(no subject)

So. It's Friday. *yawn*

After I left Game Night I went over to Elli's house, where I found she'd fallen asleep, the poor dear. I hung out with her for about an hour before I had to return home and get to sleep.

After work today, I get to:

Cash my check

Make a car payment

Buy books for either $130 new or $100 used (TWO books! For one class! And when I sell them back I'll get only bloody $30 if I'm flaming lucky. ARGH!)

Pay roommate for utilities

Estimated dollars left: $30

::facepalm::

Deep breathing. Lots and LOTS of deep breathing.

The Friday Five

1. What does it say in the signature line of your emails?

I don't have a sig line.

2. Did you have a senior quote in your high school yearbook? What was it? If you haven't graduated yet, what would you like your quote to be?

No, I didn't have one. They didn't do that at my school, and a damn good thing, too -- or I would have said something utterly stupid.

3. If you had vanity plates on your car, what would they read? If you already have them, what do they say?

Minbari. WHTSTR. Something of that nature, probably. Maybe even ARRAKIS. Good thing I can't afford personalized plates.

4. Have you received any gifts with messages engraved upon them? What did the inscription say?

One, from my coworkers when I left EMH. It had the Japanese character for "Destiny" on it.

5. What would you like your epitaph to be?

I'll be dead. I won't care.

Dark Dungeons, revised!

I'm sure you all remember Chick tracts. Nasty little pieces of bile disguised as Christian teachings? My dad used to call them "Little packets of hate."

Well, one of the worst was Dark Dungeons, a very silly "warning" about the dangers of D&D leading to real witchcraft. Someone has done it justice -- taken Chick's original art and redid the dialogue, to create an anti-goth tract entitled ...

Darque Dungeons

It's stolen, but I like it

The perfect quote to make the 'feel' of my upcoming HERO Arcanum game (The 'Secret war against demonkind' option which seemed to be the most popular) clear:

How do you know the chosen ones? No greater love hath a man, then he lay down his life for his brother ... not for millions, not for glory, not for fame; for one person, in the dark. Where no one will ever know ... or see. - Sebastian, Babylon 5: "Comes the Inquisitor" (season 2)

More info will be forthcoming in the future. This game won't begin until later in the spring (I have a few sessions left of Star Wars, plus I'm taking some time off from running games -- and hey, when did I become a regular GM?), but I need the lead time to get it all set down properly. And besides, the best way to get players when it's time is to let you all see the creative process of how I put it together. At least, I think that's the best way. I could be wrong.

Soon I'll begin writing "movie" trailers for the game, like I used to do for fun on the Champions MUSH where the Arcanum began.

---

Note that my calling the game Arcanum right now is a "code" or placeholder -- the game may or may not be called that eventually, but it's based off the Champions MUSH Arcanum team idea, so it's convenient for me.

I really miss the glory days of that place. I think, above all else, the Revamp killed it.

Note also that if you'd like to be removed from all further game-developer posts, just say so and I'll create a filter.

Anita Mui's last film

When she checked into the Hong Kong Sanitorium Hospital, Anita Mui was filming Zhang Yimou's "House of Flying Daggers." Zhang has chosen to retain her role as a loose thread in the plot rather the cut her footage or replace the actress with a double.

That's kind of neat.

Apologies if I'm spamming your friends page

From the excellent series of columns from Ms. Gonick, detailing her midlife return to college and first-year teaching:

In any case, I'd ended up in an education class where our first assignment was to collaborate with a partner to "team-teach" one of the myriad articles collected and bound in our class readers.

As almost every article addressed multiculturalism (whatever that is) and as I believe only in duoculturalism (Those Who Get to Have Health Insurance and Those Who Do Not), I chose the essay on Daniel Goleman's 1995 book, "Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ." For one thing, I'd already read it. For another, I'd already failed at living by making decisions based on my own particular brand of emotional intelligence, and figured I could teach the gist: Without self-awareness, impulse control, empathy and/or social deftness, you can quote Sartre till les vaches come home and still get fired from McDonald's for having a bad personality.

Edit: Link fixed

Oh, the comedy! Oh, the ignorance!

From Straight Talk on Dungeons and Dragons (and the title couldn't be any more misleading!):

( I cut it for space. Clicky! )

Of Mad Cow Disease, SUVs, and eroding civil liberties

More sanity from the mind of Jon Carroll.

( You're not helpless, you only feel that way. )

CSUS nightmare

Readers may recall that I bitched some time ago about how I could request my transcripts be sent to CSUS from SCC online, but I had to snail-mail a request to CRC.

Guess which one sent the stuff in? That's right, CRC. Guess which hasn't? You got it. Guess whose collective ass I'm going to light this afternoon when I go to the campus for my textbooks?

You damn betcha.