The Marsh King's Daughter

2005-10-16T22:07:00.000-05:00

Getting In Touch With My Roots

I spent the weekend visiting relatives in Kentucky. As an unexpected bonus, my mother, her two surviving siblings, my eldest cousin and I spent Saturday afternoon in the county where Mom's ancestors have lived for centuries. Now, I've been out to the family farm a number of times; my mom spent the first six years of her life there, and even after her family moved a half-hour away to the "big city" her father continued to farm and keep horses and cattle there. On this trip, though, we also visited the log cabin where Mom's mother was born, which I'd never seen. That farm was sold to the Girl Scouts in the 1950s, and they've maintained the original cabin. The main part of the cabin is perhaps as big as my living room and dining room, plus there is a small loft, reachable by ladder. When my grandmother was a girl, she and her three sisters slept in the loft, while their parents and three brothers slept downstairs. The kitchen was apparently in a separate structure off the porch. My aunt and uncle still remember visiting their cousins there as kids. Since the Girl Scouts have taken over the land, the floor and ceiling have been rebuilt and the "chinking" filled in with concrete to keep critters from slithering in between the logs; but the exterior walls and the stone chimney all survive from the original structure, like something straight outta "Little House On The Prairie" -- except less prairie and more mountains.

We capped off the trip with a visit to the cemetery where many of my grandmother's relatives are buried. My mother likes cemeteries as much as I do, and it's extra-fun visiting them when she knows half the people buried there. I got to see the obelisk-like headstone marking the graves of my great-great-grandparents, the Reverend Nelson T. Burchett and his wife Clarinda McCormick Burchett; as well as Nelson's grandmother Susannah Hearne (or Herron) Burchett, born in 1777.

I totally understand why none of Mom's siblings can bear the idea of selling the farm.

2005-04-30T15:03:00.000-05:00

Quote Of The Week

"And there's a Black Death over Valhalla...."

- spouse, happily singing mis-remembered lyrics to Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'"

We're considering re-writing the whole song as an RPG encounter gone wrong....

2005-04-28T14:13:00.000-05:00

A Little Passover Humor...

...from last night:

spouse: "Are peanuts kosher for Passover?"
me: "Well, that depends. Are you Sephardic?"
spouse: "Uh...." <pause> "Which answer lets me eat the peanuts?"

...and this morning:

me: <pulling on fluffy hooded alpaca sweater> "I decided I was in the mood to wear something fuzzy. 'Why is this day different from all other days?' Well... it isn't, really, is it?"

Nope, I'm not dead, just... busy. Li hosted another fabulous seder this year (and while I still contend that eight days of all-fast-food diet would be an even more appropriate way to commemorate the flight of the Israelites from Egypt, a seder complete with bag-o'plagues is a very close second). Before that, spouse and I between us spent 18 of the first 23 days of the month out of town (me at a bio conference and a math meeting, him at two meetings for work). In just over a week we're off again, this time on one of the two trips we're actually scheduled to take together this year, for a long weekend in Connecticut/NYC for his nephew's Bar Mitzvah.

Eventually we're gonna hafta make time to plan out that campaign we're s'posed to start running this summer....

2005-02-27T18:21:00.000-06:00

End Of An Era (Or Perhaps The World...)

Last night, we played our final, marathon session of Masks, Cathy's Call of Cthulhu campaign. We finally acquired the translation of an ancient Chinese manuscript telling how to re-make the magical ward to block the path of the dark gods into our world -- and almost killed ourselves in the casting of the spell. (We did have one casualty -- our archaeologist -- but it could've been much, much worse.)

My character, Emily, ended the game with 14 SAN (down from 70), 2 POW (down from 14), and a shrivelled arm -- but she stayed alive long enough to learn and cast the Elder Sign spell necessary to create the Eye of Light and Darkness.

Funniest moment from our final session: We knew that for the ritual we needed someone who could cast the Elder Sign spell (none of us knew it, but a PC whose player couldn't make it did know it) and the blood of an "innocent". GM Cathy ruled that we could phone the player of the absent PC to find out which of the books in our possession he'd learned the spell from, so we could all try to learn it. Now, learning the spell requires both that you read the book (a Read English skill check, which is based on one's Education Level), which causes you to lose some SAN and gain some Cthulhu Mythos, and that you UNDERSTAND the spell (an Intelligence check). So the smartest PCs started trying to learn the spell. They'd read the book, lose a little SAN -- and then fail their intelligence checks.

So then the less-smart PCs started trying to learn the spell.

Andy's PC Neville rolled so poorly that he couldn't even make his "Read English" check -- he tried twice! -- with an 85% chance. Then I tried... and with an INT of 9, I made my INTx2 check.

It was only after that, after everyone but Neville and our doctor (who was already halfway 'round the bend) had read the book and gained Cthulhu Mythos that we realized that the "innocent" had to be someone without any Cthulhu Mythos.

So Neville got to be our lucky bleeder by virtue of his complete lack of cleverness. He was not exactly pleased by this -- we were afraid we'd have to knock him unconscious -- but it all worked out in the end....

We will eventually learn in an epilogue, either via email or at our wrap party, whether the spell (in combination with our previously-wreaked havoc) will be enough to foil the plans of Nyarlathotep and his cultists. And then, if the world doesn't end, Emily is going back to the States for a nice long rest and a new career in nursing....

2005-02-24T21:46:00.000-06:00

Gallery of Rogues

In between bouts of Real Life, which has been impinging on my gaming quite a bit lately (but in a good way), I finally finished the web page giving summaries of all my current and past characters that I started working on over a year ago.... (Mostly it's all just an excuse to find pretty pictures, I think....)

2005-01-06T22:25:00.000-06:00

Because You Asked....

At the request of some of my readers, here is the full track listing for the Call of Cthulhu mix I made for Cathy.... (I'm including track length because... well, you'll see.)

Synchronicity II, The Police (5:05)

World Destruction, Afrika Bambaataa and Johnny Lydon (5:30)

Aren't You The Guy? They Might Be Giants (0:06)

Millionaire Adventurer Balloonist, David McCormack & POLAROIDS (2:54)

I Found A New Friend They Might Be Giants (0:07)

Preaching The End Of The World, Chris Cornell (4:41)

Leave Me Alone, They Might Be Giants (0:05)

We Only Come Out At Night, Smashing Pumpkins (4:05)

Return Of The Spooky Driver, Andy Votel (5:01)

Who's Knocking On The Wall? They Might Be Giants (0:04)

Following Me, Steeleye Span (3:39)

See The Constellation, They Might Be Giants (3:27)

Subterranean Homesick Alien, Radiohead (4:27)

The Statue Got Me High They Might Be Giants (3:06)

Skullcrusher Mountain , Jonathan Coulton (4:16)

Attack of the Ghost Riders, The Raveonettes (2:33)

Something Grabbed A Hold Of My Hand, They Might Be Giants (0:12)

Time Is Running Out, Muse (3:56)

I Walk Along Darkened Corridors, They Might Be Giants (1:01)

O Death, Camper Van Beethoven (3:06)

I Heard A Sound They Might Be Giants (0:04)

Shoot Shoot! Solex (3:08)

I'm Having A Heart Attack, They Might Be Giants (0:22)

Cavern, Phish (4:24)

Mysterious Whisper, They Might Be Giants (0:28)

I'm Deranged, David Bowie and Trent Reznor (3:48)

Hell, Squirrel Nut Zippers (3:12)

Heroes, David Bowie (3:38)

Most of these are pretty self-explanatory -- yes, in our campaign the world is gonna end if we don't do something to stop it, and we're all going slowly crazy, and... yes, we really DID encounter a subterranean homesick alien. But one of my favorite bits is the very last line of "Cavern": "Whatever you do, take care of your shoes."

Ah, brings back memories of that half-mad chap we met in the desert in Australia who was wandering around starkers except for his Oxfords....

2004-12-21T03:09:00.000-06:00

What's That Blue Thing Doing Here?

As many of you know, I've taken to doing "soundtrack" mixes for some of the games I play in. This week, inspired largely by discovering a song called "Millionaire Adventurer Balloonist," I set out to make a Call Of Cthulhu mix for Cathy.

Now, sometimes when I do this, I suddenly realize that one album in particular could be the game soundtrack all by itself. It happened for "Power of Threes", and now it seems to be happening for Masks: After pulling a bunch of appropriate tracks into a playlist and then culling down to album length, I realized that 11 of the 28 tracks I'd selected come from Apollo 18 by They Might Be Giants -- and I didn't even use "Dig My Grave" or "My Evil Twin" or "Hall Of Heads"....

And then I realized -- well, duh! I mean, just look at the cover art....

2004-12-07T20:32:00.000-06:00

I Like To Think Of Myself As The Poster-Child For Inbreeding

As some of you may recall, every so often I stumble upon some new tidbit of information about my ancestors that allows me to find often-hilarious information about them online.

Last time I did a little online genealogy digging, I found out that my paternal great-great grandfather led the vigilante band that killed his good-fer-nothin' brother-in-law. The time before that, I found out that the reason my maternal grandmother used to make such casual reference to marryin' one's cousins was that her own parents were first cousins.

This weekend I decided to do a litle digging on my maternal grandfather. I had the names of his parents but hadn't gotten any farther than that. This time, I found a website recently put up by a distant relative that includes scans of a large number of very useful documents -- including my grandfather's obituary and the death certificates of both my grandfather's parents. These, conveniently, include the names of all four of my great-great-grandparents on that side. Woo-hoo! Armed with this new information, I started poking around on a few genealogy sites. I'd traced one branch back several generations, when all of a sudden...

I got to a name I recognized.

Yes, not only were my maternal great-grandparents first cousins, my maternal grandparents were fourth cousins. At least. (My mother has mentioned before that she was pretty sure they were related -- I mean, in a farming community occupied for over a hundred years by a few large families, it's hard not to be -- but she was pretty sure it was through a different branch than the one I found....)

As I compare my own family tree to the Family Tumbleweed in House of Cards, it occurs to me that my mom is probably about what you'd get if Phillipe and Saeth hooked up.

Now I'm just waiting to find out that my dad is actually my mom's fifth cousin....

2004-11-18T00:17:00.000-06:00

Taste This Movie: The Incredibles

Tomorrow marks ten years since I and my spouse had our first real date. What better way to celebrate than with an animated superhero movie?

A gamer friend of ours has suggested that the characters in The Incredibles are controlled at times by gamers -- this would be when they are using or combining their powers in clever and entertaining ways -- and at times by Hollywood Screenwriters, who apparently aren't quite so clever. Lucky for us, the gamer moments are prevalent enough and amusing enough that they totally make up for the occasional lapses in clue. Spouse had a hard time deciding whether he enjoyed this or Shaun of the Dead more; he definitely wants to see both again. (I would give Shaun of the Dead the edge because it was much funnier and less predictable; but The Incredibles is still quite entertaining.) Cute homages abound, from Star Wars to James Bond to X-Men to... Edith Head. (And really, what superhero movie wouldn't benefit from an Edith Head homage?) And superhero tropes are gently mocked to good effect.

It turned out to be the perfect long-term-relationship-between-gamers movie, in that several of the scenes -- the navigating-the-freeway scene in particular -- are much, much funnier if you've lived it with your own long-term partner. That Elastigirl reminded my spouse of my mother added another dimension of funny, too.

The animation, as usual for Pixar, is very, very shiny. If you have any interest at all in this movie, I highly recommend seeing it on the big screen. The characters intentionally look like cartoons, but some of the backgrounds are nearly photo-realistic. Gorgeous stuff. Plus, stuff blows up! And there's, like, a volcano and stuff! Definitely big-screen material.

Overall, this is a cute, frequently clever, and very shiny movie. Recommended, especially for Pixar fans and gamers with kids.

2004-11-17T22:40:00.000-06:00

Foetid, Pustulent, and Free Online

Last night, after more than two years of playing "Call of Cthulhu," I finally got round to reading some actual Lovecraft.

I decided to start with "The Dunwich Horror," which formed part of the back-story for Rick's dearly-departed Buffy/Cthulhu crossover game.

I will definitely read more, but... I can't help but feel that my overwhelming urge to giggle at much of the prose means I've rather missed the point. I mean, my god! Those adjectives! The horror!

Of course, I tend to think everything is funny.

I look forward to reading one of the stories out loud to my (squeamish, easily-freaked) spouse -- in broad daylight, most likely -- to see if he reacts the same way....

2004-10-10T23:35:00.000-05:00

Taste This Movie: Shaun Of The Dead

I am an introvert. It takes a very special movie to prompt me not only to leave the house of my own accord, but to invite other people to come with me.

Shaun Of The Dead is just such a movie.

All the reviews I'd read just SCREAMED "Gamer Movie," and the tag-line ("A romantic comedy. With zombies.") had the names of several specific gamer-friends written all over it. It looked funny-clever-silly, and I knew it was my duty to drag my friends out to see it.

The only kink in my cunning plan: It's a ZOMBIE MOVIE. Apparently this isn't a selling point for everyone on my list....

I started with my dear spouse, Sensitive New Age Guy. I knew a zombie movie (even a very funny one) would be a hard sell for him, as he rather prefers movies where nobody bleeds or dies or has anything especially bad happen to them, especially if we *like* them. So, "Hey," I said, "I'm thinking of going to see Shaun Of The Dead. Are you interested in seeing it with me?"

"Um... no," he said.

"Well, would it be okay if I invited other people and went without you, then?"

"Um... no," he said. Because being left out while other people have fun is even worse than watching a zombie movie, apparently.

So I emailed Li and Cathy to try to convince them to join me. I figured Li would be enthusiastic: not only is she sick and twisted in exactly the right way, her husband Ed is a fanatical zombie-movie lover. I am told he began salivating as soon as the invitation was relayed to him.

Cathy, on the other hand, turned out to be much more skeptical. Despite being a big fan of werewolf movies (and a "Call of Cthulhu" GM!), she doesn't much care for zombie movies because they're too gory. But after I consulted with some friends who'd already seen the movie to get a sense of its overall goriness ("Don't watch the disembowelling," they all said, "but the rest of it isn't too bad"), and after all Cathy's co-workers told her she HAD to go see it, she reluctantly agreed.

Oh, was it worth it. Squeamish spouse declared it an "instant classic" and has already asked me to buy him the DVD. Cathy thanked me profusely for dragging her along. And Li and Ed say it's even funnier if you're a zombie-movie fan and get all the in-jokes.

It is, in short, a funny, clever, well-acted, well-scripted, brilliantly edited ensemble action-comedy... that happens to be about zombies. I'm not a big fan of gratuitous violence and gore, but I wasn't bothered by any of the images in Shaun Of The Dead. Even the aforementioned disembowelling (during which spouse and Cathy both covered their eyes) I found too fake-looking to be truly disgusting, and the end of it is actually pretty funny. (Well, sick-funny, but still....) I cannot remember the last time I laughed so hard in a movie.

Go see it. Really.

2004-08-18T15:24:00.000-05:00

GenCon! GenCon! GenCon!

Yep, it's been the sort of busy month-or-so that keeps me from writing fun blogposts -- I mean, I saw Bourne Supremacy TWICE on its opening weekend but never quite finished writing up my review -- but I had to pop my head up long enough to mention GenCon, which starts... oh, now-ish.

We picked up our exhibitor badges today. I have told Scotto, proud proprietor of Dogtown Games and the reason I and many of my local gaming buddies have exhibitor badges, that I will set aside some time this weekend to be a Booth Babe. I'm not sure quite what that will entail, but when I asked spouse how I looked in my spiffy new bright yellow Dogtown Games t-shirt, he said, "You look like a Booth Babe!" So, y'know, I figure I should run with it.

We also have our tickets in hand for our Friday afternoon TrueDungeon slot, woo-hoo! It's the only game I actually pre-registered for, and I'm really looking forward to it. Spouse is wanting to get our group together ahead of time to talk strategy.... We'll see. (I perhaps am overconfident in my ability to kick ass without advance planning....)

Out-of-town guests --all four of them -- arrive tonight, woo-hoo! And I've got a tentative plan to run a session of Carl Klutzke's in-development Storycards RPG for them and some of my in-town friends, if we can find a time that works for everyone. This will be my first time actually GM-ing something; I think it's a testament to what Carl is trying to do with his system that I am so enthusiastic about the prospect. If it gets off the ground, I'll post about the results later.

There are also murmurrings of impromptu Cthulu from Cathy and possibly also AD&D from one of the out-of-town guests, so I may get wall-to-wall gaming without even having to sign up for anything.... Sweet.

Now, if I could just skip out on my meetings the next two mornings, life would be perfect....

2004-07-12T00:43:00.000-05:00

Queen Bee

I may have to re-think my superpowers. Normally I claim that my main superpower is Telepathy, followed closely by Infectious Sloth, but then things like this happen:

This morning my spouse and I had the following email from our friend Carl, at whose house we spent most of yesterday:

Last night, closing up the house, I saw some weird thing on the deck just outside the door, a small silvery oblong thing, but I was way too tired to
really be curious about it. This morning when I put [the dog] out she stepped right on it and it startled the heck out of me by flipping over and making loud buzzing and fluttering. In the sunlight I was able to see it more clearly: it was a cicada. This is the only cicada I've seen all year. I can
only assume it knew Karen was here and wanted to come present itself to her.

Weird.

Either I've also got Bug Summoning, or my mental powers also extend to the insect realm.... Either way, I'm not complaining!

2004-07-01T13:43:00.000-05:00

Taste This Movie: Spiderman 2

On a whim (and because my sweetie is very spoiler-phobic), we saw Spiderman 2 last night. I found it to be not-quite-perfect, but shiny and fun anyway. A good summer movie.

Herewith, some impressions (many of which are mild spoilers).

First, the bad. There's only one truly noticeable flaw in the film, and it's probably not the turn-off for most people that it is for me: Anytime any of the characters try to explain the science behind Doctor Octavius's work -- really, whenever science is invoked at all -- the results are painfully laughable. I should know: my dear spouse, Poor Impulse Control Boy, chortled uncontrollably during a couple of not-really-supposed-to-be-funny scenes. (I managed to beat my own reactions down to a few eye-rolls and the occasional "Yes, I know. Shh," directed at the spouse.)

Yes, I realize one doesn't go to comic-book movies for their well-thought-out, cutting-edge scientific theories -- but combining spurious science and lazy exposition in one convenient, hard-to-swallow package is a mockable offense in my book. I point and laugh at thee, silly screenwriter!

Happily, the acting and directing mostly rise above the occasionally silly script. I applauded Sam Raimi's name in the opening credits (which are worth mentioning all on their own in the "good" column: beautiful comic-book images hitting the highlights of the first movie, reminding the viewer Where Last We Left Our Intrepid Hero so we wouldn't hafta waste too much valuable story time on a recap), and he didn't disappoint me. In particular, I think Raimi does an excellent job at capturing Peter Parker, Everyday Dweeb, in a way that does my own happy-to-be-a-nerd heart proud. (The shiny-happy-dweeb montage had me laughing out loud. And, hey, has anyone else noticed a resemblance between dweeb-style Tobey Maguire and Sam's baby brother Ted?) From the many comic-book-appropriate scene transitions to the "Evil Dead" homage, Raimi's choices kept me consistently entertained.

The acting was all quite satisfying as well, from Tobey Maguire's delicate balance of dweeb and hero to Alfred Molina's sympathetic baddie Doc Octopus to Rosemary Harris's voice-of-conscience Aunt May, who manages to pull off that difficult task without sounding too much like a plot device. Special props to Cousin Cleph -- er, I mean, James Franco -- who keeps his "That bastard killed my father!" ravings believably angsty.

My only disappointment was Donna Murphy -- not because she was bad, but because, having seen her mostrecently in the fantastic "Wonderful Town" number at the Tony Awards, I harbored a secret hope that she'd spontaneously burst into song. But alas, this wasn't "Spidey: The Musical," more's the pity, and so she was left to burst in an entirely different way.

Was this film as good as the first Spiderman? It's kind of a toss-up. I don't remember as strong an urge to mock the science in the first film; but this one is still an enjoyable ride with little else to recommend against it.

2004-06-29T14:20:00.000-05:00

Quote Of The Week

"Well. I b'lieve I could teach you Klingon!"

-- My proud father to my one-year-old niece as she babbled a long string of guttural consonants

Have I mentioned I'm a second-generation sci-fi geek?

2004-06-11T23:08:00.000-05:00

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

Over the last couple months, I've been slowly putting together a soundtrack for Genevieve. I'd come up with maybe a half-dozen songs that seemed appropriate... and then, a couple weeks ago, I finally got 'round to buying an album that's been sitting in my Amazon wishlist for almost two years: Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile.

Wow.

There's a song for Alyddia, who was first introduced to her Amber heritage when Insane Uncle Brand took her on a date that culminated in stabbing her on the Pattern ("It didn't turn out the way you wanted it to/It didn't turn out the way you wanted it, did it?" -- The Wretched).

There's a song for Hargomme, the closest thing to an actual peer Eve has ever had ("You and me/We're in this together now/None of them can stop us now/We will make it through somehow" -- We're In This Together).

There's a pair of songs for Martin, who may now be metaphysically linked to Eve since they defied his grandmother and took the Rebman Pattern together ("I descend from grace in arms of undertow/I will take my place in the great below/I can still feel you even so far away" -- The Great Below, as well as its immediate predecessor, the mostly-instrumental La Mer).

In fact, the whole album opens with the perfect summary of Eve's attitudes toward her family ("So impressed with all you do/Tried so hard to be like you/Flew too high and burnt the wing/Lost my faith in everything/.../Broken bruised forgotten sore/Too fucked up to care anymore" -- Somewhat Damaged).

And of course Flora gets Starfuckers, Inc., with its gloriously snide quotation from "You're So Vain" ("I'll bet you think this song is about you/Don't you?/Don't you?/Don't you?").

The whole thing is doubly amusing because Eve spent the first couple days of the campaign wandering around in a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt.

Gareth is too weird for Nine Inch Nails, though, and Cole is too smiley. I think they both may hafta end up with They Might Be Giants songs instead. (Gareth, who grew up in a society of disembodied brains, almost certainly needs "Hall of Heads"....)

2004-05-28T13:52:00.000-05:00

Best. Boss. Ever.

Yesterday on the way back from a molecular-biology-intensive seminar my boss and I got to talking about Ramones songs. (He started it: he brought up "Gabba-gabba-hey," which was apparently inspired by the GABA receptors targeted by barbituates.) So I told him about the cicada song.

This morning when I got to work I found a mason jar half-full of live cicadas on my desk.

Hee hee hee!

2004-05-25T16:42:00.000-05:00

May Fortune Favor The Foolish

I've been discussing with a couple of Power of Threes players the way Fortune readings are used in House of Cards. Often, they happen in-game: a character will decide to cast cards, the GM will describe which cards come up, and the character will interpret them. (The GMs also do single card draws to resolve actions that don't have an obvious outcome.) But I prefer doing my own readings without GM intervention (well, except for that maniacal cackling that usually erupts when I show them the results), usually behind the scenes of the actual game rather than in-character.

Here's the most recent example (which the GMs wanted me to post anyway so that the other players could point and laugh): Just before Folly took Random's newly-created Pattern, she had a long talk with Random during which she finally confessed that she's fallen in love with his son. Random replied that he wouldn't stand in the way of their relationship, but that it would be Bad (in the Ghostbusters sense of the word -- like, metaphysically detrimental or something) for them to have a child together. When pressed for how he knew, and exactly how it would be bad, he said he "just knew" that he had to forbid it to "prevent tragedy".

When Folly passed this news on to Martin, Martin seemed pretty dubious. After all, Folly is Random's former lover.

So, some short time after Folly's Patternwalk, I did the following reading:

Question: Should Folly have Martin's baby?
Past: The Soldier (Duty)
Present: Winter (Maturity)
Future: The Smith reversed (Evil Effort)
Virtue: Nature (Life Energy)
Fault: The Lion (The Body Prevails)
Fate: The Fool (Freedom/Lack of Connection)

Now, I don't know about the rest of you, but I look at this reading and I think, "Uh-oh." <grin>

Here's my take, though I'm open to other interpretations:

Past: Easy. Folly and Martin declared their love to each other years ago, while the Army was still away fighting the war in Chaos. But they agreed not to consummate the relationship 'til they'd cleared it with Random, who might have other ideas about whose bed Folly oughtta be sleeping in.

Present: Folly's Patternwalk was a huge turning-point for her. She has just come into her own not only as a member of the family and an heir to Oberon's legacy, but also as a key player in Random's newly-created realm of Xanadu. Her Patternwalk marked her symbolic transition from Maiden to Mother, made evident by one of the things she encountered as she approached the Fourth Veil: a child who addressed her as "Mama".

Future: Random is not lying. If Folly has Martin's baby, there will be terrible consequences. I find it chilling to note that the Smith Reversed has come up so frequently, always with the result that one of the Youngers injures another either accidentally or on purpose, that in this game it has been nicknamed the "stab your cousin card." This is bad.

But unfortunately....

Virtue and Fault: Does anyone else see what I see here? It scarcely matters what Folly decides: All the forces of the Universe, whether they're working for or against her, obviously really want that baby to be born. I practically peed my pants when I saw that pair of cards come up. But perhaps together they suggesting possible good as well as ill consequences for the nearly-inevitable event.

Fate: I can see a couple of interpretations for this. The one that makes the most sense is that choosing to go through with having a child ("freedom" from Random's strictures) will in some way disrupt Folly's connection to her loved ones or other things that are important to her. Perhaps she'll be forced away from Xanadu as a result. Another interpretation is that freeing herself from the threat of this tragedy can only be accomplished by breaking her connection to Martin.

All-in-all, very scary but very interesting. I like it so much I may hafta have Folly do this reading in-game, so she can freak out about it, too!

2004-05-21T16:23:00.000-05:00

Groovy Gaming News, Part 2

Got a phone call last night from some out-of-town gaming buddies who are planning to come up for GenCon! Yaaaay! <happy dance>

Now is the time on Sprockets where we figure out how many people are coming, and how many we can comfortably (or, heck, not-so-comfortably) house at once....

2004-05-21T16:09:00.000-05:00

Groovy Gaming News, Part 1

My face-to-face Amber GM has set up a nifty new website for our "Power of Threes" game. Yay! It's still in the protoplasmic stages of development; but eventually it should house info on characters, important locations in Amber and Shadow(I'm already halfway into a floorplan of Flora's house in Westchester), metaphysics, and game mechanics as they differ from (or expand upon) ADRPG rules. Shiny!

2004-05-21T09:48:00.000-05:00

Brood X

Twenty-twenty-twenty-four days to go
I wanna see cicadas!
Nothin' to do, nowhere to go
I wanna see cicadas!

Just eating-peeing-mating
You think it's kind of rude
But don't be deprecating --
It's just their nature, dude!
It's time for celebrating
Emergence of the brood
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!

Bap bap bap-bap ba bap bap bap-bap
I wanna see cicadas!
Bap bap bap-bap ba bap bap bap-bap
I wanna see cicadas!

Really, if you'd ever seen my sister's jarfly imitation, it would all make sense. Wheeeee!

2004-05-07T21:42:00.000-05:00

Next Year In The Holy Land! Next Year In Reykjavik!

Dani, one of my favorite college housemates, was a psychology major who didn't especially like math herself, but she really liked that I liked math. So we talked about math a lot.

During my senior year, I took an extremely entertaining class in non-Euclidean geometry. And so in due time I ended up discussing with Dani the concept of drawing "straight" lines on a sphere.

Looking for a concrete example, I said, "You know how when you fly from here to Europe --" (she'd spent a semester in Spain the year before) "-- it might seem intuitive that you'd go 'straight' across at a constant latitude. But instead, you head north over Iceland, and not just because Reykjavik is a convenient refuelling stop. And that's because on a sphere, the shortest path between two points --"

Dani's whole face lit up as she interjected excitedly, "...goes through Reykjavik?!"

Ever since then, I've desperately wanted to live in the topology where that's the case, where directions from here to Chicago necessarily detour to Iceland. I mean, wouldn't that just be cooler than cool? (And whiter than white and cleaner than clean....)

And ever since then, "Go to Reykjavik" has been on the list of things I hope I get 'round to before I die.

The guy I was dating at the time collected Hard Rock Café sweatshirts, but somehow I never managed to convince him that we should just pop over to Reykjavik for the weekend to add to his collection....

I woke up this morning with Iceland on the brain. I searched for a couple of Icelandic words in online dictionaries (because, erm, it might become important later?) and in the process found a description of the vagaries of the Icelandic language, its complex (and sometimes arbitrary-seeming, according to that author) case structure, its rules for swapping out vowels even in proper names.... And I thought, hey, studying Icelandic might be fun. I've studied Chinese, which is very entertaining to speak and write but not very grammatically complex. I've studied German, but I only kept it up through two years of high school, not really long enough to get down-and-dirty with the grammar. Maybe, I thought, I should try to learn a little Icelandic, and then next summer -- which is an "off" year for my spouse's family's biannual family vacation -- I should go to Reykjavic for a few days.

I even went so far as to check airfares from here to Reykjavik.

But of course I'm far too busy to ever follow through with such a plan, particularly if I actually intend to learn enough Icelandic to get by before I go. (If Reykjavik is anything like Vienna, I won't need much -- but I should at least learn how to say, "My husband is allergic to your pillows"....)

Then this afternoon I walked out of my office and down the hall on the way to a late lunch. I noticed that the Geology Department, just around the corner from us, had updated the big research posters in the glass cases outside the department office. Before, they showed data on local seismic activity.

The new poster? "Undergraduate Research In Iceland, 2003."

I'm tellin' ya, it's a sign -- literally and figuratively.

So, who wants to go to Iceland?

2004-04-29T18:05:00.000-05:00

Last. Week. Of. Classes.

My boss keeps asking me, "Are you sure you want to be in academia?" with the bleary-eyed stare of an overworked college professor with a two-week-old baby. And then he sheepishly asks me to grade something else. (Very relieved was he when I announced that I'm spouseless this weekend, and therefore free to edit figures and grade final exams.)

I dunno what he'd do if he didn't have a "mini-me" on staff. :) (Boss is easily fifteen inches taller than I, and twice my mass. But I am *not* getting a buzz cut, no matter how funny it would be.)

Some days I think I'm almost as exhausted as he is, but I find the whole thing highly amusing. I'm really beginning to understand why even my most brilliant, over-caffeinated friends reach the end of first-year-of-professordom with a wide-eyed, "But I didn't get ANY research done!" I'm doing labwork, but it's in support of student experiments. I'm running simulations, but I haven't had time to finish the last batch for a paper I wanted to submit months ago.

But oh, I've had some fantastic interactions with the students, and that more than makes up for it. I hope I've helped them; I have gotten the "eyes suddenly light up" look from a couple of them, which is always encouraging.

I am also encouraged by the comments, which finally arrived this week, on my (rejected) first grant application. One reviewer thought it was great. Another, who recommended against funding it on the grounds that the experimental plan did not sufficiently address my specific aims, nevertheless complimented the clarity of my arguments for the importance of the work. Since sometimes I get so close to a paper that I cease being sure whether I'm making any sense at all, I was glad to get that little bit of encouragement.

So. Tired, but the end of the semester is in sight. Not nearly as grumpy as I might be under the circumstances.

If you haven't heard from me for a while, I'm not avoiding you -- I'm just grading papers.

2004-04-15T23:19:00.000-05:00

Access Denied.

Yesterday our campus got hit hard by a computer worm. Yesterday evening our lab was required to take our computers off the network. All the machines will need to be rebuilt, eventually; in the meantime, no Internet from my office computer. (Probably will take the Nigh Invulnerable Titanium Powerbook in with me tomorrow, and try to stay connected that way.)

So today, I spent twelve hours at work with no email. Which wouldn't be so bad -- much of that time was spent doing lab work, or in a meeting, or giving a lecture, and the rest of the time I worked really efficiently due to the lack of online distractions -- except that I'm supposed to be fielding email questions about the second computer project for my boss's class, due Tuesday. I should be finding and answering them right now, but I'm too tired. (On the plus side: today I did the project myself, so I should be able to provide better answers in the morning when I do finally get around to responding to emails.)

I should also be cleaning the house. Yesterday spouse phoned me from his conference in D.C. to tell me that his father and brother are driving from Philly to Denver to visit his sister, and they'll be in Indy Friday night and would it be okay if we had a late dinner with them and they crashed at our place? And would I mind getting the house cleaned up, since spouse won't actually be returning to Indy until an hour or two before the guests are due to arrive? And hey, I wonder if we can do anything about the hole in the living room wall from where the plumbers fixed our leak, since one of the futons is in the living room.... But I'm too exhausted to clean. And I'm way too exhausted to wrangle that centipede that apparently climbed out of the hole and is now hanging out on the living room wall -- but he doesn't appear to be going anywhere or bothering anyone, so I'll just let him hang there 'til tomorrow.

I should also be writing gameposts, but... see above. Maybe tomorrow, if I respond to all the emails and get the house clean and still have some time left over before guests arrive. Otherwise, not 'til Saturday at the earliest.

Right. Wiped. Bed now. 9am seminar tomorrow, and I want to get responses to students out before then....

2004-04-11T22:51:00.000-05:00

And Speaking Of Bjork Videos...

There's something quite charming about listening to Bjork poke gentle fun at someone else for being weird.

(From the Directors Label The Works of Director Spike Jonze DVD: "...and he phoned me up in the middle of the night because he's had this idea that there should be a dancing postbox, and he's so excited about the postbox that he can barely speak....")

Heh.

2004-04-11T22:21:00.000-05:00

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

...rocks. :)

How could it not, though? It's written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by the weird, sweet little French drummer who's responsible for all my favorite Bjork videos....

I loved Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. Eternal Sunshine is a bit less brain-twisty, which could've been a liability: probably moreso than most of my usual movie-going companions, I'm a big fan of "brain-twisty". But it has a heart the other two films lacked that I think makes it a better film. We recently inflicted Malkovich on a friend of ours, who found it "interesting, but I realized by the end that I didn't actually like any of the characters." Eternal Sunshine is a much sweeter film; I suspect that's largely Michel Gondry's influence.

(Spouse loved it, too, which is probably as effective a barometer of "sweet" as you could ask for....)

(And no, I haven't seen Human Nature yet -- but it's waiting for me on the TiVo. Based on reviews, I'm expecting "interesting but flawed," but I'm looking forward to it nonetheless....)

2004-04-08T10:39:00.000-05:00

You Know It's Going To Be A Challenging Day When...

...you arrive at your office at 9:30am having ALREADY put in an 8-hour day.

Yep, I was up all night grading projects for my boss's class. I've been awake for about 25 hours straight, and I've got a lecture to give in about two hours. Conveniently, it's one of those "could give it in my sleep" lectures -- and I may do just that....

I am so gonna take a nap before my evening lab work.

2004-04-01T18:11:00.000-06:00

Foot Fetish

Ah, spring, when a young postdoc's fancy turns to thoughts of...

BIRKENSTOCKS!!!!!!

Or at least that's the way it's worked for the last decade-and-more, even back when this postdoc was but a wee grad student (and "spring" started about a week after New Year's --- ahh, Texas....) and even undergrad (and "spring" didn't really start 'til about mid-June, but we all went barefoot as soon as the temperature got above 40 F --- ahh, upstate New York....)

But alas, now I'm doing lab work every day, and it really would be bad form to wear sandals. Clearly, I need some Cheerfully Impervious Summer Shoes!

Mmmmm. I'm already looking forward to wearing them. :)

2004-03-30T14:16:00.000-06:00

Back To The Drawing Board

Using the power of the Internet, today I found out the priority score of my first-ever grant application.

I am so very not getting funded.

It'll be a month or two yet before we get actual comments from the reviewers, but we can already guess what their major complaints will be: my mentor isn't established enough, my publications record isn't strong enough, and my university isn't one of the Big Guys.

So, time to submit that paper and then re-tool the grant application for resubmission to another agency.

I'd probably be extremely grumpy right now, except that (1) it's exactly what I was expecting, and (2) I've gotten a lot of unexpected Lab Love in the last week to remind me that I'm Useful even if I'm not Federally Funded. (Last week our senior scientist spontaneously told me that he thought our lab was much stronger with me in it. Totally made my week.)

The other extremely good part is that I'm still funded under my boss's grant, so it's not like I'm out of a job because of this. But if I manage to get my own grant, my current funds will be freed up so we can bring in someone else -- maybe another postdoc, or another grad student. The boss has gone so far as to suggest that I could have my VERY OWN STUDENT, which would be sweeeeeet! (I hadn't realized it 'til I proofread his portion of my grant application, but he has definitely noticed how much mentoring I do for the students we've already got. I'll bet I could handle guiding a Master's student.)

So, yeah, the not getting funded kinda sucks, but I feel ready to try again.

And have I mentioned my lab totally rocks?

2004-03-15T17:51:00.000-06:00

Fresh Blood

We've got a new PC in Power of Threes, my face-to-face Amber game: Cole, son of Caine, played by Carl, the husband of our GM. He'd actually developed the character two years ago when we first started the campaign, but a combination of occasional co-GM duties and the all-important Distracting The Three-Year-Old While The Rest Of Us Game kept him from joining as a regular player... until now.

I'm psyched. My character is also one of Caine's bastards; and as the intervening years have revealed that Carl and I actually share a brain (why else would we both answer the question, "What would make a really cool set of high school superpowers?" with an immediate, resounding "SQUID!!!"), I can think of no better person to portray my half-brother. He and the GM agreed that Genevieve would probably either really like Cole or really hate him -- but I suspect that in fine sibling tradition, she will do both, sometimes at the same time. I am so looking forward to seeing how they interact....

A word on the casting: It is something of a running joke that Michele, who plays Alyddia, thinks the male PCs (who bear striking similarity to Brad Pitt and Michael Praed) are distractingly gorgeous and that Alyddia sometimes reacts to them on that basis. As we considered possible castings for Cole, Carl and GM-Karen described him as "blond, buff and friendly." Spouse suggested Val Kilmer as a possible casting, and Michele made a sound not unlike the sound I make when I see something shiny through a store window.... Yep, Val Kilmer it is.

2004-03-10T22:42:00.000-06:00

Disappearing Act

Looks like I'll be travelling to Kentucky on Friday for a funeral.

Two days ago, my father emailed me a brief health update on some of our relatives, including the news that my Uncle Joe had just been admitted to the hospital with pneumonia. However, the litany of Joe's ailments also included the aneurism his doctors have been watching for some time, a spot on his lungs -- probably cancer, probably spread to his bones already -- discovered on his latest chest x-ray, and a recent fall that -- given the other symptoms associated with it -- may have been caused by a mini-stroke.

Joe died yesterday morning. In hindsight, we suspect he's known for some time just how bad his health was, but didn't want his overly-sensitive relatives to fret over him when there really wasn't much they could do to fix it anyway.

I wasn't very close to him -- I'm far closer to his wife, my mom's sister -- so my going to his funeral is far more about supporting my surviving relatives than it is about mourning. But if the weather holds, and if I can get enough work done tomorrow, I'll probably go.

So if I'm extra-quiet, or miss gameposts, that's why.

2004-03-03T12:10:00.000-06:00

Experience Points

I hate allotting XP. I really do. I've got almost two years' worth of accumulated points from my ftf Amber game that I've never quite bothered to assign, although I've got a pretty good idea where a lot of them are going: Warfare and Sharp Pointy Things. (Which reminds me, I've got an action to resolve by email with a fellow player before our next session....)

But last night I finally came up with an idea, just now submitted to the GMs, for what to do with Folly's newest XP. Given the nature of what I proposed, they may make me wait and use my next rather than current XP for it, but... I like it. I finally found something story- and character-appropriate that may have the side benefit of opening a huge can of ~~worms~~ dramatic possibilities.

Yep. Just wait 'til Folly starts referring to Xanadu as "our baby".... <weg>

2004-03-01T19:41:00.000-06:00

Quote Of The Week

We don't fish, Sage, we're VEGETARIANS!

- my sister's exasperated admonition when my nephew, gleefully flinging his baby sister's stuffed 'Cat In The Hat' fish about the living room, answered the query "WHAT are you doing, Sage?" with "Fishing!"

2004-02-25T15:35:00.000-06:00

Card Games

Ginger muses on PC fortune/tarot readings over on the House of Card Weblog.

Folly has done a few fortune readings, one to help her assess the situation after Random returned and another to try to discern the identity of her biological father. (The latter reading I found so disturbing I never did write commentary for it.) She will probably do many more before the game is through.

I've considered putting a point in Fortune Reading as a character skill, but I find that I prefer doing "cold" readings (that is, drawing from the deck myself) rather than letting the GMs feed me cards to interpret. With cold readings, I think I'm more open to seeing connections I haven't made before rather than just focusing on trying to figure out what the GMs want me to see. Even though I suspect a GM-directed reading would answer my queries more directly, I think cold readings can be a lot more interesting.

On the other hand, I have got that shiny new experience point I still haven't decided how to allot....

2004-02-24T14:39:00.000-06:00

Mmmmmm. Mardi Gras.

In token observance of Mardi Gras, today I bought three chocolate chip cookies and ate them all in one go. Mmmmmm.

I briefly considered giving up definite articles for Lent -- my (mostly Chinese-born) officemates would hardly notice, I suspect -- but then decided I shouldn't risk slowing down my gameposts any further.... I'm open to other suggestions.

2004-02-18T13:07:00.000-06:00

Where's Karen?

Some of you (by which I mostly mean Ginger) have probably noticed I've not been online much in the last week. That's mostly because I've started doing actual wet-lab work in addition to my usual computational work.

The wet work takes about four hours a day; and although that does include a couple of short breaks while I wait for cells to incubate, almost all of that time is spent away from the computer. Last week, on top of that, the combination of getting up much earlier than usual for training, learning new fine motor skills (and tensing up while worrying whether I was doing them right), and staring through a microscope resulted each evening in total exhaustion and/or an eyeball-searing headache that required isolation in a dark room with no computers as soon as I got home from work. (And then my weekend activities expanded to fill all available space. Very fun, but not much online time....) So I'm just a little bit behind on gamestuff. I know I owe at least a couple posts on Lunar Ellipse, which I intend to write tonight. I'm also waaaay behind on Genevieve's journals for my f2f game, but those will probably have to wait 'til after my trip to Atlanta next week....

I will say, though, that the wet-lab stuff does include its own unexpected element of fun: every day, as part of my prep, I get to whack dry ice with a tire iron. How cool is that?

2004-02-17T10:52:00.000-06:00

Quote of the Week

In Korea like everywhere else there are young ladies who are curious about therapeutic cloning.

- Dr. Woo Suk Hwang, on how his lab found the 16 egg donors for their cloning experiments

It's an interesting interview (registration required to use the NYTimes site), even if that one line sounds like a personals ad by Aldous Huxley....

2004-02-13T11:44:00.000-06:00

Observation Of The Week

The phrase "up-and-coming" is suddenly a lot funnier when you've just made a Viagra joke.

2004-01-28T14:42:00.000-06:00

One True Thing

Apparently I came away from my undergraduate years with at least one important lesson deeply ingrained:

When falling on ice, don't try to break the fall with your hands. Instead, you should bounce on your butt the way nature intended.

Owie... but not nearly as "owie" as twisting your wrist and ripping the flesh from your palm (as I know from way too much experience). Go, me!

2004-01-27T11:44:00.000-06:00

Mixed Blessings

The bad news is that our Cleveland collaborators may not make tomorrow's scheduled visit after all, due to terrible weather in their area. (Not that it's so much better here: my boss is home with his kids today b/c schools are closed, and spouse is working from home 'cos roads are yucky and sidewalks are worse. I only came in today b/c I needed to prepare for tomorrow's lab visit....)

The good news: if the lab visit is cancelled, maybe I'll be able to catch up on a little gamestuff tonight....

UPDATE: ...or maybe not. Still no final word from them. I'm willing to bet they'll wake up in the morning, survey the nasty roads and/or air delays, and call it off; but sounds like they're waiting 'til then to decide one way or the other.

2004-01-26T15:54:00.000-06:00

Game Convergence

In my ftf Amber game, "Power of Threes" (which we played yesterday), the PCs' voyage to a state funeral (aboard Gerard's ship, the Bonnie Lass) was interrupted several sessions ago when the whole ship was swallowed by a giant metaphysical Space Squid with (apparently) an entire universe in its belly. We spent a while drifting lazily through space on the Bonnie Lass (which conveniently enough held atmosphere and generated its own gravity), trying to figure out how to get out.

After finding a planet inhabited by former vassals of House Barimen and defeating the Thelbane soldiers/bounty hunters who showed up there to try to bring us back to Chaos, we've finally got a way to get out of the Space Squid: we're taking the Thelbane spaceship.

Conveniently for us, one of our PCs was an astronaut on her homeworld. Her player immediately started asking detailed questions about the ship.

"Uh.... Can I get back to you?" said the GM. "I haven't really thought much about the layout...."

"So, uh, how many people did you say this thing holds?" I asked. "'Cos, er, I'm working on a spaceship for another game and I've got the floor plans on my laptop...."

Turns out the Thelbane crew is exactly the same size as the crew I designed our Lunar Ellipse ship for. So I'll be flying more-or-less the same ship in two otherwise unrelated games! Hah!

2004-01-26T02:35:00.000-06:00

Shiny New Icon

Yep, I'm having waaaaay too much fun with Photoshop.

2004-01-23T18:43:00.000-06:00

WISH 82: Three Word Summary

Wow, it's been quite a while since I've done one of these....

This week's Game WISH asks:

Sum up one or more games that you GM or play in 10 words or less. (Three is best, but not everybody is that pithy.) Don't restrict yourself to current games if you have great ones in the past.

I'm sticking with my current games, for now:

House of Cards (Amber/Everway): Everything is connected.

Power of Threes (ADRPG): Trust no one. Especially family.

Masks (Call of Cthulhu): Nyarlathotep wants YOU.

Lunar Ellipse (GURPS): Rigs... in... SPAAAAAAACE!

(...because who can resist a Muppet Show reference?)

And I can sum up much of my past D&D dungeon-crawl experience in another handy three-word phrase: Always Look Up.

2004-01-23T17:46:00.000-06:00

The Illusion of Cluefulness

I decided I should compare the (tentative) dimensions of my Jules Verne Deathtrap(tm) for Lunar Ellipse to a real-world space vehicle, to see whether my draft design is egregiously over- or undersized. So I used the power of the Internet to find info about the Space Shuttle.

Oh, my.

Space shuttle height: 56.58 ft
JVD proposed height: 48.0 ft

Space shuttle length: 122.17 ft
JVD proposed lenght: 120.0 ft

I'm not sure whether to be proud or alarmed!

2004-01-15T22:11:00.000-06:00

Here's One For All You Lady Vesper Fans

Today's IMDB Movie/TV Quote of the Day:

DARRIN

Sam, don't expect your mother to be gracious. She doesn't do imitations.

It could just as easily be Lucas talking about his mother-in-law....

2004-01-14T15:05:00.000-06:00

Behind, Behind, Behind

I'd meant to get a draft of my Lunar Ellipse spaceship specs done this weekend. I've got part of a sketch, and some of the numbers crunched, but I've got at least another couple hours of work before it's ready to submit.

Saturday was taken up with another gaming commitment, at which I at least got to bounce a silly idea or two off teammate Cathy. But no time for number-crunching.

Sunday should've been the perfect time to get it done, but I was just wiped all day. I pulled out my notes and stared at them for a while, but my brain kept shutting down.

Last night I was all ready to jump in when I got home from work... at 9:30pm. But spouse looked over and mocked me: "You're jumping right back into work? But you just got home, and you're exhausted. You need to rest." So I ate my dinner and watched "X-Men: Evolution" (TiVo knows we're geeks) and realized yes, I was staring glassy-eyed at my surroundings and really ought to go to bed.

Today. Today, when I finally get 'round to my first meal of the day -- probably around 5pm or so -- I will go get a burrito and I will go home and I will finish my draft design and character.

But I probably won't get a HoC post out in time for tonight's GM round. Bummer.

Apologies to both Li and Ginger for being so far behind....

2004-01-12T20:30:00.000-06:00

Unforseen Benefit of Living in the Midwest

When your gracious gaming hostess decides to experiment with a new Thai vegetable curry recipe, which turns out just a little too spicy-hot for everyone else's tastes, your tested-in-the-fires-of-Texas-cuisine self gets to take home a lot of yummy leftovers.

Mmmmm. Curry.

2004-01-08T22:36:00.000-06:00

Unbreakable

Briefly IMed with Ginger this evening, in part to tell her I've started work on our spaceship for Lunar Ellipse.

Came home and made matzoh ball soup, 'cos I was having a craving.

Upon staring at the rapidly-hardening residue in the mixing bowl, considered suggesting to Li that the British team should use matzoh meal as a major structural component in our spaceship....

2004-01-01T19:32:00.000-06:00

Giftage!

I had a very nice time at my parents' for Christmas and my birthday. For us, Christmas day is all about trying to make each other laugh as hard as possible with bizarre gifts. My sister is usually the queen of this -- past highlights have included the "Finger Ponies" ("It was a tossup between this and the Finger Puppies, because the package for those was misspelled 'Finger Pupies', but these look like aardvarks!") and a cute stuffed hedgehog (actually a dog chew toy) that grunts when you squeeze it -- but alas, due to a new job and a recent move, she wasn't able to join us this year.

However, spouse did a great job taking up the slack.

For Christmas, he gave me a poseable stuffed cobra (yay, zoo gift shop!) and a Perky Goth t-shirt. The latter was especially fun because it meant I got to explain to my parents what a "goth" is. (When I then opened the box of three perfectly respectable long-sleeved t-shirts from my mom -- one teal, one orchid, and one dark grey -- she said gleefully, "Something for your perky days and for your goth days!")

Then, for my birthday, spouse got me... an autographed photo of Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia! Hahahahaha! I love it!

But the best thing ever, also for my birthday, was the long dagger with a wavy, kris-like blade and a leather sheath. It totally rocks! (He picked it up at the Irish festival this summer on a whim, and was surprised at how much I like it.) I must remember to take it to my next f2f Amber session to show off -- it's a very Genevieve sort of blade.

When my parents asked what I was gonna do with it, I told them I really ought to put it on the side table where I display beanie Cthulhu. Then I got to explain to them what Cthulhu is....

No wonder a common refrain from my father throughout the week was, "You're weird, Karen -- but we like you anyway." Heh.

Two days 'til my anniversary, woo-hoo! I can't imagine spouse will top himself gift-wise -- but I'm looking forward to his reaction to my gift, and to seeing whether he gets the joke....

UPDATE: He got it. :) The gift in question was the "X2" DVD.

me: D'you know why that was your anniversary gift?
spouse: Uh... because I wanted it?
me: No, I mean, which anniversary is it?
spouse: <pause> <grin> The iron anniversary!

Heh.

2003-12-08T21:47:00.000-06:00

You Can Tell By That Legendary Self-Control

So, now that work has let up a bit, I can finally comment on Folly's newfound knowledge of her Amber heritage....

For those of you not following the game, Folly recently tracked down her mother in an attempt to find out who Folly's biological father was. No definitive answer on that front -- but when Folly showed her mother the trumps of the Elders, her mother recognized Julian from sketches she'd seen in her own grandmother's diary. Apparently Julian left their shadow before he knew Folly's great-grandmother was pregnant. He may well still not know of his offspring from that union. Folly has not yet decided how -- or even whether -- to bring it to his attention.

She will be talking with Random about it, I'm sure. Probably also Gerard. There are a couple of aspects of the circumstances that have her a bit worried -- not least being the dilemma over what to do about her mother, whom she was quite happy to get away from when she left Texorami in the first place....

But in the meantime, here's the growing list of How You Can Tell Folly Is Descended From Julian:

1) She's been known to do the eyebrow thing.

2) She loves animals, and they love her! (Insert comments about her romantic history here....)

3) Doesn't litter, even when she's in a bad mood:

Folly gives a 'be there in a sec' gesture, extinguishes her second cigarette against the sole of her shoe, and flicks the butt in a perfect arc into a nearby trash can, followed closely by the first discarded butt, retrieved from the ground.

4) Julian sings! Who knew?

5) And speaking of legendary self-control: Still Not Sleeping With Martin.

2003-12-04T20:42:00.000-06:00

And Now, Back To GAMING!

Slowly catching up with some of my backlog of gamestuff, I've finally posted Session Ten of Genevieve's Journals...

...in which Our Heroine learns to despise Llewella almost as much as she despises Flora....

2003-12-04T14:49:00.000-06:00

Unexpected Funny

Spent part of the morning playing phone-tag with an administrative office on campus. At one point, I ended up on hold, listening to the requisite dreadfully-cheesy-instrumental-music. But the tune sounded awfully familiar....

Ah, yes. "Don't Speak."

I had to clap my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing into the phone.

2003-12-03T14:44:00.000-06:00

Grant Application...

...submitted. Woo-hoo!

I left work early (where "early" in this case means "after only 8 hours"). My brain is done. I'm goin' to a movie.

More posts later, if I can stay awake that long....

2003-11-13T23:02:00.000-06:00

Nerds of a Feather

Just got back yesterday from Neuroscience. Five glorious days of posters and talks and getting together with collaborators past and present in a giant convention center among about 25,000 of our closest friends -- and neither my boss nor I brought a cell phone.

Or a watch, for that matter. (I am so very working for the right guy.)

We did, however, both bring laptops. With wireless cards. And the venue provided wireless Internet. My favorite moment using the wireless Internet came the day I slipped out of one of the poster sessions to check my email. There was an email from my boss... sent four minutes earlier. From a location about fifty feet away. I looked around the room 'til I caught sight of him, and then wandered over to his table.

"Hey!" he said. "I just sent you email!"

"Yeah, I know!" I said. "I just got your email! That's how I knew where to find you."

We then proceeded to make tentative dinner plans involving a friend of ours who was at that moment presiding over his grad students' posters. My boss dashed off a quick email to him, and on my way back into the session, I stopped by his posters just long enough to say, "Check your email."

He got the message and showed up for dinner.

Who needs cell phones, anyway? :)

---

Right. Now I've gotta go finish a grant application. Back in December.

2003-10-15T14:55:00.000-05:00

Lunch

O vending machine
Turning metal into food
Modern alchemy

2003-10-09T00:06:00.000-05:00

Because You Asked So Nicely

Hair pictures! Thanks to Martin for sending them and to bridesmaid Christina for taking most of them....

Here are three "work in progress" shots from the salon. I really like the look of concentration (or is it consternation?) on the stylist's face in the first one. And the third one gives a great view of the enormous shoes I wore to be as tall as the other short bridesmaid.... :)

Here's a front view (with Catharine) and a side and back view of the end result.

And here's one smallish and one large pic of the bridesmaids (l. to r.: me, Christina, Catharine) looking all pretty and shiny during the ceremony. I liked the dresses quite a bit. And note my chain-mail necklace, which I also wore in my own wedding. Do I know how to accessorize for a gamer wedding, or what? ;) (I got the bride's approval beforehand; she really liked that it was the same necklace I wore when I got married, and suggested with some amusement that it'd go over big with the SCA crowd....)

Those who know me live-and-in-person realize what an impressive feat successfully wrangling my hair is. Those who don't... well, here's a couple examples of my hair's usual state....

In other words: don't try this at home, kids. :)

2003-10-06T23:31:00.000-05:00

Wanderlust

My father-in-law worked for years as a salesman for a big chemical company, traveling all over the world as a result. (Spouse even finished high school in Hong Kong.) Europe, Asia, South America -- he was always flying somewhere.

Consequently, he always had enough frequent flyer miles for Super Spiffy Preferred Passenger Status on his favorite airlines, with the boarding before everyone else and the upgrades to first class and all that other shiny goodness.

He's been retired for several years now, but he and my mother-in-law still do a lot of flying, visiting family or taking vacations or going with the older grandkids to Paris for Thanksgiving. That sort of thing.

However, for the last few years, my father-in-law has approached the end of each year with not quite enough miles to maintain his Super Spiffy Preferred Passenger Status. And so, because he is loath to give it up, he has made a habit of flying, each December, to someplace just far enough away to round out his mileage and maintain his status. It doesn't even have to be someplace he wants to go: a couple years ago, he flew to Florida, sat in the airport for a few hours watching his new Civil War DVDs on his laptop, and then caught a same-day return flight home, just to get the miles.

Apparently, this year he needs a few more miles than that.

"Your mother and I need miles, so we're spending a long weekend in Vienna sometime before the end of the year," he casually told the spouse on the phone this weekend.

"Vienna? You're going to Vienna?! Wow, that's so cool! I wish I could go to Vienna!" gushed the spouse, who is easily excited.

"Well, um.... Do you want to come with us?"

Now, spouse hadn't actually been fishing for an invitation, and he told his father so. But his father pointed out that they do a lot of things for their other three kids -- all of whom have kids of their own, unlike us -- including frequent visits to see and help out with grandkids, help with downpayments on houses (which we didn't need), and... did I mention the part where they sometimes take their grandkids to Europe?

So they're taking us to Vienna with them. Spouse and his father booked the plane tickets and the hotel this afternoon (which, I dunno, maybe doesn't strike me as an entirely Yom Kippur-ish thing to do, booking a four-star hotel in Vienna when you're supposed to be all atoning and stuff -- but, hey, who am I to complain? I'm goin' to friggin' Vienna!!!!) for a mid-December departure. It'll be a whirlwind five days, after which I'll immediately drive jetlagged to my parents' house for Christmas, but I think it's gonna be a blast. "Blast" in the "vacationing with retirees" sense, but still....

Extra-fun bonus: I'm the only one of us that speaks any German -- and my German is terrible. I do still remember how to say "My husband is allergic to your pillows," though, which came in quite handy on our trip to Germany a few years ago....

So, at least one of the five or six people who read my blog is bound to have been to Vienna, right? (Olof?) Any advice for must-see sites in Vienna?

2003-10-04T00:51:00.000-05:00

Eat, Drink and Be Married

And as long as I'm talking about major life events, I should mention the wedding we attended last weekend. Yay, gamer wedding! Some highlights and observations:

Nothing livens up a bachelorette party like a hyperactive four-year-old with a toy crab.

Charlotte's going to Neuroscience! Yaay!!!! (We spent lunch Saturday talking about grant applications.)

Apparently the seamstress had never worked with a gamer-intensive wedding party before. As she checked the zipper at my fitting, she asked incredulously, "What is it with you all and hair?!" (The bride and one of the other two bridesmaids both have waist-length hair. Mine is rather significantly longer than that, even.)

And speaking of hair -- as part of my bridesmaiding duties, I got my hair professionally wrangled. (Eventually, there will be pictures!) This involved a lot of consultation between the woman working on my hair and the woman at the next station, about fifty hairpins, two curling irons, and pounds and pounds of hair product. The results were impressive but perhaps a bit silly -- kind of a Colossus of Rhodes of hair. (We decided to put it in a twist and let the extra bits cascade down in a pile of beaten-into-submission-with-a-curling-iron curls. The "extra bits" still came to my waist!) But we all got a big kick out of it, and all the shellac did accomplish my major goal of keeping my hair from blowing into my face while I was trying to do my reading....

...and speaking of readings, I'd never before heard I Cor. 13 read as though I were being threatened with fiery death if I failed to believe it. Imagine someone shouting "Love is patient and kind!!!!" as if disciplining a mass-murdering preteen, and you've got the general idea....

The spouse forgot to bring a sports jacket. Great was my surprise, then, when he showed up for the ceremony in a jacket... a couple sizes too big for him. ("And you may ask yourself, 'Why is this suit so huge?' And you may ask yourself, 'Could this suit be taken in?'") He'd borrowed it from the lost-and-found at the hotel. :)

At the reception, I got dragged onto the dance floor A LOT. Mostly by four-year-olds. :)

Has there ever been another wedding reception in the history of mankind at which "Zombie Jamboree", "I'm In Love With A Big Blue Frog" (both by Lager Rhythms) and "The Last Saskatchewan Pirate" (the Arrogant Worms) were all on the set list? Wheeee!!

The bride and groom are both active in their local SCA. At Sunday brunch we somehow decided that what we really needed was to get the groom to don his armor and then take turns beating him with sticks. When he and others in the crowd encouraged me to take a turn, I replied, "I am quite content mocking you from afar, thank you" -- at which one of the SCA members exclaimed, "A bard!" Heheheheheheh. (I did eventually take my turn beating up on Martin. It was fun!)

All-in-all, an excellent weekend.

2003-10-03T23:44:00.000-05:00

Landed Gentry

Bought a house today! Woo-hoo!

(Sink backed up this morning, and now it's our very own to fix! Woo-hoo!)

2003-10-01T22:55:00.000-05:00

My Redneck Past

My father spent this past weekend at his mother's house. Mamaw has been in a nursing home for the last couple years, and Dad drives up about once a month to take her to doctors' appointments and s-l-o-w-l-y clean out her house.

This time, he was going through a drawer of newspaper clippings when he came across the yellowed obituary of his grandfather Henry (birth name: Isaac). I've tried doing genealogy searches on that branch of the family using Internet databases, but until now I never had enough data to find anything definitive. And my grandfather never talked about his ancestry any farther back than Henry, his father. All I knew 'til today was that Henry was a blacksmith and fiddler.

From the obituary, though, I got Henry's birth-year and the names of his two surviving (at the time of his death) sisters, from which I could finally determine who his parents were.

Cool, I thought -- this is way farther than I've ever gotten in researching that particular branch of the family, and the info is part of a larger genealogy site for Rowan Co., Kentucky.

Then I scrolled down to the "notes" section. Oh, my.

There's an old "You might be a Redneck if..." joke that concludes, "...you consider 'He needed killin'' a valid defense." It's funny, as Homer Simpson might say, because it's true.

Seems my great-great-grandfather Franklin, Henry's father, was part of a vigilante band that murdered Frank's no-good hoodlum brother-in-law. The article linked above includes transcripts of the trial and letters to the governor asking that the vigilantes be pardoned (because the victim "has been a man of evil habits all through his life", among other points in his disfavor). The author nicely sums up the whole affair with this comment:

The impression one gets on reading the hearing transcripts is that the members of Isaac's family did not think of the shooting as a crime. They were open in talking to everyone about what they were doing. That's why there were so many witnesses. They apparently thought it was legal to kill somebody, even when he was unarmed and outnumbered, as long as he was a well-known criminal and they first yelled "Surrender or we'll shoot!" And they were given that counsel, or what they understood as such, by an honored judge who later became a representative to the Kentucky State Legislature! In fact, if they had killed Ike outright the first time, rather than coming back to finish him off as he lay wounded in bed, there might have been no trial at all.

I am very, very amused. Combined with my ancestry on my mother's side (wherein my grandmother once observed to my mother, "Sometimes I wonder what our lives woulda' been like if we'd'a stayed in Carter County and you'd'a married your cousins like everyone else" -- turns out my great-grandparents on that side were first cousins), I'd say this makes my pedigree pretty pure in the redneck department.... Go, me!

Or, uh, something.

2003-09-29T16:47:00.000-05:00

Here's Me Still Not Owning A House

When we landed in Tulsa on Friday, we had a message on the cell from our mortgage broker telling us that the underwriters want more information on the use of our property (apparently they're confused by the fact that it's half a building functioning as a single-family dwelling) and that the paperwork therefore wouldn't be ready for today's closing; followed by a message from our landlady telling us that we should yell at our mortgage broker, because if the deal didn't go through on Monday maybe it just wouldn't go through at all.

I reserve the right to ignore the insanity of others; and so we decided that our best course of action was to ignore the "yelling" advice and instead drive to the wedding rehearsal, for which we were already running late.

The landlady seems to have calmed down, and now the closing is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday. However, the underwriters are still confused -- so we'll see....

UPDATE: Or maybe Friday. Gaah.

2003-09-24T18:23:00.000-05:00

And Speaking Of Suffering For One's Art...

...this is hilarious.

I love Radiohead. Really, really love Radiohead. Have considered coming up with a good bleak near-future campaign based mostly on their lyrics ("Are you such a dreamer to put the world to rights? I'll stay here forever where two and two always makes five....")

I'm not sure I'd inflict any of their albums but "The Bends" on unsuspecting fifth-graders, though.

2003-09-24T18:02:00.000-05:00

Even Animals Suffer For Their Art

My preferred path from my office to the campus food court takes me along a long second-story corridor lined on one side with big windows looking out into a tree-filled courtyard. On my way to lunch one day this week, I noticed an abundance of strange smudgy white stains on a lot of the windows. Many seemed too symmetrical to be random smudges from careless hands; I thought at first they might be spiderwebs.

When I got close enough to figure out what they were, I stopped in my tracks and my jaw dropped open.

They were bird prints. Easily a dozen of them. Some were so clear that I could see the outlines of individual wing and tail feathers. Many were quite beautiful, showing the full span of wings spread in flight.

They were also a little gruesome, of course; pretty the way fossils are pretty. It seems strange that a hapless dirty animal smashing headlong into an obstacle could leave behind something so compellingly delicate and beautiful.

(That's also kind of how I feel about Frank Sinatra, come to think of it....)

2003-09-20T18:45:00.000-05:00

crazycouplaweeks

Originally this month was supposed to be all about grant-writing. My, how that hasn't turned out to be the case.

We got the phone call Monday that Andy's grandmother passed away Sunday night. This was not entirely unexpected: she was 93 years old and had been in declining health for several years. So we spent Wednesday through Friday in Los Angeles for the funeral (and impromptu family reunion -- most of Nana's nine grandchildren and fourteen great-grandchildren were able to attend).

While in Los Angeles, we got an unexpected call on Andy's cell phone from the bride whose wedding we're supposed to attend next weekend. Turns out one of her bridesmaids is pregnant and just has been ordered to total bedrest by her doctor, and would I mind filling in? No problem, I said, partly because I'm honored to be a part of their wedding and partly because I think it would be really entertaining to get fitted for a dress the day before I have to wear it. (As luck would have it, I took my measurements just a couple weeks ago, so those have already been passed on to the seamstress.) And of course it also means I no longer have to worry about which dress to wear to the wedding! I'm all kinds of amused by the situation.

Oh, and then our house closing is tentatively scheduled for the day after we return from the wedding.

Eep!

2003-09-16T20:48:00.000-05:00

Another Improbably Correct Quiz Result

This one purports to tell me the meaning of my name....

Literal meaning
"The One with an unjustified capital O."

History
Illegal before being given amnesty around 11am, the name Karen was originally used indulgently to refer to unsettlingly enthusiastic night soil collectors, before the Visigoths swept down from the hills.

Famous Karens
1. Karen B Tidecatcher, for a time, in their own mind, romantically linked with the paper aeroplane; ghost-writer of Richard Stilgoe's posturingly lurid autobiography, SEE YOU IN HELL;
2. Judge Karen O'Happenstance, co-habitee of two people associated with the hovering cinema;
3. Chief Scientist Karen Nivea, channeller under supernatural influences of the world's most attractive bucket;
4. Karen Smmith, director of the new Bond movie, ROBOT STAMPING MAYHEM A-GO-GO; first holder of the office of Ruler of the World in Exile;
5. Karen Quoits, fascinated to death by unspeakable guilt; ghost-writer of Peter Lawford's heavily censored autobiography, I WAS MONTY'S THUG;
6. Karen Jesus, PhD, opponent of edible bark; ghost-writer of Ming the Merciless's cousin's autobiography, YES, I THOUGHT I WAS DEAD TOO;
7. Karen de la Frewsy ("The Celebrated Juggler"), who could never shake an early association with the definitive manual on drowning;
8. Karen L Q Nightdodge ("The Reasonably Broadly Educated"), populariser of the world's most popular cosh;
9. Karen Toot, reputedly trapped for eleven days under a fallen monument to a musical quiz show based on the Nanjing Massacre; ghost-writer of Margaret Rutherford's expressionist autobiography, SUDDENLY I'M LITERATE;
10. Karen ap Grating-Nootlooter, named in court as holding compromising material concerning the self-aware vacuum cleaner.

Typical Karen motto
"Karen! Karen! Karen! Karen! Yaaaaay!"

Yes, House of Cards fans, you read Namesake #2 right....

The meaning and motto are spot-on as well, of course. <grin>

Via Ginger.

2003-09-16T01:59:00.000-05:00

First Draft: Great Moments That Weren't

Folly is a more sensitive soul than I. We both use humor as a defense mechanism, but in certain high-stress situations I need to edit my own gut-response dialogue because it's a little too callous for her. Like tonight....

The Situation: Folly and Martin have returned to Folly's hometown after a nine-year absence to bring her childhood friend and former bandmate Soren to Amber. But before they can say word one to the guy, Soren (who doesn't know yet who just broke into his studio) jumps Martin, and Martin (who is paranoid and superhero-strong and has better reflexes than Soren) responds by knocking him cold.

The Problem: Martin feels kind of bad about it. Folly's instinct is to lighten the mood -- without simultaneously making him feel worse about it.

What She Said: "Maybe you should go see if you can find some ice, or a first-aid kit, or, I dunno... a whole hell of a lot of alcohol, 'cos I think we're all gonna need it."

What She Could've Said Instead: "Maybe you should go see if you can find some ice, or a first-aid kit, or, I dunno...." She considers what Soren might request upon regaining consciousness. "A restraining order."

See what I mean?

2003-09-12T10:40:00.000-05:00

July Follows June

...and so does Johnny.

2003-09-04T19:21:00.000-05:00

Reason #47892 I'll Go To Limbo When I Die

Walking through the parking lot on the way back from lunch today, I caught sight of a bumper sticker that asked (in the same font as a certain Dairy Council ad), "Got Jesus?"

Now, the degree to which the bumper stickers on campus proclaim blatantly Christian sentiments weirds me out a little (despite my own blatantly Christian background). But in that moment, I found myself thinking maybe the world really does need one more Dairy-Council-spoofing Jesus-crispy bumper sticker.

Of course, the one I had in mind would ask, "Where's your Jesus moustache?"

('Cos, hey, if you believe in transubstantiation, it's actually sort of a valid question....)

2003-08-28T17:14:00.000-05:00

Reprieve, Sort Of

Yesterday I discovered, while poking around the NIH webpages for funding schedule info, that while the general category of "New Research Grants" still has a Cycle III application deadline of 1 October, the specific type of training grant for which I'm applying is now listed separately... with a 5 December deadline.

I sent my mentor an email, subject line "Confused about dates now...."

This morning he called his former postdoc mentor, who is wise in the ways of such things. Apparently there has been some recent restructuring in the way grants are reviewed, and there's now a separate study section that does nothing but look at NRSA grants -- and yes, therefore the deadlines have shifted.

So, the good news is that I suddenly have two extra months to finish my application, woo-hoo! The good-or-bad-depending-on-how-you-look-at-it news is that now I can finish up and submit that paper before I submit my application....

So the stress level is now a bit lower, but it'll last a lot longer....

2003-08-22T19:42:00.000-05:00

WorkWorkWorkWork...Oooh, Shiny Toy!

The Gender Genie tries to predict the sex of an author via language clues in a text passage. (Males quantify and classify with numbers and words like "the" and "a", so the theory goes; females use relational words like "with" and "for" and personal pronouns.) The original authors of the algorithm claim an 80% accuracy on the works of fiction they've analyzed, but the Genie isn't matching those results. I suspect the algorithm may be mis-programmed (due to an ambiguity in the NYTimes description of the algorithm, on which the Genie was based), though, and just left a comment over on bookblog to alert them to the possibility.

(FWIW, the Genie thinks my grant application was written by a man. Of course, the algorithm was developed to analyze works of fiction, so that might not be a fair test....)

Mad props to Meera for the link.

2003-08-16T22:24:00.000-05:00

Heh. Heheheheheheheh.

As I was leaving the "Grill the Gurus" panel discussion at Gen Con, a guy I'd never met before stopped me and asked if he could take my picture.

Sure, I said.

Heh.

2003-08-16T17:18:00.000-05:00

A Month Of Crickets Chirping

Between now and October, I'm likely to be even more hiding-under-the-furniture quiet than usual: I'm putting together my first-ever very-own-grant-application, and it's now officially reached the "taking over my life" stage.

(I keep reminding myself that I used to suck at writing abstracts, too; this is bound to get easier with practice.)

So anyhow, if you're wondering how I'm doing, you might want to check back after the first of October, when I'm (relatively) sane again....

2003-08-05T20:41:00.000-05:00

Box Of Bane: Or, The Other Cool Thing About True Dungeon...

...was the props.

I specifically asked one of the True Dungeon staff guys about them, I was so impressed. Apparently, either the Grand Dungeon Guru or someone he knows does ceramics, so there were goblets, inlaid tables, tablets, and other really impressive, professional-looking components to a lot of the rooms and puzzles. Gorgeous stuff.

There were also, of course, Treasure Chests and other nice wooden boxes (like, for example, the Chest of Chaos) that, according to one of the True Dungeon guys, "we picked up for a few bucks each at Hobby Lobby...."

I bring this up because some of you may recall that I received for my anniversary this year Dread Cthulhu, Abomination of the Beanie World (see the 1 January entry). Now, owing to Dread Cthulhu's, er, unique construction, he's a little on the top-heavy side; so I've been saying for months that I really need a nice wooden box to display him in, something I can prop him in to look like he's emerging onto an unsuspecting world.

The Monday after GenCon, Andy and I took a trip to Hobby Lobby.

Oh. My. God. Cute little wooden box heaven.

For fifteen bucks, I ended up with the perfect little dark-wood box, with a closure that looks like an iron chain and other details like something out of a miniaturized version of Pirates of the Caribbean. I could totally believe that this thing had been sunk to the bottom of the sea for centuries. I've now got it arrayed on a side-table in the living room surrounded by candles. Spouse thinks Cthulhu looks more like he's lounging than that he's emerging with evil intent, but maybe he's just taking his time.

Or maybe he's just transfixed by the "Road Rules" marathon that the spouse is watching while he folds clothes. I mean, what could be more evil than that?

<grin>

2003-08-05T20:07:00.000-05:00

Almost Recovered From GenCon...

...except for my feet, which still have a few nasty-looking scabs on them from all the walking I did.

I was going to write a nice long post about the absolutely way-coolest thing I did at GenCon -- True Dungeon -- but I see that my procrastination has payed off and Cathy did it for me....

I agree wholeheartedly with her both that True Dungeon TOTALLY ROCKED and that we had a most excellent party. As she mentions, we managed to keep our whole party alive until Room 7 (out of 8), where we lost Andy and Carl. Now, Andy and Carl are both very bright guys, and a lot of the obstacles in the dungeon were of the word-puzzle, logic-puzzle or other problem-solving variety; and yet as Death came to take them away, I looked around at our remaining party members and realized that we were gonna be FINE. And lo, we solved the puzzle in the last room and made it out alive...

...except for Cathy, but that's just karmic justice over the T-shirt thing. :) (I'm not sure how the rest of the party feels, but -- as cool as it would've been to get us all through alive -- I'm actually glad Cathy took the T-shirt instead of healing us. It's a much funnier story that way.)

Cathy's story fails to mention, however, the other funny thing she did that almost screwed the party: One of the rooms contained a Chest of Chaos, from which we had the option of pulling drawers which could contain anything -- extra spells, damage, what-have-you. Cathy, of course, decided to pull one.

Now, we found out later that what was supposed to happen was that our GM would look at the color of the little glow-stick in the bottom of the drawer and then check his chart to determine the result. But by Saturday afternoon, a lot of the glow-sticks had already burnt out. So that morning, the Grand Dungeon Guru had told all the GMs that if they got a burnt-out glow-stick, "Just make something up. It's a Chest of Chaos, after all...."

Cathy pulled a non-glowing drawer. Our GM said, "OK, everybody take off your character sheet and pass it to your left...."

So suddenly I stopped being the Cleric and became the Rogue.

The GM wasn't a complete sadist, thankfully. Since casting spells required being able to recall things from the charts we'd memorized before entering the dungeon, he let the former [cleric/mage/bard] answer the memorization questions for the new [cleric/mage/bard], rather than requiring the new guys to make wild-ass guesses.

And on the plus side, because I made it all the way out of the dungeon, I'm now technically a 2nd-level Cleric/Rogue (yes, the True Dungeon folks plan to maintain statistics from year to year, though rankings sadly are not yet posted to the website), a fact that amuses me no end.

Thanks, Cathy!

2003-07-31T12:37:00.000-05:00

Observation of the Day

Science is not about proving things true. Science is about proving things useful.

2003-07-26T01:40:00.000-05:00

Actually, I Agree With Most Of That

follybard is a Tiny Ant that can Leap Great Distances, is Covered with a Thick Slime, and has a Computer for a Brain.
(Strength: 1 Agility: 6 Intelligence: 11)
Unleash your Giant Battle Monster.

Via Ginger, who Screeches when Angry.

2003-07-25T21:30:00.000-05:00

Today's Forecast: Slightly Surreal

I was not fated to get a full night's sleep this week, it seems.

At a few minutes after 8 am today, I was awakened by the slamming of car doors followed by several people talking in Outside Voices right outside my window.

"Five thousand dollar rug my ass!" said an indignant male voice, obviously in the middle of telling a story to his companions. "I seen things just like it for twenty-five bucks at K-mart. So I told her, 'Well, if it was that nice you shouldn't'a left it out in the middle of the floor where it could get shit on.'"

I'm now wide awake and shoving my face in the pillow so they can't hear me laughing. I mean, what the fuck? Did this guy let his dog poop on somebody's rug or something, and now he's indignant that the rug-owner got mad? And then my mind went to other, even funnier places.

Not 'til my walk to work a couple hours later did I finally get it: They were painters, here to work on the exterior of our neighbor's house.

And the storyteller hadn't said "where it could get shit on." He'd said "where it could get shit on it." As in, stuff. Paint.

It makes a hell of a lot more sense that way. But it isn't nearly as funny.

2003-07-25T11:09:00.000-05:00

Nerdvana

Gen Con. Walking distance from my house. And me with an exhibitor badge.

Life is good. :)

The spouse ran his SuperHuman High School game last night, and it was a blast. I knew it would be when the first person to pick a character -- and all our players were guys, I should point out -- said enthusiastically, "I want Jenni!" (Jenni is the perky cheerleader type who just happens to have mad fightin' skillz. And a Hello Kitty cell phone.) Everybody got very into their roles, to hilarious effect: Jenni passed a note to a classmate that started out fishing for clues to the mystery and ended with, "...and do you know if Jason likes me?"; our Marshall "Ghetto Blaster" Dean, who can hurl energy projectiles -- but only while rapping -- was bustin' rhymes through the entire session whether he actually wanted to blow things up or not; and our Alex "The Artist" Vandenberg was the first Alex player ever to use his "navel gazer" power -- which involves letting another character stare into the tiny portal he can open in his own belly-button. The (appropriately adolescent) reactions of the other characters were just priceless.

We laughed. A lot.

Kind of makes me wish I'd signed up for some other games ahead-of-time. I knew I'd actually be working (like, real mundane work, not manning the booth or anything) yesterday and today, though, so I didn't bother. We are hoping to get a group together for True Dungeon sometime Saturday, but aside from that I expect I'll mostly be poking around in the Exhibitors' Hall. ("They've got clothing all over in that area," my ftf Amber GM enthusiastically informed me when I ran into her. One of the spouse's co-workers, standing nearby, added helpfully, "And in that corner, they've got chainmail underwear." Heh. Gamer-geek heaven, I'm tellin' ya.)

Or maybe I should buy myself a stack of generic tickets and go looking for empty slots.... :)

2003-07-16T23:07:00.000-05:00

Taste This Movie: Amelie

Thanks to the holy marriage of TiVo and digital cable, I finally saw Amelie for the first time this week. And then I saw it a second time as well, because the spouse decided to watch it too.

Love it, love it, love it.

A few observations, in no particular order:

- It's pretty the way Kurosawa movies are pretty, where every frame is so well-balanced in shape and color that each could be a still photo. Kind of makes you want to lick the screen.

- Usually movies that make the spouse declare, "This is so French," also make him leave the room or ask if we can watch something else. This one he watched all the way to the end, giggling at much of it. If that's not a ringing endorsement of the film, I don't know what is!

- A long ago Game WISH asked about recognizing one's own character in the guise of some other real or fictional person. Well, the six-year-old Amelie (Flora Guiet) is young Genevieve, no question about it, from the slightly sullen stoicism (at least when anyone's looking) with which she takes in much of the world around her to the cold precision with which she exacts revenge. That's my girl!

- Of course, Amelie's resemblance to Genevieve is not unrelated to Amelie's resemblance to a certain introverted blog author with an overdeveloped sense of whimsy; and perhaps that's why this household enjoyed the film so much. "It's dangerous to let creative people get bored," the spouse observed partway through the film while giving me a SIGNIFICANT LOOK. And as the movie came to a close, he added, "Remember, Karen, use your powers for GOOD." Hee hee!

Beautiful and whimsical. Highly recommended, if you're in the mood for that sort of thing.

2003-07-16T22:19:00.000-05:00

Good News on the Gaming Front!

Just got an email from my ftf Amber GM. After a few months off to recuperate and deal with life stress -- during which we all read the Robin Laws book and discussed our various types and what we're looking for out of gaming -- she's ready to pick back up again whenever we are! Woo-hoo!

Guess I should get Genevieve's journal entries for the last couple sessions written up....

2003-07-14T20:21:00.000-05:00

Ill News on the Gaming Front

Well, Rick's Tales of the Slayer game is good and officially dead. Not only that, he has decided against starting a new PBeM game to replace it. I am sorry to see it go; I thought we had a good group of players with interesting, enjoyable characters, and I like the cinematic style of Rick's game ideas. I expect Dr. Lazarus, true to his name, will rise again in some new incarnation in a future game.

My ftf Amber game has hit a rough patch, as well, and we're on hiatus as we figure out how to resolve some meta-game issues. In particular, our GM is finding the game more stressful than enjoyable to run, and it's not yet clear that we can find a solution sufficient to allow her to continue. The players all really want the game to go on, though -- we like our characters, and we love gaming with each other -- but it may come down to having one of us take over GM duties. I do hope I don't have to give up playing Genevieve, though.

Thank the Unicorn for House of Cards, which shows no sign of letting up anytime soon. (And thank Nyarlathotep, I suppose, for Masks, now entering the home-stretch....)

2003-07-14T17:29:00.000-05:00

Quote Of The Week

My compatriots and I sat in a diner in rural Wisconsin, enjoying a leisurely Sunday brunch, staring with detatched interest out the plate glass window at the thick plume of black smoke rising into the sky from somewhere a little ways down the road.

"What is that?" we asked our waitress, an inordinately perky middle-aged woman in glitter make-up.

Cheerfully, helpfully, she replied: "Somethin' burning!"

2003-07-08T20:06:00.000-05:00

WISH 52: Your Robin Laws Type

This Game WISH from a few weeks ago asks:

Robin Laws identifies several types of gamer in his book of GM tips: The Power Gamer, the Butt-Kicker, the Tactician, the Specialist (plays one type only), the Method Actor, the Storyteller (plot and pacing fan), and the Casual Gamer. Which of these types do you think you are, and why? Most people aren't pure types, so multiple choices are OK.

We're discussing this very question in-depth in my ftf Amber group, which is on temporary hiatus while we regroup; so I'm going to consider what types I'm not as well as what types I am, and how each contributes to group dynamic.

A Power Gamer is the thing I am the least. In some ways, I'm an anti-Power Gamer: I prefer characters with at least one significant flaw (Willow's lack of wisdom; Folly's youth, inexperience, and (relative) physical weakness; Genevieve's bad attitude) that they must find creative ways to overcome or turn to their advantage. And I hate thinking too much about game mechanics. This, I'm sure, can be frustrating to power-gamer GMs, who may see their attempts to provide rewards thwarted: I'll hold back unspent experience points indefinitely unless given a deadline for assigning them, and even when I am finally made to spend them I'm loath to buy away my oh-so-interesting weaknesses. So, yeah, I'm way not a power gamer.

I've been known to play characters who are Butt-Kickers, but I am not fundamentally a butt-kicker as a player. Genevieve is overconfident and highly skilled and will happily prove her superiority by kicking your ass and smirking over your quivering carcass, but she's equally happy outsmarting you or messing with your mind. It's not the butt-kicking that's important; that's just one of the ways she expresses her need for control. And Folly is the opposite of a butt-kicker: she's a peace-loving mediator, a calmer of frazzled nerves. Getting her into a combat situation -- most likely to happen if something poses an immediate, bodily threat to someone she loves -- would be very interesting to me, but only because I'd want to see how she reacted rather than from an innate desire to kick butt.

In real life, I am at my very core a problem-solver -- and thus challenges that appeal to a Tactician are likely to engage my interest. I am not so interested in large-scale military strategy, though -- I'm more MacGyver than MacArthur -- nor in making sure that the scenario is necessarily realistic. (Far more important that it be consistent, so I'll have a better basis for formulating solutions to problems.) I like creative solutions; I'm the "you've got a pack of chewing gum, a tape measure, and a cell phone -- how do you keep the bad guys from following you?" guy. I love other kinds of puzzles, too, word games and logic, and clues that you don't even necessarily realize are clues -- a choice of wording by an NPC here, a stray observation there -- until you think of all of them at once and realize they fit together to tell you something you didn't know before. But I won't necessarily optimize my characters to be good at this sort of thing. In fact, the things that appeal to my tactician side I often enjoy in a meta-gaming context, as I figure out things my character doesn't know and then wait to see how she bumbles into them. I do have characters who happen to be good tacticians just as I have characters who happen to be good butt-kickers; but those characters who aren't will be played as though they aren't. More than once I've gotten halfway through a sentence in which problem-solver Karen is gleefully proposing the clever plan that just occurred to her when suddenly I stop, look at the GM, and add, "But I'm not sure my character would think of that." So then we decide whether I should tell my plan to another player whose character might think of it, or whether we can come up with a good justification for my character thinking of it. In our most recent Call of Cthulhu session, for example, my character Emily -- who is of painfully average intelligence (I play her as a total ditz) but who has a very high Knowledge -- contributed some key elements to a plan to explode a drum of gasoline (including using a roll of string as a fuse). We decided she thought of it because she'd seen it in a movie once, which totally fits with her character. So while I am by nature a problem-solver, and I love being presented with interesting in-game challenges for which I've got to provide a clever solution, I'm not fundamentally a tactician as a roleplayer.

And I'm certainly not a Specialist, either: while there are individual traits or vocations that will pop up more than once among my menagerie of characters, I really try to mix it up from game to game; and with each new character, I want one element (at least) that I've never explored in-depth before.

Method Actor, on the other hand -- now there's a style I can get behind. I really like games in which my character's psychology and motivations are an important aspect of play; and in such games I always have a strong sense of my character's inner life. Folly is the most obvious example: she is a fully-realized character; and her behavior, her reactions, even her patterns of speech change according to her emotional state. I don't mind at all that she is physically weaker, and metaphysically less knowledgeable, than most of her cousins, because that difference drives a lot of interesting interactions. It's one of the things I like about Amber, where interpersonal relationships count for a lot. I use many of my characters to examine aspects of personality and psychology that would be potentially detrimental to experiment with in everyday life -- being obnoxious, for example, or manipulative, or overemotional, or more pedantic than I am in real life -- and being true to my character even with respect to those negative traits is far more important to me than having my character do everything "right".

But above all else, I am a Storyteller. I am aware of narrative in nearly everything my characters do (hell, I'm aware of it in my own life, too), and I nurture it and try to make it as entertaining as possible for myself and my fellow players. Although my method actor side cringes whenever I consider stepping too far from the core psychology of my character, I am willing to make compromises for the sake of genre and narrative. In real life Emily the ditzy nightclub singer would not be chasing cultists through darkest Africa; but in the horror-comedy B-movie serial that is my Call of Cthulhu game, there she is. My goal with her isn't so much to get her to act as a real person in that situation would act, but to add an entertaining narrative appropriate to the genre, a la Willie in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (but funnier, one hopes). And I love Folly to death and in general would like to see her succeed -- but if putting her, or the people she loves, in danger or otherwise giving them shit makes for a better story, I'm all for it. The she-GM sometimes taunts me with the possibility of killing of Martin, to whom Folly has declared her love; and I don't think I ever react quite as strongly to the threat as she expects. Sure, Folly would be devastated, and I'd feel some of that pain myself -- but, let's face it, it would make for a really interesting narrative, as well as an interesting exploration of Folly's psychology....

I am a Casual Gamer only insofar as I like most of the people I game with (particularly in my ftf Amber group; the four of us who play in that game are driving to Wisconsin next weekend for a Renaissance Festival because we like each other so much we're willing to spend a weekend trapped in hot cars and hotel rooms with each other) and would gladly get together with them for things that didn't involve gaming. But if a game is on, I really want it to meet more of my gaming needs than just letting me see the other players.

So for me, it's all about story and character. I will enjoy an interesting challenge if you throw one at me; but I'll enjoy it more if it furthers the story and reveals something about the characters in the process, rather than merely serving as a diversion. The same goes for butt-kicking: it has its place, but it's not why I roleplay. And while it can be fun playing out the effects of superpowers, I have little interest in the "get powers, get stuff" style of roleplaying. I want to know my character and have her interact with the other characters (both PC and NPC) in a way that makes good story.

2003-06-25T11:53:00.000-05:00

A Cause for Celebration

While poking around my archives a couple days ago trying to figure out why the most recent ones wouldn't display properly, I discovered...

...that this blog is one year old today. Yay, MKD!

(Still haven't figured out the archive problems, though....)

2003-06-23T18:08:00.000-05:00

WISH 49: Winning

I've been too busy lately to answer very many of these, but this one ties in with a couple of recent experiences I wanted to write about anyway....

Game WISH 49 asks:

Is there a way to win or lose in a roleplaying game? Are you in competition with other players, NPCs, or the GM? What are the rewards for winning or the penalties for losing? Do you feel like your characters have to 'win' to enjoy a game?

I've had the opportunity to participate in a couple of very entertaining one-shots in the last few weeks. By most objective measures of "winning," one of the scenarios ended with a clear win for the PCs (we followed the map, we found the treasure, the bad pirates didn't kill the not-so-helpless Damsel in Distress), and the other did not (we failed to solve the mystery by the end of the session, though we had temporarily neutralized the threat). But I got similar enjoyment from both games.

More and more, I find that the thing I like best about roleplaying is, well, the roleplaying. Depending on the nature of the game, "winning" at a game level may involve some combination of solving puzzles, meeting character objectives, and influencing the story in an interesting or entertaining way. But for me, "winning" on a personal level is more about designing a memorable, enjoyable character and entertaining myself and the other players with him.

By that measure, both of my two recent one-shot characters -- Sergio the Lothario Pirate with an Overinflated Sense of His Own Worth and Beauty, and Enid the Nerdy and Unattractive High School Sophomore with the Not-Always-Socially-Appealing Squid-Related Superpowers -- were real wins. (Really, can't you tell just from the descriptions? <grin>) They contributed to the plot, they interacted with the other characters in ways that were fun for both me and the other players, and they were occasionally just plain hilarious.

I actually have a better sense of what it means to me to lose in a roleplaying game than what it means to win. Losing, for me, is a situation where the characters absolutely cannot affect the outcome, and so all their actions are pointless. Or, related to that, a situation in which the GM defines success so narrowly that only a small subset of possible character actions will move the plot along can be a losing scenario for me -- even if the characters actually succeed in navigating the scenario to the GM's satisfaction! -- because solving the puzzle comes at the expense of roleplaying.

As an example, by the end of the Superhuman High School scenario, Enid was working on her own set of goals (protect her science fair project from destruction so she could get a good grade!) that was only partially related to the goals of the larger group (figure out why the science fair projects were getting trashed). I think her comically uptight behavior ultimately made for a more entertaining and interesting scenario, even if cutting back on the roleplaying might've gotten us to the "correct" solution more quickly. The GM in that situation was flexible enough to allow us to drive the action and get good plot out of it, even though the resulting climax was nothing like what he'd originally planned for. In the post-game debriefing, we-the-players all agreed that not railroading us into the expected plot had been far preferable to a more heavy-handed approach, even if it didn't tie up as nicely at the end as the GM had hoped.

So, yes, for me "winning" a roleplaying game is a nebulous concept that has far more to do with portraying my character effectively (and entertainingly!) and generating interesting moments of character driven plot than with being successful in everything my character undertakes.

2003-06-23T15:12:00.000-05:00

You Know You're An Engineer* When...

...you watch The Bridge on the River Kwai and find yourself rooting for the bridge.

* either kind

2003-06-11T19:22:00.000-05:00

Quiz Roundup

Because I promised Cathy I'd post the links so she could take some of these, too....

The Which Agent Smith Are You? quiz tells me I am Snarky Smith, the master of wit. But of course. I'll bet most of my friends are, too -- although the spouse came out as Psychotic Smith.... (Possibly my administering the test for him without actually telling him the subject had something to do with that. When we got to the "pick a quote" question, he asked, "Why are these all quotes from the same character?" -- without actually figuring out the quiz title.)

Then there's the Geek Test, on which I scored just a few tenths of a point shy of 50% -- which qualifies me as a "Super Geek". Incidentally, that also makes me the geekiest person in my ftf Amber group, but (thanks to the spouse, also a Super Geek at 48%) not by much.

Finally, the What Herb Are You? quiz tells me:

You Are Catnip

You are hypnotic and inspire strong feelings in others.
People can't get enough of you.
You often wish to be left in peace.

Heh. Maybe that explains why I so often have the urge to hide under the furniture.

2003-05-26T21:04:00.000-05:00

Movies With An 'X' In The Title

(Mild spoilers.)

Like nearly everyone else in my demographic, I've now seen both X2 and Matrix Reloaded. I enjoyed both, but I very strongly prefered X2 -- and not just because I'm a mutant myself.

I enjoy a good blowin'-stuff-up, kickin'-people-in-the-head movie, and both X2 and MR certainly fit the bill. But X2 really drove home to me that one of my favorite aspects of such movies is the problem-solving. (That explains why I like Jackie Chan movies so much: the fights are all about that kind of making-clever-use-of-your-resources problem-solving, rather than mere superiority of strength.) I thought X2 did an even better job than the first X-Men of using the mutants' powers creatively to advance the story; and I cackled maniacally through much of the film out of sheer glee at the way some things played out.

I cackled through some of Matrix Reloaded, too, but for a different reason. There are all kinds of really spiffy visuals, but....

But.

The fights just aren't clever in the same way. In fact, a couple of them are downright silly, even if they are fun to watch. In the end I felt like the film had far too high a Coefficient of Mockability for me to take it seriously. (I will note, however, that spouse did not agree with me on this point. He did laugh long and loud when I pointed out afterward the thing I'd found the silliest, but it hadn't taken him out of the film the way it did me.)

There's also the matter of the acting talent associated with each film. I mean, X2 has got Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart and Alan Cumming and Ian-friggin'-McKellen. More to the point, it begs the question, "OK, who rocks more, Alan Cumming or Ian McKellen?"

Meanwhile, Matrix Reloaded has got... Keanu Reeves. Now, I have enjoyed watching Keanu in a number of flicks, starting with Bill and Ted's, but let's face it: Ian McKellen's eyebrows have more range. (And no, I'm not just jealous because Keanu's prettier than I am. Actually, that's sort of a point in his favor.) And even the more, uh, critically acclaimed actors in MR lose something, I think, by the way much of the dialogue is written. They don't so much converse as speechify. And when they do. They are made. To speak. In a very... slow. And... deliberate. Way. As if... doing so. Would give their words. More meaning. I found it more distracting in this film than I did in the first installment, where I was willing to go with it as a "style thing".

And finally, I just plain preferred the conflicts in X2 to those in MR. I really, really liked the conflicts that arose naturally when Xavier's "good mutants" were forced to join forces with Magneto's "bad mutants" against a greater evil. I like that even the "good mutants" fight among themselves, that even the "bad mutants" are sympathetic. With only a couple of exceptions, I felt like I understood the choices -- good and bad -- that the characters made during the film, that the conflicts and the choices grew out of the characters themselves. In MR, in contrast, I felt like the characters were serving the story rather than the other way around. As a result, I just didn't buy some of the conflicts.

The big chase scene in MR was pretty darn spiffy, though, and there was lots of good kickin'-in-the-head. And stuff blows up real pretty. And I want Neo's coat.

But X2's got Nightcrawler. Did I mention Nightcrawler rocks?

So if you've only got the time or the money for one of them, see X2 -- unless you prefer visuals to character development and storytelling.

2003-05-14T17:16:00.000-05:00

No Harm In Looking, Right?

OK, so it's a little out of our price range (meaning, we could probably swing the monthly payments but we wouldn't quite be able to put 20% down), but isn't this adorable? We've got an appointment to look at it after work.

It's between 1 and 2 miles from campus, which might still -- barely -- be "walking distance" for me but definitely is not for my spouse (who has knee issues).

But, hey, turret! (I am so totally a sucker for turrets.)

2003-05-12T19:27:00.000-05:00

Abstract

Today I'm working on an abstract for a local neuroscience conference.

I just love that word: abstract. It makes me feel like I should be rendering my results as interpretive dance, or something: Behold, the delicate beauty of local calcium dynamics!

Oooh, maybe if I structure my poster as a mobile....

UPDATE: But I'll bet interpretive dancers never have to deal with a character limit. Blech.

2003-05-12T17:25:00.000-05:00

If You Insult Someone And She Doesn't Even Notice...

...does it still qualify as an insult?

I love writing for Folly. It can be painfully difficult at times, because I often aim for regular meter, or a lot of alliteration and rhyming, or multiple meanings, when I write her dialogue. But occasionally the exact right response occurs to me so quickly that I have to sleep on it in order to consider all the implications.

Her latest thread included a good example of that:

Martin is leading Folly back to the champagne fountain for another glass of the bubbly when they are intercepted by a green-haired mermaid. She is wearing a glittering skirt of green scales that catches the light of the many candles in the room and a pair of "shells" that cover her upper assets, topped by a gauzy blouse that seems to highlight rather than disguise her near-nudity.

Her costume would not be risque by the standards of a Texorami festival, but in Amber, it borders on the positively indecent. Never mind that some of the plunging gowns show nearly as much cleavage.

Her smile positively gleams. "Your Highness! It's so good to see that you survived the drudgery of this afternoon's state affair. I thought the King did splendidly. And who is your lovely Lady Swan?"

"My cousin, Lady Folly. Folly, this is the Duchess Valeria of Rebma, Jerod's sister," Martin says. Out of sight of the mermaid, his grip tightens slightly on her hand.

"Duchess Valeria," Folly says cheerfully, "what a wonderful costume -- I can tell exactly what you are!"

Note that Folly doesn't say "what you're supposed to be". By her word choice, she's implying not "I can tell you're supposed to be a mermaid," but rather, "You're obviously an attention-grabbing skanky ho', stop sniffing around my boyfriend you bitch". (But she means it in the nicest possible way, really.)

She would never have said it, of course, had she thought Valeria would actually get it. But Folly figured that anyone who'd wear that to an Amber formal lacks the subtlety to see the hidden meaning behind the obvious message. (Given Valeria's response and subsequent actions, it was probably a pretty good assumption.)

She was hoping that Martin would get it, though. Had they already made it to the champagne fountain, it would've been the kind of joke designed to make him accidentally snort bubbly beverage while trying not to laugh. (Not that Folly would ever do something like that on purpose, mind you.) Unfortunately, he was distracted at the crucial moment by a pair of threatening-looking party guests lurking in the background.... (At least he appreciated Folly's subsequent excuse, fabricated on the spot, for why he really needed to be on the other side of the room RIGHT NOW. Even if he didn't end up using it.)

I really hope Folly has a chance to dance with Valeria's brother before the night is through....

2003-05-10T13:14:00.000-05:00

And Not Harding, Either

Yesterday, spouse tells me, in an online discussion of the big shakeup on the annual list of most popular baby names ("Michael" is not the most popular boy name for the first time in something like twenty years, having been replaced by "Jacob"), someone observed that a surprising number of currently popular girls' names are also surnames of U.S. presidents.

Indeed. It's practically a trend.

And so, as a public service, because I just know there's some confusion on this issue, I offer my own handy-dandy guide to Naming Your Daughter After A President:

Good Choices:
Madison
Taylor
Kennedy
Carter
Reagan

Bad Choices:
Polk
Garfield
Taft
Hoover

Really, Really Bad Choices:
Bush
Johnson
Fillmore

2003-04-30T18:08:00.000-05:00

Cute Baby Alert!

For those who responded to the announcement of my niece's birth with a request for pictures: this link's for you.

2003-04-29T15:59:00.000-05:00

No, We Still Don't Own A House...

...but we're still thinking about it. The landlords were supposed to have a court date this week to clear up a lien on a property they sold over a year ago -- apparently the paperwork didn't get filed correctly, or something -- but have expressed interest in selling to us once that's cleared up. But there are all these complicating factors:

- Spouse went to the city assessor's office, or somesuch, a couple weeks ago to get an estimate of property tax. In the process, he learned that the city considers our building (which includes two units, only one of which we'd be buying) a single taxable entity. When he confronted the landlord's wife with this information, she hemmed and hawed about all the paperwork they'd had to go through to get the plat divided... but then conceded that oh, wait, maybe that's why they send some tax money to the owner of the other half of the building, or maybe she sends the money to them, she really doesn't remember but she'll ask her husband. At spouse's suggestion that they have to get the plat divided before we'll buy, landlord's wife responds (via email) that "dividing the plat will be explained to you at closing". Yeah, right. If the assessor's office doesn't believe our half of the building is a separate property -- before the closing! -- we won't buy it.

- From what we've been able to figure, the landlord wants to go through with selling to us because his aunt, who owns the other half of the building and really wants to own our half, too, couldn't come up with financing. We're told, though, that the aunt is somewhat upset that the other half of the building might be sold to someone outside the family. For this reason, we've been asked not to blurt out to her that the landlord intends to sell to us. Of course, we still need to complete the inspection, which terminated the first time around when we couldn't find crawl-space access... because it's in the other half of the building. Which means we kind of have to tell auntie about it in order to schedule the inspection. And this portion of the inspection is even more important to us now that we've had plumbing problems that were apparently solved by the handyman going under the house and working on the pipes. We want an outside opinion of what's down there! (And then there's the issue of the shared-wall agreement, which we can't draft without the involvement of the owner of the other half of the property!)

- If only -- if only! -- another property of the right size and price range, walking distance to work, would become available. (Yes, walking to work is very important to me. It's the only exercise I get, and I know better than to think I'd replace it with some other exercise were I to move far enough away to necessitate a commute-by-car. Biking to work isn't really an option, either, because I way don't trust my own bike safety in urban traffic.) So far we've become aware of two properties that were cheap enough but way too small, and two more that were more than adequate in size but about $300,000 out of our price range. (Ah, urban living!) So I don't really feel like we're in much of a position to take a lot of risk in the negotiating, because there aren't a lot of really appealing alternatives to where we're living now....

Ugh.

But if we do buy a house, I'll let you all know....

2003-04-29T15:56:00.000-05:00

The Results Are In

Spent most of the weekend, and all day yesterday, grading projects. Nobody handed in the sort of subtle, insightful, journal-quality work I really wanted to see, but many of them seemed to have at least some clue what they were supposed to be accomplishing. I really tried to grade fairly, but I'm not entirely sure how well I accomplished it; grading essays like these -- not only must the students perform the assigned tasks and present the results in a useful format, but they also should provide some cogent analysis of why it worked the way it did -- gets really subjective. Did I do a sufficient job of differentiating between those who'd strung together buzzwords they learned in class and those who demonstrated a clear understanding of the underlying concepts? Did I cut enough slack, or too much, to those few students who clearly don't speak English as a first language? (Took me two questions to realize one student was writing "stiff" to mean "steep", after which realization the answer to the first question made a whole lot more sense to me -- and had to be re-graded.)

We'll see whether they complain about their grades. Most people scored between 65 and 85, I think. I'm not in charge of converting final averages into letter grades, but I did let my boss know my gut instinct, that everyone who scored above a 70 showed at least some grasp of the material and put a reasonable effort into demonstrating it.

And yes, by-and-large, students who bugged me a lot ended up doing a bit better than students who didn't. A couple of notable exceptions were the two people who scored in the 90's, who apparently didn't need to bug me because they've got clue all on their own.

And now back to my regularly scheduled research.

2003-04-21T19:30:00.000-05:00

A Knot In The Zelazny Timeline

Rikibeth comments on my Nic and Flora post (scroll to the 18 April entry if the archives aren't working):

If Flora was Grace Kelly, she couldn't have been Evelyn Flaumel in the early-to-mid-sixties, which is when the events of _NPiA_ would have had to have started in order to have the events of the Chronicles complete and told-to-Merlin -- who then would have had to come to Earth and tell the story to Zelazny, or maybe to Bill Roth who then arranged to have Zelazny publish it -- anyway, to have the Chronicles conclude by the earliest publication date of the serial versions, "Evelyn Flaumel" has to be in Westchester when Her Serene Highness was rather publicly in Monaco. :)

Ah, yes. One of the benefits of being more-or-less unaware of the passage of time is that I can come up with theories unfettered by such mudane concerns as Causality....

Riki's comments are of course quite logical and correct. But for some reason I don't like thinking of the Chronicles as being so rigidly fixed in time. Maybe it's the way they're written: I could be forgetting a disproving detail, but to me the story seems written as if it is taking place more-or-less-right-now -- and as a reader I define "right now" by my "when" rather than the author's "when". I like that. (The writing I did for my face-to-face Amber game reflects that, too: That game commenced with the early events of the Corwin Chronicles, but the details of my character -- in boarding school in Shadow Earth -- define that time as "now".)

So here are a few theories that might reconcile the two viewpoints....

Perhaps the "Shadow Earth" in which portions of the Chronicles take place and the "Shadow Earth" we inhabit are actually near shadows of each other, differing in that the stories took place there and were written about here.

Perhaps, as the Amberites are (sometimes theorized to be) the supreme rulers who bring everything into existence just by wishing it, so Zelazny brings the Amberites into existence by imagining them. In which case, clearly, the story can't happen 'til after he's dreamed it....

Perhaps time in Chaos and time on Shadow Earth don't always run in the same direction; so the events of the Merlin Chronicles end, Merlin spends some time in Chaos, and then he returns to Shadow Earth many years before he was born to tell his story to Zelazny. (Maybe Merlin, not remembering that he wasn't the sort of young man who read a lot of sci-fi/fantasy, was hoping the books would be a warning to himself. Maybe when Flora screams near the beginning of _NPiA_, what she's actually thinking is, "I think I read a story like this once, and... that obnoxious little fink ends up King! Eek! Must take a Valium and purge that horrid memory from my system!")

By now, Occam is taking that razor to his own wrist, I'm sure.... <grin>

2003-04-18T16:26:00.000-05:00

And Speaking Of Royals...

While looking for possible game images, I stumbled across this photo gallery of Royal and Noble Females from across Europe. Could be a useful resource for those who want to cast their games using actual royals, or tie Amber royals to Shadow Earth royals in some way.

2003-04-18T16:07:00.000-05:00

Nic and Flora

I have recently been revisiting the issue of which real-world (or "Shadow Earth," if you prefer) woman I think would make an ideal Florimel of Amber. Once again, I've come to the same conclusion: Nicole Kidman.

(Michelle Pfeiffer, whom the HoC GMs cast as their Flora, is a close second.)

I see Flora as having two distinct -- and in some cases seemingly contradictory -- sets of traits. The first is her reliance on femininity as a tool for manipulation and a defense mechanism. My Flora will pout and coo and flatter and cry and put on a very good show for the men in her life in order to get what she wants.

The second is what I call "frenetic homemaker syndrome". This is a woman who feels out of control of her own life and fate on a large scale -- she knows that she is ever at the mercy of her powerful father and siblings -- and so she compensates by exercising obsessive control over the minute details: her house is immaculate, her hair is perfect, she can provide a seating chart for every occasion.

If you don't believe Nic can portray both kinds of energy, watch Moulin Rouge and The Others back-to-back.

(Plus she's got that whole "sometimes a blonde, sometimes a redhead" thing going on. And unlike, say, Cameron Diaz, whose personal style in formal settings is far too free-and-natural to make her a good candidate for Flora, Nic tends toward the right sort of styled, elegant glamor.)

Of course, I've also got this pet theory that Flora actually was Grace Kelly, and she faked her own death when she grew bored of her marriage to Prince Rainier. But that's not inconsistent with casting Nicole Kidman as a "modern-day" Flora: Corwin says that the shadows will lie for the scions of Amber. Of course Flora would want to alter her appearance somewhat when she re-emerged on Shadow Earth as Evelyn Flaumel....

(And I have to admit, I like how Flora-as-Grace-Kelly opens the door for bad-girl Princess Stephanie crashing her mother's parties....)

2003-04-18T14:00:00.000-05:00

Linky Love

I've added a few links in my "Gaming Buddy Blogs" section. In the Shadow of Greatness and Caveat Lector are both blogs I've been reading for some time now, and if I were a good little blogger I would've blogrolled them a long time ago. That I'm about to be in games with Arref and Dorothea is apparently the kick-in-the-pants I needed.

And Cathy has a new blog devoted entirely to gaming: Dark's Carnival. Pay no attention, o ye future Lunar Ellipse players, to any character spoilers she might offer up therein. Her character is sure to be a nice, wholesome boy, whatever she might say to the contrary. <grin>

2003-04-08T20:38:00.000-05:00

To The Moon, Alice!

My preliminary character sketch for the Lunar Ellipse appears to have gotten the green light. Woo-hoo!

And so, without further ado, I present Henry Gibson "Gibbs" O'Neil, Australian naturalist/adventurer. I still need to build him on points (and, uh, pick a team), but I've now got a pretty good idea of who he is. In particular, Cathy and I have worked out the basics of the relationship between our characters -- longtime adventuring partners with very different strengths -- which, if we play off each other half as well in PBEM as we do in ftf games, should be pretty entertaining. (Gibbs is inspired in part by The Crocodile Hunter and in part by Roy O'Bannon (Owen Wilson) in Shanghai Knights. Guess which one of us is The Smart One?)