The Rules of Life: #06

Rule #6: If it's so interesting you can't look away, it's probably a diversion.

Man, another cynical little gem from a guy who lives with one foot out of his own life. It's true that maintaining a certain amount of situational awareness is important. Not becoming totally engrossed in every sensory experience does have some merits.

Maybe though--just occasionally, Kris--it is okay to really drink in a moment.

No, "The End of Time" does not count!

The Bjelland Brothers

Man, this song is so stuck in my head and it gets re-stuck every time I see apple juice.

Edere Vir Part 1

So last week I put some some Magic card based on some monsters I made up called the Edere Vir. Well, not monsters. Monsters in the sense that anything from White Wolf's World of Darkness is a monster.

 

The Edere Vir are based on a very simple idea. You ever hear something on the other side of a glass door, look over, and see nothing? The Edere Vir are based on the monster that's invisible until you open the door to see what's out there.

It was just a little concept until Terry ran a mixed supernaturals, classic World of Darkness campaign. I wanted to use the Edere Vir. Good monsters represent parts of the human psyche. Werewolves are our primal instincts. Ghosts are the summation of our deeds undone and wrongs unavenged. Vampires move around a lot, but they're done everything from repressed sexual desires to the thin, empty veneer of civilization to doing the whole "mutant and proud" message True Blood tried for.

The Rules of Life: #05

Rule #5: Listen to your elders. Give them respect until they no longer deserve it and you don't have to give it to them.

Ugh. Not one of the better rules. It's wordy and clearly written after dealing with some elder person who spend their prime grinding dumbass points instead of actually learning anything worthwhile.

Instead of pretentiously meditating on this slow pitch Rule, can we talk about how great it is to blow off idiots who try to waste your time teaching you obvious shit, or their own facile world view? They're all, "What you gotta know about women--" and you can just get a cup of coffee and shuffle back to your room before they can even realize how little you care?

Like, they can't comprehend someone wouldn't give a shit about their speech even though they care so little about you as a person they don't even recognize you're 100% into this coffee and -7561% into their bullshit.

Yes, very aware of the irony.

The New Doctor Is gonna be a Badass,

and that's okay. 
Remember my first blogspot blog? At that time, I’d seen most of Series 1 of the new Doctor Who on the Sci-Fi channel. I liked it and accepted a lot of the campiness as an integral part of the series.

Anyway, then there was this new guy they wanted to be The Doctor. 

I hated him. He was nothing like The Doctor! All…handsome and fighting people. Mr. No-second-chances-I'm-that-sort-of-a-man.

I’m sorry; Doctor No-second-chances-I'm-that-sort-of-a-man.

But while the Ninth Doctor played by Chris Eccleston will always be my Doctor, his successor, David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor, is my favorite. Perhaps even more than Nine, Ten bore the scars of The Last Great Time War, which appeals to me personally for a lot of reasons.

After that, we had Eleven and I didn’t like him either, but I knew that was an unfortunate side effect of having a good Doctor just prior. So I waited for Matt Smith’s Doctor to win me over and moment by moment, bit by bit, that didn't happen. There I was at the end of “The Time of The Doctor” waiting for the love to come even as The Doctor went.

It's the...ah crap I forget

It's the...mumu?

It's the...momo?

It's the...mudkips?

I got it, It's the Magic!

The Onion's "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" Review

My internet kung-fu is not strong enough to embed it, so here's the link, but it's golden.

The Rules of Life: #04

Rule #4: The universe does not recognize the impetus of success.

"Past Performance is no indicator of future success."

"What have you done for me lately?" is our slient universes's favorite question. We like to think that past vicotries count for something. that our work accumulates. Builds to a climax or a final, cathartic win.

It doesn't really.

About 3 days without water, 3 hours without heat, or 3 minutes without air and it's all gone. Sure, you climb up the social ladder a way, but but you only get back a fraction of what you give up.

Whether it's cold physics or a fickle society, you're always tossing pieces of yourself down a hole to get back scraps.

The Rules of Life: #03

Rule #3 People believe what they want to believe

This is probably the first of the really important rules. I like one and two. I repeat them to myself a lot, but three is just painfully true.

It's not the roots, but more like the lower trunk of Western intellect that's rooted in a form of science implied by priests reasoning backwards to make the natural world "prove" the existence of their god. The Scientific Method is built on that foundation even as it tries in vain to move past it.

That's how we bill the thing that will radically alter our civilization.

The ability to dispossess ourselves of what we want and admit truths we do not is an important part of a human cultural change that is even centuries after The Englightenment, still struggling to take hold.

Generally though, I express Rule Three with a shrug and a sigh. Nothin' I can do to help those who can't handle truth.