Musings on Random Musings

[Bazza]

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THis is funny, someone should tell Storn.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

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"I am not sticking a lollipop up my butt!"

"C'MON! IT's for a good cause!"

 

You see?? This is how rumors get started...

[death tribble]

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have you met Storn in person?

No.

 

Larry Elmore and Keith Parkinson. Also Clyde Caldwell and Liz Danforth. All these I have met.

[zornwil]

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No.

 

Larry Elmore and Keith Parkinson. Also Clyde Caldwell and Liz Danforth. All these I have met.

He's as nice in person as you might expect, very down to earth.

[Old Man]

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Has anyone seen Dave Trampier since, what, 1987? I need him to finish Wormy.

[Mentor]

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Someone had once mentioned one these boards, IIRC,that Trampier won't have anything to do with gamers now that he is a "serious" artist.

[Mentor]

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Has anyone seen Dave Trampier since' date=' what, 1987? I need him to finish Wormy.[/quote']

I think the answer is no.

 

"When an artist's checks are returned uncashed, he is presumed dead."

 

-- Phil Foglio

 

 

 

Wormy first appeared in issue 9 of Dragon magazine. The cartoon was extremely popular and the artist seemed to have some carte blanche with the magazine's editorial staff. One month his cartoon would be 1 page long. The next month it would be four pages long. The comic ended abruptly mid-story in issue 132 with a troll trying to free his salamander friend from a bureaucratic police station.

 

 

 

There have been several attempts to secure the rights to produce a compilation of Wormy strips but the strip's author, Dave Trampier, dropped off the face of the earth and publishers have been unable to acquire rights, let alone make contact with him. It appears TSR and Dragon magazine either do not know the fate of Trampier or are extremely tight lipped.

 

 

 

The seeds of his disappearance may be hinted at in the strip itself. Wormy featured "evil" D&D monsters acting in kindly human ways and the humans tended to be the bad guys. Ogres and Trolls war gamed. Wormy the dragon was a pool-playing, cigar-smoking lay about. Occasionally violence would erupt but Trampier did not hold back. There was blood and terror. Trampier never depicted violence in a noble or heroic fashion. Characters ran for their lives. The subtext of Wormy was really an anti-gaming message. Wormy subtly screamed at its readers "quit fantasizing and experience real life".

 

 

 

Some claim the artist is dead and buried in Philly. It's been confirmed, however, via his family that Trampier is still alive. His whereabouts are utterly unknown, even by his brother-in-law (and fellow Dragon contributor) Tom Wham. Wham states he's not talked to his brother-in-law since 1982. He thinks Trampier lives in Illinois... "somewhere". There's a rumor in comic circles that he's living out of his car in Canada. TSR will only make vague statements that point to a possible falling out between Trampier and magazine staff. Art Director Roger Raupp stated Trampier's strip simply ended because "He didn't turn in any art." An unnamed TSR staffer was quoted as saying "I will never work with him again." Dragon magazine editor Kim Mohan has stated checks for Trampier's final cartoons were returned unopened.

 

 

 

There's a Wormy archive here, although TSR routinely enforces its copyrights on the net and this might not last long. Other Wormy archives have not.

 

 

 

-- Karl Mamer

[Black Omega]

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They did a newpaper article on him. Trampier drives a cab now. He emphatically has nothing to do with gaming, for whatever reason.

[Old Man]

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Someone should hold a gun to his head and make him finish the strip. Leaving Wormy unfinished is a crime of the highest order.

[Bazza]

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I spoke to her for the first time in several days last night and in speaking to her became convinced that she thinks I'm just going to lie down and not do anything whatsoever while she takes everything. She told me of how she spent all day yesterday in a lawyer's office filing for divorce, and how things are going to be with our property and our children.

 

Reality is going to hit her in the middle of the forehead like a butcher's hammer. You see, I filed first, last week...

Good for you, I'm sure it will come as a HUGE surprise to her.

 

But I feel for your son, divorce is never easy on children and messy divorces (which I anticipate this becoming) are worse.

 

SO I'm in two minds, 1) I feel joy for you, but 2) I feel sorrow for your children.

[Guest George Kirby]

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SO I'm in two minds' date=' 1) I feel joy for you, but 2) I feel sorrow for your children.[/quote']

 

 

So am I, and so do I, and so do I.

[Cancer]

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I got to find another job pronto as I can't fully express my feeling with the "swear filter" kicking in.

 

Dead serious now: Your full-time job should be finding new employment. You're just punching the time clock at your old one, until you leave (either by jumping or pushing). START TODAY.

[Cancer]

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The kid isn't even a month old and already I think he's got more stuff here in the living room than I do.

 

Yup. Back in the days when I had kids under the age of 2, and we lived 300 miles from the grandparents, I felt like we travelled with more gear than a mechanized infantry battalion. Certainly our station wagon was fuller than any military vehicle I ever saw (and I grew up around them, so I've seen a few).

 

My kids are the only grandkids on my wife's side of the family, so we got deluged. At one point I said my kids had more toys than sub-Saharan Africa. And one Christmas, I swear the "Toy Line" moved northward to Aswan High Dam.

[Enforcer84]

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I've met Larry and Storn. Spent much of my first year of art school in mail contact with Caldwell. Met Wayne Reynolds ...

 

Caldwell was very nice indeed. I chose him as my favorite artist for a project and while my instructor was not nearly as impressed as my fellow students, Clyde sent me a signed art book from which I made nice slides, and penned a page long autobiographical update for me.

 

Also corresponded with RA Salvatore for a bit.

[Enforcer84]

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So am I' date=' and so do I, and so do I.[/quote']

My soon to be ex-step-brother-in-law () and his wife hate eachother with the power of a thousand suns. But they stay together "For the Children". The daugher, 6 cries all the time and thinks it's all her fault. The son 8 plays the parents off one another for toys and privledges. It's sick.

 

Ironically, Jenny and I get along pretty good but we're ending our marriage. No Kids, just a dog that misses me.

[Bazza]

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Dead serious now: Your full-time job should be finding new employment. You're just punching the time clock at your old one' date=' until you leave (either by jumping or pushing). START TODAY.[/quote'] Yeah I know.

[Cancer]

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I found this very interesting and recommend it to everybody

http://www.sigmaxi.org/meetings/archive/forum.2001.online.tri.shtml

 

The foundations of our Western Civilisation are crumbling and are moving o far apart that chasms of igorance (?) are between them that need to be bridged and brought back to unity. Our civilisation depends on this, I feel.

 

Reaction 1: If you are really concerned about Western Civilization, the first thing you should do is destroy all the karaoke bars.

 

Reaction 2: The only people who think that the sciences and the humanities are in opposition to each other are people who are woefully ignorant of at least one of them. The visceral fear (and carefully cultivated contempt) of mathematics held by so many "liberal arts" folks is one red-flag symptom of this.

 

Reaction 3: I have come to the conclusion that one's core world view is very different from the one I'm used to when one doesn't believe in causality.

[James Gillen]

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Watching David Spade's "The Showbiz Show" a half hour extension of his "Hollywood Minute" Bit.

It's got fake movie trailers...They're not bad.

The trailer for "The Man" with Eugene Leavy and Samuel L Jackson did have this gem.

"This film is not yet funny."

 

I like that.

 

 

Yeah, that was definitely the best part.

 

JG

[zornwil]

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Summing up some musing responses -

 

Rage, kudos! Great news!

 

Super Squirrel...WTF?

 

I found this very interesting and recommend it to everybody

http://www.sigmaxi.org/meetings/archive/forum.2001.online.tri.shtml

 

The foundations of our Western Civilisation are crumbling and are moving o far apart that chasms of igorance (?) are between them that need to be bridged and brought back to unity. Our civilisation depends on this, I feel.

 

Bazza, first, sorry to hear about work troubles, best of luck.

 

Second, re this, great and intrigueing article. I don't think, to Cancer's point above, that it's so much an opposition among these as ignorance. But I also think that the author is fundamentally correct in that increasing specialization is occurring at the expense of generalization and there's a drift occurring. However, as Cancer's comments essentially state, I think there's lots of evidence that many people are dabbling among it all - the problem is, how many among those leading these disciplines? I don't know...

 

I think the biggest conflicts remain culture-based and the notion that we have at all one world culture is a complete fallacy. But we are building a new world culture, I agree, and out of that what I think he speaks of in SOME part is really a sense of anomie, that the world is losing its sense of values, as a group/community, what it has as cultural and social values, as it transitions, and the real issue is that.

 

But I wonder if that's bad? I wonder if we're not moving towards valuable more independent ways of thinking...and if in SOME ways the basic technology of the Internet doesn't reflect the way we are developing intellectually? That we are learning to "hyperlink" our thoughts more formally, more consistently, and to apply learning, informally, this way?

 

What I wonder is if the author isn't missing an even-more fundamental point, that the tradition of knowledge itself is flawed for the era and challenges we face? That the way in which we need to learn has to evolve from static, siloed subjects into more of a "web", and that we need to develop a more "futurist" sort of discipline approach, a more fused, more generalist-among-certain-specifics way of thinking? And I think that's happening, but that formalized education is not supportive of it.

 

Since the Middle Ages, education has been geared increasingly towards mercantile goals. But as we move towards a more digital and intellectually-based commoditization, this seems inadequate, as property itself is evolving from something static and predictable to something dynamic and evolutionary in a way that more closely mirrors biology.

 

Yet in all that I don't think he's wrong...I just think he overstates one perspective, re the perceived conflict, and understates another, re how education needs to change.

 

I view the "art for arts' sake" and "science for science's sake" as positive, instictively and intuitively, but not in a way I can call fully rationalized so would have to think more about it. I'm just introducing that as a personal prejudice so it's on the table...

 

Anyway, I view the arts as different than what he does, and this is fundamentally important...art is communication, simply. It is elegant communication, at its best, but no more and no less than communication, I feel. Whether it's an industrial or commercial art or "art for arts' sake" it is a conveyance by the publisher of a thought of some form. Even where it explores the ambient and non-deliberate process it communicates a concept and incites an attempt at some understanding, even if that understanding is uncontrolled.

 

As such, it has no intrinsic core as emotional or subservient to a value ideal.

 

Now, in ancient times, we see a high incidence of art and religion, but I think the author is strictly wrong to ascribe that as either causal or even particularly important. Much ancient art seems to be "this is how I live" and "this is what happened," as with the commissioned works of Pharaohs, in which I am positive there are as encoded messages as there were in Russian communist-era music but they are lost to us as they relate to contemporary events and communication modes for which we have no understanding. That's a divergence from the point that we often see in art of any era an implication of personalization and an explication of "what was", either in the minds or the hearts or the actions of the people. The simple Basque paintings do not seem religious; they seem either instructive or explanatory in nature. Neanderthal embellishments and symbology hold no known meaning at all, frequently, they are pure abstractions unlike the art of their contemporaries.

 

Anyway, out of this misunderstanding of art comes a flawed thesis as to the purpose of communication. The post-modern notion of meaning as only contextual is perhaps the only useful thing of post-modern but it is, after all, its ace-in-the-hole; it has a place in reviewing why we are where we are and why in some ways it doesn't matter...

 

Because we are in a context in transition. The question really is "in transition to what?" Hard to say. We are in a world of dangers, but to root them all in what this author states not only over-simplifies but it's incorrect, as it presupposes an earlier harmonization among disciplines without context (my point here) of those earlier eras. Harmonization was and will be applied according to cultural shared values. His point of a common world culture is so wrong the rest is lost in this. Without cultural shared values the "discipline for discipline's sake" is the bread and butter of anomie, it is a resorting of the individual to whatever he knows best, and to exercise it in a self-referential way, because cultural values are lost to him. So the best form of educational harmonization in the world cannot rescue him.

 

But in some part this might be good. It encourages self-development. And IF we develop a context for this that comes at the point where the individual has been pushed to but not beyond the limit and if the current technologies all seem rooted in this self-absorption, then perhaps, if that context is suitably communal, the individual will be much more fully empowered and supported than in any preceding civilization.

 

The problem is our ability, as the author does note, to self-destruct or otherwise set back such developments. But this won't be resolved by harmonizing the disciplines...it must be resolved by harmonizing world cultures and cultural values.

 

Rapid commercialization and capitalist value expansion is doing this to some degree, albeit with, of course, alarming results in some ways, a natural by-product of its own limited value set. I think it remains to be seen if a culture of democracy or post-Marxist (i.e., mostly non-Marxist but with that root) socialism is accompanying it; China stands as a major test, but is not the only one, in regard to how cultures are evolving with capitalism (Japan is, too, though, in ways oft-unrecognized, in that it remains to be seen if democratic, Western, and socialist values are really promoting a truly open society). Whatever the case, it does seem that the values of capitalism are at least promoting a globalism which demotes large-scaled armed conflict (as witnessed though not yet proven with India-Pakistan) and promotes a certain type of tolerance (not necessarily cultural, but certainly class-based socioeconomic respect and empathy, by which I mean at least a have/have-not sort of dichotomy in which the haves and have-nots are coming to have more in common among their respective class and even if nationalism and other values supersedes it, there is an emerging form of linkage).

 

So the real issue, to me, remains to build that global inter-connectedness but to work for ways in which communication and education support a (to me) necessary level of personal development and individual respect. And this article serves as an insufficient suggestion towards that.

[AliceTheOwl]

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Super Squirrel...WTF?

He works overnights. Yesterday morning, he decided to have a Sam Adams before he went to bed. I teased him about having a beer before noon, and I guess he decided to run with it.

[Mentor]

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Someone should hold a gun to his head and make him finish the strip. Leaving Wormy unfinished is a crime of the highest order.

I was sort of saving that threat to force William Manchester to finish the Churchill biography series, but it appears age is going to prevent that from happening.

[Old Man]

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We can threaten many people, it's not like we have but one gun and bullet.

[Mentor]

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I wonder if we can use that method to un do stuff. The first Star Trek movie, the Highlander sequels, Robert Jordan's unnecessary fill in books...

[archermoo]

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I wonder if we can use that method to un do stuff. The first Star Trek movie' date=' the Highlander sequels, Robert Jordan's unnecessary fill in books...[/quote']

 

What Highlander sequels are you talking about? La la la la la...

 

Denial. It's not just a river in Egypt.

 

 

I'd have to say that #2 was the second worse movie I've ever seen.

[Mentor]

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What Highlander sequels are you talking about? La la la la la...

 

Denial. It's not just a river in Egypt.

 

 

I'd have to say that #2 was the second worse movie I've ever seen.

OK, if, and I emphasize if, there was any such thing as a #2 Highlander, I would have to concur 100% with your assessment.