Author: James McNally

Dungeons And Dragons

I was thinking back today to my early adolescence, with that mixture of wistfulness and crushing embarrassment that might be familiar to some of you. I was thinking about my “Dungeons and Dragons” years. The coolest thing about this period was how I discovered the game. I believe it was 1977 or 1978 (I was 12 or 13 at the time) and I read an article about this new “role-playing game” in Psychology Today. Yup, just one of a few brainy mags I read at the time, including Omni, Popular Science, and Popular Mechanics. I even tried to read Scientific American for a while, but that just went over my head. Brooke was a little embarrassed when I told her about the D&D years (or, more correctly, the AD&D years), even though (or perhaps because) I protested that “I was always the Dungeon Master!!” Another aspect of those years is that since I couldn’t always convince many of my friends to play, I found a sort of club that met Sunday mornings in Toronto’s Eaton Centre. There must have been 40 or 50 of us there, and meeting those people was sort of a precursor to the kind of relationships I’ve formed online, relationships formed around common interests and not where you lived or went to school. Those were great times…

Anyone else have a geeky RPG past (or present!)?

Another Liberal Majority?

The CBC and CTV networks are projecting a third consecutive Liberal majority government here in Canada. I’m pleased. We don’t seem to have as much trouble voting decisively here (!). Maybe the five party system works better than the two party system…

Nothing In Common

Brooke and I ate at a great little restaurant last night. It’s called Nothing in Common, and it has about 6 tables downstairs (they have a smoking section upstairs but I expect it’s about the same size). The decor was great. Lots of kitsch on the walls, boxes of Trivial Pursuit questions on the tables, and the legs of our table ended in rubber boots. Great food, too, by the way. Funny thing was that because it’s so small, you can hear everyone else’s conversation. There was a couple there who were obviously on their first date, and I wondered what sort of a person would ask someone to a restaurant called “Nothing in Common” for a date…

You Can Come In

I’m now reading “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith” by Anne Lamott and it’s wonderful. She used to write for Salon and they have a good archive of her writing there, of which some of the pieces ended up in the book I’m reading now. Anyway, I just had to share a passage with you, where she describes her “conversion” experience:

“[E]verywhere I went, I had the feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to reach down and pick it up, wanting me to open the door and let it in. But I knew what would happen: you let a cat in one time, give it a little milk, and then it stays forever.”

Then she talks about being in the church where she would go just to sing and she’d always leave before the sermon, because she didn’t want to hear any sermons about Jesus, but this one day, she gets caught up in the last hymn before the sermon, and so she stays, but:

“I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat running along at my heels, and I walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God’s own dreams, and I opened the door to my houseboat, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said, “Fuck it: I quit.” I took a long deep breath and said out loud, “All right. You can come in.” So this was my beautiful moment of conversion.”

I may have just discovered my new favourite author…