I was reading blog posts on Vincent Baker's website*, and this thread got me wondering about a game where the action-of-play consists of what cloths you wear.

I don't have a lot of development to that idea, which is the big reason I'm posting about it here rather than commenting about it there. (Free to a good home, because I don't have one, and all that.) But like, is color significant? Tshirt versus button-down? What is the goal here, what kinds of actions are legal moves and what are just kind of irrelevant?

* they did Dogs in the Vineyard and Mobile Frame Zero, and also other tatterpigs that I'd have to look up to tell you anything about.

Honestly though, Neon Genesis Evangelion feels really relatable right now. Hedgehog dilemas all over the damn place.

*agressively baricades self in room*

Hot take: yearly Christmas letters are the pre-internet version of the "Facebook highlight reel" effect.

Tired: Stress-impulse-buying myself a LEGO set I don't need while out shopping on an unrealistic deadline I set for myself.

Hired: Impulse-buy LEGO baseplate fifteen inches to a side. (This one's not the set, they're separate items.)

If, months or years down the line, I start identifying as "agender" (or similarly NB) -- I'm going to say that I first knew it back in October of 2017, I just didn't know that I knew it yet.

Half-baked (if that?) concept:

Superpowers are a thing. They kick in when you're, I don't know, like twenty or something, and are virginity-powered. They are explicitly available to literally anyone, and the group of people the setting/media/story follows is a balanced (50%~50%, more than three of each) mix of male and female.

I was picturing this as otherwise-completely-modern-world urban fantasy, probably with magical girl flavorings.

(Directly inspired by Sir Galahad as described here.)

Teachable

Taxes happened today. It only took two and a half hours and all week and a not-subtle kick in the pants. The hab person came by today and sat around while I did my taxes but they got done.

Here are some things that did not happen today:

• Laundry

• Food. I eventually called a break on taxes to go grab something to eat so that I had anything at all to eat today. Yes, it was that necessary.

  I am perfectly capable of making food. It just wasn't happening today.

• Dishes, or other cleaning/chores
• Writing. (To be fair, "writing didn't happen today" has been the default state for the past month. And all year. And most of last year, actually.)

I did get one other blog post out today, plus (presumably) this one. I can't tell if that is because I had more blog energy than usual today, or I'm low energy and my standards are lower.

Potato

(Content note for implied gore)

Blog heroes

I want to get this out, mostly because if I leave it it will just turn into another "putting it off for seven months" thing.

Somewhere on Penguin Pete's blog, I picked up the idea of "blog heroes". I don't remember where, and the last time I went looking this post stalled for months so the heck with that. The gist of it is that if you have some bloggers who you respect and pay attention to and want to emulate, you'll be a better blogger. Even if your blog is nothing like theirs.

At the moment, I have two. Coyote, who blogs at theacetheist, and good ol' Penguin Pete himself. Coyote is active but sporadic, while Pete closed his blog down a while ago, which is a pity.

Yes, That Too looks to be in danger of becoming another such hero. Not yet, but perhaps soon.

Four of us at work are some sort of GSRM type, counting me.  (Mostly S.  Well, everything I know says S, but with one person that's technically an inferrence, so mostly.)

I find it slightly funny, because it's this grocery store in rinkydink rural nowhere, where you stereotypically don't talk about this stuff.  There's like thirty or forty employees, and that's including the family in "family owned and opperated".  And yet there are four of us.  Just that I know of!

And yes, we're close enough liberal Ithaca that I think nothing of hopping on the bus for forty minutes each way to go to a concert or a meeting or do some shopping or whatever.  But we're not in Ithaca, and this town is very... republican.

Checkpoint!

My brother hit a new threshold on his relationship script the other night. He got engaged!

Politics later. (And they apply and I could talk about them. If I had to.) This is worth celebrating.

"I'm just reloading"

I'm not dead. I did, however, completely abandon blogging for a while. Long enough to trigger my contingiency.

I'm in the midst of re-conceptualizing what this blog is about. Bear with me.

Don't get your hopes up

If you're reading this, it means I haven't been by my blog for a full year. I find it extremely unlikely that I'd do such a thing, unless I was doing it on purpose, in which case I imagine I would have disabled this thing.

Given that's the case, I'd like you to assume that I haven't been able to do something about it. In fact, go ahead and assume I'm dead.

Unless the post right before this is about me going away for a while. Then you should yell at me for being such an idiot.

#3870 Cromulence

Two questions, closely related:

Is it cromulent to apologize for not knowing something; and

Is that a correct use of "cromulent"?

Mom said something which–to her–seemed completely innocuous to me when I came downstairs just now. She said, "You can bring whatever you're doing downstairs and just do it down here." Which really just shows kinda the misunderstanding going on.

As a general idea, that's a fine idea. But "what I was doing" was inextricably tied to the computer. A lot of what I do is, for better or for worse. And since the computer I use currently is a fixed-location type, that means I couldn't bring it down. Which I'm not terribly fond of either, I'd prefer more-mobile access, but it is what it is.

Which brings me in a roundabout way to paper, I guess. Paper's good as an artifact for consumption, as reading fiction (but not certain kinds of scholarly/intellectual-type work); and for certain kinds of reference; and at least some kinds of note-taking— I rather like editing with pen on paper, honestly. Not saying that it's efficient, but that's how things are. But paper's crummy for arguing, a halfway-decent internet discussion thread is much better, so long as the people involved aren't dicks— and if they are, the chance of a decent argument is right out no matter what. And paper's terrible for storage, as my recent experience with using both version-control and paper on the same writing project has shown me. Dear god is that a nightmare-in-waiting.

Now where did my point meander off to OH YE— no, wait, false alarm, I don't actually remember. Drat. Well, I guess this is just a drivel anyways. I dunno.

Absurd thought of the day:

I'd play Monopoly with the addition of an "earthquake damage table". (See playing to lose, roundabout here-ish.)

Review: Frozen

I just watched Frozen the other night, and AAAHH!

Oh--I should get this out of the way early. I make no pretense of avoiding spoilers in my reviews.

Okay, the movie was merely okay. Maybe a six? (This brings to mind that I don't have a baseline for movies reviews. I'll have to fix that.) Not quite as good as I remember Tangled being, but I saw Tangled a while ago. Although it's possible I missed some early context that would have let me appreciate it more. But the music, gah, WEEEEEE!

Is Disney getting better at doing musicals, or am I at a temporal disadvantage of some sort for appreciating their older stuff--don't have context to appreciate it because I'm to young or like that? Or have I simply never heard it? Tangled and Frozen both had really good music.

But this is about Frozen, not Tangled.

Okay, first off, no villians. What? It's a Disney Musical with no villians. How weird is that? I guess there's a guy who's kind of a villian, but he's second-string stuff and more of a self-centered jerk than a real villian. (Although he acts really well, at least in-universe.)

Incidentally, kids: there's a moral about 'true love' and 'love at first sight' here. Pay attention to it.

For once, Disney has made a movie that approaches this 'true love' thing somewhat realistically. And I think they managed to double-subvert their romantic-movie conventions while they were at it.

Oh, Elsa's was the frozen heart healed by the act of true love, not Anna's. Just sayin'.

Final Verdict: A solid 6/10 for the movie itself--that was nothing much special, except maybe for Disney--but brought a 8/10 by the soundtrack. Though honestly, if you get the soundtrack, I recommend getting the movie; you should see them in context. I think the soundtrack is lurking at an above-nine "copy please" currently.

Review: Neil Gamian's Fortunately, the Milk

Neil Gamian's Fortunately, the Milk is a wonderfully preposterous bit of exquisite nonsense. Well. I say nonsense. Once you accept the time-traveling stegosaurus, and the goopy green space aliens, everything else makes perfect sense. (Well, except the piranhas.)

The father, the main character of the story, gets interrupted on the way back home with some milk—all-important for breakfast cereal and tea, you see—and in the course of his adventures ends up saving the world almost, but not quite, entirely by accident. Along the way he meets pirates, dinosaurs, aliens, space police, wumpires, and one Angry Volcano God. (But no piranhas.) He meets them all out of order, of course, and timey shenanigans are used multiple times to save the day. Twice, at the very least. (Hey, that's high for (what's nominally) a children's book.)

The book is illustrated in a Seuss-like manner. Well—. The illustrations don't look at all like Seuss's work, but otherwise they've got the same kind of absurdity look to them. Unfortunately, as I'm writing this review from memory, I don't have the name of the illustrator at hand.

Final Verdict: 8/10. Well worth reading, but may not be worth buying if you don't have kids who'd enjoy it. I liked it, but I don't expect I'll be buying a copy. I've been very spoiled by fanfic. (Mind you, I probably 'should' buy a copy, to support the existence of such books. But....)

Appendix π, "Monster Manual"

Bandersnatch

A fruminous creature, with incredibly strong arms and a long, downright extensible neck.

Fruminous Bandersnatch

Much like a Bandersnatch, except fruminous.

Cthu

Mad giants from the edge of unknown space. Half-dragon, half-octopus, and half-humanoid.

OpenId's big problem

If you really look at the comment box at the bottom of any of my posts, you'll find a whole bunch of ways to say "I'm a human". One of these is OpenID. I like OpenID, and its cousin OAuth, on general principle. People shouldn't have to be hooked up to some suspect overlord like facebook or google to participate, you know?

(On consideration, my "reasons" for not allowing "anonymous" comments may be suspect. Maybe I should allow that. But that's not related to my point.)

Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror made a recent post about "install our apps" pop-ups. You know the kind:

One of the points he makes is that with so many apps, apps kinda need to be free. Otherwise, they're overpriced. But that brings us to this old privacy-freak adage:

When apps are free, you are the product.

OpenID and OAuth are intended to help solve this problem. And that, in a fit of paradoxical irony, is their problem. The very thing they're supposed to do, is the very thing the people who'd have to adopt it don't want.

Without huge, hyper-driven use demand, they're doomed.