Can I ask you some questions about the COVID vaccine?

Sure! This is definitely something we should be talking about.

Have you gotten vaccinated?

Yes! I've received both shots of Moderna.

You fool! What if they injected you with a microchip?

Nevermind that this rumor has been debunked by ABC, the BBC, Business Insider, c|net, The New York Times, Reuters, Times of India, USA TODAY, and countless other news sources that didn't come up in a cursory Google search on the topic. The government already knows my address, age, marital status, income details, and political affiliation. They've got my fingerprints on file from when I was a student teacher. They can monitor my phone calls, texts, Internet use, and credit card charges. They can watch me through webcams, phone cameras, and security cameras; they can even track where my smartphone is (which, for all intents and purposes, is where I am). They don't need a microchip to keep tabs on me.

We don't know all the risks of the vaccine yet. Aren't you worried about long-term side effects?

Let me tell you what the side effects are of not being vaccinated: I know firsthand what COVID can do to a person, and it's one of the worst things I've experienced in my life. I've spent the last year hiding from my friends, family, and community because getting close to them might kill them. I've given up holiday get-togethers, movie marathons, birthday dinners, conventions, and anniversary trips, not to mention all the day-to-day excursions that keep life fun and interesting. Leaving the house for any reason involves so much more stress, anxiety, preparation, and mindfulness than ever before. I've fallen into unhealthy habits to cope with the fear of being around other people and the loneliness of being isolated from them.

People eagerly embrace new cars, smartphones, shampoos, packaged foods, etc, despite having no information about any consequences or defects that only become apparent with time. Why are we so much more cautious about rigorously tested and carefully regulated vaccines developed by some of the best experts in the world?

This pandemic has taken away so many freedoms that we used to take for granted, and we're not getting those freedoms back until everyday people step up, put aside their fears and excuses, and get vaccinated. I think about my grandfather, who enlisted to fight in World War II—despite knowing full well that he might be injured or killed—in order to protect his country and the people he cared about. Getting vaccinated to protect my country and the people I care about, even in the face of unknown risks, is a small act of patriotism that I hope would have made my grandfather proud.

Doesn't the vaccine make you sick?

If you're asking if the vaccine gives you COVID, the answer is no. It teaches your body how to fight COVID. But if you're asking about whether I felt awful for a little while after getting vaccinated, the answer is yes. After the first dose, I had two days of symptoms that reminded me of when I had COVID, followed by two days of general exhaustion. After the second dose, I experienced lethargy, headaches, and mild chills for one day before feeling totally normal again the next day. I never had any real pain at the injection site; my arm just felt heavy and tender if I tried to move it too much.

Everyone's body behaves differently when their immune system is hard at work, and I understand that people who've already been exposed to COVID have a worse reaction to the first dose, so your mileage may vary. The key is to plan ahead and let your past self take care of your future self. Finish all your errands and housework before getting vaccinated, and clear your schedule as best as possible for 1-2 days after your appointment. Plan to have food available that requires little or no effort to prepare, and try to stock things that are easy to eat—I recommend yogurt, pudding, and instant ramen.

I really hate needles. Can't I wait for them to make a pill or something?

Well, you don't have to have ramen, but—oh, wait; you said needles, not noodles. Fortunately, at least in my experience, injection technique has improved significantly among medical professionals in recent years. Both COVID shots felt like a quick punch to the arm, not unlike the kind of punch you might receive from a friend or family member after saying something embarrassing about them in public. Not that I know what that feels like.

How much does the vaccine cost?

For the recipient? Nothing. Getting vaccinated is absolutely free. There's no place for financial barriers when the goal is to reach herd immunity and ensure everyone can be protected. Even if you don't have medical insurance (or ID, for that matter), you can get the vaccine at no cost here in the United States—the Health & Human Services website has a lot of useful information about that on this page.

Was it difficult to schedule an appointment?

Actually, it was super easy, barely an inconvenience. My wife and I registered through VAMS. We started by submitting our basic contact info, then within 24 hours we received an e-mail to sign up for a vaccination appointment. This required filling out a simple online form (nothing we haven't disclosed to a doctor's office before) and then selecting where and when we wanted to get vaccinated. Each location on the list included the street address, the earliest date for a new appointment, and which specific vaccines (ie, Pfizer, Moderna, J&J) were available. The whole process took only a few minutes to complete, and we had an appointment only a few days later.

What was it like at the vaccination center?

We went to a popup clinic at a senior center. There was clear signage around the building that directed us where to go, and a volunteer was at the entrance to answer any questions. We queued up in the gymnasium, which had vaccination stations set up around the room in the same manner that voting booths would have been set up for an election. We showed our IDs, waited briefly in line, and then proceeded to the first available station. The person administering the shot asked us a few questions (eg, have we ever had an allergic reaction to an injection), gave us the shot on the upper part of whichever arm we preferred, and had us take a vaccine record card to fill out. Then we scheduled a follow-up appointment for a month later.

We were asked to stick around for 15 minutes (or 30 minutes, if we had a history of allergic reactions) just in case any bad reactions developed. We sat, socially distanced, in a waiting room down the hall, where another volunteer gave us the rundown of possible side effects in the next few days and how to handle them. One important tidbit was to use Tylenol (acetaminophen) rather than Advil (ibuprofen) for pain relief, because of some emerging scientific evidence that anti-inflammatories might reduce vaccine efficacy. Another important tidbit was to download our vaccine certificate from VAMS at our earliest convenience, because that documentation is more official than the vaccine card, and because it was unclear how long our VAMS accounts would remain active.

Every single volunteer, without exception, was friendly, patient, and good at the job they were doing. The atmosphere was very relaxed, and I actually felt comfortable being out in public for the first time since the pandemic started. I cannot tell you how refreshing and soul-soothing it was to be surrounded by people actively doing the work that's required to end this pandemic.

I have other concerns about the vaccine. Is there any legitimate reason why I shouldn't get vaccinated right now?

In all honesty, if you've done the research, discussed your concerns with a healthcare professional, gotten second opinions from a varied group of other people you trust, and decided that there is a genuinely compelling reason to remain unvaccinated despite the potentially fatal risk it poses to yourself and others...then yes, that reason is probably legitimate.

However, the onus is on you to keep following the safety procedures that have carried us through the pandemic—masking, social distancing, handwashing. If you truly care about the people around you, you'll be completely transparent with others about your vaccination status and your rationale for delaying or avoiding the shot. Transparency demonstrates that you're thinking about their wellbeing, and any legitimate rationale ought to hold up against criticism and peer pressure.

As strongly as I believe that everyone should get vaccinated, I feel that way because I care deeply about keeping everyone healthy and safe from this virus while we work to eradicate it. Getting vaccinated is a safe, free, easy way to demonstrate a basic respect for human life and a concern for the greater good in a time when breathing on someone might kill them.

I'm doing my part to keep you safe. Will you do the same for me?

The general consensus among my friends is that 2016 was one of the worst years in recent memory, marred by a seemingly endless string of celebrity deaths and characterized by a viciously divisive election that was more personal than political. For me, 2016 was an emotional rollercoaster that served as an unlikely getaway vehicle from 2015, AKA the worst year of my life.

The highs and lows of 2016 were so drastic and unevenly spaced that the whole year feels almost surreal in retrospect. There were incredible highs, including Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage, seeing my name in the credits of not one but three new Mega Man games, and starting work on a Mega Man game of my own. I made one of the biggest decisions of my adult life, walking away from a stable (but undesirable) situation in order to take a risk on a new job and a new home in a different state (or, as I prefer to say, finally moving back to Earth after five years of exile on the moon). I confronted a few personal demons, not exorcising them completely but making invaluable progress. I celebrated a milestone anniversary with my wife, and we helped each other weather one physical or emotional storm after another. I had the weirdest Christmas of my life, filled with twists and turns that had me cycling through the entire range of human emotions for the better part of a week. I actually paid attention to world news for several months, attempting to keep myself informed about topics, such as the Presidential election, that were oppressively unavoidable and that demanded I have an opinion about them. I became an active part of the Mega Man fan community at Sprites INC, and I received their Spike Award for my sporadic gaming livestreams. I informally said farewell to GameCola after 8 years on staff. My mother and I went on a memorable road trip to attend the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN. A brief trial of EnChroma glasses gave me a taste of what it's like to see color the way the rest of the world does. I (mostly) stopped picking tomatoes off my sandwiches. It's been quite a year.

Importantly, I made an effort to follow through on my 2016 resolutions (or, as I prefer to think of them, goals). Here's how I did:

Goal #1: Start and finish a YouTube playthrough of Mega Man 8.
Hah! I had every intention of this being the one goal I would definitely achieve, but I ended up spending almost the entire year working on designing Mega Man levels instead. Having spent too many years working on multiple projects and finishing none of them in a reasonable amount of time, I made a conscious decision not to split my focus between projects, and so MM8 remains on hold (but partially recorded) until people stop giving me excuses to make more Mega Man levels.

Goal #2: Make serious headway on the video game my wife and I are planning.
See above. I've at least made serious headway on OH JOES! (A Proto Man Adventure), which hadn't been conceived when I came up with these goals, so I'd call that at least a partial success.

Goal #3: Run at least one D&D campaign, then learn a new tabletop RPG system and run another campaign.
Failure! I played in a number of Pathfinder sessions, but I didn't run any games of my own or learn any new systems. I did at least jot down some ideas for a D&D one-shot that I've been wanting to try for several years. Once again, my creative energies were directed almost entirely toward making Mega Man levels.

Goal #4: Read 12 books.
Failure! Probably. I lost track toward the end. However, I got pretty darn close. My conservative Christian friend sent me a care package of books early in the year, relevant to some conversations we'd had, and they constituted a good portion of my reading list. I have a terrible habit of letting his gifts gather dust for several years before putting them to use, so it was good to delve into these books right away. I may write a separate post discussing everything I read in some kind of detail, but for now, here's what I read in 2016 in the order I read them:
1. Every Good Endeavor by Timothy Keller
2. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
3. The Ultimates, Vol. 2 by whoever wrote, drew, and inked it; the book's in the other room and I'm too lazy right now
4. And the Good News Is... by Dana Perino
5. William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, a New Hope by Ian Doerscher
6. Firsthand: Ditching Secondhand Religion for a Faith of Your Own by Ryan and Josh Shook
7. Memories of the Future, Volume 1 by Wil Wheaton
8. Spock, Messiah! by Theodore R. Cogswell and Charles A. Spano, Jr.
9. Some Ultimate Spider-Man graphic novel, I think; once again, too lazy to check
10. Star Trek: The Next Generation: Indistinguishable From Magic by David A. McIntee
11. Things That Matter by Charles Krauthammer (about 3/4 read by the end of 2016)

Goal #5: Get my Backloggery progress index into positive double digits.
Success! Even with so much of my leisure time spent reading instead of gaming, I managed to achieve not only double but triple digits—a progress index of +200, to be exact. That means I played or removed from my collection way more games than I added. Granted, there was that Backloggery revolution halfway through the year, so my real progress index is probably more like +2 than +200, but who's counting? Wait, I am.

Goal #6: Write like I used to.
Partial success! My criteria for this one were to write regularly, write positively, and write for myself. I've obviously failed to meet the first criterion, but the second and third are well in hand. Articles like this one and posts like this one capture my passion for blogging and critical analysis, and even if they're not all sunshine and puppycats, they don't come across as the "general bitterness commentary" that characterized my writing for too long a period. I'm writing the way I want to write—the way I used to write—and it feels wonderful.


Now, then. Let's see if I can't come up with some goals I might have a better shot at achieving in 2017:

Goal #1: Spend more weekends at home.
For the last decade or so, I have done an out-of-state road trip at least once every month. Often at least twice a month. Usually at least three times a month. With so many friends and family members living close enough to visit regularly, but far enough away that a day trip is out of the question, I find myself giving up as many as 10 hours every weekend just to get where I'm going and back. Departing on a Friday evening or first thing Saturday morning, and not coming back until Sunday afternoon or evening, leaves me with insufficient time to work on my creative projects and keep on top of the housework and kick around and relax. It also leaves me with insufficient funds to live as freely as I'd like to—road trips are expensive. For the sake of my sanity and my wallet, I intend to set aside at least one weekend a month for going nowhere.

Goal #2: Finish OH JOES! (A Proto Man Adventure).
Everything is on track for the game to be released in early 2017, so I really hope there aren't any awful surprises here.

Goal #3: Finish a YouTube playthrough of Mega Man 8.
As long as I'm not designing Mega Man levels the entire year, this should be doable.

Goal #4: Read 12 books.
I was very close to accomplishing this in 2016, and I only fell short because of how Christmas vacation turned out. I'd like this goal to become a staple, because it's good to be reading again.

Goal #5: Maintain a positive Backloggery progress index.
Likewise, I'd like to make this goal a staple. My video game wishlist has shrunk dramatically in the last year, and I'm quicker than ever to identify when it's time to stop playing the game I'm working on.

Goal #6: Get involved in my community.
It has been eating as me for several years that I'm not involved in church and volunteer activities like I used to be. I want to join a choir or a small group or something, and I want to find ways to live where I'm living. Hopefully, spending more weekends at home will allow me the time to do so.


I've got a good feeling about these goals. I'll let you know in a year how things go.

I have a difficult time accepting that someone is open-minded if their words about politics and religion are as uncompromising as what you'd hear from the people they call closed-minded. My wife and I recently went out to see a live performance by comedian Eddie Izzard—a British transvestite with a rambling, ridiculous stream-of-consciousness performance style—who has been one of our favorites for years. Despite his fondness for lipstick and occasionally inappropriate routines, I've seen him appeal to my most conservative and traditional friends as much as my most liberal friends. Izzard's ability to find the absurd amidst the mundane has always kept everyone laughing too hard to get hung up on any cultural or ideological differences; for the duration of the show, all of us are open-minded to good comedy.

Something changed for his Force Majeure tour, or perhaps I've become more sensitive to criticism of religion since making an honest effort to resume my faith journey last year. Religion has long been a part of Izzard's routines, but his bits about the Bible needing an editor and the Holy Ghost running around with a sheet over his head—sacrilegious as they may be—are (arguably) still funny to a person of faith because the humor isn't presented as an affront. Through silly scrutiny, Izzard invites the audience to see the world the way he does, and they don't have to agree with him to enjoy riding those trains of thought. Suddenly, he's peppering his jokes with "...because there is no God," as though the audience should already have boarded that train of thought. Without any real lead-in, he fires off a few clever zingers at the oft-derided Tea Party, takes a few unkind jabs at conservatives in general, and continues jabbing unapologetically off and on for the duration of the show, almost like he's got a chip on his shoulder. I can understand tailoring your performance to better suit your audience, but this felt less like playing to the crowd and more like letting frustrations from his personal life spill over into his act.

That's not to say the show wasn't funny. The performance was more consistently entertaining than a couple of the ones I've seen, I had some wonderful belly laughs, and my wife and I brought home some new favorite Eddie Izzard quotes. But that uncharacteristic emphasis on criticizing religion and politics—not simply making light of certain aspects of the subjects—had the same effect on the show that raspberry sauce has on a chocolate lava cake: some people might like it, but for me, it spoils the enjoyment and seeps into the heart of the experience even after you've scraped it off.

What bothers me most is how he seemed to associate intelligence and open-mindedness with atheism and liberalism. He expressed that we were clearly an educated, unbiased audience to have paid money to hear a foreign cross-dresser crack wise about such erudite subjects as Buddhist monks and European history. Then he proceeded to rag on conservatives and belief in the divine, even during the bits that had nothing to do with them, because he saw it got a reaction from the audience. So the implication was that we, the audience, appreciated liberal, atheist speech because we were intelligent and open-minded. Maybe I'm reading too far into this, but that's definitely how it came across to me.

I'll reiterate that I'm a political moderate (though largely apolitical) and a Christian who's had plenty of exposure to a wide variety of belief systems. Ignorance and pigheadedness are neither exclusive nor inherent to conservatives and believers. Rejecting conservatism doesn't make you open-minded; it makes you liberal. Rejecting faith doesn't make you intelligent; it makes you an atheist. It's how you go about reaching your conclusions that determines whether you're open-minded and intelligent. Can you be open-minded, intelligent, and openly opinionated? Sure. But it's hard to listen to you if your opinions come across as facts that need no support, especially if those opinions hurt or disappoint the intelligent, open-minded people who came to listen to you despite their differences.

I don't generally follow politics, but I do get out to vote whenever possible. "Why bother?" you ask. "It's not like your vote makes a difference." No, you're right—the chances that my single vote means anything other than bupkis are slim to none. That's because I don't choose our elected officials. We do. I forfeit my right to complain about my country's government if I don't vote, just like I forfeit the right to complain about not winning the lottery if I don't buy a ticket. The odds that it'll make any difference are against me, but the point isn't to beat the odds—if you do, that's only a bonus. The point is to play the game.

My wife and I go out to vote together. We don't always vote alike—I'm sure our votes have effectively canceled each other out on occasion—but on the way over to our polling place, we discuss the people we are (and are definitely not) voting for. Sometimes, one of us sways the other to change his or her vote. More often, our choices remain the same, but we have a worthwhile conversation that helps us to better understand the ups and downs of these candidates as well as each other's thought processes. Not everyone can have a civil discussion of the subject, but my wife and I give enough consideration to the candidates we support to explain where we're coming from before any fur starts flying. We already understand each other's personal viewpoints on "the issues"; choosing a candidate is mostly a matter of weighing the personal and professional choices and identities of the individuals on the ballot and deciding which person would best represent us.

Why doesn't my individual vote matter? Because too much of the country assumes there are only two choices, and certain states act like there's only one. If I'm not siding with the obvious winner or tipping the balance to the left or right when it's too close to call, I'm throwing away my vote. But I throw away the democratic process in favor of an endless tug-of-war when I let the rest of the country essentially flip a coin to decide who my leaders will be. How much do I really care about myself or this country if I don't cast my lot with whomever truly represents my best interests? How much do the nation's problems really matter to me if I've got a half-dozen people on the ballot who have solutions, and I only consider listening to one or two of them? Forget about the piddly little drop in the bucket that is my single vote; my integrity, patriotism, and freethinking individualism are at stake here!

I take responsibility for my votes. I sit down to research all the candidates before an election. All the candidates—Republican, Democrat, Green, Libertarian, Independent; even the ones with ridiculous names like the Go To Bed Or Else Your Mother Will Run For President To Make It Against The Law To Stay Up Late party. It doesn't matter if I think I won't like what a candidate has to say. Political affiliation is only a label, and you can't trust a label to tell you what an individual is like.

The trouble is, some candidates don't make it easy for people who care about more than their party affiliation to find out anything about them. If I miss all your pep rallies and debates and newspaper coverage, where can I turn for information about you? The Internet. If you are truly serious about getting elected, the least you can do is get your tech-savvy nephew to spend five minutes throwing together a free website for your campaign. Facebook or Twitter? Even better. Project Vote Smart? Fab. I cannot tell you how many candidates I've given up on because I couldn't find anything about them, from every party, for President all the way down to Board of Education.

At the time I'm writing this, doing a search for my name on Google yields this website as the first result, my Twitter account right after that, a YouTube tribute video one of my fans made for me, the wrong Nathaniel Hoover's Facebook page, my article contribution page for GameCola, my LinkedIn profile, some other dude's LinkedIn profile, Exfanding Your Horizons, and a news article about my demise in Jacksonville, FL last year. All of this is on the first page of search results, and that's without throwing on any additional terms to narrow down which Nathaniel Hoover we're talking about.

Meanwhile, I'm trolling the archives of a local newspaper for even a passing mention of this person who's on the ballot. If you don't recognize the value of a basic Internet presence, then it makes me wonder how in-touch with our tech-driven society you really are. If you see the value but can't be bothered to establish a basic Internet presence, then I wonder how much you really care about getting elected. If you see the value but don't know how to establish a basic Internet presence, then I wonder how suitable you are to lead if you give up on anything you can't do by yourself. I'm not even asking for a whiz-bang multimedia extravaganza; a 1997 GeoCities page with your picture and a list of three things you care about would be fine!

In the end, I vote for the person I feel is best qualified for the job, regardless of whom the media and my own political party are putting in the spotlight. If that's a waste of a vote, then it's a waste of a vote. But I'd rather waste my vote trying to do right by myself and my country than sit at home and wait for an election that's worth voting in.

Interesting.

Jeb Bush, former governor of the state of Florida, calling out his own political party for being an "anti-everything" party.

"All too often we’re associated with being 'anti' everything. Way too many people believe Republicans are anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-science, anti-gay, anti-worker, and the list goes on and on and on. Many voters are simply unwilling to choose our candidates even though they share our core beliefs, because those voters feel unloved, unwanted and unwelcome in our party."

Perhaps it's because I don't follow politics, and hear about current events most often from my more liberal friends than my more conservative ones, but what Jeb Bush describes here very closely matches what I've been led to believe over the last year or so. I noted that this last Presidential election seemed to be especially vicious, not just between the candidates but across the entire country, and I wonder whether this "anti-everything" notion—whether it's true, or merely perceived to be true—might be largely to blame. It's easier to argue intelligently over differing opinions than opposite opinions. "I prefer Star Wars" goes a lot farther with me than "You're an idiot and Star Trek is stupid" does. From what I've heard, it sounds like some of these opinions have morphed from personal convictions into political tactics aimed at disrupting the current administration from getting anything done.

Again, I don't follow politics. I'm registered Independent, do my research when the big election rolls around every four years, and vote for the candidate I think will do the best job for the country, not just me personally. The rest of the time, unless somebody else brings it to my attention, I am blissfully unaware of the ways of Washington. But every time I do hear or read about politics, it's the same old song: We're not making any progress. We can't agree on new policies, and we can't agree about the old ones. Politicians keep making offensive, embarrassing statements that show how out-of-touch they are with the other side, if not reality itself. It doesn't sound like we're compromising and working for our nation's future; it sounds like we're relying on sheer numbers of people who inherently agree with us to make anything happen.

"...we need to get re-acquainted with the notion that the relationships that really matter are not made through Twitter and social media. Real relationships take time to grow, and they begin with a genuine interest in the stories, dreams and challenges harbored within each of us."

Jeb, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you've been reading my blog.