After the meeting was over, some of the new writers congregated around me and asked me if I was, in fact, the apocryphal figure Dan Archer. Actually, most of them were afraid of coming off as stalkers, fears I attempted to dismiss. I've said before, I'll say it again, I like having stalkers. They make me feel important.

As it turned out, a couple of them wanted to be video game writers, and had come here for the ETC (Entertainment Technology Center) in hopes of launching their video game careers. I got to espouse my philosophy on video game writing and how a tidy little alcove in the industry is beginning to form for writers, and a bunch of other malarkey pertaining to how I had to blow dust off N64 cartridges in order to play them, and how these young 'uns have no idea what's what. I don't get to be crotchety very often, so when I'm presented with a pristine lawn and a rocking chair, I'm often tempted to sit down in the latter and scare kids off the former.

Nytethorn's coming along at a decent clip; not spawning volumes, but pages are indeed emerging. In other words, for me, a decent clip. Classes have been interesting in their respective ways:

I knew document design was going to be a troublemaker, when I first gazed upon its sinister moniker with that word -- design -- and proceeded to gather my protective talismans against such crafts. As some of you already know, my eye for design is akin to my eye with x-ray vision. Desired, but nonexistent. Thankfully, the instructor, Kerry Ishizaki, is of the compassionate sort, who understands people with my disability and is willing to guide them with a gentle hand.

Magazine writing has been a sort of review of excellent articles so far, from a bunch of magazine I know my mom reads. Atlantic, Harper's, The New Yorker, and some other heady fare with cartoons that display humor dry as Saltines. The writing is all top-notch, even though I'm always inclined in these classes to doubt my own judgment on these things. It's not my arena, after all. I can judge the verisimilitude of a system of magic, the timbre of imagination. This material, in magazine writing, is the stuff of our world, a world I inhabit only out of necessity.

Argument's been a little on the academic side, although I think things are heating up relatively soon. We've had to read all these grimoires on the history of argument, which does not a thriller make. It seems that in classes on X, there's always the 2-3 week period in the beginning where we learn the history behind X. I'm all for contextualizing things, but MAN. I mean, who was the first guy who said "You know what, Og? Our debate concerning your stone wheel could be a lot more effective if we attacked each others' claims and warrants, as opposed to just bludgeoning each other with mammoth thigh-bones." Then I imagine Og clubbed Thog into submission. This is why I can't name great rhetoricians past Aristotle and Socrates. And that's not to say THEY weren't clubbed, in a manner of speaking.

Calculus is...well, math. I'm not getting into this.

Other than that, not a ton to report. I'm thinking about posting Nytethorn excerpts, maybe? See what you guys think? I know I said I'd do that before, but then was then and this is now, and if you're looking for a better argument than that, I'm sorry but you're reading the wrong blog.

Check back after I've passed Argument.