poukledden

Gregory is:

- currently reading the collected ghost stories of Edith Wharton

- so ready for November 4th to be over and done with

- headachy

- currently, and absurdly, addicted to a silly little Super Mario knockoff called Super Tux 2. Open Source games can be fun, yo. And cute as the dickens. I mean, a little penguin running around stomping on fluffy monsters? Priceless.

- enjoying the new Sarah Jane Adventures series. Even if they did the unforgivable and went for the tired old Evil Clown cliche.

- falling in love with Hannah Fury's music. I have her album The Thing That Feels. "The Vampire Waltz" destroys me every time I hear it.

In other news:

The Hunter's Moon seemed to bring out weirdness and other fun at my apartment complex, with odd conversations drifting through the night air, a shouting match somewhere in the complex, and at least one person having, apparently, a Very Good Time, if you know what I mean. In several bursts throughout the night, the last being somewhere around 5 am.  I say one person because either 1)the woman in question was really into self-love that night, or 2)her partner didn't make concrete penetrating sounds.

I'd never really noticed before, but it can actually be a bit depressing hearing other people have a Very Good Time. It is, however, a good sport to try to guess who it was. This apartment building is rather odd, sound wise, and there are ways that sound can travel through it -- largely, I think, because of the ventilation in the bathrooms.

Otherwise, moody. More soon, when certain parts of my head settle a bit. Peace, y'all.

One of the joys of following links on the intertubes --

Deeper in the Game ( "Media Analysis and the border of rational discussion"), which in general has been stoking my interest in looking at games and such from the perspective of power relations (racism, sexism, heterosexism, you name it), pointed me to this discussion of fascist imagery in games, which clued me into Umberto Eco's must-read essay on Ur-Fascism, and also to Merlin Missy's "How to Be A Fandom Jerk in Just a Few Easy Steps."

There's so much awesomeness in there, so much thinking to think. If you can only read one, read them all. And man, that last one reminded me of more than a few encounters on the intertubes.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, has to go and sign up for Pmog. You can read Cory Doctorow's description of it at Boing Boing.

You know you want to. Dooooo it. Think of the fun we can have. Make missions! Lay mines! Gang up on desultorie! (or, you know, someone else. Me, even. I'm not picky)

ps -- if you do join up, you can find me there as poukledden. Surprise surprise.

Why did I know that Rich Burlew would make me cry?

A thought I had earlier, by the by -- one of the wonderful things that Gygax and Dave Arneson did was, perhaps, simply this: they said, essentially, it was okay for adults to play make believe. If that's not a wonderful gift to the world, I don't know what is.

I find myself rather saddened by the fact that Gary Gygax, the creator of Dungeons and Dragons and thus, by extension, the creator of role-playing games, has passed away. One of the first fanboy letters I ever sent was to him, back when I was a kid getting into the fun of D&D.

The thing that strikes me is that you'd really have to include him on any list of hugely influential cultural icons in the past half century. Sure, most people have never played D&D, but many did, and most know of it. And role-playing games entered into wider popular consciousness with the advent of computer games. Without Gygax, there would be no Final Fantasy, no World of Warcraft. Nada. Zilch. He and his cohorts created a whole new way to play. And that, when you think about it, is a pretty damn cool thing. Sure, he was an odd duck -- a Jehovah's Witness, cranky and opinionated, dismissive of other role-playing games and ideas. But he brought something new into the world, and that's not to be dismissed lightly.

So the next time you're hacking an orc to pieces, or blasting an elf with fireballs -- do it for Gary.