Revelation

So I'm really enjoying Alastair Reynolds' REVELATION SPACE trilogy. I'm nearly done with the second book, REDEMPTION ARK and I'm very impressed with Reynolds' writing skills. The far future backdrop has a lot of scope to it and feels very credible to me, and I enjoy his characterizations.

Reynolds seems to stay away from the heavier emotions. Neither sex nor romance play much part in his characterizations - often times they're part of a particular individual's history, or a couple of characters may already have an established relationship - but Reynolds seems to have no interest in that soap opera staple, the romantic arc. Still, I like his characters enough that I don't feel they need that added level of intensity.

I am, however, completely disenchanted with one particular aspect of the Clavain/Felka interaction - this whole "is she or isn't she his daughter" mystery is just nonsense. This whole thing takes place 600 years in the future; technology has made HUGE advances, and both Clavain and Felka are Conjoiners - members of a cybernetically advanced human faction very similar to Star Trek's Borg. And we're supposed to accept that in three hundred years of wondering, Clavain has never had a fucking paternity test run? Please.

Other than that, though, I like the story a lot.

The critics speak!

One of them, anyway. I hadn't even looked at the Amazon Kindle pages for my various e-novels in a long time, but today I swung by each and was astonished to see the following reader review, on TIME WATCH:

Don't waste your time on "Time Watch"., February 11, 2010
By Kelly Abney (Bentonville, AR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Time Watch (Kindle Edition)
A single, one-dimensional, unlikeable character who makes his way through a nearly incoherent plot. The author attempts to create a futuristic "slang" language that is periodically used to further confuse the reader. Throw in a little cyber-sex with a computer avatar and you start to understand where this review is headed. If the author had even started to develop our time traveling hero's character and then added a few plot lines to expand the story's basic premise, the book's hypothesis might have been more interesting.

Interestingly, TIME WATCH is pretty much my top seller, as such things go, and among my novels, probably my second favorite. I like the shifting narrative viewpoint and the relatively simple central story/character arc, and enjoy the (hopefully) unexpected romance that shows up in the story's third act.

However, I can't argue with anything Ms./Mr. Abney has said here. Presumably, he/she bought the book and are entitled to their opinion, as as TIME WATCH's protagonist is pretty much me, I certainly can't dispute the 'unlikeable' tag. Christ knows I am. As to one dimensional, well, I guess that's the risk you run when you essentially write about yourself. I chose to focus more on the story elements than developing 'Jim' overly, probably because I know Jim well and presumed the story of Jim getting hold of a time machine was more interesting than Jim himself. Which certainly could have been a mistake.

I will say that it seems Ms./Mr. Abney (Kelly is an indeterminate name; I'm not trying to be disrespectful) has some kind of personal issue with sexual depictions in their science fiction, and, well, I guess that happens. Sorry you didn't enjoy it, sir/ma'am. Maybe you'd like ZAP FORCE better.

And the beat goes on...

Just sent this to all the mods over at LouisvilleRPG.net:

These communications in the past have netted me little (except, when I'm communicating with Chris, a lot of insults - and, I know, I'm insulting with him, too, but I'm not trying to set any kind of example of civil behavior here, nor am I in any kind of self imposed position of authority/responsibility, so the burdens of presentation fall a little bit differently on him and I) but, what the hell:

I take some issue with the way this site is moderated, at least, in respect to my posts.

As a general issue, well, this is part of the Rulez:

"This site was founded on the principals of free speech. It will take a lot for us to warn you, let alone ban you.".

I call bullshit. It has taken very little for any of the mods to warn me, much less ban me.

I realize 'a lot' and 'very little' are both subjective terms, but, well, subjectively, I feel that my first two warnings were for, well, something falling short of 'a lot'. My third one... okay, I can see where that post might have come up to something approaching a reasonable standard of 'a lot'. But on the third one, I have two very specific objections:

(a) If I got warned, why didn't Cosmic J? His post prior to mine, to which I was responding, was as insulting as mine, and as specific in its intent.

(As a subheading of (a), CosmicJ has been pretty constant in his snarky sneering and pretty bold faced flame baiting, as can most recently be seen in response to my most recent Shouts. I realize he does his best to walk just this side of that fine line between, you know, being a just another fucking piece of shit douchebag and actually openly insulting anyone, but I would also like to say that if one is going to repress people on the grounds of uncivil behavior, as all of you are clearly enthusiastically on board for, he's earned some goddam repression. At least as much as I have. Probably more so.)

And (b) warning someone three weeks after the post goes up is just fucking bullshit, and while it's hard for any of you guys to surprise me with your behavior any more, well, that surprises me. No, the rules don't indicate there is any kind of statute of limitations, but jesus christ. Have some self respect. A warning coming in nearly a month after the fact is retarded.

Beyond all this, while all the Rulez are obnoxious in the extreme (and, given the level of snark Chris frequently indulges in with anyone who dares to disagree with him in a comment thread, extremely self serving to the point of hypocrisy, but, whatever, certainly I never expected anything else), this final one about how one cannot engage the mods in any kind of public debate in re: the Rulez, or the mods' often retarded, childish, biased, and self serving behavior, is egregiously so. If there is any one topic that should ALWAYS be germane on any moderated site, it is the behavior of the moderators, and the rules underlying the act of moderation. When you don't allow any kind of public debate on this stuff, you're truly setting yourself up as above and beyond any kind of repercussions.

You guys weren't elected and have not subjected yourself to ANY kind of limitations. You apparently serve for life, or until you feel like stepping down, there is no oversight, no one can appeal your often incredibly wrong headed and dumb ass rulings, and just to make sure you can do whatever you want without any consequences whatsoever, you make sure nobody can call you on any of your bullshit in any kind of forum where anyone else would see it.

I think at the very least, you should create a board where members can publicly post grievances and comments on how the mods behave and invite public debate. I also think all of you should be up for re-election after some set period. You can, and almost certainly will, discount everything I've said here. But if you're unwilling to subject your actions to public debate, and further unwilling to let the members of the site decide on whether or not they feel you're doing a good enough job to re-elect you to your positions, then, well, in addition to everything else you are, you're a bunch of gutless weenies, as well.

Sincerely,

Your pal,

Doc

Having already been banned once, I have a feeling my account at the site is going to be disappearing permanently any time now. So, y'know... for the record, and all that.

UPDATE:

Got these back. First is from Chris, the new (sociopathic) site owner:

We are above repercussions. We own the site.

No, we weren't elected. We own the site.

You continually seem to think this is a government of some sort. It isn't. This is our private residence. You're able to post on here because we say you can.

I hate to be like that. I really do. I hate submitting the site to the vagrancies of a single person's whim, including my own, which is why there's a committee of people chosen because they don't get along.

If this site were to become a primarily democratic forum, its first action would be to ban you.

Kisses,
Chris

AND, from CruelDespot, another mod:

Dear Doc,

I realize Cosmic J is also breaking the spirit of the rules, but frankly he is just better than you at skirting the limits without crossing the line.

This seems to be the pattern:
1) You make a snarky but legal comment
2) He makes a snarky but legal comment
3) You escalate into a rule-breaking insult, or back-seat mod comment
4) You get a warning.

This is probably annoying for you, but I'm not going to give him, or anyone, a warning unless they clearly violate the rules. You have clearly violated the rules 4 times that I know about, so you have gotten four warnings.

Your initial post of "I am that guy" was fine. Then Cosmic and team provoked you into explaining what you meant, which led you to complain about your mod warnings, which is a rule violation.

If I see Cosmic J or anyone else clearly violate the rules, I will warn them. Unless I'm not in the mood. Then I won't. I haven't taken any sort of sacred oath. It's a fucking website.

You seem to argue that our moderation of this site is not professional. You are correct. We are amateurs. Fortunately, we don't owe anything to you or any of the other site members. This is not a government entitlement. You don't have any rights here. Neither do I. Only Chris does, because he owns the site.

Since you don't mind spicing your PMs with personal insults, in conclusion, fuck you.

So here's what I said:

Okay, so I did what you wanted me to do: I complained through a PM. And, once again, what I got back was "Naaah naah naaah naaah, we can do whatever we want, so suck it".

For the record, any time you put yourself in a position of authority over others, you take on a responsibility to handle that authority fairly and well. Assuming, of course, that you are people with any pretensions towards civility and maturity, much less... to use a trite and near obsolete phrase that is probably meaningless to all of you except for CD... honor. Your excuses are childish and emotionally retarded, as well as, well, dishonorable and unjust. I suspect you all know that, except for Chris, who is apparently pathologically incapable of ANY level of self awareness that might include any sort of acknowledgment of error or imperfection.

Again, the stated rules are "It will take a lot for us to warn you, let alone ban you." I was warned for trivial, stupid shit that other members of this site would not have been warned for, and, following your rules, I have brought this up to you, as men of honor and good will, and your response is to tell me to fuck myself, because you aren't professional and you feel no obligation to be fair unless you're in the mood to be fair.

And you wonder why I think this is all futile.

This is not, in Chris' words, anyone's residence. It's a shared community and frankly, I don't give a fuck who 'owns' it. That's a child's argument. That's what the fat spoiled kid who owns the bat and ball says, when he insists that he always be allowed to get on base no matter how badly he whiffs. That's... well, it's actually pretty loathsome and despicable. If that's cool with you, well, rock on with your bad selves, I guess.

Chris also advises that if the site became a democracy, the first thing the site would communally do is ban me. That's probably true. But he, and you, are frankly deranged if you think the list would stop with me.

I knew exactly where all this was going the instant I heard Chris had bought the site. Chris, who threw a monster hissy fit at being shown to be wrong about something in a thread, and deleted his account, and who refused to come back until he could be that fat kid who owned the bat and ball. None of this is any surprise to me.

Well, no. I honestly expected better from CD and CA. But people often disappoint me, so, whatever.

I'm pretty much done with this PM bullshit. It accomplishes absolutely nothing except, apparently, to aggrandize your already monstrous egos.

Thanks for all the fish.

D.

Friday night's all right for... global domination

So, after a pretty lame start, last night took a pretty good bounce on me. Nate was asleep in the comfy chair and terminally uninterested in anything I suggested. Tammy was all like, 'Well, I'll do whatever everybody else wants to do', while not sounding excited about anything. So I suggested we go see a movie, but Nate didn't want to see CRAZY HEART, which is the only thing still playing that Tammy and I are interested, and the only new movie that started this week is DATE NIGHT, which is like, what? I mean, seriously. It's the weekend, I'm looking for something new and good to go see, I know KICK ASS and IRON MAN 2 are supposed to be opening sometime soon, I check new movies, and what do I get? Fucking DATE NIGHT. Say, Hollywood, blow me.

So then I'm all like, okay, let's go to ROLE OF THE DIE and play Magic. And they were like, nah, everybody at ROLE OF THE DIE hates us. Now, I don't think anybody at ROLE OF THE DIE hates us, but there are one or two people there who are not on our favorite person's list, but, still, we hadn't been to ROLE OF THE DIE in a long time, and the alternative seems to be, Nate goes home and goes to bed, and Tammy and I watch BUFFY DVDs all night, which is okay, but, you know, I was bored and looking for something a little more out of our standard activity stream. So then Tammy or Nate, I forget which, said "Let's get a new game", and the other one said "Where could we go to get a new game?" and I said "ROLE OF THE DIE, and hey, let's get FELLOWSHIP OF THE TALISMAN", which is this cool game that the one group of gamers I used to hang out with in Syracuse used to play all the time, except you have to get rid of the Prophetess, because everybody hates that little bitch. And they were like, blarg, okay, whatever.

So we rolled to ROLE OF THE DIE, with the back up plan being, if we couldn't find a good game, we'd head to Blockbuster and rent something. But first we hit the Smok Shop for Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and an energy drink for Nate to wake al our asses up.

At ROLE OF THE DIE we couldn't find FELLOWSHIP OF THE TALISMAN; in fact, most of their games seemed to be among the missing, which Brian's dad, who was apparently in charge for the night, told us was because Brian had taken nearly all of their stock off to ConGlomeration. But Nate spied ILLUMINATI and said "This sounds kinda cool" and I went totally apeshit, because ILLUMINATI is this game that I used to play all the time with the other clique I hung out with in Syracuse, my first gaming clique, the one with Jeff Webb and all the assholes that used to be my best friends for life and beyond and that I haven't heard a word from in twenty five years. But it's a really cool game, and I grabbed it and said "This is a really cool game, we have to buy it!" So we bought it and got it out of the box and played a game right there at ROLE OF THE DIE, which other than us and two guys playing D&D and Brian's dad, was totally empty all night. (I almost never see anyone in ROLE OF THE DIE buying much of anything; I'm convinced Brian is actually a covert billionaire who fights crime as a masked avenger most of the time, and the store is just a front hiding a secret entrance into his underground headquarters.)

And it was totally awesome. So Nate picked up the Y2K expansion, providing a lot more cards and two new Illuminati groups, which is also cool.

And then we were looking for a place to eat, and we tried Penn Station, but they were closed, so I suggested Spinelli's, which is this awesome local pizza place, so we went there and got a huge meat lover's pizza and I gorged myself, and then we came home, and eventually went to sleep, and now it's today.

Tammy totally kicked all our asses at ILLUMINATI, by the way. I had forgotten, over the last 25 years, that when someone is playing the Servants of Cthulhu, you need to kill them quickly, or they just roll right over you. I had also forgotten that the Network is about the weakest and most vulnerable group, and that was what I drew.

So how was everyone else's Friday night?

Interminable, my dear Watson

So, we found some Sherlock Holmes TV shows from the 50s on DVD the other day, and picked them up. This is the 1950s series, starring Ronald Howard (not RON Howard) as Sherlock Holmes and Howard Marion Crawford as Watson. I had the time to sit down and try to watch the first episode yesterday.

It was hard to get through the first episode, for two reasons: first, the soundtrack is pretty tinny, which makes a great deal of the dialogue all but impossible to discern. That's a real problem for someone like me, who loves dialogue and whose only real interest in Sherlock Holmes is the characterization and all those cool deductions Holmes does, which you won't ever know about without the dialogue.

The second problem is even more aggravating - as with most TV shows shot in the 50s, there are no close ups, and all the camera positions are entirely stationery. My guess would be that the less expensive cameras used for TV work in this era had no zoom lens capacity. But the result is, as you may recall from other TV shows you've watched that were made in this period, everything is presented in long or medium shot. And it's all black and white, badly washed out sepia tone black and white at that.

So what you end up with is a visual presentation that is pretty stultifying, especially to a modern audience, used to color, tracking shots, close ups, audible dialogue, and all the other aspects of modern film making directors use to convey emotion and other nuances of characterization and story.

It's tough to get through. Perhaps a really serious student of Holmes, or of 50s era television, could glean enough of interest from the material to stay focused, but me, I just mostly found myself constantly drifting away from the narrative.

It's a pity. But those of us who can read will always have the Conan Doyle originals.

Go, Go, http://www.garagedelparco.com!

auto usate milano !
vendita auto usate !
compro auto usate !

When you hear those ringing words, what does your mind automatically turn to?

Sell and buy car: http://www.garagedelparco.com has been in business since 1978 with experience and professionalism, always attentive to the needs and customer satisfaction. Efficiency, competence and thoroughness are our trump cards to continue to offer service and assistance, safe, guaranteed and worthy of trust. The website is in Italian if you can't read Italian here's the translated version - http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.garagedelparco.com&sl=it&tl=en

At least, that's what I think of.

Check it out for yourself. Check out http://www.garagedelparco.com/. You'll find it's one hell of a webpage, representing one hell of a phrase in Italian.

When top scientists like my personal friend Jix Casey or Dr. Emilio Lizardo tour Europe, http://www.garagedelparco.com/ is their go to website for fast, furious, friendly, frantic, frenzied fun. When you’re being pursued up one side of the Swiss Alps and down the other by Red Lectroids or Satan worshipping bovine growth hormone cultists in flashy red Miatas with the tops down, it pays to have http://www.garagedelparco.com/ on your speed dial. One lucky shot with a .45 Beretta and you could seriously need a quick tire change. Otherwise, it’s don’t ask for whom the lunch bell tolls, because you’re the one bubbling in the ancient Lemurian serpent man stewpot.

A blast of high energy particles from your orbital quason cannon later, you may have the strength and speed of a few dozen South American jaguars. Or you may be goo. But latter day jungle god or amorphous, pulsating jelly, you’re still going to need the services of a talented mechanic to keep that chick magnet Ferrari on the road. And petrol? Forget about it. The best, quickest, most high octane and competitively priced petrol in the Western Hemisphere is right there, at http://www.garagedelparco.com . It rocks!

The Way Things Ought To Be

It's clear to me that our Founding Fathers, in their haste to put together a final draft of a historically important document, left out a few key words. But it's an easy fix:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of any decent Christian religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech for right thinking decent American folk, or of the press for same; or the right of proper hardworking Godfearing American citizens peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of good God fearing law abiding Christians and other true Americans to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house owned by any right thinking God fearing Christian American, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

The right of decent God fearing Christian people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

No proper well behaved God fearing American person shall be held to answer for any capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any true right thinking American be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district where in the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense, if the accused is a good God fearing patriotic American citizen and not some stupid wetback or dumbass liberal.

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted, on any decent right thinking American.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by proper decent hard working tax paying American folks.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the regular law abiding properly Christian folks who live in ‘em.

See? Add a few words here and there, and you can make it exactly the way those great American heroes no doubt intended it should be all along.

Quote of the Day

From the Doonesbury website:

"What I dislike most about Obamacare though is this notion that the leftists in Washington think that they can pass this thing through, cram it through, with disregard to consider the will of the people, disregard of these constitutional legal traditional processes which have thus far been used in America's processes to allow policy to be adopted that do adhere to the will of the people."
-- Sarah Palin

Ah, the wit and wisdom of the right wing...

New story

Just finished a story I've been working at, on and off, for several months now. Maybe I'll send it to someone. Maybe not... hard to figure a market that would want to buy it.

Anyway, it's called THE LAST TRUMP, and it's another of my pulp pastiches. Read it, don't read it, comment, don't comment. Whatever.

The Hub of London

A site I've recently become aware of is http://www.qype.co.uk/ . It's a very useful resource if you're over in Great Britain and looking for restaurants, pubs, or any thing of that sort in London.

This site is very extensive. It provides information about events and occasions occurring all over the world. Whatever you're interested in, you can find it on this site.

What I hadn't realized until I found this site was that you can get Kentucky Fried Chicken in Great Britain. That's pretty awesome. And apparently you can also get Subway. Now, if they get a Jimmy Johns, they'll be all set.

So now I'm curious as to what British pizza is like. So I go over to this site and type 'pizza' into the search field. What do you know? They have Domino’s and Pizza Hut pizza in Britain, and some chain called Pizza Express, and even something called Clever Wally's Raw Pizza, which sounds more interesting than appetizing to me, but still, it’s knowledge I didn’t have before, which can’t be a bad thing.

Apparently they don’t have much barbecue, though. A search turned up only one place: www.JollyHogandSausage.co.uk. I’m not sure I want spare ribs from a Jolly Hog. But then, I usually get them from a feed store (Mark’s, just down Bardstown Road from me) so maybe it wouldn’t be all that bad after all.

There are, however, 55 Latin American restaurants in London, which is about 55 too many, in my opinion.

But what do you know? I do a search on ‘steak’ and I come up with Bodean's Barbecue in Clapham. So maybe the barbecue places are just hiding.

Also, apparently a lot of places in London are called “Gaucho” something. My guess is, if you want to open a business there, you could make a killing selling sombreros.

Restaurants
Pubs London
Restaurants London

I dare you to make less sense

Or, VENTURE BROTHERS, revisited:

My initial impression -- namely, that THE VENTURE BROTHERS were little more than THE TICK meets JONNY QUEST, and overall, the show was consistently only about half as funny as THE TICK, turns out to have been premature. As Mike Norton said in the only comment this blog has had in over a year (I think), you can't judge the series by the first seven episodes. It does, indeed, evolve over the first and second seasons into something that is far more complex and valuable than merely the sum of all its inadequate, badly damaged parts.

I kind of wish I'd watched the first two seasons without having the Big Secret About Hank And Dean pre-spoiled for me. As it was, I probably didn't get the full impact of the death scene at the end of Season 1, or the revised credit scroll at the start of Season 2.

Having said all that, and having watched with real pleasure as what at first seemed an extremely formulaic show did indeed develop into something with real depth and breadth, something that was both nuanced and rich, something that actually rose above the limitations of the genre and became a multifaceted and almost beautiful and moving ongoing story of one of the world's most tragically disfunctional extended emotional families, replete with some of the most bizarrely developed and unhealthy psychic symbioses imaginable... for all of that, I find myself, in the end, feeling disappointed.

I know where it came from. I went into the last two episodes of Season Two psyched, thinking "Okay, next paycheck I'm buying Season 3". I emerged on the other end of that particular 2 parter... deflated. It was a big grand superhero wedding story, and all my favorite VENTURE BROTHERS characters were there... and overall, I was just kind of bored and disappointed and depressed by it. Phantom Limb had been kind of cool, but now he was just another jerk. Dean's addled, delusional wanderings through the Monarch's engine room filled me with a burning desire to watch nearly anything else, even ROCK OF LOVE, while they were onscreen. The ongoing saga of the Monarch, Dr. Girlfriend/Fiance, the Monarch's two numerically-named henchmen, the revelation of the true identity of the Sovereign... nothing really seemed to work for me. The only thing that really worked for me was watching Brock lead the Monarch's horde of nearly worthless goons in an attack on Phantom Limb's forces... and Brock always works for me.

Which is yet another reason I'm disappointed... apparently, Brock leaves at the end of the third season, and is replaced as Dr. Venture's bodyguard by Sgt. Hatred. Yay.

So, yes, THE VENTURE BROTHERS did grow up to be something far more than it seemed like it could in those first seven episodes, and I did very much enjoy a lot of what I've seen much more than I expected to. But at this particular moment, I largely feel disappointed in the series, and have little interest in watching any more of it, knowing what I do of its future direction.

For the exceptional mind...

...there is no greater validation than the misapprobation of the mediocre.

Heh. Indeed.

Here's a bunch of guys who, apparently, spend most of their time arguing about stuff like this:

semicolonsrock posted:

Jut switching in from 3.5 I am frustrated at not being able effortlessly whip up a min maxed character, and kind of annoyed that the fighter seems to have turned into a solely melee class (This kind of forced specialization is awful). Longbow wielding human fighters were pretty much my favorite character.

ManMythLegend posted:

Why don't people ever get this is meta gaming to the extreme? To the world in-game you are not a "Bow using fighter" you're "a guy who uses a bow". A ranger and fighter using a bow are, in-universe, no different in profession.

Yet, apparently, when they can't find enough jerk off fodder in their Monster Manuals to continue to fuel their massive mutual bukkake threads, they've decided to momentarily focus their miniscule attention spans on Your Humble Narrator, as per follows:

NorgLyle posted:

This guy is crazy for all kinds of reasons, but when he talks about gaming...

That whole blog is a peach - pure concentrated essence of grognard. He brags about the Kindle sales of his terrible, terrible books and repeatedly mentions how upset he is at the lack of comments on his blog. He also has the Angry Fanboy thing down perfectly (gently caress you, Neil Gaiman! gently caress you, Brian Michael Bendis! gently caress you, George R. R. Martin! gently caress you, John Rogers!) Dude's in his 40s and just starting training for a Call Center position. Not bad for a Master Class spouse/parent!

They keep using this word 'grognard'. I was pretty sure I knew what it was, but just to make sure, I looked it up:

Grognard is French for "grumbler".^[1] It is not necessarily pejorative and is sometimes used as a compliment. Historically it meant a soldier in Napoleon's army, particularly a member of the Old Guard.^[2]

"Grognard" came to mean a veteran wargamer in the early 1970s.^[3] It was first used by John Young, at that time an employee of SPI, and subsequently popularised by Strategy & Tactics magazine.

Now, I suppose it's possible that I'm a soldier in Napoleon's army, particularly, a member of the Old Guard, and I just don't remember it... maybe I've been hypnotized into forgetting all that stuff, for the good of the timeline, or whatever. I can roll with that.

But I've never played a wargame in my life, other than some RISK when I was a kid.

They also seem to think the word is about the worst insult they can attach to someone. Apparently, it has become the new Cat Piss Man, which other frantically masturbating no life nerds have also attached to me in the past.

Do I really have to quote Inigo Montoya on semantics, here?

I have the love, respect, and admiration of my wife, my children, and some few friends. And that means a great deal to me.

Someday, the time may come when I begin to see some small or large professional success in the field of writing, when the eyes of the world turn to me and my work, and then, I may well know at least some small shreds of admiration from strangers whom are actually, well, admirable.

Until then, the continuing contempt of the weak, the stupid, the envious, the virginal, and the emotionally disfunctional will have to be enough for me.

I will say, it makes me sad that someone as cool as the original Invisible Kid has apparently come back to life as a D&D geek who mocks other people behind their backs. Bad form, Lyle. Mon-el and Ultra Boy would be ashamed of you.

Christmas, the aftermath

Christmas this year was pretty wonderful. After some past holiday debacles which need not be detailed here, the two oldest kids were trying hard to stay on their best behavior, and having learned some valuable lessons ourselves, SuperWife and I put on a show. All presents were eagerly fallen upon and appreciated, although the biggest hit was the gift Santa left for our entire family - a karaoke machine, along with 15 mixed karoake discs.

It wasn't such a nice gift for our new neighbors, I imagine, but when we originally decided to get the thing, the apartment immediately above ours was still empty. Ah, well.

Super Drama Adult was delighted to find the new Beatles version of ROCK BAND upon unwrapping a gigantic box to the rear of the tree; Super Dependable Teen was equally pleased to open a tiny, tiny giftbag and find within a new I-pod. And Super Adorable Kid was over the moon about her new American Girl doll and attendant paraphenelia, although Nate entirely stole the show with his gift to her of a 17" flat screen TV for the top of her bedroom dresser, which he then also installed for her using his Level 7 Tech Geek skills to hook it up to our existent cable line.

As for me, well, it wasn't about me, but thanks to a last minute, unanticipated Christmas bonus, SuperWife and I okayed each other to spend a relatively small amount of money on each other at the last minute... about five days to the Day, actually. So I ran around like a monkey on crack trying to spend my allotment, and SuperWife, naturally, deployed her assets far more wisely and strategically, with the end result that she wound up with a lot of crap she has no use for, while I got huge stacks of incredibly cool loot, including many, many books (deep breath: WHISKEY AND WATER and BLOOD AND IRON by Elizabeth Bear, THE GIVEN DAY by Dennis Lehane, THE SPIRAL LABYRINTH by Matthew Hughes, INSIDE STRAIGHT by George R.R. Martin, and THE PREFECT by Alastair Reynolds), a couple of hardcover comics collections (the second DC Archives Supergirl volume, and the latest Fantastic Four Treasury), a Tampa Bay Buccaneers Santa hat, an extra special Snuggie with pocketses, a fabulous t-shirt, a card shuffler, some comic book image imprinted undies, a lovely warm corduroy winter jacket, the Director's Cut of WATCHMEN on DVD, and, in my stocking, a booster of HAMMER OF THOR, just for nostalgia's sake, and what appeared to be a pack of DISSENSION Magic cards, but upon opening, proved to be a customized booster created by my wife full of amazingly cool and rare vampire cards, which have already energized my vampire deck to the point where everyone else at the table groans when they see me breaking it out of the box.

Then from other people:

Nate gave me an entire booster box of DISSENSION packs, which was awesome, Super Dependable Teen gave me QUANTUM OF SOLACE on DVD, Super Adorable Kid gave me one of the books listed above (the George R.R. Martin one), Super Drama Adult and her girlfriend gave me a much appreciated copy of THE MARVEL VAULT, which I had pined and moped over ever since we bought the last one off a Books-A-Million remaindered table and sent it to Mike Norton last year, and which, now that I own it, has proven to be a fabulous treasure trove of wonderful and beloved goodies indeed (although the interior text by Roy Thomas and Peter Sanderson is generic, boring, imprecise, all but useless as either a historical or journalistic document, and in short, not much more than a fairly tedious advertiser's puff piece), my mom and stepdad got me a movie trivia game, my in laws gave me a sweatsuit and some microfleece pajama pants and a Christmas ornament and some socks.

But far more important than that is the fact that my kids had a wonderful Christmas and my wife had a wonderful Christmas and I suspect even Nate had a wonderful Christmas.

I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas, too.

And for Mike Norton: Pluto, Fandral, an Asgardian Warrior, Malekith, and Mico Minoru. I'm a little shocked at how crappy most of the sculpts I got look; Pluto is especially disappointing, although Mico Minoru looks like her mutant ability is stretching her neck like a giraffe, or something. The Asgardian Warrior looks by far the best of the lot, although Fandral isn't all that shabby, either. I didn't get any kind of Feat or other sort of card, besides the power cards for the sculpts, so I don't know if I got a bad booster or if the new company isn't including cardboard components any more.

Captain America Lives Again!

...and various other assorted sundries.

The pic is from my birthday, the big 48, nearly a month ago. Time flies during the holidays around here. The shield was a gift from my eldest daughter, Super Drama Teen, who, being twenty years old now, should probably just be called Super Drama Daughter or some such.

I got other cool stuff -- a nifty Silver Age JLA and Flash t-shirts from Nate, the two FF movies from Super Adorable Kid, some magic cards and an awesome Silver Surfer glass from Super Dependable Teen, a copy of a very useful and avidly sought after, long out of print, roleplaying resource book from SuperWife, and... hrm... probably a few other things I can't remember. But the shield, which Super Drama Daughter found on vacation in Gatlinsburg and hid out for me for months, was the highlight.

I have such great kids.

Last summer, I started up another blogspot page, all about this pulp hero RPG scenario I came up with set in the fabulous 1930s. Check it out, if you've a mind to.

In other random bits of geek blather, I've been watching the first season of THE VENTURE BROTHERS on DVD over the last couple of mornings before I leave for work. Remember THE TICK cartoon? Remember how unbelievably hilariously hysterically bust-a-gut nearly laugh yourself into an aneurysm it was, pretty much constantly, in every single episode?

Well, if you're looking for another pulp hero parody/pastiche cartoon series that is consistently about half as funny as THE TICK, and that occasionally gets up to being nearly 2/3s as funny as THE TICK, then this is your show.

That may seem like damning with faint praise, but I can't think of anything else on that's even half as funny as THE TICK used to be, so, whatever. THE VENTURE BROTHERS is cool, mind you, and I'm enjoying it. It's just, kind of, THE TICK-lite.

Continuing the random, I think it's time. Time for Joss Whedon to just admit it. However much he hates it, he needs to stop running away from it, stop living in denial, and just embrace it: the only thing he can do right is BUFFY. (DR. HORRIBLE was cool, but it's not going to work as an open ended series.) He needs to stop wasting years and years and years that we and Eliza Dushku and Anthony Stewart Head are never going to get back, buckle down, gear up, and do a goddam FAITH series.

And if he'd honestly rather die than re immerse himself in the BUFFY verse, well, I'll write the fucker. I'm easily as fat as Whedon. And I have the same kind of whiny voice he does. Plus, I have a cool Captain America shield. What more could anyone ask for?

I just threw up a little in my mouth

From my Inbox:

From Sgt Herman Hansley Camp MXP-512 Third Infantry Division UnitT.I.D.U, Abul Uruj, Baghdad, Iraq. I am Herman R Hansley, a native of Iraq. I am a Military Contractor with the America troop currently serving in the third infantry division Unit in Iraq. I am currently on duty break. My partner Darren D. Braswell, 36, of Riverdale, Ga., died Jan. 7th near TalAfar, Iraq, when the UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter in which he was a Passenger crashed. Braswell worked For the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, before his death We secretly moved some abandoned cash in a mansion belonging to the former president, Saddam Hussein and the total cash is US$20,200,000.00 Twenty Million two hundred thousand Dollars. As I write this letter to you, these boxes are in Security Company as I secretly moved it out of Baghdad to safe place. Sir I seek your consent to help me move this money to your country location. You do not have to be afraid of anything as no one else knows about this and everything is safe. I would be pleased and grateful to you if you could assist me and my late partner Darren D. Braswel in receiving this boxes for us on your behalf as I will be heading back soon to camp in Iraq to join my colleagues. Of course, I shall compensate you with an attractive percent of the total funds for your role/efforts. We have limited time now as you know that our evacuation agreement is been negotiated by the USA and IRAQI government, kindly get back to me immediately. Moving the funds out of the security company is not going to be much of a problem as arrangements are being made towards that. All I want from you is your trust, Please get back to me with your full name Contact phone number Preferable without delay and let's negotiate terms. Your response will determine our subsequent correspondence. You can read more on this website for more information and explanations: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2988455.stm Yours in Service. Herman R Hansley

For years I've been getting these things... I suspect we all have. And like most of us, I've pretty much ignored them. I mean, if all these people actually were the relatives of deceased African ministers who had stashed millions in a numbered account, the number of deceased African ministers would start to rival the population of Brooklyn. It all seemed very... unlikely. And silly. And sad.

But this... this just makes me mad as hell.

I would like it very much if the United Nations, or Interpol, or some similar entity, would catch these people and put them in jail for a very long time.

Barring that, maybe we could track these pricks down and 'extraordinary rendition' their asses to Gitmo for a few dozen Presidential terms...

A novel approach

Just a reminder: all this sf/fantasy goodness is now available in electronic format at Amazon's Kindle store.

WARREN'S WORLD
It's 1983 in New Sparta, NY, and Warren Dawson is beloved by everyone... his friends, his family, even random strangers on the street. Everybody loves Warren and wants to make him happy. The TVs only show his favorite programs, the radios only play his favorite songs, the movie theaters always have his favorite movies. And, naturally, all the women are beautiful, and all of them love Warren unreservedly and uninhibitedly...

When Warren's best friend Jimmy starts to notice just how strange the reality he and all his friends inhabit truly is, he becomes a threat to the odd, timelost Utopia that Warren has so carefully constructed around them all.

Which sets the stage for a final, epic battle between Warren Dawson and his closest friends. Utilizing powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, Jimmy and his buddies must go to war with a man who would be God, to settle the final fate of the entire human race...
and every living inhabitant of WARREN'S WORLD.


THE FEAR MASTERS
In the late 21st Century, the Global Union has mostly united mankind and brought lasting peace to the surface of the Earth... until the dead start rising from their graves to attack the living. Across the globe, panic and terror cause chaos to erupt, civilization to crumble,
and humanity itself to totter on the very brink of extinction.

Only three members of the Global Union's top secret Science Sector have any inkling of what is actually going on. Now they must undertake a perilous journey into the airless depths of outer space and beyond the borders of death itself in a last ditch attempt to save humanity from the evil alien Fear Masters that seek our utter, final destruction.

Can two tough as nails secret agents and a beautiful, brilliant super-scientist 'git 'er done'? For the answer, check out THE FEAR MASTERS, by D.A. Madigan.

TIME WATCH
When Jim, a thirty something bachelor geek with no life outside the pages of his favorite SF books, comes across a wrist watch that allows him to travel in time, he immediately sets out to fulfill his lifelong dream by traveling through time to assemble the greatest collection of
mint condition Silver Age superhero comics in human history.

But in the future, the secret agency known as Time Watch isn't pleased that one of their devices has fallen into the hands of an outsider, and they are ready, willing, able, and eager to do whatever it takes, up to and including killing Jim, to get their watch back.

As Jim flees from his pursuers across time and space, he quickly realizes that he may well be the human race's only hope for avoiding extinction at the hands of the insidious alien intelligence that is pulling Time Watch's strings from behind the scenes. They want humanity, ALL of humanity, dead... and Jim is now the only living human being who knows the truth.

Armed only with his wits, his time watch, and the aid of a beautiful female personal computer from the 22nd Century, Jim must avoid his pursuers and somehow thwart the genocidal agenda of an ancient, immortal, unearthly collective mind that seeks to bring all human
history to a most final termination.

ZAP FORCE: ROYAL BLOOD
Welcome to Sparta City, circa 1995, where seven super-powered teenagers fight for their lives and their freedom against covert cabals of ancient, evil immortals who yearn to outfit them all with high tech alien mind control slave collars - or low tech earthly bodybags, whichever works.

Yes, here in Sparta City, it's the neurotically networked 90s as they never really were, a time and a place when centuries old evildoers scheme, conspire, machinate and manipulate, while teenage superheroes leap, flip in midair, hurl lightning bolts, cast illusions, punch, kick, fly at supersonic speeds, kick ass, take names, and generally blow stuff up real good.

Seven stalwart students at Sparta University, inadvertently given unique and insane ultrapowers by an exotic on-campus psychology experiment gone horribly awry, and now avidly sought after as super-powered slaves by every other secret super society on the planet -

GALLANT, team leader, who at the age of 19 is both selfless and cynical, and whose super-agility and inhumanly unerring aim make him an all but unbeatable hand to hand combatant and absolutely deadly with anything he can throw, especially the hard energy discs and explosive energy globes his alien tech gauntlets generate;

TESLA GIRL, an 18 year old French Canadian hottie who can turn heads with her high voltage beauty and whose electrically supercharged metabolism can generate lightning bolts powerful enough to melt a combat tank into molten slag;

STRAIGHTLACE, the 18 year old diminutive blonde babe with the attitude of a pit bull who can fly faster than a speeding Sidewinder and smash through solid concrete without taking a scratch;

RAMPART, 19 year old African-American star athlete and honor student who can leap tall buildings in a single bound while carrying a Cadillac Seville over his shoulder;

LOBE-O, wheelchair bound 16 year old supergenius with an advanced college placement whose telepathic powers can trace a fleeting thoughtwave through a million muddled mundane minds;

GLAMOUR, a husky Innuit plain Jane psych major whose psychically projected mental illusions seem real enough to leave lipstick marks on a frat boy's cheek, or boot shaped bruises on a bad guy's ass;

WARPER, the 19 year old star college quarterback who can open teleportals with his mind, when he's not charming phone numbers out of any nearby cuties with his All American good looks;

MAINFRAME, the ageless, bodiless former maintenance man who now only exists as a self aware electronic impulse haunting any machine or set of circuitry he cares to inhabit at any given time;

Together they are ZAP FORCE, reluctant heroes fighting to protect an innocent and ignorant global populace, or at least, their own damn selves, from enslavement or death at the hands of the ancient evil immortals who secretly run the world:

BARON SAMEDI, centuries old blustering boss-man of the voodoo-themed Clan Loa, whose sheer raw strength can crumble solid concrete and whose brutal will to dominate will not be denied by uppity interfering newcomers like those no good Zap Force punks;

THE BARONESS, Baron Samedi's crafty, malevolent and utterly ageless wife and co-Monarch, whose vast mental prowess can (and does) enslave entire populations, including, of course, her own entirely unsuspecting husband;

THE OLD ONE, an inhumanly brilliant schemer born before written history began, who remembers the angels, gods and devils of ancient Sumeria and Babylonia as his contemporaries, peers, and more often than not, siblings, and whose own Royal Clan, the Eldest, is the most respected, hated, and feared of any in existence on Earth today.

STEPHEN SANTERIOS of Clan Loa, psychic assassin and master of the incomprehensibly advanced technology left behind on Earth by the long gone alien H'nnr

Put it all together and what do you got? ZAP FORCE!!

Of all of those, THE FEAR MASTERS is so far my top seller... in the last three months, I've sold 7 copies of it to discerning and apparently satisfied customers (at least, they didn't ask Amazon for a refund). This is so far a break out month for me; from May 1 through today, I've sold 10 copies, total, of my work. In 60 days or so, I'll get $34.80 direct deposited to my bank account. I may buy my wife flowers. Or, you know, just my kids some groceries.

Anyway. To the above tally, I'm happy to say I've formatted and added the following:

ENDGAME : When Webster Madison awakens at the far end of the universe in the super powered fantasy body he'd always wished he had, he was thrilled... until he learned that the price for his power would be his participation in a deadly alien game that could cost him not only his new avatar-form, but also his sanity, or even his life.

Now Webster and thirty other transformed roleplaying gamers from Earth find themselves enmeshed as living chess pieces in a contest whose rules they cannot comprehend, and where every move can result in sudden, horrible, grisly death, while the alien overlords responsible for their transformations test their new champions, often to destruction.

Those transformed human champions who survive these trials will be sent on a mysterious mission even more hazardous than the game itself, with an enormous reward waiting at the end for those who finally win through. Or so they are all told... but Webster suspects that in a world where no one is what they appear to be, nothing they have been told is the truth, either... and if he cannot somehow determine actuality from illusion in this dangerous labyrinth of perilous power, neither Webster nor any of his fellow super powered pawns will make it through the ENDGAME...

EARTHQUEST : When Webster Madison, Hired Gun is dumped at the other end of the galaxy from Earth by treacherous aliens, he must fight his way back home across the hostile stars. Hijacking a ship full of slaves, he successfully leads the human cargo in rebellion against the crew and embarks on a career as an interstellar buccaneer and liberator of the oppressed.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Sam Curtis is using his newly found superpowers to reshape the world in his own twisted image. Should Webster somehow manage to set foot once more on his native planet, he will find himself walking into a deadly trap elaborately planned and set by his deadliest foe...

Man vs. Swine

So, the plague has infested Castle Anthrax.

It started last Friday. Super Adorable Kid was finishing up a week's stretch at her biodad's, and he called to tell us she was spiking a fever. When she got back to us Saturday morning, her fever was around 101, and over the next 24 hours, it went as high as 103.9, never quite breaking the magic '104' mark we had set to ourselves as the point at which we'd take her to the emergency room.

It was an eerie Saturday night. I'd worked until, I think, 7:30 in the evening, and upon getting home, I got to watch what SuperWife had been describing to me all day (on my breaks, I always call home) - Super Adorable Kid flushed from fever, every square inch of her skin radiating heat like a sun lamp, shivering and complaining bitterly of the cold and begging for a blanket, which of course SuperWife wouldn't give her, due to the high fever.

We tried kid's ibuprofen and cool showers, and could not get that fever down. By ten o'clock the next morning, we were near panic. My mom was due for a visit starting tomorrow; we were worried even at that point that we might have to wave her off, and anyway, she's a nurse, so we called her to consult over the phone, and she advised us to get Super Adorable Kid to a doctor immediately, as it sounded to her like the swine flu.

So we called our doctor, and it turns out they have an after hours acute care facility just for kids, and thought she sounded bad enough that she should come in immediately. So we took her over there, and after waiting for an hour and a half in a lobby full of coughing kids, and another 45 minutes in a small consultation room, a doctor we didn't know came in, swabbed her throat, advised us it was probably just the flu but he wasn't sure if it was swine flu, came back in ten minutes later to tell us she was negative for strep, and sent us home, with instructions to keep doing what we were doing.

While we were there, a nurse took her temperature, and it was 99.6... the lowest we'd seen in 48 hours. But the digital thermometer she used had a little plastic roller that you run along the forehead, whereas ours is a digital that you insert the contact point into the ear, so I'm still not sure their thermometer got a good reading of her core temp.

So we got her home and took her temp with our thermometer and it was back up to 102.

That was last Sunday. Sunday is the one day a week I always have off; you can imagine, it wasn't a very restful day of rest for me.

Along about Tuesday, Super Wife started showing symptoms. Now, Super Wife has had bronchitis before, and anytime she gets anything remotely like a chest cold or the flu, it goes straight into her lungs and turns into bronchitis. The last time she got sick was a month and a half ago and although she got a Z pack, and it seemed to get her most of the way back, she never quite got to a point where she wasn't coughing if she laughed too much or breathed too hard. So she started heading downhill fast, fast enough that I didn't have to exert anything like the amount of pressure I normally do to get her to go to the doctor's. (She's quick on the trigger to send me or any of the girls to the doctor if we get a sniffle, but she will not go herself. She's the last person in the family she ever wants to spend any money on. It drives me insane.)

So she was home sick from work Wednesday and went to the doctor's office Thursday and came home with an inhaler of medicine and a double Z-pack, and she seems to be improving, but she's still weak and wheezy, and given that the people who seem to be dying from this thing are doing it because it gets into their lungs, I'm pretty worried about her.

Also on Thursday, our pediatrician called us back and advised that they were pretty sure Super Adorable Kid had swine flu. Yay.

Thursday I also started to cough, just a little bit, at work. I work for a call center (no matter how assiduously I try to avoid call center work, I always seem to end up being sucked back into it; it's like I can get away from hell for a little while, but eventually I always end up back there) so I was hoping it was just allergies combined with having to talk to idiots all day, but Friday, which was my day off, I started to spike a fever and feel pretty crappy.

I would have loved to have stayed home on Saturday, when I was scheduled to work 11 to 8, and any sane employer would have encouraged me to do so rather than bring swine flu into their workplace, but if anyone has ever called my current employer sane, they need to take it back. At the call center where I work, employees earn no sick time until they have worked there a year. You get no PDO (paid days off) until you've been there six months. If you get two full attendance occurrences within a year, you get fired, and there are no exceptions made for any reason, and I'm not kidding.

Different types of things trigger different levels of 'occurrence'. If you're between one minute and two hours late, or you punch out between one minute and two hours early, it is an infraction, and technically you need 10 infractions to add up to an occurrence... but there is a sliding scale. In your first 12 months, any one infractions actually equals 6 infractions. In your second year, that goes down to like 4, I think. In your third year, it drops to 2, and when you've been there four years, your attendance infractions actually count as one for one.

Now, missing a day of work unexcused, for any reason at all, is a full occurrence, so you can only miss 1 day of work in your first year... the second day, you are fired. No exceptions. It doesn't matter why you missed work, your supervisor cannot excuse your absence, it is zero tolerance.

So, if you come in late or leave early twice, you have eighteen infractions. Miss a day of work, and you have 10. Get up to two full occurrences, and you're gone.

If this sounds very confusing to you, well, it is. I believe that it is deliberately made very confusing so that at the uppermost levels of management, somebody somewhere can be a little bit subjective about it if they want to... in fact, I know they can, because a month or so ago, when we had bad flooding in downtown River City, about half the call center couldn't make it to work, and management decided that that particular day would not count as an occurrence. (You didn't get paid for it, but it didn't count against you.)

I understand the policy. At any other job I've ever had -- and having temped since 1985, I've had over a hundred, I'm sure - where they have sane attendance policies, people will generally, at least once or twice a year, call in sick when they're not sick. Maybe you've got a sick kid, or maybe you've got to go to an appointment, or maybe it's a nice day out and you need a mental health day, or, whatever... if you work for an enlightened employer, you call up and say "I've got a sick kid, I can't come in today", and if your employer is a dick, you call up, put on your sick voice, and say "I've been throwing up and I can't get off the toilet, I'm gonna try to make it in tomorrow". And nobody fucks with you.

They may not like it; they may very well suspect, when they hear the 'sick voice', that you're faking it to get out of work, mostly because they've done the same damn thing themselves; everybody has, one time or another, unless you have the kind of employer who will let you call in for any reason besides sickness.

My current employer has decided they're not having any of that. But how do you eliminate fake sick days? Well, you eliminate ALL excuses to call in for work; you enact a policy whereby, if an employee misses any work at all, they're fired. No excuses. No exceptions. Show up for work on time when you're scheduled and work your whole shift, or don't show up at all, ever.

The analytical part of me also wonders just how much this deranged policy has to do with the fact that I only have this job because my employer had to get permission from the Federal government to do a pretty big merger last year, and the Federal government stipulated that if they were going to do that, they had to agree to bring about 2000 jobs that they had previously offshored back to America. Given how hard it is to actually stay employed by this employer, what with the policy I am describing, and several others I have not, I'm wondering if they aren't positioning themselves to go to the Feds in another year or so and say "We've tried to staff these jobs with Americans, and Americans are no good... they won't show up for work, and we can't keep the positions filled. We need to offshore these jobs again." This little bit of paranoia is especially born out by what a supervisor at my call center once told me - any month where they only have 51% turnover in staff is considered a good month. But they don't often have good months.

So, yes, I do understand the policy, but it's either malevolent or insane. The elimination of people calling in sick when they're not sick is, on one level, a laudable goal, and call centers do need to be pretty strict about attendance and punctuality. But this is my fifth call center, and it's the first place I've ever worked where, no matter how sick I actually am, I absolutely do not dare to call in sick if I think I have the strength to crawl to the bus stop.

So, even knowing that I almost certainly have the swine flu, I went into work on Saturday. I was pretty miserable, with my fever spiking up and down all day, but I took a lot of medicine in with me and I'm not bronchial like Super Wife is, so I got through it. Most of the people I spoke with, however, opined that I should really be at home, a sentiment I heartily agreed with.

Today I'm doing okay. I've been stuffed up, but taking a handful of pills every 12 hours or so... ibuprofen for fever, Mucinex for the cough and congestion, sudafeds for the runny nose. I had no fever all last night, but woke up with it back up to 101.7... took some ibuprofen and a shower, and got it back down. Now I have no fever again, or didn't last time I checked it. I just feel kind of punk.

After a restless night, I switched over to sleeping in my 9 year old's room (she was back at her biodad's for her weekend visit earlier today). Her bed is the futon I used to sleep on (my mom and stepdad bought it to put in the guest room when I had to stay with them for a while back in '97, and when they moved out of that house, they gave the futon to me, and I've had it ever since, and slept in it until I moved here in 2004, when I turned it over to Super Adorable Kid). I mostly did it so SuperWife could have the bed in the back room and watch TV; she wasn't tired and I was. I wound up sleeping until 2:30 in the afternoon, which seems to have done me a world of good.

Super Adorable Kid had been scheduled to go camping at Red River Gorge for a family reunion this weekend, and SuperWife had been scrapping with the ex all week long, trying to get him to see that even if Super Adorable Kid weren't feverish on Saturday, she might still be contagious and she shouldn't be sleeping on the ground in 40 degree weather. He finally, grudgingly, saw reason on Friday and agreed not to go to the Gorge; it was only when SuperWife called his sister and told her that Super Adorable Kid probably had swine flu and the sister called him and gave him an earful that he came around. It's unfortunate that things are this way, but the kind of relationship he has created with us, if SuperWife or I say "stop", he immediately says "go". He honestly thinks that everything is about him, and if SuperWife or I are expressing concerns about our mutual daughter's health, well, that's just a blind, what we're REALLY trying to do is mess up his camping trip, and he has to dig his heels in just to spite us.

So, anyway, she didn't go camping, and she seems to have been fever free all weekend, which is something. Now she's got a rash and is scratching her head and neck a lot, and she's still coughing too much, but I think she's getting through the flu, at the very least. Which is a huge relief.

This thing isn't hitting me anywhere near as hard as it's hitting SuperWife. I can hear her coughing her head off from down the hall in the bedroom, and it's really stressing me out. I have to go back to work tomorrow, and risk spreading this thing to any number of other people who, I'm sure, if they could take a vote, would much rather I stayed home... but I can't lose this job. There is nothing else out there for me; I keep looking. I'm amazed that in the middle of a recession bordering on a depression, I managed to find work at all. I've called our personnel department twice to ask if they are planning to make any exceptions to the attendance policy for swine flu, and both times the person on the other end of the phone has said, basically, "Uh...." followed by a long silence.

Of course, whoever I get on the phone isn't authorized to make an exception for any reason, that has to come from the very top. And I know that. And I also know that if someone were to decide, okay, we'll let people with swine flu stay home and recover, well, anyone who wants to call in sick will say they've got swine flu, which is exactly the sort of thing that this completely fucking demented and utterly irresponsible attendance policy is intended to prevent.

But the end result is going to be, the entire call center is going to end up down with the swine flu.

Anyway, that's my ongoing battle with swine flu. I strongly suggest that if you haven't already gotten it, you wash your hands every twenty minutes, carry antibacterial spray with you everywhere you go, and avoid the infected like lepers.

SuperWife is coughing again, so I'm going to wrap this up.

George R.R. Martin is not my bitch

Daniel Keys Moran's latest comment threads point me to this driveling idiocy, which, given the source, surprises me not at all with either of those two qualities. In that comment thread, I respond thusly:

As for entitlement issues, and Neil Gaiman:

It's interesting that Gaiman opens that essay complaining because American Airlines won't provide him with what he considers to be a necessary tool to facilitate his writing while on one of their flights, at a price he thinks is reasonable. American Airlines provides him with a service (getting him from point A to point B within an acceptable time frame) for a price he's willing to pay. Gaiman seems to feel there's a contract between him and AA, that they will also, for the price of his ticket, facilitate his word processing while he's in their care, just like, apparently, all the other airlines he normally flies with do. But, as he points out later on in an entirely different context, the contract doesn't exist. His sense that they should give him this thing that he wants cheaply, that is not part of the service they render, is, er, hm, what should we call it... oh, yeah... an 'entitlement issue'.

Then he goes on to say this, in re: the astonishingly lazy George R.R. Martin:

You're complaining about George doing other things than writing the books you want to read as if your buying the first book in the series was a contract with him: that you would pay over your ten dollars, and George for his part would spend every waking hour until the series was done, writing the rest of the books for you.

No such contract existed. You were paying your ten dollars for the book you were reading, and I assume that you enjoyed it because you want to know what happens next.

Yeah. We want to know what happens next. And the author isn't telling us. Know what he's doing instead? He's taking the money we've paid him to tell us this story and he's spending it doing pretty much every other thing in the world except what we're paying him to do, which is, finish the story.

There is a contract. When you pay your money to the storyteller in the marketplace, the contract is, he tells you a story. Now, I'm willing to accept that when I toss a shekel in his upturned turban, maybe I won't LIKE the story, but unless the motherfucker dies before he chokes out the ending, at the very least, I believe that the implicit contract betwixt him and me that came into existence when he said "I'll tell you a story for a shekel, my good man" and I said, "Very well, here is your shekel, prate onward, o scribe", encompasses him telling me the ENTIRE story. Not just half or two thirds of it, at which point, he'll decide it's much much more important for him to watch a Giants' game, or go off to some storyteller's convention where people will kiss his ass for a week or so, or head back into his hotel, where he can sign a lot of merchandising and film contracts regarding the half or 2/3s of a story I've paid him to tell me and that he hasn't finished yet.

I'm not paying for a book, I'm paying for a STORY. He hasn't finished the story yet. And sure, if it's a long story he's entitled to breaks and meal time and some rest & recreation, but when I keep coming back to the marketplace looking for him to pick up where he left off and he's still over by the fountain under an awning watching the Punch & Judy show while good looking matched Swedish twins put butter on his toes, and it's pretty obvious that the operators of the Punch and Judy show and the good looking Swedish twins are both being sponsored by my shekel, I'm going to start feeling a little bit put upon, a little bit aggravated, a little bit as if someone is failing to live up to their end of the unstated contract.

But there is a contract, and the contract is this: You start a story, you finish it, and if you're having trouble finishing it, you at least show that you're making an effort to do so, that your contract with me is a priority for you, that it matters, that it's important.

You want to break that story down into increments and charge me for each increment, that's fine, but I want to see that you're making progress. I want to see good faith. And if I don't, I'm going to scream my head off about it, and why? Because that's really all I can do. If the storyteller is indeed so feckless and faithless that, while continuing to take my shekels through all his merchandising contracts and such, he still puts every other thing in his life ahead of continuing to tell me the story I'm paying for, well, there's not much I can do, except scream my head off, which I'm going to do.

This is one of those things where you're either a paying audience member or a story teller. If you're one, you simply have no sympathy for the POV of the other. I can understand this, vaguely; there are only six people in the world who have read my first novel UNIVERSAL MAINTENANCE, but I regularly hear from all six of them, wondering when I'm going to write the sequel. And I tell them all the same thing: when someone wants to pay me a realistic amount of money to set aside a year or so of my finite lifespan to turn out that sequel, I'll write it. Which I think is fair.

George R.R. Martin has been fairly compensated for not only the entire projected SONG OF ICE AND FIRE series, but, most likely, at this point, for every single other thing he's ever written in his life, and, most likely, he's been compensated at a pretty high rate for every football game he's ever going to watch again before he dies, too.... all of it, out of the coin that has been generated by A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE... a story that he has, as yet, to finish. The contract is for the story, not the increments of the story. If he can't finish it, he can at least keep working on it. He can show us it's a priority for him.

Or he can start issuing refund checks.

And if he can't do that, or he chooses not to do that, then, at the very least, while he's living in the million dollar home the Ice and Fire fans bought for him, watching football on the big screen high density TV the Ice and Fire fans bought for him, jetting to various exotic foreign lands using tickets that his Ice and Fire fans bought for him, and staying at hotels that his Ice and Fire fans are paying for, and going to cons to receive the adulation of his Ice and Fire fans, when we ask him "say, George, when's the next Ice and Fire book coming out", he could not whine and shriek and stamp his feet and wave his arms and cry like a giant fucking grey haired baby and call all of us names because, you know, we've given him millions of dollars for this story and he doesn't even want to bother pretending he's actually working on finishing it.

There is a contract. There is. I'm sorry if other authors of serial fiction out there take all this personally and find it all very inconvenient, but there is. And it's not for the book, it's for the story. You start a story, you need to at least make a pretty game attempt at finishing it. George R.R. Martin not only wants to cop out on his contract, but he also demands universal respect, admiration, and adulation from his fans while he takes our money with one hand and flips us off with the other.

Beyond all that, let me say this: Nobody, not one single Ice and Fire fan, has ever assumed that George R.R. Martin is our bitch. That's a straw man, and an egregiously dishonest, ludicrously stupid one, at that. We just think George R.R. Martin undertook to tell us a story, and he's fucking off, on our dime. And it pisses us off.

Or at least, it pisses me off.

Here endeth the lesson.

It's not exactly succinct, and given that nobody reads this blog any more, it's not going to inspire any fawning sycophant to record a catchy little You Tube ditty, but, still, I think it's much more cogent than the entirely self serving nonsense it refutes.

The Random

Random nonsense as it occurs to me:

* My new job sucks. I could go on and on and on, as I once did about previous jobs on previous blogs, and it would be hilarious and all the people who aren't reading this blog would find it hilarious if they read this blog, but then one of those people who aren't reading this blog would mention it to someone I work with and I'd get fired and my wife would kick my ass. So all you get is 'my new job sucks', and 'you' are me, anyway, because nobody else is reading this blog, so 'you' already know all this stuff, anyway.

* Tip of the oscillation overthruster to that master of fuck a doodle doo John Rogers for tipping me to the phrase shipping, which I still can't believe I never heard of until a few minutes ago. In addition to being an asshole, I'm apparently an ignorant wipe, too. WhatEV.

* The guy over at Perfectly Cromulent Blog isn't getting any comments these days, either. This makes me feel simultaneously sad and comforted, reinforcing once again the long standing realization that I am, indeed, a dick.

* So far, out of all my e-novels at the Kindle site, my runaway best seller is Time Watch. Now, mind you, I like Time Watch fine, but why it should outsell everything else I've got up there for an order of magnitude I could not possibly tell you... except that so far, it's the only book that anyone else has ever linked to from anything like a popular blog. Which is probably all the difference there is.

* And at that, when I say it's a runaway bestseller, I mean, over the last six months, it's sold about 20 copies. Which is about ten times what any other title I've got up there has sold over the same period.

* My new job REALLY sucks.

* And so do nearly all Republicans/conservatives, from what I can see.

Please Help If You Can

Back in September of 1979, I was wandering aimlessly on the third evening since my family had helped move me into the dorms at Syracuse University. I heard music coming from the quad, and drifted over. A band with a female lead singer was playing AMAZING rock and roll, so I sat down at the periphery and listened. I caught the name of the singer after a few more songs, and a week later, bought her self named debut album at a local campus record store.

Along with the first two albums by The Cars, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' DAMN THE TORPEDOES, Blue Oyster Cult's SECRET TREATIES and AGENTS OF FORTUNE, and Carole King's TAPESTRY, that self titled debut album, CAROLYNE MAS, became a vital and permanent part of the musical backdrop of my adulthood. I've always thought it was a great pity that Carolyne Mas never caught on; she had a fantastic voice, was a wonderful guitar player, and a terrific songwriter. A few years later I managed to find her third album and snatched that up, too. It wasn't as good as the first, but it still had a lot of really solid tunes on it.

Fast forward to last summer -- I came across an article online about Carolyne Mas, about how she'd never quite made it in rock and roll and was currently, in her early 50s, running a shelter for abandoned animals in Florida. I put up a blog entry lamenting the unfairness of a world in which hack non creative types become incredibly successful while genuinely talented artists languish as unknowns.

Fast forward again to a few weeks ago, when that blog entry got its first comment... from Carolyne Mas. She thanked me for the entry, said she loved my writing style, and suggested I help her write her biography.

That began an email correspondence, the latest installment of which is below (in response to a note I sent on Monday, asking if she was doing okay, as I knew from a phone call on Friday she was heading into a rough weekend):

"We're not okay...I have been desperately trying to raise money. I have no money for cat food, dog food, and now people food. No matter how many times I post my plea on FB or MySpace...we are all on the verge of starvation. I am trying to make sure my mother and my son have something to eat. There is a place that gives free meals on Sundays, so we will be able to eat then, all of us, if we can get the gas to get there. I am worried about the cats and dogs, too.

I have sent this letter to all the production and publishing big shots I have known, who are all wealthy, with no response. When you are poor, no one wants anything to do with you. It's a sick world, especially the entertainment business...if you cannot serve them in some way, you are invisible.

Here is a link to my letter...

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/note.php?note_id=90734634069&id=637561082&ref=mf]http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/note.php?note_id=90734634069&id=637561082&ref=mf

Hope I can hang on long enough for you to finish this...

Love, Carolyne"

This is not a joke or a hoax. This is a real person who is really at the end of her rope and has no idea where else she is going to turn, or how she's going to eat, or feed her husband, or the hundreds of abandoned animals in her care, past this Sunday, assuming they manage to get to a food bank and the food bank actually has any food.

I don't know this woman at all well, but I believe her to be one of the genuinely good people in this world, as well as an enormously talented performing artist, and while there is little to nothing I can do for her, or my family can do for her, at this distance and given our own financial situation, still, I can reach out on the Internet, and I am doing so.

If you check out this link and scroll down a little, you will find a lot of information about Carolyne's life and career and current undertakings and desperate situation, and you will also find a PayPal link. I'm sure Carolyne will be deeply grateful for any contributions whatsoever that may come in. As will I, for whatever that may be worth.

These are a few of my least favorite things...

...a bunch of blog posts in a row with no comments.

It's tough to stay motivated.

It's just a jump to the left

Okay. So, I started a new job on Monday, and I could do a whole blog about what I've learned regarding this job in the last four days, but the economics of our day to day family life demand that I not get fired, so I will abstain. Suffice to say, it's a call center, and when I complete my classroom training in another three weeks, I'll be taking calls from disgruntled and stupid customers at horrifying hours of the day and night. You can review my old blog entries made while working in other call centers for anything further you might need; nothing is different about this job, except in the ways that this job is worse than those I've held previously.

I'm pretty much over LouisvilleRPG.net, and I'll tell you why.

The latest thing was, I had set up this scenario to run for my Monday night gaming group using the SAVAGE WORLDS RPG system. SAVAGE WORLDS is extremely simple minded and unrealistic and I'm not crazy about how several of its essential mechanisms work, but the system's slogan is "Fast, Furious, Fun!" and that, at least, is accurate. I would never use the system for any kind of serious campaign, but for different, more shallow adventures, it's pretty workable. So I came up with this scenario and I was really psyched to run it, as it's set in 1938 and features larger than life pulp hero/villain archetypes, which is a subgenre I've loved since I was a kid reading DOC SAVAGE paperbacks at my babysitter's house. I was really looking forward to it, it was going to be a lot of fun.

But those hopes began to die when I started my new job.

See, I'd known that after six weeks of training, I'd have to bid on a shift and chances are that, having no seniority, I'd end up with one nobody else wanted, meaning, I'd be working nights. My Monday night gaming group ran on, well, Monday nights, so it seemed pretty certain that once six weeks went by, I'd no longer be able to game with those guys, but that was okay, as the scenario I'd come up with was designed to run maybe four sessions at most. So all was cool. Yes, it seemed likely that after training was over, I'd have to drop out of the Monday night group indefinitely, but at least I'd go out with a bang.

Now, the path to getting my new job was long and arduous and required several phone conversations/interviews with various HR people and supervisors, as well as a drug screen and a background check, over the course of several months. During these contacts, I was told repeatedly by several different people that for training, we'd be working Monday through Friday, 8 to 5. After training, we'd have to bid on shifts and most likely would start out working at night, as very few people want to work at night and that's what we'd get stuck with... a very familiar dynamic to me from past call centers. But for the first six weeks, Monday through Friday, 8 to 5.

Which worked well with our Monday game group, as it met from 6 to 10. Four hours isn't much to run an RPG in, and I wouldn't have wanted to try running any kind of RPG for much less than four hours a session, but getting out of work at 5 would leave me ample time to make a 6 o'clock start time.

So I thought, anyway.

But Nate's going on vacation next week, so that was one Monday we weren't going to have. Which was no problem, as my scenario was only supposed to run 4 sessions, and I still had 5 weeks available for sessions before training concluded and I had to quit the group. So it was still going to be cool and I was still totally psyched.

But then, one of the other guys (he doesn't like his real name used on the internet, on the sight he goes by Cruel Despot, so I'll call him CD) announced he'd be out for a week in there, too... not the same week Nate was going to be out, but a different one.

So that dropped my six weeks of availability down to 4. But I could still do it, no problem. Gonna be fun, totally psyched...

So then Nate found out on a Thursday that the following Monday (last Monday, the 29th of June) he was going to have to go out of town for work and wouldn't be around. Fuck. Okay. At first I figured we just weren't going to get to play that week, which sucked, and I was sad and disappointed. But then, everyone in the group -- CD, another guy named Chris, and Nate -- agreed to do it on Wednesday night instead. Okay. Going to be cool, totally psyched...

Then at work, first day, right out of the box, we were informed that our fifth and sixth weeks of training we'd be working 2 pm to 11 pm, instead of 8 to 5. Which meant suddenly I'd have to quit the Monday group two weeks earlier than I'd thought. So I started sending emails on my break again, and that dialogue went something like this:

ME: I only have four weeks until I start working evenings. Two weeks of those we can't play. Suggestions?
CD: Run it anyway as a one shot, or for two sessions. I want to play.
NATE: Hell to the yeah.
CHRIS: Whatever, dudes.

So... okay. I could cut back, I could streamline, I could cram. I could run the scenario for one or two sessions. I could make that work. And I was incredibly psyched to run. Even comopressed, it was going to be SO much fun. I just love Golden Age pulp.

So there were two other guys who were kinda sorta thinking of joining the Monday night group, which as I have noted, met from 6 to 10 on Mondays. I'd been hoping they'd both play in the scenario, as 5 player characters would be better than 3. One of them, whom I knew only by his board sig, ElSanto, had sent me a few emails full of excellent ideas for Golden Age type pulp heroic player characters. So I was really hoping he'd be able to play on Wednesday.

Another, a guy named Conner, I hadn't heard a word from. But after the run had to be pushed from Monday to Wednesday, I heard from ElSanto... he was sorry, but the only night he could make it was Monday. Goddamit. Okay, that was disappointing.

Then I heard from the other guy. He wasn't really interested in the 1930s or 'the whole pulp thing', as he put it. So he wasn't going to play, either. Bummer. Oh, well. Anybody who doesn't like Golden Age Pulp is a waste of space and organized protoplasm, anyway, so... whatever.

But I still had three players for Wednesday, and was totally psyched. It was going to be SO cool. I was really looking forward to it.

So then at the end of our first day, after I'd made all these adjustments and absorbed all of these changes, our trainer mentioned that she was changing training hours from 8 to 5 to 9 to 6.

That dialogue went like this:

TRAINER: Did they tell all of you you'd be working from 8 to 5 for the first four weeks of training?
CLASS: Yes. Over and over again.
TRAINER: I'm going to change that just a little, to 9 to 6. I really think it will help you to get a little later start in the morning. You'll be more awake.
ME: You fucking bitch. I will kill you, I will skin you, I will suck the marrow from your bones, tan your filthy hide and make it into taut, supple drumheads that I may beat out the rhythms of my rage with the long and weighty lengths of your femurs, which will feel so very right and comfortable in my vengeful hands.

Or at least, that's how it went in my mind.

(Should the human race become telepathic, I will find it impossible to remain employed.)

So, I sent emails out again. Did people still want to try to run this thing, if I couldn't be there until 6:30, quarter of 7? I hated losing any time at all from such a narrow, finite window. But I only had two potential sessions left to run this thing where a reasonably sized group could get there, and I really wanted to run it, despite what seemed to be an absolute determination on the part of God to do everything short of hitting the Earth with a planet killing meteor to stop me doing so.

That went like this:

ME: Uh, so, my hours just got changed and I'm working until 6 and I probably can't get there until like 6:30, quarter of 7. I hate that. Do people still want to play?
CD: I'm cool.
NATE: Totally.
CHRIS: Uh... I forgot to tell you guys but like two months ago I promised my girlfriend I'd do something with her and her family on Wednesday and she just reminded me so, uh, too bad, so sad.
ME: You fucking bitch. I will kill you, I will skin you, I will suck the marrow from your bones, tan your filthy hide and make it into taut, supple drumheads that I may beat out the rhythms of my rage with the long and weighty lengths of your femurs, which will feel so very right and comfortable in my vengeful hands.

Okay, I didn't really say it, or even type it, that time, either, but I badly, badly wanted to.

It was especially exasperating, as I'd gone to great efforts to attend a couple of RPG sessions that Chris had GMed, the previous week. But... whatever, dude. Skin you later.

At this point, I just gave up, because it seems obvious that if I persist in this folly, God is going to send a plague of boils or a voracious and unstoppable onslaught of hideous mutated giant boll weevils or some such shit to keep me from ever running this scenario.

Which makes me sad. And frustrated.

Just to add further general aggravation to the situation, it appears that apparently by some bizarre alchemy, this complete collapse of my planned scenario has transmuted itself into the complete collapse of the Monday night gaming group. Those two guys who were going to join the group? They decided to start their own Monday night group instead. Chris and CD? They've joined the new Monday night group, abandoning our previous one.

It's like, I get a job where I'll have to work evenings, and everything falls apart all around me.

I had no idea I was such an essential person.

Anyway. By itself that wouldn't have been enough to sour me on the RPG site, but, well, it's been coming for awhile, and this is just that fabled final straw. Beyond all the crap I've already reported above and in previous entries, well, I'm just tired of the idiocy and, more importantly, the hypocrisy, that is redolent on the site. What do I mean? Well... listen, O Prince, as I weave for you the tales:

A while back, I happened to casually mention in a thread on the site a particular incident that had occurred in my RPG back in the 90s, in Syracuse. I thought it was funny, and that others would find it amusing. As nearly always happens, I vastly overestimated the intelligence, maturity, open mindedness, and wisdom of my fellow gamers, especially those at LouisvilleRPG.net. But let me tell you this anecdote as I told it to them:

The group of player characters in my game at the time had broken into a wizard's lair and stolen several valuable items. One of the most valuable they couldn't sell in Ona Tengu (the area where they were) because it was powered by a kind of magic that was very illegal there (necromancy) and they would have been executed if anyone had suspected they had such a thing.

So they had booked passage on a ship to a less lawful realm, but it didn't leave until the next morning. They were pretty sure the local underworld was aware they had the item, and would try to kill them and get it. So they rented an inn room, and took turns sitting up on watch in the hallway outside the inn room door. (In a previous scenario, a different group of characters played by the same guys had been in a similar situation, and they'd stood watch inside the inn room, and an assassin had snuck up to the door and pumped the room full of toxic gas through the keyhole. So this time, they posted their guard outside the door, to preclude that.)

So I was going to have the local crimelord send an attractive bimbo to try and lure the PC guarding the door away.

Naturally, the players were going to be suspicious of any kind of approach... players generally know when an encounter or occurrence is random or planned, based on what kind of dice the GM has them roll. So they were suspicious of anything that happened, especially if they hadn't rolled a random encounter. (Some GMs roll such things behind their DM screen, specifically so that players won't have this kind of information, but I make rolls like this where people can see them, so they know I'm not cheating. It's just how I DM.)

Now, what the players were doing in this instance is called metagaming... playing your character with knowledge that only the player has, usually based on a game mechanic the character has no idea exists... and I have rules to deal with it. There are skills in my RPG that allow characters to Persuade each other to do things, even if the player of those characters knows better and does not want their character to do those things.

So I was going to have a cute dancer or tavern servant or something go down the hall and make a Sex Appeal roll on whoever was standing guard. The player would be pretty sure it was a trick, given the lack of a random encounter roll... they'd be fairly certain this was an event planned by the GM, and therefore, part of some scheme... but if the non player character succeeded at the skill roll vs the player character's Willpower, then it wouldn't matter what the player suspected... the PC would be successfully seduced and removed from position.

At the last second, it occurred to me that in my RPG setting, there is no homosexuality taboo and nearly everyone is bisexual... so it could just as easily be a male cute young thang as a female assigned to the seduction/distraction task. Certainly, it would never occur to the local crimelord that he needed to specifically send a woman to do the job. So I told the player whose character was on guard (his name was Chris) to roll a d6. He said "What do I want?" and I said, "Well, knowing you, probably an odd number". He rolled a 4. So the cute young thang set to seduce the big burly male mercenary was, indeed, male.

In my RPG setting, this wouldn't make any difference, which was why I did it... to underscore that the world my players were gaming in was not our world, but an entirely different reality, and their player characters, having been raised in that world, would have somewhat different values, morals, and taboos than the players themselves did.

So this is how that went:

ME: So you see this incredibly sexy inn servant coming up the stairs... you saw this same NPC serving drinks in the bar downstairs when you came in. Long reddish blonde hair, silky soft, beautifully applied make up, young,soft skin the color of coffee with cream, big brown eyes... you smell just a hint of a very pleasant, musky perfume mingled with a very sexy natural body scent as this sexy thing sways past you in the hall, carrying a tray of drinks to one of the rooms further down. You get a wink and a smile as you watch the NPC go by with the tray. A few minutes later, this same server comes back out and walks back down the hall, and pauses a few yards away from you and says "Gods, I hate this shift. What are you still doing up?"
CHRIS: Uh... I ignore her.
ME: Ignore beauty such as this? Roll 2d6 and add 2.
CHRIS: Goddamit... okay. Erg. 9.
KENNY: Dude, you are totally into her.
ME: In character, I don't think your character would just ignore her.
CHRIS: I want a Willpower roll.
ME: Okay... roll. (rolls dice) I have a 19 total.
CHRIS: I can beat that... (rolls dice) Fuck. A 12. Okay, I'll say "Well, I'm keeping watch and I need to concentrate so I'll talk to you later."
ME: Okay. You see a disappointed pout come to the NPC's lovely features. "Look," that lovely voice says, dropping to a whisper, "it's dead downstairs; the barkeep won't notice if I don't come back for a little while. This room across the way is empty... wanna slip into it with me for a quickie?"
KENNY: Dude, don't do it!
NATE: She's going to make a Sex Appeal roll and I'll bet she's got this huge rating.
SCOTT: It's a good thing it's not my watch or I'd already be there. She wouldn't even have to roll on me.
KENNY: Dude, you're a horn dog.
NATE: You'd get us all killed.
CHRIS: I tell her I can't, really, but I'm flattered.
ME: Well, your character knows he SHOULD say that, but I'm not sure he actually can. Roll and add to your Willpower.
CHRIS: Goddamit. (rolls dice) A 23.
ME: (rolls dice) Yeah, but I have a real good rating... 29. Your character totally wants to go.
CHRIS: Goddamit, goddamit! I know this is a total set up from the Kinship!
ME: Your character goes off with the good looking young waiter, and I'm sure has a great time...
NATE: Wait. 'Waiter'?
SCOTT: It's a guy?
ME: Well, I've told you guys before, there is no homosexuality taboo on the River, so your characters wouldn't care. It's not our world.
CHRIS: What the fuck...? It's a GUY?
ME: It wouldn't make any difference to your character, Chris...
KENNY: Dude! It's a DUDE! You're totally going to bone a DUDE! Your character is a fag!
SCOTT: {coughs into hand} Homo!
NATE AND KENNY: (playing air guitar) Lolaaaaa... Lo Lo Lo Lo Lolaaaaaa... Lo lo lo lo lo Lolaaaaaa...
CHRIS: (yelling) That is so totally stupid my character is not gay I would totally never play a gay character I would never even let a guy get close to me that is so fucking bogus I AM TOTALLY NOT QUEER THAT IS SO UNFAIR YOU CAN'T DO THAT...

So I told this story on the site. I mean, it's fifteen years later, right? People are more enlightened now. Everyone would see how funny the whole thing was.

Or so I, entirely erroneously, presumed.

You would have thought I'd confessed to killing someone's kid.

IDIOT 1: You can't make people be gay. That's crazy. Players should have total control of their characters, especially something as important as whether they're gay or not.

ME: It.. okay, in my rpg setting, the kind of homosexuality taboo we take for granted in our world does not exist. People can be attracted to other people regardless of gender. I'm not 'making' anyone be gay, it's simply that my culture does not place enormous social pressure on all its members from birth to only behave in a heterosexual manner.

IDIOT 2: You are totally overestimating the impact of culture on sexuality. People are born straight or gay. And all my characters were born totally straight. Totally.

ME: Look, in most RPGs, characters are pagan, right? You don't get a choice in that. The background culture worships many gods, so, so do your characters. You don't feel offended or outraged that your character is going to worship some weird made up deity from a Monster Manual because that's what people do in the world where he grew up.

IDIOT 3: That's not the same, being gay or straight is totally different from that, and all my characters are straight. The world they are born in has nothing to do with it.

IDIOT 4: Also, you can't just make somebody's character do something they don't want to. Even if it was a girl trying to lure me away, I should get to decide if I go or not.

ME: So, if some good looking NPC makes a Sex Appeal roll on you, and you fail a Willpower check, there should be no consequences?

IDIOT 5: The player decides what his character does. Unless you're using a mind control spell or something. Sure she might be hot but my character might think about the good of the mission and how the party needs him and decide not to go with her. Or maybe my character is married or just isn't in the mood to have sex right then. It's up to me, not you.

IDIOT 2: Also, my character isn't gay. I would never sleep with a man under any circumstances and neither would any of my characters.

ME: So, the player always controls the character, even if the behavior is out of character?

IDIOT 1: It isn't out of character. My character might decide to go with the chick, but he might not. It depends. I'd play my character in character. But only I get to decide what that is.

IDIOT 3: And he would never under any circumstances be gay. That's final.

This "how dare I make anyone be GAY" thing is, in my opinion, beneath contempt... it's nothing but homophobia, which was made pretty clear in the succeeding posts in the thread. The more the members of this particular posse protested that they had nothing against gay guys, it's just that THEY weren't gay, and weren't interested in roleplaying gay characters, and none of their characters should ever be gay, or would ever be gay, under any circumstances, the clearer it became that these were some deeply homophobic motherfuckers, at least some of which were probably repressing their own particular impulses and fantasies to an entirely unhealthy extent. And I have no time for that idiocy, any more than I had time for the one player who rolled up a member of a dark skinned race in my game and didn't want to play him, because he just wasn't comfortable if his PC wasn't a white guy, like him.

So all that soured me on the site, too. But the last straw was an incident that occurred just last week.

As background, let me take you back to the height of the Doc Nebula Flame Wars. This was a period when most of the site was up in arms at me, because I do not like Dungeons and Dragons, I think it's an incredibly stupid fucking game system, and I also think that adults who play Dungeons and Dragons instead of using any of a hundred or more better game systems, or making up their own, are kind of retarded, or, at the very least, have no idea what roleplaying actually is, and are apparently unwilling to learn. And I'd said so, repeatedly, on the site.

Now, this is a site devoted to roleplaying games, and one where supposedly, freedom of expression is cherished and championed. However, apparently one of the big unwritten taboos of the site was and remains, Thou Shalt Not Talk Shit About D&D Because We Worship It Beyond All Sense or Reason. D&D is a childish system, a simple minded system, an unrealistic system, a brainless, dumbass, fucked up and retarded system, and this is inarguable to anyone who has ever roleplayed using it and who has more than four functional brain cells. Everybody I knew who was serious about roleplaying started out with one of the various D&D versions, eventually (usually quickly) became disgusted with its limitations, and moved on to more sophisticated systems allowing greater depth and breadth of roleplaying.

And, in point of fact, many of the people on the site made similarly disparaging remarks about D&D, although they still played it. And many site members also insulted each other with great regularity. However, apparently, my derisive comments regarding D&D, and those who played it irregardless of its obvious limitations and built in stupidities, were intolerable. And so, the flame wars raged.

So at one point, I posted an essay on what freedom of speech meant, and how it was necessary for people of maturity and good will to take responsibility for their own responses, when something that was not intended to insult them wound up offending them gravely. I truly believe that we generally choose to be offended by something, although often we are not consciously aware of it, and if we spend all of our time reacting with umbrage and outrage to everything that offends us, we are not being particularly adult. Freedom of speech doesn't work well in an environment where people scream like four years olds every time somebody says something that conflicts with one of their precious provincial biases or dearly held preconceptions.

I posted that essay in a sub forum where I had moderator privileges, and warned people in advance that while I was looking forward to a spirited debate as regards the ideas in the essay, I would, as moderator of the forum, delete any posts that were simply abusive and/or pejorative.

The first response I got was "DOC STOP BEING SUCH A FUCKING DOUCHE!!!!" And, as I had said I would, I deleted it.

And oh my God. You would have thought I'd bombed downtown Louisville with flaming grandmothers, or something. I could barely keep up with deleting all the abusive, insulting, infuriated tirades of personal invective. I deleted and deleted and deleted. Every once in a while someone would post something pertinent to the actual discussion, and I'd leave that up and respond to it, but those posts were about 1/10th of the flood of hysterical abuse that came pouring in. And most of the abuse was no longer about my hateful intolerant insults in regard to D&D and those who played it, or even what a jackass I was to post essays on freedom of speech and how mature adults should behave in response to it. No, now I was horrible, appalling, and a megalomaniac because I DARED to delete people's posts. I should be stripped of my privileges as moderator in my own sub forum. I should be thrown off the site. I should have a rebar shoved up my ass. It was an outrage.

Well, all that was months ago, but it served to convey to me that apparently, on the site, it is considered to be an absolutely unforgivable offense for a moderator in a forum to delete anyone else's posts, for any reason whatsoever, period, the end.

So, last week, a site member who was posting in another site member's sub forum hit 1000 posts, which is quite a milestone on the site. And he mentioned it in his post. And was clearly pleased at the accomplishment.

So the next day, the member with moderator powers in the sub forum, who has a long standing personality war going on with the first guy, went in and deleted half a dozen of the first guy's posts, to drop him back below 1000. And then he changed the visible signature paragraph on all HIS posts, to make it clear he'd done it just to be a dick.

So the first guy started a thread in which he described what had happened and replaced all the posts that had been taken down. And I read this, and I could not believe what a complete asswipe the other guy had been, and I also could not believe that the rest of the site, which had come after me so hard and furious when I'd deleted posts by other members for what was a very good reason, was going to just sit there and let the dumbass get away with deleting another member's posts for a completely childish and spiteful reason.

So I went in and posted something about what an amazing jackass he was.

And the sky fell in on me.

I'm not kidding. Here's how that went:

IDIOT 1: You fucking hypocrite. You did the exact same thing deleting other people's posts and now you're getting in someone else's face for it? You are scum.

ME: Uh... I deleted posts that were personally abusive and insulting, after advising people that I would. He deleted posts just to be a dick. That's not the same thing.

IDIOT 2: Shut the fuck up, you're stupid.

ME: I... hold on. Even if it is the same thing, when I did it you people crucified me for it, and now, none of you are saying a word to him about it...

IDIOT 3: It was just a joke. Those two have a history. You should just stay out of it. You're such an asshole.

ME: Okay, wait. So when I delete other people's posts for a good reason, I'm scum, and everyone screams at me, but when some other guy does it for a joke, just to be an ass, that's okay?

IDIOT 4: Shut the fuck up.

IDIOT 5: Somebody wake me up when he stops crying like a little bitch.

IDIOT 6: I can't believe you're trying to start a flame war over this. Delete your thread or I'll delete it for you.

ME: ...what...?

IDIOTS: Shut the fuck up.

I want to say I don't understand, but of course I understand. The guy who deleted the other guy's posts, just to be an ass? He plays D&D, albeit with about a thousand house rules loaded on top, and frequently brags about how much he loves D&D and would never play with another rules system. So apparently, as long as he loves D&D and says so frequently in public, he can do no wrong.

Me, on the other hand... my input to the site is only just barely suffered by most other members as long as I never express any kind of negative opinion regarding Dungeons and Dragons. My constant suppression of my opinions regarding that particular gaming system, and the retarded morons who game with it, is the price of my continued sufferance on the site.

So, I'm pretty much over LouisvilleRPG.net.

But if you love Dungeons and Dragons, it is definitely the place for you.

Go to it. Bear its children.

I'll be over here, scheming to make all your characters gay.