Month: January 2014

Welcome to the nerd club

January 10, 2014 Brody No Comments

This column appeared in The Herald-Sun in January 2014: Fifteen years ago, I told my editor at The St. Petersburg Times that I was working on a new side project — an online role-playing game. He smiled, laughed and said, “Wow, you really are a geek.” This, coming from a guy with an office festooned…

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Journalism, Non-Fiction, Sample Columns

Getting out of our own way

January 8, 2014January 8, 2014 Brody 13 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, as 2013 wound down, a player dragged me out to the woodshed for a beating over everything I’ve done to screw up the MUSH in the past few years.

Crafting? Awful.

Space system? Why?

Game lore? So terribly convoluted!

Bringing my alts online to pad the who list? Horribly deceitful and pointless.

Running RP threads in the forums as an alternative to in-game RP? Not their cup of tea.

How do any of these measures – these apparently half-assed Band-Aids that I’ve been slapping on OtherSpace – do anything to foster RP?

I’ll address these issues one by one in a bit. And later I’ll cop to things I’ve done in recent years that actually were detrimental MUSH.

But first I’ll say this: None of the items griped about above are detrimental to RP in the game. Period.

Later, I’ll talk more about what is, in my opinion, hurting RP.

MUSHes, Online Storytelling, OtherSpace

For teens this summer, “out” meant “outlaw”

January 7, 2014 Brody No Comments

This article appeared in The St. Petersburg Times in August 1992:

Three teenagers stood talking in the soft glow of the lights outside the Kash n’ Karry at Seven Hills Plaza during the early morning hours of Aug. 14.

The shopping center parking lot, a popular Spring Hill hangout, is no stranger to teen trouble.

Last year, a girl socializing there was shot in the leg, and it is there that many fighting words are exchanged, and challenges are made to be settled on some other turf.

Last weekend, as the teens talked, another group of youths approached, shouting taunts, a sheriff’s report shows. Two from the first group, a 15-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy, tried to leave before the situation worsened.

The pair jumped into a car, but were sprayed with Mace by one of the other youths before they could get away. Two miles later, eyes burning, the boy wrecked the car in front of Springstead High School. Neither was injured. A week later, the alleged attackers remained at large.

A day after the Seven Hills Plaza incident, another occurred at Showtyme Video on Spring Hill Drive. A 17-year-old boy and a friend went inside to rent a copy of Lionheart, a slug-a-thug movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme.

The boy exchanged words with another youth who then punched him twice in the face before fleeing. No arrest was made in that case.

Those incidents are the latest in what has become a summer of violent confrontations involving youths from throughout the county, including:

The death of Joe Morris, 19, who was gunned down one humid June night in front of a crowd of people at Tanglewood Apartments in Brooksville. The shooting followed an argument over a pair of sneakers, witnesses said. Donald Langley, a 17-year-old Central High School student, was charged with first-degree murder.

The injuries of two young women and a man on Azora Road when a group of at least 20 people swarmed out of dark woods in late June. The attackers wielded steel pipes, baseball bats and clubs. Clint Hutchins, 19, of Spring Hill was charged with three counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. His was the only arrest in that incident.

A report the next day by two of Hutchins’ roommates that a 19-year-old suspect had tried to run them off the road in retaliation for the Azora Road incident. No arrests so far.

The arrests of two teenage boys and a 22-year-old man on concealed weapons charges after they were caught with an assortment of knives, a chain and some nun-chucks in their cars in Spring Hill. They were on their way to a fight at the time.

Journalism, Non-Fiction, Sample News Articles

Breaking the Cycle

January 7, 2014 Brody No Comments

This article appeared in The St. Petersburg Times in September 1992:

A year ago, Rick J. ate garbage from trash bins behind an Orlando shopping center.

A cocaine addict and alcoholic, the 44-year-old Melbourne man had abandoned his wife, kids and job with the Internal Revenue Service for a life of petty crime.

An embezzler and thief, he was sentenced to prison. Like other inmates now in the Brooksville Drug Treatment Center, he committed crimes to feed his addiction.

Now, using an innovative approach, officials hope to break this cycle of crime and addiction.

At the Brooksville center, and in a similar program in Gainesville, inmates spend four to six months dealing with addiction and learning to become productive. Inmates must apply for the program, a more extensive and personal alternative than is offered at most prisons, where inmates get only a few hours in counseling.

If inmates succeed, by adhering to strict codes of conduct, they can get an early release.

“If the state didn’t have a center like this, I don’t think I’d make it,” said Rick J. during a group session. “I would not learn how to live life on life’s terms.”