Parental fail - stealing costumed thunder

When your little man is dressed in his Aldi sourced Buzz Lightyear(tm) costume, if you're getting ready for a shower don't dash naked into the lounge, your towel on your shoulders and scream "I'm Buzz Lightyear too!' and run off down the corridor, the towel stretched out like they're Buzz's wings.

Because your costumed child will chase you down that same corridor then punch you in the arse for identity theft.

He was not happy.

Rally sign goodness

The lads at The Daily Show have created a site where you can load up sane signs and have them peer tested for sanity. All in support of the 30 October Rally in Washington to restore some fucking sanity.

I loaded up a couple - though it's only one per email address.

Here are mine - there and here. However I have to fully confess I ripped off the idea for there from someone who did that to a 'Make your own Tony Abbott poster' during the 2010 Oz election.

24 out, the rest to go

Yay! The Chilean mine rescue is going along without a hitch!

Go all concerned with the rescue. Pats on bag, glasses hoisted in celebration etc.

Don't hate me Patrick...

TheWife was away recently. When she goes for more than a couple of days I like to splurge out and get "me foods". Often I will also order a poo-load of delish Thai or Chinese food and live off that for lunch and dinner over 72 hours.

I went up to the supermarket for some additional supplies.

I'm not proud to say it - though it was on special - I bought a tub of Sara Lee Vanilla ice-cream.

That night I cooked up some apple pies in the disgusting old pie maker, made especially gross by the ribbons of fat curling around the pie cavity's rim.

I put a pie in a bowl. I added a big scoop of Vanilla ice-cream.

I had a spoonful.

It ... wasn't the same.

The pie admittedly was badly cooked - it had burst and I probably should have cleaned the pie maker before I cooked it - but let's face it I've eaten pies near burnt black before and loved it.

It was the ice-cream.

I think It had been about I think a month or more since I last had full fat luxury vanilla ice-cream. When I had it, it tasted strange. Not ... not great.

I didn't eat all of the pie, nor the ice-cream, and ended up chucking it. I also chucked the other pie.

I think ... I think I've actually lost my taste for ice-cream.

Holy snapping catfish. How the fuck did that happen?!

Anyway ... the Sara Lee Vanilla remains in the freezer. Untouched save for that one scoop I had from it.

I dunno ... maybe ... maybe something is happening here? If this was some sort of rite d'passage coming of age movie where dancing and singing was a fundamental component, right now my foot would be inexplicably tapping with acute rhythmic sensibility as I looked on in wonder and bewilderment and dawning possibility that I, King Nerd of the first two acts, could actually ... could actually be King Dance!

Or some shit like that.

If someone had said to me one day I'd lose the taste for ice-cream I'd have called them a liar and started a game of roshambo on them on the strength of their hurt casting.

PS But don't get too excited. I haven't turned my back completely on all dairy. I bought a mini-pizza for lunch today. It was a bit cheesy. I suffered from that tonight. I also had a delish re-visit of a deep muscular inner buttock muscle spasm that feels like someone drove an awl into it. I don't think that was cheese related though. Just the sick joke my genetics has given me.

Deck of Many A___ F____

In the game of Dungeons and Dragons, one of the kewler experiences you could have was to encounter a Deck of Many Things. Basically the game designers linked the face cards - or whatever they're called - in a Tarot deck to a bunch of mega stuff that could happen to a character. You draw up to four cards and ... well ... the cards fall where they may.

In the adapted 30 year old Dragon Magazine adventure I am running for the lads I had in it just such a deck. Basically 50% chance of something very good happening ... and 50% chance of something bad.

The lads all decided to draw four cards each. Various things happened, on balanced skewing good. So good in fact three people drew The Sun result.

When D&D hit 3rd edition they decided to throw away the alternate experience point progression of the past, where different classes (or "professions") went up at different rates. Instead the one rate for all. Also, the rate was a mathematical progression of 1+2+3 in that level 2 was 1000 experience points needed, level 3 was 3000 experience, level 4 was 6000 experience and so on. So instead of the millions of experience points needed in previous iterations to crack fancy high levels, hell now you needed less than 100,000 points to get to 14th.

Okay, big fucking whoop. So they changed how experience points worked and did the currency equivalent of re-issuing a new money at a different value.

All editions of Dungeons and Dragons, including the (spit) dreaded Fourth Edition, stand on the shoulders of the others in that a lot of the content carries over from the past. Indeed until fourth edition most of magic items that are classic standards appeared in the late 70s in one form or another. Most of them transferred in power and price into the new editions with very little changes.

Only the thing is ... with the Deck ... well ... they fucked up. Because they left The Sun card in without a change. Which in addition to giving the drawer a spanking new useful wondrous item ... gave them 50,000 experience points. Don't get me wrong, even in the previous editions to the 3.5 we're playing, 50k was a nice chunk. But at the levels you were at when you ran into a deck it might put you up a level, or get you a little way there.

In third ed ... well ... I think three of the player characters jumped four levels.

Well says I. We play it where it lies. But when I get home I am looking for errata. Within five minutes of making it in the door I googled for it.

Turns out in 3.5 (a kind of mini-edition released between third and fourth), after their careful consideration of all the crap that needed to be fixed in the 3.0 version ... they missed fixing The Sun... and so yes, errata was duly issued.

They dropped the 50k gain to just 20k.

But ... well ... too late. Because I let the giddy practically feces flinging sugar rush from an all brown sugar fucking monkey tea party at the zoo players level up during game. By rights I should have fucking googled for it there and then and taken advantage of P's WiFi to confirm my once-again accurate GM spidy senses that something was amiss in 3.5 land.

However, like I said, that's how it went down. They could have gotten well fucked by the bad cards - and indeed one did with another player blowing their kewl card to get them back. Hell, even P turned down the extra exp because as skilled as a game mechanic engineer he is I think he wanted the challenge of doing it incrementally as he had done to date (though I did nix the alignment change to super tie-a-hot-chick-to-a-railway-line-twirling-mustache-villain result he drew earlier because of his voluntary sacrifice).

So, well, I guess I just have to up the ante challenge wise. Because we're playing the Eberron setting, where the typical name level non-player character they will meet is tooling around level 10, it means they're now some of the most personally powerful adventurers on the planet.

Did I mention they also got their hands on a flying ship?

Sigh.

When I got back from the toilet during a mid session loo break, there was a mint condition red D&D box on my chair - shrink wrapped and all. The players were all grinning at me, fox like, their little foxy eyes glinting with amusement. It was a gift - for me!

I expected a trick. 'What ... did you guys replace the contents and get it professionally re-shrink wrapped?' No, they hadn't. It was the red box set art and the old Basic D&D font etc. For a second I thought they'd found a super mint red box edition copy (released 1983) and I was actually momentarily loathe to crack the box and lower its value.

But ... they clearly wanted me to open it, grinning as they were with expectation of hilarity to ensue. I also saw the words 'Starter Kit', which wasn't on the original red box either.

So I opened it ...

It was a Starter Kit - basically a cut down intro to the D&D game to entice people with a taste of the full game at a lower price so they will consider going and getting the core books.

Only it was a starter kit ... FOR FOURTH FUCKING EDITION!

You dirty son of a (LOUD SWEARING CAUSES BIRDS TO TAKE FRIGHT FROM A TREE ROOSTING).

Oh how they laughed.

And, given P's on hols for a couple of weeks and we're putting the main game on hold until his return, you know what? ... I agreed to run it.

Damn you fourth edition!

My views on this are well known.

Mah workin' PJs on

Part of the problem for US soldiers in Vietnam was that the enemy was not readily obvious. The infamous black pajamas dilemma in that Viet Cong wore the typical daily dress of the average peasant when fighting because that's what they were - average peasants who lived and worked in their communities. The coastal and delta people as I understand it had similar cultural practices and dress as well. Only the hill tribes were markedly different.

Damn tricky of insurgents ...to not fight in uniform! I believe however the North Vietnamese Army elements that sent forces to the south travelled and fought in uniform.

On a side note the counter insurgency in Malaysia worked because it had a number of factors going for it on the plus side - the insurgents were ethnically Chinese, the population were more easily relocated into controlled settlements that offered employment, access to land, and resources (unlike Vietnam where villages had been in the same site for a thousand years in same places and the people were shifted under protest to settlements literally miles from their fields), there was no friendly state for guerrillas to cross into, terrain was easier to interdict, and the core strategic aim was protecting the populace from infiltration and influence as opposed to fire and movement of Westmoreland and Co.

Anyway, enough about tales of cold war days, on to my PJ pants.

Still sick but feeling a bit better I had a look at what to wear on the PJ bottom front. As long time listeners know I wear girl's PJ bottoms as my choice of night wear on the simple grounds that they have elasticized waists for comfort, and the absence of a slit in the front where my old fellah would flop out if I sat wrong or received visitors*.

Despite recovering from illness I felt like being productive. But what to wear? Ah, purple plaid PJ pants. The snuggest fit ones. The waistband is secure but does not saw in. If I jump up and get down then they won't ride their way to the floor. Which means if I am doing stuff they will stay up.

Yes, I apparently have preferred PJ wear for working in.

Go me.

* Though I admit if I had full tantric command a frontal slit could be useful when guests were about. Because if my hands were full, such as carrying a tea tray, and I needed to gesture to a guest I could order it from its hole, slip it out like a summoned snake rising out of a basket (♫♪ dah nar nar nar nar, dahna nar nar nar nar nar nar ♫♪), and point percy in the requisite direction.

Pammie Hanson

It is said by some that electronica take-up in Oz is faster than most other countries - VCR, CD players, DVD players etc, we had a greater penetration into the populace with such things and quicker too.

I guess to same could be said for pig ignorant politics in the form of Pauline Hanson and One Nation, who burst giddily onto the Australian political scene by winning the Federal seat in Ipswich in Queensland despite having been dis-endorsed by the Liberal party. Yes, that's right, the Liberal party. It seems they had standards back then.

The Pauline Juggernaut then took off and in the 1998 QLD state election incredibly they won 11 seats, with one of their victors a part-time Santa. I wonder what would have happened to a child if they'd asked Santa for world peace? Possibly told "Get fucked, hippy" then drop-kick punted out of the grotto.

But by October 1998 she was gone and One Nation was all but dead in the water by 2001. Despite the goodness that was the Tampa led election, with Hanson blaming their poor showing on the Liberals - and not without some truth to this I think - mainstreaming her risible policy ideas like temporary protection visas.

A number of Australian-American politics commentators have noted the similarities between One Nation and the Tea Party movement (and apparently Planet Janet sniffed recently we needed one too). Also some of the more histronic commentators too bear a similarity akin to that of Hanson - backward, conspiracy theory laced idiots with access to the cyber airwaves.

I am speaking of Pamela Geller.

Geller is the most vocal anti-Islamic blogger in the US to date in that she has the greatest profile for someone that would make us look away in pity and disgust were they spouting their crap on a box in Martin Place.

She is symptomatic too of the distillation that occurs on the right whenever a Democrat is in the white house. They just go batshit insane.

At any rate, read the above article and how Geller turned the Islamic friendship centre two blocks away from Ground Zero into some sort of victory mosque as raised over places of Islamic conquest back in the middle ages in the eyes of more than a few Americans.

Now ... now she's everywhere on the airwaves, mostly Fox and affiliates, as the representative of the no camp. It's akin to a news org hosting the Grand Dragon of the Klan in a debate on a synagogue coming into town.

What a repugnant, repellent woman. If indeed ... she is a woman.

Fucking hell.

Saturday night is the most delirious night of the week

I decided to stay at the Wedding. I made sure not to breathe anywhere near the bride and groom lest what I had was infectious.

It was about 530 by the time I left and I faced a 30 minute drive home.

It was pretty scary. I had the shakes when I started and my vision was swimming towards the end. At one point I was going to pull over and have a rest but then I reached a kay from home and decided to push on.

I got into the house, downed some cold and flu meds, stripped off and shuffled shaking into the shower.

I stayed there for 20 minutes.

Summoning courage to leave I managed to make it out and crawl naked into bed. I sent a couple of texts then sacked out. Over the course of the next 11 hours I awoke several times, moved beds twice, had a couple more hot showers, and was convinced I was the linchpin of a very carefully organised cosa nostra like organisation that had selected me after watching me for a while then beamed their corporate matrix into my head of how it all worked out.

Each time I woke up I had to say 'just a dream' but I lapsed back asleep and re-entered the Mafia mets the Matrix world.

I didn't even get long leather coat out of it.

The fever largely passed by 5 am and I got some more normal sleep after that. However I feel hideous and am just going to lurk around the house like a gollum for the day.

This makes the second Saturday in a row where I've had an acute hallucination laced fever. Seriously, what the fuck?!

Mehctober

I am feeling super meh. Had a bad night, woke up badly, went back to sleep and had weird vivid dreams, woke up again and felt like paraffin wax warmed shit.

My arse decided now was the winter of its discontent and proceeded to force me to go lots. Thanks arsehole. So, so painful trying to pass it.

I decided to have some lunch and it got stuck. Thanks stomach.

But still I went for my walk and as I did I listened to a Beeb interview with an elderly transplanted to the UK Portuguese painter, Paula Rego.

The interviewer started with the obvious. 'You're 75...' to which the painter simply replied 'Oh god...'

Still it was a cool interview, though Rego was clearly irked by some of the overly lyrical questions. But it was interesting to hear how as an artist she'd dealt with the Portugal of her childhood - under a dictatorship aided and abetted by the Catholic church much like in neighbouring Spain, with subject matter including a series of works showing the impact of illegal abortion.

She lived near the sea. She said sometimes girls that had died getting backyard procedures washed up out of the sea, all bloated like a cow.

That's some fucked up shit right there.

She also talked about the culture of domestic violence. The rich she said had thicker curtains to block out what went on. But in the poor neighbourhoods you heard it all. Men, drunk, coming home from the tavern, and laying into their wives.

I was born in the early 70s. Thank the progressive forces that we've come a long way since then.

Off to a wedding ceremony despite being crook as. I have the communal signed card from work. My guts are on fire, my arse is screaming, and I'm going to chuck up. I think I might have to bail once I've handed it off.

I loathe feeling this way. I just want to crawl into bed, go to sleep, and wake up feeling better.

Not ... gay ... enough

I recently added myself to the Mother Jones website email alert list. I get a daily spotlight of recent posts etc. It's good stuff. Well written, well researched. Kudos.

Anyhoo I got a link to this story. It's about a judge ruling on an asylum claim.

His verdict? That Mladen Zeljko Todorovi, a Serbian national who claimed victimisation from police back home and who was seeking asylum on the grounds that his homosexuality made him a target for law enforcement abuse, did not look gay enough.

Seriously. Not gay enough. Just how fucking overtly or stereotypically gay do you need to be? Did Todorovi need to hop on the back of a flatbed truck clad only in a banana thong and have the truck reverse BEEP-BEEP-BEEP into the courtroom all the while why doing a super athletic dance to convince the judge of his 'I like dick more than bush' proclivities?

I know, I know. How did this arse-hat of a judge get hired? Mother Jones links to this Wash Post article that indicates it's because the Bush Attorney General put ideological purity ahead of jurist skills when it came to putting people in such slots.

God bless America. Because on the right, it's your "values" that count first before any modicum of reasoning ability or talent in your field.

Argh, sometimes the world just frustrates me.