Well, I’ve been working on this story for awhile now – with a few fairly hefty breaks for real life (work, weddings, wildfires) in there. The novel isn’t quite done, but I’ve gotten enough inquiries that I thought I’d open up the first chapter to the public and see what you folks think. I’m still in the process of figuring out the best strategy for publishing, but hopefully 2012 will be the year for SuperEgo Games!

I’ve taken my experiences working in the game industry and adapted them into a novel. As such, no real people or places are depicted. Even the fictional me is fake. You can tell by how good-looking he is. I did this for a few reasons:

• One of the people in my true stories (no names, people!) has a slightly litigious reputation. I’d rather avoid even the slightest potential for a lawsuit.
• There’s really no advantage to using real people as characters. None of the people that make these stories great are A-list celebrities or anything.
• There are very real disadvantages to doing it, however. As much as I like almost everyone (actually all but one person) that helped inspire these stories, no one is perfect – and writing naturally focuses on the things that are funniest or most absurd. In that harsh light, everyone looks like an asshole. We all make mistakes (me… constantly) – and there’s just no reason why some random screwup or wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time or personality conflict or whatever should be tied to real people.

At the end of the day, it was the last one that really made up my mind. The idea of one of my friends getting disqualified for a job by some intrepid background checker because of some random story I wrote is not cool. I’m writing SuperEgo Games to entertain – and, if you were there for any of these stories, to make you nostalgia hard – but I definitely don’t want to punish people who were just doing their jobs.

Even though the story is fictionalized, I did draw QUITE heavily from my experiences. The products and people might be different, but the story is true. I’ve met a lot of amazing people and gone on a lot of crazy adventures – SuperEgo Games is my attempt to capture at least the first decade of that experience.

If we’ve worked together – or even if you’ve just heard me holding court at a random bar – you’ll probably recognize the cast of characters, from the roguish Tom Moxie to swarthy international man of mystery Aaron Hook to the heartless, gin soaked Arlo Cole, who became the bane of my decade.

SuperEgo’s characters are amalgams of real people with a little spice of my own thrown in. While some characters are more amalgamated than others, I hope that no one is too deeply offended by the characters that may or may not resemble them. If you do find yourself offended, you can always take solace in the fact that virtually no one except you knows anything about this.

Also, you all have way bigger penises than the characters in SuperEgo Games. Theirs are… tiny.

Enough talk. I hope you like it. Let me know what you think – omeed@omeeddariani.com!

Click here for an exclusive preview of SuperEgo Games!

Well, it’s been a few months since I updated the blog. I’ve been working on some interesting projects – and they got the best of my time. Try as I did, sitting down to blog just wasn’t something I could squeeze in. As proof, here are a few of the topics I half-started:

• Why Triple Town is the best game I’ve played in a while
• Oh – Hey My Wedding Was Kind of Awesome!
• How much I like Lando Calrissian
• The true story of Greenface
• My top ten Simpsons episodes (truly, this was a bridge too far!)
• The “Youtube party” or “Why Apple TV is insanely good.”

Now, I’ve freed up a little more time – so I’m going to get back into it! Also, I’ll be offering an exclusive look at the first pages of SuperEgo Games!

In the meantime, I thought I would give shout outs to two things that are occupying far too much of my time – and another two that are likely to do so in the near future.

First up – you may remember my post about the board game Ascension. Aside from a few binges of Puerto Rico (hey – I’m getting married there – can’t blame me for that!), Ascension has been constantly next to the gaming table since its release. They’ve released a new expansion, which I encourage you to pick up. But the thing that has been taking up the majority of my time is their iOS application. At $4.99, it may seem like a costly purchase but… trust me. I’ve already logged countless hours playing it. Kudos to them for creating an AI that is competitive but, happily, never first picks MY Arbiter of the Precipice. If you want to fight, my Game Center name is GreenfaceBranklin.

Second – Altitude had a free weekend on Steam recently. It’s a small, indie game that is Mac compatible. I downloaded it just for laughs, but it is a great, great experience. Altitude is a 2-d customizable dogfighting game with insanely addictive gameplay. My favorite mode is called “Ball” and it’s basically just Quidditch with airplanes. You’ll find me ruling the skies as Greenface.

Third – A couple of good friends recently launched a gaming/entertainment news site called GameHead.com. While it’s just getting started, it’s clearly got good DNA. Also, the team behind it is hardworking and top-notch. I’ve bookmarked it (and so should you!).

Finally – A good friend of mine named Rian Fike just started fundraising for a game project over at kickstarter. The game is called Ocho and his site does a better job explaining why you should get involved than I ever could. He’s a passionate art teacher and all-around great guy. I have no doubt that is game is going to be wonderful and can’t wait for my (autographed) copy to arrive. Have a look and kick a couple of bucks his way.

That’s it for today. Have fun!

It’s been bumming me out that I haven’t written a blog in so long. The good news is the reason: I’ve been absolutely smashing words down on paper… making good progress across several projects.

Writing that makes me think that perhaps I should talk more frequently about work in progress, especially since my final products take so damn long to get done. On SuperEgo, things are moving along swimmingly. Or, at least, moving along.  Right now, it’s still be shopped (no passes yet… just a glacial pace deciding at some of the major publishers). Still looking good… just waiting for good news from my agent.

While I’ve been waiting for that to resolve, I’ve been working on my second novel, which is currently titled Space Jesus vs. Earth Moses. It’s satirical sci-fi… less funny than Hitchhiker, more funny than Blade Runner.

Here’s the deal:

There are three people trying to save humanity from extinction.

One is the drug-addict serial killer CEO of Coca-Cola.

One is an immortal fugitive with no concept of time.

One is a spacemonster Alien pretending to be Jesus Christ.

I’ve gotten the first few chapters written and am in the process of doing revisions. I’m very excited about the story so far. Lots of great jokes to be made and a core of interesting philosophical questions to explore though a set of fairly unusual characters.

Truth be told, science fiction has never been my favorite genre. I find, however, that a lot of my ideas fall into the category, so I’ve been thinking a lot about why it doesn’t really do it for me. I think it’s mostly because the barrier to entry can be a little… intense. It’s always the future, so things have changed. Fundamentally, there has to be some new fictional science-y stuff you’re discussing. This can lead to a lot of technical mumbo jumbo – which I don’t really enjoy.

So, for Space Jesus, I’m just going to be honest about that and write a story that doesn’t require you to take detailed notes as you go along. Hopefully, my utter apathy will make for great entertainment!

Here’s a little excerpt about it from the first draft of Space Jesus:

I know what you’re thinking: this was supposed to be the future. Why the hell was Moe setting up alarms on his iPhone and playing Farmville on Facebook and walking to the grocery store? Where was his jetpack. Why wasn’t he at least riding a robot? I’ll explain.

Hard science fiction – the kind where everything’s florgons and krorpbogs and you need a fucking space dictionary just to get through the first page – is not really my scene, man. This isn’t a story about how neat it would be if we all rode around on krorpbogs and could use our florgons to pleasure each other sexually. This is a story about people. Sure, some of them may live forever and others of them might be space aliens, are just regular people who are living on my slightly modified version of planet earth.

So how’s that for a blog update? Oh, also, here’s the full fake cover for Space Jesus vs. Earth Moses.

Full credit (or blame) goes to Jenn (who has been making remarkable progress on her own blog, don’t you think?).

As always, feel free to hit me up: omeed@omeeddariani.com. Or follow me on Twitter!

It’s pretty fun – and a good way to steal her delicious recipes!

Check it out!

Obviously, I’m not super happy about this. I can’t remember the last time someone actually called me a retard. Probably like seventh grade.

Though I disagree with many of their policies, most of the TSA agents I’ve dealt with have been professional, even apologetic for reaching into your pants to locate your, um, rocket.

Full details of the altercation that almost was are below in the letter I’ll be submitting to the TSA, Reddit, my congressfolk, and whatever media contacts I can get my hands on. If you have any superpowers in the field of publicity, I’d love a little help.

If you are selected for a backscatter machine, I urge you to file a complaint and let them know that you are unhappy with the unreasonable searches the TSA seems more and more comfortable inflicting on innocent travelers.

As a reminder, there have been no successful incidents of terrorism on American flights since September 11th 2001, despite the TSA’s inability to prevent passengers from bringing loaded weapons on airplanes. Thanks to reinforced cockpit doors, airplanes are now virtually impervious to hijackings. In almost ten years of terrorism-free living, the “terrorism threat level” has never dipped below ELEVATED. At the same time, our freedom to do basic things, such as bringing our own water onto airplanes, have been eliminated. Even more than that, we seem to be perfectly willing to cede our more and more of our liberties in the name of security.

What are we being protected from?

If you have a moment, please file a complaint with the TSA over their procedures. The online complaint form can be found here.

Thanks,

Omeed.

***

Here begins the letter I’m sending around. I’ll be adding an introduction paragraph for non-TSA audiences:

Hello,

I’m sure you’re receiving lots of complaints these days, so I thought I’d summarize my circumstance before going into the longer version of the story.

On January 3rd, 2011 at the Tulsa airport one of your security managers (Noah Willoughby) twice called me a “retard,” later denied it, and then insisted he only said I was acting “retarded.” In response to conversation from me, he lost his temper and, multiple times, appeared physically threatening to me. At times, I felt certain that he was going to assault me. He did this while I was attempting to fill out a complaint form and answering his questions politely.

As you know, vast swaths of people consider the term “retard” every bit as offensive as “motherfucker” or “nigger.” It’s not a term to be used in polite company and certainly not be used while representing the United States of America at an international airport. Moreover, physical intimidation should never be practiced by TSA agents against the general public.

This type of behavior is unacceptable from an employee of the US government, and even worse considering that he is setting a terrible, terrible example for his employees. I will be publicizing this story as much as possible, sending a copy to each of my state and national representatives as well as resources in the media and the ACLU. I write to you in the hope that you will take corrective action against this agent and, more importantly, work to create an environment where this sort of cruel bullying of the general public is no longer tolerated.

More detail:

My fiancee and I were flying out of Tulsa, January 3rd, 2011, on a 6:45AM flight, going home after an extended stay for the holidays and my father’s heart surgery. The security lines seemed normal for the first major travel window of the day. The line moved fast through the ID check but bogged down at the X-ray machines. I believe this is because the agents were attempting to use a single backscatter machine to scan everyone from two X-ray lines. Occasionally, they would rush a few people through the metal detector to relieve the pressure, barely even separating them out. I was one of those herded through the metal detector. My fiancee was not.

My fiancee and I both have concerns about the technology used in the backscatter machines causing cancer, so she opted out of the machine screening. I cleared through the rest of security, including an additional bag check, very quickly. I waited at the edge of the security area, but could not see my fiancee. She later reported that there were two female agents standing right next to her, but neither would take her for additional screening, instead forcing her to wait by the metal detector for five to ten minutes. I assume this was some sort of “punishment” for choosing not to go through the typical process, especially since many people around us seemed to be late for their flights. In the meantime, her bag and coat cleared the X-ray machine. A female agent was holding them impatiently and, I assume inferring that I was waiting for the person related to those bags, offered to let me take them. I’m not an expert on your policies, but I don’t believe that an agent should give someone’s personal effects to an unfamiliar person while their owner is going through additional screening. If the person you were screening happened to be the first terrorist you’ve ever caught, you wouldn’t want their bags to make it onto the plane and, in the more likely scenario where the person is just a regular traveler, you could be handing thousands of dollars in personal property over to a thief. I declined to take my fiancee’s effects until the agents were finished with their pat down. This visibly annoyed the female agent, who rolled her eyes at me and muttered something I did not hear.

Whenever I or anyone in my party is subject to the backscatter technology or the extremely invasive opt out pat down, I file an official complaint if I have time. I do this because I disagree with the policy and would like to believe that you are listening to the people you are protecting. When I asked the female agent for a complaint form, she pointed me to a spare desk tucked away, outside of the screening area. At other airports I’ve visited, the complaint forms are available at a well-lit desk manned by an agent who, in my experience, has always been very professional and helpful. The fact that the complaint forms sat abandoned outside of the screening area makes me think that the TSA agents at the Tulsa airport don’t care about comments from the public, be they positive or negative.

As I walked around to the complaint area, the female agent notified her manager, who came outside of the screening area to confront me. He did not approach me with a customer service mentality. He seemed less interested in addressing my concerns than quelling my forthcoming dissent. Without a greeting of any sort, he asked me, in an annoyed tone of voice, “So what’s your problem?” I answered that I don’t agree with the TSA’s current search policies and that they are in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Since this is one of the most common complaints and since there’s nothing the individual agents on the ground can do about it, I assume that they are instructed not to argue with travelers. Instead of trying to settle the issue professionally, he chose to escalate the situation, telling me that I was wrong and that the Fourth Amendment “agency clause” fully covers TSA searches. He became even more annoyed when I suggested that he was probably not qualified to comment on matters of Constitutional protection and that I would like to finish filling out my complaint form. I wasn’t looking for a debate with the security manager – I was just answering his question. He continued berating me, saying that the pat down was optional and my fiancee chose it. I responded that we have health concerns about the backscatter machines’ potential to cause cancer. Since we won’t volunteer to increase our risk of a life-threatening condition, we have no choice but to take the pat down, which we have both faced multiple times.

He became extremely upset – his face flushed red. He just stood there for twenty seconds or so, angrily shaking his head, with his fists clenched. If we’d been having this conversation in a bar, I think he would have punched me. I was afraid for my physical safety. I asked him what he was thinking – and, after a delay of a few seconds, in which I assume he was carefully choosing his words, he replied, “I’m thinking that you’re a retard.” I asked him to clarify if he just called me a retard. He said “yes. You’re a retard.”

At this point, having been called an extremely offensive name by the person in charge of security, I became upset. Still, I maintained my composure as best I could. I told him that I was offended and asked him for his name. I think he realized that he shouldn’t have called me a retard, so he tried to change the subject. I repeated my request for his name three more times as he tried to change the subject. When he realized I wasn’t going to engage him on any other subject until I got identification from him, he relented and flipped his security badge over, allowing me to see his name finally. I grabbed another complaint form to write it down. He informed me that I could just write it on the form I’d already begun filling out. This made me suspicious that he would likely attempt to throw the complaints out after I left, so I made sure he knew I was taking it with me. He became extremely agitated at this and again looked like he might hit me.

After writing down his name, I tried to explain that it was absolutely not appropriate to call anyone a retard, especially not in a customer service situation such as this. He then backpedaled and claimed that he had never called me a retard, instead claiming that I was “being retarded.” He seemed to think that telling someone that they’re “being retarded” was perfectly acceptable. I explained to him that it absolutely was not appropriate either, but, also, that was not what he said. He left abruptly, mumbling something I did not hear.

I continued waiting for the other agents to finish the pat down of my fiancee. As I did, I had a conversation with another agent, who I assume was supposed to be watching the backscatter output, but instead was facing in the opposite direction looking out at the airplanes. Perhaps he was on a break. I have no idea. He was perfectly pleasant. He explained to me that a lot of people who come through the security are crazy and cause all kinds of problems. Again, I wasn’t looking for an argument, but here was another one of your agents expressing blanket contempt for the people he’s supposed to be protecting. I asked him if he was surprised that his boss had called me a retard. He smiled as if he agreed and said “he said you were being a retard, not that you were a retard.” Like a good employee, he was already trying to cover for his boss’ mistake.

At this point, my fiancee finally was released and came over to where I was standing. She seemed surprised to find complaint forms, as the agent who had been holding her items told her that they had run out of them. As she filled out her complaint form, the backscatter agent asked me where I was flying. Having grown up in the south, I recognized his motive immediately. He wanted to see if I was from one of “them blue states” like California where the liberals and hippies come from. Obviously, I was too much of an asshole to be from Oklahoma. When I told him we were flying to Boston, he kind of smirked, satisfied that we were just “effete liberals” and not “real Americans.” While my fiancee was finishing up her complaint, I saw Noah wandering around aimlessly, obviously still upset about our encounter. When he saw me, he came up to me with very threatening posture, putting his body between me and my departure gates. He was a little too close for a polite conversation and it made me uncomfortable again. I can only assume his goal was to physically intimidate me again. I asked him if he needed something. He growled “you looked like you wanted to say something else to me,” common words for someone looking to start a fight.

Trying to lighten the mood, I jokingly asked if he’d come over to apologize. He kind of laughed and asked me “for what?” “For calling me a retard.” He refused to apologize or admit that he had done anything wrong, again maintaining that he said I was “acting retarded,” as if “acting retarded” was somehow different than “being retarded.” He then offered me a generic halfhearted apology, something to the affect of: “I’m sorry if you felt like anything I said was somehow offensive.” I explained the difference between that statement and an honest apology, then gave him an example of a sincere apology (“I’m sorry for calling you a retard”). He again refused and made a rude comment I can’t remember, then moved out of our way so my fiancee and I could get to our flight.

Needless to say, I was shocked by this encounter. It’s rare that I interact with someone as rude as Noah in the normal course of my life. That this man is out there making decisions affecting thousands of travelers each day is frightening to me. In retrospect, I probably should have called the police or tried to get ahold of someone with more authority at the airport, but our flight was boarding and, I’m sure you can understand, all we wanted was to get the hell out of there.

Noah’s and my opinions of the TSA and its policies are irrelevant to this complaint. Even though I disagree with some of your policies, I’ve generally had positive experiences with your agents. Noah was acting as a very poor representative of your agency. I hate to think that agents like Noah are out there abusing their authority and discouraging other Americans from traveling. My fiancee and I have scaled back our use of airlines to the absolute minimum and are seriously considering changing future plans to avoid airports. No one deserves to be called names or be physically intimidated for trying to voice an opinion. No one deserves to be subjected to security procedures that contribute to cancer. No one deserves to have his or her genitals groped in the name of security.

As an American, I am ashamed that I even have to write this letter. Please find a better way to protect us. These policies are hurting America.

Thanks for your time. I can be reached at omeeddariani@gmail.com if you wish to discuss this incident further. I’m happy to cooperate in any way that would be helpful in resolving this.

I hope you had a nice holiday,

Omeed.

***

When I was in high school, my dad owned a little ghetto-corner grocery store in Roanoke, Virginia. The parallels between my dad and Apu from the Simpsons are too numerous to ignore. Both hail from an area of the globe that is often reduced to “the brown people who make the science or work at 7-11.” Obviously, they both have master’s degrees in science. Both, inexplicably, abandoned lucrative careers (in my father’s case, as a successful dairy microbiologist) to run the local Kwik-e-Mart, though in the case of my father’s, it was simply called “Dave’s.”

***

One of the first joys of moving back to the east coast was reacquainting myself with all the foods I’d been denied by California. Sure, you can roll up to In-N-Out anytime you like, but where are the Dunkin’ Donuts? Where are the Tasty Kakes? You got some Andy Capp’s Hot Fries?

Most relevant to this story though is the question: My friends, where do you keep the Utz potato chips? When I was a kid, I loved Utz sour cream and onion chips.

Utz is a completely forgettable brand. I know this, because I had completely forgotten them until I was walking through my local Market Basket (like Ralph’s, but filled with psychopaths). Utz mostly makes potato chips and pretzels and are often “down there by the Pringles,” as far away from the reputable brands as possible. Their chips are pretty much the cheapest things you find and come in every flavor you could ever desire, plus one more. In that moment, staring at the bargain basement salty snack racks, it all came flooding back. My eyes darted down to the bottom shelf, the place where the worst, most unspeakable flavors would be. Of course the crabs were there, staring back at me with their eyeless and horrible bodies. I shuddered involuntarily. Back in high school, I’d eaten more than my fair share of Utz potato chips. Many of them were sour cream and onion. But some were crab. And these crabs, these were my greatest enemy.

***

Packaged foods have very aggressive expiration dates. Most foods, especially processed ones, will last essentially forever, despite their nancy little “best by x” warnings. I know this because my dad was a food scientist before he began selling junk food.

***

Dave’s little grocery store was the only storefront brave enough to keep in the relatively mean streets of Roanoke’s second most-infamous projects. If you were ghetto-bound and wanted something to eat, your options were to pick something up at Dave’s or to hoof it “over the bridge” to another, slightly larger establishment. It was miles to the closest Food Lion. Because the neighborhood was poor, my dad made his money carrying all sorts of tier 2 groceries. No one was buying Dr. Pepper – Dr. Thunder was cheaper. No one was drinking Billy Dee’s 40s… not when Olde English was 15 cents cheaper. You get the idea. As you can imagine, Utz potato chips were a big seller.

***

The coolest thing about Utz, from the perspective of fifteen year old me, was that they didn’t care what you did with their expired stock. If the chips didn’t sell, they’d just throw them out. That is, unless you wanted them. My dad, for whom the breadth and depth of the word “frugal” was scarcely sufficient, brought them home by the boxful.

The first time this happened, we viewed it as a perktacular miracle beyond all reckoning. It seemed that my house had become home to something vastly more important than me or my little sister: a never-ending fountain of Utz potato chips. Bags and bags! Bags forever! Crunchy potato treats until the end of time! Maybe this was just the first of the myriad comps we had coming as owners of a reputable grocery concern. My mind spun. Today, potato chips. Tomorrow, Kit Kats. Perhaps M&Ms were only days away.

For a few days it was paradise. Sour cream and onion! Salt and pepper! BBQ! The good times, it seemed, would never end. But, after the few bags of our favorite flavors were consumed, we were forced to face a grim reality: a few outliers aside, we were getting the most unpopular flavors of the most unpopular brand of chips available. Salt and vinegar. Super cayenne pepper. And, the worst flavor of all: crab.

Crab. I’ll say it again: crab. Fucking Crab. They came in the ugliest bag imaginable – orange and beige. Two ugly crabs flanked the bag, seemingly guarding the chips. We wouldn’t even open the bags. Disgusted, we just left them in the bottom of the box and silently hoped that dad would come home, like some sort of potato chip Santa Claus, with another box of palatable-sounding chips.

***

We learned, over time, to pace our chip consumption. We learned that some flavors we thought were terrible could be eaten as long as you were eating them together with a sandwich. We would inform each other. “Hey ma,” I’d say.

***

The super spicy ones, for example, were perfectly acceptable, even pleasant, with a ham and cheese sandwich, provided you slathered the thing with mayonnaise. We had formed an understanding. We were a confederation organized around the principle of not eating the crab chips. We rationed the good bags. We fought our way through the ones we didn’t like. But no one, no one, would touch those crab chips.

***

After a few months of this, the box was overflowing with crab chips. The doom we’d seen on the horizon was here – and there was no more denying it. Every month, my dad would bring home more bags of the least popular flavors than anything else. It was only a matter of time before we hit lean times – by which I mean times when the good people who inhabited Roanoke’s second-worst slum, in what I can only assume were boom times, bought up every last bag of Utz potato chips at Dave’s grocery concern.

Every last bag, of course, except for the crab chips. That month, we waited at the door the day the Utz man came. It was a bread line for non-crab chips. We’d pleaded and bargained. Anything, dad. We’ll take the spicy ones. Please! But there was nothing but our doom in that box.

Dad brought home the crab chip-filled box like a Dickensian character whose mill had just closed. There were dozens of bags in total – all crab chips. We wept and screamed and flailed like the idiotic children we were. We tried to reason with dad. Surely this Utz man had some sway at the Utz company. Surely he could tell them that no one wanted these damn crab chips. Maybe they could shut down the crab chip factory or, at least, kill whoever was responsible for creating them.

We became the worst sort of grifters – surely, father, you could hide a few bags of sour cream and onion chips under the counter until the day before the Utz man came by. Just stash them away. No one would be the wiser. It was a victimless crime. The only victim would be the Utz corporation and, quite frankly, we were getting fed up with their unreasonable demand that we eat their fucking crab chips anyway. My point is, they had it coming.

***

The boom times in the projects continued. We tried everything we could think of. We tried not eating chips at all. Nothing worked. I think it was summer and people were having parties and whatnot. Worse than the increasing pile of crab chips was the increasing realization that there was only one place for them to go: down our reluctant throats.

***

We gathered around the first bag. If you’ve ever felt one of your dreams die, that is what this moment felt like. We opened it. The stench was not horrible, but there was definitely a waft of something you’d rather not smell. It was pungent and alien, as if these weren’t chips at all. The crab chips were super thin and oily, but covered in a red, Martian dust. I took the first one and put it in my mouth. At first, there was nothing unusual. Crunchy – but then it hit me all of a sudden. The pungent scent was now inside of me, backfilling my nostrils with a combination of stale paprika and rape. As my face contorted from this, a fresh horror emerged: the taste. It was a pile of wrong flavors – the sort of slapdash spices a kid combines to season a steak. Pepper, garlic, vinegar, salt, honey, onion, and whatever else might be in the cabinet. It burned my tongue just as the paprika began stinging my nostrils.

This was unpleasant enough – but it got worse. Surely a chip with all those flavors and odors could be considered complete… but the good folks at Utz had yet another wave of terror to unleash on my childhood. Just as I began to realize that the chips didn’t really taste like crab at all, a wave of salty, seafoody tang rose up from somewhere. Not a good seafood flavor. The sort of regrettable seafood aftertaste you get from bad seafood. Imagine drinking the water in a bucket of thawing shrimp. Or sucking on the tail of a lobster. Just unreal bad.

Finally, I swallowed the chip. The whole process took about thirty seconds, but it felt like World War One. I looked around for something else, anything else to wipe the terrible taste out of my mouth – but there was only one thing available: another crab chip. So I ate it.

***

On many of my lowest days in high school, when hunger and laziness triumphed over my will to hike down to the Food Lion – I stared into that crab chip filled box, contemplating the descent into that snack food abyss, knowing full well that I would be forced to sit there and consume chip after chip after chip, each to ablate the flavor of the last, until finally brushing my teeth in disgust, spitting that orange sea foamy water into the sink, vowing “NEVER AGAIN!” to the stars above.

***

And it was “NEVER AGAIN!” until earlier this week, when stupid Quintin came home and handed me that fucking orange bag. I sat there, on the floor, eating chip after chip, raging internally, finally, finally finishing it. As my little Christmas revenge, I’m going to post the worst picture I have of Quintin. So here it is. Merry Christmas!

We’re having dinner tonight at Craigie on Main, probably the best restaurant I’ve tried since moving to Boston. And then, as always, my birthday week concludes with turkey and stuffing!

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes and gifts. I appreciate you taking the time.

My spectacular fiancée bought me this book for my birthday:

It’s a collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s early novels, from Player Piano to Mother Night. Of course, we know that ALL of Kurt Vonnegut’s works contain great wisdom, but this one is particularly filled with wisdom:

As you can see, there’s a flask in there filled with, um, the Breakfast of Champions. This is part of a long-term library/bar strategy than Jenn and I have been discussing for some time. The idea is to have a room in our house we call the Map Room, which contains a full library AND a full bar – only the elements of the bar are hidden around the room. In a globe, for example…

Since so many of our friends are writers and academics, we also thought that we’d keep copies of their books in the library, filled with their favorite drinks. So you better get crackin’ if you want to become a famous drink in our Map Room!

As this review is late to the game and being read mostly by friends of Justin, it seems crazy to spend time on gameplay or mechanics in detail. The average person reading this has already played the game. Instead, I thought I’d focus on the contrast between Ascension and the 800 pound gorilla in its category, Dominion.

I’d been waiting for a couple of months to get my hands on a copy of Ascension. Finally holding it, I sat there for a couple of minutes thinking “damn, that’s a nice box,” and mentally going through the process I’m sure Justin did as he was pricing the game’s components out.

I’d played Ascension a couple times while Justin and the guys were playtesting it and have some good memories of those games. Pretty sure I slew a monster that looked like Sarah Palin… but I may be mistaken. Of course, the game reminded me significantly of Dominion, one of my favorite games, but I was sure that as the engine coalesced and the mechanics matured, it would find its uniqueness. It definitely did. In fact, Ascension beats Dominion in almost every aspect, from packaging to gameplay.

One of my key gripes with Dominion is the actual startup of the game, especially now that there are several expansions. After a few nightmarish game nights, digging cards out of several boxes, I went ahead and created my own one-box system for the cards. It’s hella ugly, but it’s a lot better than rooting around in four or five boxes to play one game. Ascension’s packaging looks ready-built to accept more cards and accessories, which will make me happier when I’m plunking down for the expansions (in a few weeks, Justin? We’re getting antsy for new cards over here!).

And let’s not forget that you need sleeves. If you play this sort of game with any frequency, the cards wear out. Dominion’s boxes clearly don’t believe you will ever sleeve your cards. The second you do, you might as well throw the box out. Ascension’s box, which is much simpler, accommodates sleeved decks. It’s funny – people who don’t play TCGs probably wouldn’t think of sleeves immediately, but for us, it’s a no-brainer. That’s one of the many little advantages TCG companies have when designing boxed products (anytime now, Cryptozoic…).

Ascension’s setup is so very quick compared to Dominion that it immediately made me resent the ten minutes of setup in Dominion. Ascension feels a lot more like a TCG – just shuffle and go, as opposed to finding and laying out stacks of cards. The same is true of cleanup – since most of the cards just go into one giant pile, it’s really easy to reset. Also, unlike Dominion, where a misplaced card could be misplaced for quite some time (and impact gameplay), cards that get shuffled up sort of get coughed out of the deck eventually, with no real impact.

I sneered at the board when I first saw it (I thought this was a card game!), but it adds a lot to the fit and finish of the game. When the cards aren’t precisely laid out on a board, it looks like you’re the slob, rather than the fundamental disorganization that I associate with Dominion. I’ve noticed everyone lays out their Dominion piles differently, which annoys the hell out of me. By adding this little bit of structure, Ascension creates a standard play experience that will carry across playgroups, while adding a simple handhold for inexperienced gamers.

The elegance in the design really makes me happy. In a lot of ways, it’s the difference between firing up a Mac and a PC the first time.

In gameplay, the two feel fairly similar. In fact, with Dominion’s most recent expansion, they’ve incorporated external scorekeeping, one of the key features of Ascension. I enjoy the feeling in Ascension of metagame, which is rarely present in Dominion. In Dominion, when you see the ten cards you can buy, there is rarely more than one deck that seems optimal. In Ascension, I find myself paying attention to the deck choices my opponents make. If they take a lot of combat (which we call “karate”), I will invest in a deck with strong buying power, so that I can pick up the six and seven cost Heroes that will inevitably clog the board.

The less experienced players in my group, say that Ascension is easier to play. I think it’s very much the same mentality that Magic players feel as they’re learning, where the luck of the cards coming up serves as an equalizing force in their minds. The randomness makes the game seem less locked in – and makes the game more approachable. When the ten cards hit the table in Dominion, the savvy players immediately know which deck to build, leaving the novices to trail behind them, making bad buys early. In Ascension, the randomness (and inclusion of all the cards) means you have to take your opportunities as they come – and sometimes you’re facing down a horde of monsters with a hand of Mystics.

Really, the only thing that makes me sad in Ascension is that the cards in the center row aren’t ever there for long. There’s no point in getting your hopes up that the good stuff will ever make it to you or that you’ll get to kill that monster. In a four-player game, I barely pay attention after my turn, as the entire board will likely cycle before my turn. Additionally, I wish there was some quick way to tell Mystics and Heavy Infantry apart from other cards you buy (for quick re-sorting purposes).

That said, the new Dominion expansion, Prosperity, showed up at my door two days later. We spent an hour sleeving and sorting the cards into their new home. We played one game and put it on the shelf. Ascension rarely leaves the dining room table.

I’m proud to see a game designed by friends that succeeds across every metric. I can’t wait to see what Justin and his team come up with next.

For more information about Ascension, check out their website. http://www.ascensiongame.com/