May 2011 Recap

Well, May was about as bad a month as we've ever had here at the Back-Blogged blog. Seventeen posts? That's barely one every two days. Figure in that we have seven contributors - in theory - and it's a measly rate of one post every 12.7 days for each of us on average. But don't be fooled. I still think that the essence of Back-Blogged is just as alive and well as ever.

Shame on me for concentrating so much on statistics like post counts and monthly totals. When Back-Blogged began, it was a blog where Sweeney and I could document our individual quests to complete every book, movie, and game we owned. But that quest can only be accomplished if there are more completions than new acquisitions. And since all we're documenting is our completions, it's easy to say that a bad month is one in which there aren't that many things being completed. But what isn't being documented is how many acquisitions we're making each month. And I can't speak for anyone else, but I had a pretty good month overall in terms of backlogging. While I only made five loggings (an all time monthly low for me!) I also didn't buy or receive any new items, giving me a +5 success rate. Last May, for comparison's sake, I logged 25 items (huge!) but fucked up big time with 33 new acquisitions - 20 of them video games. Ouch. By using the "total loggings" metric I've been stressing in these recaps for like seventeen months now, it would appear that May 2010 was five times as good for me as May 2011 was. Au contraire! I improved my logging efficiency by a mark of 13 items.

So, yeah. It's time for me to stop doing these monthly recaps. I'll still be tracking post totals - I mean, it's too easy not to do - but it doesn't mean I'll focus on them every thirty days. Summer's here, and in between my best efforts to enjoy the weather and spend priceless time with friends and family, I'll just be logging away and checking in with any interesting developments should they arise along the way. The blog's two year anniversary is coming up in August, and that event should allow for a nice "big picture" look at the quest in general.

In the mean time, I still feel the need to set some kind of list of monthly "goals." But since we all seem largely to ignore them anyway, let's not call them "goals" as much as a loose idea of where to go next. A "path forward" if you will. And since I just finished explaining why "monthly" isn't the best modifier to use when measuring our success, let's ditch that too. Fuck it - what follows is "The Short List."

MOVIES:

• Any Given Sunday
• The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day
• Capote
• Dog Day Afternoon
• Downfall
• Goodfellas
• Lawrence of Arabia
• Predator
• The Princess Bride
• Scarface
• Speed Racer
• Toy Story 3
• Wall-E

Yeah, so that's the entire movie backlog as it stands now. Why shouldn't all thirteen of them be considered short term goals? Each is capable of being banged out in a mere night. Only the shortest of books and video games can say the same.

TELEVISION:

• Heroes: Season 4 - I'm already halfway through it. Consider it on the short short list.
• Lost: Season 6 - The sooner I watch my DVD copy of this trainwreck of a final season, the sooner I can be done with it forever.
• The Pacific - I absolutely loved Band of Brothers and after watching Saving Private Ryan I could go for some more Spielberg-Hanks World War II drama.
• Sons of Anarchy: Season 2 - I'll need to finish this season and the next one somewhat soon if I intend to watch the fourth one as it airs this fall.
• The Sopranos: Seasons 2-6 - Widely considered to be the greatest drama of all time, and I shouldn't be dragging my feet at finishing it.
• The Wire: Seasons 3-5 - Ditto.

BOOKS:

• The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown - No need to put off the lengthy but presumably quick third part of a series I've enjoyed so far.
• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - The perfect storm of undesirable qualities (an old story meant for little girls) but my girlfriend considers it one of her favorties from childhood and I know I'll have to get there sooner or later.
• The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins - I haven't read a scientific book since Fearful Symmetry last June (Malcolm Gladwell's pseudo-science bullshit doesn't count) and I really liked the only Dawkins book I've read to date.
• The Princess Bride by William Goldman - I've got both the movie and the book, and something says that logging one will make me want to log the other. Who knows which one will come first?
• Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - Somehow I was able to blaze through the first half of this 1400-page book in April; clearly, it can't be hard to finish it off once my interest is rekindled.
• The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman - Parts 2 and 3 of the Golden Compass trilogy. Although I didn't care much for the first book, I know I've got to bang these others out at some point, and why let it hang over my head?
• The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells - To say that I am "in the middle" of this one would technically be a lie, since one chapter hardly constitutes reaching a book's juicy center. But it's in progress nonetheless.

VIDEO GAMES:

• Call of Duty 2 and 3 - I want this summer's "theme," if you will, to be finishing off the sequels to several games I've already played. And as I already said, I'm also in a bit of a WWII kick at the moment.
• Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King - This is what I believe to be the longest video game I currently own. Might as well get back into it and chip away another ten or twenty hours.
• Final Fantasy IX, X-2, and XII - Three more games I've already started and abandoned long ago. Once my PS2 is hooked up, I fully expect to do some serious damage here.
• Ico - Another "now playing" gem. If I can't beat this before it comes out for the PS3 in the fall or winter, I'll feel stupid for having "wasted" fifty bucks on a rare PS2 copy. So, there's that for incentive.
• Kingdom Hearts - Yet another game I've already begun playing. Those PS2 RPGs are stacking way the hell up.
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and Spirit Tracks - Spiritual sequels, if not true ones, to Ocarina of Time and Phantom Hourglass respectively.
• Metroid Prime 3: Corruption - Still standing by that "finish the sequels" goal.
• Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands - But only if the Xbox 360 holds up. Fingers crossed!
• Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal - Another third installment of another franchise I've enjoyed. Why wait any longer?
• Resident Evil 4 - Because if Sweeney is finally playing my favorite game of all time, I feel like I owe it to him (and myself) to play one of his.
• Sonic the Hedgehog 3 - Was it really almost two years ago that I last picked up my Sonic Mega Collection? Yikes!
• Super Mario Galaxy 2 - It can probably only fail to meet my lofty expectations, but I won't be able to confirm my pessimistic hypothesis until I suck it up and play.
• Twisted Metal: Head On - Allegedly, it's the direct sequel to Twisted Metal 2. So, to borrow a silly convention from Final Fantasy, it's Twisted Metal 2-2. And I loved Twisted Metal 2-1!
• Viewtiful Joe 2 - I'm absolutely not looking forward to this. So why save it for later on in my quest to log them all?
• WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne - Not a sequel, but an expansion pack. Could be very short. Also, could be that I've already played and beaten it long ago. Stay tuned to find out!

Okay, so maybe "short" isn't the best adjective for a list that is 53 items long, but when your total backlog stands at 141, that still leaves a ton of room on the "log" list. By the way, there's no timetable for this list at all. I'm tempted to try to see how many of them I can check off over the course of the summer, but that's just inviting back that same old emphasis on post quantity over backlog progress. The true summer goal should just be to decrease that number - 141 - to the lowest amount possible.

How about the rest of you? Feel free to share your goals or plans or paths forward, or whatever you want to call them.