Or let it melt, actually. Bloody snow.
Hasn't snowed here in like, 4 years or something to that effect. A little bit last year, but other than that...
Trying to figure out at what point I became hostile to snow, too. I mean, it's snow. You frolic in it and play and throw it at people. Fun times, right?
Well, at some point, D&D became much more important. Don't ask me how, maybe I grew up (wince) or something, but there it is. As snow prevented me from going to the weekly D&D game yesterday, I am...displeased. I'll be even more displeased if it prevents me from going out tomorrow, too. *grumble*
I might not be going anywhere besides that, actually. After in theory getting better finally, I felt pretty horrible yesterday, and today not only was my throat dry, I got this rather intense feeling, as if Godzilla had kicked my in the crotch, then put his foot on my stomach and stomped really hard. Ugh.
On a more positive note, the whole 9 hour Shogun miniseries rocks. We haven't finished it yet, but that's ok. It's still sweet. It excises some things, changes others (reminded of LotR yet?), but overall it's a pretty viable rendition of the book. I'd prefer if they put in some subtitles for the rather copious Japanese, instead of the occasional English voiceover, but that's ok. I'll watch it subtitled next time. The way they've done it this time pretty well puts you in Blackthorne's shoes - you don't understand anything, but after a while, you begin picking up the language right along with him. That's cool and well done, I think. Plus it's made me rethink some of the scenes in the book in a way I haven't done for a long, long time. That's cool.
Urgh. I might blog some history next time. I sort of want to talk about Shogun in that context, as well as toss out a quote from a book I'm reading. We'll see. I need to go off and ache some more now.
[edit]
So I spent half the day reading a bunch of Penny Arcade. Because, well, people like Cole and Brian are always telling me how badass it is, and I'm looking at it and never quite get it, and it's just not working.
Well, I get it now. It's in the news posts. Of course if I was a hardcore vid gamer with no life, I'd get all the jokes anyway, but oh well. There's a strip with a killer rabbit on it. Killer rabbits are garunteed good times, I tell ya.
But I think I'll stick with
And on the same note, I got the rabbit email, Regina. I was appropriately amused. One of these days, I will live somewhere that will allow pets. Yes. But then I'll get a cat, because I'm, well, odd like that.
"Purrrrrrr... Pathetic mortal human. Do my bidding. Get me cat food."
"Yes master."
Anyway. I think bed is in my immediate future. Just thought you all should know all this, being how it is vital to national security, the discovery of life on Mars, and whatever it is Whir wants on ICQ now. Hi Whir.
[/edit]
[/more edit] Movable Type, do my bidding. I have a stick. [/me]
Last night was quite something.
For one, Kyle came back from the Army on leave, so we dragged him over and played some D&D and such, just like old times. He had some good stories to tell about the whole thing. That was cool.
So we played some D&D. It went badly, as it happens, but that had a lot to do with Jason sort of not realizing what day it was, what day we were having the session, or any of it, and having to totally fake something off top of his head.
"Doctor, I'm having the strangest sense of deja vu. I'm level 8, and my mission is to investigate a strange portal that spawns dog-headed evil creatures."
"Very interesting. Tell me more..."
First, the party:
Me: Usagi, the Rabbit Hengeyokai fighter who dual wields war fans.
Cole: Smaug Baggins, the half-dragon/halfling sorc.
Brian: An unnamed Yakman (!) ranger.
Kyle: An unnamed hobgoblin evoker.
And Newt Gingrich tagged along for the ride.
So, our mission was to investigate strange happenings near, get this, Kay's Circle. Something strange is afoot at the Circle K, see.
When the session begins with a Bill and Ted joke, you should get the general drift of where the whole thing's going to go.
So in short order, we go through the portal and get captured. Cole and I and our elf bladesinger flunky get locked in this huge pit with a bunch of slaves, some dead. This doesn't sit well, so we have Cole fly up, break the lock on the trapdoor, whereupon I leap up out of the pit using my rabbit skillz, and begin taking on guards with sharpened jawbones. Cole and the elf join in, and we're doing ok before we get taken down.
So the whole group wakes up, and gets taken to the gladiatorial arena, where the Emperess, who's got blue hair for some reason, is watching us fight people.
After a pit stop in the jail cells to explain the basics of economic theory to the main evil general, of course.
"Look, dude. Slavery's pretty inefficient. You see, you could have just hired some dwarves or something to build those huge pyramids you're building. And if you do it right, you can set up some export trade, and get your money back. And you can lower your military spending, because you don't need to keep the slaves in line. So everybody wins."
Cole's first, and takes on randafool and wins.
Me, Kyle, and Brian are next, versus a pair of stone giants. Midway through the fight, the elf joins in, and we win handily. Whereupon the guards shove us back, and the Emperess leaps down to go take on the elf. Well, we break free, and start fighting the Emperess...
Brian: "I grapple with the Emperess."
Jason: "Uh, ok."
Brian: "Well, I grappled her."
Me: "Ok. I rip off that weird magic necklace she has on, and stab her a bunch."
Jason: "She turns into a huge blue dragon."
Us: "Crap."
So I turn into a rabbit, the elf picks me up, and we get the hell out of Dodge. Brian ineffectually beats on the dragon for a bit until Kyle gets up, turns him into a huge gold dragon because it's late and Jason doesn't really care, and they, uh, fight.
Brian: "I really don't want to fight this out. What say we fight it out in a best of 3 Godzilla game instead?"
Jason: "Sure."
So they do. And Brian wins.
First, for the avid Civ readers in the audience, I've put up a Hall of Fame page with a whole bunch of little game reports and such, including a bunch I never talked about here.
Second, we'll be playing a bunch of D&D later today. Jason's session, level 8, Forgotten Realms. European theme and all that. So we need characters for this.
Erring on the side of normality, Cole and I start with a pair of Kensai from the Oriental Adventures book. Mine's human, his is a lizardman. They, yknow, kill stuff with swords. A lot.
But then we got a little crazy. So I come up with the aptly-named Rabbit Boy character concept. A character, a rabbit hengeyokai (shapechanger), who with Boots of Springing and Striding, moves 80' per round (3.0, for you 3.5ers in the audience), and dual wields a pair of...wait for it...war fans. So he runs up to you, carves you up with war fans, and runs off. This is good.
Cole, meanwhile, comes up with Smaug Baggins, the half-dragon/halfling sorcerer. You are all invited to figure out exactly how that one is supposed to work.
This leads to slightly interesting scenes. You know, like we get in a fight, and the bad guys are sitting there, and this little 3' dragon comes in the door, followed by this 6' tall...rabbit.
"Hey Bob. You didn't spike the ale again, did you?"
"Uh, no. I thought you did."
Yeah.
But that wasn't good enough. So we came up with Weenog.
And you have to understand how Weenog works.
First, he's a goblin. But he's not just any goblin, see. You see, he's a goblin paladin. But he's not just ANY goblin paladin. He rides a warg, see. But he's not just ANY warg-riding goblin paladin. He's a swashbuckler, too. With a rapier. Three Musketeers style.
Weenog, we figure, has style.
But Weenog needed company. So we came up with the firenewt cleric. Who worships, appropriately enough, Kossuth, the fire elemental god. We thought about naming him Newt Gingrich, but we decided that would be maybe a bit too cruel.
Elves, you say? Dwarves? We have transcended such foolishness.
Just like the ones I used to know.
Actually, feeling a lot better. I can (mostly) breathe, my throat merely twinges instead of re-enacting the great battles of World War II, and, well, it's Christmas.
That having been said, Merry Christmas, O Blog Readers. It's good to have ya all.
A few specific ponderances before I go join in the revelry:
Raine sent me a card all the way from Singapore. Very cool. In fact, the vastly-greater-than-normal amount of Christmas cheer flowing my way this year is very gratifying. Apologies if I've been a bit lax in my own giving this year.
Dad got the entire Shogun miniseries on DVD for Xmas. I am profoundly jealous. So profoundly jealous, in fact, I believe I'll go purchase my own copy when next I see it.
I'll spare the details of my own gifts, but let's just say it's all cool, and all stuff I really really wanted. Nifty.
Once again, Happy Christmas, y'all. Hope it's a good one.
Lack of updates, you say? Let's just say it's been busy.
So after the family didn't get to see RotK Thursday (not Friday like I said, oops), I went with a whole bunch of people Sunday after playing some D&D with the gang, and...er, no, I didn't. All of that stuff occured, mind you, but I wasn't there.
So where was I?
About the time D&D was going on, I think I was napping, or trying to. Or maybe that's when I was throwing up. Can't remember. I slept through most of RotK though. Or at least I slept as much as you can when you can't really breathe.
Being sick sucks, let me tell you.
The worst of it, from my standpoint, isn't the fact I can't breathe. I can eat again, so that's cool. But it's reduced me from being energetic to the point where I'm exhausted simply getting a glass of water from the kitchen. Aeeyah.
Looks like it's going to go on for a couple more days, too. Looking like an influenza Christmas at this rate.
Still, I shouldn't be complaining too hard. A hundred years ago or so, and even more recently, they had outbreaks of the same sort of stuff I've got, and it killed thousands of people. This here's the good life, comparatively.
Anyway. As Toast so kindly pointed out over on the tagboard, Epic 37 is up on the Civ page. Go forth, read. I'd link it for you, but energy's fading again.
People who make really freaking strange computers rule. Really. I love things like that.
How long have I been hyping this book, totally unread by me, now? 6 months or something, anyway. Well, I got ahold of the Corvallis library's copy of it the other day.
It didn't last longer than a day.
350 pages, read essentially straight through. Damn fine writing. Tells the story of William Adams, a sailor upon whose life John Blackthorne of Shogun is modeled. The truth, it seems, is just as interesting as the fiction. Less involved in epic warfare than you might think, Adams was infact an advisor to Tokugawa Ieyasu, and participated in lots and lots of interesting trade stuff. In fact, after reading it, I'm inspired to go out and find a history of the East India Company somewhere. Much less a good biography of Ieyasu, who was most certainly The Man, whatever else his offspring might have been. Too, I'm inspired to find a good biography of Elizabeth of England, who just so happened to be The Woman, so far as I can tell.
History's good times, I say. Good times.
Especially, I should note, when well-written. And if there's one thing I want to throttle the collective membership of my profession for, it's writing books that nobody in their right minds would choose to read for being boring as hell. On that note, remind me to post a copy of my review of a certain biography of Simon de Montfort sometime. As a profession, historians are capable of some seriously dull writing, which is slightly odd when you consider that we're all well enough trained in writing, have the passion for the subject, you'd think we'd be able to inject some flair into the damn books, but no. The number of history books I can read in a single sitting can likely be counted on my fingers. Samurai William is one.
Which isn't to say there aren't flaws. I felt like it lacked for depth in a lot of places, though a lot of this has to do with working with fragmentary primary sources and the scope of the work. Too, it lacks for a lot of footnotes, which calls it into question somewhat, but the bibliography seems to me to be top-notch.
Go forth, O ye readers, and read this book. Anybody who's read Clavell's Shogun will like it, and there are worse introductory books to the period, certainly.
Rich country, strong army, even. Or maybe sonno joi (Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians). Take your pick.
But I get ahead of myself.
Finally more or less recovered from being sick. My parents aren't, but I'm better. That's excellent.
Too, I apparently did well for myself this last term. Worked half to death, but I managed three Bs and an A-, which may well mean I go to England this spring. That's great.
Lot of movie watching these days. Watched Pirates of the Carribean Tuesday with Tali and Laurent, and there was much rejoicing. It was, as I said after the movie, "a suitably rediculous movie." Fun, didn't take itself seriously, good times. Not necessarily more than 3/5 aliens on my ranking list, but good.
Watched The Last Samurai on Wednesday with Cole before going and playing a LOT of Mechwarrior at the shop, which was a lot of fun and resulted in me doing quite well for having been away for a month, but I'll refrain from going into details for the non-playing readership.
My review, such as it is, of The Last Samurai, is at Tonto. I'm not entirely sure if I conveyed how much I like the movie. Go see it. It's worth the investment.
That having been said, I'm about to proceed to do some deconstruction work on the movie's little worldview, so be warned. If you're not into historical reasoning, now would be an appropriate time to exit the aircraft. Please form a single-file line towards the exit. Thank you. Too, there's likely to be a minor spoiler or two in here somewhere.
Anyway. The main premise behind The Last Samurai is that the old Japan, the Japan of Bushido and samurai and whatnot, is in fact a good thing. It's unclear to me as to if this is supposed to be a universal thing or just for Algren, the main character, but it skirts the unversality line pretty close.
This is, for all sorts of reasons, dangerous. Not in the least because to glorify that sort of thing means you're glorifying a highly socially stratified, formalized, dare I say violent culture which treated its lower classes like shit. Now, the closet agrarianist in all of us rather likes that sort of thing, but the raging democratic capitalists in most of us might well object, when you consider that whatever else it might have done, the Meiji period brought Japanese as a whole increased prosperity, social mobility, and all of the good of the Industrial Revolution.
Which isn't to say the Meiji period was entirely good. Democratization, of course, went right out the window, and living conditions went to hell for a lot of people, among other assorted bad things.
Nevertheless, the movie takes its stand with the samurai. More romantic, to be sure, and there's a certain value to movies that go radically against our prevailing culture (we are, of course, far closer to the Meiji industrialists than the rebels). And that works, as far as it goes.
A few ponderances, though.
The industrialist Japanese are pretty faceless, actually. Algren, for example, is driven towards the samurai because of his experiences in the American West and the massacres of...Cheyenne, I think. The movie wants you to draw parallels between them and the samurai, and between the Japanese industrialists and the American version. This mostly works. There are some random cultural differences in the experiences, but ok. Omura's still faceless, though, hard to hate, easy to feel sorry for. That may be what they wanted me to think. I dunno.
In any case, I got ahold of a copy of Samurai William and I'm reading it. More on that later.
For the plus side of today, we have:
The capture of Saddam Hussein. While it may or may not translate into a real reduction in the number of guerillas in Iraq, the symbolic victory is enormous. This is good.
My playing of Epic 37, which is one of the coolest games I've ever played. You will hear more about this when the game ends on the 22nd and I can actually talk about it.
My birthday, which was muchly fun, and good times, even if I do suck really bad at Godzilla.
My acquisition of Civ 3: Conquests. Yay.
On the downside of today, we have:
The lack of a patch for C3C means there are still game-crippling bugs.
My very sore throat means I'm sick. Dad's sick too, so at least we're all sick together. And based on how I'm not gushing or anything, probably viral, which means no help to be had other than drinking lots of fluids. Bother. I really wish it didn't hurt to swallow, though.
Bill: "So-crates. 'The only true wisdom consists of knowing that you know nothing.'"
Ted: "That's US, dude!"
---Bill and Ted
We inturrupt your regularly scheduled birthday revelry to show you an article Whir sent me. You too can build your very own 1/3 scale Battlemech.
Anybody who wants to build me one for Xmas can feel free. I won't stop you.
So, yeah. Not only are finals done, I'm 23. Uh, yay.
Er, about that.
So I get home last night, and I'm all talking to Mom, and she's like "Oh, by the way. Your package from Amazon is on your bed."
"What package from Amazon?"
"I dunno, whatever it is you ordered."
"But I didn't order anything."
"Well, obviously you must have if you've got a package."
"No, but I'll check it out anyway."
Sure enough, there's this package on my bed. Huh. Go back in, open it up. Inside is...a book. A book on how to be Evil. Now, I'm for evil as much as the next guy, but... "Uh, Mom? I didn't order this, you know." So I check the packing slip, wondering what the deal is...
Erik/Dwip/Marius, Merry birthday. :) Too late for your birthday, too early for Xmas - it splits the difference! Hope you have a great b-day/Christmas. --Regina/Sarah
Heh. Actually, you timed it damn near perfectly. :) Perfectly, I say. Domo. Domo arigato goziemashita.
But now we flash back a bit, to the fifth. I'm randomly talking to Suzanne. And to jump into the middle of the conversation...
Me: I done been college edumacated, ysee?
Her: mmm.. chicken.
Her: that sums up MY college experience.
Me: What? "mmm.. chicken." or "I done been college edumacated, ysee?" :P
Her: both. :)
Me: *40 years later, when you're running for president*
Interviewer: Could you tell us a little bit about your college years?
You: Why, certainly. I think they can best be summed up by "mmm.. chicken."
Me: You could be the chicken president.
Her: That's what I've always wanted to be!
Her: better than: "mmm.... marijuana..."
Her: "I didn't inhale! I only TASTED the chicken..."
Me: Ha.
Me: You could always combine the two. "mmm... chicken marijuana..."
And the voters will be like "Fuuuuuuck. Obviously she got the good shit in college. Maybe if we elect her, she'll hook us up with some."
Her: LOL
Her: you can be my election advisor..
Me: Heh. Yay.
Her: and campaign organizer.. obviously you have a knack for this sort of thing...
Me: Our symbol will be a great big red white and blue chicken smoking a joint.
Her: Yes.
Her: now i'm going to draw that and give the pic to you later and you're gonna be like: "Wha..?"
And, you know, sure enough, she did.
And there was much rejoicing.
To recap:
The President of Taiwan wants to hold an independence referendum. China is, of course, against this. China now announces that it wants to increase US imports. Bait, you ask? Trying to influence Bush? But would the Chinese ever do such a thing? We wonder.
And the bit about Halliburton overcharging the US Government for it's monopoly in Iraq? That's just too good for words, I tell ya.
I just looooove politics. Don't you?
I am now done with finals. W00t. Life is now good. I will now, as I was telling Suzanne, demonstrate my primal superiority over the corpse of my finals by playing computer games until I can no longer see straight. Raaaaaarg.
Too, it may well be that I'll be seeing The Last Samurai tonight. Whee!
A few random thoughts.
First, MY National Guard can beat up Marechal's National Guard. While he's got some Paladins, a bunch of infantry, and some F-16s, I've got M1A1 tanks, infantry, and twice as many F-15s as his F-16s. Nyah.
Yes, we really DO have arguments about these sorts of things. Frightening, I know.
On a further note:
There's an operation in Iraq going right now called "Operation Panther Squeeze." Who the HELL comes up with these names? Honestly.
So, after announcing that nations who were against the war, won't get any contracts in rebuilding Iraq, Bush wants them to help out Iraq monatarily ANYWAY. Anybody wanna figure that out?
Too, with the pressing need for more troops in Iraq, especially Iraqi troops...a third of the new army just quit. Whups.
Courtesy of Marechal, wildly out of context:
"Secret police perform useful functions in their service to the state and fear motivates the population and the machinery of government. Squirrel aliens with M-4s is just madness, communist madness."
In other news, I finished my paper. It is truly teh suck, but I finished it.
EDIT: For today's other wildly out of context Marechal quote...
"I look good in a Soviet black KGB overcoat though with the armband and hammer&sickle medals."
At last, we know the truth...
Er, no. Really. It wasn't my idea to begin with, particularly. But I will admit to a certain morbid fascination with the title, so here we are.
At any rate, I find it slightly morally offensive to have to get up before dawn to go to a final which will last me 20 minutes. I really do. Nevermind that I've been getting up at 5 and 6 lately.
Last night's final was slightly amusing, despite the fact that I spent all day with a raging Godzilla-devastates-Tokyo-and-then-for-fun-does-it-again level headache, followed by the mother of all stomachaches. But here I am in the test. And there's like 25 multiple choice questions, 3 5-sentence paragraph short answers of the type "So, what ACTUALLY went wrong in Mexico in the 1980s, anyway?" and a long essay of the type "So you have these countries, like Britian, which are the 800 lb gorillas of the world, and you have other countries, like Mexico, who cower in the corner whimpering "We are weak, please don't kill us." Why is this?"
Oh, sure. I know that. Gotta get in on the ground floor of capitalism, yo. *scribblescribblescribblescribblelalalathisisfunscribblescribble* In any event, I wrote just as much as anyone else, but got done a full 20 minutes ahead of the rest of the class. So as I get up to leave, everyone must have obviously had paniced looks, because the prof is like "No, no! Don't worry! Some people just work at different speeds!"
So I went back, and saw a video the RAs were watching of some guy beating Super Mario Brothers 3 in 11 minutes while collecting 99 lives because he could. Like, damn.
In other news, today will suck a lot. Why will it suck a lot, you ask? Because when I went to get my books for my paper that's due tomorrow, it turned out that somebody had already checked them all out. Thus leaving me to totally fake something. Uh, right. No problem.
Guy who jacked my books, I'd just like to let you know, when the squirrels come for you in a scene eerily reminiscent of the one in Terminator 2 where Sarah Conner goes berserk on Miles Dyson with an M-4, don't try to fight it. Just give in.
Speaking of Terminator movies, we didn't get to see Pirates of the Carribean. I even tried faking the cashier out with a display case, but he wasn't having any of it. So we got Terminator 3 instead, because Laurent hadn't seen it yet and, honestly, what the hell else is out right now? So we watched it, and it was good.
Pringles, we note, are also good.
That will be all.
This is me, filling time while I listen to one of those Anth 210 videos I need to, er, watch. Fortunately he's not putting anything worthwhile on the screen.
Busy life. In between the Anth videos, which is going to take like, 5-6 more hours, there's going to be me studying at the library with Jean in a couple hours, me revising my Jacksonian democracy paper which fortunately isn't due until monday, me working on my combined 17 pages of stuff for 20th century science, and me watching Pirates of the Carribean tonight with Tali and Laurent, which is only fair because I sort of skipped out on them last night to crash for 10 hours.
And this video, for the record, is along the lines of:
"...and thanks to great leaders such as Julius Caesar, Muhammad, and Spanish Inquisition, Morocco is FULL of great history!"
Argh.
Anyway. So I'm reading the New York Times, and I hit this article about Howard Dean's Internet campaign[1]. Interesting stuff. Some of it is true for all political campaigns, some is uniquely Internet. Take, frex:
'' 'Friend' is an odd word,'' she says slowly. ''I mean, these are the people who populate my imagination.'' She mentions one blogger, a frequent poster from San Francisco. ''Sally in SF,'' Teachout says, ''is as much a part of my life as my sister.''
Truth. It's something a lot of people have a hard time getting their minds around, but you don't necessarily have to see somebody in front of you to be friends with them, have a meaningful relationship. But of course you lot all understand that. Still, it's funny how hard that concept is to some people.
[1] - How many of you can actually read these NYT links I put up, anyway?
My evening has been aptly summed up by a comment I made to Whir earlier:
Dwip: Grrrrg.
CAFFIENE BIOS VERSION 2.1
CAP ERROR. PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE.
INITIALIZING SYSTEMS...DONE
WELCOME TO CONCIOUSNESS.
Dwip: Ahhhhh... Happy.
Cherry Coke good.
I forget how much stress totally screws with my system. Then I hit the end of the term, and I remember. Sleep 3 hours, up for 4, sleep 3, up 4... that needs to end. It's of course made worse by the fact that I only seem to function by procrastinating like mad until suddenly 5 hours before the paper is due (we're at 7, right now, and page 5 of 12), I go into Zen Paper Writing Mode, everything falls into place, and I become the Great Master of Paper Writing.
The Tao of Papers truly is hard to follow. Yes.
So, I took a nap earlier. For 3 hours. I'm more exhausted now than when I started. Anybody care to explain that?
Also, I'm hating this paper. I know what I want to say, but I can't get it out in any coherent way. To explain this, I shall quote to you a conversation with Marechal. Just as a warning, Napoleon IS mentioned. Viewer discretion advised.
Me: "And instead of the differences between Jeffersonian Republicans, Jacksonian Democrats, and later Republicanism and Federalism, the only thing I can think of is the Mosh Mosh Revolution strip from Megatokyo. Go figure."
Me: "When I'm stressed out, I don't sleep well."
Me: "Too, stress gives me mad writer's block, which is usually a problem since it's usually a paper giving me stress in the first place."
Me: "The funny thing here is that I know what I want to say, I just can't say it coherently."
Marechal: "I'd be a bigger fan of Jefferson if he had played the part of Nappy's American puppet a little better. Bugger. Interfered with the whole maritime conflict with the cursed English and the glorious arms of France."
Me: "That and my whole problem with these things is that I always think all this shit is obvious, because to me it IS obvious, so I don't explain it to the teacher, because the teacher should know it too, right?
Yeah. Defeating the purpose in new and creative ways, that's me."
Marechal: "lol"
Me: "I'm still giggling. I think I'll blog that.
As I'm sitting here thinking things like "Hrm. Well, the Federalists were about, uh, stuff. And the things. And stuff like that. Yeah."
Deep profoundness, that's me."
Or, "I have some more random musings that didn't really go in the last post. You should be afraid now. Head to the exits in an orderly fashion, please. Women, children, and squirrel aliens first."
This is more along the lines of what I meant about the female characters thing. Not that it wouldn't be awesome to see that pop up in something - played by somebody else.
And for something almost completely different, Cole and I were doing some multiplayer Civ action over Thanksgiving break (see, you knew there was a Civ story in here - I am me, after all), and suddenly, I got bushwhacked by the Mongols. And it went something like this:
"Mongols. Mongols make Baby Jesus cry."
[massive beatdown on the Mongols ensues, in which I spawn a leader]
"Leaders make Baby Jesus glad."
[I appropriately name the knight that spawned the leader "Baby Jesus"]
"Woohoo! Baby Jesus r0x0rz Mongols!"
[Baby Jesus gets killed by some random Mongols]
"Ack! The Mongols killed Baby Jesus!"
Plus a lot more of the "makes Baby Jesus cry/glad" stuff. Trust me, it was a laugh riot all night long. Those of you under the impression that I'm one of those sensitive type folk who endeavors not to offend anyone, let the record state that usually I am. But my sense of humor IS pretty warped. And I feel free to make fun of absolutely anybody and everybody. That ought to be a dramatic enough example for us all, yes? ;)
Too, I need to get a pic of my little pink stone rabbit up here at some point. Truly, he is a symbol of all that is good and right in the world.
School, incidentally, can kiss my ass. I'm tired of it. In fact, I tried to read the book I was supposed to have read for today, and I couldn't. I saw words, but they weren't forming into anything coherent. Suck. And the paper, despite how I know what I want to do and say, is going to suck on the principle that it's 15 pages. 15 pages automatically equals teh suck.
Which brings up one of my stranger dichotomies. I'm a good writer. People tell me that often enough that I even believe it now. Funny thing, is I don't enjoy most of the writing I do. I actively despise writing history papers. I'd like to write fiction, but what I actually end up with either comes out as fairly stock fanficish stuff (thinking my MTW games, here), or cliche and shallow as all hell (my early fantasy writing, frex). My one attempt at a longer work, Party On, was so painful to write, being autobiographical as it was[1], that it's instilled in me a fear of writing in the same vein, never mind that it's the sort of thing I feel most in touch with as a reader, and what I feel the most need to write. There are other technical problems, of course, which interestingly enough are problems with my roleplaying games as well (Gris can relate my supposed diplomat Alvanir's total woodenness in our D&D game) - I can't plot for shit, and I actively suck at portraying characters well. Fatal flaws, really. They can be worked on, of course, but of course my ability and desire to practice my writing is drained by the end of the history papers. I hate that.
Ah well.
And, yes. It's been sort of a strange morning. Why do you ask?
[1] - I think most of you have actually read Party On, and may actually know the story behind it. For those that haven't, it used to be up on my site, but I took it down as being far too autobiographical and painful to keep up. If you're confused and ask me nice enough, I might put it up again. We'll see.
When I orginally applied for college, I wanted to be an architect. I focused on going to the University of Oregon, because it was the only place in state to get that degree. The observant reader will note that I go to Oregon State University these days - in fact I never went to U of O for more than the abysmal summer term where I destroyed my life with Latin. So what changed? Two things - I can't draw, and I hate Eugene. So at the comparative last minute, I switched and went to OSU as a business major. See, the art one's important - you need mad art skillz to be an architect, and I haven't got them.
So where's all this coming from? I was reading Megatokyo again. The whole thing. That's twice in a week. No excuse, except that I identify far too much with Piro the character. I identify with Largo, too, but I'm not the same sort of "L3+z b|0w $|-||+ up!" gamer that he is. Piro, on the other hand, could well be me, except I haven't got quite the same attachment to female characters. Anyway. Go read. It's worth it. Whir especially'd get a kick out of it, I'm sure.
For those of you having trouble figuring out where the one idea came out of the other, consider that the real Piro, the guy what draws the comic, really is an architect. And he really can draw. And while reading, I got to thinking about the architect thing seriously for the first time in a while, along with a few other things. My future career, such as it is, has always been bound up with creativity in some way - my years in business seem more and more to me to have been a horrible delusion, and my somewhat abortive desire to be an army officer, while somewhat the opposite of creative, has a lot more to do with doing something I feel should be done than anything. Architect and history teacher were the two really serious ones. I sort of miss not going all out for the first, but that may be because the second has reached a fairly grueling stage. I tire of papers.
But seriously, I really CANNOT draw for shit. Sort of like I have absolutely no creative talent for music. I'm sort of sad about the both, since I'm a rabid consumer and appreciator of music, and I do appreciate art, though anyone looking at my room might dispute that. For whatever reason, though, I've a certain talent with the written word. Maybe because I read more than just about anyone I know. I'm not sure. In any case, my writings are pretty well appreciated. Too, people appreciate my humor most of the time. That one mystifies me, but it's been made abundantly clear. It is rather gratifying to know that I was successful in escaping the utterly humorless bastard self-image I had as a teenager. Maybe I never was. I don't know.
My other gift creatively happens to be with world creation. I think this one comes from my training as a historian - maybe not, as I was creating semi-decent worlds in high school, but certainly the training has helped me. And that's where the "Damn. I didn't know you could make stick figures look THAT bad" l33t art skillz come in. Much of what I see in my head can't be adequately described in the written word. I can't adequately describe to you what, say, Tharavel looks like to me, because I don't have the tools. That's extremely frustrating sometimes, and it puts me in awe of things like Morrowind, worlds with such depth and clarity of vision and breathtaking reality. Putting that in perspective with the architect thing, one of my amusements has always been to draw out the buildings of the worlds I create. There was a year, once, in which I plotted out a pretty vast castle. Took me the whole year. I lost it in a moment of stupidity upgrading my computer. The point, though, I guess, is that I always had very complete images in my mind of what these places looked like, but could never show them in anything but a pathetic 2d image of the real thing. Frustrating, like I said.
Anyway. If there was a point behind that little digression, other than to show you all what goes in my mind half the time, it's lost on me. The soul-searching of a visual artist trapped in a non-visual world? Dunno.
Of slightly more immediate importance, Boardwalk downstairs is freaking out of Cherry Coke, and the freaking fountain pop machine freaking ran out of it, too. So I'm drinking Barq's. Gaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrr.
And I only got 3 hours of sleep, but you knew that anyway.
