Arrr, matey! When is International Talk Like a Banker Day?

Synergy....

Politically Incorrect Thought of the Day: Life and Law in Angie-Land

I think morgues should be under fiat to extract human organs from cadavers for transplant, regardless of consent. It's not like you need that anyway, you selfish prick.

From Chris' plethora of interesting away messages... (which I've created a list for, as I have Jose's).

There was the AD&D campaign I ran that was a rip-off of the Wizard of Oz. You know, Dwarves for Munchkins and all that, with a high level Wicked Magic-User of the West. The campaign actually lasted quite a while to my regret.

I seem to recall the PCs killed the Dwarves/Munchkins to take their stuff and tore up the yellow brick road because they thought it might be made of gold. The PCs also killed the Wizard of Oz because he sassed them too much and set Scarecrow on fire because he gave poor directions.

Alex Anderegg, from RPGnet.

It goes to show that the (dismal) reality of human nature is best displayed when people have the opportunity to be directly and unlimitedly responsible for their own moral choices.

Why else do most roleplaying games end up so fucked up?

Hey everyone, UMBC's blood drive is this Tuesday, the 20th, from 10am-4pm in the Commons. You can walk in, or make an appointment by emailing Erin Hood at hood2@umbc.edu. Appointments make it go faster doubly because a) if you have an appointment you'll get priority and b) the more appointments they get, the more staffers and equipment there'll be, making it go faster in general.

If you can't make Tuesday, there's a separate blood drive on Friday, the 23rd, on South Campus. Check it oot..

ALSO, there's a blood drive in Catonsville on Saturday the 24th at the Banneker Community Center from 10:00-3:00. It's reachable by the MTA Red Line, bus route #2.

27 Melvin Avenue
Catonsville, MD 21228

The Community Center's phone number is: 410-887-0959... Someone there should know what's going on.

If you give blood, you can make it to one of the drives. Unless a piano fell on you.

BTW, I'm trying to dedicate my life to public service. Which is why I spent Labor Day weekend clearing park trail with a machete on a stick*. Okay, so that's not the only reason. If anyone asks: Dungeons and Dragons made me do it.

*Weapon proficiency: weed whip

So!

School is great... I moved into an on-campus apartment, which is very nice. It actually feels homey, unlike that one room which is a dorm, and the common room which nobody uses. I got myself a foil poster of one of those ostentatious 17th century world maps to plaster across the wall, and a pre-Raphaelite is going on my door. Jose has a giant Middle-Earth map on his ... ceiling... which makes for great staring at when you're lying on the floor. His walls are covered with his favorite artist.... Salvador Dali.

As given to abstraction as Jose is, I really should've guessed.

I actually have female friends this year. It's pretty fun actually living with girls. One of the downsides to being a nerd is that... it's hard to meet girls. Amber is sick and went back to So.Co. though. :( She and Katie are pretty awesome. Karissa is quiet and is always talking to her fiancee over webcam/voicechat, so it's like she's never around. Katie says Karissa says the same thing about me...

I'm trying to start a sci-fi and fantasy club on campus, if I can ever wade through the paperwork... I already have enough members to start out with.

My classes:

Roman Empire
Greek Life and Thought
Applied Statistics for Business and Economics
Household Economics <-- not to be confused with Home Ec
Theory of Public Finance

Ring around the Rosie

SFX 87: huh, what's Defcon?

Katie98 KT: Hacker Convention

SFX 87: sketchy

Katie98 KT: no, its actually pretty well known.

SFX 87: well there are a lot of people who think they're hackers cuz it's 1337

Katie98 KT: Tech person from teh WashPost covered it.

SFX 87: well-known as it may be, it's still a hacker convention

Katie98 KT: yea, Phil was bitching about lots of people like that being there. but there's also lots of legit hackers.

SFX 87: that'd be like attending the "international spy convention"

Katie98 KT: *shrugs* aparently its really legit

SFX 87: "People Who Poison Drinks With Giant Rings" Convention. So that's why rappers have all that bling

Katie98 KT: LOL

SFX 87: Seriously, how does anyone fall for that shit?

Katie98 KT: going to a hacker convention?

SFX 87: no, poisoning people with giant rings

Katie98 KT: I don't understand about the poisoning thing.

SFX 87: oh, you've never read those old swashbuckler novels or whatever when the devious villain would poison people by having a ring, the "jewel" of which was actually a hinged capsule filled with poison powder?

Katie98 KT: nope

SFX 87: three musketeers and what have you. Well, I think those types should have a convention. And a union that will handle their liability lawsuits. "Gentlemen, we were going to have catering this year, but there seems to be an unfortunate illness.." X-TREME POISONINGS FOR GENERATION X... NOSE PIERCING POISON!!!!!

Oh, So Wrong!

Anthropologies of Age

I unearthed a rather thought provoking blog while on a rather mundane google search of "panda names."

I think this is someone I'd like to meet, though of course because meeting people from the internet is creepy, someone I'd like to meet in a strictly neutral, strictly hypothetical non-threatening pocket dimension, free of the dual burdens of awkwardness and judgmentalism.

The quality of thought changes when you know you actually could meet someone, someone who's not just a nebulous text-spawning "person on the internet." If I went out and took Metro lines so and so, I could meet him... You know when something is "based on a true story," it's a better story? And so it is.

I think he's smarter than me also. Not smarter necessarily IQ-wise (I couldn't judge, but I wouldn't be surprised) but just in the "Oh, I never thought of that," category, a certain level of self-awareness. Maybe this is the difference between old people and young people, what "maturity" is. (Asking me to define "maturity" is like ... well... Blind people don't dream in color, from what I've heard. When people who are born blind are asked, "Do you wish you could see?" they say, "How could I wish it, when I've never known it?") It's only a theory I have; my actual contact with people outside my age group is rare. More anthropological fieldwork on my part must be done.

Unfortunately, whenever I talk to anyone older than me, it's within a hierarchical context: parents, relatives, teachers, bosses, "superiors"¹ even informally. In the case of the blog, I have spontaneously been handed the revelations, stripped of formality and rank, of someone older than me, but not old enough to be "old." You can tell, I think, just from the writing style- reading things by people older than you is like dropping a pebble into a deep pool, watching it sink, and watching the ripples. I can't explain why. It just is.

When I was younger, and my parents kept using the "when you're more mature" line on me, I thought rebelliously that, surely the consciousness of a twenty year old and the consciousness of a forty year old were similar? Your IQ does not improve so much after a certain age. If education were the issue, then a ten year-old public school American brat would be more "mature" than an 80 year old peasant from a third world country. It's not so much about family status and responsibility either- there are thirteen year-old wives and avowed bachelors to the grave. Between age 10 and age 20 a person goes through revelations of seismic magnitude, and compared to that, I didn't think the mental difference between someone, say 25, and 45 was a difference in "maturity" so much as a difference in physiological, economic, social conditions.

That was a theory, and theories can be disproved.

I know I am smarter now than when I was twelve. Smarter than when I was eighteen. How it happened and the nature of this "wisdom" is a mystery. At any age, you dwell within your consciousness. All of the world, for its great size, can be encompassed inside my head, and vast as the universe is, it cannot be bigger than my mind.

So. I enjoy watching thoughts bloom...

Sorry for the two philosophy-babble posts in a row.

¹ Except for lower-class adults. Un-PC, but true. Consider: My boss is "Dr. Mitch." The janitors at Harbor are "Sheila and Lynette." My dentist is "Dr. Miyamoto." My school bus driver was "Bobby." The esteemed culinary expert cum tv celebrity is (the honorable) "Iron Chef Kenichi." The food services employee working the dining hall cashier is "Valerie." Us young'ns are taught to address adults (I'm a "college girl," emphasis on "girl," hence not a "real" adult) as superiors, but if forms of address have any social implication, then what am I to think? I still find addressing adults by first name abhorrent. Sometimes I will call the janitor "Ms. Sheila."

Regarding the previous post: No, I'm not religious at all.

On the Nature of Youth

St. Augustine said, with whatever authority can be conferred upon dead saints, that people, even while they sin, even in the state of their own wretchedness, reach out to God. No one murders for murder's sake, for evil's sake, for the black abyss that claims them after death. People kill and execute other acts, for greed, for glory, for the sake of a woman, for the countless things that they believe life worth living for. Greed, ambition, lust, all of these sins yet at their core strive for comfort, joy, power, rapture, love, all of the things that are the essence of God who is every goodness.

However you regard St. Augustine, I have hope, while others have despair, for the youth and the future of the world. While parents, preachers, and politicians shake their fists over video games, music videos, teen sex, drugs, piercings, youthful disrespect, degeneracy, the general decline of Western Civilization, whatever it is these days that draws fashionable old-timey criticism, I look upon the world with the restless hope of the young, and because I am young, have the luxury to dream.

We play our violent video games, destroying aliens and saving the world because we dream of valor. We watch our thuggy rap tv in defiance of compliance, brown-nosing, softness, compromise and complacency. Through harsh lyrics about pride and strife we seek integrity. We do our drugs like the cloud-seeking shamans of old in pursuit of epiphany and rapture, visions of colors and stars and music. We have sex at sixteen hoping to know the pinnacles of love, this great emotion that shakes the axles of the world. We wear gang colors to know the meaning of loyalty, family, and sacrifice, to take a bullet for a brother, to do jailtime for a sister, to understand the meaning of strength. We bring guns to school in hope of immortality and recognition, because as Machiavelli says, if we have not love, then fear will do.

At school, with clear backpacks and metal detectors and security guards, the first thought of adults should not be, "Does he have a gun?" At the CD shop the first thought should not be, "Is she going to shoplift?" When the news reports a vandalism or a theft, the first line should not be, "Authorities think teenage hoodlums did it."

At the school they should say, "Hello, Sitting-By-Yourself-In-The-Corner, what's your name?" because the best way to stop a killer is not to take away his ability, but his intention. At the shop they should ask, "What sort of music are you going to make?" or "Excuse me, can you help me reach that box up there?" Perhaps if she is expected to help instead of expected to harm, she will. In the news, perhaps the story should be, "Members of local high school pitch in for children's hospital."

When we ask, "How should we live?" we want answers. When we ask, "How should we love?" we want answers. When we ask, "How will I find the meaning of valor, honor and faith?" we want answers.

"Don't do drugs and stay in school," is not an answer.

There is not one teen who does not dream. If we dream in the wrong places, wrong though they may be, wicked though they may be, at least we dream.

We want to change the world; give us a way to do it.

Security

I just spent like the last half hour trying to convince the bank on the phone that I am indeed Angela C, the bearer of Angela C's credit card.

See, I went to UMBC to turn in my timesheets to the econ department secretary so that I can get paid, and then I went to buy food. Well, I had intended on bringing (Jeremy's) pasta, but he had no sauce except an annoying frozen one that needed thawed/boiled. I didn't mind but he was like "Nooo, it doesn't reheat well... You could just get something at the Commons" and I was like, "The Commons probably aren't open" and he was like "yeah they are" and I was like "I have no cash," but it seemed like he was loathe to have me eat his pasta so I gave up the cause.

SO, it turns out that the Grille is actually cash only. I went to the ATM to get money out, grumbling cuz I'd have to pay a "convenience" fee for using another bank's ATM, but I dinnit know my PIN number. (I hate this, BTW. I have too many numbers to remember already, you'd think they'd do a password or something.)

Okay, fine, I go to the OTC and get myself a hotpocket... via credit card. No problem.

Then, since I'm there, I go to the Bookstore to get textbooks. It takes me a while to do that, I'm kind of distracted by all the nice shiny books there and the cute tiny freshmen. Anyway, I try to pay for them (it's like a $200 purchase, and I only bought a fraction of what I need) but the card won't clear, so the cashier makes me show photo ID, and then she has to call the bank and ask them.

Well it turns out they froze the account cuz of my PIN number fiasco. So they ask me a few security questions, where I make a total retard out of myself by being hesitant/getting them wrong.... There's nothing quite so infuriating as having a stranger ask me questions about myself and getting them wrong.

"So where do you buy your books from?"
"Amazon?"
"Uh.. no." (I think the correct answer is supposed to be B&N...)

"What's your current address?"
"(address)"
"No, your current address."

(Turns out the correct answer to the current address question was last year's dorm address, which is, of course, no longer current.)

I sound like such a moron, not remembering my own address. Well I'm not. I don't need to know my address because I know precisely where I live. Only people who don't know where I live know my address. Ex: I don't need to see my nose either to know it's there. Besides:

A) It's not my address, seeing as I don't own the place
B) Anyone I care about knows how to get there. It's that room, over there, at the end of the hall. Yeah, that one.
C) The door has my name in big cheerful letters on it.
D) If you've got the right room, my roommates will be there to tell you whether I'm in or out.
E) Everyone knows I'm "Michelle's Roomie" anyway so all you've got to do is find Michelle.
F) Call me or AIM me to tell me you're coming, and I'll let you in.
G) Nobody sends me mail anyway except for spammers.
(Corollary: I've never sent myself postcards.)

Most importantly:

H) I don't live there anymore.

Same with:
"What is your work/cell phone number?", ... when I told them my actual cell phone number (since I don't have a work number), that was the wrong answer. Apparently the number they wanted was last year's dorm phone. I'd forgotten what it was, so I had to look it up on my cell call list before they were satisfied. Not knowing your own phone number also makes you look stupid.

Well, I finally managed to convince them somehow that I was indeed myself. I closed the purchase on my textbooks, and went out to retrieve my bookbag from the bag check. As you know, the Bookstore doesn't let people bring their bags into the store, for security reasons. They take your bags and give you a little plastic card with a number on it, which you return to them when you get your bags back. But it turns out that in the mess I'd lost the card somewhere in the store..

GRAH!!!

I blame Jeremy. See! If only you'd let me eat your pasta!

Otakon was frickin' awesome. I had a lot more fun this year than last.

Yay, Jeremy! It's a lot better with him there. Also, I think he's finally mastered the art of driving into downtown Baltimore. Also, I was better at finding my way around and scheduling things this year.

Bumped into Lauren there too. That was frickin' awesome. Small, small world.

I had a costume of sorts, on Sunday, if wearing a giant yellow foam World of Warcraft exclamation mark on my head can be considered a costume. Damn the torsion power! It kept falling over, or keeling over in the wind. Plus, I had to take it off to go through doors and low ceilings.

A bunch of people took my picture (most of 'em thinkin' I was from Metal Gear Solid) - I hope none of them get online or you'll have pictures of me in a bike helmet with a styrofoam sphere and a high-density foam block attached to it. I ran into two other people who had forms of punctuation attached to their heads too.. that was amusing. Plus I bumped into a bunch of guildies from my server. The number of WOW junkies at Otakon was just incredible.

(The number of people who went as Full Metal Alchemist characters... less so.)

Jeremy went as Larva from Vampire Princess Miyu and ended up being glomped by an uncomfortable number of girls.

I can also say with perfect confidence that while he was dressed as Larva, (and when we went down to the Inner Harbor), he freaked out/awed a bunch of little kids ("Are you a magician?"), and homeless people did not ask him for money.

Good Morning, Edward Said!

I've been watching Going Tribal, a Discovery Channel reality show about this British marine who goes to live with various tribes for a month. I find it to be quite interesting, though on the Discovery Channel forum a bunch of anthropologists are stirring up a ruckus.

I concur that the advertising is retarded. "Oohhh, watch the white man try to survive a month with the CANNIBALS!!!" Plus, the generic "tribal" drumbeat, the cliche spiral pattern and leet flame motifs get a thumbs down. You know if they did a show called "Going Oriental" and had a bunch of geishas, dragons and Jackie Chan in the trailer, (with ying yangs and that "chop suey" font), I'd be pretty pissed off too. It'd be almost as bad as the description^* UMBC dining services wrote of our Chinese takeout. Anyway, the show itself is actually pretty good, though I think that the hour-long episodes are too short to give us anywhere near a comprehensive understanding of various cultures. True to its reality show nature, you get all the crazy shit, ("I'm Bruce Parry, watch me drink cow blood!") but not so much normal things.

Of course, all the anthropologists are screaming, "Cultural Imperialism!" I think the anthropologists should pull their heads out of their asses and be glad a show like this was even made, and is widely watched. One of the criticisms I saw was, "OMG how dare the Discovery Channel send a normal joe, and not a trained anthropologist!" I find that to be a paternalistic and imperialistic statement in itself. So the only people who can "study" foreign peoples are "trained scientists"? So the only contact indigenous people should have with the outside world should be people sent there to study them? God. The Suri and the Kombai, among others, are living and breathing people, not Jane Goodall and the monkeys. They should have the final say over who to invite into their homes to live with and befriend, not scientists who want to "protect the natives from cultural contamination." Explorer Bruce Parry never claims to be an objective scientist doing a scholarly documentary. His show is merely the memoir of his personal experience and how it changed him. It's not the be-all-end-all authority about a people, and nothing ever will be. If someone produces a reality show about living in Japan or England or Sweden, will the anthropologists jump on his ass too?

Anthropologists are also annoyed that Bruce Parry spins his experience as being exciting and dangerous. This annoyance is understandable, since for ages anyone who wasn't white has been labeled an exotic, wild savage. To which I respond... exotic, wild, or no, living miles away from the nearest modern medical facility is dangerous. Having bows drawn on you by a dozen Indonesian tribesmen is dangerous. Living in Sudan on the border between two warring ethnic groups, in the middle of a civil war, is dangerous. Parry made it quite clear that his hosts were hospitable and kind, but be that as it may, anyone in his situation is in great danger, regardless of the disposition of his companions. It's a hard life, and it does a great disservice to the people involved to pretend that, "Ladeedadeeda, there's no war or disease here! We live in Rousseau's paradise!"

Bruce Parry has balls. Give him credit for that.

--
*"Pungent spices. Delicate, aromatic sauces. Intricate and imaginative combinations of vitamin rich vegetables and chicken, beef, or pork. Mein Bowl provides exotic, high quality food that nourishes the body and soul and creates a positive flowing chi. It's everything that you look for in an Oriental restaurant-and a little bit more. A meal at Mein Bowl isn't just a meal; it's a visit to another culture!"

Scientists Breed Cute Tame Foxes

Awww!

Tears of St. Lawrence

Friday was aptly named, being that I spent it at Matt's place cooking up veggie tempura and attempting to roll sushi. We played an Oriental Adventures style game based on Exalted mechanics. After a night of pretending to be Asian, we went outside, tried to catch the meteor shower, failed, and went home. The Leonids, by the way, are also known as the Tears of St. Lawrence because they fall near his feast day. St. Lawrence is famous for being burned alive on a gridiron, and is reported to have said, "Now you may turn me over, my body is roasted enough on this side." I don't know what it is with Catholic saints all being more famous for dying in a hideous manner than for doing good deeds. My sister's church, for example is lined with pictures of bleeding Korean martyrs. I personally, think it would be more important to learn how to live well than to die well.

--

Went to Atlantic City on Saturday.

Hot as balls on the beach, lots of old people, little Chinese men, chain-smokers at slot machines, and shiny lights. Carl made $200 on poker. He calculates that as basically earning $60 an hour. Congratulations, Carl. He has a reputation in roleplaying games for making deals with demons in exchange for dark power, and usually dying in hideous ways, so this isn't surprising. (Mike Robbins even made a comic series called, "The many deaths of Carl.") I also got an economics lesson. I couldn't gamble legally (since when has the gambling age been 21???) and the minimum bets on craps were like $10. Blackjack was like $20. As opposed to um, Guild Wars, which costs $50 and will last me a year.

Old Senate fogeys like complaining that video games are sinful. You all have probably heard the big scandal about Grand Theft Auto's Hot Coffee mod (which I, undoubtedly like thousands of others, promptly downloaded after all the press). While I find games like GTA distasteful, and I know parenting is a hard job even without video games, the only way to get a mod like Hot Coffee is to... mod.

Fact of Life #1: If some hacker accesses areas of the game that were intentionally locked off, that's not the game developer's fault. That's hacking. Duh.

Tons and tons of unfinished code remains in all games as a matter of course, which can't be deleted, only locked off. If someone goes out of their way to hack the game, who's fault is that?

Fact of Life #2: Fourteen year old boys will masturbate. I don't know why parents are so shocked to hear this. "Oh, my little Johnny would never touch his weewee!" Talk to your kids about sex. If you slap your son everytime he looks at a breast, he'll grow up neurotic. This isn't to say, give your kids smut, but don't, you know, go ballistic.

Jack Thompson even condemned the Sims as being sinful. In this life simulation game where you can do anything from getting a job or getting married to washing the dishes or reading the newspaper, Thompson gets his panties in a jumble because in the game you can take a bath or change baby diapers. Woe is me, the lustful nudity! Nevermind that all nekkid people, even kids, are covered up by a blur. Supposedly there are hacks that can remove the blur. Nevermind that naked Sims look like Barbie/Ken dolls, without nipples or genitalia. Nevermind that EA (the company that makes the Sims) cracks down harshly on any such mods that they find. Nevermind that the Sims is the best and most popular example of a game that doesn't rely on sex or violence for entertainment. Nevermind that the Sims is the game that best reaches out to older gamers and women. Nevermind that violent crime this decade is the lowest it's been in history. No no no, Jack Thompson is on a crusade.

Jack Thompson says that game companies are to blame because they encourage modding, nevermind that most modding is the creation of new levels or different character models. Counter-Strike, the first person-shooter where you fight terrorism, started out as a mod for Half-Life and got so popular it's now a separate game. In the case of the Sims, the mod community mostly does innocuous things like custom-designing wallpaper for your house or a new spring outfit for your daughter. While we're busy persecuting game companies for what a very small minority of modders do, why don't we start arresting celebrities for public indecency, since porn sites are photoshopping their heads onto naked bodies?

Of course, like gambling, all the outcry will die down once they realize how much video gaming contributes to the economy...

Hypocrites.

Check out GrowRPG, a great flash game/turn-based strategy/ experiment in chaos theory.

Basically, this is a game in which you build an RPG world turn by turn. So one turn you may "build" a forest, the next a mountain, the next a town. After everything is built, then the hero sets off on his pre-planned adventure through the world you just made, on his quest to slay the great evil. The outcome of his quest is determined not so much by his actions, but by the order in which you build features of the world. A forest that is grown earlier is denser, a town that is built near an ocean can construct shipyards while a town near a forest makes lumber mills, a castle that is well-fortified earlier can repel an attack while a weaker castle smolders.

What's interesting about it, besides being a fun game, is that it gets me to wonder to what extent success or failure is based upon individual actions/decisions, and to what extent it depends on circumstances. In each game, the hero does mostly the same things, but his world determines how well he does, or sometimes even how he does certain things. Play it. You'll understand what I mean.

Knight/Mage

The best short story ever.

A Church completely made out of Legos

Oh, and while you're at it... The Brick Testament, a rendition of the Bible, as told in Lego.

I Hart Darth, the cutest Star Wars webcomic out there.

I found the link via Manic Graffiti, the cutest World of Warcraft webcomic out there.

The Paladinly Fortune Cookie

"Have faith in the force of right and not in the right of force."

Lucky numbers 6, 17, 38, 46, 2 7

LEARN CHINESE: Boss
Lao-Ban