I currently see them, those 203 people are important to me in some way and I want to keep in touch with them. In today’s world Facebook is a pretty solid way to keep in touch with people, so it only makes sense that I use it in that manner.

With that in mind, it becomes clear that these 203 people are people that matter to me. None of them are people I met at a bar, learned their name, and added that night when I got home, never to speak to them again. None of them are people I’ve only had one conversation with. They’re all people that if they called and said, “Hey Terence, want to grab something to eat?” I’d say yes assuming I hadn’t already ate or had prior engagements. If I were to get married, I’d want these 203 people to know. These are people that consider part of my life, no matter how big or small that role is.

I know that some people, if not most, don’t use Facebook in this manner. Many people I know, including members of the 203, have over 500 friends on Facebook. I personally don’t understand it but I’m not them and they aren’t my accounts. These types of people probably post their significant events/information on their wall and expect that the people who need/want to see it will. I just don’t buy into that. If I want someone to know something, I’m going to tell them directly. If its a couple of people, I’ll tag them all in a post or send a message. General wall posts are, for me, either personal musings or simply thoughts that I’m sharing with whoever is willing to read them.

If there is something that I want everybody to know, like the fact that I am thinking of them and wishing them a Merry Christmas, I’m likely to do what I did the other day and attempt to post it on each and every wall of the 203. It bothers me that Facebook tried to prevent that, even if the reasoning behind it is benign. Facebook started as, and continues to be, a social networking site. It is labeled and sold as a way for people to stay in touch with friends and share their lives with one another through pictures, notes, statuses, etc. If that is the case, why was I almost prevented from sharing my favorite holiday with my 203 friends?

I’m sure there are some of you reading this who will think that I am making something of nothing, and in the picture I definitely am. For me, though, my life and friendships are extremely important and I find it odd and intrusive that a website, that is labeled as the leading social networking site, has reasons and means to limit how I conduct those relationships. I understand that it is their site and I am a registered user their under their terms, but why have a system in place that effectively prevents exactly what the site is trying to do? What is the magic number of consecutive posts that I can make? Is that number somehow suggestive of how many “true” friends I’m supposed to have? If so, who are they to decide that?

Random Post Script: My repeated mentions of “the 203″ kept making me think of “The 198″ stories that Marvel did a few years ago after House of M. I don’t think there is any significance to that, but I think it is a funny anecdote.

I did, however, find the time to write up a new tournament report for Diannara.com. In the report I cover a recent Battlegrounds Tournament held at Grasshopper’s Comics and detail each of my matches. To read the full report and my thoughts on the matches, click here.

Next week I hope to get back on schedule with a few posts. I will likely e writing up another tournament report for Diannara as I am expecting to be playing in another event when this post is published. I also have a lot to say about Frank Miller’s recent comments regarding the Occupy Wall Street movement, so expect see a piece about why I think he should keep his mouth shut, or at the very least choose his words more carefully.

Until then, though, be sure to enjoy this Autumn weather while getting yourself ready for the upcoming holiday season.

The concluding thoughts of Superman during the last two pages turn are as follows:

“The living of life has a way of making the important a memory. And while I construct a new Fortress of Solitude, built surrounded by life instead of ice…I think about my life, about my loves, about my home, about my fight, and about you. I will always be there to save you. Because I am Superman. Believe that, until the end.
The end.
I wonder, when it comes….who will save me?”

Anyone I know personally who reads this will quickly understand why I like the ending so much despite the fact that it is in a Superman comic. It is because these few lines actually take the time to remind us that Superman is a person, that there is something beneath that giant red “S” on hist chest. He isn’t just Superman, he is Clark Kent as well. Heck, he even goes deeper than Clark Kent if you look to his Kryptonian name/identity, Kal-El. There is an identity to Superman, one that is much more detailed than big muscles and x-ray vision. The few lines quoted above do more to demonstrate that fact than four years of comics that came before it. It showed that these characters could have their own personal identity crisis, a concept that I feel has become lose in comics.

Come to think of it, Identity Crisis is a perfect example of the point I’m trying to make.

Identity Crisis, while setting up the events of the DC Universe for the five plus years that followed it, truly was a landmark in the modern age of comics, especially for DC. It brought the titanic characters (Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Green Lantern, etc.) that we see only as heroes and never as people back down to the level of the common man. We were reminded that the heroes have families, friends, and various other loved ones that populate their lives but have been forgotten in the pages of comics.

Marvel tended not to have this problem and for that reason it has always been my favorite of the two publishers. But even at the time Identity Crisis came out Marvel was falling into the “larger than life” slump that DC has been in for years. For the better part of the past decade the characters we love have essentially forgotten their secret identities and have been in costume non-stop. Both the Marvel Universe and DC Universe have been torn asunder by a string of cross-overs and epic events requiring all of the title characters to team up or be involved in some way.

This leads me to ask, when do the heroes get to be people again?

When do Reed and Sue get to take the kids on a camping trip?

When does Clark actually get to write something for the Daily Planet?

When does Spider-Man get to go home and watch a movie with Mary Jane? In that regard, yes, I know that Peter and MJ aren’t together anymore, but I’m choosing to ignore everything from “One More Day” onward.

Naturally I understand that the comic industry is a business and needs to keep readership high so that sales continue to grow and the revenue needs to keep coming. But when does it stop? It was supposed to end with Siege and Final Crisis but since then we’ve had Blackest Night, Brightest Day, Flashpoint, Fear Itself, Manifest Destiny, and Schism.

What happened to the comics that told the stories of people?

Don’t get me wrong, I love big crossovers with splash pages and a climactic issue seven as much as the next comic book geek, but those aren’t the best stories. The best stories are the ones that remember that the heroes we love have a life. Stories like J. Michael Stracyznski’s run on The Amazing Spider-Man, Grant Morrison’s run on Batman, Brian Azzarello’s Superman, and even Brian Michael Bendis’ Daredevil. These are the stories that need to be told, not the ones with the big splashes that I mentioned above.

I’m not going to go as far as to say that crossovers need to stop or that none of them are good as both statements aren’t true. Big events, for the most part, generate a lot of interest in comics, sell extremely well, and get some readers interested in characters they may not have been interested in before. There have also been quite a few good ones in recent memory, including, but not limited too, Civil War, House of M, and Silent War. The problem arises, however, when the big events never stop and the characters are not allowed to return to their own world.

I remember a time when, only about ten years ago, when there were a slew of amazing titles that had nothing to do with big events. On top of the ones i mentioned above there was Grant Morrison’s New X-Men, Bruce Jones’ Incredible Hulk, and Jeph Loeb’s Batman. Nobody cared that Spider-Man didn’t interact with Captain America because the stories of the individual characters were so good. Not only that, but they were stories that featured Peter Parker and Steve Rogers, not just their costumed alter ego.

In essence, I think modern creators have forgotten that these people, these heroes, are people before they are super heroes. Batman wakes up as Bruce Wayne in the morning, Superman wakes up as Clark, and Spider-Man wakes up as Peter Parker. If you’ve been reading comics these past ten years you’d think that Peter, Bruce, and Clark didn’t even exist and that all of these heroes slept in their costumes. I sincerely hope they don’t, and I would really like to read some stories in which we can see them walking the streets and being real people.

When do the heroes get to take a break? Who is going to save them?

If you’re interested in how my “Trust the Fungus” deck performed, be sure to read the article here.

I’m finally, seriously, going to go ahead with publishing my novel. The first step in doing so, though, is finally admitting to myself that I’m not going to publish it as a novel. The work is a memoir, one covering about four years of my life, that I had always planned as releasing as a novel. I planned on changing some of the names and places just to make it a bit less obvious, but anyone who knows me would be able to figure it out rather quickly.

The way I see it now, there really is no point in doing that as I would just be lying to myself and my readers by trying to pass the work off as fiction. It’s a true story, all of it, and it’s a wonderful story. That’s the reason I wrote it. I thought it was a story worth chronicling and preserving in writing, and as a writer I had the means to do it. Who knows, maybe revealing that it is a true story will add some impact to it for my readers. I can only hope that will be the case.

So this is it. This is my formal, official announcement, that I will be pursuing the publication of my currently unpublished memoir, It’s a Love Story. I am likely to follow the same route that my good friend J. Elliot Riley did with his novel, Dangerous Clay, and publish the book for e-readers with a print on demand version, but of course that is all speculation at this point.

At some point in the future I’ll post a few glimpses of the memoir for you all to read as previews. Hopefully they’ll generate some feedback and interest in the work.

Come to think of it, It’s a Love Story: A Memoir has a nice ring to it.