Occupying My Mind Today

Lately I've not been studying the world around me nearly so much, and have been pursuing lighter venues.  I'm back into the role-playing with a vengeance but there's a difference this time, for the first time in 3 years I'm finding I'm caught up in a story that's not my own, which is refreshing, challenging and to be honest a little intimidating.


I'm still running exalted, but my pace has slowed… my story is epic and I've got great ideas where I want to take the story, but I'm losing my grasp of the details which is a bit concerning.

However, a good friend of mine has been running a game where I'm just playing and I can't express enough admiration at her skill, it took her a couple months to get her stride but now she's found it and I'm in-awe, I've been gaming for over a decade, and I've never seen that kind of natural talent.  The girl has a gift.

Our styles of running games are very different, I have a tendency to try to concentrate solely on setting and let it react in a dynamic and plausible way to the Player Character's actions, whereas she keeps a tight hold on things, her plots are carefully controlled to deliver maximum story and she's become fantastic at improvising to keep things on-track when we do things that she doesn't expect.  She's telling the story here, and we get tugged along kicking and screaming, whereas I like to may the story my players, pull a string here and there and see how things turn out… my style only works if my players are proactive, whereas hers requires that she keep a strong grip on the independant-minded gamer so that things don't spiral out of control.

My biggest problem with running games these days is that I really have a hard time being bothered to design and think up villain characters… it's a big weakness and one that seriously needs addressing.  Villains aren't much fun for me, because they're just fodder for the PC's to kill.  However when Zi runs games, the Villains are freaking scary beyond belief, and even the allies sit on the razors edge between trustworthy and villains themselves.  One of the biggest problems for my character in her game is finding allies he can trust.

So anyhow, today I sit… musing over villains and trying to get my convoluted ideas in order while laying the groundwork for a big climactic fight that I honestly don't know the outcome of yet… and wishing I could explain it well enough so that you non-gamers out there could understand the enthusiasm I have for these things.  

These are the mediums where I tell my stories…

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An Odd Thought

Political blogging is a good way to exercise your mind some days, but proportionately by now my mind should rival Einstein's by now for all the politic blogs I've been reading.

I've learned a lot about the American electoral process in the last few weeks, can't say I'm a fan really, to me it seems like a broken system that doesn't really represent the people's wishes, perhaps it's that I'm still learning.

To understand my view of systems you have to understand my background as a gamer and what I was taught by my mentor Ian.  Role playing game are about wandering a made-up person through a make believe scenario, the system the RPG uses arbitrates the interactions between the made-up person and his environment.  A poor system has holes, inconsistencies and imbalances, and doesn't even attempt to come close approximating how things would be in reality.  A good system will emulate the entire spectrum of the way humans can interact with anything, and the better they do it the more fluidly the game experience will work and the easier it is for someone new to understand how things work because they can just explain what they would do in real life, and the game system can pull it off in a somewhat balanced fashion.

There are a lot of game systems out there, and most of them I won't even bother to look sideways at.  There was actually a period in the early part of this decade where there were less options than ever for the game that I wanted, so unwilling to put up with them, my friends wrote a new system.  And believe me, it is one of the injustices of the universe that that game is not published yet.

Anyhow, what I'm getting at is that for me, when I see a system I don't like I don't really feel confident enough to work with it, and the American Political system is a system I'm not a fan of for sure.  Good thing I'm not an American I guess, but I still feel compelled to say that the system should be changed.

At the heart of my issues is the two-party's only government.  Two parties means you're either a liberal, in favour of a minority-loving nanny state, or you're a conservative who wants God to smite all the gays, as your right to have children is sold to the highest bidder.  Let me tell you, I'm neither.

I'm not saying that both parties are bad, but they're dynastic brands that are resistant to change.  Even if the Republicans and Democrats got completely overhauled and their stances changed across the board, the public would still see the parties the way they always had before, the corporations would still be making deals with the parties the way they had in the past, and the media would still spin its member's actions to suit some outside agenda.  When you look at MacDonalds, you see MacDonalds.  There's an association with that, and it's been drilled into your head for over 20 years, if MacDonalds changed their menu entirely that perception wouldn't change at all, not until they did away with their name and everything that looked old about them. 

So ultimately with two parties there isn't any real choice, the spokesperson for a party can't change anything if the party doesn't want that change to come into effect.  So things that perhaps the country might need, like the shrinking of federal influence, dissolution of the IRS, or returning certain rights and freedom's will never ever come to pass because it's simply NOT in the government's interest to do those things. 

I think that's one thing that GWB might have got right.  Back in the early first campaign he seemed like a man of principles with a strong view of what he wanted America to be, but it's obvious he bought his way into power, and worse he did it with someone else's money.  And then along the line he discovered out that he'd sold the freedom he had for that money.  The man is obviously hog-tied and unable to satisfy the people of his country because he took courses of action to benefit his financiers and now he can't back out.  Perhaps he isn't being forced to do everything he does… but if he isn't – being forced that is – then why is he continuously walking out to address the press and tell the public about all the things he's doing and continuously sounding so stupid about it?

Consider this, perhaps the man knows he's over a barrel, he knows his soul is sold and he has no recourse.  Worse yet, the things he's forced to do don't fit with what he wants for the country, so what does he do?  Well the only thing he can, he goes out in front of the cameras and tells the public what he's doing in the most infuriating way possible.  Sure he'd go down as the worst president America will ever know, but when the wheels of Democracy turn and a new president walks into the office, at least the American people will know what needs to be fixed.  Maybe they won't make the same mistakes…

Probably a long-shot that's off the mark, but who knows, maybe Baby Bush is trapped in a system that's untenable and knows it.

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The Green Consumer

 I am an early adopter when it comes to technology, I make no bones about it, and I also work in the oil industry which makes me a lot of money and lets me afford the pretty MacBook(I find it ironic that it considers that word a spelling mistake) I’m typing this on.

 

I’m a consumer and not much of an environmentalist, which doesn’t really jive with my freedom loving mentality.  Tyler Durden said it best, “The things you own end up owning you.”  But for me it’s the things I buy that enslave me to keep working hard to afford the next trinket.  However, I’m introspective enough to see these foibles in my own character, and examine them to see where they reform to modern trends and where they don’t.  One thing that I don’t often buy into is the green marketing that’s swept up everyone.  Here’s why:

 

To keep us healthily consuming away, markets want us to be purchasing a new automobile for personal use every 3 years or so, a new computer about the same, a new phone likely every 2 years, and to be constantly upgrading elements of our home, and life in general.  However it’s in a person’s nature to constantly want those new elements to be or at the very least feel somehow superior to the last iteration we had.  Concepts like Moore’s law have given us the illusion that we can usually have that “upgrade” at the same cost as we paid for the inferior model, so the markets are forced to constantly provide better things each year for us to buy,  but in some cases better is harder to do than others.

 

Take cars for example, for the longest time it was always about being faster, cooler sleeker, more rugged or what have you…  but more power in a car swiftly becomes irrelevant, sure it’s great to say your car can do 200Mph, but when the hell are you actually going to drive it that fast?  Even if the average person were able to drive that quickly without killing someone, speed limits forbid it.  And more rugged vehicles aren’t in the manufacturer’s best interests, if cars didn’t slowly degrade then where would the impetus be to buy another?

 

So instead the automotive industry switches gears, they encourage fuel prices to rise in the markets by creating artificial shortages.  They release a few acclaimed movies about how our children are all going to die because of air pollution, and voila!  They’ve just convinced 90% of the buying market that not only is their pickup truck that navigates potholes far too easily and is close to being paid-for but not worn out is draining their bank accounts dry on fuel costs.  All the while elitist friends look down their noses at them for driving something that’s “wrecking the planet” as they munch contentedly on their cordon blue steaks disregarding the fact that the cows that they came from produce an unprecedented amount of Carbon Monoxide as well.

 

Cars are small, they cost less money in materials to make, and hybrids are specialty cars, which means specialty parts which means you pay more money for them despite the fact that these same parts are made to be lighter and thus less durable, they’re closer to the ground and thus are more prone to damage from rocks, potholes and curbs.  From a manufacturer’s standpoint this is an all-win situation, because more money will be spent on maintenance, and cuts the amount of time that the owner spends between making another purchase as the vehicle has a shorter lifespan.

 

The green craze hasn’t isolated it’s self to automobiles though, lately the competition war for faster processors has given way to smaller, more energy efficient CPU’s and GPU’s.  Now admittedly this is not a bad thing at all, less energy consumption means longer battery life, less heat produced, and smaller sleeker products.  But if it already works, why should I be spending money on a new one where the only thing I’m getting is less heat and a bit lighter.  For a desktop computer this is utterly irrelevant, though from a laptop standpoint it is nicer.  Now however my old aluminum case is too big for my Macbook, so it’s not taking up any less space when I travel.  I think I’ll buy myself a nice new laptop bag made out of leather… maybe calfskin leather, that way there’s one less cow out there polluting our planet.  I doubt it’ll balance the scales for me though as I have every intention of keeping my V8 dodge Dakota for at least another 2 years.

 

…unless of course I decide to reupholster the seats with calfskin too.

 

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My First Meme, Too Much Information

Stole this one from Dee, I'm a sucker for a dare.  This would of course be the first meme I would do.

1. Sex in the morning, afternoon or night?   Morning is my fave.  The morning wood is usually the first-up, and it wants breakfast!  Other than that anytime is quite fine with me.

 

2. What side of the bed do you sleep on? Anyside, currently right. 

 

3. Have you ever taken your clothes off for money? If not, would you?  No, and yes.  

 

4. Shower or bath?  Showers

 

5. Wax or shave?  Never waxed, but I've had this machine thing pull the hairs out of my back a time or two… it gets easier every time.

 

6. What kind of underwear?  Or commando?  Never commando, zippers and penis's do NOT play well together.  Boxers usually but I've got a few thong sorta dealies for wearing the expensive tight jeans. 

 

7. Do you want someone aggressive or passive in bed?  Each has it's perks, depends on my mood really.

 

8. Love or money?  Well money was my first, but she's a fickel bitch, so having a caring lover to console me when money spurns me helps me get along.

 

9. What makes you feel sexy?  Being checked out.  

 

10. Sexiest body part on the opposite gender? LEGS!  Long slender bare with a flirty skirt yesplease!

 

11. Would you rather go camping or to a 5 star hotel?  FUCK!  Decisions!  I choose hotel I guess, I work in the wilderness all the time anyways.

 

12. What is the weirdest place you have had sex?  On the hood of a junked Lincoln in a junkyard.  Nice.

 

13. Favourite sexual position? On top coming in from behind with her laying flat, legs closed under me.  

 

14. Would you shave your entire body (including your head) for money? Sure why not.

 

15. Ever been to a strip club? Of course.

 

16. Ever been kicked out of a bar or a club? Nope.

 

17. Ever been so drunk you had to be carried out of somewhere?  Nope.

 

18. Ever been so drunk that you don’t remember things?  Nope.

 

19. Ever had a one-night stand? Uh… no, they all keep coming back, I need to try harder.

 

20. Ever had a hickey in a strange spot? Don't think so… I've left a few tho.

 

21. Ever kissed someone of the same sex? Nope.

 

22. Ever kissed a stranger?  Don't think so.  

 

23. Ever kissed a friend?  No.

 

24. Favorite drink? Granville Island Pale Ale.  Also there was once upon a time a Key Lime Liqeur called Ke Ke Beach, that if you mixed 1 part of it with 2 parts of sprite you would get a perfect drink simulation of Cheezecake… but that drink doesn't exist anymore, if you know where I can find some I will be eternally in your debt.

 

25. Ever had sex in a movie theater? Nope


26. Ever had sex in a public bathroom? Nope, I'm workin on it tho.

 

27. Ever had sex at work? Yes.

 

28. Ever had sex in a car? Parked or moving?  Yes, parked.  I've gotten blowjobs while driving too.  Back country roads and I only swerved a little.

 

29. Ever been in an "adult" store?  Everyday.

 

30. Ever bought something from an adult store?  I've spent enough money on "adult" paraphanalia to put someone's offspring through college.

 

31. Ever been caught having sex? No.

 

32. Funniest sex tip you received?  Weeeellll… when one is attempting to have sex with sheep, the best way to do do it is to get yourself a pair of velcro gloves and some rubber boots that are perhaps a size or two too big.  Then lead the sheep up to a cliff just to the point where it's looking out over the edge.  Then insert the sheeps back legs into the tops of your rubber boots and use the gloves for control, the sheep being frightened of falling off the cliff will do all the rest of the work for you.

 

33. Does anyone have naughty pics of you? Underwear, but other than that, no.

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Crazy Psycho Freak

Tash was watching Trading spouses and had to bring me in for this.  I can't stand this, I couldn't sit through it then and I can't sit through it now.  If you get the chance try to watch the whole show about who she's ranting about, the family she traded with was liked to involve themselves with spirituality and had to walk on tiptoes the entire time as she had one freakout after another.  This grates on my nerves even more than Chris Crocker.


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Updates

Well Christmas has come and gone and I'm typing this on a beautiful new Macbook which I purchased yesterday with the Christmas loot I stole from Santa Clause.  


To start, I love the new book.  Tres sweet, and after a day of working I've got it almost to the point where it's eclipsed the old laptop in functionality.  Some of the things I've yet to manage are that my Palm phone won't connect properly with bluetooth, and won't function as a USB modem.  So I'm still working on that.  The other thing is that I haven't been able to get the new versions of Photoshop and Illustrator past the trial versions but that shall be overcame too.

I haven't tried to connect the camera to the new mac yet, but I'm not anticipating too many problems there.

If I can't get the external modem to function then that'll be a feature that will come when I buy a new copy of XP to dual boot on this baby, but I'd really like to get it working on OSX…  

Oh, and I went to the doctor this morning… apparently I'm on the cusp of developing onset diabetes, no suprise there, but do I have to give up everything I enjoy?  No beer, no cigars, no mocha's… at least he's not making me swear offa you guys.  

So anyhow I've got to find some good ways to get excercise while I'm out at work, Shush does Yoga, and I'll definitely be asking her about that, otherwise I'm going to have to do a regimen of pushups, situps, squats, and running through the snow, sounds exilerating doesn't it?

Anyhow, that's what's up.  

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The Bucket of Shittyness Overfloweth

Normally I like my job, but it's days like this that I want to tell the world to just fuck right off and let me go home.

On Sunday night I set forth out into the wilderness for a ONE DAY job out here.  It's Wednesday night right now and at this point I'm quite certain the job will take "just one more day" til the end of eternity.  It's like groundhog day, only without nearly as many cute girls to seduce and fresh underwear every morning.

Normally I understand and expect these things as a fact of life out in Ojay, it's called the Ojay triangle for a reason after all, but tomorrow I've got a doctor's appointment I've rescheduled once allready and he's supposed to go over some bloodwork I went for TWO MONTHS ago.  I swear, if I have 5 months to live and I've waisted 3 of them working before I find out, I'm going to be quite pissed.

Speaking of dying, I very nearly did today.  It would have been wonderfully exciting if I had a sense of adventure regarding 300 foot cliffs and tumbling off them, but sadly they don't let me do drugs out here so the appeal is conspicuously absent.  But instead of tumbling over the 300 foot drop into the river I decided to slide my tractionless vehicle into the other ditch where it now rests on a fluffy bed of snow and saplings which probably haven't even done enough damage to warrant the incedent report I'm going to have to write up tomorrow. 

Did I mention that I'm the luckiest fucker alive?  Because I'm pretty sure I have before… several times actually… and  it's true, luck had EVERYTHING to do with this one, I had no traction whatsoever on a 28% hill where I slid AROUND the death drop to land in the only soft ditch there is on the entire hill, I tell you, my guardian angel deserves one mind blowing blowjob from his secretary after that good work.

So anyhow, tomorrow morning they pull my disobedient truck out of it's cozy ditch and I'll go back to site for ONE MORE DAY, and I'll try not to act too suprised when they don't let me leave afterwards. 

So anyhow, MERRY CHRISTMAS everyone.

 

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Stuff and Things

Several years ago after seeing a few incomplete episode of Farscape (Since then I've seen the entire series nearly 3 times.)  I whimsically tried to run a Science Fiction RPG for my two best friends. 

I was not very good at it. 

My descriptions of the alien space station was like this:

"You dock in a huge hangar where a giant rod sticks out which you dock to.  There's stuff and things all around you on a promenade."

My descriptions of the alien life forms was like this:

"A large man wearing a red robe adorned with stuff and things stands before you.  His hair hangs in large dreadlock like brades and stuff.  Around him things the size of large rats roll around."   (I was envisioning a luxan and DRD's for those who know what that stuff is.)

I was actually so bad at this that my friend Kyle made a sign on a piece of paper and would flash it at Ian every time I said "Stuff and Things."  He wouldn't show me what the sign said but I learned later that it said;

"Toe Knee Sucks at Sci-Fi."

The funny thing is, whenever I hear someone say Stuff and Things, I think of that and I chuckle, like it's a joke everyone should get.  What they did mighta been cruel, but I learned from that day.  I've had to teach myself to communicate my ideas because my thought processes don't work like other-people's.  The things I think sometimes don't make as much sense outside my head.

 

Another friend summarized it aptly, he said; 

"Toe Knee thinks outside the box… all the time… and it's his undoing."

 

Thinking outside the box is cool and all, but sometimes it really can be your undoing.

Especially when your stuff and things aren't everyone else's. 

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A Vox Masquerade Proposal

The other night I had an idea about how to tell the stories I want to tell.  I've had all these ideas in my head wanting to get out, but for some reason I was unable to express them, but now I have an idea.  I would like Voxer's to help me tell these stories.

 

This is still in the planning stage, but I've decided I need some feedback on certain things.  What I propose is a game where people create alternate persona's, and then create blogs for those alternate persona's.  I in turn would feed people personal and global events which would guide these persona's along the path of the stories I am telling.  The world the stories are told in will seem exactly like our own, but subtle events and changes I make as the story progresses will reveal new things that are happening around everyone and draw different persona's together as they get wrapped up in the events of the story.

 

I would be setting up a vox account for widespread events in the story, and players would keep track through those stories, however the persona character's account will not be linked to it.  In this way I would hope that players would be able to keep their persona's secret from the other players so that they would have to discover each other by accident.  Of course I wouldn't be able to enforce this, but I would highly suggest it in the name of fun for everyone, even those who aren't involved in the game directly but would just like to watch.

 

What I'm asking is the following:

 

-Does any of this make sense? 

 

-Does it sound interesting or appealing at all? 

 

-Is creating a new vox account and making up a 'fake' blog too high a barrier of entry? 

 

I know blogging takes effort, and fake blogging is likely much harder for you if you're not an extremely creative sort.  But I will be with everyone involved to make things very interesting.  I will not reveal anything of the story or setting except for this:  There are things modern man has forgotten.

 

Any comments questions or opinions on this idea are more than welcome.

 

 

 

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