Literatrix

Dragon Age: The Calling

2009-11-03T08:00:00.000-05:00

My friend Chris got me this novel for my birthday, as I'm currently running a game in the Dragon Age setting so I was hoping to get more material by reading the novel. As with The Stolen Throne, it's not a hugely impressive novel. It's enjoyable, but really only as a prelude to the video game. In many ways, though, the problems are the opposite of those in The Stolen Throne, which had excellent characterization but mediocre dramatization.

The Calling starts off with an excellent plot hook. One of the Gray Wardens (warriors tasked with keeping a lid on the Darkspawn threat) has been captured by the enemy and taken deep underground. This particular Warden has knowledge that the enemy could use to launch an assault and potentially even destroy civilization entirely. The other Wardens decide that they must breach the underground realm of the Darkspawn and either rescue or kill the captive before he can reveal this knowledge. Sounds pretty ominous.

Yet, the novel stumbles almost immediately by the bizarre decision to include probably the least interesting character from The Stolen Throne in this mission, the generic good-natured "nice guy" Maric who was thrust all unprepared into leading the rebellion and later becoming the King of Ferelden. The rationale for including this fellow in the story is poor at best, and his presence as the spotlight character steals time and attention from the interactions of the new main characters. David Gaider's treatment of Maric in this novel virtually turns him into a Canon Sue--except that Maric is portrayed as "endearingly" incompetent except in the realm of getting people to like him. He was only tolerable as a character in The Stolen Throne with the cynical and harsh Loghain to balance him. In The Calling he is tedious. The multiple re-treads of his romance with Katriel in the first novel (especially since he finds a new elf chick to glom onto) inspire epic amounts of eye-rolling.

This is sad, because the story itself is quite interesting and raises a lot of questions about the setting. Are the Darkspawn directed by a conscious evil, or are they merely animals driven by inescapable instincts? What, exactly, are the motivations of the mysterious Architect and are they benevolent or horrific? What is the nature of the Old Gods and this strange relationship they have with the Darkspawn? Yet these questions and their impact are largely minimized by excessive attention to Maric's personal problems and a return to the "setting tour" in the form of basically unnecessary battles with a dragon and an abomination. A couple of editing missteps (you could make a drinking game from the number of times the words "a single bead of sweat" and "sickening crunch" appear in the novel) seal The Calling's position as a solid meh.

Rating: 2.0

Game Journal: Threat

2009-11-02T13:28:00.004-05:00

I'm running a new game on Sundays for a (mostly) new gaming group, and I keep having these interesting thoughts about the way I run the game, so I decided to start recording them on my blog as they occur to me. I'll also be talking about computer games in addition to tabletop games.

These thoughts about making players feel threatened were sparked off by Shamus Young's excellent article on The Escapist about the Survival Horror genre. I often use horror elements in my games and I've been told they're quite effective. However, I have real difficulties inspiring a healthy level of dread when I want the players to do things like make extra preparations for combat or run away from a monster.

The reason for this is that I forget what actually inspires players to be nervous or careful, so I wind up rediscovering it all over again every time that I run. Fear in games runs contrary to what most people are used to seeing in, say, movies. In games--even tabletop games--people aren't really afraid that their character will be killed, no matter what they might say about it. The more you warn them that their character may die, the LESS frightened they will be about the prospect. I've found this out, to great annoyance, in circumstances when I put OBVIOUS death-traps in the party's path. Not only were they not frightened into caution, but they were so incautious that they set the trap off on themselves and almost killed the entire party.

I think there are a number of reasons for this. Some players have a tendency to mistake dithering for caution. If it takes a long time for them to come to a decision about what to do (as it did in the above trap situation) they seem to subconsciously assume that some sort of precautions have taken place and thus no harm will result. There is also a tendency for people to forget that they may roll poorly just at the wrong moment. Gaming is like gambling in many respects, in that you're almost always playing the odds and nearly all actions involve some element of risk. The players become inured to this risk over time because they usually do succeed and almost all the time, when they fail, the consequences are negligible. Your character's life usually doesn't depend on a single swing of the sword or damage roll, but you're doing exactly the same thing (rolling the dice), as when your character's life DOES depend on it.

Secondly, the characters exist in a world which is organized so they can succeed--and usually, succeed just via the expedient of not dying. If the GM wants to kill off the characters, there's nothing to stop them. The GM runs the entire universe. If they want to slap in an impossible monster or situation, they can. (Some GM's get a kick out of putting in tricks and letting the players kill their own characters, but this doesn't change the fact that they can't even get as far as the trick without the GM organizing the universe for their benefit.) In computer games, this phenomenon is even WORSE, because even if your character does die, you can just load the game.

So, if the threat of death doesn't inspire dread in a game, what does? The answer that I've seen, over and over, is uncertainty. A huge monster stumbling around in the open, no matter HOW big it is or how many vicious teeth and claws it has, does not inspire fear in itself. You may get a measure of fear if the players aren't sure that they can defeat this monster, which is why the tradition is to hide the creature's statistics. It's the uncertainty that generates nervousness and thus cautious behavior. Likewise a sudden sneak attack inspires no dread. You have to build suspense by first telegraphing some alarming event and then hiding the details. Don't have a big fanged monstrosity stomping around in the open and roaring. Hide it in mist and give the characters only the thought of "something large moving around". This is so effective that they'll continue to be nervous even after you've shone light in the corners and proven there's nothing there.

One video game that did this quite well was the original Gothic. The forests in that game were so nerve-wracking that I avoided them even when my character was quite high-level and could maul just about anything in the game. Why? Because they were built up in this way. In Gothic, the game was full of groups of creatures that, especially early on, could annihilate your character. This wasn't fear-inspiring in itself (it was more annoying, but also rewarding when you managed to clear them out). In the open, though, you could see them quite some distance away and avoid them easily because they didn't move around all that much. Heck, even if you did accidentally anger them, you still had a chance to get away because they'd go through a little "growling at the PC" ritual before they outright charged.

In the forest, however, you couldn't see the creatures. (Once you got past the first rank of trees, they pulled a graphical trick that made it very dark and hid objects even in the middle distance--you had to almost trip over things in order to see them.) Due to the forest noises and the eerie music that played, you often couldn't hear the faint rumble that preceded "I charge you, sir!". It was terribly scary to be in the forest for even a short period.

One last note: this doesn't mean you should just take the expedient of hiding everything in the game in order to make it scary. Pitch black games are not scary, they are annoying. They don't inspire the player to caution, they make them turn up the gamma. In order for this sort of thing to work, there has to be a transition from "I'm safe here, I can see things coming" to "where'd everybody go?" Likewise, in tabletop games, if you never tell the players what is going on, you'll just frustrate them and they'll begin randomly acting out in order to provoke some kind of reaction. All you want is a touch of built-up uncertainty at the moments when they have a strong reason to push forward, and they will shake in their boots.

Still Life of Apples and Onions

2009-10-30T16:01:00.003-05:00

I think I'm learning better how to work this paint thing. It still needs some work, but I'm starting to get the idea.

Experimenting with Paleo

2009-10-29T10:12:00.002-05:00

While Adam was in Atlanta for training, I decided to try experimenting with the Paleo diet. For those who don't know, the idea behind the paleo diet is that you try to eat a diet more suited to human evolutionary development. It's high in saturated fats, protein, vegetables, and VERY low in carbohydrates. In particular, you avoid grain products and refined sugars as those are believed to have deleterious effects on most people--they cause inflammation and jack up your blood sugar and cholesterol in the form of triglycerides.

Well, I have to say that the experiment was pretty successful. Within the first day I noticed I was shedding retained water and the chronic swelling in my ankles and feet disappeared. My intestines seem much happier with this diet, as well. I ate some bread a couple of days ago and I was not at all pleased with the result. The stuff sits in my stomach like a lump of wood.

The paleo works well for controlling hunger pangs, too. I can easily go down to one meal a day without really noticing, especially if I wait until later in the day to eat. (I start looking around for snacks in the evening, so it's easier for me if I eat later.)

The really funny thing about this (to me) is that Adam is more into this diet than I am. Not *eating* it--he's not the diet type because he wants to be able to eat whatever he feels like eating. No, he's having a fun time making sure I stay on it, to the extend that when he wants to go out, he'll spend time poring over the menu to make sure there's something I can eat. This is quite a sea change for him because usually he's far from supportive whenever I try a diet program of some kind.

It really is pretty surprising how hard it is to find meals that don't involve some sort of bread/pasta/potatoes, though. Usually salads are my best bet, and they're not exactly high in saturated fat. So I expect to be cooking at home more in the future.

Acrylics on Illustration Board

2009-10-25T10:41:00.003-05:00

I've been having to do some paintings for school, so I thought I'd share them. They're not great, but I think the apple looks good.

Dragon Age Fancomic

2009-09-28T20:32:00.002-05:00

I've been working on my comic skills again, creating this short comic for the Dragon Age: Origins game.

District 9

2009-08-29T17:57:00.001-05:00

This movie is very unusual in that Adam didn’t like it while I actually did. Usually, if there’s any movie-disliking going on, it’s me not liking the movie while Adam kind of does. I can understand his point—if you go into District 9 expecting to be entertained in the usual style of a summer action movie, you’re not going to get much out of it. If you’re looking for your standard tale of people overcoming their differences and prejudices, you’re going to find District 9 impenetrable. Because this is not a movie about aliens and humans or even something as straightforward as racism.

It’s a movie about South Africa. Or, rather, the underlying problems that make places like South Africa what they are. It would be equally applicable in any similar place.

What District 9 does is to take a story any American would find nearly as familiar as their own bed—strangers slapped together by circumstances and forced to work together to accomplish a common goal—and uses it as a platform to rip the lid off of Hell and show it to you in a way you can actually understand. They even tell you outright the purpose of the movie very early on. The alien space ship, they say, could have stopped in New York or Tokyo or Moscow or any other famous city, but it wound up in Johannesburg. And then the fun started.

Even the style of the movie, presenting the events as newscasts and documentary footage with interviews of various distant participants mimics the only way most Westerners ever get news about Africa. Through this mechanism and the revelation of actual events, it goes on to show just how distorted, random, and ineffectual that news coverage is. Everything in the movie follows this same scheme. The brutality and callousness of all the characters, without exclusion, delivers the impression of staring into a completely foreign world where solutions for problems are the vain dreaming of distant madmen. It’s never explained why the many parties behave as strangely as they do. Counter-productive behavior isn’t an aberration here. It’s the rule.

And at the end, while there are words of hope, they are more a conceit of dreamers than anything that can really be reached or grasped. A fog of questions that will never be answered descends, leaving only one impression.

Now what?

Fun With Housework

2009-08-21T12:25:00.002-05:00

It's been an interesting week around here because apparently everything has decided to break or need attention at once.

1. The garbage disposal went kaput and clogged up the kitchen sink and the dishwasher. Yay.

2. The vent over the stove is now home to a sizable nest of bees. These are the most relaxed, blase bees I've ever encountered--they'll fly over and land on you like they're just saying hi, then wander off again--but that doesn't mean I want to share my living quarters with them. Adam has sprayed them three times. They don't seem impressed. If you listen closely, you can hear them giggling in there. "Those idiots!" they say. "They're using wasp and hornet killer! But we're bees! We're going to be in this vent FOREVER!!" They think they have a sweet gig going.

3. Also now inhabiting the kitchen are some disgusting black ants. Well, I mean, they're kind of cute for ants, but they are freakin' everywhere. Heck, they're not just in the kitchen. Perhaps they're using the bees for a taxi service to other parts of the house. I've put out ant baits, but apparently this just inspired them to come out in force so now they're REALLY REALLY freakin' everywhere. Joy.

4. The toilet in the hall bathroom is leaking and cannot be flushed unless you want this procedure to involve a mop. So we have to use the toilet in the master bathroom.

5. The SHOWER in the MASTER bathroom, conversely, does not leak. In fact, no water of any kind whatsoever comes out of it at all in any way. So we have to use the SHOWER in the HALL bathroom. This situation has led to a comical ablutionary procedure involving migrating from one bathroom to the other and back as many as three times depending on where you've left your personal toothbrush and whether or not you remember where you left your personal toothbrush. The Dance of the Bathrooms, I call it.

6. It's been storming sporadically all week, primarily whenever Adam seems inclined to go out and do yardwork. In fact, this has become so predictable that it seems Adam has turned into some sort of weird thunder god who wields a weed whacker instead of a lightning bolt. This finally let up today.

7. So, Adam decided to teach *me* how to use the lawnmower. Now, you have to understand that I am comically inept at every sort of yard work and the lawnmower turned out to be no exception. Heck, I couldn't even get the thing started at first. It turned out this wasn't my fault, as Adam gave me misleading instructions on how to start the thing and then stood back and sniggered when I followed them and the lawn mower would not start. He kept telling me to "pull it like you've got a pair!" while I yanked fruitlessly on the starter cord. I asked him, twice, "are you sure I don't need to prime it again?" "No, no." Finally, he got tired of watching me flail around and gave it a yank himself. Nothing. Yank, yank, yank. Nothing. So he sheepishly bends over and primes it again. Bam. Starts first pull. Punk.

8. After I mowed the front yard (leaving comical tufts of untouched grass here and there), Adam decides to tackle the back yard. Now, Adam hasn't mowed the back yard in some time. I'm not sure what we have going on in the back even qualifies as a "yard" any more. It's more like a jungle someone inexplicably fenced in. So he gets out the pith helmet and sends me on an expedition to cut down the more tree-like growths in the hopes that he won't completely annihilate the lawnmower within the first five minutes. I forage around for a while and pull out a full-grown tomato plant with five fist-sized tomatoes on it. No joke.

9. Finally, we're done and I hold the trash bag while Adam rakes up the grass. Only he seems to be having some sort of difficulty with the raking procedure because he has the hiccups and it's throwing him off.

So, yeah. Fun times.

Facts? What Facts?

2009-08-17T14:06:00.002-05:00

I just overheard a television commercial telling people to get "the facts" about health care reform and claiming that no matter what the "scare mongers" say, "you and your doctor will always choose what is best for you".

Excuse me? My doctor and I can't choose what's best for me NOW, much less if this Obamacare nightmare gets off the ground. If I have chronic insomnia, can I get a prescription for GBH (the "date rape" drug)? No. Heck, why do I have to get a prescription in the first place?

The *real* fact is that your doctor and you are the people most excluded from making decisions about what is best for you, and the health care plans of the current administration are aimed exclusively at limiting your choices even further.

G.I. Joe

2009-08-13T11:19:00.002-05:00

Soooooo . . . it's not actually a bad movie. It's not great, but it's not bad, either. My biggest quibble is that I didn't like the actor they got to portray Duke (Channing Tatum, what a great name), and my main complaint was that his ears completely ruined the character for me. Yes, I'm aware that's extremely petty. Women can be shallow, too. But I had a major crush on Duke as a kid and I don't like seeing him re-imagined as a scarred charisma-less brick with two milimeters of hair and ears that make his head look like an upside-down soup bowl. This is about the worst thing they do with the source material, although I *swear* that I saw Brendan Frasier do a brief cameo as "Sergeant something-or-other" (I didn't catch the last part of the name, I thought it sounded like Slaughter, which would make him the Least Appropriate Sergeant Slaughter Ever Imagined) but he's not credited on the cast list. There are a LOT of very recognizable actors in this movie.

The rest of the movie is as campy as you might expect, but it's not awful because there's an underlying childlike glee about all the explosions, flashing lights, and ridiculous Secret Ultra-High Tech bases. Heck, even the throwaway particle scientist gets his own Ultra Cool High Tech Base even though it's only in the movie for 5 minutes. Now that's devotion to concept. They don't even work very hard at making you care about the characters. Periodically the movie remembers "oh, these people ought to have some motivations here, how do we . . . right, flashback!" and you'll get to see some snippet of a character's personal history unfold. But the movie itself seems to find these flashbacks boring and punctuates them with punching, kicking, and yet more of the beloved explosions. The scenes where you'd normally expect to hear excessive violin music of overwhelming pathos are usually drowned out by, you guessed it, explosions. It's GREAT. It's also ridiculous, particularly during the lengthy underwater aircraft battle (they really should have put that in a giant open-air cave and be done with it) that takes up maybe 1/5 of the movie.

Also, for those who are used to experiencing motion sickness in modern action flicks, don't worry. While they still did *some* photography via the "camera strapped to an excited dog" approach used in movies like The Bourne Supremacy and Batman Begins, it's much less awful and you can actually follow the action even when they're switching rapidly between three or more viewpoints. This is really helpful because otherwise the sheer quantity of action would be inducing epileptic seizures in entire audiences.

If you're looking for something intelligent, thought-provoking, or even emotionally engaging, see something else. But if you're just really in the mood to see Stuff Blowing Up, you could do worse than G.I. Joe.

Clearly I'm Dangerous

2009-08-07T10:03:00.001-05:00

I've decided to comply with the White House's request:

Dear White House:

I am reporting myself as a dangerous subversive in total opposition to any form of government health care "plan". I regularly express my opposition in print, in conversation, and in electronic media too numerous to mention. I contend that there should be a free market in health care as in any other good or service.

If this be treason, make the most of it.

Jennifer Snow

This Week's Objectivist Blog Roundup

2009-08-06T22:18:00.000-05:00

Is over at Erosophia. Enjoy!

Anatomy: Skull

2009-08-06T10:00:00.000-05:00

And here's the skull.

Anatomy: Foot

2009-08-05T10:00:00.000-05:00

And here are some feet. I tried to get these approximately the same size but didn't quite manage it.

Anatomy: Hand

2009-08-04T10:00:00.002-05:00

Here we have some hands. I did a better job with these, I think.

Anatomy: Pelvis

2009-08-03T10:00:00.000-05:00

I'm a little annoyed because my textbook doesn't have a picture of the female pelvis, which is substantially different anatomically--it looks to be at about a 45% angle compared to the male pelvis.

Clicking Away Your Soul

2009-08-02T17:25:00.004-05:00

This video is pretty horrific. It's also somewhat inaccurate--in order to log in and reach the stage where you're faced with that privacy statement, you have to register to get the *dealer* information. But it's still pretty bad when the government is declaring that it *owns the system* while a person is logged in and can share any and all information on said system with anyone it likes.

Car dealerships would be bad enough, but most car loans go through banks and other financial institutions, and they are people who are quite likely to want to register on sites like these, making all of your personal information de jure property of the government.

Oh, I agree that this is likely just sloppy wording and won't ever amount to anything, but it's another sign of just how far over the hill into tyranny this country is. Tyrants and scam artists rely on a lot of the same tricks and the Big Lie is one of them. Think they won't enforce things like this given the chance? They will. People in power who think they're doing things "for your own good" have shown time and time again that they have NO scruples about doing WHATEVER they can do to "get the job done" as long as they can get away with it, and maybe not even then. Heck, the wayward cop who breaks the rules to get his man is as much a cultural icon as the debonair rogue or the cowboy.

Sure, we cheer for cops who find the rules tiresome when they're up against a murderer or rapist or someone genuinely evil. But honest citizens must remember that there are people out there who consider you *genuinely evil* if you are in favor of legal abortions or insist that you have a right to keep your hard-earned cash when someone else "needs" it. Those "tiresome" rules exist for a very good reason and a principled person understands that and accepts them as necessary. If you want a cultural icon, the scrupulous cop would be a MUCH better choice.

Glenn Beck's indulgence in scare-mongering masks a much bigger and scarier issue that could swallow us all whole.

Update: Here is a link that takes you to the privacy policy Beck quoted.

Anatomy: Torso

2009-08-02T10:00:00.001-05:00

Here's the torso. I tried to do a bit more with the modeling this time around, although the drawing is actually really small so it looks pretty crude. I'm also displeased with the way the book shades the bones in the ribcage. The dark connective tissue holding the ribs to the sternum should actually be white. It's costal cartilage and literally looks like rubbery white plastic, much whiter than the ribs themselves which are thin and filled with dark bloody tissue.

Anatomy: Leg

2009-08-01T10:00:00.000-05:00

Here's the leg. The skeletal view is messed up--unfortunately the book doesn't have a corresponding skeletal view for EVERY muscular view, and I picked a muscle view where I had to make up the skeleton.

Anatomy: Arm

2009-07-31T10:07:00.002-05:00

I've been doing a lot of sketches of anatomy for my Life Drawing class, so I'll post a few of them for Your Viewing Pleasure.

My First Commission

2009-07-30T14:21:00.002-05:00

I've been soliciting artistic work and I just finished the first design request. I know it's not perfect, one of my friends sent me a tutorial on creating flames in Illustrator that I'll have to try out, but I think it's not bad. I really am improving quite a lot.

On Parasitism

2009-07-24T17:26:00.003-05:00

My friend Shamus just wrote an excellent article for the Escapist that really got me thinking. Here's the relevant bit, but read the whole thing:

So far there aren't any videogames called "Edge," so you should be good.

You release the game to the iPhone and it gets very favorable reviews and is praised as something unique and different in a sea of bland Bejeweled clones and Tetris knock-offs. Congratulations, you made it. You're a successful indie developer.

Except...

A little after launch, you get a letter from the lawyers of a guy named Tim Langdell. Langdell owns the "international trademark" for "Edge Gaming," and he claims you're infringing on his trademark by using the word "Edge" for your game. Your creation gets pulled from the Apple store.

One of the biggest problems people seem to have with the idea of capitalism is that it (supposedly) gives free reign to parasites like this Tim Langdell character. This is a huge misconception based on the idea that there's nothing to prevent people from engaging in activities that are morally questionable but not actually illegal. The Germans actually have a saying that encompasses this philosophy: "If it is not required, it is forbidden".

The best thing to do to protect yourself from people like this is exactly what Shamus has done here: GO PUBLIC. Complain loudly, unceasingly, and with large amounts of evidence. Or, do what The Chaos Engine has done and get together with others to blast the guy. There is no need to stoically submit to this indignity and no need to suffer endless lawsuit threats, either.

For my part, I'm having nothing whatsoever to do with the IGDA if they allow someone like this to sit on their board. It's like they're the United Nations of professional associations. I was considering looking into the student chapter at the University of Pittsburgh, but after this news, forget it.

Objectivim Blogs Roundup

2009-07-16T14:59:00.001-05:00

It's over at Titanic Deck Chairs this week, and I actually submitted a post. I really should do that more often.

United Breaks Guitars

2009-07-15T20:46:00.002-05:00

My dad sent me a link today to this great video produced by artist Dave Carroll. It's a fun song and also terribly amusing. I'm glad I never fly United. Usually I do USAir or (very rarely) Southwest "The Walmart of the Airways". If I'm hitting the East Coast, I'll fly JetBlue in preference to anything else. All three companies have been great to me, and while I've hit some delays with USAir in the past (both times getting stuck in an airport halfway home for an unreasonably long time), they've never once lost or damaged any piece of my luggage. In fact, the worst thing that ever happened was due to a very narrow squeak at a connection where I had to RUN all the way across the Minneapolis airport to get on another plane, so my luggage got left behind. A service guy drove from Columbus to my home in Dayton to hand-deliver said luggage IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FREAKIN' NIGHT. What a nice guy!

In general, I've found that the companies that have good customer service treat their employees well. That's not to say that their employees aren't overworked--I've had some great waitresses who were working a triple shift because of call offs. But the manager APPRECIATED what they were doing, so they stayed in a good mood regardless of the crazy schedule. This is because customer service is based on empathy and it's hard to have empathy for other people's problems when your boss is a stupid jackass and you've worked seven hours without a break because the person who made up the schedule can't do math.

Moral Thermostat?

2009-07-10T10:03:00.003-05:00

Via Geekpress I encountered this fascinating article on the subject of temptation and why it may be harder to resist than people think. I'm not sure I agree with this premise, but it's certainly an interesting idea. If anything, this research seems to demonstrate why duty-based ethics just don't work. Guilt is not a motivating force. Willpower, as the article indicates, wears out.

I can certainly verify this from my own experience. When I do something, not because I want to, but because I "have" to, I get fed up. I do just enough to assuage the guilt and then abandon it to go do something I actually want to do. Often, I'll just *distract* myself from feeling guilty by becoming preoccupied with something else, and then, whoops, look where the time went. I think that this is what most of us are doing when we claim we were too busy to do something. We didn't want to do it, so we let other things interfere with our ability to do it. Sounds malicious, doesn't it? It's not. What's malicious is that we don't feel free to admit that we just don't want to do it.

There's more than one kind of not wanting to do something, of course. Sometimes it's because we know it's going to be work. Ayn Rand called this the "white tennis shoes" when it comes to writing. This is where willpower can actually be useful, because if you're like me, once you get started doing work you enjoy, you'll go and go and go and not notice--because it's fun. But it takes a constant exertion of willpower to do something you *don't* enjoy on *any* level, like, for me, doing a regular diet and exercise regimen. I *don't* like being hungry and nothing I can do will ever change that. The only diet I could ever successfully do is one where I'm *not* hungry and I don't have to spend large quantities of time thinking about it. Exercise is the same way. Oh, I enjoy *specific* activities, but after three or four days of a regimen I'm bored and it starts taking constant willpower for me to keep doing it. I'd need a "regimen" that was completely different every day--but that didn't require me to sit around trying to think up how to make it different, because I'd get bored with that, too.

As a side note, I know those things aren't impossible. I've been looking at the idea behind the "paleo" diet and I think I could do it if I had more control over what I was eating at the moment. Doing a sport or martial art would be sufficiently varied for exercise, too. I've done volleyball before and I didn't want to miss a practice no matter how much work it was. We only practiced twice a week, though, so it wasn't enough.

Anyway, the real way to avoid this problem is to avoid the trap of duty-based ethics altogether. "I really should" won't turn you into a moral person. Only rejecting the evil as truly *undesirable* leads to full morality. There's a great quote in Atlas Shrugged that conveys this idea completely (on page 720 in the Centennial Edition):

[A]nd they looked as if, should they encounter malevolence, they would reject it contemptously, not as dangerous, but as stupid, they would not accept it in bruised resignation as the law of existence.

Full morality *is* possible, there is no "moral thermostat" that prevents people from becoming too moral. You just have to know that evil is not desirable and that you do not become good by grudgingly rejecting it. Nor is good some duty you owe someone above, beyond, and against what you want--not some unpleasant chore to be performed and dispensed with as soon as possible. Once you fully understand the consequences of evil, you'll never feel tempted to engage in it, and you'll find it bizarre that anyone ever could be.