When I was a teenager, I used to have a lot of friends at my house, all the time. The place I was living in was an older, kinda run down two family house, but the layout of the ground floor, where we lived, was ideal for teenagers to party, get drunk, take drugs and have sex in, so we did. A lot. We did other stuff, though, too. We listened to records, and a lot of them. We played video games. We watched movies. And, of course, we talked, got to know each other, and ourselves as well. Great, if not-exactly-proper times were had in that house, which amazingly, is still standing somewhere out there. Alas, almost if by design, right around when I turned 18, we moved out of it, and into a place with facilities far less conducive to adventures like the ones we’d had for the previous couple of years, so it was a little different.

I still had people over often, and we still partied, got drunk, took drugs, had sex, listened to records, played video games, watched movies, and talked, but due to the nature of life, what with my group of people slowly being dispersed all over the globe, and due to the nature of it being a much smaller room that became gradually less attractive to visit because people other than me got apartments and dorm rooms and eventually houses, the partying became less frequent, and less well-attended.

I quit drinking about 6 years after I moved to the second place, and while there were a few more really good parties after that happened (Memorial Day Weekend 1999 stands out as the best, which is interesting, as Memorial Day Weekend 1990 was probably the best at the old house…), things gradually petered out entirely, before I moved out of that place a few years ago. I lived there a total of 11 years, longer than I lived anywhere else in my life, and yet, it was probably the place I liked living the least of any of the places I’ve been.

I really haven’t had much in the way of parties worth mentioning at this house. The one actually-declared party that sticks out in my head was a night when justj0hn, the late Jim Dunlap and I ate dip and watched a Toyah concert. That was a really fun night, but it was a horse of a different color than the things that used to happen. Nature of the beast? Perhaps. I get the feeling as I’m writing this that I sound like every schmuck on Earth who wants to go back to being a teenager or never stopped, but bear with me, as this is going somewhere.

About a year and a half ago, as regular readers of this site know, I landed in Second Life. While I’ve been there, I’ve been running a club that, at times has morphed into a small city, called Heck. A lot of good times have been had at Heck, in some ways like the parties I used to have out here in the world that most of you are accustomed to, but there’s also been this underlying pressure to expand, succeed, and be financially viable there. At times it was too much like a business, and that kinda fucked with the purity of the operation. I am pleased to report that Heck is in a situation now where, at least for the time being, being “financially viable” isn’t a driving force behind how we do things, and we’ve got a nice, comfortable, expandable space to have our parties in. So, I’m putting the invitation out again. If you’d like to come to my “other” house, party, drink, take drugs, have sex (let me know; I have to put the poseballs on the ceiling again if you’d like to), listen to records, play video games, watch movies, talk, get to know each other, and perhaps most importantly, get to know yourselves a little better, you’re all more than welcome to visit Heck. If you’re not using Second Life yet, why not give it a try? Let me know if you run up against any tech hurdles.

As for having parties in my house “back home”? I’d like to line one of those up sometime in the forseeable future, but I don’t want to force it. It has to be one of those “right place, right time” kind of situations. I will say this, though: despite leading a very different life than I did when I was a teenager in a lot of ways (though in some ways, it’s frighteningly identical), and despite the fact that those of you who were around for the parties of my teens and twenties also live very different lives in some ways (and the fact that some of the people who were around for those parties simply aren’t around anymore), I still think we’ve got a lot of party left in us.

RIP Gary Gygax

Go on, get all of the jokes about his HP running out, his failed saving throws, the orcs getting him, and pouring a 20 (sided die) on the ground out of your system. I’ll wait.

Now, back to business. I would wager to say that this is perhaps the most culturally significant-yet-gonna get totally overlooked by the mainstream death we’ve had since the guy who invented instant ramen died a year or so ago, and maybe one of the biggest (possibly even bigger, blasphemous as that’ll sound coming from me) than Jack Kirby’s death. Take a minute, and really think about all that this guy has either definitely or probably influenced with his little paper and dice game. It’s staggering to even begin to think about. I’ve started to type a list 3 times, and I keep stopping, because I don’t think I’ll do it justice.

Huge, huge loss, but at the same time, this world is a lot richer and more imaginative for having had him in it.

I posted one of these charts a while back, and I’ve got updated information from September 4th of ’07 through March 2nd now.

For the layman: the left side of the chart is Midnight, the right side is the following Midnight. Each row is 1 day. The blue bars are the times during which I’m asleep.

My sleep has actually totally cycled through twice in the past 3 weeks, which is an aberration to what the chart had been saying previously. I attribute this to February sucking as a month, but I’m not an expert, or so I’m told.