Left I tell you left! You know I used to be a lot more up beat when I write. I blame the internet, it is a horribly negative place, it really is. This is my corrner of the internet and granted I piss where I choose...but damnit I should be happy to be here. There are things going and and the world is a highly awesome place.
I am in a good mood! Who can tell? So I just got done looking around town for a new place to live. I spent roughly 4 hours doing it. Annnnnddddd? I think I might stick with my fightclub trailer. The thing is that I never really gave it a shot. You know? I could fix it up and it would be really nice. I think I am going to try to make it a place to roleplay in order to do that I need more space. So what I think I am going to do and move all my books into the closet room that I don't use, cloths too. Then I think I am going to put more in the back bed room and do my best to really open up the main bedroom. Once I do that I think I am going make a concerted effort to keep it CLEAN. That means spending a concerted effort on making it a nice place to live. I have more time now and this is the time where I can make it work. Once I do then I can make a better descion as to wether or not I want to live there. I might also make my gas stove work.
Right now though there are four places in my price range and they are all either shady, terrible, run by crazy people, or just not a good idea. So starting tomarrow I am going to undertake a massive spring cleaning project. I am also going to have to get the maintence people involved, and when I am done I should have a pretty snazzy place. The main thing I am going to need are chairs and such or a way for people to sit. I can make that work out, and when I get everything cleaned and such I can start making them fix things.
The point being that things need not be as bad as hey are and if I just need to pick things up and get going with stuff. Woo best most definitive sentence ever.
Also spending over 500 bucks to move to a place that isn't really any better is foolish. It is the thing I've always said, improve the world around you don't keep spreading out looking for something better. Besides the area I live in is really nice and I am in a perfect location for everything. So this is going to work becasue I said so. I am also willing to put forth the effort to make it happen.
I realize now that I've been feeling strangely down lately which is pretty sad pandazors. So it is time to get things going forwards and onwards. Yeah! So I was going to make this post about how a modern civil war would work in america. Yeah see what I mean about depressing? Good god what the hell is wrong with me. It is an interesting concept though and it is one of those things that peope don't really understand. The main though about it is that it won't take place over the entiretly of america, it would be isolated to a more or less geograpicaly specific region. More or less the rebel forces will want to break off and get their own country indian reservation style.
You know I wonder if that would be possible. If I could get 2-3 thousand people together and we get the same sort of status as an indian reservation? What would we do? Prolly substance farming, and some sort of internet serivice like web designing, freelance work, stuff like that. We could wifi rig the whole place and I dunno leagalize pot or something like that. It has potential. Maybe canada would let us do it? Heh cool I just came up wit a commune idea that doesn't utilize a single skill I have.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Instead of one thing you get Another
One of these things is not like the other. Teehee I had forgoten how much fun Wormwood Gentleman Corpse is. I really need to make Sasha's brain read it, ALL of it. Sasha's reading list is not what this blog is going to be about, but it could be because her reading list is increadbly interesting and it should be your reading list too.
However, this is my blog. So I read something distressing this morning and I would like to address it here but I don't have the time. LAME. Its basicly a marine wrote this open letter to teabaggers informing them what exactly would happen in the result of a civil war and that they should really watch what they are saying. I came acrsot this in a forum and the conversation was interesting and moderatly paced until some anti government kid came in shouting fear tactics. Thing is he didn't even have the balls to be an internet tough guy, he was just complaining. Which is sad. I wanted to turn the tables on his argument but like I said I am lacking the time to do so.
So we will go talk about the other thing that's on my mind. Which is actually the Iran thing. So we will go to the OTHER thing that is on my mind and that is the fact that I have volenteered to run Mutants and Masterminds. As in I have bought the book and I am going to be comitting a large portion of my time to doing this. Working around the Sasha thing is going to be both very difficult and very easy. Simply put Sasha=win. Though I think we will end up playing over the weekend which is pretty bad ass if we make it happen. Which means I think I will try to find a new place to live on the double. I mean if I had a place friends could come over then it wouldn't be a problem at all. That and half my outlets stopped working.
More than the basic mechanical things that's happening to me is the whole idea of running a super hero game. I am REALLY excited about it. I love super heros I really do, yeah yeah you look at my comic book collection and you will notice a distinct lack of super hero books but I only make so much money you know? But yeah yeah they are great and everything. So I already have all sorts of ideas running around in my head about how I want to do this and villian groups I want to include and all sorts of stuff like that. I totally want to have a fight with Nazi Gorilla's in the terriformed core of the moon. Like that is really exciting to me. I pretty much just really want to get started and it would help if I had the book :(. I should of sprung for the faster shipping, DAMNIT.
Oh well moon nazies definatly happening. Also I want to reinvent the brother hood of Dada though they are going to be the order of the other left. And I want to have a couple of pretty scary villians, Joker style, and I am talking Batman RIP Joker not TV show joker. I don't want to do to much work ahead of time because I would like the players to have some imput on the tone. Maybe I'll let them come up with an arch villain on their own. That would be cool and exparamental I am going to go for it.
However, this is my blog. So I read something distressing this morning and I would like to address it here but I don't have the time. LAME. Its basicly a marine wrote this open letter to teabaggers informing them what exactly would happen in the result of a civil war and that they should really watch what they are saying. I came acrsot this in a forum and the conversation was interesting and moderatly paced until some anti government kid came in shouting fear tactics. Thing is he didn't even have the balls to be an internet tough guy, he was just complaining. Which is sad. I wanted to turn the tables on his argument but like I said I am lacking the time to do so.
So we will go talk about the other thing that's on my mind. Which is actually the Iran thing. So we will go to the OTHER thing that is on my mind and that is the fact that I have volenteered to run Mutants and Masterminds. As in I have bought the book and I am going to be comitting a large portion of my time to doing this. Working around the Sasha thing is going to be both very difficult and very easy. Simply put Sasha=win. Though I think we will end up playing over the weekend which is pretty bad ass if we make it happen. Which means I think I will try to find a new place to live on the double. I mean if I had a place friends could come over then it wouldn't be a problem at all. That and half my outlets stopped working.
More than the basic mechanical things that's happening to me is the whole idea of running a super hero game. I am REALLY excited about it. I love super heros I really do, yeah yeah you look at my comic book collection and you will notice a distinct lack of super hero books but I only make so much money you know? But yeah yeah they are great and everything. So I already have all sorts of ideas running around in my head about how I want to do this and villian groups I want to include and all sorts of stuff like that. I totally want to have a fight with Nazi Gorilla's in the terriformed core of the moon. Like that is really exciting to me. I pretty much just really want to get started and it would help if I had the book :(. I should of sprung for the faster shipping, DAMNIT.
Oh well moon nazies definatly happening. Also I want to reinvent the brother hood of Dada though they are going to be the order of the other left. And I want to have a couple of pretty scary villians, Joker style, and I am talking Batman RIP Joker not TV show joker. I don't want to do to much work ahead of time because I would like the players to have some imput on the tone. Maybe I'll let them come up with an arch villain on their own. That would be cool and exparamental I am going to go for it.
Friday, March 26, 2010
It is Only the Fall
And it need not be so bad. My hours went back to being cut at work again! I should be mad but I am really not. I do need to buy less comics, that is for certain and mayhaps getting into a new miniature game isn't the best idea in the world but other than that I am actually pretty thankful for the four hours of my life that I get back. I think it also keeps me conveniently just under the hour limit I need to be, to be full time. I'll look into that later I guess. I don't know involving myself in work place politics just seems like something that is SO very opposite of what I want to do. So it will never happen.
All that got told to you though because that means it freed up more time for me to hang out in Barns and Noble and read their increadbly well stocked magazine section. I don't know why but they have all sorts of really technical political journals. Some of them are filled with statistical data and terms that are so dense that there is no way to even come close to understanding them without specialized knowledge. It is pretty crazy cool actually. I <3 barns and nobles and it is where I get a wide variety of blog bait from.
Anyway the last time I went and hung out I noticed something. There is this large strange undercurrent of increadble negativity the prevades the political spectrum. No longer is America the country that people look to with hope and awe. Now we are the country that is going to fail and when it does it is going to be spectacular. Foreign Affairs was particularly illuminating on the topic. They had two articles one directly related to the topic at hand and one tangentally related. The tangentally related one was actually more interesting.
It was about what is going to happen when Iran becomes a nuclear power in its own right. See this is a scary proposition for everyone involved. No one really wants Iran to be able to make nuclear weapons and yet they seem well on their way to weaponizing uranium and having their first sucessful nuclear weapon detonation. The world is holding its breath over this. Really while everyone is afraid of Iran, everyone is equally afraid of Isreal. We all dodged a bullet once when Pakastan managed to get a nuclear device but decided to not wipe India off of the face of the planet. But I can't say I am thrilled with the prospects of two destablizing powers being nuclear capable. The really scary thing about Iran though is that the government might give to terroristis or the terrorists might take from the government and then all the sudden a large section of Jerusalem will be oh so much glass. That would suck, the repocussions of such an event would be immense. Mostly though, most people don't think either of those things will happen. What will happen instead is that Iran will use their nuke like a big scary bargining chip that will give them more power and prestige in the region. What will happen is that they will certainly try to use it like a barganing chip and they will fail bacause no one wants to be friends with the crazy guy waving a nuke around pissing off the world.
Still the best course of action would be to stop them from getting the nuke in the first place. Ironically this is a responsibility that falls to us. I think this is rather odd on the part of the world and I would like to do some more research to know if my impresisons are right. Still though it is interesting. We try to help in Haiti and we are painted as monsters in the International Socialist Review (which is an insanely grubby magazine that no one important reads) and the whole kidnapping thing gets told as often as possible because those people are nuts. But at the same time we are expected to come in and boss around Iran to the point where they will no longer try to weaponize uranium. And should we fail, and should we have to deal with a future that involves nuclearized Iran all the sudden it is our fault for not stopping them and we will be the ones that looses massive standing in the world. I could argue with the article at this point, but there is something about it that makes a lot of sense to me. America is held up to this massive double standard. Like I at least know about the ethnic cleansing in Uguanda, and I would love for people to go in and do something about it, but if just America goes in we are imperialist monsters. If the UN and America goes in, that it becomes all America all the time and we go back to being imperialist monsters, and...well I think there are UN peacekeeping forces there now and they aren't really getting the job done.
Post Colinialism isn't to blame but it is really easy to point a finger at. Instead it is the poor application of post colonialist theory that caused us to end up in this sort of situation. I'm going to stop here because I really don't feel like pulling out my post colinialism books again and getting it on with a school of thought that I really really want to be a part of but I can't because they are taking things just a bit to far. I mean damnit when I come off like a flag waver you know something is wrong. I just don't like double standards that's all, and it pisses me off that we are somehow responciple for stopping Iran from becoming a nuclear power. I want to reread that article now and come back to it. It is rooting around in my head more than I thought it was.
Back to the topic at hand. The thing is we are more or less expected to fail in Iran. I am pretty sure that without invading there is nothing we can do that will make they give up on the idea of becoming a nuclear powerhouse. It is just to tempting. So any way we look at it we still loose.
The other article was pretty blunt. It flat out said that when the fall comes thatit will be sudden and without warning. Now while it was over all a depressing piece of writting it did warm my heart when it panned everyone saying that the housing bubble collapsing can be tracked back to the 80's and the deregulation of something or other. He claimed that the world isn't this nice neat pile of cause/effect events and that can be traced back dozens of years. Things happen and the cause is usually much nearer than everyone wants it to be. It was refreshing.
I don't really plan on adressing the article directly but more about the idea of the fall. Let's say for example that it is going to happen. America is going to fall tomarrow, it starts and in 50 years we are no longer the predominate power in the world. That really need not be so bad. When the sun set on the brittish empire the world kept on turning and last time I looked England was doing just fine, even after having the living shit bombed out it. Despite, at current, of being the butt of every ignorant american's joke frace more or less once ran the world and they were fucking terrifying. Despite being leveled in two world wars they are still kicking, and they made Amilie. Both China and India are up and coming and life isn't some sort of soiled hell in those countries. Though I will say that being poor in either of those countries really sucks in comparison to being poor in America but I think you see what I am getting at slowly but surely. So we won't be the people who gets to boss around the world and for awhile we won't be the best at everything. That doesn't mean the sky is going to fall. In fact for most people their lives aren't going to change at all. It just means that someone else is going to have to deal with things like Iran. It will be okay, don't forget to breath, and this is no time to give up and throw in the towel.
This will only happen if we let it.
All that got told to you though because that means it freed up more time for me to hang out in Barns and Noble and read their increadbly well stocked magazine section. I don't know why but they have all sorts of really technical political journals. Some of them are filled with statistical data and terms that are so dense that there is no way to even come close to understanding them without specialized knowledge. It is pretty crazy cool actually. I <3 barns and nobles and it is where I get a wide variety of blog bait from.
Anyway the last time I went and hung out I noticed something. There is this large strange undercurrent of increadble negativity the prevades the political spectrum. No longer is America the country that people look to with hope and awe. Now we are the country that is going to fail and when it does it is going to be spectacular. Foreign Affairs was particularly illuminating on the topic. They had two articles one directly related to the topic at hand and one tangentally related. The tangentally related one was actually more interesting.
It was about what is going to happen when Iran becomes a nuclear power in its own right. See this is a scary proposition for everyone involved. No one really wants Iran to be able to make nuclear weapons and yet they seem well on their way to weaponizing uranium and having their first sucessful nuclear weapon detonation. The world is holding its breath over this. Really while everyone is afraid of Iran, everyone is equally afraid of Isreal. We all dodged a bullet once when Pakastan managed to get a nuclear device but decided to not wipe India off of the face of the planet. But I can't say I am thrilled with the prospects of two destablizing powers being nuclear capable. The really scary thing about Iran though is that the government might give to terroristis or the terrorists might take from the government and then all the sudden a large section of Jerusalem will be oh so much glass. That would suck, the repocussions of such an event would be immense. Mostly though, most people don't think either of those things will happen. What will happen instead is that Iran will use their nuke like a big scary bargining chip that will give them more power and prestige in the region. What will happen is that they will certainly try to use it like a barganing chip and they will fail bacause no one wants to be friends with the crazy guy waving a nuke around pissing off the world.
Still the best course of action would be to stop them from getting the nuke in the first place. Ironically this is a responsibility that falls to us. I think this is rather odd on the part of the world and I would like to do some more research to know if my impresisons are right. Still though it is interesting. We try to help in Haiti and we are painted as monsters in the International Socialist Review (which is an insanely grubby magazine that no one important reads) and the whole kidnapping thing gets told as often as possible because those people are nuts. But at the same time we are expected to come in and boss around Iran to the point where they will no longer try to weaponize uranium. And should we fail, and should we have to deal with a future that involves nuclearized Iran all the sudden it is our fault for not stopping them and we will be the ones that looses massive standing in the world. I could argue with the article at this point, but there is something about it that makes a lot of sense to me. America is held up to this massive double standard. Like I at least know about the ethnic cleansing in Uguanda, and I would love for people to go in and do something about it, but if just America goes in we are imperialist monsters. If the UN and America goes in, that it becomes all America all the time and we go back to being imperialist monsters, and...well I think there are UN peacekeeping forces there now and they aren't really getting the job done.
Post Colinialism isn't to blame but it is really easy to point a finger at. Instead it is the poor application of post colonialist theory that caused us to end up in this sort of situation. I'm going to stop here because I really don't feel like pulling out my post colinialism books again and getting it on with a school of thought that I really really want to be a part of but I can't because they are taking things just a bit to far. I mean damnit when I come off like a flag waver you know something is wrong. I just don't like double standards that's all, and it pisses me off that we are somehow responciple for stopping Iran from becoming a nuclear power. I want to reread that article now and come back to it. It is rooting around in my head more than I thought it was.
Back to the topic at hand. The thing is we are more or less expected to fail in Iran. I am pretty sure that without invading there is nothing we can do that will make they give up on the idea of becoming a nuclear powerhouse. It is just to tempting. So any way we look at it we still loose.
The other article was pretty blunt. It flat out said that when the fall comes thatit will be sudden and without warning. Now while it was over all a depressing piece of writting it did warm my heart when it panned everyone saying that the housing bubble collapsing can be tracked back to the 80's and the deregulation of something or other. He claimed that the world isn't this nice neat pile of cause/effect events and that can be traced back dozens of years. Things happen and the cause is usually much nearer than everyone wants it to be. It was refreshing.
I don't really plan on adressing the article directly but more about the idea of the fall. Let's say for example that it is going to happen. America is going to fall tomarrow, it starts and in 50 years we are no longer the predominate power in the world. That really need not be so bad. When the sun set on the brittish empire the world kept on turning and last time I looked England was doing just fine, even after having the living shit bombed out it. Despite, at current, of being the butt of every ignorant american's joke frace more or less once ran the world and they were fucking terrifying. Despite being leveled in two world wars they are still kicking, and they made Amilie. Both China and India are up and coming and life isn't some sort of soiled hell in those countries. Though I will say that being poor in either of those countries really sucks in comparison to being poor in America but I think you see what I am getting at slowly but surely. So we won't be the people who gets to boss around the world and for awhile we won't be the best at everything. That doesn't mean the sky is going to fall. In fact for most people their lives aren't going to change at all. It just means that someone else is going to have to deal with things like Iran. It will be okay, don't forget to breath, and this is no time to give up and throw in the towel.
This will only happen if we let it.
Monday, March 22, 2010
45 Minuts Until Launch
So healthcare got passed, that's pretty intense. More interesting to me though is that the man who shouted baby killer was called out on it and he apologized. This is what is going to take up my interest for the evening. For those of you who don't know:
Yeah see he totally did that. Then the next day he backpeddles like a mother fucker trying to do anything possible to put as much distance between what he said and what he meant. Here is an article for those who are curious.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/22/randy-neugebauer-revealed_n_508525.html
I don't feel like doing the fancy copy link past thing. It is a pain in the ass. Anyway what I find myself wondering is would the same sort of apologies be made if the health care bill didn't pass, I don't know but I find the whole thing to be rather insulting. Were I to do that in a court of law I'd be held in contempt, fined and eventually jailed. If I did that to a cop I risk being arrested for insulting a police officer. At work I'd be fired. Yet when an elected official does it...nothing. Hell he didn't even have to make an apology, and the only reason why he is doing so is to scramble around trying to save face.
I don't know, never mind I am going to ruminate on the healthcare bill a bit. After all I stand on the dawning of a new age. So let's look out and see what's up? For a long time I was fairly resistant to the idea of healthcare. Mostly because...well look at the state of our government run programs. Then I realized that the worst offenders government wise were from the state run programs. Orphaned children, schools, roads, and FEMA not being allowed into New Orleans were all failures on the state level not a federal one. Yeah see I slipped that Katrina thing in there because it really pisses me off when people shit all over FEMA while the governor of Louisiana gets off scott free. Also California is falling apart and that is mostly California's fault. Its pretty neat when it is all said and done.
On the other hand the FBI is a pretty fly law enforcement agency, the IRS is one of the most ruthlessly effieceint things on the planet, federal prisons are one of the only things that scare hardened criminals (another beanie for the FBI because they catch people like that), and we have the most efficient government run mail carrier in the world. So healthcare on a federal level I can get behind that I guess.
The part that worries me will be getting the actual insurance. See my job provides insurance but the cost would be over 8% of my earnings which is to much according to the ferderal minimum. I am actually pretty cool with that. What I know will happen though is that I will end up with so little insurance that I'll still be paying 100 bucks just to see a doctor and that it will take up 8% of my income. However, I never really went into this with any sort of hope that my needs would be met. After all a single person with no kids who isn't old is about the least liked demographic ever. So I get mildly screwed but I am okay with that because I work with single mothers who make just as much as me and I know that the only way they can do it is with a combination of government aid and luck. Now while this paticular woman's kids are assholes not all of them are so you know I'm glad they can go to the doctor.
As for me the maximum I can pay for healthcare is 80 bucks a month on my current pay scale and so I can live with that more or less. Right now my biggest worry is the republican party. Not the whole party, but the part of the party that thinks it can win things by discrediting the government as much as possible, which is why 80% of all legislation that passes through the senate is filibustered among other things. 4 years isn't so long in the real world but for the government that is CENTURIES. A lot can happen now and then, like passing laws at the state level which will undermine the healthcare bill. These laws will get overturned but not until the supreame court takes a crack at them which may take quite awhile depending on how things go. That's a little scary. FOr the most part though I am looking forwards to tomarrow with a sort of nevouse excitment. When I say tomarrow I mean the next 4 years or so. All in all its a good thing. Not for me nessisarly but I am okay with that.
I really did want to write more about that slinking "babykiller" shouting son of a bitch but oh well. I guess I don't really know what to say, something about classism,
Yeah see he totally did that. Then the next day he backpeddles like a mother fucker trying to do anything possible to put as much distance between what he said and what he meant. Here is an article for those who are curious.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/22/randy-neugebauer-revealed_n_508525.html
I don't feel like doing the fancy copy link past thing. It is a pain in the ass. Anyway what I find myself wondering is would the same sort of apologies be made if the health care bill didn't pass, I don't know but I find the whole thing to be rather insulting. Were I to do that in a court of law I'd be held in contempt, fined and eventually jailed. If I did that to a cop I risk being arrested for insulting a police officer. At work I'd be fired. Yet when an elected official does it...nothing. Hell he didn't even have to make an apology, and the only reason why he is doing so is to scramble around trying to save face.
I don't know, never mind I am going to ruminate on the healthcare bill a bit. After all I stand on the dawning of a new age. So let's look out and see what's up? For a long time I was fairly resistant to the idea of healthcare. Mostly because...well look at the state of our government run programs. Then I realized that the worst offenders government wise were from the state run programs. Orphaned children, schools, roads, and FEMA not being allowed into New Orleans were all failures on the state level not a federal one. Yeah see I slipped that Katrina thing in there because it really pisses me off when people shit all over FEMA while the governor of Louisiana gets off scott free. Also California is falling apart and that is mostly California's fault. Its pretty neat when it is all said and done.
On the other hand the FBI is a pretty fly law enforcement agency, the IRS is one of the most ruthlessly effieceint things on the planet, federal prisons are one of the only things that scare hardened criminals (another beanie for the FBI because they catch people like that), and we have the most efficient government run mail carrier in the world. So healthcare on a federal level I can get behind that I guess.
The part that worries me will be getting the actual insurance. See my job provides insurance but the cost would be over 8% of my earnings which is to much according to the ferderal minimum. I am actually pretty cool with that. What I know will happen though is that I will end up with so little insurance that I'll still be paying 100 bucks just to see a doctor and that it will take up 8% of my income. However, I never really went into this with any sort of hope that my needs would be met. After all a single person with no kids who isn't old is about the least liked demographic ever. So I get mildly screwed but I am okay with that because I work with single mothers who make just as much as me and I know that the only way they can do it is with a combination of government aid and luck. Now while this paticular woman's kids are assholes not all of them are so you know I'm glad they can go to the doctor.
As for me the maximum I can pay for healthcare is 80 bucks a month on my current pay scale and so I can live with that more or less. Right now my biggest worry is the republican party. Not the whole party, but the part of the party that thinks it can win things by discrediting the government as much as possible, which is why 80% of all legislation that passes through the senate is filibustered among other things. 4 years isn't so long in the real world but for the government that is CENTURIES. A lot can happen now and then, like passing laws at the state level which will undermine the healthcare bill. These laws will get overturned but not until the supreame court takes a crack at them which may take quite awhile depending on how things go. That's a little scary. FOr the most part though I am looking forwards to tomarrow with a sort of nevouse excitment. When I say tomarrow I mean the next 4 years or so. All in all its a good thing. Not for me nessisarly but I am okay with that.
I really did want to write more about that slinking "babykiller" shouting son of a bitch but oh well. I guess I don't really know what to say, something about classism,
Friday, March 19, 2010
Odd
I am having an oddly difficult time concentrating today, I am not sure what that's about but my time here is nearly up and I want to get something productive done. In Lieu of that I am going to write here. For reasons I can't even begin to fathom I have been thinking an awful lot about the past recently. Not with any sort of rosey eyes nostaliga I assure you but rather a more hard lined look of who I was, what I've become and where I plan on going. I don't really have any firm conclusions at the moment except that there are some basic life things I need to get taken care of and I find them scary. I'm sure I'd get help if I asked for it, but that isn't my way. I find it baffling how easily people can navigate things that I find insurmountable. Then again, I can fearlessly charge into a government run beuracray with the drive of a suicide bomber and come out the other side. Speaking of which I need to get my registration taken care of so I don't have to deal with it anywhere NEAR my birthday because bugger that. I insist that it can all be done online. It is just a matter of getting it done. I also need to do my taxes I was going to hold of on that but at the moment it isn't something I should be putting off anymore. Mostly though, I need to get things packed up and I need to start working on finding a new place to live. That shouldn't be to particularly hard because I have a sort of absent minded bullheaded confidence when it comes to these sorts of things. It is kinda like having having an aura of false invulnerability. It works out well enough until someone pokes me with a stick, then I gotta take a nap for weeks on end while I recover. Oddly enough the person who does the poking most often is me because I work very hard to lie to myself less.
Near my right hand is a book called "The Origins of Totalitarianism". I want this book very very much but I know that I won't read it because I am to wrapped up with to many other things. I really do want it though. Totalitarianism man now that is a thing. It is deep, dark and there is something infinitely sexy about the idea. Sure sure it would suck to live under a totalitarian government, I don't know these things first hand but I got a general idea that it isn't so much fun. Still though, the idea of running one, of making things happen, of sending them all scurrying. That is something that I am far to fascinated with for my own good. The sections of the book I am paticularly interested in are the sections about the transformation from classes to masses and the use of propaganda when it comes to dealing with the outside world.
The classes to masses thing is of paticular interest bcause I've long wondered how it is that people become so very married to ideas. I spoil myself by surrounding myself with people who are flexible thinkers. Like a friend of mine last night didn't understand how one person wouldn't conform entirely to one gender or another. It took me five minutes of explaining it and he got it. Whereas I have other people I know who I could talk to them for hours but the idea of gender as something fixed in space is just to much for them to handle. Young people too like in their early 20's. Ben Burbank said something in an article in Time which has stuck with me, "Geologists study earthquakes when they want to see how the plates move, ecconomists should be studying the great depression". It makes perfect sense. So when trying to understand how people become fixed in ideas, refusing to give them up, well looking at people who live under totalitarian regimes should fit that bill.
Between the two of them the quickest and easiest thing to point out is fear. Fear fear is one of the greatest societal controls that has ever been developed. It can erode rationality, replace rationality, it can turn the world upside down, and devour one's will to fight back. Take a look at the saying "The first person to do it is a madman, the second person to do it is a trendsetter". This is because there is some element in our sociery perhaps in humanity that craves highly ordered tightly organized structures. Not everyone of course. But while your friend is out move everything they own one inch to the left and see what happens. Hilarity that's what. But see here I am talking in generalities. That is half the problem is finding some nice meaty example that I can work off of. Totalitarianism though, that works, it titilates, it's romantic. I gotta say I am fan.
That is the main reason why the post modern pornography project stalled. For example I want to write about the text surrounding pornographic images on the internet and maybe in movies. The reason being is that it makes the whole Andrea Dworkin "Pornstars are whores" essay seem not utterly retarded which is important to me for reasons that I can't even begin to understand. The problem? There is nothing but fly by night pornography operations. I can't really grab something juicy like Jizz on my Glasses or traumatizing like Anal Smoothy because in two to five years those sites won't exist anymore. Hell even the massive construct that is the Bang Bros network won't be around a couple of years from now and it would be nice if my stuff still worked. I suppose I could take screen caps or something. It is something I am very invested in and it is the only reason why the Totalitarianism book is still sitting by my right hand instead of being paid for. No more new theory projects until I finish the one I am working on.
Screen caps though, that might work. Because the language surrounding the images is almost more important than the images themselves. It is almost like there is this universal acceptance that pornography, in its standard form is boring. Not metaphyisically of course. Like take the way the actual act itself is zoomed in upon with such ferocious dedication, for minutes on end. There isn't any idea of artistry, elegance, or even attemt at establishing that the act going on is sexual in nature. Which is interesting because it leads me to the following conclusions:
-One the act of sex isn't nessisarly sexual. Same way me rubbing your feet may or may not be sexual depending on the fetishes you come equipped with.
-The act of sex can be desexualized when the actual physical aspects of the sex act become overly focused on
-That the pornography is still being consumed as sexual even through materials even though the pornography itself bearly constitures as something as sexual.
That last bit is messy but really though, why does bad porn still excist? It is like the pen ultimate argument against free market ecconomics. Oh god its been forever since I dug out free market ecconomics but take the idea of competition, people put out better products and there is this consistent air of competition so that newer better products will be constantly put out. The things that flummox this are things like advertisements, brand loyalty, and all sorts of other stuff. Yet looking at pornography, the exact opposite has happened. Attempts at quality and legitimacy that were made in the 70's have been thrown to the wind and now what we have are these dull repetative videos and...anal smoothy which is part of the extreme gaping genra which is the reason why no one can have nice things.
So what is it about pornography that makes it so that no one is willing to ask for better quality porn. Seriously, people should demand more from their porn but they don't. Even sights like to the nines fall radically short of their intended objective. Sure some of the actresses start off as attractive but over the course of filming something happens. I've actually found a few videos where this is not the case. HOWEVER, I am starting to suspect that is part of my sexual deviancies rather than an ontological status. I need to get some sociological studies on pornography, but fucking christ these people are so behind the curve that they can not produce the sophistication I am asking for. I mean fucking hell there was a study done just recently pointing out that the people who are the insane porn crazed folks are rare and most people only view it every so often and in relativly brief intervals. A novelty. Like many other people's brushes with decadence they fiddle with it briefly and then wander off to greener pastures which are occationally revisited.
Hrmph. Well shit I feel vaugely trapped. I guess the best way to proceed is to simply just go forth and let the chips fall where they may. Its strange though, it doesn't feel right. Grawr. I guess at the end of the day I just need pornography and a bunch of it. Maybe I should apply for a research grant, that would be hilarious if I got it. Its strange though, because some of the movies from the 70's like Deep Throat have achieved a sort of quasi legendary acceptance in the hip crowd. It has become a strange sort of cinematic icon along side Debbie does Dallace. It almost occupies the same cultural space that the grindhouse movies do. Grind house is an entire genra of film that excists vididly for the people who love it and only bealry hinted at to those on the outside. Another example would be the sexploitation genera which is one of those dark secretive ugly things hat people dig up and often watch for the wrong reasons.
Rape porn is something that shouldn't even exist.
I guess what I will do is start again, picking some specific pornographic works and working my way up or down from there. Ugh, I've learned that finding porn on the internet is easy. Finding a specific porn? Nearly god damned impossible. I guess I'll do that then I go home in a bit.
Near my right hand is a book called "The Origins of Totalitarianism". I want this book very very much but I know that I won't read it because I am to wrapped up with to many other things. I really do want it though. Totalitarianism man now that is a thing. It is deep, dark and there is something infinitely sexy about the idea. Sure sure it would suck to live under a totalitarian government, I don't know these things first hand but I got a general idea that it isn't so much fun. Still though, the idea of running one, of making things happen, of sending them all scurrying. That is something that I am far to fascinated with for my own good. The sections of the book I am paticularly interested in are the sections about the transformation from classes to masses and the use of propaganda when it comes to dealing with the outside world.
The classes to masses thing is of paticular interest bcause I've long wondered how it is that people become so very married to ideas. I spoil myself by surrounding myself with people who are flexible thinkers. Like a friend of mine last night didn't understand how one person wouldn't conform entirely to one gender or another. It took me five minutes of explaining it and he got it. Whereas I have other people I know who I could talk to them for hours but the idea of gender as something fixed in space is just to much for them to handle. Young people too like in their early 20's. Ben Burbank said something in an article in Time which has stuck with me, "Geologists study earthquakes when they want to see how the plates move, ecconomists should be studying the great depression". It makes perfect sense. So when trying to understand how people become fixed in ideas, refusing to give them up, well looking at people who live under totalitarian regimes should fit that bill.
Between the two of them the quickest and easiest thing to point out is fear. Fear fear is one of the greatest societal controls that has ever been developed. It can erode rationality, replace rationality, it can turn the world upside down, and devour one's will to fight back. Take a look at the saying "The first person to do it is a madman, the second person to do it is a trendsetter". This is because there is some element in our sociery perhaps in humanity that craves highly ordered tightly organized structures. Not everyone of course. But while your friend is out move everything they own one inch to the left and see what happens. Hilarity that's what. But see here I am talking in generalities. That is half the problem is finding some nice meaty example that I can work off of. Totalitarianism though, that works, it titilates, it's romantic. I gotta say I am fan.
That is the main reason why the post modern pornography project stalled. For example I want to write about the text surrounding pornographic images on the internet and maybe in movies. The reason being is that it makes the whole Andrea Dworkin "Pornstars are whores" essay seem not utterly retarded which is important to me for reasons that I can't even begin to understand. The problem? There is nothing but fly by night pornography operations. I can't really grab something juicy like Jizz on my Glasses or traumatizing like Anal Smoothy because in two to five years those sites won't exist anymore. Hell even the massive construct that is the Bang Bros network won't be around a couple of years from now and it would be nice if my stuff still worked. I suppose I could take screen caps or something. It is something I am very invested in and it is the only reason why the Totalitarianism book is still sitting by my right hand instead of being paid for. No more new theory projects until I finish the one I am working on.
Screen caps though, that might work. Because the language surrounding the images is almost more important than the images themselves. It is almost like there is this universal acceptance that pornography, in its standard form is boring. Not metaphyisically of course. Like take the way the actual act itself is zoomed in upon with such ferocious dedication, for minutes on end. There isn't any idea of artistry, elegance, or even attemt at establishing that the act going on is sexual in nature. Which is interesting because it leads me to the following conclusions:
-One the act of sex isn't nessisarly sexual. Same way me rubbing your feet may or may not be sexual depending on the fetishes you come equipped with.
-The act of sex can be desexualized when the actual physical aspects of the sex act become overly focused on
-That the pornography is still being consumed as sexual even through materials even though the pornography itself bearly constitures as something as sexual.
That last bit is messy but really though, why does bad porn still excist? It is like the pen ultimate argument against free market ecconomics. Oh god its been forever since I dug out free market ecconomics but take the idea of competition, people put out better products and there is this consistent air of competition so that newer better products will be constantly put out. The things that flummox this are things like advertisements, brand loyalty, and all sorts of other stuff. Yet looking at pornography, the exact opposite has happened. Attempts at quality and legitimacy that were made in the 70's have been thrown to the wind and now what we have are these dull repetative videos and...anal smoothy which is part of the extreme gaping genra which is the reason why no one can have nice things.
So what is it about pornography that makes it so that no one is willing to ask for better quality porn. Seriously, people should demand more from their porn but they don't. Even sights like to the nines fall radically short of their intended objective. Sure some of the actresses start off as attractive but over the course of filming something happens. I've actually found a few videos where this is not the case. HOWEVER, I am starting to suspect that is part of my sexual deviancies rather than an ontological status. I need to get some sociological studies on pornography, but fucking christ these people are so behind the curve that they can not produce the sophistication I am asking for. I mean fucking hell there was a study done just recently pointing out that the people who are the insane porn crazed folks are rare and most people only view it every so often and in relativly brief intervals. A novelty. Like many other people's brushes with decadence they fiddle with it briefly and then wander off to greener pastures which are occationally revisited.
Hrmph. Well shit I feel vaugely trapped. I guess the best way to proceed is to simply just go forth and let the chips fall where they may. Its strange though, it doesn't feel right. Grawr. I guess at the end of the day I just need pornography and a bunch of it. Maybe I should apply for a research grant, that would be hilarious if I got it. Its strange though, because some of the movies from the 70's like Deep Throat have achieved a sort of quasi legendary acceptance in the hip crowd. It has become a strange sort of cinematic icon along side Debbie does Dallace. It almost occupies the same cultural space that the grindhouse movies do. Grind house is an entire genra of film that excists vididly for the people who love it and only bealry hinted at to those on the outside. Another example would be the sexploitation genera which is one of those dark secretive ugly things hat people dig up and often watch for the wrong reasons.
Rape porn is something that shouldn't even exist.
I guess what I will do is start again, picking some specific pornographic works and working my way up or down from there. Ugh, I've learned that finding porn on the internet is easy. Finding a specific porn? Nearly god damned impossible. I guess I'll do that then I go home in a bit.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Twice Damnit
You know what I forgot to bring? A note book. I wanted a notebook so that I could get started on NA25 stuff and I have found that while doing brain dumps here in the blog FEELS satisfying they are ultimately unproductive. Also just having a nice little outline thingy next to me instead of one window over is more helpful. However, don't have a notebook and the closest place to get one is walmart. Yeah I am totally going into walmart to buy a single 1 dollar notebook. Not bloody happening times infinity.
The other fuckery thing is that I seemed to have gotten something foul on my copy of Pressession of the Simulacrum. This is enraging because I really like that book, enough to just sort of put it on auto replace and just keep going. I'm not going to do that right just yet, I am going to try and repair it as best I can but I am not sure if it will work out. Ecrits made it through okay because Lacan is fucking evil.
I am convinced that the devil sold his soul to him. Because Lacan drew a chart that makes no sense. So I guess it is time I go get to work or something like that.
THE GOAL! To get a play test version of NA25 up and running by summer time. So that way when I get a spare afternoon or three I can get the gang to play test my rules. The thing about the rules is that they need not be overly complex, but they definatly need to be better written than say SLA industires.
Once upon a time I wanted to use a dice pool system that used a variety of dice, and I think I am going to keep that but to a far more limited degree, or to just remove it altogether. The important thing is to keep a very simple game system. Dice pools are easy to modify and 1d10s have that sort of percentage thing that people naturally click with. SO I want that. I also want the visual pool thing for the social combat which where people can see how close they are to getting people to believe them. That sounds good. I want 6 stats three mental three physical, something nice and simple. I want a couple of derived stats... actually NO the only derived stat will be the power stat and that will be done on a power by power basis.
Lets go back to the social combat thing again. I want to have a visual pool of what the players need to do. So lets do an example. THe players are standing around in buisness or buisness causal atire, there is a man with an unusual amount of bullet holes in him at their feet and a cop who is notably suspicious. As the players try to go back an forth trying to make them seem as innocent as possible. I think the way I want socialization to go is that the players will have a variety of skills which they can use to influence. The actual dialouge will provide pluses or minuses to the roll. Any sucesses that the player rolls the cop rolls against. The players can also burn auto sucesses to help out in this regard.
Oh Auto Success system. Okay here. First and foremost the general flow of the game will be, players start with needing a mission of sorts. This will either come out of them being blackmailed or their dark secret or something of the sort. Everyone starts with something like this at character generation. The players then set out with a goal, usually breaking into somewhere and stealing/killing something. Stealing and killing things is fun and the back bone of the rpg experience.
Over the next few days of game time the players will try to amass information about the area. This will be everything from getting the building's layout, to the security load outs, to scouting out the actual areas, to calling in terrorist hits to check police response times. There will be TONS of examples of these in the main rule book I am thinking of at least 5 pages of nothing but examples for the players to do ranging from simple to very complex. This planning phase can take one or many game sessions. Executing the plan is almost like a boss fight in a normal game except instead of having a big bad to fight, they are trying to get back home alive. All these preparatory actions add a number of automatic successes to the eventual action. To keep things from getting to out of control all information gathered degrades over time, so they can't expect passwords they grabbed a month ago to still work.
Okay I also kinda want there to be some sort of limit on how easy it is to kill people. Maybe not, nobody really digs forced morality in their games.
I think that will be a nice simple start to getting things running. Really what I need to do is get some some background information typed up so that my players can get some idea of what they are doing in the world. This is good so I can come at it from two diffrent angles and get things set and ready to go.
Really the whole part that I find utterly intimidating is getting layout and stuff like that. Also just making sure my writting is clear but that is the blessing of play testing. Okay now fer serial I am getting food.
The other fuckery thing is that I seemed to have gotten something foul on my copy of Pressession of the Simulacrum. This is enraging because I really like that book, enough to just sort of put it on auto replace and just keep going. I'm not going to do that right just yet, I am going to try and repair it as best I can but I am not sure if it will work out. Ecrits made it through okay because Lacan is fucking evil.
I am convinced that the devil sold his soul to him. Because Lacan drew a chart that makes no sense. So I guess it is time I go get to work or something like that.
THE GOAL! To get a play test version of NA25 up and running by summer time. So that way when I get a spare afternoon or three I can get the gang to play test my rules. The thing about the rules is that they need not be overly complex, but they definatly need to be better written than say SLA industires.
Once upon a time I wanted to use a dice pool system that used a variety of dice, and I think I am going to keep that but to a far more limited degree, or to just remove it altogether. The important thing is to keep a very simple game system. Dice pools are easy to modify and 1d10s have that sort of percentage thing that people naturally click with. SO I want that. I also want the visual pool thing for the social combat which where people can see how close they are to getting people to believe them. That sounds good. I want 6 stats three mental three physical, something nice and simple. I want a couple of derived stats... actually NO the only derived stat will be the power stat and that will be done on a power by power basis.
Lets go back to the social combat thing again. I want to have a visual pool of what the players need to do. So lets do an example. THe players are standing around in buisness or buisness causal atire, there is a man with an unusual amount of bullet holes in him at their feet and a cop who is notably suspicious. As the players try to go back an forth trying to make them seem as innocent as possible. I think the way I want socialization to go is that the players will have a variety of skills which they can use to influence. The actual dialouge will provide pluses or minuses to the roll. Any sucesses that the player rolls the cop rolls against. The players can also burn auto sucesses to help out in this regard.
Oh Auto Success system. Okay here. First and foremost the general flow of the game will be, players start with needing a mission of sorts. This will either come out of them being blackmailed or their dark secret or something of the sort. Everyone starts with something like this at character generation. The players then set out with a goal, usually breaking into somewhere and stealing/killing something. Stealing and killing things is fun and the back bone of the rpg experience.
Over the next few days of game time the players will try to amass information about the area. This will be everything from getting the building's layout, to the security load outs, to scouting out the actual areas, to calling in terrorist hits to check police response times. There will be TONS of examples of these in the main rule book I am thinking of at least 5 pages of nothing but examples for the players to do ranging from simple to very complex. This planning phase can take one or many game sessions. Executing the plan is almost like a boss fight in a normal game except instead of having a big bad to fight, they are trying to get back home alive. All these preparatory actions add a number of automatic successes to the eventual action. To keep things from getting to out of control all information gathered degrades over time, so they can't expect passwords they grabbed a month ago to still work.
Okay I also kinda want there to be some sort of limit on how easy it is to kill people. Maybe not, nobody really digs forced morality in their games.
I think that will be a nice simple start to getting things running. Really what I need to do is get some some background information typed up so that my players can get some idea of what they are doing in the world. This is good so I can come at it from two diffrent angles and get things set and ready to go.
Really the whole part that I find utterly intimidating is getting layout and stuff like that. Also just making sure my writting is clear but that is the blessing of play testing. Okay now fer serial I am getting food.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Let them Weep
Oh man. MAN man man. I can feel it, deep down scratching about in my soul. Dancing around in my peripheral vision always staying just out of reach, whispering into my ears, while brushing its fingertips lightly against the hinterlands of my hair in the secret way that drives me absolutly insane. It is deep seeded it draws my state and I realize that I am nearly powerless against it, a nice cool glass of poison that I can drink all day long because the day is hot and the flesh is weak. Sickly sweet and crystal smooth. I got the heady rush of addiction.
To pokemon of all things. I have an addictive personality, or rather I have a highly focused personality that tends to fixate on things for long periods of time combined with a rational process that includes the words, "Fuck sleep" and "and I don't need to talk to people". Oh my yes. The worst thing is that I am not even playing the new Heart gold or Soul Silver, no I am playing through Platinum which is a version of pokemon I've ALREADY PLAYED THROUGH. It would be terrible if I didn't find it to be so wryly amusing. Still the second play through is going much smoother, I know where the snazzy pokemon are, I to go get a gibble so I can level it on my way up through the game because gibble=easymode. I know where I can find earthquake and because I am playing the game with a flash card I can clone the shit out of certain items and whatnot come anime club on thusday.
I don't know what it is, something about gathering up a poketeam and getting its move set to be just right is something that I find to be highly appealing. There is just something about the entire process that makes it so that I have an unusually hard time focusing on anything else. That's the way of things though. I know that this will last for a month or two, maybe more and then I will move on to something else. This is because as interesting as I find Pokemon to be there is a point where things just start going WAY TO SLOWLY. Getting things to lvl 100 is a huge fucking pain in th ass and that is where you really get to see payoff's like when you check a pokedex's base stats against what you have and you realize you got your evee just right. Or something like that, look I am obsessed with evee's leave me alone. I am totally making an all eevee hit squad. Okay in reality I am making one perfect eevee and cloning the shit out of it but FUCK it. By the time I get my one perfect eevee I will have more than likely have gone through 8 billion eggs. I need my eevee to have either a modest or mild nature and I need to breed wish into it. So once I get one you can be damn sure I am holding onto it. This way I can lvl one eevee up to 36, give it baton pass, clone it and have one eevee of every type for me to lvl. Baton pass plus wish is a wonderful combo and since it is going to have a high special attack I can just lather on some pretty special moves for it to use and I will be set! Set as in I will be able someday play pokemon with someone. I don't know who as most of my friends no longer play, but sill the thought is nice and as I've said before I like doing stuff like this. My nippon ichi game save files are like that which reminds me that I really want to start playing Phantom Brave again cause that game was AWESOMEly underrated.
Its strange. There are things I want to do, things I want to read, to write, to learn, and experience. Sometimes it is hard to justify playing video games in a world that has so very much to offer me. I do my best to keep it all in perspective and that is the whole purpose of this blog post actually.
I am here, and granted I am writing about Pokemon, but the point is that I am here in public not actively playing it. I am loosening its hold over me so that when the hours pass into multiples I will have an easier time putting it down and doing something else. After all I want to get NA25 up and into a playtestable state by this summer so I need to get to work on that. By summer I mean June, late May. I figgure since I have all sorts of people who will jump at me GMing something I should take advantage of it and playtest the shit out of my ideas.
This is all well and good and I would actually like to write something else...BUT I am hungry. I had plans for another blog entry but foiled by food. Though I don't go in until 4 tomarrow so maybe if you are all good I'll write another post. Most likely not though cause fuck all y'all. :)
To pokemon of all things. I have an addictive personality, or rather I have a highly focused personality that tends to fixate on things for long periods of time combined with a rational process that includes the words, "Fuck sleep" and "and I don't need to talk to people". Oh my yes. The worst thing is that I am not even playing the new Heart gold or Soul Silver, no I am playing through Platinum which is a version of pokemon I've ALREADY PLAYED THROUGH. It would be terrible if I didn't find it to be so wryly amusing. Still the second play through is going much smoother, I know where the snazzy pokemon are, I to go get a gibble so I can level it on my way up through the game because gibble=easymode. I know where I can find earthquake and because I am playing the game with a flash card I can clone the shit out of certain items and whatnot come anime club on thusday.
I don't know what it is, something about gathering up a poketeam and getting its move set to be just right is something that I find to be highly appealing. There is just something about the entire process that makes it so that I have an unusually hard time focusing on anything else. That's the way of things though. I know that this will last for a month or two, maybe more and then I will move on to something else. This is because as interesting as I find Pokemon to be there is a point where things just start going WAY TO SLOWLY. Getting things to lvl 100 is a huge fucking pain in th ass and that is where you really get to see payoff's like when you check a pokedex's base stats against what you have and you realize you got your evee just right. Or something like that, look I am obsessed with evee's leave me alone. I am totally making an all eevee hit squad. Okay in reality I am making one perfect eevee and cloning the shit out of it but FUCK it. By the time I get my one perfect eevee I will have more than likely have gone through 8 billion eggs. I need my eevee to have either a modest or mild nature and I need to breed wish into it. So once I get one you can be damn sure I am holding onto it. This way I can lvl one eevee up to 36, give it baton pass, clone it and have one eevee of every type for me to lvl. Baton pass plus wish is a wonderful combo and since it is going to have a high special attack I can just lather on some pretty special moves for it to use and I will be set! Set as in I will be able someday play pokemon with someone. I don't know who as most of my friends no longer play, but sill the thought is nice and as I've said before I like doing stuff like this. My nippon ichi game save files are like that which reminds me that I really want to start playing Phantom Brave again cause that game was AWESOMEly underrated.
Its strange. There are things I want to do, things I want to read, to write, to learn, and experience. Sometimes it is hard to justify playing video games in a world that has so very much to offer me. I do my best to keep it all in perspective and that is the whole purpose of this blog post actually.
I am here, and granted I am writing about Pokemon, but the point is that I am here in public not actively playing it. I am loosening its hold over me so that when the hours pass into multiples I will have an easier time putting it down and doing something else. After all I want to get NA25 up and into a playtestable state by this summer so I need to get to work on that. By summer I mean June, late May. I figgure since I have all sorts of people who will jump at me GMing something I should take advantage of it and playtest the shit out of my ideas.
This is all well and good and I would actually like to write something else...BUT I am hungry. I had plans for another blog entry but foiled by food. Though I don't go in until 4 tomarrow so maybe if you are all good I'll write another post. Most likely not though cause fuck all y'all. :)
Saturday, March 13, 2010
The Rape Taboo!
Or rather the lack thereof. That is one of those things that has always bothered me about the world. There really isn't a taboo against rape. Its funny too (ha!ha!) because I live in a roughly tabooless world. I mean I don't think incest is the best of ideas and we KNOW that offspring production is a bad idea out of those things, but I think that a situation or two could come along to make me thing that it isn't so bad. I didn't conem lucien valentine when I found out about his incestuous relationship with his sister and I was genuinely sad when she offed herself. In a world so full of sadness what would you go and do that for? Because he wouldn't give you a baby come on now. Okay well CLEARLY there are all sorts of problems going on in that situation but the point remains. There is a pretty heavy incest taboo that I don't feel. I just sort of frown at it, but I do try to approach it with an open mind. But seriously, SERIOUSLY? Rape is one of those things I don't approch with an open mind. Mich like other people I am SO over with holywood movies using it for horrific effect. I guess it is because I feel the full force of what I am watching on the screen and I know that some of the people around me are not.
So yeah rape is inexcusable, yes even in prison, yes even if the person is a pedophile. There is a d in pedophile, while I knew that I just never processed it. Fascinating.
Anyway, so what brought this on? Two articles which I actually care enough about to link to.
One is about prison rape
The other is about how to stop it.
They are both fairly meaty reads and worth your full attention. I'm going to dealing with the second one mostly. See the main problem that we need to deal with when it comes to stopping prison rape is the fact that rape simply isn't a taboo. Hell it isn't even frowned upon. More horribly the way our society is working at the moment is, when a politician tries to do something nice for the inmates (like put in rape safe guards), they are seen as being soft on crime. Being seen as soft on crime is effectively a death knell. At the moment prison rape isn't a problem, by golly it is a feature and its virtues are called out everywhere from Sublime songs, to knowing conversations about what happens to people in prisons.
Furthermore, these rapes are never prosicuted. The rapists are never brought up on charges, hell I don't even know if there is any punitive action from within the prison and this isn't even STARTING to touch on the abuses the guards inflict on the inmates that goes unreported/recorded. This is a huge problem and the root of it, the thing that is staring everyone in the fact but that no one wants to acknowlage is the fact that we, as a society, don't give enough of a shit about rape to put forth any effort in trying to stop it. And that is both sick AND sad.
So first lets get those people who are not on board with me out of the way. BACK it incest because just about everyone agrees with the incest taboo, that's what makes it a fucking taboo. Actually no screw that. I am tired of being accepting of other people's self appointed right to restrict how other people have sex. Those people suck. Also it is much easier to convince someone to take something away from someone else because it makes them happy than it is to convince someone that an extra helping of punishment is wrong. Its true I bet the god hates fags crowd and the pro prison rape crowd have a lot of overlap.
Extrodinary bitterness aside, it is important to undertand that while there is never really a good reason for a brother and sister to have sex, there is also never a reason to say hooray for prison rape. YEP PEOPLE DO! There is no public outcry against it, no humanitarian causes running to the aid of prisoners, fuck there aren't even watchdog groups that monitor the actions of the guards in relation to the inmates.
At the end of the day, once they are out of sight they are out of mind, and that is a fucking horrible way to be. This is a massive humanitarian black hole and the fact that we just let it happen all around us is just frankly bizarre to me. I dunno. I DO know that I am pretty bloody hungry and while I was going to produce another post tonight after this one I think I am going to instead put foods in my body.
So yeah rape is inexcusable, yes even in prison, yes even if the person is a pedophile. There is a d in pedophile, while I knew that I just never processed it. Fascinating.
Anyway, so what brought this on? Two articles which I actually care enough about to link to.
One is about prison rape
The other is about how to stop it.
They are both fairly meaty reads and worth your full attention. I'm going to dealing with the second one mostly. See the main problem that we need to deal with when it comes to stopping prison rape is the fact that rape simply isn't a taboo. Hell it isn't even frowned upon. More horribly the way our society is working at the moment is, when a politician tries to do something nice for the inmates (like put in rape safe guards), they are seen as being soft on crime. Being seen as soft on crime is effectively a death knell. At the moment prison rape isn't a problem, by golly it is a feature and its virtues are called out everywhere from Sublime songs, to knowing conversations about what happens to people in prisons.
Furthermore, these rapes are never prosicuted. The rapists are never brought up on charges, hell I don't even know if there is any punitive action from within the prison and this isn't even STARTING to touch on the abuses the guards inflict on the inmates that goes unreported/recorded. This is a huge problem and the root of it, the thing that is staring everyone in the fact but that no one wants to acknowlage is the fact that we, as a society, don't give enough of a shit about rape to put forth any effort in trying to stop it. And that is both sick AND sad.
So first lets get those people who are not on board with me out of the way. BACK it incest because just about everyone agrees with the incest taboo, that's what makes it a fucking taboo. Actually no screw that. I am tired of being accepting of other people's self appointed right to restrict how other people have sex. Those people suck. Also it is much easier to convince someone to take something away from someone else because it makes them happy than it is to convince someone that an extra helping of punishment is wrong. Its true I bet the god hates fags crowd and the pro prison rape crowd have a lot of overlap.
Extrodinary bitterness aside, it is important to undertand that while there is never really a good reason for a brother and sister to have sex, there is also never a reason to say hooray for prison rape. YEP PEOPLE DO! There is no public outcry against it, no humanitarian causes running to the aid of prisoners, fuck there aren't even watchdog groups that monitor the actions of the guards in relation to the inmates.
At the end of the day, once they are out of sight they are out of mind, and that is a fucking horrible way to be. This is a massive humanitarian black hole and the fact that we just let it happen all around us is just frankly bizarre to me. I dunno. I DO know that I am pretty bloody hungry and while I was going to produce another post tonight after this one I think I am going to instead put foods in my body.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Indie Roleplaying and Me
I was going to start probing into the mysteries of the way our society looks at virginity but I think I will leave that for another time, mostly because I only have 15 minutes left of lunch. Anyway, through a series of pretty random events I ended up not working on Friday even though I was supposed to and I ended up running Asylum. If you don't know the game Asylum don't feel bad. Asylum was an independent game produced by a company that, to the best of my knowledge, only made three games. They also stalwartly did their absolute best to maintain absolutely no internet prescense what so ever. No seriously, like I wrote them an email telling them how much I liked their game and they never responded. By contrast the Cutter's guild which makes Deathstalkers gave me another copy of the book, a t-shirt, and a free adventure.
That's the thing about independent roleplaying games. They really do live or die based on not just their fan base but the internet prescense that they maintain. Obsidian and A-State are two perfect examples of small companies doing right by their clients. The Obsidian guys are just plain old fucking nice and they happily talk to everyone, and the A-State people take that a step further by publishing a monthly fan written news letter called the Mire End Tribune on their web page. All three of the games I listed are moderatly sucessful and well liked by their fans.
I LOVE the Deathstalker's setting and charecter generation, I LOVE the flexibility of Obsidian, and I love the setting of A-State. I also love both the setting and raw originatlity of Asylum. Our game session lasted for 6 hours, 4 of which involved them walking 4 miles just to get food. The thing is though, is that each of these games all have problems, not just little problems either but big shiny glaring super problems.
Asylum will be my primary example because I just ran it for the first real time on Friday. And while the game was massivly "Holy fuck that was awesome fun", it really became kind of a pain. First the system. The system tried to be creative, and because I am a fan of system mattering I was always a fan of this game's system in theory. Instead of rolling one or more dice to determine the outcome of random events you instead drew marbles from a bag, the marbles all were a certain color and what color you drew corresponded to a number and thats how you resolved rolls. It was cool, and very evocative, it also simulated the "I lost my marbles" feel of the game play. I was so enamored that I actually bought a special set of dice for the game we were gonna play. Now aside from how clunky it was every player had an arrberation, and at the start of every scene they would draw for that aberration to see how powerfullly it effected the charecters. The problem with that was there were less options on the corresponding chart than there were color combinations which resulted in redrawing and eventually us abandoning the system altogether and us rolling d10s. Of course each chart had only nine choices each so I quickly ruled that if you rolled a 10 you just weren't effected. In retorspect I should of chosen if you roll a 10 you choose the level of effect but there is only so much you can do while thinking on the fly. I also forgot that basic skill rolls were based around a 1d5 instead of a 1d10 so I had to make massive and rapid adjustments in my head that I just didn't tell anyone about. Like I said it though, some of the most fun I've had roleplaying ever came out of that game session, but god damn it takes a lot out of you.
Ultimatly that is the diffrence between indie games and normal ones. SO much more is expected out of the gm. In d20/4th edition game sessions are more or less handed to you. There are churches/mages/kings who get the players to go do things and then if you even need to fill in an hour or so of game play all you need are three dice rolls and you got yourself a random encounter that will take up the player's time and be roughly balanced. There are lists of gear, both magical and mundane, lists of spells, lists of special powers, lists of lists. There are entire books filled with completely unessisary crap that you can give to players including death. For D&D, white wolf, Shadorun, Traveller, and some of the other big names there is never ever any need for a gm to pick up a pen and write anythings orginal for the game other than the game sessions.
For SLA there are pices of gear that don't have any stats what so ever to them. So people just sort of gotta guess what they do. That's my favorite example, I never even noticed it until one of my players bought it because he thought he needed it and then asked me what it did. Man they didn't even errata that shit. As a result though there is more fan based material for SLA Industries than just about any other game in existence. I am talking about people writing entire books for the game, like 100+ page books. That is a level of devotion that most white wolf fans can't even muster. It is a different sort of gming essentially. It is the sort of thing where you have to fly by the seat of your pants so much more, where there isn't a rule for everything, and where loot sometimes has to come off of the top of your head because the book hold no answers. In the case of Asylum I just rejiggered the entire game system over the course of a few minuts while simultaneously narrating a scene. Sure the system wasn't very complicated but it still had to happen.
Alright off to werk I go!
That's the thing about independent roleplaying games. They really do live or die based on not just their fan base but the internet prescense that they maintain. Obsidian and A-State are two perfect examples of small companies doing right by their clients. The Obsidian guys are just plain old fucking nice and they happily talk to everyone, and the A-State people take that a step further by publishing a monthly fan written news letter called the Mire End Tribune on their web page. All three of the games I listed are moderatly sucessful and well liked by their fans.
I LOVE the Deathstalker's setting and charecter generation, I LOVE the flexibility of Obsidian, and I love the setting of A-State. I also love both the setting and raw originatlity of Asylum. Our game session lasted for 6 hours, 4 of which involved them walking 4 miles just to get food. The thing is though, is that each of these games all have problems, not just little problems either but big shiny glaring super problems.
Asylum will be my primary example because I just ran it for the first real time on Friday. And while the game was massivly "Holy fuck that was awesome fun", it really became kind of a pain. First the system. The system tried to be creative, and because I am a fan of system mattering I was always a fan of this game's system in theory. Instead of rolling one or more dice to determine the outcome of random events you instead drew marbles from a bag, the marbles all were a certain color and what color you drew corresponded to a number and thats how you resolved rolls. It was cool, and very evocative, it also simulated the "I lost my marbles" feel of the game play. I was so enamored that I actually bought a special set of dice for the game we were gonna play. Now aside from how clunky it was every player had an arrberation, and at the start of every scene they would draw for that aberration to see how powerfullly it effected the charecters. The problem with that was there were less options on the corresponding chart than there were color combinations which resulted in redrawing and eventually us abandoning the system altogether and us rolling d10s. Of course each chart had only nine choices each so I quickly ruled that if you rolled a 10 you just weren't effected. In retorspect I should of chosen if you roll a 10 you choose the level of effect but there is only so much you can do while thinking on the fly. I also forgot that basic skill rolls were based around a 1d5 instead of a 1d10 so I had to make massive and rapid adjustments in my head that I just didn't tell anyone about. Like I said it though, some of the most fun I've had roleplaying ever came out of that game session, but god damn it takes a lot out of you.
Ultimatly that is the diffrence between indie games and normal ones. SO much more is expected out of the gm. In d20/4th edition game sessions are more or less handed to you. There are churches/mages/kings who get the players to go do things and then if you even need to fill in an hour or so of game play all you need are three dice rolls and you got yourself a random encounter that will take up the player's time and be roughly balanced. There are lists of gear, both magical and mundane, lists of spells, lists of special powers, lists of lists. There are entire books filled with completely unessisary crap that you can give to players including death. For D&D, white wolf, Shadorun, Traveller, and some of the other big names there is never ever any need for a gm to pick up a pen and write anythings orginal for the game other than the game sessions.
For SLA there are pices of gear that don't have any stats what so ever to them. So people just sort of gotta guess what they do. That's my favorite example, I never even noticed it until one of my players bought it because he thought he needed it and then asked me what it did. Man they didn't even errata that shit. As a result though there is more fan based material for SLA Industries than just about any other game in existence. I am talking about people writing entire books for the game, like 100+ page books. That is a level of devotion that most white wolf fans can't even muster. It is a different sort of gming essentially. It is the sort of thing where you have to fly by the seat of your pants so much more, where there isn't a rule for everything, and where loot sometimes has to come off of the top of your head because the book hold no answers. In the case of Asylum I just rejiggered the entire game system over the course of a few minuts while simultaneously narrating a scene. Sure the system wasn't very complicated but it still had to happen.
Alright off to werk I go!
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Spayum
Looking back that title isn't actually humorous. It was supposed to be spam with that awesome accent the say way damn can come out as dayumn but it isn't working out. Oh well set in stone and all that. Pure tragedy that is. What will all 8 billion of my readers do. Be fictional that's what. Still things change when I know there are people out there so it is beter that I just keep on going it alone. Oh hey before I begin let me get this one ADD thing out of my way...
Okay I need to get a calandar, so that I can plan when I can start tap dancing lessions. I am vaguely serious about this. For some reason I am reminded of the scene in gummo where the mom pulls a gun on her kid to make him smile. Then she goes back to tap dancing in shoes that don't fit her. I tis one of the saddest points in the movie, there is so much in that movie that just plain old breaks my heart. It is so beautifully sad, many people get way to wrapped up in the shocking images and the grotesqueness which is not to be ignored. What they fail to see though, is the beauty of it all, the sort of cold dignity which some of those people try to live their lives as best they can, even when the rest of the world thinks of them as trash. Where Crepe suzet is a mystical thing that is spoken of in hushed whispers where clean socks are worth stealings and cats are meat. It is a beautiful movie, you just need to see it the right way. Sure sure rolling around in the dirt and reveling in how fucked up and shocking it can be is fun too! No doubt. But man. Man, there are some moments which will reach down to the balls of your soul and it will gentally massage them before crushing them into a yellow paste and putting them onto a cracker which is then force fed to your mom. Are balls yellow? I wonder.
SO SPAM how the hell did all of the above happen? I actually had a topic and everything. So this guy started following me on twitter. My tweets are free for everyone to read and I am happy about that. However at some point or another I got on some sort of spam bots list and I get all sorts of bizzare followers. It mostly used to be porn and that made me happy because I am a fan of porn. Sometimes it is just weird though. For example in response to this tweet, "Also while I never got off on Orchids I do get off on Calligraphy...and hugs" I got an orchid grower following me. Strangest thing ever and it made me really wanna watch Adaptation. I think that might happen later on I don't know. I also go some german winter sports feet dollowing me after I posted something about sport's night. Oh yeah I got spam I can't even read! I don't understand how that seemed like a good idea to someone but what the hell.
This guy though. Mr @comeandtakeit12 is one of the most bizarre random spam followers I've ever encountered. First of all his tweets are on a cycle, and it repeats about once a week (okay yeah I am really interested in this spamer would you rather have me stalking you? Okay then shut the hell up). They generally go something like this:
Stop screwing up the US Dollar Obama (Fing Dumb Shit)
Nothing Like a Cold Beer, Cigar and an AR-15 yes ATF in Texas!
Great Idea Obama close Gitmo and hold civilian trial for enemy combatants in Manhattan.(Fing dumb shit)
The Latest News About Dumb Lawmakers From Comeandtakeit12 http://tinyurl.com/ygzzwrd
BAMF (this one is my favorite! What the hell does it mean? Is he a fan of nightcrawler?)
Dont Mess with Texas! Liberal Dumb Shits!
If you noticed he is cool with saying the work shit, but fucking is a little bit to intense for him or something like that. I have no idea and I am slightly traumatized. There is also BAMF! which for some reason makes me really really happy. I'm mentally balanced you leave me the hell alone. Okay no seriously though. So I did a little bit more digging, in that I actually starting clicking on his links and tracking them all over the place. As I suspected most of his links go to the same places. Which seem to be a local news station and a couple of other places I don't have much of a desire hanging around. He is on ten diffrent lists but 4 of those lists are by one person, who isn't a spammer. Her bio claims she is, "News, Politics, Patriot, Military supporter, Mom, Radio Talk Show Host, Prayer Warrior! #TCOT Loves to laugh! Loves Jesus, Pro-Life!" which I guess is why Mr.comeandtakeit has some strange aversion to the word fuck. Why everyone is cool with the word shit is a mystery to me.
A little more poking around and I realized something @comeandtakeit12 is a real person. His name is actually Robert and his centeralized internet prescense can be found here : http://www.americanvoice.com/members/robert/default.aspx.
He's written some articles. Most of them are myopic, preachy, and they possess a limited world view. Much like many of the things I write here. It is just that we come from opposite sides so I look correct and I have the right to make fun of him as a result. In a way me and Mr. Robert are very similar. We both have strong views, I'd imagine we would both argue powerfully. We both like to write, and we both like using lengthy anecdotes to make our points. I'm more prolific and I bet he has less free time. We both even have foul mouths though he is more of a fan of shit whereas I am more of a fan of the word fuck. The diffrence between us, the fundamental divide that will ensure that the two of us will never, EVER reconcile is the fact that he made a bogus twitter account that is hooked up to some sort of auto follow search thingy and he just recycles tweets in hopes to get his word out there as much as possible. This is a man who hungers to apostatize whereas my attempts to get my word out about my blog can't even be considered half hearted at best.
Spam is that thing. It is a lot like a computer virus only more annoying. Virus's aren't ideological nor do they try to sell you something be it a product or a series of ideas. Spam is just throwing things out there in as wide a net as possible and not caring where anything lands. Robert here has followers in germany, japan, other spam services, and me! Along with roughly 1500 other people who more or less don't give a shit about him because he is a spammer. Some of his articles have been read hundrends of times. Most of them though have been read under 5.
Spam is something that is almot universally abhorred by internet users and now with twitter and facebook it is available to the common man. Anyone can be an asshat spammer and that's...great I guess I don't know. It does, however, seem to me that there is another way to get your word out. A better way. OH WELL.
Sucks to be that guy I guess.
Huh I was also going to use all of this to branch off into talking about the tea party but it is getting late and Books a Million is closing soon which saddens me immensely. Oh well maybe I'll type it up while I am doing laundry later on or something like that. I dunno, definatly kingdom of loathing first though a new toy was released today!
Okay I need to get a calandar, so that I can plan when I can start tap dancing lessions. I am vaguely serious about this. For some reason I am reminded of the scene in gummo where the mom pulls a gun on her kid to make him smile. Then she goes back to tap dancing in shoes that don't fit her. I tis one of the saddest points in the movie, there is so much in that movie that just plain old breaks my heart. It is so beautifully sad, many people get way to wrapped up in the shocking images and the grotesqueness which is not to be ignored. What they fail to see though, is the beauty of it all, the sort of cold dignity which some of those people try to live their lives as best they can, even when the rest of the world thinks of them as trash. Where Crepe suzet is a mystical thing that is spoken of in hushed whispers where clean socks are worth stealings and cats are meat. It is a beautiful movie, you just need to see it the right way. Sure sure rolling around in the dirt and reveling in how fucked up and shocking it can be is fun too! No doubt. But man. Man, there are some moments which will reach down to the balls of your soul and it will gentally massage them before crushing them into a yellow paste and putting them onto a cracker which is then force fed to your mom. Are balls yellow? I wonder.
SO SPAM how the hell did all of the above happen? I actually had a topic and everything. So this guy started following me on twitter. My tweets are free for everyone to read and I am happy about that. However at some point or another I got on some sort of spam bots list and I get all sorts of bizzare followers. It mostly used to be porn and that made me happy because I am a fan of porn. Sometimes it is just weird though. For example in response to this tweet, "Also while I never got off on Orchids I do get off on Calligraphy...and hugs" I got an orchid grower following me. Strangest thing ever and it made me really wanna watch Adaptation. I think that might happen later on I don't know. I also go some german winter sports feet dollowing me after I posted something about sport's night. Oh yeah I got spam I can't even read! I don't understand how that seemed like a good idea to someone but what the hell.
This guy though. Mr @comeandtakeit12 is one of the most bizarre random spam followers I've ever encountered. First of all his tweets are on a cycle, and it repeats about once a week (okay yeah I am really interested in this spamer would you rather have me stalking you? Okay then shut the hell up). They generally go something like this:
Stop screwing up the US Dollar Obama (Fing Dumb Shit)
Nothing Like a Cold Beer, Cigar and an AR-15 yes ATF in Texas!
Great Idea Obama close Gitmo and hold civilian trial for enemy combatants in Manhattan.(Fing dumb shit)
The Latest News About Dumb Lawmakers From Comeandtakeit12 http://tinyurl.com/ygzzwrd
BAMF (this one is my favorite! What the hell does it mean? Is he a fan of nightcrawler?)
Dont Mess with Texas! Liberal Dumb Shits!
If you noticed he is cool with saying the work shit, but fucking is a little bit to intense for him or something like that. I have no idea and I am slightly traumatized. There is also BAMF! which for some reason makes me really really happy. I'm mentally balanced you leave me the hell alone. Okay no seriously though. So I did a little bit more digging, in that I actually starting clicking on his links and tracking them all over the place. As I suspected most of his links go to the same places. Which seem to be a local news station and a couple of other places I don't have much of a desire hanging around. He is on ten diffrent lists but 4 of those lists are by one person, who isn't a spammer. Her bio claims she is, "News, Politics, Patriot, Military supporter, Mom, Radio Talk Show Host, Prayer Warrior! #TCOT Loves to laugh! Loves Jesus, Pro-Life!" which I guess is why Mr.comeandtakeit has some strange aversion to the word fuck. Why everyone is cool with the word shit is a mystery to me.
A little more poking around and I realized something @comeandtakeit12 is a real person. His name is actually Robert and his centeralized internet prescense can be found here : http://www.americanvoice.com/members/robert/default.aspx.
He's written some articles. Most of them are myopic, preachy, and they possess a limited world view. Much like many of the things I write here. It is just that we come from opposite sides so I look correct and I have the right to make fun of him as a result. In a way me and Mr. Robert are very similar. We both have strong views, I'd imagine we would both argue powerfully. We both like to write, and we both like using lengthy anecdotes to make our points. I'm more prolific and I bet he has less free time. We both even have foul mouths though he is more of a fan of shit whereas I am more of a fan of the word fuck. The diffrence between us, the fundamental divide that will ensure that the two of us will never, EVER reconcile is the fact that he made a bogus twitter account that is hooked up to some sort of auto follow search thingy and he just recycles tweets in hopes to get his word out there as much as possible. This is a man who hungers to apostatize whereas my attempts to get my word out about my blog can't even be considered half hearted at best.
Spam is that thing. It is a lot like a computer virus only more annoying. Virus's aren't ideological nor do they try to sell you something be it a product or a series of ideas. Spam is just throwing things out there in as wide a net as possible and not caring where anything lands. Robert here has followers in germany, japan, other spam services, and me! Along with roughly 1500 other people who more or less don't give a shit about him because he is a spammer. Some of his articles have been read hundrends of times. Most of them though have been read under 5.
Spam is something that is almot universally abhorred by internet users and now with twitter and facebook it is available to the common man. Anyone can be an asshat spammer and that's...great I guess I don't know. It does, however, seem to me that there is another way to get your word out. A better way. OH WELL.
Sucks to be that guy I guess.
Huh I was also going to use all of this to branch off into talking about the tea party but it is getting late and Books a Million is closing soon which saddens me immensely. Oh well maybe I'll type it up while I am doing laundry later on or something like that. I dunno, definatly kingdom of loathing first though a new toy was released today!
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Cheating!
Notice how I said I would gaurentee that there wouldn't be three bitchy blog posts in a row? Yeah well I am starting a new one right here. Haha! I am a dick!
Lets see despite wanting to live it up the next three days there are some basic things I want to get done. 1st is another SLA game session. I think I am going to make this one specialy desighned for a larger group of people, like around 6 or so. I am not sure what I want to do, but something kinda big and event based. Since I have always done SLA campains I kinda had to shelve most big events I've wanted to do until my players got to them. They very rarely did. This time though, I think I can cook something up. I am not sure what I want to do though. I am thinking of a major biogenic monstrocity, fused with thresher armor, and some sort of crazy Dank Night involvement. What I kinda want to do is have the thing running around. The players be there on a red, another squad from a grey be there, and still another squad from a silver and they all try to sort it out. I don't think that will work though. That is also ALOT of plates to spin. Maybe...wait no I know what I am going to do. That's going to be FUN! And it will put the FU back in SLA.
Good then once I do that I can get on the whole shadowrun thing I've been wanting to do. I have ALL sorts of shadowrun game sessions I want to get stiched together. I might even be convinced to do a shadowrun campaign. We'll see how running a couple of one shots goes though. I also really need my work situation to stabalize because this is starting to get fucking ridiculous. I haven't been effected by it to much, except for some nonsense next week but you know how it is.
i also want to get back on NA25. The fact that I have not written and published this game yet is actually a source of embarassement for me. There really is no excuse for it other than raw laziness. What I am thinking of doing is just clearing off a month and bunkering down like I did during national novel writting month. Sometime during the summer or maybe in May. April would be a good time for that but I have a birthday that I intend on fully celebrating even if it is on a tuesday. I HATE tuesdays. Bah! What I think might happen here is that I turn it into a development/mindpill place which is what I do with it more often than not anyway.
Before I do that I want to get more done on the PPP. I really need to reign in my ideas for it. I really can do an entire book on the subject I mean there is just so much to write about. Everything from the boxes it comes in, to the way it is prescented, to the plots, to the actual pornography itself. So I think I am going to pull it all back for a bit and get some focus. So the next thing I am going to do to work on it is get down in my head, and then on paper, what exactly it means to view a real sex scene in an unreal medium. This is of CRITICAL importance and there is a lot tied up in it. In all honesty it is something that sits at the core of both the post modern problem, the problem with mediated representation, and the idea of how we precive reality.
I am going to need Lacan and Baudillard for this. Baudillard will set up the basic problems inherent in the way we view reality, and I will use Lacan to set up the problm of the metaphore and what happens when the bar between the signifiyer and signfied get crossed. I am going to admit that pornography is a potentially dangerous medium and yet it is also one of the most honest. It reveals much about our desires, like how sad small, and fucked up they can be. Once I get that all established I will be able to break into things like how the plot makes porn more or less real, and the way it is prescented. Alright so I will work on getting that set up maybe tonight. It depends how awake I am after KOL and Dungeon Fighters.
Lets see despite wanting to live it up the next three days there are some basic things I want to get done. 1st is another SLA game session. I think I am going to make this one specialy desighned for a larger group of people, like around 6 or so. I am not sure what I want to do, but something kinda big and event based. Since I have always done SLA campains I kinda had to shelve most big events I've wanted to do until my players got to them. They very rarely did. This time though, I think I can cook something up. I am not sure what I want to do though. I am thinking of a major biogenic monstrocity, fused with thresher armor, and some sort of crazy Dank Night involvement. What I kinda want to do is have the thing running around. The players be there on a red, another squad from a grey be there, and still another squad from a silver and they all try to sort it out. I don't think that will work though. That is also ALOT of plates to spin. Maybe...wait no I know what I am going to do. That's going to be FUN! And it will put the FU back in SLA.
Good then once I do that I can get on the whole shadowrun thing I've been wanting to do. I have ALL sorts of shadowrun game sessions I want to get stiched together. I might even be convinced to do a shadowrun campaign. We'll see how running a couple of one shots goes though. I also really need my work situation to stabalize because this is starting to get fucking ridiculous. I haven't been effected by it to much, except for some nonsense next week but you know how it is.
i also want to get back on NA25. The fact that I have not written and published this game yet is actually a source of embarassement for me. There really is no excuse for it other than raw laziness. What I am thinking of doing is just clearing off a month and bunkering down like I did during national novel writting month. Sometime during the summer or maybe in May. April would be a good time for that but I have a birthday that I intend on fully celebrating even if it is on a tuesday. I HATE tuesdays. Bah! What I think might happen here is that I turn it into a development/mindpill place which is what I do with it more often than not anyway.
Before I do that I want to get more done on the PPP. I really need to reign in my ideas for it. I really can do an entire book on the subject I mean there is just so much to write about. Everything from the boxes it comes in, to the way it is prescented, to the plots, to the actual pornography itself. So I think I am going to pull it all back for a bit and get some focus. So the next thing I am going to do to work on it is get down in my head, and then on paper, what exactly it means to view a real sex scene in an unreal medium. This is of CRITICAL importance and there is a lot tied up in it. In all honesty it is something that sits at the core of both the post modern problem, the problem with mediated representation, and the idea of how we precive reality.
I am going to need Lacan and Baudillard for this. Baudillard will set up the basic problems inherent in the way we view reality, and I will use Lacan to set up the problm of the metaphore and what happens when the bar between the signifiyer and signfied get crossed. I am going to admit that pornography is a potentially dangerous medium and yet it is also one of the most honest. It reveals much about our desires, like how sad small, and fucked up they can be. Once I get that all established I will be able to break into things like how the plot makes porn more or less real, and the way it is prescented. Alright so I will work on getting that set up maybe tonight. It depends how awake I am after KOL and Dungeon Fighters.
Bah at things
I could and should my month in review but you know what? Last month was pretty shitty over all. The thing is though is that most of the shittyness was out of my control. This is why I am a pretty moderate control freak though. So that when shitty things do happen to me it is because of something outside. Huh, I just explained that kinda poorly. I guess the best way to do it would be via example. I had a friend who once...actually airing out the dirty laundery of the people I know isn't the coolest thing to do. Hrm, I guess I'll just try explaining things again. Eh never mind, it is just that there really are things that you can control, then there are things that you can manage, things you can see coming and then you brace for impact, and lastly there are the things you can't control. The things you can't control tend to suck the most and they always come when something else is happening so ts best to keep as much shit as organized as possible. Oh yeah and there is other people's shit. Sometimes you really should put your shoulder to the wheel and help out.
Its a funny thing actually. It isn't a real disorder but there is something where geeks in paticular will obsessivly play social worker for their friends. I think it is the general mentality that they are smart and problems are problems and there isn't a whole lot that can't be solved if... hey there is an XKCD strip about this and I haven't found a picture to go at the top of my blog yet! Woot now that shit just happened. It raises a valid point though. It is something I see happen a lot. I view part of it as a side effect of wikipedia, part of it as a generalized lack of critical thinking, and part of it because it is easier to deal with a problem when we reduce it down to base components. However, a problem is ALWAYS more than its base components so really, REALLY, people need to knock that off. THe other day I called someone on their Iseal Palestine opinion. I asked them some basic questions on either religion, some basic information on the geographic area, some basic political questions, long story short he couldn't answer anything and I told him he wasn't educated enough about the situation to have an opinion and that he was excused from my prescense.
To be fair to him, he thought he did. He thought he knew things. But at the end of the day all he has was a series of sound bites that didn't even come close to the entire story. Unfortunate. But coming into a situation that has been going on for well over a decade two months ago and already thinking you have an opinion, no you don't. Stop it.
Eh I decided I am done with this topic. Were it was going to go is this. Helping people is important. But that is just the thing HELPING. You can't save everyone, not everyone wants to be saved, and sometimes people just wanna drag you down with them. Some of them are beyond the whole idea of convensional help and they need it professional style. Learning the difference is important, but giving up on all people with problems is messed up.
This isn't to anyone personally, just in case. The shoe kinda fits some of the people who read this. Rather it is sort of a responce to a general attitude that some people maintain on rpg.net when giving out advice and such. Some of these things are sad. I talk about kicking people out of my life a lot, because I do it a lot, but I always do it with a heavy heart.
Oh well. People are indeed complicated. Thinking about them makes me wanna go to sleep.
Oh well, I'm still a little bit upset. Last week has been plauging me, normally I am very good at compartmentalizing my weeks but this last one is just sort of running around still smearing feces all over the walls of my life. Oh well! I have the next three days off and while I will not be able to go up and visit Sasha as a direct result of all the stupid bullshit of last week. So I will more than certainly live it up. I will also not have three bitchy preterbed blog posts in a row. In fact? I am going to make sure that happens right now.
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