I'm kind of a big deal

Went back and read some of my previous posts, especially the ones on gaming, and I'm kind of in love with myself all over again.  So I'll continue, and maybe try for one post each weekday, just to keep in the habit of spitting my mind-juice into word-shapes on the screen.

Today, though, I'm watching my type appear onscreen, which is comforting, compared to yesterday's experiment of typing blind.  Yuck.

So, what to talk about?

Um.

I game on Thursdays?  It's fun.  I used to be the token female. which, let me tell you, really boosts your popularity among the select group you game with, at least until they hear that you, also, (even though you have girl parts and are probably supposed to cry when you see spiders and have both a dustruffle on the bed and those useless decorative curtains that hide the functional shower curtain) agree that peeing in the morning shower is both not-terrifying disgusting and actually something of a time- and water- saver.  (I do.  It's all going down the train.  Urine is, for the most part, pretty sterile, and as a girl I don't get a lot of chances to pee standing up.  DON'T JUDGE ME.)  But now we've had an incredibly attractive 16yo friend-of-the-DM's-daughter gaming with us for a while and that took "an evening with adults who are secretly all 12 years old who love innuendo and bad jokes" to "you can't say that in front of the child or pedobear will sneak into your skin at night and you'll wake up in prison."   It's interesting.  I was sort-of immune to the jocularity, except of course to defend her honor by reminding everyone that jokes in general are allowed, none of the propositional or hypothetical scenarios can involve the child.
And then she turned on me.
Turned on me and laughed.

So I get knocked prone in battle, right, and have about 3 HP to my name. The joke starts as something along the lines of  'my character fell down in battle. Again.  She's always on her back during these things.' (Hur hur sleeping with the enemy, etc.  They're not really sexists?  We do the same joke to anyone who falls down within striking distance of an enemy.) And then HER character also got knocked prone while trying to defend/stand astride MY character and keep my meagre hit points in play until I could stand and move the hell out of damage range.
So her character is now prone.  Essentially on top of mine.

And eyebrows go up as the fellas try to decide which scenario is more joke-worthy, and lo, it is stated that if no one is allowed to touch the bubble, why do I get to touch her bubble.  I smile (ignoring the innuendo) and say it's fine.  We're on the same team, and she fell defending my honor. (Yes, lame joke, but she's in the bubble, guys!)

She arches a brow and shrugs.  "Whatever.  Even if it's a problem, she's the one going to jail for it.  Not me."

BETRAYED.

Sweet Baby Raptor Jesus I am lazy as fuck all

So: I'm going to try to write more.  It should be interesting.  I'm also going to try to type up these entries without looking at them too much.  Just to see how truly despicable my typing skills become when I can't watch them and continue my obsession with the backspace key.

So! Scary story time!
I frighten mysel foften.  I'm not one of those people who can just lay down and sleep, I have to think for a while first.  During this time, my complete shit eyesight can often influence what I perceive around me and lead me to think "That stack of 'probably clothes' looks like the trash monster from the Fraggles" and then off I go. Right?
Sometimes, though, I think about how I'd like my home to look, ideally.  Other times it's environmental elements that get me going.

Exsample 1:  Last night (or maybe the night before) I was pretending to be asleep (really reading sites on my phone.  God I love my iPhone.  Or, rather, I love the internet.) and as I shifted, the bed squeaks really loudly.  I tdoes that a lot.  I don't know if it's because it's an old bedframe/boxspring combo, or if it's because we have the above stacked on risers so more shit can fit under the bed. But! It's noisy, and I thought "Wow, if I was starting fresh and had my own place, I hope the bed wouldn't squeak like this cause it's loud and annoying", which led to "Well, I probably would just throw a mattress on the floor, because lazy, and also it'd lend itself nicely to a sort of 'casbah' theme to a bedroom and the cats would probably enjoy that", which led to "And then when I'm feeling lazy or sick I could just crawl to the bathroom."
"
Naturally, this led to me picturing the crawl, in the early light of dawn or the pitch black of night blessedly cast by blackout curtains (because FUCK YOU, STREETLIGHT!) and how I'd keep the carpet vacuumed , and how I wouldn't even need my glasses because if I'm on the floor I can't trip over anything.
Which made me think of crawling across the darkened hallway to the bathroom, grumbling quietly about the hour, or whatever issue made me go to the bathroom in the first place, and how my dogcat would probably really enjoy this new game of "walk under the human".
So then I imagine her bushy tail running across my throat as the gallumphs in front of me on her way to jump into the bathtub, y'know, like they do, and then my brain turned on me.
As usual.
It made me imagine laying my hand down on the carpet in the hallway, only to encounter another hand.  My brain-what-loves-me rallied, and suggested this would be a probably-hungover houseguest and we could carefully avoid knocking heads and have a quiet groaning discussion about who gets the restroom first.
And then the brain-what-hates-me thought:
What if the hand was cold.
And in the near-dark you saw the other crawler, her hair down over her face, like your own.
And she raises her head, and her jaw is missing, the carpet dark beneath her with blood or gore, and a trail seeping audibly into the carpet where she's crawled to here.


Fuck you, zombie girl from The Ring, and also the Grudge. Even though I logically realize you're among the slowest and least dangerous of zombie/spirit/demon/creatures, you still suck and that gagging air-sucking noise of an exposed trachea and ugh.

Fuck you, brain.  I thought we wanted sleep.  I guess it wanted more internet.

Also I should write more

I write for shit, but upon a rereading of the below, it's almost exactly how I talk.  Full steam ahead what the fuck are you talking about 'pause for breath' or punctuation or somebullshit like that?  When I say "describe", I want that fucking sentence to be filled with so many adjectives that the ones on top are torn between fighting for a clawhold to stay on the pile or grasping at their friends who may not have been so lucky in their positioning and need a helping hand to stay aboard or be flung into the abyss of the mind, never to be seen again.

New year, new goals for gaming?

There are so many things I find myself urgently wanting to do.  Like play the flute more often, so I don't forget how, and run more, so I can stay in shape and maybe some parts of me could weigh more but wobble less, and wanting to organize my limited belongings so they all fit into one tiny space as a [probably passive-aggressive] method to gloat about how all MY shit is tidy and all of someone else's shit is NOT TIDY IN THE LEAST.  In fact, it has never seen or heard of this concept of "tidy", and wouldn't believe in its existence if you invented a religion and performed passion plays about it every year.

Another kicker is that I really need to get started on my Fae campaign, because I love the concept in my head, but setting it on tiles and letting other people play around in my headspace is both intensely, deliciously manipulative and also highly annoying and intrusive.  I have only the most basic of concepts for the world itself, because I have to reject any sources that are universally available Note here:  This is the #1 easiest method to prevent meta-gaming -  Fuck the players out of a way to learn the history or backstory from the same source you're using.  It's labor-intensive, sure, but it does prevent the village idiot from spontaneously knowing how to kill the monster you've carefully chosen for the PCs to fight, despite the fact that VI there, as a character, has never seen or heard of this monster and really has no way to justify this knowledge.

(Minor side rant:  WHAT NOW, BLOGGER?  I can't indent a paragraph?  You can go suck a sweaty ballsack.  I'll indent if I want to.  YOU DON'T KNOW ME! YOU'RE NOT MY REAL MOM!)

        So, back to the world.  I know I want it to be indescribably beautiful (an impossibility when you have to describe it for the players, yes, but I'd like to try.) and constantly deadly.  That field of sunflowers?  Lovely, yes?  They're taller than the species you're used to, true, and they sway with a rhythm you wouldn't expect, and isn't that a lovely tune coming from that scarecrow-looking thing!  Oh!  It's got some sort of reedy instrument thing strung from it's form here, so the wind blows through it and makes that sound.  Let's take this little reed flute/recorder/ocarina thingy with us, in case we need to charm some plants, ha ha. OH HOLY SHIT!  Sunflowers gone wild or someshit!  AAugh!  Vines!  They've got the cleric! Fuck! Fuck this! Fireball! Someone jesus baby help oh man! *ACTION FOR DAYS*

        Later, while panting and bandaging up the wounded and checking over their supplies while the war-minded and angry party member sees to it that the fire of wet plants is constantly fed, they'll wonder.  Hrm...What was in this field that was worth protecting, or was it the plants themselves that had/have value?  What are these seeds like, and should we take them?  Who can we convince to eat these to see if they're poisonous?  I want them to gradually realize that this entire lovely world is very fairytale-esque, with the picturesque and idyllic villages and smiling, vapid townsfolk and possibly the random flashmob that sings about being the only smart girl in the village and so forth.  And also very dark farytale-esque, like a poisonous version of Alice in Wonderland.  "Drink me!", they'll read.  "I think NOT, Sir!", they shall decide unanimously.
     This ought to result in forcing rations and drinkable water to finally become a necessary commodity of gameplay.  Favors from townsfolk will be approached with caution, and marketplace interaction only sought when all other avenues have failed.  Because they can't trust the surface words of any bargain, and every fishmonger could be an Unseelie in disguise.

I've even thrown in a villain (as if something in a land of dubious morals could recognize deliberate evil in a mere few centuries) by the name of Dalv Lucard, and the tithing of human youths and so forth.  I want them to enter this place like it's Disneyland and spend the latter sessions desperate to escape this living, breathing, technicolor hell, and its beautifully twisted claws shall pursue them up to the very breach they entered by.

        So aside from the firming up of landscape and the deliberate planting of plot lines, I only have a few issues  and most of them revolve around Players and their PCs.  Some Players don't have the grace and civility to create a PC with a malleable mindset who will adapt to the situations presented rather than staunchly refuse to enter the proceedings unless clubbed, drugged, stuffed into a sack and dragged to the forefront of an NPC encounter.  Others can.not. let go of their favorite characters from games past, and while I'm fine with Players having a favorite 'type' of character or a certain theme they like to include, and that's all fine.  Really.  I am not okay with yet another revamp of a past character whose backstory and eventual evolution has been set in their own personal mind-canon for YEARS.  I have heard the stories, sir, and while I was at first amused by retellings of actual gameplay antics, I grow weary of your continued insistence that anything that happened outside of the killing field of d20s and damage has any importance to my actual, real, life.

For gods' sake, just write fanfiction about your OC and be done with it, like the rest of the internet!

        Another hurdle with playing using an established group of Players is that they're used to being high level.  No one wants to start at the bottom, and while I respect and understand that, I'd like to have some kind of realistic balance between  
a. handing the farmboy an enchanted sword and flinging the poor dear into a burning barn filled with angry owlbears and
b. 7 war-hardened battle-scarred steam-panting individuals who eat NPCs of 6th level or lower for BREAKFAST, can kill a troll with each hand while simultaneously reciting the spell that blackens the sun and forces their personal aura to explode and paint the world in the blood of their enemies.
        I want to make the story the important part, and throw in some believable fights and have those fights be a challenge that makes the Player more invested in the campaign as a whole. (I, too, know how irritating it can otherwise be.  One minute you're walking to the next town, traveling past the boredom that probably represents some inanimate and uninteresting landscape when BAM!  Thirteen goblins, with nothing better to do than attack travelers who carry nothing of immediate value, attack you from nowhere, dying easily and with very little to say in the way of badass last words, and strangely their murder at your hands nets you 30 gold, a sword with a ruby in the hilt, and some goblin meat.)

I need my mojo back, please

I need to knit that sweater. NEED IT.

It's not often that you can so faithfully recreate a piece of your favorite show in such detail and by hand, and so I NEED the John Watson sweater.  I've saved the pattern, the yarn won't be much, really, but I just have to finish these fucking commissioned gloves first.

WE HATES THEM, PRECIOUS.

Someone explain this crazyness to me.

Yes.  I spelled craziness with a "y". 

So!  I stalk tumblr.  I haven't committed yet for a few reasons.
1.  I don't have the internet at home, and tumblr is FILLED with delicious panty-melting images, so that's no good.
2.  I have deliberately painted myself into a largish corner with my online profile, because anonymity turns me into a different person and it creeps my shit.  It is ME, and it creeps MY shit to compare what I say/do online to real life, provided I was able to say/do it under the guise of someone not-me. 

Still.  I stalk tumblr.  And one person I stalk on it has been in the same location as a favorite actor of mine several times.  She has seen him in REAL LIFE.  And she posted in a little tweet-like post that she was finally in the same room as him and did not bump into him.  She later clarified, after receiving many responses about how lucky she was to be near his awesomeness, that she honestly could not care about it.  She has no interest.

I got that.
No, really, I understand.

Sometimes I really get sick of having to sidestep my backyard pool filled with gold pieces, jewels, and disgustingly hot people wearing no clothing and just begging for attention while my incredible sound system projects solid holograms of my favorite singers and bands that are programmed to provide a perfect soundtrack to my every mood.  The the walk to the end of my jaguar-filled personal parking garage is SO LONG.  God.  Some days I just want my personal retinue to carry my silk-draped litter faster but with less jostling as they traverse the indoor hallways filled with rescued kittens who all get along and none of whom shit anything but rounded precious stones and never track cat sand out of the box.

It's great that there are people who are not attracted to those who literally exude sex.  I mean, less competition for the rest of us poor saps, but really?  Honestly? WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN

So....DeeDee it is

I've found go-go boots for about $20, and a pattern for the hat won't be an issue.  The shorts are likewise a non-issue.  My big thing is making sure the boots arrive first, so I can match the color to the top.

Also:  Geek Prom 2012.  I want EVERYTHING prom should've been, but I'll settle for a fun evening, I suppose.  I have a dress, and a year to get the boots and accessories.  I have co-conspirators, (one of whom really ought to take the opportunity to get an awesome dress/outfit and go TOTALLY sexay with it), and we'll make do, I suppose.  Why is no one as excited as I am about part one of The Hobbit?

Healing Surge vs. Second Wind

So, in D&D, my people die. A lot. We fought a fucking DRAGON in Encounters this week. Just sayin'.

As the cleric, it's my task to be there to help them. Not to "help them on their way to post-mortem existence", but to use my clerical skills to bring them back to fighting status.

UNFORTUNATELY, it seems to me that my powers are pretty limited in this respect. I can heal someone twice, and am learning to pay special attention to the difference between "healing surge" (which any character can do a specified number of times per in-game day) and a "second wind" which a character can perform only once during an encounter.

However, I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around the apparent fact that when someone is neg, I cannot in any way, do something more than stabilize if I've already used healing word twice (per encounter). It's like getting over there, staunching the bleeding wound, and then giving them a nice pat on the head. There, there. It's fine. I can perhaps do a heal check next round and help you out, but for now, let's just sit in the path of utter destruction and hope for the best.

Urgh.

Halloween Prep

I want to be a million things! Argh!
And I have to pick just one (or two) so it'll be easier on the budget.

Items to consider:
1. Jem
2. Rainbow Brite (not a skanky version with cheap ass leg and arm warmers)
3. Sherlock (BBC)
4. Dalish elf from DA
5. ANY character from Dance Central

Still Alive

Though on a related note, I am not as averse to playing co-op on Portal 2 as I expected. I AM highly competitive for the praise of a non-existent electronic ragegod. So far, I have played Orange and receieved more praise/less insults than Blue, so I'll be damned if I change now. Also, I refuse to call the robots by their model/body names.

Back in the swing/saddle?

I'm getting better again about picking up my knitting. As soon as I finish these gloves, I PROMISE (you hear that, Universe?) not to let my eyes get ahead of my stomach again.
Still, not too shabby, and I got the pattern out of it, so there's always that.

Stupid Wednesday

Everything snuck up on me and I was doing so well at this whole "put the words in the box-thingy" deal!

But then a coworker died Tuesday night and I was at the front desk for about 9 hours instead of 4 and things went all diagonal from there.

Second post in a row! I am some kind of super-demon or something!

No, not really, but hey, since no one knows about this blog except one sister and one best friend, I'll risk a funny story for your amusement.

Once upon a time, two friends went to an adult-toy store and each made a modest purchase, fully backed by the support of the other. The friend in question here got a blue thingy, with a weird but subtle bulbous tip that made it quite honestly look like a stylized and catchy-bit-free version of a chess bishop.

SO: A million years later, this thing lies unused (after a frankly disappointing and noisy first and only attempt) and unloved in a sock drawer, while the friend wishes she'd got something that didn't sound like an egg beater or a cat toy in a coffee tin. One night, it is dark and stormy and she is tidying up the laundry, which lives on the floor, because she is lazy and secretly believes in house elves (or something. It's a good a reason as any). The house is empty at night now, and it's a little fun and a little spooky, and she is placing things in the cabinets and cupboards while all three shiftless layabouts lounge in varying degrees of feline boredom when an especially emphatic shove to fit more items into the finite space of the sock drawer cause the item to engage operation RATTLE THE BONES AND SHIVER THE TIMBERS!

In the span of a second three furry animals turn into WHIRLING CHERUBS OF TEETH, FEAR, AND CLAWS while this embarrassingly enthusiastic piece of shitty plastic and shame attempts to bore through the cheap wood paneling of the drawers and into hell. Sadly, nothing further happened. I located the item, removed the [still good?] batteries and finally was glad to have proof that the damn thing was too noisy and distracting and just about as subtle as the snap of an elbow-length rubber glove at high noon in a proctologists' office. It is gone now. All is well, and I'm glad.

Do you ever just want to flail your arms about until everything makes sense?

I want EVERYTHING these days it seems.

I want to make snazzy art, and maybe even post it on here. I want to KNIT ALL THE THINGS. I want a clean and organized house where ANYONE I like could count on a safe-haven. I want to be super badass, and be able to sweep your feet out from under you while catching a throwing star. I want to do a million flaming hula hoop tricks and join the circus. I want to be some kind of awesome consultant wherein my word and opinion is of the highest value. I want to be super fit, in case the zombies come (I'm actually working on this. At this point, I really ought to run either off a building, or into the hoard of zombies to save time and terror.). I want to be an excellent dancer, and impress everyone. I want to be stylish and have a zillion outfits that look great even though I just 'threw something together.' I want to be a teenager again so I could appreciate the connections and experiences I had and encourage young!me to fucking do ALL THE THINGS and make decent choices that will help current!me out now.

Also, while we're asking for impossible things, how about some wizardry, a million gajillion dollars, and the magical ability to explode minds with a glance while maintaining immunity from legal repercussions?

It's been so long

That I don't even remember what this looks like. Hopefully not terrible, though someday I'd love to actually organize things to my preference.

So I'm working, as usual, but also again. I've not lost my job, though some "restructuring" is making my asshole chafe like the dickens. (Ha! That's class! See how I didn't say "I'm really fucking irritated that these fuckers are fucking with my shit." Instead, I used "like the dickens" to fully represent my gentile nature. Also "asshole", because anus doesn't fully encompass the irritation I feel.)

I've also been working on a year long knit-along (KAL) for LSG, and am stuffing that into a monthly KAL-meets-competition in which I represent team Star trek. For one "challenge" I am knitting a nebula-inspired shawl. It's going, but not fast enough for my tastes.

Picture is unrelated

I will do my job today, even though I am mentally lethargic all the time now. I will do this thing, and this blog post will be proof of my intent to do this thing. And if I couldn't post what I meant to yesterday, then an older item will have to suffice.

I need to get off my own case and start encouraging myself. AND YOU DO TOO, you-know-who.

I also need to exercise, but that's hard. ):

I know what I want to be when I grow up!

Finally! My Career Path has spoken to me!




I particularly enjoy that she tones it down a bit for the baby, because I sure wouldn't. Cry, baby. I'm evil. Deal with it.

Eggy is fast-burning nightmare fuel or Please stop pumping crazy-dream gas into my home.

For two days now I've had strange and horrific nightmares, most of which I forget upon waking. It seems to be happening to my mate also, and now I'm going to keep a close eye on the cats when they wake up to see if they share my disorientation and confusion (since it's hard to tell if a cat woke up drenched in chilled sweat).

Yesterday, I thought I'd take a short nap on the couch. An hour and a half later, I wake up scared (for no apparent reason), very groggy and tired, soaked in fear sweat, and the best part? My face hurt like I'd been screaming. I suspect a dinosaur dream. Those bastards are terrifying anyway.

Last night, the parts I can remember are disturbing, though in the light of day they just seem odd. I'm sure I was freaking out in the dream though, because the feeling carried over into waking and lasted about a half hour. It had something to do with my mate and his brother (the good one), and I was supposed to be knitting his brother some Bayerische socks (which is pretty chilling, having narrowly survived my own experience with making a pair for myself), and my mate was trying to help with my second job, and so was watching a live action Rainbow Brite movie (which seemed good, but I was too busy being chased by some unnamed horror to stop and watch). He kept trying to fill me in on what was happening, while remaining completely oblivious to the danger I was trying to elude. I think he ended up reviewing the movie or something, but I just remember running for my life, thinking "I hope we get to keep that so I can watch it if I live" and then my dad rammed a red truck through the wall into the living room and was bent on destruction.

I thankfully can't remember my dreams from the night before, but I do remember knowing I'd had a nightmare. Even this morning, when saying goodbye to my mate, he admitted I'd woken him up before the police arrested and accused him of the murder of someone who'd lived in the (currently nonexistent) sub-basement of his childhood home, in a haunted silent-hill version of the town we grew up in.

If it happens again tonight, I'm considering going to the apartment office and asking them to test the air for carbon monoxide or something.

Pigamahorse

I am a horse, or at least, I am vaguely horse-shaped. Now that you look at it though, it does seem that my legs are kind of spindly and my body is very fat, like a pig, or a very fat scotty dog.

I am jumping, which means my ability to be safely displayed on a wobbly table has been significantly decreased. Yay!
My head, unlike most large domestic quadrapeds, is able to reach my (thankfully nonexistant) genitals.
There is nothing directly wrong with me, except that my glass eyes (like all my siblings, here) are attached to the sides of my head and are distinctly NOT a part of my face. Also, they are visibly uneven from side to side. Boo.
What is that smell? Did I step in something? I'll just heft my FOOT to my SNOUT to see. Yep, I definitely stepped in something smelly.
I am a chimera. My body is that of a pigahorse, and my neck is that of a snake.
I'm fat, but happy. I'm what happened when Wilbur met a horse and fell in love. This is a horse-ish face on a pig body. With a rooster tail. I am Lj's favorite as a result.
I am sloth-horse. My eye is drippy on this side, and I am laying down. Which didn't prevent my foot/psuedopod from breaking off. If only I looked more like a cow..

Copywank

So, I'm having problems reconciling some ideas about artist protection with my appreciation of a finished product.

In short, sometimes artists who would dislike the current copyright systems create some awesome things. Like this:



I get the distinct impression that while this artist would prefer that her work be completely free to anyone and everyone.

However, (and I might not have considered this if it hadn't been so diligently detailed online) since the work above involved using some works belonging to others (in the past, or through various legal issues, etc), it made me strongly consider what would happen if all artistic works were free to anyone with access to them.

On the one hand, you could achieve worldwide exposure in days, which would be pretty awesome. And some pretty cool stuff could be created. Without any contact, hundreds of creative ideas from different could be flawlessly joined into works of art.

On the other, and this is the side that I find myself aligned with, by freeing your work from copyright, you are making it very difficult to profit from your hours and hours of labor and inspiration. It would be fine if it was a personal choice. If I, for instance, chose to create fantastic paintings and encourage others to view my work through any means convenient to them, either from free viewings, to downloaded scans. However, if the expectation spreads, if the world begins to expect entertainment for free, I think it would be extremely hard for anyone to support themselves through their artistic work.

My work has value, and I'd rather have the credit and profit from it than allow everyone to have access to it. It's probably a very bourgois(sp?) idea, but I like it. Demand can create value as well.

(This is partially why I get upset on Ravelry when someone says "I like pattern X, but don't want to pay anything for it. Is there a similar pattern for free that someone can point me to, because SIGHT LITERALLY UNSEEN I feel that the designer is asking too much." I also chuckle happily when a designer restricts pattern distribution to a hard copy via mail.)