Robin D. Laws - These Things I Pledge to You

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March 5th, 2004

12:46 am

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These Things I Pledge to You
The fault for this can be equally divided between Ken Hite and RSS feeds.

Periodically I’ve toyed with the idea of starting up a blog. On more than one occasion I’ve been tempted by the opportunities offered by the journal format: the self-promotion! The pontification!

But till now, I’ve always come to my senses before yielding to the blog’s time-sucking embrace.

I like reading blogs. I spend too much time looking at them, but then, as a professional writer, procrastination is an integral part of my every working day. The reading of blogs offers an ever-expanding horizon of time-wasting-related program activities. Something more fun than work is always a click away.

Let’s face it, though. Some blogs are less than inspiring. They certainly don’t inspire me to go out and leap in the pool alongside them.

I’ve kept a journal in the past, but it’s blown hot and cold. I get on a journal kick for a while, then move on to other distractions.

Then I went and got reading Ken’s livejournal; every post is fun, informative, and redounds with Hiteian zest. It’s the next best thing to having him stay on your fold-out couch, while you periodically take him out to your neighborhood’s many fine used bookstores and watch the cash jump from his wallet to its death.

The only thing is,

princeofcairo doesn’t slap up some terse bit of keyboard-blather every six hours. He waits till he actually has some material to present. Until the other day I found this simultaneously admirable and vexing.

As reader, I’ve always hated blogs that are both interesting — so that you want to keep coming back for more — and painfully intermittent — so that most of the time you go to the trouble of clicking on that bookmark, you get nothing new. As a certified white rat in B. F. Skinner’s Plexiglas maze of life, I want my reward pellet when I bonk my nose against that button — and I want it now!

Then I went and found out what the heck “RSS Feed” means. I set up a reader and — hey bingo — now everybody’s content comes to me as it is generated. What wonders will these beautiful madmen of the Internet dream up next? How can I have missed this, just because it was another incomprehensibly technical-sounding computer acronym? Now the efficiency of my procrastination is multiplied tenfold!

Armed with this fresh knowledge, I can start a blog without feeling guilty about how infrequently my posts to it might become. I won’t have to envision legions of disappointed clickers hitting the site again and again, then finally deleting it from their bookmarks in sad disgust… Instead, I can blithely imagine them with their own RSS feeds, experiencing the rare arrival of each new post as a delightful surprise.

Having essentially promised to get you interested in this blog and then blow you off, I guess I ought to throw something more into the kitty. In that spirit, I now solemnly make the following pledges to you: a bold new manifesto of self-imposed blogging limitations.

I HEREBY PROMISE THIS TO YOU, O REFINED AND OH-SO-ATTRACTIVE READER:

When I am sick, I pledge not to write a blog entry about it.

And, if, in my delirium, I do backslide and whinge about being down with a bug, I further pledge never to describe the current state of my mucus, no matter how vitally compelling I may consider it to be.

Nor will I write to inform you that nothing interesting has happened to me, and/or that I am bored. Further, I will not tell you how crappy or uncrappy my day has been. I acknowledge that by putting a piece of writing in the public view, I am obligated to at least try to make it in some way entertaining.

I will never inform you that I woke up this morning; this will be assumed to be evident from context.

Never will I write merely to vent about bureaucratic run-arounds and/or poor customer service.

Even though I am a Canadian and it is my birthright, I will never post to tell you what the current weather is in Toronto, even if said weather is affecting my mood in a significant way.

I shall not commit the sin of linkage! No posts consisting of a one-line comment and then the exact same URL half the blogs on the net are also pointing at today.

As much as I like photos of other people’s cats, I promise not to acquire a cat for the purposes of posting its image to the journal. This would be insincere. And I’m allergic.

The next time my computer goes bung — and oh yes, we all know it will go bung — I will not make my subsequent return to journaling an account of my hellish tech experience, no matter how much my thwarted co-dependence on technology has laid me low.

The only light permitted will be natural light; the only music, source music. Oh wait, wrong list…

I pledge never to wax mystical on the nature of the creative process.

I shall abjure, abominate and otherwise refrain from any and all cute quizzes in which one figures out what kind of action figure, abstract philosophical concept or bar of soap one might be.

I promise not to post in Spanish, as I do not speak, read or write it.

(Leave a comment)

Comments

From:	(Anonymous)
Date:	March 6th, 2004 04:38 pm (UTC)

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Ah, the Pledge of Allegiance (or is it relevance?). If only it were mandatory!

Jeff

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From:	ringsnake
Date:	March 7th, 2004 12:23 pm (UTC)

Obligatory Fanboy post

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At least you didn't say anything about showing off tattoos...

Would you mind if I copied this (with credit to the fine creator of course) and posted it to my own journal with a few modifications and additions?

BTW: I'm thrilled to see that you've started one of these. I've been a huge fan ever since I first picked up Over the Edge, and then even more so when you created Shadowfist/Feng Shui and sucked me into the world of HK cinema that I'd been previously ignorant of.

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From:	robin_d_laws
Date:	March 7th, 2004 02:38 pm (UTC)

Re: Obligatory Fanboy post

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Would you mind if I copied this (with credit to the fine creator of course) and posted it to my own journal with a few modifications and additions?

No problem; knock yourself out.

BTW: I'm thrilled to see that you've started one of these.

Thanks! I'm always especially happy to hear from people who found the world of HK cinema through my stuff.

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From:	thorkell
Date:	March 7th, 2004 05:21 pm (UTC)

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Hm, these promises make a lot of sense. I have been guilty of doing some of the stuff you describe.

I hope you don't mind if I link to this post (with more than a one line explanation).

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From:	robin_d_laws
Date:	March 7th, 2004 11:07 pm (UTC)

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Nothing wrong with linking to posts.

Linking to the exact same post as everybody else -- that's what I'm pledging to avoid.

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From:	tanbi
Date:	March 7th, 2004 06:22 pm (UTC)

Re: no.6

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You are a Canadian, it is your birthright, the weather in TO today (03-07) sucks plywood, and I want to hear that everyone else is suffering from it just as much as I am. Think of it as community support or a spiritual work of mercy: Condole with the afflicted.
-mjj

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From:	robin_d_laws
Date:	March 7th, 2004 10:57 pm (UTC)

Re: no.6

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Sucks plywood? I snort derisively! It was 2 degrees C today, which ain't half bad for the beginning of March. With a few measly flurries that turned to slush and then melted within an hour!

Why I remember the when we really had weather worth complaining about. This is paradise, I tell you, paradise!

Global warming has spoiled us. Turned we once-tough Torontonians into a pack of wusses. I'd watch out -- it might even be sapping the purity of your precious bodily fluids...

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From:	unseelie23
Date:	March 8th, 2004 08:51 am (UTC)

Re: no.6

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You realize that with Global Warming and all it's only a matter of time until us Americans move north... oh, and the snowbirds will be back as I'm not sure how long they can tread water.

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From:	ross_winn
Date:	March 7th, 2004 06:35 pm (UTC)

one of us... one of us... one of us...

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welcome to the freakshow.

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From:	princeofcairo
Date:	March 7th, 2004 10:49 pm (UTC)

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My blushes, Watson.

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From:	weekendwench
Date:	March 8th, 2004 09:17 am (UTC)

Promises, Promises

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You said nothing in your promises about the use of self-contained icons that are nothing more than a sad plee for attention.."look at me, look at me," oh..um...wait..I mean dirty words? What does a Canadian know of dirty words?

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From:	(Anonymous)
Date:	March 8th, 2004 10:30 am (UTC)

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Your first non-LJ-user post! Woo-hoO!

Just wanted to add:

"The only light permitted will be natural light; the only music, source music. Oh wait, wrong list…"

That made me almost fall out of my chair laughing. LJ is the last place I'd expect to see a Dogma95 reference...

GMS (of the non-LJ proles, over at gmskarka.blogspot.com)

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From:	ptika
Date:	March 10th, 2004 10:11 am (UTC)

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Good pledge.

Personally guilty of 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 11 and possibly 12. However, I can still appreciate a blog that goes without those. :)

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From:	gammaleak
Date:	March 10th, 2004 09:31 pm (UTC)

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Crud... I'm guilty of almost all of those. But then again, I don't actually expect other people to read my blog.

By the way... I absolutely loved your work on the Dying Earth RPG. It's the perfect adaptation of one of our time's most brilliant author's works.

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From:	robin_d_laws
Date:	March 10th, 2004 09:56 pm (UTC)

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By the way... I absolutely loved your work on the Dying Earth RPG. It's the perfect adaptation of one of our time's most brilliant author's works.

Thanks so much. I agree with you about the importance of Jack Vance's work; I considered it a great honor to work on this project. I even got to speak with him on the phone; he's a gracious and very engaging man.

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From:	mrpata
Date:	March 16th, 2004 07:35 pm (UTC)

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I used to do a lot of those, but not so much anymore. I'd like to copy that and post it to my own LJ as an affirmation of good blogging technique.

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From:	robin_d_laws
Date:	March 16th, 2004 10:10 pm (UTC)

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Feel free to do so!

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From:	zorkfox
Date:	March 23rd, 2004 01:10 am (UTC)

No Suitable Title

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Dear Robin -->

This is one of those notes from someone who wishes to sing your praises without coming across as a complete sycophant. I will attempt to keep my sentences short, declarative, rather than gushing.

Thank you for Feng Shui--which my group of gamers has enjoyed time and time again. Our GM has successfully adapted it to many other genres (Aliens and Conan the Barbarian to name but two) which I hope will not offend you, and we have gained much enjoyment and laughter from exploiting action movie clichés to our tactical advantage.

Thank you for The Dying Earth Roleplaying Game--which I have not had the honor and pleasure to play, but which I love wholeheartedly both for the work on which it is based and the superb treatment it has received. I am jealous that you've spoken to Jack Vance; I missed seeing him at Norwescon (in Seattle) last year and still kick myself for it. I have just obtained Turjan's Tome of Beauty and Horror and read it as fast as my schedule allows.

Recently I have tried to hold close to those ideals expostulated above--before I even knew you had a journal and before I read this post, much to my satisfaction--and will refer others to them as a model.

Simon hasn't yet handed me a manuscript of yours for editing purposes, but he has let me take a stab at a gazetteer currently in the works. It would be great to work with you on the DERPG sometime, however remotely. (Consider this to be a thinly veiled schmooze attempt.)

And with that broken stutter of topic changes, I will close. This will prevent me from going back to edit things which are sincere yet might strike me as gushy on a second read. I look forward to many more books from you.

--
Jared

"Before you continue, I must warn you that The Vlark is my boon companion."

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From:	robin_d_laws
Date:	March 23rd, 2004 09:06 pm (UTC)

Re: No Suitable Title

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Thanks so much for the kind words.

Our GM has successfully adapted it to many other genres (Aliens and Conan the Barbarian to name but two) which I hope will not offend you,

I am the exact opposite of offended, whatever that is, whenever I hear that someone has taken a project I've worked on and used it to create their own cool new thing. That's what makes RPGs so rewarding and so valuable -- the opportunity to participate in someone else's creativity.

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From:	nicked_metal
Date:	June 6th, 2004 04:20 am (UTC)

Another thankyou for Feng Shui

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Thank you for Feng Shui - 2 years after the FS campaign I ran ended, I still had a player who would (quite literally) pound his fists on the table, chanting "We want Feng Shui!"

I've just finished 6 weeks of formal instruction in Chinese geomancy, too - interesting how life turns :)

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From:	pd_thor
Date:	March 25th, 2004 03:17 pm (UTC)

* a excepción del número trece

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Espero que usted no importe de que I, también, intento para apropiarse de su lista de las pautas self-imposed para mi propio diario en línea. Las encuentro para ser pensativo para mi público que adora así como un filtro para mi propia estupidez.

Aprecio su trabajo en esto y más tan su permiso para mi hurto de él.

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banningy217 Expand

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bardand221 Expand

From:	(Anonymous)
Date:	January 30th, 2007 06:30 am (UTC)

Very Interesting Here!

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Hello world! I'm from Latvia, I now have a computer and Internet! It's so interesting here! But on some forums I see strange posts, they offer to buy some pills or something and they look very stupid. It is robots posting? I thought moderators should delete such posts. Maybe somebody will explain me what's going on? But at all it is very interesting to speak to all you people!
Kisses! :)

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