The Tease of Things I Don't Need

nosce te ipsum

I'm lousy with free time.

Well, maybe that could be read more that colloquially and inferred that I have too much of it, but I wouldn't agree. All I meant was that I don't handle it well. Oh, there were many things I was obliged to do during this time off, but with so many things waiting for me -- unread books, magazines and comics, a Legends deadline a week away, a multitude of dust-covered projects -- I've instead gone through much of it in a restless stupor, like someone waiting for a bus. Nothing self-revelatory there -- I've been slapping myself with this particular fish for years -- but I need to remind myself of it every so often if I'm ever to have a hope of changing my behavior.

What was something of a revelation this past week spilled from the previous weekend's clix competitions. It wasn't until the week began that I rolled back over it and realized another of those strange legacies of my odd upbringing: Somewhere early in life I'd been taught that it was rude to compete to win. It's linked to the same lessons that find me restraining myself when dealing with strangers and even friendly acquaintances but blowing up at those I'm bound to in blood. Oh, I'm not some raging madball at home -- I generally bottle it up and do my yelling while I'm alone, driving or after hours at work, or exploding comically in front of a friendly third party in a sad display of emotional fireworks after receiving the latest call from home -- but if I'm going to be found yelling at someone it's most likely someone I'm related to. Reason should direct me to do the opposite, but in my defense that part could be seen as a reflection of what degree I have reason to expect something more from someone. All but a vanishingly small percentage of the people alive today are, to me, no more real that fictional characters. The very few who are really and truly bound to me, well, I'm going to take it personally and expect more from them.

Ah, well, I know my head's a snakepit. There are definitely self-loathing issues involved in some of that.

Anyway, I realized with some amusement that while in truly friendly clix games I tend to quickly go in for strategy-crippling attacks, when playing with strangers I tend to be too deferential. I pass up multiple opportunities to blow their teams apart, judging at the time that it's too much, too soon. Under it all is the idea that it's rude, and being rude isn't something I stomach well. Generally speaking, if I've been rude to someone it's either something I've been too distracted to realize or something I'll be beating myself up over 1,000 times over the rest of my life. I'm still wincing at things I did or said 30 years ago. No joke.

This misconnection between competing to win and rudeness also colors my perceptions of an opponent's actions and behavior. Oh, to be sure, at least one of the people I played against this past weekend was an asshole, but a ridiculous cycle of misinterpretation's been going on in my head. It was one of those satori I couldn't help but find amusing -- which is all the stronger an indication that it was just such a flash of enlightenment.

Trying to correct that ill lesson learned, not to mention get a little more use out of all these pieces I've been accumulating, I've signed up for the inaugural tournmant at a local venue, set for this Monday at 6pm. It's a 300 point build of any tournament-legal clix. I haven't decided on a team yet, but that's part of the fun. On the chance that someone reading this is also going to be there, I'm not going to note the team until after the fact.

Well... I've had to type this twice because a rare (amazingly so, for recent times) freeze-up blew away everything I had in this edit window, it's getting well into Saturday night, and FedEx actually just came through with my latest shipment of comics, etc. from Westfield (truly, this was a delivery being made after 8pm on a Saturday) -- and in the mix is a DVD-ROM set of 44 years of the Fantastic Four, complete scans (including ads, letters pages, etc.) of over 550 issues from November 1961 through December 2004. Unlike the similar treatment for Amazing Spider-Man I bought a few months ago, this set includes the annuals, too. Now there's that much more to look at.

Not connected to anything else, but just another of those time stamps I like to toss into entires: I suspect Abbygal and Crypt Leak are exhausted tonight, as they ran a garage sale today (I believe one run jointly with new neighbors) , which I hope went well for them.

Addendum: The 44 Years of the Fantastic Four is, by and large, a beautiful package. Shifting to a DVD format enabled them to put it all on a single disc, whereas the Spidey set is on 7 (I believe) discs. Jumping from one spot to another is much easier, and the scans I've checked out have been of a nice quality. Certainly, a larger monitor would make it easier to read the pages on the screen, but it's easily enough negotiated.