Fox Life

Dear Blog world, How's it going? You guys look great. Really. New browser? It shows. So, I haven't written too much this year. Or rather, I have, but very little of it has been on this site. Some has been at Out of the Storm News . Some of it has been for Pheon , a Facebook game. Some of it has been for Precipitate and guest blogs . And of course, most of it has been on my humble novel about the end of all time. But I like this blog. And I like how I feel when I write it. You, Internet, you don't judge me. Or if you do, you don't tell me about. Or if you do, your comments get flagged as spam and I don't read them. So I thank you for that. The summer is halfway gone, and I need to set some goals. Moreover, I need to put the goals out in the world so that someone can hold me accountable, even if it's just the thought of other people (and commenting Spam Bots ) that I'm accountable to. Actually, it's a short list this time. Goals: 1. Finish the novel. End ...

So I completed one of my life goals by getting hired to write a computer game review. Originally posted on Out of the Storm News, here is the review in full: “ Have You Considered the Benefits of Life Insurance ” is a computer game about life insurance, which automatically makes it the best computer game about life insurance, because the competition is just that thin.   The plot is simple enough: you are an ugly life insurance salesman with a trophy wife. You need to buy your wife gifts (a fish, a bottle of wine, something I thought was an asthma inhaler but now believe to be a blender) so that she stays with you. You make money by selling life insurance policies to pixelated people who will pay you $1 a second until they fall into a hole and die, at which point you pay them $100. (Since that’s the only way anyone dies, I’d probably have a “falling down holes exemption clause” in the policy, but that’s just me.) If you so choose, you can plug up holes at $20 a pop...

As a follow-up to the mistaken identity post , here's the story I wrote on Christiania. I'm kinda proud of it. http://outofthestormnews.com/2010/12/01/ezra-fox-explores-christiana-the-free-denmarks-sort-of-lawless-place/ To pique your interest, I give you the first few paragraphs: In 2006, the people of Freetown Christiania had one of their epic, soul-crushing consensus-democracy meetings. It wasn’t going well. The subject was the future of Christiania itself. Up for debate was a plan by the conservative government that offered a devil’s bargain. Option 1, accept the Danish government’s plan to normalize Christiania, the self-governed, three-decade-old hippie commune in the middle of Copenhagen, by putting it officially under Danish rule and allowing the government to construct housing for 400 new residents, opening it up for people to move there. Also, the Christianites would see their well-below-market rents raised through the roof. In short, it would be the end of Christiani...

My high school buddy Jeremy came to visit Sarah and me this weekend. He flew out to Sweden for work and then rerouted himself through Copenhagen to put a Danish notch on his passport belt. In the "What should we show Jeremy?" planning process, Sarah and I compiled a list of things to do that probably would've taken about a week, and could in no way be shoehorned into the day and half Jeremy had to see the city. Whenever we found a new kebab place (the one under Nørrebro Station) or remembered how much we liked our jazz spot ( Blågård's Apotek ) we added it to the impossibly large list of things to do in our new city. Sarah asked me why I wanted to have so many things on the list, and it's because having someone visit you is the test of whether or not you've done a good job of making a place your home. By comparison, you're now the expert. Sure, you're not a native, but you're a local, or at least the closest thing they have to one. There's only...

So there I am in Christiania, the rootingest tootingest frontier hippie commune imaginable, replete with a shady hash trade and a cozy vegetarian cafe, all within a five minute walk. I'm looking for that free tour I've heard so much about because I need to research life in Christiania for a news piece I've been commissioned to write. I go to a place that I think is the Infocafe to get a tour, see two girls behind the counter, one of them is making kanelsnegl . She tells me to go to the next place over to get a tour. I look around and end up at the top a stairwell inside a music venue with a woman with an English accent asking me if I work there. I tell her no, and that I’m looking for a tour. I ask her if she works there and she says no, she's the tour manager for a band called Warpaint that's playing here tonight. A guy in the back says he’ll be out in a minute. We hunt around for a lighter for the English woman's cigarette, peaking behind the abandoned bar, b...

It’s 1:26 AM and we’re home on a Friday night. I would’ve thought that 1:26 AM would be a fine time to be at home, all hygge and happy, and yet for our neighbors one floor down, there seems to be something distasteful about a quiet night at this hour. And so I enjoy what appears to be a mix of polka, Louis Armstrong, and the voices of alcohol-lubed Danish youth creeping through the floorboards. Now they’re laughing. I know it would take a particularly virulent kind of crank to get mad at other people for laughter, but I think laughter has to be one of the least pleasant things when you’re not in on the joke. There’s nothing like hearing a group of people at the table next to you in your quirky little coffeehouse cracking up to make you realize just how joyless your life is, and how much duller your companions are by comparison. Make no mistake: laughter, music, and good times are all fine things, as long as you are the direct cause of each of them. Surely these strangers in apartment ...

While in Berlin, Sarah and I took a free walking tour. The tour guide stopped at a car park. About 8 meters below us, Adolph Hitler shot himself 65 years ago. And right after his guards found his body in the bunker, they all lit up a cigarette. Apparently, Hitler hated the smell of smoke, so all the soldiers were prevented from smoking in his presence. But with him dead, and the war going as badly as it was, a cigarette must've seemed like a pretty good idea. Berlin's a weird place. There's no way to reconcile its oppressive, fascist past with its fun, vibrant present. It gets even weirder when you layer in a second oppressive regime on top of it, so walking around you can't help but bump into the austere concrete slabs of the holocaust memorial, a fake military checkpoint with fake US and East German soldiers posing for photos, and the most delicious and cheapest pastries and roasted bratwurst imaginable. The experience is like watching TVs that are playing "Schin...