On reading horror in the second grade

My mom was a reader, so I was a reader too.

I learned to read at the same age as the rest of my classmates, but I was better. I liked reading, and I was good at it, so I read a lot. I read all the fucking time: on the way to school, in class when I finished my math work, after school, during dinner, before bed and so on and so forth.

I was really proud whenever my aunts or grandma would tell anyone who would listen that I "read at a college level." When I was eight years old, I thought it was some hot shit. It probably was!

The point is: I was into reading, and I wanted to read the stuff my mom was reading. This book in particular:

My mom wasn't into it. For some reason, she didn't want me reading IT when I was in second grade. But I was persistent, and eventually she said "Fine, read it," thinking I would get bored or move on to other books.

I didn't move on to other books. I read the whole thing, cover to cover, the same way I read my daily reader in school, and the newspaper comics, and anything else I could get my hands on: on the way to school, in class when I finished my math work, after school, during dinner, and so on and so forth.

My teacher (Mrs. Stoner) and my mom both knew I was reading this book, and didn't say anything. They knew it wouldn't do any good. I didn't start reading the book until I got my mom's permission, but I wouldn't leave her alone until she gave me that permission. 

I learned a few life lessons from reading IT in second grade: I learned the word "whore," (though I pronounced it more like "war" because I didn't actually know what it meant.) I also learned I found villains far more interesting than heroes, and I learned that I could be a writer some day. This was a fact that had somehow escaped me until this point. I loved books and spent most of my free time reading, but it didn't occur to me that someone had to write these things. It's not like I thought they just fell out of the sky, fully formed, or burst forth from the forehead of Gentle Zeus.

I just didn't think about it.

I've had this desire to write ever since. Twenty-four years, a degree in journalism, who knows how many half-started stories, novels and essays and a handful of blogs later, and I still have this weird itch to write, and sometimes I just have to sit down and bang out some words until it goes away.

Or at least becomes less irritating. 

I wish I still had my mom's copy of IT. I have one, but I got it at a yardsale when I was a teenager, and it's one of a handful of Stephen King books I've bothered to hang on to. I don't really keep many sentimental things (I've got a good memory, so mostly hanging on to things just seems like a waste of space, and clutter drives me nuts) but I'd like to have her copy of IT.

It was a cheap, paperback copy on her bookshelf in the house I grew up in, and something about that shitty 1980s cover art got inside my head when I was 8 years old.

Jerry the Engineer

I've had this guy sitting on my desk for a while now:

I've been planning on making him the star of a larger set, picturing him as a tech on a space station. I've already started thinking of him as Jerry, and assigning personality traits to him.

In this nightmare scenario, he's been assigned to replace a part in a distant part of the space station, when he runs into something horrifying and unexpected. Look how horrified he is! Holy shit, Classic Space dudes were never this horrified. Or pink.

I love Classic Space, and the Neo-Classic Space movement. I'd like to pick up some more of these guys on BrickLink some time, but Classic Space minifigs aren't cheap, especially if they come with their gear (helmet and oxygen tank) and their logo is in good shape.

On a side note, I definitely had more Classic Space guys when I was younger, but this is the lone survivor. That nightmare scenario I mentioned above is even creepier if you think of him as the last of his kind!

Still, I might pick up some friends for Jerry, the next time I make a BrickLink order.

Progress on my spider mech

Here's an update about the spider mech I've been working on.

Basically I've spent most of the time working on the cockpit. The idea being that I'll start with a good cockpit design, then build out legs and armaments around it.

Ignore the legs and mismatched pieces. I assure you I know some things about color palettes!

Here's some more shots of the cockpit.

I like this design a lot better than the simple dome windshield I took from the Galaxy Squad set I got for Christmas. I'm picturing this as a heavily armed mech, and a big glass windshield didn't really work for me.

Still, I'm new to building these things, so baby steps!

I'm planning on placing a couple more BrickLink orders to get some better joint connections. I'm having a hard time getting the ones I picked up the other day to stabilize, but after some research I've found there are some other pieces that are better for that thing.

Did you think I was lying when I said I don't really like Technic pieces? Haha, fool! It was the truth!

Lego mechs

One of the things that rekindled my interest in Lego is seeing pictures of huge, crazy mechs people have built with Lego. You guys want to see some inspirato?

I'm talking about mechs like this one, built by flickr user zane_houston:

Or this guy by flickr user kwi-chang:

Or this guy by flickr user legoloverman:

This guy also has a tone of awesome retro classic Space stuff on his stream (but that's a Lego post for another day!) Side note: this build is going to be an official Lego set, thanks to Cuusoo. I have mixed feelings about Cuusoo, but I think it's really awesome for pushing offical Lego sets forward. This also sounds like a Lego post for another day.

 I've always wanted to start building mechs of my own, but have held off partly because I don't really consider myself a great builder, and I've been intimidated by awesome designs like these. I've also held off because most of the mech designs use Technic pieces for their underlying structure and GODDAMN, do I ever hate Technic pieces.

You can build mechs without using ball joints, and people certainly do this thing, but I am not clever enough to repurpose hinge pieces to achieve a similar effect.

Long story short: Technic pieces don't feel like Lego pieces to me, and I don't like their design. Still, official Lego sets (especially larger ships and vehicles) often use Technic pieces for underlying structure, so that's what I'm doing.

I picked up a couple small Ninjago sets today because the sets had some useful-looking ball joint pieces and started working on this thing when I got home:

I'm imagining it will be a heavily armored spider mech thing. I've lifted the cockpit entirely from one of the Galaxy Squad sets I got for Christmas, and it's just a placeholder for now. I plan to build a vertical cockpit, so you can see the minifig pilot more easily.

I spent most of my time working on the gun, and while I'm not super happy with it, it's a pretty good first draft:

The ammo drum feels overengineered, but I like the idea so far.

The ball joints I got from the Ninjago sets (you can see them making up most of the legs here) were a good start, but still not quite what I want. They're too long for my purposes, too inflexible and too hard to build around, so I put in a couple of Bricklink orders for some ball joints that typically come with the Hero Factory sets.

I've never been a fan of Hero Factory, since it's the new Bionicle and I hate Bionicle (for many of the same reasons I don't like Technic pieces in general) but those BALL JOINTS, man.

Pretty exciting! I've been wanting to start working on crazy mech designs for a while, and this has been a lot of fun.

Another post about systems v. goals

A lot of my friends have been talking about the idea of systems v. goals for New Year's resolutions.
An example:

  "I want to walk 20 minutes every morning" is a system.
  "I want to lose 10 pounds" is a goal.

So here's a short list of things I want to do in the new year:

Say yes to more things

I always feel like I spend way too much time hanging out by myself, playing video games, reading and watching Netflix, and I want to spend more time with my girlfriend, my friends and my family. I actually make this goal every year, and I feel like I made great progress in 2013. What can I do here? When someone asks if I want to do something, say "Nah, I'm just gonna stay home and play video games" less often. The trick is being aware of this thing.

Write more 

I have a tumblr but I don't like tumblr. I get distracted by the cat gifs the people I follow repost, and it really seems more like a medium for reposting original content from people you don't know, rather than publishing your own original content. I just want a simple, dumb thing to write down ideas, so here's my ten thousandth blog or whatever. I'm thinking about a thing where I just write something in it every day, but that already sounds like a high bar to clear.

Get back into photography

There was a time I spent every spare dollar I had on photography equipment, and while something tells me that time has passed forever, I still want to get back into shooting photography. I built a shitty whitebox a while back to make it easier to take photos of Lego stuff for Instagram, but it hasn't quite scratched that itch. To start with, I'm thinking of going back through all my old notes for photo projects I never started, or abandoned, and picking one for the year.

Be smarter with my money

This mostly means a couple of things: paying down debt faster, and doing more research before I buy anything. I have a tendency to just buy the most highly rated thing on Amazon, and while that works out pretty well most of the time, I have a nagging suspicion I could be doing more here. I don't want to waste hundreds of hours to decide on a $50 purchase, but I have an idea I could waste less money by taking a bit more time.

I think I've already got some good ideas for systems here, but staying motivated on personal projects is a continual problem for me. To-do lists work pretty well for me, but eventually I lose motivations, and even my most effective systems fall to pieces. I like the idea of productivity apps, but I haven't found one that works well for me. Ideally, I'd have something like this:

The idea being you create a task, set a time for it to repeat (every day, every week) and the app will give you progressively more shit until you mark that task as completed for the time period.

Maybe something like this already exists, but I'm not sure there's much of a market for productivity apps that call you a shitbird when you forget to do things.

Anyway, I'm a couple days late, but whatever. Happy New Year!