aumshantih

It's been a while since I wrote up a bunch of the movies I've seen. This isn't it, but here's most of them. Spoilers ahead.

( 16 Candles )

( The Aristocrats )

( Scarface )

( Carriers )

( Rachel Getting Married )

( Return to Oz )

It's been a while since I've delved into the twisted inner workings of NERO National (not to be confused with NERO Volta or Mass, who by all accounts are running consecutively good events; or the ongoing Oraban National Plot which is said to be the finest the game has seen in recent memory) because, let's face it, when the Executive Vice-President for Human Resources vanishes in a cloud of smoke and legel proceedings; and Val Jolenti is rumored to be sharing a bunk at a public campground with the site's caretaker, Cletus, what else is there to say?

However, with the recent announcement of a new National Event this May, the promised release of the 9th Edition Foolbook, and other ambitious proceedings underway; I felt it was time to dust off the sarr-chasm (doh!) and see what was to be seen; especially with the newly updated Tyrran Cosmology.

http://nerolarp.com/InGame/Plot%20Intl%20CosmologyMarch20603ER.htm

And what I saw were several immediately apparent things:
1) Boobs
2) Freaking Tariq *all over* the place.
3) Giant Bees

Lacking, except for one photobomber:
1)Fat Guys

Good things:
Solstice! We got through the darkest night, and the days are getting longer. Yay!
Getting to see some lovely people who I really need to see more.
Laughing a whole lot.
New music
Saw 16 Candles, finally. Next is Breakfast Club, and then a certain someone has to stop mocking me. :P
We're getting a christmas tree tonight!
I got a package from my mom containing, among other goodies my wire raven sculpture, and the book of Grimm's fairytales I have always adored. The cover is cloth covered and falling apart, and it just feels so very magical and it is a joy to read through it again.


Things I did well:
Braille
Saw people
Celebrated the solstice
Knit

Tomorrow I go to NJ for a few days, R&R (video games and tea and blobbiness probably). I've an urge to run a game in this world.  May do a one-shot involving space pirates. I'm working on a mix of my favorite songs of the year. Here's what I have so far- AFI - Okay, I Feel Better Now (Crash Love, 2009) Mars Volta - Teflon (Octahedron, 2009) Depeche Mode - In Sympathy (Sounds of the Universe, 2009) Mesh - Only Better (A Perfect Solution, 2009) Etro Anime - Danger (See the Sound, 2002) Nine Inch Nails - Lights in the Sky (The Slip, 2008) Sarah Brightman - Where the Lost Ones Go (Symphony, 2008) Oomph! - Die Schlinge (GlaubeLiebeTod, 2006) Gathering - Shortest Day (Home, 2006) Sonata Arctica - Everything Fades to Grey (The Day of Greys, 2009) Symphony X - Communion and the Oracle (V: The New Mythology Suite, 2000) Been grooving to Crash Love and A Perfect Solution lots the past few days.

Comics about daily life in Shanghai.

These are a really cool and realistic representation of "upper middle class" urban life in China. They give a very good sense of what my daily life is like when I'm there.

I did make it to London!

Also, the American terminal has a spa in it. Getting a massage right before a flight: best idea ever.

I seem to have brought the snow with me, however, as Adam, his sister, and I discovered in the middle of a trip to the London Zoo yesterday.

Also, the food here is amazing. Fully expect that the plane will not be able to get my weight off the ground by the end of this trip.

And Siamese cats are the least allergenic ever.

Curmudgeons unite! The benefits of being grumpy.

The game doesn't have a name yet. It's a fantasy game inspired by http://imgur.com/FNYyK.jpg and http://imgur.com/ntDgG.jpg (thanks Ewen). I call it "shonen fantasy game" in my notes.

Here's some thoughts.
* Fast play as described in my previous post: target 1-hour.
* Long-term play. Target: play once a week for a year.
* A GM who does GM shit.
* Character levels 1-99
* Characters have both background and role. Backgrounds are high color power sets. Roles are thematic roles (hero, buddy, mysterious girl, villain, traitor, loner) and change in play.
* Turn-based play with productive passing.
* Antagonism comes from factions, which are mostly GM controlled but not always.
* A reward system (with leveling) for the GM?
* Backgrounds have three possible contexts (example: for the Light Rebus power, you can choose between being a member of a holy order, the last descendant of a hunted bloodline, or possessed by a mysterious entity.)
* Each context has plot unlocks which reveal more about your background and history (for the "last descendant of a hunted bloodline" above, these are: hunted, another branch of a family has survived?, the lost city of your people, your progenitor and your destiny.)
* Mechanically implicated: Characters, sets, items, factions, desires, mysteries.
* Power pyramids with ways to temporarily unlock higher level powers for big showdown fights.
* Saving your game?

Backgrounds thus far:
Light Rebus (see first link, above)
Chain Warden (see second link, above)
Dark Sigil

There'll be like ten or so.

Credit where it's do: Backgrounds are just Positions from Principia. Several ideas are lifted from Posion'd and Apocalypse World. Shooting the Moon also figures big into all my designs. Power pyramids are all over the place but I was thinking of FATE 2e. Final Fantasy, natch.

So, here we are, at last, on December 21st. I think, perhaps, that New England decided it was winter long before the winter solstice, but I don't mind a bit of white in the winter world. The weekend before last, I attended Revels. It was a fantastic show and I was very happy with my second row seats which allowed me to see every facial expression of the actors. I think, perhaps, that the chorus singing was not quite as strong as years past, but I had a fabulous time with my husband, Kang, and Vree. I think at this point that we might have a tradition with them. Afterall, there are not many people who can give me an immediate answer when asked what weekend might work for them in December when it is still August. :-) I also got to see my nephew, Stuart, play in his Christmas piano recital and that thrilled me to no end. He was so serious and wonderful! Last week, I had the chance to attend Wicked at PPAC here in Providence. I love that our little theater has such wonderful traveling shows throughout the year and am so glad that conspiratrix  and I maintain our season tickets each year. Amazingly, I would say that of the three times I have seen Wicked, this might be the best one. The two main character's voices sent chills up my back. If you have the time, I definitely recommend coming down to Providence for the show. I believe they are here until January 10. This weekend, I had many plans. For one, I really wished to attend conspiratrix 's party, but those silly weather people scared me! They kept predicting blizzard conditions that might start around 4pm and I could not bare the thought of being trapped in Worcestor with fluffy Cotton here at home. So, we decided to stay home and the snow didn't even start until 10pm!! I was totally robbed of a fun holiday party and I feel terribly guilty about not making up. le sigh. The good news, of course, is that my parents' plane got in fine from Florida at 6pm at Logan airport and they got to Jamestown just as the first flakes started to fall. So, anyway, come Sunday morning, it was very very snowy. I had planned to go to church to see my nephew's in the Christmas pageant, but my sister said there was no way they could get their car out of the driveway. And so, my day of Christmas pageants and family gatherings became a day of lazing about playing lotro and doing small chores. Not bad at all. And so, here we are on another Monday and it's sooo hard to drag my attention to the work that must be done. I know it's a short week (even shorter because I'm going to Boston Pops tomorrow!), but still... I'd rather have fun!! :-)

First off, the movie is utterly spectacular. It's not just the much talked about special effects and completely lifelike CGI and the fancy new 3D, but the story. Go experience the story.

( My thoughts with spoilers )

I made a terrible mistake on Saturday. I decided that we would hit the Natick Mall for a couple hours before going up to a holiday party at... uh... can't remember LJ handles. Anyway, before going to a holiday party at, hmm, K & J's house. Vastin & his mom had made plans to get together to do some shopping, and I needed to get a couple things for my sister-in-law.

Ha. Ha ha ha. HA HA HA HA HA. Oh, I was such a fool.

( Not with ten thousand MPG could you do this. It is folly. )

( Attack of the killer duckie )

( Locked out in the cold! )

( The party was made of solid awesome )

( Shoveling in a winter wonderland )

( The dark reign of the pantsless undead ninja queen )

( A culinary experiment )

( Arcane scrawlings )

Now the Christmas tree is lit, and here I am kicking back with a cup of tea and my laptop. Not a bad end to the day, even if my arms are a bit sore from all the shoveling. I hope others are not too overly snowed in, or are having fun with it if so!

I think we're up to about 20 inches here and still falling... we measured it using the highly scientific method of sending Freya out into the snow, noting how high on her shoulder the snow came, and then measuring up to there when she came back in. :)

This should be particularly amusing when I take the kids out to play in a little while, since I think the snow will come up to about Kyra's waist. I am soooooo taking pictures and maybe video. We'll see if she can even move in it! At least it's light and fluffy.

I'm not looking forward to the shoveling, but playing with the kids and having hot cocoa afterwards will be pretty fun. :) Great day to catch up on laundry, drink hot beverages nonstop, and wrap presents. I feel like maybe there should be some baking in there somewhere, too. Mmmm. Maybe cheddar corn muffins. That could work.

I just got Straight No Chaser's new Christmas album off iTunes, and it's awesome. For those unfamiliar, they're an a capella group... they have a mix of really funny stuff and perfectly serious stuff, but everything they do always has a really new take on the song (at least on this new one -- don't know about their older one, though I assume it's similar). Good stuff. Go find their Twelve Days videos on You Tube! Hye-sterical.

The snow is finally slacking off... time to think about shoveling. Hi ho, ho ho!

So I've been flooning and finishing my 7V backstory and now desire character connections. For the wary, I am determined to play a relatively mundane character as opposed to my weirder concepts (Aralis will always be there for that).

Concept: Formerly a Changeling from the Lostwood before he joined the Scarthian army. He has been involved in the recent Mahori conflict as a swordmage in an irregular unit. Curious, contemplative, and precise, he is loosely a Guardian/Sorcerer with possibly Scholar/Rogue as side headers. A straight man by nature, I suspect he may be a good scholarly conversationalist or a bewildered foil to the younger and/or crazier people going to the 7V school.

I'm interested in backstory connections for the past year before game starts, traveling from one land to another. Chance meeting with him in a library, traveling companion of convenience from one place to another, being hired to teach or be a bodyguard (great for concerned parentals), etc. are some fine ideas that come to mind. Any connection can be worked out for most countries at some point.

Either comment here or ping me here if you are intrigued.

Last night, instead of going to what sounded like a super-fun party, Josh and I elected to stay home, because we were worried about driving in the huge blizzard that we were supposedly going to be getting. I was annoyed when it still hadn't begun to snow by bedtime (weather.com had told me we'd start getting snow by 4pm), and REALLY cranky to wake up this morning to find that it had barely snowed at all.

It's been a long time since I've done probability, and I'd love for someone to check my work on the following question:

Suppose you have 58 marbles in a jar, 28 white and 30 black, and you draw a marbles from the jar without replacement.

(a) If you draw 19 total, what's the probability that exactly 9 will be black?
(b) If you draw 17 total, what's the probability that all 17 will be black?

If I've done this right, I get ( cut to insure the independence of your results ).

So I'm awake, because I'm waiting for the limo to Logan, which is going to, in theory, enable me to catch a 9 AM flight to England.

Nice falling snow out there.

Also nice thirty-mile-an-hour wind.

But the airline says the flight's still taking off on time. Hm.

I think a good litmus test for whether you've done enough research in a particular area occurs when you pick up a new book on the subject and don't learn many things you don't already know. I've about reached that point with Alexander the Great, at least involving his early life and his death and the general plotting of his campaigns, though I couldn't lay out the battle plan and troop movements for famous battles or read the source material in the original Greek or Latin. Even though Alexander rarely appears in Aristotle Vampire, reading about him is a good framework for understanding Macedonian politics and occasionally, Aristotle as a person. Aristotle as a philosopher, now that's a different story.

Update on my website: My refund demand must have gotten me somewhere, because my website is back up except for the all-important forums, which are at least displaying a different error page now. Yay!

A while back, noradannan posted about the movie "Ink".

Goooo see it. It's on Hulu. In fact, I shall give you a link.

Gawd.



http://www.hulu.com/watch/116313/ink

Two neat youtube videos on Neil Gaiman's latest blog post:

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/12/xmas-roundup-with-some-good-links-and.html

One is a video-song response Amanda Palmer wrote in response to a discussion/argument she's been having with Neil. The other is a neat song about Christmas that resonated with me. Oh, and a there's a story about Bad Jews and Christmas trees that also made me smile!

I had fun at K_beckett's holiday party last night - we gamed the raffle system a bit by going all in for one of the smaller prizes, and walked away with a couple of theater tickets. It was no 160GB Ipod, but it was better than nothing! We also got some of our ballroom dancing in, so I was quite happy with that. And I had some good conversations (with several different people) about teaching, aphasia and trying to rent campsites only to discover you don't fit in with their "mission statement." Niiice.

We saw Avatar this afternoon with Gairten and I quite enjoyed it. It was very pretty, and I'm a sucker for phosphorescence anyway. Oh, and the plot was fine too. But, really, see it for the great creature designs.