Ravings of a Textual Deviant

Happy twenty-eighth birthday to my no-longer-so-little brother, about whom I could say so many things, none of them adequate to describe what a great guy he is.

Happy eighty-somethingth birthday to my grandmother, who walked all over Venice with me and Ari, still takes two ballet classes a week, can do the splits all the way to the floor, and is no longer “the only old lady in the retirement community without great-grandchildren”. (Thanks, Mari!)

Happy third birthday to my nephew, Puddles (don’t ask how he got the nickname), whom my sister-in-law occasionally refers to as “other people’s birth control.” We all hope that trauma will wipe our minds of the memories from his truly terrible twos…and soon. The good news is, we all survived. Watch out, preschool.

And a happy belated birthday to Dorothea, even though she probably hoped I wouldn’t bring it up. (What did you think the plush Cthulhu was for, anyway?)

Happy birthday to all, and to all a good night.

Ginger asks

What are three examples of physical or verbal schtick that you’ve used to develop your characters? Schtick means trademark gestures or phrases that identify your character uniquely. It’s about showing, not telling.

I try to give my characters interesting quirks, which generally leads to “trademark” phrases or habits. Bronwyn, a druid character of mine, makes a habit of conversing with trees. Another example is Annika, one of my newer current characters. Annika is an ex-professional athlete turned small-town piano teacher as a result of a combination of parental pressure and injury. She has spent the last five years of her life (since the injury) in an undiagnosed depression, teaching scales and finger exercises to the younger siblings of the people she hated in high school. She watched her classmates go off to start their lives, while as far as she was concerned, her life ended when she could no longer train or compete. Signing up to fight aliens gave her something to do with the rest of her life. No matter how bad the situation gets, she will say, with all seriousness and great conviction, “it beats teaching piano in Nebraska.”

Sometimes, I just want to tell Antonin Scalia to sit down, shut up, and read a good explanation of the separation of church and state. The problem with dragging religion into government is that not everyone has the same religion–or any religion. You don’t need a god to tell you the difference between right and wrong; a good kindergarten teacher can do that. Theoretically, at least, Americans are supposed to have the right to make their own decisions about their personal lives. My personal opinion is that whatever consenting adults want to do together is nobody’s business. I also think that it’s much better to make a decision based on what you think is right or wrong, rather than what a god told you to do or not do.

Besides, I’m tired of the White House and Congress taking a slash-and-burn approach to civil rights, and it’s about time that someone with real clout reminded them that privacy is important.

The only nice thing that I can find to say about Strom Thurmond is that he was an excellent example of why term limitations would be a good idea. I desperately hope that his record is not “rehabilitated” as a result of his death, the way Nixon’s was. I’m not promoting speaking ill of the dead for its own sake, but I think his choices should be left unvarnished to speak for themselves.

That said, I am going to go on to talk about one of my favorite short stories, “Death and the Senator,” by Arthur C. Clarke. (Arthur C. Clarke has written almost all of my favorite short stories, actually.) “Death and the Senator” should be required reading for all politicians. It’s all about unintended consequences, and how a decision can come back and bite you years later, in a way you’d never expect. I’m going to spoil it for you, but go read the story anyway as Clarke is a much better writer than I could ever hope to be.

Early in his career, the Senator votes against funding a space station that would be comparable to one the Russians are building. Many years later, the Senator discovers that he has a heart condition that can only be treated by surgery in microgravity. The U. S. still doesn’t have a facility, mostly because of the Senator’s own actions. Arrangements are made for the Senator to have surgery aboard the Russian station. He’s even bumped to the top of the list. The beautiful part of the story is the Senator’s internal monologue, and how he finally comes to deal with the blatant hypocrisy he’s about to commit.

And for the record, there’s no connection in my mind between Thurmond and this particular story, other than the words in the title. Although, after I go back and re-read the story, there might be.

It’s not that I haven’t had anything to say for three days. I just haven’t had time to blog. Upcoming topics include the next Game WISH and Role Call, dead senators, amusing the neighbors, and sex in Texas.

Unfortunately, at the moment, I have an elsewhere to be.

I’ve occasionally thought that car alarms are the urban equivalant of crickets.

Today was the Day of the Crickets.

Several times a day, I find myself having to walk from one set of allegedly temporary buildings (trailer modules) to another set of allegedly temporary buildings. It’s a short jaunt–no more than a few hundred feet–that rounds the corner of a parking lot. Every single one of the twelve times I was outside today (six round trips) a different car alarm was going off. It was like stepping in and out of a John Cage version of the Ring Cycle. I had no idea that there were so many versions of car alarms. In addition to the standard, ceaseless honking (you know, the kind that makes you want to scream “I’ll give you something to honk about” and pitch rocks through windows) there was one that sounded exactly like an ambulance siren, one that played the same four bars of a tune (the name escapes me) and an utterly random honking pattern. Speciation happening before my very ears…

Role Call #23 asks a deceptively simple question–

What was the best character you came up with that you never had a chance to play?

I’ve built this character twice and never gotten to use her (hence her lack of name). The concept is that she is a Siberian shamaness whose spirit was disconnected from her body by the Tunguska Event. It seemed reasonable to me that anything with such a profound effect on the physical world would have a parallel effect on the spirit world. I intended that she would have no physical form, but was visible all the time to people who could see into the spirit world and to everyone when she put the effort into it. She would have some magic and some healing abilities. To balance the scales, she would be from a relatively primitive culture, have a rather different world-view from the other characters, and be more than a little bit out of her mind (so to speak) from being noncorporeal for several decades. One of these days, I hope she’ll get a name and a story.

Game WISH #52 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.

This reminds me of one of the myriad quizzes I’ve taken. The quiz in question (its title utterly escapes me; it was years ago) had four categories of gamers: Real Men, Real Roleplayer, Munchkin, and Loony. If memory serves, I came in squarely between Real Roleplayer and Loony. This probably comes as a surprise to no one who knows me.

As far as Robin’s Laws go…I would say that I have spent time as a Specialist, but have made an effort to get away from it in the past few years–variety, spice, and all that. At this point, I’d consider myself 90% Storyteller and 10% Tactician…but only because Loony isn’t an option. (Yes, I have started a pie fight in game, and would do it again in a heartbeat, given the opportunity.)

The Grand Ellipse is now officially moving again. There are new updates to the Times and the Progress pages. Dorothea, ever quick on the uptake, is once more too clever for my own good.

The current obstacle is that the Her Majesty’s Representative for the Grand Ellipse in Arkhangelsk will only produce the sign-in ledger and tokens for the Grand Ellipse every third Thursday, between 3:30 and 4:00 PM. I’m looking forward to seeing how the players cope with that one.

Today, I went up to Westfield to have lunch with some friends from Minnesota who are in town visiting family. The directions were fairly straightforward. I had plenty of time and plenty of gas. I had no trouble at all following the directions.

Until I ran into the parade.

Westfield’s “Shamrock Festival” is this weekend, the highlight of which is apparently a parade, complete with the high school softball team, kids from the local karate school, and soccer moms on yard tractors. The parade route was such that people who lived in the particular subdivision I was headed for could not get out (or in my case, in) because the entire road was blocked. I was less than six blocks from my destination at that point, so I parked illegally (there was nowhere to park legally, and the police officer assured me that it was OK so long as I came back for my car after the parade) and hoofed it to the house.

The walking itself was not so bad, although I would’ve worn different shoes. The problem was that I was walking beside the parade. Specifically, I was walking near the high school softball team…whose members were riding in the back of a pickup truck and throwing candy. The girls were throwing small pieces of candy to people ten feet away with approximately the same force that they would use to throw a softball from the outfield to a base. And while their aim was good enough that they didn’t hit anyone (at least, I didn’t see anyone get hit) it was a lot of ducking and weaving–both the sugary little missiles and the moppets swarming up to claim the treats.

The entire time, I was thinking to myself that I have been so focused on the hassle created by the Hyperfix that the current navigational difficulty would never even have crossed my mind.