First of all I want to grovel at your feet a bit. I have been utterly unreliable for pretty much anything except getting to work on time lately, and even that has been a bit shady. Even things like housework have been getting seriously neglected- a sad state of affairs here at Chez Spwug. Why all the neglect of responsibilities? It’s been mostly because I have had to put so much energy into the business of keeping this business going at all. Fortunately I think I’ve filled out the last of the paperwork and things seem to be coming unstuck again. Hurrah!

Which brings me to the thing I wanted to rant on about. In pursuit of some Things Geeky (and also maybe in a serious bout of procrastination,) I did get out to see the Iron Man movie (twice.) I’m not going to review it here, since that’s been covered by many folks who are better at that than I am, I did want to point out a cameo that I thought was interesting. It was not a cameo by a Famous Movie Star, nor one by a Crossover Character (although if you didn’t stay through the credits you’ve missed a good thing,) but one by Jim Cramer. A stock investment show host. Yes, I realize he was discussing the merits of stock in Stark Enterprises, but still. Did they just get some Wall Street in my Geekdom?!

Of course they did. I have recently noticed more and more financial anylists discussing things more commonly discussed in comic book shops. From pundits frothing at the mouth about Grand Theft Moneymaker, to those who are gleefully watching their Take Two stocks take off, to CNBC spending an entire half hour segment discussing the Vivendi/Activision merger, to stock tip stars making cameos in summer comic book blockbusters- the economic power of The Geek is being recognized for the juggernaut it truly is.

don’t get me wrong, now. I don’t think that all this Wall Street attention is sullying the geek cred of our video games and comic books and whatnot. I just think it’s interesting that sometimes money does buy respect.

Also- Iron Man really does kick serious Hollywood ass.

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I’m awful sorry that I’ve been so absent of late. Life, sadly, has a way of screwing up schedules right when you don’t want it to, and that’s pretty much what happened. Ah well.

While I’ve been trying to cope with life’s little insanities over the past couple of weeks, the calmest moments have been coming at my job. You see, I am an office temp right now, and I’m currently assigned to a financial firm. The branch I’m working in is fairly relaxed, since it’s where all the paperwork gets shuffled and things get processed, but it’s still a financial firm and I’m wearing more suits and high heels than I ever have before.

I’ve been there for a few weeks now and I only just noticed something that made me think. I was jolted a bit out of my paper-shuffling stupor by an overheard comment across the cubicles: “You two are like Mario and Luigi!” *blink* now I’m not sure exactly what he meant by that statement since I hadn’t been paying attention to the conversation till that moment- whether the two in question were always seen with each other, were color coded, or were constantly rescuing inept princesses- but it made me sort of look around. I realized that I’d been working in a cubicle farm with distinctly geeky slant to it. There was a Hello Kitty toy here, a Transformer figure there- traces of geekdom dotted the desks.

The more I looked, the more I realized that this is the result of the total cultural saturation of things like Nintendo and anime. Now that I’m looking around more a bit, I realize that it’s everywhere I go, and on the one hand I’m glad to see that it’s more socially mainstream and accepted, but on the other I feel a little bit like my secret clubhouse has been ransacked. I dunno.

How does anyone else feel about it?

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It’s been a little crazy here in my little ol’ weekend, I’m afraid, and I have to be at a job in 45 minutes, so hopefully I will have time this evening to expand on this, (Assuming that I get to leave this job after a normal workday. It might happen…)

Anyway, I came across this BBC article last week regarding the debate over the best way to regulate video games. There seems to be a proposal to have an official ratings body that will replace the industry’s self regulating rating methods. On the one hand, I feel kinda relieved to know that the US isn’t the only place that this argument is raging (I know, I know, it’s everywhere.) but on the other hand I have to weep a little that we as adult type persons raising children need to be told what to do all the time.

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I do hope that you don’t mind if I take some time in my column to reminisce a bit. I’ve been telling this story all weekend and I just can’t get it out of my head, so I’ve decided to bother you all with it.

It starts out at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, which if you’ve never been to a ren faire, is across between a themed Halloween party and an arts festival, with a little bit of county fair thrown in for good measure. You will find all types there from people wearing street clothes and boggling at the crazies in costumes, to girls with fairy wings, to pirates (and yes, I’ve seen a ninja.) For many people it’s like LARPing, without the need to think up rules for monsters or magic users. I tend to go on Pirate Weekend, so I can wear my fabulous hat (It’s wide brimmed, black velour, with two rather amazing feathers coming out where the brim is turned up Crocodile Dundee style,) but I don’t get too overwrought about costume details. Black jeans and my leather corset-top-thingie are more than good enough of an excuse to wear the hat. I love the hat. (Hey, if I want to play dress up at 26 I am perfectly well allowed to, thanks.)

Well on this particular Pirate Weekend a couple of my friends and I were heading to the food stalls and try to choose between the many bad for you but oh so tasty options for lunch when I caught sight of a pair of reenactors. They were an olderish couple, decked out in full period accurate garb, and the man had the most fantastic beard. I knew full well that I knew them from somewhere, but thanks to my amazing memory I was drawing a complete blank. Worse still, they’d seen me and were heading over. As I slowly made my way towards them (not wanting to be rude and all, I mean, it doesn’t hurt to say ‘hey how ya doing?’) I kept trying to think where I’d seen them before. Must have been a theatre somewhere. Maybe the summerstock I did a few years ago? Oh man, I HAVE to come up with some NAMES or something!!

As we drew near to each other I glanced at the beard again and it dawned on me suddenly. A ray of light pierced the clouds in my brain and I knew. I knew that beard. I knew it perfectly well and I was apparently a bit of a dimwit not to have recognized it instantly, or the couple, for that matter. I said the only thing I could in the situation. “Aunt Wendy! Uncle Skip! How are you guys?!”

I felt a bit relieved as my aunt (who I’ve only known my whole life and see all the time,) looked at me with startled recognition, glanced down at my costume, and said, “Katy!! You’ve got BOOBS!”

That’s pretty much the whole story. My aunt and uncle were indeed there with the pirate camp, so I got to have a tour of it and meet everyone which was pretty cool. My uncle had to go off and give a cannon demonstration and I lost track of them both as my friends wanted to do something on the other side of the fairgrounds, but it was a pretty cool day to be able to spend with some relatives in a completely different environment. My uncle passed away last week, but I’ll always remember that he had the best beard I’ve ever met.

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There’s something really unfortunate about being sick on a weekend. It kinda feels like your body is cheating you out of a day off, instead of during the work week when it’s more like an unexpected reprieve from the drudgery of the office. Fortunately for me, Sunday wasn’t ruined, really, since I did basically what I’d been hoping to do- I sat on the sofa, bundled up, and played video games. Specifically Psychonauts.

Now, if you haven’t heard of this game, it’s a pity. While it came out a few years ago, it’s wasn’t wildly popular like, say, Madden. Which is too bad, because this game is super sharp. The writing alone makes this game worth playing. It’s hysterical, even the throw away dialog that you hear when you walk past other characters on your journeys around the camp. Just wander around and stand near people, honestly it’s worth it. The game basically is this: You play Raz, a young boy who’s run away from home (at the circus) to go to summer camp. Not just any summer camp, of course, it’s a summer camp for kids endowed with extra mental powers. It quickly becomes clear that Something Is Not Right as Raz witnesses a strange and creepy man stealing the brain of one of the other campers!

Now I haven’t gotten too far in the game yet (I kept having to take time off for naps and tea and suchlike. Curse this being ill.) but so far Raz has learned several new tricks including pyrokenisis and what can best be described as mind bullets. I’m not sure how they will top the amazing level where I got to play a godzilla style monster in downtown lungfishopolis, though. There is something deeply satisfying about crushing buildings with a single footstep and throwing tanks at each other, then finally fighting an endboss styled after Ultraman.

Now I do have to admit that Psychonauts has an appropriately bizarre art style, and some of the levels are definitely strange, which can be somewhat offputting, but I think that the genius of the writers and the geme’s designers trumps that. So, if you’re looking for something new and maybe a bit quirky, this game is definitely for you. G’wan, help Raz through the special troubles of a summer camp for really special kids. It’s a fabulous way to spend a sick day.

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Still another tough question! Aren’t I full of ponderous philosophy lately? But really, how DO you put a price on artistic work? Let’s think about it from a purely business standpoint for a moment. There are the materials to consider, (and if the work is digital, that can be pricey indeed! Yeah, Photoshop and Wacom tablets!) There is the hourly rate of the artist, which will naturally vary from person to person. There is printing, mounting, blocking, packaging, and shipping, that all might be necessary to consider. Then there is a big question- what if it’s a movie of some sort? Distribution is another cost- do you go with DVDs or release it on a digital download system?

Assuming you aren’t going to make one person pay for your entire Adobe CS bill, how do you decide how much to charge for that print? How much should a hand knit sweater cost? Or the CD that took your band 2 months to put together? Or the quilt that your grandmother made? It’s really hard to be honest with yourself when putting a monetary value on your time, your talents, and your passion. Most artists do it because they love the art, not because they want to get filthy rich, but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be fairly compensated for what they do.

When I asked Hawk about his work, he talked about his Ebay auctions from a few years ago. He was raising funds for… um… something, and posted a few sketches up on Ebay to help. Auctions are wonderful for determining the value of a piece of work, though it’s sometimes tough to get perspective. Hawk’s work ended up in a last-second bidding war and the sketch sold for several hundred dollars. “I was freaking out when it up just to 20 bucks! In my mind, it’s just a sketch, a drawing. I’m not dead!” The not being dead part seems to be a sticking point- DaVinci and Degas are dead and their work is priceless! That must be the trick! I can’t be alive while my work is valued highly!! What do you do if you’re not dead but still want to make some money off your work?!

I asked Garth Graham about how he puts a price on his art when I talked to him recently- he’s a professional artist making a living off his work. “A lot of it is having a heart to heart talk with yourself and saying, ‘how much am I worth?’ A realistic evaluation of the quality of your work, and how long it takes to make it, and how much that time and effort is worth.” It’s hard to be honest enough with yourself to come to a fair price for your time, but there are ways to start: “I took a look at how much the ‘professionals’ make. I probably should take a look at how much their clients get billed (as one is always bigger than the other in industry). Then I averaged how long it takes me to do a particular kind of drawing and used that as a baseline. I charge commissions based on complexity, using that baseline as a minimum.”

It really still boils down to being honest with yourself about your skills and talents, and how strongly you feel about the work in question. How do you price a creative work?

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I was listening to a knitting podcast the other day (what? Cast On rocks.) and one of the host’s big concerns is the freedom of artists. Not just being free in the sense of allowed to leave the house, but free to create whatever they want, to build on their predecessors, to continue or riff off of, or improve upon the work that has come before. That could mean anything from artists sitting in a museum and copying from the work of the masters, or a knitter finding a picture of a sweater in an old magazine and updating the look to design a new sweater for today to a musician making a rock band because they are so totally into the Rolling Stones or U2. Artistic freedom in this sense means the freedom to take inspiration from wherever it comes.

Of course, there is a flip side to this freedom: intellectual property is the easiest way to refer to it. Nobody is going to be able to realistically claim the Mona Lisa as their own original work, but what about the work of artists that aren’t protected by the vast shields of history and fame? What about your favorite webcomic? There are plenty of examples of webcomics having work taken from their website and represented as the work of someone else. I know that one of my friends had art taken from his online gallery and printed in Greece on stationary notebooks- when I heard about it, I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach and it wasn’t even MY work!

When I asked Mohammad ‘Hawk’ Haque about it, he was pretty clear on where he drew the line: sometimes it’s flattering when a fan is inspired by your work to create an homage to it-as long as they’re not trying to make a profit off that homage. “If the artist admits their piece was an idea from [an]other piece… admitting it I don’t have a problem. But it comes down to… are you talking about character design, exact same pose, exact same concept, etc, or someone else’s character in a different pose… which turns out to be a fanart… selling fanart… I don’t agree.”

Garth Graham agrees: “Imitation may be the most sincere form of flattery, but sincere flattery gives credit where credit is do. Fan art is fantastic, it’s awesome, it makes us artist feel all warm and fuzzy. It’s a wonderful affirmation of “someone else likes our work.” And fan artists should be entitled to the credit of creating said works of fanart. … Artists put a lot of effort into creating characters and stories and franchises that people love and adore. And when you go take those characters who are not yours and make money off of them, you rob the artist your imitating of some of his work. We’re not even talking monetary kind of thing, but you’re leaching off of someone else’s effort. And that’s a terrible thing.”

Our very own resident graphic artist Jason points out, however, that he draws inspiration from everything that he sees, the work of other artists included. It can form a very important part of an artist’s development to imitate the work of others: “What’s fun is looking at other works and figuring out *how* they did it, and that can be inspiring — fills in the gaps to works you can’t quite execute.”

So. Where’s the line to be drawn? It’s hard to see what is legitimately an artistic inspiration and what is outright theft. Shouldn’t artists and writers be allowed to profit from their own work? Why should some stranger who finds a page on Deviant Art or a personal online gallery be allowed to print off a few posters and sets up shop selling ‘original prints’? What if they take that work and flip the colors around to negative? Would it be original art then? It’s a tough question, and as an artist and a friend to artists, even I don’t know what the answer is. All I know is that as long as there is art and creativity, there will be people who will try to profit off artistic work that isn’t theirs.

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Feeling decidedly uninspired this past week, I turned, like most Americans, to the sweet sweet lovin’ of the television. I have recently found a British program called How Clean Is Your House? And I am addicted. It’s about these two women who go into truly, epically filthy houses- houses that should support no human life they’re that bad- and clean them up, all the while teaching the residents how to clean up after themselves. After the show, I usually scrub something. Like the kitchen floor.

How does this relate to geekdom, you ask? Well, it’s gotten me thinking about fan devotion. It’s amazing what people can become fans of. Anime, video games, sports… The broad subjects are well known, but as has been pointed out by one of our Mr. Kims fandom can be broken down even further, to specific types or traits or even items! As far as the cleaning ladies go, I am a huge fan of their rubber gloves. They have pearls and feather boas on them. I can’t help it, I just love them.

I love hearing about interesting, odd fandoms. Anyone with anything as odd as my compulsion to watch other people clean things?

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You all know already of my fondness for video games, and I am sure that you have also somehow divined my distaste for those people who blame video games for all the world’s ills. I’m sure that if Jack Thompson could pin the blame for the current ongoing troubles in Iraq on Grand Theft Auto, he would do so gleefully.

Video games are just like any other sort of entertainment, however. You have to approach them responsibly and use your own best judgment about them. Parents ought to take notice of the rating of a game, and of the content before allowing a child to play it, and adults should think about what games they play and how much time to give them. We hear many stories of gamer widows, of children with virtually no attention span and lousy grades, we hear debates about whether violence is at all linked to video game playing, and how all the ills of society possibly including venereal diseases are the direct result of the video game.

Yeah, yeah. But what about the other side of the coin? I myself can attest that video games gave my family countless in jokes, (we still sometimes express concern about grues when the power goes out during a storm) and has definitely brought me much closer to my significant other- we play WoW together all the time. I recently ran across a few other stories about how World of Warcraft in particular has affected a few other people in very positive ways. I have to say that the idea of Mom getting on WoW just to play with her kids at college was one of the best things I’ve ever heard.

Both of my kids have been in World of Warcraft since beta. They play on different realms and in different factions. My son, who was still in high school at the time, convinced me I could play World of Warcraft even though I never had done anything in a game other than run into walls in Mario Brothers once or twice. The goal was to be able to play with my daughter while she was away at college.

Sure, not all kids would like to have a parent there in game (notably in my mind, Bart Simpson…) but I think that more parents should consider the vast benefits of gaming with their kids.

Also, teachers could probably manage to have a better insight into their students if they would be ‘cool’ enough to pick up a controller or a keyboard. One teacher let his students convince him to play WoW and ended up finding true love, right in his own school!

I rerolled a troll shaman on her realm, Ysera, where I quickly caught up to her priest and then we leveled together. Last Christmas, when we both hit 60, I asked her to marry me. Playing together and getting to know each other was the best time of my life. Today we are married and I now have two stepsons, who also play.

My new family is the most epic gear I could have ever found with this game. I have a beautiful wife and two awesome sons, and we are still playing today. We are a family of 70s. For the Horde!

So. There you are. There’re lots more stories like these out there, and not just about WoW. If you have one of your own, I would love to hear it. Each positive story like these is another nail in the coffin of the ‘video games are evil’ myth.

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Wait, what? An essay that is sensibly feminist, and by ‘feminist’, I mean ‘stands up for the rights of both men and women to take responsibility for their own damn selves, and the twin right to enjoy their life and the products of their work.’ How is this geeky? well, how’s this for you?

The cure, for the record, for being a football widow or Xbox widow or whatever is often not to bemoan the fact that your partner doesn’t spend all his free time entertaining you. It’s to cultivate interests outside of your husband, to be an individual unto yourself who also needs some time to pursue her hobbies. And if he really is withdrawing into his hobbies to the exclusion of ever interacting positively with you, to take advantage of the newfound feminist right not to be in a marriage with someone who doesn’t really love you.

Now excuse me, but I’m going to drag my childish ass over to play the Xbox. Wonder if Lopez knows that you don’t actually need a penis to work the controller.

I actually really enjoyed this article (written by Amanda Marcotte,) as it made several perfectly sensible points using actual sound logic. Common sense, people. She wrote this as a response to another article, and I’m going to go read that now- and I won’t get irritated because I’ll be secure in the knowledge that it’s already been very well addressed.

Then I’ll fire up the PS2 and play some video games. I’ve got several waiting for my attention- WoW has been taking up far too much attention lately.

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