Today, I vandalised a car. I'm happy to report that it's the first time I recall ever doing so deliberately (I don't think I did anything like that during my wild youth but honestly, I'm having trouble remembering entire decades at this point, I don't think I should claim to remember 13) and I also believe that Douchebag McCockHat had it coming. Parking so close to me that I can't get into my car with anything like ease and within half an inch of me ending that clause at "can't get into my car" is behaviour that I feel justifies me to some recourse. Normally, I would prefer to speak to the parking attendant to get the person to move their goddamn van, but that wasn't an option.

So I slammed my door into theirs. Fuck you, fuckhead. Sorry you wanted that space so badly (and apparently, that particular space, undifferentiable from any other on that level of the parking garage) that you felt it appropriate to park within eight inches of my car door. Also, I'm sorry that I kind of have, you know, a JOB that I had to go to, after the Appointment From Hell, so I couldn't actually wait around for your ass to come back out and MOVE YOUR CAR.

Although, the AFH may have had something to do with my utter rage. I mean, it may just be ME, but I don't actually think it's appropriate for the non-attending medical personnel to just walk into the room I'm being seen in (and am exposed in, thanks a lot, because I really want to be in a position to give an eyeful to any patient off the street, this is why I'm a part-time high-rise-based stripper, it is totally) without a) knocking and b) MORE THAN ONCE.

I will actually be filing a complaint about this, on the advice of my mother who is a (former) nurse for the same hospital.

I will also mention the timekeeping aspect of the whole thing. I mean, if you tell me to be there by 7:30 for a 7:45 appointment and I move heaven and earth to get there by 7:35 in surprisingly heavy rush hour traffic, I do actually expect to not cool my heels for another 29 minutes before I'm seen. And it turns out that $hospital has a policy of not making patients wait (at least without explanation) for more than 15 minutes. So, you know, THERE WE ARE.

Also, dear examining person whose name, rank, and serial number I never got because I don't routinely bring a car battery, ten feet of wire, and a pair of alligator clips to my cardiology appointments, maybe next time you do an EKG you'd like to actually EXAMINE your patient first? But I do realise that you were very startled by my yips of pain when you crushed the goddamn wand into extremely thick, extremely painful scar tissue. I tend to make loud noises when shit hurts. SORRY ABOUT THAT.

I am almightily pleased that my car has nary a sign of injury to show for my use of it as a crushing weapon. Not entirely sure what happened to Asshat McDickBag's car, but I did see paint loss. And I genuinely have no sympathy whatsoever. He (or she) chose to park in a space too small for his car (as determined by the giant, roof-supporting pole on the other side of the space) rather than looking for a better spot on another level ... I still need to get into my car. This parking garage is great and all, but I don't want to live here.

The irony is that the garage is one of the ones with those u-shaped double-line dividers with a shedload of room in them so you can't park too close to someone else without trying, AND it had the lines on the walls as well so you could aim your car appropriately. After years of trying to park at Westwood Village (motto: our parking places are 6 inches too small for anyone's car!) I sort of wanted to have sex with whoever designed the paint setup for this garage. And someone still managed to not be able to park.

Every day brings me one step closer to a cabin in the woods and a shotgun, it really does.

I'm thinking again about giving up social media. I feel totally alienated by it, honestly - I feel like I so rarely have something to say to someone else's LJ posts that I never comment, I've been slapped down one too many times by a fandom I tried to participate in to want to try to join in that conversation again, Facebook confuses me, and Twitter is composed of people who like everyone else more than they like me, so what exactly is the rush to beat myself up over social media? I can beat myself up over everything else I've ever done, including (but not limited to!)

1. Sitting next to someone I find VERY unstable in Group tonight and saying that I had spent the last week being a giant ragemonster. That ended well.
2. Not being able to force myself to interact with family members and a former student when I want to, if only to try to pretend for ten seconds that the dysfunction in these relationships isn't me.
3. Being Judgey McDoucherson if left to my own devices but turning into Zen Master Cass when confronted with my father doing the exact same thing I would do if he hadn't done it first.
4. Needing to stop being Team Mom for 30 minutes if only to take care of myself, emotionally, because half the people I associate with regularly aren't able or willing to reciprocate the emotional support I believe I give them.
5. Not cultivating a better relationship with Sane!Coworker because emotionally supporting MentalIssues!Coworker (not the one I have dubbed Initial) is so much more rewarding to Team Mom Me.
6. Not getting off my ass and doing things I don't want to because I will be unable to resolve the problem and therefore why not just fuck it up more upfront, like paying the life insurance, contacting the car insurance, getting a new dentist, talking to Sallie Mae. Continuing to not pay any of those will end well.
7. Liking to talk so much that I interrupt people because they've made me think of something and I'm excited and want to share it.
8. Not extending to other people the possibility that they have the same issues I claim to have and that's the real reason why I haven't gone to lunch with Phil or Josh this month despite their promises that this was a monthly think.
9. Not being able to muscle past my issues by sheer force of will.
10. Having issues at all.

So with that kind of busy schedule, I should stop beating myself up over things other people are doing and just get back to home-grown crazy. Think local!

On the bright side, if the problem with the website that I've been trying to fix for months turns out to be application-pool related, I will consider myself the most brilliant networking motherfucker to ever network. And also, I still have to call Integra and let them know that one of their techs is never, ever to be dispatched to us ever again because I refuse to be treated like a not-very-intelligent dirty sock by someone who intends to keep me as a client, and also they need to fix what he fucking broke.

And if the problem does turn out to be that we have, essentially, two routers in chain to each other (I don't know why, don't ask me, I don't do this shit, I would question my life choices if I were treating a print server box as a second router and didn't have it hooked up to the printer) I will require that someone crown me god of networking, Integra fire the most recent tech, and Crystaltech fire everyone I have spoken to before today, and then sacrifice them on an altar to my awesome.

That, I look forward to. It shall be glorious.

Now I'm gonna listen to the crows pace around on my roof for a while (it sounds like Hannibal crossing the Alps if you want to know) and then go to bed.

The Avengers made me realise that Civil War (and registration) didn't go NEARLY far enough.

( Cut preemptively because probably spoilers )

( Irrelevant postscript to the whole business. )

1. Favorite childhood book?
The one I think is my favourite NOW from then was probably Where The Wild Things Are, but the question sort of assumes that I have only read five books and don't, for example, remember loving the hell out of Madeleine L'Engle or Beverly Cleary or the Boxcar Children or Walter Farley or Dr. Seuss or Shel Silverstein or other things by Maurice Sendak or Susan Cooper or a whole host of other things I have read and loved.

... fuck it, I only read five books and my favourite book was Dick and Jane. Still is. The rest of this meme's gonna be pointless, isn't it?

2. What are you reading right now?
A book on Python, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, The Land of Painted Caves, a Lucky style guide, The Children's Crusade (Avengers), Snowcrash because I'm the only person who's never read Stephenson, Cry The Beloved Country, The Barbarian Conversion, and some books on the religious revivals of the early-mid 19th century. Thank Christ I finished Sade: A Biography, because it was BORING. And, of course, Man's Rage For Chaos, the book that will NEVER DIE.

3. What books do you have on request at the library?
I don't really do libraries. This does mean that I own more than a few books for only a matter of days or weeks.

4. Bad book habit?
Buying books. Never being able to buy only ONE book. Buying books I will never read. Judging books by their cover.

5. What do you currently have checked out at the library?
I suppose technically Special Topics and some book I can't remember the name of that I really should start because it's my next book group book are out from the library because the group is run by the library.

6. Do you have an e-reader?
Nope. Or, very broadly, yes, in the sense that I do read novel-length fanfic on my computer.

7. Do you prefer to read one book at a time, or several at once?
I'm someday hoping to know where all the books I'm reading ARE.

8. Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog?
Yes and then back again. I stopped reading books essentially, as my free time diminished not long after I started blogging and then I started reading them again lately because reading social media is not my favourite thing. Also, due to job change, I feel like I now actually have uninterrupted time to read. It's awesome.

9. Least favourite book you read this year (so far)?
Sade: A Biography. The book is well researched but it's a somewhat suspect translation, to me, and also, it turns out that the Marquis was VERY FUCKING BORING INDEED, which I would not have expected. Also, I tried to read 120 Days of Sodom once and got about two pages in before I really wanted to throw up (the ... count, I think, who apparently has never felt the need to practise anal hygiene AT ALL) so I don't exactly have a spoogefest over the Marquis and his AMAZEBALLS literary talent, unlike the author of this book. And it turns out that in real life he was basically a whiny child.

Note that I have this opinion after reading a book by someone who clearly faps to the wonderful transgressiveness of the Marquis. THIS IS A BAD BOOK.

10. Favorite book you’ve read this year?
Uh. Probably either the two Morning Glory TPBs that my comics dealer made me buy or else Colour. I haven't read a lot of really great stuff this year yet. I did like Blood's A Rover but The Cold Six Thousand was so unmitigatably fucking terrible that it's hard to say I liked the third book in the trilogy after reading the second, you know?

11. How often do you read out of your comfort zone?
Rarely. I mean, my comfort zone with reading is large and eclectic as is, and I won't say that there's not, like, a self-help book or an investment manual that would just make me spooge myself with glee, but it seems unlikely. And beyond that, I have no idea what a comfort zone is, literarily. If you're really a fan of a certain genre maybe reading outside of that is outside of your comfort zone, but I don't have a comfort zone apparently.

12. What is your reading comfort zone?
apiphile says it best: "books which don't suck".

13. Can you read on the bus?
Interesting fact! I can read on the bus if I am not facing forward and/or windows are open. Otherwise, recipe for instant nausea, just add Cass. But I can read in cars where I am facing forward, so GO FIG.

14. Favorite place to read?
At home. Not in bed, though, as I fall asleep and I hate looking like someone's been hitting me when the book falls on my face.

15. What is your policy on book lending?
It depends on the person. I lend books to people where I know I will never see the book again but don't mind (if I really mind, I will actually buy a copy of the book for that person) such as graeae and my mum. If I loan to my dad, I'll get it back eventually. If I loan to pretty much anyone else, I have given it away in my head.

This policy would have stood me in good stead to remember when I loaned a book group friend 10 graphic novels (which are NOT cheap!) two years ago and I'm not sure how to say "Hey, remember that several hundred dollars of books I loaned you? Yeah, I can't afford to replace them, so I need you to give them back, because I did not actually give them to you."

16. Do you ever dog-ear books?
Not much. I'm more likely to write ... *reads next question*

17. Do you ever write in the margins of your books?
Yes. I underline too. That said, I generally dislike marginalia and underlining (and highlighting is OF SATAN) so I really really really am involved in a book if I mark it up.

18. Not even with text books?
Depends on the text book. See above re: engaged in the book.

19. What is your favourite language to read in?
The only one I know, which is English. I read technical books too, and I don't promise that I understand them because they are often written in a language I don't know. Or about a language I don't know.

20. What makes you love a book?
VAGUE. I have loved books that were terrible, I have loved books that were brilliant, I have loved books despite their faults, I have loved books for their faults. I guess I would go with "good story, good characters with good motivations, and something that feels unique about the book." And by "good motivations" I don't mean that their motivations were good, I mean that they weren't motivated by, like, the logic of "suddenly pregnant MUST DEFEND THIS STRANGE PLACE I HAVE FOUND MYSELF." Believable motivations, I suppose.

Actually, some of the best books have totally objectionable characters where you can understand their motivating force even if you don't agree with it at all. (These are the characters I like to write, so I'm biased.)

21. What will inspire you to recommend a book?
Not much. I hate it when people recommend books, generally, and I question whether I'm a good judge of books people would like, so I rarely recommend. The book and the person have to both be standout in my head. Or, the person has to be willing to read anything, like my sister-in-law.

22. Favorite genre?
Genres are so mainstream.

23. Genre you rarely read (but wish you did)?
What is this I don't even.

24. Favourite biography?
Not Sade: A Biography, anyway. Atomic Farmgirl had a fascinating premise and suffered from not fitting its premise. I quite liked This Republic of Suffering, even if it's not really a biography. Heroin: How to Stop Time From A to Z fascinates me, so let's go with that. Also, it's in the bathroom so I reread bits of it often. Biography is not one of my favourite genres, though I do read a number of them.

Looking at a later question, I realised: Michael Collins.

25. Have you ever read a self-help book?
Yes, but I doubt I liked it. Someone gave me the book, practically at gunpoint, and the thing about self-help books is that they're so rarely YOUR self-help.

26. Favourite cookbook?
The Discworld cookbook, probably. Or the one that my mum put together where she copied a bunch of her recipes including my favourites. That was an awesome gift. I also like the Australian Women's Weekly cookbooks I have, and I want to use White Trash Cooking more than I do.

27. Most inspirational book you’ve read this year (fiction or non-fiction)?
Colour, probably, and Michael Collins probably. They were both GREAT.

28. Favorite reading snack?
Tea?

29. Name a case in which hype ruined your reading experience.
I'm so hipster that when there's hype I avoid the book like the plague. This is why I haven't read The Hunger Games.

30. How often do you agree with critics about a book?
I almost never read reviews.

31. How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews?
BWAHAHAHA, I used to be an editor. I have NO SHAME about bad reviews if the book was bad. That said, this does imply that I review.

32. If you could read in a foreign language, which language would you chose?
Fuck if I know. German? German has lots of great words in it.

33. Most intimidating book you’ve ever read?
Man's Rage For Chaos. It's not intimidating so much as "so much more complex than anything else I have ever read, written using words that *I* don't know the meaning of a lot of the time, in a discipline (philosophical art theory, I guess) that I have no grounding in, written during a time that was a lot less culturally-diverse than now so I keep wanting to argue with the examples provided because my life is different." But someday I will defeat that motherfucker, and then I will have to reread it to try to get it to make sense. I THINK I know what the author is saying, and he does make a compelling argument, but it's hard, yo.

34. Most intimidating book you’re too nervous to begin?
Godel Escher Bach probably. I keep avoiding starting it and I don't know why because I bought that motherfucker. I WANT to read it, I just HAVEN'T.

35. Favorite Poet?
Oh fuck no. I don't do enough poetry to have a favourite one. Or Rashid Husayn because he rocks.

36. How many books do you usually have checked out of the library at any given time?
None.

37. How often have you returned books to the library unread?
The last time I checked a book out, I was probably 15.

38. Favorite fictional character?
+++ Whoops! Here Comes The Cheese! +++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Error At Address: 14, Treacle Mine Road, Ankh-Morpork +++ !!!!! +++ Oneoneoneoneoneone +++ Redo From Start +++

Which is a fancy way of saying that question has no semantic value as that implies I can pick one.

39. Favourite fictional villain?
SEE. ABOVE. WITH ADDED MELON. I like a good villain even more than a hero!

40. Books I’m most likely to bring on vacation?
Ones I'm trying to read.

41. The longest I’ve gone without reading.
Without reading books for pleasure, probably weeks at a time. I know that a couple years ago when I was finishing my web design degree I was spotty about any other reading.

42. Name a book that you could/would not finish.
That terrible academic book by Norman Cantor that was supposedly about the Black Death leaps to mind.

43. What distracts you easily when you’re reading?
SHRIEKING.

44. Favorite film adaptation of a novel?
Fight Club? I DON'T HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS OH MY GOD.

45. Most disappointing film adaptation?
The later Harry Potter books. "Let's leave out this plot entirely so we can add a totally unnecessary dragonfight that wasn't onscreen in the first place!"

46. The most money I’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?
Probably a couple hundred, not including any time I needed to get a whack of textbooks.

47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?
Never.

48. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?
Stop permanently would be only if it was a terrible book. And my standards of terrible are pretty low - I AM going to finish the Land of Painted Caves, after all, and that book is awful.

49. Do you like to keep your books organized?
Only in a sense that I am the only person to understand.

50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?
Keep, keep, keep!

51. Are there any books you’ve been avoiding?
Like a bad date or something? Uh, yeah, but not because the books have done anything bad, usually. It's more because a book on the science of dreaming sounds great, I buy it, then it languishes for 10 years while other things, more shiny and more tarty and more urgent, come along.

52. Name a book that made you angry.
Three Cups of Tea made me want to punch my relationship to America in the face. So did The Road From Ar Ramadi. In a totally different way, River Horse made me quite angry, but I wanted to punch the author for being a pretentious twat in that case.

53. A book you didn’t expect to like but did?
Good in Bed, by Jennifer Weiner.

54. A book that you expected to like but didn’t?
At Swim, Two Boys. I don't know how you can make gay boys in early Republican Ireland, set against the backdrop of the struggle for independence and identity and with bonus World War I awful, but that book managed it.

I also hated In The Wake of the Plague, but that was because it was wrong in so many ways.

55. Favorite guilt-free, pleasure reading?
Discworld, Elizabeth Moon, David Weber, Janet Evanovich.

My ideas are the stupidest, yo. :)

Pursuant to the notion that I want to do a "working" modification to the steampunk outfit I discussed in my last post, I spent some valuable staff meeting time today thinking about a) what I wanted to do and b) how to make it multi-purpose.

I came up with an arc reactor. EVERYONE LOOK SURPRISED.

So here's my thought. Using something like this as a tutorial/guide (it's delightfully vague - "Now you have to make 10 little brass tab thingies. These sit on top of the clear ring after it has been placed into the spider frame assembly and then they are then wrapped with 22ga copper wire.") make an arc reactor.

Next, using Iron Man's left arm as a suggestion, create a "weapon" that is powered by the reactor. Because it's important to be both clever and steamy, I was thinking that I could use a leather glove and maybe get real exciting and do some scale mail on it and do a second, narrower, reactor ring inside to light up and give the effect of the weapon powering up and possibly even firing.

But wait, there's more!

I still think that an eyepatch targeting system would ROCK, and I think the key there is that I either need to get contacts or build it to fit over the lens of my glasses. Going without glasses is NOT AN OPTION. I'm legally blind and if it's further than 3 inches away I can't see it in any detail. That would be fun at a crowded con. So I'm thinking some kind of jeweler's loupe attached to an eyepatch, with a laser pointer assembly for a sight.

And then! (Remember, I did say multi-purpose.) Create a power pack in a small cross-body bag, with the thought that I could hook that into the hand and eyepatch to play mix-n-match. I mean, seriously, Iron Man is very awesome and all, but ... yeah. I suspect that an arc reactor in a steampunk setting is kind of like a Bluetooth headset in the real world.

There was another piece I thought of - oh right. If I really felt like getting carried away, I could also try making an actual movie-verse Iron Man gauntlet so that I had real mix-n-match ability. We shall see.

(None of this is going to get done, you realise. I just think it would be awesome.)

I'm stuck in a weird slacktime at work today - we turned over a bunch of projects to the printers, all newsletters are out, and basically I can either update the database or ... not.

Since what I would RATHER be doing is be at home working on the corset of insanity, I figured I could blog that project and also blog how my New Years resolutions are going.

( New Years Update )

( Because no one needs another steampunk outfit )

Dear SJ crusaders:

Fuck off. Thanks!

See, here's the thing, and here's why you're really not getting the places you'd like to think you are, at least in my world.

1) You're making assumptions based on no evidence.
- I can, in fact, claim that something proves someone is a "real boy" without ever having in my thought process the contents of their pants. Because guess what, I don't care in the slightest what's in your pants. I can, in fact, be referring to Peter Pan, or to simply the humour found when someone who is godlike-pretty (Geeface, I heart you!) does something stereotypically "boy", or even using a sarcastic grammatical construct for humorous effect.

2) You're asking people to prove a negative.
- What would it take to prove that I'm not "a transphobic creep"? Do I need to get a letter signed by graeae's partner stating that I'm not? What about my friend J who's not on LJ? What about the coworker I had at my last job who was trans? What about the person I knew in college who was trans? Will it suffice if I contact everyone I've ever had any sort of social relationship with, ever, and get a sworn statement indicating whether I'm a good person or a bad person in their minds? Should I talk to a counsellor about the periods of gender dysphoria I have and get them to state that I don't hate myself, therefore I don't hate trans people? Basically, until and unless you catch me in my KKK robes, please refrain from making unfounded accusations, particularly since whatever provoked this person was not me saying "OMG THERE IS NOTHING BUT CIS EVERYTHING ELSE IS HORRIBLE AND AGAINST GOD." And I can say that with categorical certainty because I have never said or thought that.

Do gay people count to prove that I'm not an asshat? There's a reason that McArcus was my token straight minority for a while - how many gay people in my social circles prove that I'm not actually queer unfriendly? Or can I just state that I'm bi and canvas LJ for anyone who remembers my relationship with srichard for proof that this is true?

But there's the rub: there is no way whatsoever for me to prove that I don't think that thought, because ... you're firing from the hip without waiting to find out whether I'm actually sending out emails about the n****r in the White House to claim that I'm racist. You're not asking me about my stance on social issues - you are, instead, coming in with an accusation. And you don't know me.

3) There's a world of difference between "this bothers me" and "this is what you are".
- I made a comment a while back in theferrett's journal about how I frequently feel third-sexed because I don't behave like "a girl" but I don't feel like "a boy". roniliquidity pulled me up short by pointing out, politely, that doing that is a way of avoiding the issue of demonstrating that "femininity" is beyond simply what the religious right would have us believe, and she was right to do so. I haven't made that claim since.

Strangely, however, when someone takes the time to contact me off-thread and make accusations, I'm a lot less inclined to listen to your bullshit.

4) No one speaks for anyone else, even if you are a member of the group. Frequently, you are not.
- This was most pronounced with Racefail a few years back, where a bunch of white people critiqued other white people about not including characters of colour in their works (and yes, I am very well aware that there were participants in that who were not white; I'm only speaking of a section of the population that had that argument). I don't, actually, think that it's your business to come riding in and tell me that, as another white person, I'm using terms you, as a white person, don't like. Tough shit. I pick terms of respect with the best information I have, and I will alter them if I find that people in the group I'm speaking of don't like them, but I find it twee that you think I'm not being PC if I say, for example, that someone is black rather than someone is a person of colour. Are you, then, the sole arbiter of what people in that group prefer to be called? I should tell you right now that I utterly dislike being referred to as Caucasian, but have no problem with white, and think that, in my particularly mutt-genetics case, "Scandinavian-American" or "Italian-American" are misleading, particularly since they are the least true about my genome. "White American" makes me want to throw up a lot. So there you are, that's the term to use for everyone who shares my skin colour!

However, and this is key, I won't actually kill you if you call me Caucasian. I'll just point out that I don't like it, but I won't die, and nor will anyone else.

Because it is not possible to find out what every single person in the group being spoken of would prefer to be called, I find it utterly offensive that people try to define other people's language for them. This isn't so much the intention argument as it is the respect argument. Unless I start hauling off and calling trans people chicks with dicks or whatever the fuck the insulting group terms are (I literally have no idea and I cannot possibly be arsed to google for it) maybe you could do me a favour and step the fuck down until I do something that egregious? You're not going to get me to adopt your standard if you come at me with "OMG BIGOT" as your opening salvo, and personally, I don't think I or anyone else deserves it until and unless you have an actual pattern of behaviour to work with.

I am also fairly sure that the people who know me would, in fact, not hesitate to yank me up short if there was something I was saying or doing that gave the wrong impression of me, and from them, I'll listen to it, because they actually KNOW ME.

5) Whatever happened to living it?
- I cannot, literally, fathom the mindset that says "If I just yell loud enough, frequently enough, everyone will change their minds!" First: no, they won't. Second: if I really were shopping for a new thought system, what about yours is more compelling than anyone else's? I don't really like shouting at total randos about the impurity of their thoughts, and I also like having the asshats self-identify by continuing to espouse their anti-Semitic bullshit or whatever - I don't actually believe that anyone's going to change their mind if I just shout at them for a while, and certainly not if they're actually a bigot.

But here's the thing: you can do a LOT more to help your cause if you cultivate relationships with people first. Or if you just LIVE it - I've said for a long time that the one factor that makes me want to be Catholic is the priest that I had as a child at Catholic school. It certainly isn't the current Church leadership, and it certainly isn't the evangelicals - it's seeing that man live his faith, and I really mean live it. It was a far more compelling argument in favour of faith than, literally, anything I have seen before or since.

Coming around and levelling off-thread insults at me won't change my mind about anything (except that not only are you a crap writer, in my professional judgment, but you're also a crap human as well) and it certainly wouldn't make me change my mind if I really were a transphobic creep. Maybe my problem is that I don't have enough white guilt and whatever else guilt to care that everyone thinks and speaks exactly the same way I do?

WAIT. Maybe my problem is that I don't assume everyone else is a goddamn dick! Yes, I think that might be it!

No love whatsoever,
Cass

The announcement, at last, that seemed so very far away! The announcement that would not arrive!

This announcement is now here!

City of the Straits is now open for applications. Go here to apply. Seriously. Go now. Go do it.

Three crucial points here. We will be accepting applications until we have reached our player limit of 15. The opening date of the game will be announced once we have accepted the applications of 10 players. Address ANY questions about the game to the mod box, not to an individual mod's email (or post office box, or twitter, or last.fm page, or whatever). The mod address is cityofthestraits AT gmail.com.

Also, seriously, go app the game. Happy Fun Ball wants you to. Trust Happy Fun Ball.

See, I find a joke I like, and I stick to it, so this post is called "City Of The Straits: This Time It's Remarkably Personal."

As graeae and I have been writing up the City Of The Straits materials - which have gone multimedia, worryingly enough - we've been talking a lot about our vision of this game. In a lot of ways, this feels like a totally new game, something we've never done before, and that's only partly because it is new, it is undone, and the future is as yet unwritten.

In other ways, it feels like a new game, because this is the first game we've ever run, in the last seven years of near-constant gaming, where we decided to actually grow some balls about how we created games. We have a lot of history of success, and we have a lot of history of failure, as well, though we believe that most of our failures were ideas that flew too high too soon. It would be a lie to say that those failures have not coloured how we've handled recent games, though we did not tippy-toe in and anxiously try to direct people in the direction of the plot. And it would be wrong to say that our successes didn't tell us what we did right, even when ideas failed.

This time, we're not going there. This time, we will remember what works and what doesn't, but we're not starting from that posture of defence: this time, we hold in our hands our successes and our joys. This is our game, and we are developing it as we find meet and fit. We are endowing it with themes of magic and pain and diversity and the world around us and wreckage and hope and blood and laughter and all the things that drive us as writers and as creators. We're dialing it up to eleven on every front, and we have finally realised something true about this game, which is the purpose of this post.

This game is our Great American Epic.

Part of it is that we're throwing out canon. There is no canon here. We're not interested in canon - we're interested in guidelines, but we're interested in what people do with those guidelines, not whether someone can play to a type defined by someone else or not.

Part of it is we're no longer interested in what other people think of what we do. If you don't like the fact that half the characters are black, or half are women, or that at least one character is Jewish, that the game is set in Detroit and that we expect that to colour how people create characters, we're not interested in having you in our game. We spent too many years bowing to the implied - and sometimes spoken - wishes of a vocal minority to keep characters white, pretty, and male to be interested in listening any longer.

Part of it is that as we've been talking over our own characters, the themes that keep coming to mind are the ones that make up any good American Epic. When you can look at your character concept and see the theme that drove Steinbeck to write The Grapes Of Wrath, or the personality that created organised crime in this country, or the myth that powers our collective belief in the fundamentals of "being American", you can't say that you're not going to play to that.

Neither of us is willing to play a half-crippled character to appease anyone else, whether an author or a player, ever again. We play what we want to, ever and anon.

This post, however, is not a declaration of war. It is not a statement of defiance for the sake of defiance. It is, instead, an invitation to our players, both the ones we know of and the ones who would potentially join it, to start thinking in the terms we've been thinking in: we want diversity, we want personality, we want no fear, and we want courage.

I can promise this: every time we've said we're doing things differently, we've done that. This time is no exception. Though the game is open for nothing other than PB and name holds we want to spark conversation, and to start sharing what we're thinking of, what we're looking for, and what we want. The wiki is here. Yes, we bought a domain name. The game itself will take place on IJ.

The quick recap:
- It's a game set in Detroit with an ethnically diverse cast of characters. App what you want to play. We want people to play to the setting, but even more than that, we want passion.
- Apps submitted before the wiki is completed and the game is opened will be sent back. We're trying out letting people see our creation process.
- We're interested in, first, last, and always, personalities that have powers, not powers that have personalities.
- We're interested in your thoughts. We know a lot of people are waiting to app - tell us what you're thinking, what you'd like to see, what sparks for you. We make no promises, but we can tell you that we're bringing together more ideas and concepts than we ever have, and we want to know what that makes you think of.

Talk to us.

I have a seriously tempting, crazy idea.

I'm thinking of joining the Tea Party. Like, all officially and shit.

You can hit your away buttons now.

See, though, the thing is this: they claim this, on their website. "Tea Party Nation welcomes all patriots, regardless of gender, ethnicity or national origin to join us and help save this great country."

We can quibble about whether this is a "great" country or one that's really, really fucked up, but the thing is - there is utterly nothing about my politics, which are, at best, liberal, that makes me not-a-patriot.

According to Merriam-Webster, patriot means "one who loves his or her country and supports its authority and interests".

The fact that I'm not waging revolution in the streets suggests that I support America's authority and its interests. I don't love this country the way I love, say, gin, but I'm pretty sure it's preferable to living in Chad. Let's face it: all those things that people currently dismiss as "first-world problems"? I have those, and I have them because I live here. And I like them. So I'm happy living here.

I'm certainly happy living here because I don't have to deal with armed insurrection in the streets. I may not like the people who choose to become police officers, but I find a police presence is better than no police presence. I respect all significant laws of the land. I, in actions if not in words, respect America's authority by allowing it to have some say in what I do as I conduct my daily business. I don't, for example, evade my taxes, and I do carry the state licence that proves I can operate a motor vehicle.

So that's the first part of their statement out of the way.

They are concerned with gender, ethnicity, and national origin next; not a problem for me, since I'm Whitey McWhiterson, born right here in the US, and they don't seem to, on the face of it, have a problem with women in the ranks. That's out of the way.

To save this great country - well, again, we can quibble about whether it's great, but on the face of it, I like living here. So I'll concede that one on the basis of the rest of the argument.

See, I think this country needs saving too.

I think it needs saving from our pollution. I think it needs saving from fiscally-irresponsible corporations. Hell, I think it needs saving from corporations period. I think it needs saving from the fear-mongers and the hate-mongers, and the people who preach something they don't believe because they get money for pandering to the fears and hates of morons who can't figure out a gimmick to make a buck when they're smacked with it. I think it needs saving from people who think that the right to bear arms means the right to bear them right into Wal-Mart. I think it needs saving from the companies and individuals that tout America First and yet manufacture and sell products made overseas, to the detriment of the American economy and the workers at the bottom of the food chain. I think it needs saving from people who don't understand that what we pay for now is what we get later, and think that it's not worth paying for the health care or the education or the feeding or the support of someone who is not-them. I think it needs saving from greed, from hate, from inattention, from me-first, from not-in-my-backyard, from a national posture of arrogance, from the belief that enough armed people can effect a change somewhere we have no business being, from our dependence on oil, from the death penalty, from the people who want other people to shut up, from your god, and from Puritanism run amok.

I think it needs, above all, to be saved from ignorance, fear, and the beliefs of childhood. Life was easier when I wasn't making the decisions, sure! That doesn't mean that the 80s were a wonder time that should be brought back.

I think, therefore, that the Tea Party had better reconsider their welcoming statement on their website and think about whether they want me in their party - because you bet your ass I wouldn't be working for their definition of what will save America. I'll be working for mine.

And I'll be doing it under their umbrella. In their names.

Why not? They're doing all kinds of shit in my name - I want my name back. I want the right to call myself a patriot back. I want people to not assume, if I call myself a patriot (I generally don't, but that's not the point) that patriot means I want to burn the niggers and the fags and the ragheads. (And the Tea Party had better not try to argue that they don't, because their actions speak otherwise.)

Most of all, I don't want to see their America. Their America is not one I know, recognise, or love, but I seem to be trapped here with a significant number of total blowhards who think they get to dictate out of their own fear and moronic idiocy what I think and do and know and care about. And that shit cannot stand.

So, since the Tea Party and I are in agreement according to their welcoming statement, I think I should join them. I want to save America too.

HAY GAIZ, GUESS WHAT?

So, it turns out that if you run into Lost Tribe Guy, even if you're talking on the phone to your mom (who, btw, will be VASTLY entertained by the whole thing) and you decide to hang up and talk to him, the conversation will last an hour.

And further, it will be an awesome hour: lo, filled with seriousness, with comedy, with references to Andy Samberg, with discussion of whether allowing one's roots to show makes one look like a crack ho.

But verily, there is a point that it will turn out has been forgotten, and that point is this: IT IS SUNNY OUT.

Let me tell you, internets, I have the weirdest-shaped sunburn I've ever had! I assume that I don't have sunburn on my left shoulder because of my head, because it's all over my right shoulder, the right side of my chest, and my feet.

Oh, and the right side of my FACE, too!

Ouch. Lost Tribe Guy is le awesome. Sunburns are not.