NickCummings.com

So here’s the deal: I recently became unemployed after working six months as a legal assistant in the hopes of kindling a passion for legal work and, eventually, maybe even encouraging myself to apply to law school and make something of myself.

It dawned on me that that’s not the life I want for myself. For better or worse, I’m not happy unless I’m working in some creative fashion. I only feel good about myself when I’m staying up all night working on a layout, or writing about whatever comes to mind (hence this blog), or sketching ridiculous cartoons I wouldn’t dare share with anyone, or…you get the point.

I’m currently living in Eugene, Oregon, which doesn’t have a whole lot going on except for:

• An awesome library
• An abundance of affordable, healthy, local, organic food
• Plenty of bike paths
• A totally awesome girlfriend who’s got my back, even if she thinks I’m ridiculous

With that in mind, here’s the deal.

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to dive head-first back into Flash. With the help of Lynda.com (the best learning tool I’ve ever used outside of a classroom), I intend to teach myself everything I can about making games with Flash with the eventual goal of…well, it’s hard to say. I want to be a game designer, and dammit, now’s the time.

I’ve got this nagging worry in the back of my mind that this is just me trying to justify slacking off and being an unemployed layabout, but I’m pretty sure the opposite is true. For the first time ever, I have no obligations aside from feeding, sheltering and clothing myself. This is the time to hunker down and learn everything I can and start creating things to share with people. I have no idea where it’ll lead me, but frankly, I don’t care. For the next few months, my life is my own and this is what I’m choosing to do with it.

There’s one cardinal rule I love breaking as a writer, and that’s editing. Maybe it’s just the way I approach a first draft, but I get so energized just seeing where my prose takes me that to go back and revise it seems almost criminal at times. Clearly it’s a necessary process for producing something polished and presentable, but it’s hard to liberate yourself to write what you want when you’re just thinking ahead to the next step where you’re going to go back and eviscerate everything. It’s hard to focus on step one when all you can think about is step two.

The next few months are going to be all about step one. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes in a general sense, but if you’d like to keep up with all my notes, sketches, observations, and other game-related details, check out nickplaysgames.tumblr.com. And, of course, I’m still actively working on Silicon Sasquatch for the more high-brow gaming stuff — and if such a thing doesn’t exist, we’re doing our damnedest to make it real!

One of the best perks about living in the Pacific Northwest is that you probably won’t be murdered by Mother Nature. Floods? Unlikely. Tornados? Almost never. Volcanoes erupting? Well, okay, sometimes. But when you consider that your offspring are probably not going to be eaten by a roving pack of hyenas in the wilds of Oregon or Washington, you start to appreciate just how relatively demure this ecosystem is.

Until you start reading about the Cascadia fault, anyway. It’s a major fault line that runs from Northern California to Vancouver, B.C. along the Pacific Ocean coastline, and every few hundred years it decides to lurch forward and basically ruin everything.

And honestly, “fault” is quite an apologetic word for a massive subduction range that fires off a high-magnitude quake capable of leveling cities. I thought “Massive Catastrophic Pain Generator” might be a better fit, but so far the USGS hasn’t budged.

So what does it mean? According to a New York Times article by Peter Yanev, an earthquake engineering expert, it means we’re in for a more devastating quake than what occurred in Chile or Haiti — and generally speaking, we’re not at all prepared. Apparently if massive earthquakes are a rare occurrence in a particular region — as they are in the Northwest — that area is deemed a lower-risk zone. Earthquake proofing standards are kept lower and are perhaps less rigidly enforced than in a region like California’s San Andreas fault, which puzzlingly has a lower threshold for destruction than our humble Cascadia fault.

This isn’t going to surprise most people in the Northwest, though. Most of us have known about the impending earthquake for years and are fully aware that it could level buildings and kill and injure lots of people. So why aren’t we worried about it? Why am I not worried about it? I guess when there’s something so potentially devastating looming in the unforeseeable future, the most common human instinct is to ignore it. It’s not surprising; after all, how many people avoid the doctor because they’re afraid something is wrong with them?

Arguably the worst part is that we have practically no idea when the next quake will happen. We’re due for another one already, but it could be as much as 100 years away. So while we may not see it in our lifetimes, the next generation most definitely will.

But it’s kind of exciting in a perverse way, isn’t it? I mean, I’m not advocating widespread injuries and destruction, but we’re talking about a high-stakes disaster waiting to happen. And at the very least, we’ve finally got incontrovertible proof that those of us who live in the Pacific Northwest are totally bad dudes.

Forgive me, for I’m about to violate a couple of the Cardinal Rules of Blogging:

1. Thou shalt not write about the minute, inane details of thine day; and
2. Thou shalt not blogge about Portland, for every individual Portlander doth blogge

To be frank, having to move out from my apartment in Northeast Portland has been one of the most disappointing turns in recent memory. I had to move back home for a number of reasons, which is certainly better than having nowhere to go, but giving up my autonomy to move back into the guest room at Mom’s isn’t exactly the highest aspiration of someone in his twenties.

Adding insult to injury, I’m now playing host to some disgusting troupe of illnesses that seems quite intent on haunting me until I arrive at the grave, tired and mucus-y. I’ve spent more than a week at home feeling terrible, so it was fortunate that a friend who’s visiting for the holiday decided to call me up on the first day where I really started to feel capable of functioning in the real world. She suggested a trip into downtown Portland. It made for a nice reminder that Portland certainly isn’t perfect, but it is still certifiably awesome.

We stopped in at just a few of my favorite places, but they’re all worth mentioning.

Mio Gelato isn’t the only gelato shop in Portland, but it’s probably the most reliable one out there. Generous portions and a great variety of flavors make for a great snack, even when the weather is dismal. I’ve heard the sandwiches are great as well. I used to frequent Staccato Gelato when I lived in Northeast, which deserves recognition for its weekly bizarre flavors (usually worth trying) and fresh donuts, but when it comes down to it, Mio just makes the best gelato. We stopped at the one in the Pearl District, but the one on NW 23rd is just as good.

The Stumptown Coffee at the Ace Hotel in Portland (SW 11th and Stark)

I wouldn’t claim to be anything of a coffee expert, but I know that Stumptown Coffee brews the absolute best black coffee I’ve ever had. Although it’s a bit excessive, I was accustomed to spending a bit more to buy Stumptown whole bean coffee to grind and make at home on a pretty regular basis. Fortunately, their cafe drinks are just as impressive as the coffee they originate from.

When I was in Seattle a couple months back, I spent a fair bit of time walking around downtown and Capitol Hill. It surprised me to see so many smaller coffee shops advertising Stumptown Coffee; isn’t boasting about serving coffee from another state heresy in Seattle? I suppose it could be interpreted as an important life lesson: When coffee tastes this good, not much else matters.

There’s not much that needs to be said about Powell’s Books. Its reputation precedes itself. Essentially, it’s a book lover’s paradise, and one could easily lose an entire day wandering the stacks. I’m a notorious book abandoner — I start every great book I hear about and end up abandoning it about halfway through to start another one — so I have to be cautious with my money at Powell’s. But even just browsing the store’s massive selection is enjoyable.

None of these locations will be unfamiliar to anyone who’s spent much time around Portland, but I wanted to write a bit about them so I can remind myself why I like living in Oregon. It’s hard to say when and where I might move next, but I know I can’t just stay here forever. In the meantime, it’s nice to remember the elements that give this city its identity — and give me a reason to return.

This is what the rain can do to a person.

The rainy season unmistakeably arrived in Portland today: Streets are flooding, umbrellas are out, and Californian expatriates are preparing for the End of Days.

I’m no stranger to the gloom that perpetually overcast skies bring with them, but I’m also notoriously bad at preparing myself for the winter doldrums. Well, not this time! I’ve got a foolproof 30-day regimen that’s guaranteed to ease me in to Oregon’s annual unpleasantness with finesse.

During the month of November, I will write a 50,000-word novel, abstain from shaving (not that anyone will be able to tell) and blog about the whole unfortunate thing.

So why write a novel? I won’t deny the appeal of adding another outlandish boast to my repertoire for cocktail parties and art-gallery soirées, but I’m also chiefly interested in the lessons to be learned from committing myself to a major project I know very little about and forcing myself to get through it by the skin of my teeth. I’m notoriously bad at committing to work until the eleventh hour (thanks, college!) and I’m eager to see if there’s actually any reward to be found in pacing oneself when undertaking a massive effort.

As for the lack of shaving? That’s more of a “just get it over with” type of situation. As a man, I am theoretically blessed with the super power of growing facial hair. But thanks to some rather unfortunate genes and sour luck, I rolled a few natural ones at my moment of conception and wound up a couple decades later with a distressingly uneven smattering of facial hair.

Thankfully, I live in a city where an unshaven person who spends hours each day writing a meandering novel looks just as natural as a fat man in a button-up shirt, spurs and a ten-gallon hat raising a pair of pistols to the heavens does in Texas. (I have never been to Texas but I am told this is what life means to a Texan.)

It’s an altogether foolish plan for self-improvement, but at least my friends and family will get a few cheap laughs at my expense.

For updates on my novel, beard status and sanity, kindly subscribe to my blog.

This post originated on the Rock Band forums in a thread asking people to describe how they first heard and got into The Beatles. I ended up running with the topic and found I had a lot to say. It’s not my best writing by any means, but it felt great to finally have something to talk about in detail. I’ve reposted it here — hope you enjoy it.

I’m curious to hear how other people first started listening to the band, so feel free to leave a reply if you want to share.

I almost never got into The Beatles.

I grew up in a household where there were plenty of records and CDs but very few were ever queued up to play. My dad listened almost exclusively to talk radio or the classic rock station, and when he talked about his favorite bands (Jimi Hendrix, The Allman Brothers Band, The Grateful Dead) The Beatles never came up. I’d heard The Allman Brothers’ double album “Eat a Peach” before I even knew what The Beatles’ White Album was.

My mom owned an impressive collection of Beatles records from her childhood, but we never had a working record player. They sat in a box in the closet for as long as I could remember. I’d leafed through them a couple times, laughing at their ridiculous haircuts and marginally clever album titles.

As a teenager I lumped them into the broad genre of “oldies” — a term that basically meant “music that has no business hanging around.” Their songs sounded overly simplistic, at times insipid (Drive My Car, Eight Days a Week, Twist and Shout) or just plain weird (Piggies, I Am The Walrus). It wasn’t until a few years ago that the band finally made sense to me.

There are only a handful of albums I’ve come across that were so powerful and consuming that I remember exactly where I was when I first heard them — Radiohead’s Kid A, The Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois, for example. My recollection of the first time I listened to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is probably the most vivid of all of them.

A couple summers ago, I was driving back to school from Portland to Eugene with one of my best friends from grade school. We both ended up going to college at the University of Oregon, but we had fallen a little out of touch over the years. I was excited for the trip as a chance to reconnect and share some music.

Heat’s rarely an issue in Oregon — temperatures over 90 are uncommon, even in the summer — but this day was well over 100 degrees, and the air was thick with humidity.

So of course, my car’s air conditioning decided to stop working that morning.

The freeway was packed, the car was stifling, and I was sweating to the point where the seat was fusing to my clothes. Neither of us was bold enough to talk — the air tasted like a track meet.

It was kind of disgusting.

My friend began rifling through his bag, looking for some music to put on that would distract us from the fact that the ceiling was damp. He pulled out Sgt. Pepper and waved it at me.

I shrugged. He put it on.

What I heard wasn’t supernatural, or beyond belief, or maybe not even the best album in history. But it was audacious, adventurous; it was unlike anything I’d heard. It was convoluted and over-the-top one moment and heartfelt the next.

When the album ended, it was like awakening from a daze — not the best realization when you’ve been driving a couple tons of metal at freeway speeds for an hour — and I was struggling to think of something to say. The heat may have contributed to the surreal nature of the experience, resulting in something of a poor man’s spirit journey, but one thing was certain: There was something very important to be found in listening to the Beatles.

My friend and I had bonded over music when we were friends in high school, but back then his tastes (Marilyn Manson, Slipknot, Limp Bizkit) and mine (Blink-182, Sum 41 and…Limp Bizkit) were limited, to put it delicately. Thankfully, in the decade since we’ve both since grown a bit older and wiser — and hearing Sgt. Pepper was proof of that.

I must have listened to that album a hundred times over the last couple years. I sought out copies of the rest of the Beatles’ catalog and listened through every album. I became fascinated by the history and the mythology surrounding the Beatles and the people that were a part of it. Between the Beatles Rock Band instruments scattered around and the countless Wikipedia pages I’ve been scouring, my desk is beginning to look like that scene in A Beautiful Mind where John Nash’s wife stumbles upon his shack in the woods.

I’m sure I’ll eventually learn all I want to know about the Beatles, but I’ll never grow tired of their music.

So, funny story — I haven’t posted here in a month. And this is after I promised frequent updates, right?

Well, I have been blogging daily, believe it or not. Just not here.

For the last couple months, I’ve been pouring heart and soul (and carpal tunnel-ridden hands) into editing and writing for a gaming blog called Silicon Sasquatch. It’s a project I started with Aaron Thayer, a friend and fellow graduate of the University of Oregon School of Journalism, Communication and Terminal Unemployment. Our mission has been to deliver daily news, analysis and reviews on anything related to videogames and gaming culture with a definite emphasis on the Pacific Northwest.

Writing about games is something I’ve dreamed about doing for as long as I’ve been able to read, and while it’s not quite as lucrative as I’d imagined (we’re never going to make any money, ever) I’m having a blast maintaining and improving the site on a daily basis. I’ve become addicted to Twittering and Digging each story and tracking traffic to an obsessive degree.  I’ve got Photoshop macros built for resizing and downsampling images for the site, and I’m working on developing a watermark filter. I’m positively smitten by this fake little not-capable-of-profit business I’ve built for myself.

In this month alone, we’ve more than quintupled our page views: We’re now averaging more than 1,000 views per month, and the average continues to climb daily. We’ve also started receiving comments from real, actual people that we don’t know, which is exciting. But the most exciting thing was when Aaron’s review of an indie game called The Path was picked up by the game’s developer, Tale of Tales. They quoted Aaron and posted a link to our review from their site, which continues to give us exposure. It’s a minor nod, but to know that someone’s paying attention is pretty exhilarating.

I miss writing about other things, but between working full-time (for my dad, but hey, it’s work) and working on the gaming blog I just haven’t had time for anything else.

In any case, I hope you’ll check out the work we’re doing on the gaming blog, even if games aren’t your thing. Any and all feedback is totally appreciated.

Portlanders, rejoice — we’ve finally got a reason to hate our lives!

My friend and partner in crime sent me a link to BusinessWeek’s list of the most unhappy cities in the United States, and guess what? We won!

The victory was determined by factors like depression, suicide rates, divorces and crime. Personally, my favorite component is the number of cloudy days: a staggering 222 per year in Portland.

I’m not sure I’d call this list fair by any stretch of the imagination; the article’s hefty disclaimer only reinforces the lack of scientific validity backing it up. Notably missing are factors like quality of public parks and transportation as well as air quality. Bad weather gets me down like nobody’s business, but living in a place that’s smothered in trees and foliage also makes for a healthy, cozy place to live.

Oh, and the beer helps.