Surreptitious Opinionation

I slept in this morning, and I remember a dream. It was an odd one. It started off in a waterslide tower on a giant forested hill in kentucky. Throughout the dream I was being hit on by the sporadic guys climbing the stairs with me. It was also a really odd ride down. some places where it was just giant steps with water flowing down them, and a large area in the middle one could fall down, in another it was just a giant, calm wading pool. In the basement was something like a bowling alley, but with water. I don’t get it either.

Later on, I was at a houseparty, I think I was taken there by one of the guys from the waterslide. Mostly gay guys, and a few girls as well. It was a socializing type party. I was once again hit on, someone grabbed my butt, and I warned him away for health reasons. The entire gay population of the party was guys who weren’t out publicly. For some reason, I turned them all down (multiple offers in the dream) and left.

I later recall walking along a street near an intersection that reminded me of Zanesville (ohio, where I lived while going to high school and where my parents still live). And a small suv with a new driver was turned at a 45 degree angle across an oncoming lane of traffic. In the back seat were someone who was like 60% and another person who was about 80% and 20% the former livejournal user known as vegzcity (damn for exacerbating my thing for red heads). They recognized me and waved.

In another totally disconnected dream sequence I was asking someone why they hadn’t told me I smelled, and why they didn’t smell (see prior post).

These dreams clearly tell me one thing, I need to get laid. 😉

When I woke up this morning, I had a terrible taste in my mouth. Absolutely awful. I had to brush my teeth before I could go back to sleep. Then I smelled it on my blanket, my sheets, my clothing. It was everywhere. My initial guess that it might be related to my recent decision to cut back a bit on the volume I eat until my butt gets back to normal, and thus possible increases in fat metabolism, seems unlikely. Marginally more likely is that the foul aspartame in the metamucil I mispurchased is polluting every fluid my body manufactures. Other possibilities include “sick smell” from my recent bout with whatever it is that’s been making me cough and sneeze so inconveniently or “drug smell” from all the painkillers I was taking (I took a 24 hour hiatus from all such meds, and am now taking only ibuprofen.) I’m guessing sick smell.

So, I’m doing all my dirty laundry today, which is quite a pile, but so be it.

Also, the spaghetti squash with homemade mushroom and spinach marinara has helped with the taste factor. Quite a bit. *pats self on back* I would swear this is the first time I’ve had spaghetti squash, but the way it shredded into little strands so automatically felt familiar. It definitely looked neat, pity it tasted so bland. Better nutrition, ambivalent taste, more time consuming to produce, more expensive. Neat as an experiment, but unlikely to start a trend in my cooking.

I still wanna try breadfruit, though. It sounds cool. And the phrase “breadfruit pudding” keeps dancing through my head. Heh.

Yesterday after gaming a bit with as I was chatting with both him and , I shared my typology of roleplaying games.

Type 1, the rollplaying game, is the stat wanking, my-character-can-kill-your-character sort of silliness. It’s fun up to a point, but generally has serious sustainability problems for me. Games of this sort are characterized by religious adherence to rules, endless comparisons of character abilities, and weighing of character development options. Also, lots of monster-killing-item-grabbing-leveling-up type stuff. Computers are amazingly good at these types of games. Diablo would be a great example from the computer genre; D&D, GURPS or, god-forbid, rolemaster would be a great example from the table top genre. This may be the most popular sort of gaming, and there’s almost always a certain quantity of this in any given game.

Type 2, the plot-oriented game, is more like an interactive movie. Best served with byzantine politics and plot twists, rich scenery, and, in the computer varieties, lots of artfully crafted, 3d cut scenes. This also shows up in some video games, “final fantasy”s 2e(4j), and 7 definitely have some type 2 roleplaying going on. This also fails to stimulate my gamergeeky happiness. My impression is that this is the sort of thing that Vampire the Masquerade (and other world of darkness games), and perhaps to a certain extent, Shadowrun are supposed to thrive on.

Type 3, is a bit more mercurial and emotional. It’s the appeal of the imaginary person. In final fantasy 7, there is a character who is pure goodness and light personified, and she bites it while trying to save the world from the big bad nasty of the game (actually, it’s the big bad nasty that kills her). It’s hard to say which character has the more devout cult following, but they both certainly do (really the bad guy’s cult is bigger, but I was more into the good girl). Also Vivi (the cute, retro blackmage) from ff9. But what I really love is the creation of these unique characters, and giving them a chance to express their own identities. This works best in table top games (maybe in larp, too, but I never larped, myself). I will remember with great fondness my “slutty bi elf-chick cleric who was mother to the party’s half-elven rogue and had a thing for human bards” and my “nearly-adolescent street kid mega-mage” and their interactions with the other personalities in their respective parties.

1. A simple way to make bowel movements easier

Well, walking through life in a drugged haze is much more noticeable in school than when killing a weekend at home. Apparently, it has lowered my class participation barriers, and my presentation sans powerpoint didn’t seem to go too badly. I ‘um’ed alot, and may have lacked overall structure, but I knew the article backwards and forwards. The instructor’s feedback was nothing more than “good”. *shrug*

And now a little note about bowel movements. cut for the squeemish

I’m taking it as a sign that I’m getting used to my new mac when I take my cursor to the bottom of the screen hoping to bring up the dock, only to realize that I’m actually on a windows box. I find this oddly cheering.

Ya know, for all my whiny-bitchness, it wasn’t so bad. Maybe that’s the local (or the percocet) talking.

There’s something very appropriate to working on one’s job applications as one is cleansing one’s bowels. My GAO app 2.0 is in and my transcripts re-faxed (for which additional thanks is due to .

provided transportation. I was a very chatty patient. I kept the nurses laughing. I spontaneously promised the dr that if I didn’t need all the valium, I wouldn’t sell the remainder. That sort of thing. This anesthetic experience was different from my wisdom teeth experience, when I was 17. That time, I was out cold, woke up in bed, and was very sluggish. This time, I felt like I was dreaming, I woke up on the way out of surgery (great timing, that), and seemed pretty with it. I pretty much picked up where I left off with the nurses. My butt being numb (yay local) helped. It’s starting to hurt some, and I’m sure it’ll hurt more later. The blood was a little alarming at first, but there’s only a little of it. Still, if any of you ever have butt surgery, do not wear white underwear.

I was told two weeks before heavy activity, thus two weeks of no gymnastics. And spring break is the third week. Le Sigh. Le Shrug.

In short, I’m still doing my thing, and all is well.

Skipping the planning association conference. Too expensive and not really what I want to be doing. Will head out to san fran again before too long, though. May just save the $$ by only going to pittsburgh (and any necessary interview flights) before the summer. Much is uncertain. We’ll see how it goes.

flight details

I’m a little nervous about the upcoming surgery, but far more upset at the lost time. I’m especially annoyed about the consequences for my land use & transportation class. Thursday evening, the time everyone else can do the study area inspection, I’ll be doing the home-prep-for-surgery/married-to-the-toilet plan. And friday is pretty much shot too. No idea what my recovery time is going to be like. I get the impression that I should be pretty much back to normal by wednesday, but still…

I mean I chose a friday to minimize the damage to class and everything else. Which is probably exactly what it’s doing. Minimum doesn’t mean 0. Grrr/sigh.

How many of you haven’t seen the aarp=anti-soldier, pro-gay marriage image? It’s being roundly trashed in my echo chamber, and in the first couple of hits on google, gotta wonder if anyone’s buying it. But I’ve been continually surprised by what doesn’t rebound on propagandists. I thought that ridiculous “latte-drinking” ad would have been a loser, but apparently not.

I’d like to see something similar as a simple graphical display of progressive values. And to be honest, it wouldn’t hurt to trash the regressives either. It’s all well and good to have the moral high ground, but turning the other cheek is not effective political strategy.

A few image ideas, on the pro-side: a black kid in a racially mixed classroom raising her hand, a latino doctor taking care of a chinese kid both smiling, a bustling commercial street mid day, some sweeping *pristine* natural vista, a graduation shot, a family sitting down together for dinner.

And on the anti-side: one abu ghraib image, a disabled person begging in the street, an injured/disabled soldier, a black cloud of smoke coming out of a car’s tailpipe, a congested highway, an elderly individual being evicted, some graphical depiction of excessive imprisonment, pink slips (fired/layed off), some old white guy behind a desk with stacks of money.

Obviously it needs some editing. There’s more than one way to frame some of it (old guy behind desk with stacks of money clearly points to a success of the revamping of SS, right?).