Sometimes, I wish I was white. Then, I'd stand a chance of inheriting a certain amount of resistance to viruses, what with the gazillion plagues that swept through Europe. Instead, I'm stuck with my Asian immune system....

In related news, my day is going to consist of hacking out my lungs, computer work and copious amounts of warm liquid.

Saw the new Transformers movie last night.

The bad: If you read any of the reviews, you'd know that one of the main criticisms is the overuse of rather adolescent jokes, gratuitous (and hard to follow) fight scenes, and gratuitous sexy women shots. These criticisms are right on the money. Also, cheese everywhere. Any movie where I get to snicker, "My god, he's powered up to Dragonmegazord!" has cheeze smeared on the walls. I liked it, but only because I like cheeze.

The good: It made my girl horny.

Verdict: Two thumbs up (but only when watched with my girl).

Got half an hour? Listen.

There is a Hunter LARP going on in the city, starting soon. The world is modelled off of Supernatural, and the idea is you form a group of Hunters and hunt things. If you die, you don't come back. (You can act for subsequent games.) The system is Kingdom Come and the intent is to have a short run of games (6-8, I believe).

I'm tempted. I'm almost certain I would be dead by the third game, but if it was a glorious, howling death surrounded by madness and techno music, that would be awesome.

'Course, I would need a posse.

Lemme know.

So, Saturday was Free RPG Day. In a flurry of last minute "It's WHEN?!", I phoned up Levi on Friday, got permission to give away all his hard work, and tossed CDs around like candy. Well, sorta. Made up a stack of Cog Wars burned onto CDs and left them on the table with other free stuff. My extra sneaky tactic was to include a text Read Me file named "Forbidden Lore - Read Me". (Hey, I'd read it.)

Also got sunburned slightly while playing InSpectres and the free adventure of Geist (the WoD Orpheus-esque game). InSpectres was fun and I got to yell with Finaira a lot. Geist was.... *sigh* Railroady. No fault of the GM - it's how the adventure is written. At some points we sat around going, "We wait for plot. It's bound to happen... there it is!" In the end we were trying to destroy a gun (anchor to a homicidal ghost) and we had nothing to do it with and no time to find a good place (the ghost was jumping around possessing people and trying to get the gun back). We had to vacate the table as it was booked and we'd gone over time, but it more or less ended with my character driving away with the gun in a stolen car while the other team members wrestled with our possessed compatriot. My brilliant plan was to drive the car at high speed into a wall. I was hoping that, if nothing else, the gun would be hard to retrieve from the wreck, buying us some time. Still, it was frustrating.

Oh, World of Darkness. You're so pretty - why do you hurt me so?

I caved and bought the Eberron PHB and the PHB2. I'd meant to wait on them, but they were 20% off. Eberron makes my heart melt, as always. Makes me think of my suspended game. So much stuff can be ported.... *sigh* Which made me go back to DDI, and I saw the monk playtest. Oh, monks. How I love thee.... I love the idea of full discipline techniques. They are sexy as sexy can be. Someone needs to run me a game so I can play a monk.

And this week I think there's a Dark Heresy game.

It's nice to be gaming again.

I'm in the midst of reading Genes: a Philosophical Inquiry by Gordon Graham and I'm increasingly of the opinion that the tendency to dress up genetics and the technology that grows from our increasing understanding of the science with metaphors in order to explain it to the layman is detrimental to the overall philosophical and moral debate. I have to do more reading on the matter, as it's currently just a gut reaction, but there's a difference in the way that the debate is presented to the general public versus how its presented when the audience is composed chiefly of academics. Sure, it's unfair to put the onus on informing the general population on the ins and outs of the science that has taken me years to absorb on the author, but the gap in presentation (jargon-laden and nuanced vs metaphor-laden) is not only noticeable, it means that sometimes I feel like people are talking about an entirely different subject.

Take, for instance, a diatribe written by PETA about transgenic animals. (I tried to find it to link, but after wandering around the PETA site for awhile, I had to stop. They mean well, but their propaganda makes me want to scream.) One of the points raised against the creation of transgenic animals is that there are many unwanted animals in shelters, and if animal testing is to be done at all, why create more animals that will be doomed for death when there are plenty already in shelters on death row? This makes no sense to me at all. I mean, it's like objecting to video games because you can get viruses through your email. It's completely nonsensical to me, but standing from a certain point of reference (why are you creating more animals just so you can torture and kill them?), it makes a certain kind of sense. It's just that it's wrong and while at best that wrongness just leads to a certain amount of comedy (haha, let's giggle at the uninformed and feel superior), at worse it means that people are asking the wrong questions, and real issues are completely passing us by.

This bugs me.

My girl is taking a bubble bath. The following ensues:

Me (pointing at bubbles on her foot): Hee. You have soap booties.

Her: I'm a hobbit. A seeeeea hobbit.

I'm marrying a sea hobbit. :D

What sorts of people should there be?

The What Sorts Network is an international network of researchers and community members, anchored in Canada, that facilitates individual and collaborative projects that address aspects of the question "What Sorts of People Should There Be?" Much of the work that we support and are interested in undertaking is focused on understanding the nature of human diversity and variation, our ability to influence this variation, and what this means for how we live together in the world. The network aims to stimulate debate and inform social policy at the interface of the humanities, biomedical technologies, and the social sciences, in ways that will create a more inclusive communities in Canada and elsewhere. By providing information to the general public and facilitating connections, either between researchers or university and community organizations, the What Sorts Network will help people from all walks of life keep pace with the rapid changes we are facing. Specific ways the What Sorts Network carries out its vision include:

* Supporting the collaboration of over 60 researchers and community leaders who already belong to the What Sorts Network, and using the synergy of those collaborations to articulate novel projects that address some aspect of the question "What sorts of people should there be?".

* In concert with survivors of eugenic sterilization and institutionalization, building living archives dedicated to the under-explored history of eugenics in Western Canada that, in turn, raises broader questions about contemporary technologies, disability, and social policy.

* Organizing a regular series of conferences and community workshops on themes that relate to the question "What sorts of people should there be?"

* Sharing our discussions, events and experiences with the world via our blog and recordings from events we have produced.

This is the kind of silliness I like to think about when I'm trying to be intellectual. The team leader of the project is a former professor of mine and a scarily smart guy. (He also gave me A's, so I'm a touch biased. :D)

If you haven't seen or heard of Google Wave yet, you need to click on the link and learn about it. It's still in the development stage, but it's like if you took google docs and gmail and chat and who knows what else, and lit it on fire with COSMIC AWESOME!!!!

I hope it lives up to my expectations. :P

For an interesting and in-depth interpretation of exactly what the California Supreme Court's majority decision means, take a look at this post by jimkeller. The short? Prop 8 sets a precedent where rights can be taken away by a majority vote.

Update: And here, an interesting interpretation that is more optimistic. In short, if this interpretation is true, Prop 8 has been whittled down to mean that it takes away the term marriage but does not take away the right for same-sex couples to enter into a familial relationship which in all ways but name resemble a marriage. Keep in mind that all it says is that Prop 8 does not expressly forbid such marriages-but-not-called-that - it just says that Prop 8 doesn't completely modify the previous decision that banning gay marriages is unconstitutional. Of course, what this marriage-but-not-called-that is isn't discussed.

The last episode of Dollhouse has confirmed my belief that the show's greatest weakness is in insisting that Echo is the main character. At first, I thought it might have been Dushku's acting, which reminds me too much of Faith. Then again, that could have been my own failing. Still, looking at what they've written for Echo, I can't say that she's very engaging. The episodes that I liked the best are the ones where she's kind of just another cast member and other characters get spotlight time. It's the same problem I had with Repo: the Genetic Opera.

I do hope that the show isn't cancelled, but it's not for Echo. It's for Victor and Saunders and Topher and Ballard and DeWitt....

Had a committee meeting today. I did not die. Afterwards, when I spoke with my supervisor about some stuff that had come up during the meeting, I continued to not be dead or made dead. (This may have been helped by the bribe of homemade donuts.) Victory!

Of course, I have a lovely deadline hanging over my head, but I told my committee I preferred the tighter deadline as it would prove to be better motivation that a later one. The deadline is based on fees to be paid to the university. If I can get my defense done in September and the thesis in by Oct 2, then cheaper fees! Otherwise, normal fees. The next deadline is Jan 5ish, I think, to avoid paying for Winter semester. But that's waaaaay too far in the future to be the kind of fire I need under my butt.

I actually don't know if I can make the Oct 2 deadline....

The U of A drama department is putting on a production of Assassins. It is a musical about assassins (or would-be assassins) of US presidents. I'm going to go see it on the 19th. You should come.

I need some kind of background noise when I mark stuff, and it turns out that someone has uploaded the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers on YouTube. Being the dork that I am, I've had it playing the background.

Season 1, episode 11 is about how the bad guys turn some of the Rangers bad - by making them punk. And to save them, the other rangers need to get a singing squash.

...

*dies of laughter*

Oh, nostalgia.

Today we made:

- homemade pizza pockets (I think whole milk is the trick to the dough)
- a 20 lb turkey
- mashed potatoes
- gravy
- homemade perogies

We have enough food to feed an army... and there are three of us. Turkey for a week! Woo!

WotC has pulled their PDF products. This strikes me as insane.

Whitewolf has, in response, offered up (until Sunday) a free download of the 2nd edition Exalted PDF and a 10% discount (coupon code: wwlovesyou) at RPGdrivethru. After that fiasco a while back where they wanted to prevent anyone from charging money at events that used the WoD ruleset, this moves them further back into my good books.

There are actually quite a few lovely sales about (Evil Hat, One Bad Egg, Green Ronin), so I suppose I should thank WotC for the crazy.

This is so awesome it hurts.



In other news, my shiny new laptop has not exploded. Score!

Haven't said anything about Dollhouse, but I feel the need (I blame the rum):

I love DeWitt.

That is all.

The liquor store downtown is carrying the sweet Legendario. They bought several cases and have already sold 15 of them. I don't know how fast it's going, as I don't know when they got them in, but it's going pretty fast.

I now have two bottles.

Happy birthday to me. :D