Low Heat

www.opposingviews.com/articles/video-drunken-woman-falls-onto-boston-subway-tracks-cheats-death-r-1257898237

My housemate Matt's sister almost got ran over by a train on Friday. Maybe you saw the video on youtube? Check it out at the link above. The whole thing is pretty awful, but thankfully she's okay.

I just made myself a PB&J for lunch.

At work.

I cannot tell you how un-rewarding it was.

As an overall report the con was a lot of fun. It was great taking Ben down with us and hanging out with Jules and Yi Mei a lot.

The hotel, as always was a great place to be, and I drank more than I ever do, especially over multiple days.

If I had to pick a bad thing it was the main restaraunt. I'm really sick of the criminal practice of slicing up a steak for "presentation." Thanks for the dry, bled out steak. Also, seared ahi should be seared, not cooked through, and that was an uninspired sauce and some bland rice. I should have just eaten in the pubwhere the food is better and not rushed.

In fact, what I had in the pub was excellent, especially the pepperoni and mozzarella stuffed buger, and the chowder I had on friday.

As always their liqor selection is astounding. I poured a whole hell of a lot of Woodfor reverve down my neck for sure. Their new special drink the Bourbon furnace is quite tasty as well, although too sugary for more than a sip for me. Oh, and their new IPA is quite good and has a good flavor as opposed to most IPAs, which have no flavor.

First up was Bliss Stage as run by Ben Bernard. It was just as harsh and emotional as I was hoping. The system worked well for us for the most part, and since Ben Lehman's other game finished early he got a chance to come and observe and take what he says were some really great notes. Everybody was really amazing roleplaying-wise and we all got to be totally heartbreaking in a really rockstar way.

Friday morninng I ran Nine Pieces of Flair. The players took the Amberite personalities and overlaid them onto the employees of Amberjack's restaraunt, one of those hellish places with shit all over the walls. It was a little daunting to try to do comedy in the morning, but once everyone decided that the key to the comedy was to stymie their character's ambitions.

Then I played in James Craig's Paranoia in Amber. It was artful. Hats off to Craig for running a classic Paranoia game and a classic save-the-universe Amber game and having them linked together. it was really fun.

That night was Sea Dracula, hosted by Pol Jackson, which was ridiculous and fun and definitely biased towards the lovely female players and their ability to actually dance. we played two games a murder mystery and a case of theft. In the first the jury decided that that, indeed, was an ugly lamp, and in the second we decided that, yes, Ms. Pouissonne Pouissoffe was prettier than Mr. Rogers. Nuff said.

I spent the long slot on Saturday playing Drew Wood's Dreadwood, a western horror rife with horrible things under the mines, ghosts, zombies, and unsettling feng shui. Definintely and old school mysterie game, and Drew kept us moving along at a brisk pace. The characters were seeded with secrets that preloaded action and clues. Nicely done.

That night I ran The Ruikei Project, an Amber/Akira mashup. Basically I gave psychic teens in Neo Tokyo hard choices that boiled down to have escalatingly awful things happen, or win by using your powers. Using powers set the story cclock forward and made things more intense for everyone. Unfortunately midnight snuck up on us and our actual ending was more contrived than intense. I am my own worst critic. Actually this was a really fun game, and I think I would play it every week. We all had a lot of fun being unabashed fans of the genre and framing scenes down to camera angles.

The last slot on Sunday was Scientific Progress Goes BOOM! a Girl Genius scenario run with Spirit Of The Century light by Jules Morley. It was a huge chaotic fun romp and everything I needed out of a final slot. Oh, and My Traveller boxer character (ala Mickey from Snatch) got to punch Othar Trygvasson in the balls.

I was up late last night, and couldn't fall asleep until after 3 AM. I thought that by setting my alarm for 10, I'd be ensuring myself a good night's sleep. I did not count on being woken up two hours later by a phone call from my boss, informing me that my coffee shop had been broken into last night, and did I remember seeing anything suspicious.

Objectively, I know that businesses get broken into all the time, and there's a big difference between someone being willing to break into a business after closing and someone mugging or assaulting an employee of said business, so this shouldn't make me scared and on edge, but of course it does anyway. There's a lot of bars in the neighborhood, so I already feel a little unsafe walking home after closing, because drunk people are unpredictable.

Toss in the nine unsolved arson cases this year (three of which have happened the last three weeks or so), and the Greenwood neighborhood is starting to feel a lot less safe. I'm hoping that the sunrise and a few hours will help me recover my sense of perspective. I mean, I spent four years taking walks all over the south side of Chicago, and I'm scared of being in Greenwood? Seriously?

New story from SuspectUnusual. If you haven't friended my Dad, I highly recommend it. Today's story is context for the future adventures of a person my father has spoken about a lot in his Marine Corp stories over the years.

The Box is a great little science fiction film. Creepy, atmospheric and at several moments absolutely terrifying. I dig it the most.

It's not the really nice gore effects or the chest-burster. it's not the look on the poor kids face. It's not even the idea that these people probably had this kid JUST so they could dress her/him up like this.

It's the chicken costume.

Last night i had to stay until one in the morning for work.

It was so late that the Train stopped running (apparently the last train leaves West Lake Station at one AM but only goes to SoDo. Wtf? who needs to go from DT to SoDo at one in the morning? By friggin' train?) So after running through a scary, scary Chinatown in the middle of the night to NOT catch the last train, i stood at the stop on 5th and Jackson, just staring at the street and waiting for the No.7 (again).

I hate the No. 7. I really hate it now that they've taken away half of our stops and half of the rounds it makes. Standing there, at a quarter till one, looking at the street, i realized: the next 7 wouldn't show for half an hour. And that would be if i got lucky. I was looking at an hour, easily, of my life wasted, standing at King Street Station, doing nothing.

So then i saw a cab. I waived said cab down. I took said cab home. And this morning i slapped my work with the receipt. Reimbursed! This sets a new precedent for me. How awesome is that? Now, if they shaft me with a crazy workload, i can call a cab, and go home. I'm sticking it to them.

In lieu of a true trip report on Disneyland, I offer this in the spirit of light hearted frivolity.

You may or may not know that Tinkerbell is my favorite Disney character. This may not seem terribly butch, but bear with me. ( I think I can prove you wrong. )

Ahem. Anyway, I was more than a bit worried when I saw that Disney was making a direct to video Tinkerbell movie. (Actually, they've made two now.) The amount of crap sequels that Disney has been churning out lately would make Walt turn over in his grave. We caught it on tv after we got back from the park, and it turns out I needn't have been worried.

( Plot summary under here. )

So, did I like the film? Yeah, I did. It's totally a kids film, but it's not really written down too much, although I'm biased, because I love the character. There was even a point where I was thinking, "huh, so this must be the point where she just leaves to join Peter Pan."

Did they stay true to the character? Totally. If anything they made her cooler than before. She still has a quick, hot temper and there are a few times that you get the feeling that she's just had it and is going to beat the tar out of one of the other fae. I was worried that they gave her a voice, but it has precedent and the voice they chose was a good one. Also, Mad Scientist Pixie!

Did they stay true to fae lore or at least Peter Pan lore? Not really. They kinda ignored that whole seelie/unseelie thing, instead going with a single fairy queen and then four fae lords, one for each season--probably for simplicity sake. At first I thought they were making the queen far too nice, and then I realized that they had done something very subtle. As nice as she was, you could tell that each and every fae in Neverland was clearly scared shitless of the queen. Anyway, they didn't really explore Neverland, although there were a few cute references to the main story. The fairies also didn't create their own pixie dust, but rather got it from a well/spring/thing that pulled it in from the environment. Other than that, um, well, the music was all celtic inspired and the art was both beautiful and very reminiscent of early Disney films.

So, if you have younger kids, or like films about pixies, it's definitely worth a watch.

and I'm running out of internet to look at. So because I love you (no, not you) here's some excellent SMBC.



And...

1) my lungs did not spontaneously fill with bees.