In which I actually post an update to my Blog

Lots going on.

I am now a chief steward for ILWU Local 5 (please excuse the rough web site, we had to switch hosting on short notice), and things at BLB01 are going about as well as can be expected in these brutal economic times.

On the other hand, Percey the cat is not doing so hot. She has another round of dental problems and various other health issues, that for her comfort and quality of life we have decided not to treat. We'll be going on a track of some antibiotics and enough painkillers to keep her comfortable, and we're going to let her live out her last year or so in relative comfort. No more traumatic day long vet stays or surgery that she's always scared and miserable after, and as little poking and prodding as we can manage. There's no sense in having her live in fear.

I have come to a tattooing decision. I've always wanted to get one nice, fairly ambitious tattoo, and the decision has been made as to what & where: A collage of starships (no, not Jefferson Starship) will be somewhere on my body (I will reveal where when work has begun). Here's the list of what I'm planning on including so far

Definitley:
Serenity (Firefly/Serenity)
Enterprise (TOS)
The TARDIS (Dr Who)
a Viper (New BSG)
a Raider (Old BSG)
Moira (Farscape)
Challenger (the space shuttle)
Klingon Bird of Prey (not sure which one)
Saucer from the original The Day the Earth Stood Still
Discovery One (2001 ASO)

Maybe:
SDF 1 (Robotech)
The Phoenix (Battle of the Planets/Gatchamon)
The ARK [Transformers (80's Cartoon)]

I'm also looking for other ships, be they from old Amazing covers, obvious things I haven't thought of yet, etc. So send me links and scans, I've got some flesh to fill!

My next step is to talk to a tattoo artist, and my dear sister has provided what I think will be the right path.

I am aware that there are no Star Wars ships on the list above, and it is intentional. There will be one Star Wars vessel, either an X-Wing or Slave-1. We have been betrayed, and my anger runs deep.

Everything's gone Gold

First off watch this:



We love Amanda Palmer.

Now for the good news: BLB01 has deemed me worthy of the Gold Room. I will be working the Sci-Fi section full time in about two weeks. The year of Generalist was enjoyable, but I was ready to settle into a section and Gold was the room I wanted, and what I'm best suited for, so we all win.

Both of us also went through steward training, and pending approval by the Executive Board, I will be a shop steward in short order.

t-minus 3 days till election. Vote damnit

A Year? Really?

So I noticed yesterday that today is the 1st anniversary of this blog.

(Cue the streamers, noise and party hats)

It's only been 93 posts now, which means I'm not quite posting a third of the time. Here's to trying to post more!

Venture: NOW!

http://www.adultswim.com/video/?episodeID=8a25c3921a33e870011a35f406440069

I'll be watching as soon as I get home.

It's a go for TV on Sunday night, but who can wait that long?

Not me.

New Glasses

Finally:



Now if I could just find a new (to us) car. Anybody got a good used Honda they'd care to part with for around 2 grand?

The Most Important Video You Will Watch In The Next Five Minutes

The Other Side of Unemployment

So, Old Job is getting ready to close it's doors, which means Sadimac is on full burn job search. She's doing the full Craig's List thing right now, and I've primed BLB01 for any future applications she might be turning in.

We knew this was coming, although it's a little earlier than we were expecting. The hope is to get her up and out of old job before the bitter end comes. With Sadimac's experience and tenacity,
I pretty confident that she'll be in a new job before long.

In other news, as last week was Sadimac's 3xth birthday, and yesterday was fraking tax day, that means that my birthday is fast approaching, this Saturday in fact.

In celebration, we will be going to my sister's place, eating a good dinner, drinking some good drinks, and at least I will be a special guest on my sister's pod cast. We will be discussing Orycon, Browncoats, and other general geekery.

Forgotten Sci-Fi: Enemy Mine

Breaks over, time to get back to it.

Enemy Mine is on the TV right now. For those that aren't familiar with what I consider to be one of the best Sci-Fi films of the 80's, it goes like this: the it's the late 21st century Humans have finally made peace with each other, and while exploring the galaxy came upon a race of advanced sentient reptiles known as the Drac.

Being Humans, we went to war. With the conflict in full swing a Human and a Drac crash land their respective fighters on a barely hospitable planet. To survive, they must rely on each other.

It's a deeply moral tale of the value of tolerance, friendship, and acceptance. Strictly speaking, it's a story that didn't have to be told with a science fiction setting, and in a way that's what made it so good.

It has an elegant simplicity. There were special effects to be sure (decent, although not great ones for the period), and the Drac makeup was excellent, but they didn't overwhelm the rest of what was going on. The actors (Dennis Quaid, Lou Gosset Jr., and the always menacing, but dearly missed Brion James) didn't let the fantastic setting throw them, and delivered genuine performances. Gosset is particularly good as Jeriba, the Drac. He's portraying a completely alien being, dramatically different, yet very much like a human.

Netflix it. You won't be disappointed.

Gamestorm, Snow, and D&D 4E

So D&D 4E was.... good.

I'm loathe to admit it, but they designed a good system, and it plays really, really well. I can't speak to the character creation process, but actual play is quick, smooth, and makes sense. Capn zip & I wanted to hate it, we did, but we both thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Zip is going to play another session today to get more of a feel (I am otherwise occupied sadly).

They also changed one of the most annoying things they were planning on doing (something to do with the online functionality of the game I really don't feel like getting in to), which softens some of Sadimac's outrage at WotC.

It was snowing this morning when I got up. I looked outside, saw the snow, and my brain said:

"That is an optical illusion caused by just waking up. Ignore it and make coffee"

But no, it was snow. In late March.

We got to the con just fine though, and now here I sit at the PDX Browncoats fan table, having already confirmed that we are indeed NOT the check in for Gamestorm.

More soon!

The guns....they've stopped, the wussification of childhood threats, and the last post on the decay of Star Wars

The presents are opened, and the insanity at BLB01 should be down to a dull roar.

As a result, my mind has returned to think of the normal things that rattle around in my head, specifically, Star Wars.

I received a "Darth Tater" Mr. Potato Head from my former boss, and it sits next to my head in the living room (Sadimac: don't worry I have no intention of leaving it there). It's been the trigger of a train of thought I've been playing with all day: Lucas, in his finite wisdom, has made Darth Vader as wuss.

I think the wussification of Vader began before the prequels, with the Energizer Bunny commercial where Vader faced off against the EB, only to have his lightsaber fritz out due to inferior batteries.



I remember being pissed about that when it came out. Vader was supposed to be the personification of menace, evil, and (a clunky, nonsensical, & hamfisted) redemption: not a shill to sell frelling batteries.

Not so long after that, the "Special Edition" of the original trilogy came out. With new special effects, and some tweeks, most importantly Greedo shooting first. Any one who knows me, or has seen my "Han Shot First" shirt knows how I feel about that. Lucas claims that the films were never how he wanted them, and all of the changes he made were just stuff he could only do with current SFX technology. Both you and I know that he's lying, so we won't get into that. What really chaifed me was his assertation that it was his right as the creator to go back and "fix" his own work.

Now some films are ok to go back and re-cut. What Blade Runner is supposed to be has always been controversial, all the way back to it's original release, so Ridley Scott making changes to that is fine. Releasing an "extended cut" or "unrated" DVD of a recent film is fine too, as we're talking about a 6 to nine month period between theatrical and DVD release, so it's not really something that's in the cultural consciousness yet. Then, some things are specifically designed to be added to and extended (such as Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings), and that causes little or no pain, as we know it's coming.

What Lucas did could be compared to Jackson Pollack walking into a museum, pulling one of his works that had been there 20 years off the wall, and making changes (note: I am not saying that Star Wars is equal in artistic merit to a Pollack painting)


Of course then, years later, the prequels hit. They were riddled with problems. They over reached (Anakin as immaculate conception), pandered (Jar Jar Binks), and were, frankly, down right racist (Watto, the Neimoidians, and Jar-Jar again), sexist (Amadala's transformation from forceful, wise ruler to trembling waif who just couldn't go on living, only about seven or so women in the whole thing have speaking roles.

These three films, all of them bad and with few redeeming qualities, actually make the original trilogy look almost as bad. This religion and order of knights that Luke worked so hard to restore was corrupt, archaic, and badly needed to go down. Only a precious few Jedi had it right (Qui-Gon, to a certain extent Obi-Wan, Shaak-Ti, and in the comics Quinlan Vos and Tholme), and most were pretty awful (Mace Windu, Ki Adi Mundi, and the wise old one who's advice was always bad, Yoda). They, and the republic needed to go down, and be replaced: the empire was a piss poor replacement of course, but one lousy system being replaced with another is par for the course...

I've vented enough though. This was, if you will, the last great public complaint on Star Wars. I'll always have my opinions, and I'll likely mention them from time to time, but this is the clear out. There's plenty of good Sci-Fi to talk about (Doctor Who, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, etc), and I'm tired of it wasting my thoughts on this thing I can do nothing about but whine.

I hear by resolve to stop beating this dead horse. It is the Sci-Fi of childhood, and the more sophisticated things I enjoy deserve my attention, and praise, rather than my continued scorn of what was lost by the actions a sad little rich fat man with a god complex.

D&D 4E, or why I stopped giving WoTC my money

As I mentioned previously, D&D 4th Edition is coming out next year. Now that I know a little bit more about it, I feel comfortable putting some of my concerns/bitter hatred in a more cogent form.

It seems that the mechanics of the new Star Wars RPG is pretty close to what we can expect from 4E, and I've reviewed some of that material in the last couple of weeks. I am not impressed.

Some of the ideas are fine and good, and might even find themselves house ruled into our game (Combining all of the sneaking skills into a single skill is okay, being able to spend skill points to improve initiative is long overdue in my mind, and nobody can argue with more stat bumps), a lot of them are just a mess (starting first level with 30+ hit points is excessive, I think the combining of skills went to far: Bluff, Diplomacy and Intimidate are not the same thing, neither are Spot and Sense Motive, and eliminating Saving Throws in favor of three different AC's is just going to breed confusion).

These things could have been released as an alternate rule book (Unearthed Arcana II or whatever) and priced at $25 to $30 bucks. About 50 to 80% of players would pick it up and use about 20 to 30% of the book. Everyone would use a different 20 to 30% (except for the initiative as a skill and extra Stat bumps: everyone would use those), and we'd all be happy.

But no, they have to make 4E to try and sell us three $40 dollar books, and render the rest of our collection obsolete. Frak that.

Then there is the online component. Not so long ago D&D had an ad campaign encouraging gamers to leave their basements and play in a social setting. The new business model trashes that and tries to chase everyone back to their computers. You can play entirely on line (if you pay the ridiculous $10 to $15 a month fee) if you like, there fore crippling the vital social interaction aspect of the game. WotC claims that the game will still primarily meant to be played at the kitchen table, but this is largely bullshit. So much of the game is now tied up with the online aspect that it just encourages people to stay locked up in their homes. They are trying to emulate the WoW model, and they will fail.

Oh, and if you have a Mac you're apparently not part of WotC's glorious vision of the future. The key elements of the online D&D experience will only run on a PC, with the informational stuff being all that a Mac user can access. More short sighted mistakes that will cost them a lot of players in the future.

I will continue to enjoy my 3.5 D&D, thank you very much. I won't cry too much when this grand experiment that WotC is embarking on fails.

PDX Browncoats: Firefly at the Mission

As is probably obvious from the flight suit I'm wearing in the photo I have up on this blog, I'm a raving Browncoat.

I've been a part of our local fan group since it's inception, and at this point almost all of my friends are as well (a combination of new friends and old friends who have joined the fold). Last night, we once again took over a theater.

Last month we held our wildly successful (we raised at least $10,000) annual charity screening of Serenity, and now the Mission Theater here in town has seen fit to show Firefly in it's entirety over the course of the next several Tuesdays.

We packed the place: 312 people, at ten o'clock on a Tuesday night. It was 100+ degrees yesterday, and well over 70 by the time we wrapped up, and people still came out in droves.

Portland is sort of the epicenter of Firefly fandom, and oh boy did we show it last night.

Dungeons and Dragons, or why I have more dice than the average small town.

I Play D&D, and so, thank the heavens, does Sadimac. It's our bowling, our golf, our heroin, our whatever (except it's not our alcohol, we have alcohol for that).

Warning: I am about to talk about my D&D character. Those of you that are bored senseless by this will want to skip the next paragraph or so.

Last chance to look away...

Through a combination of skill, luck, DM generosity and the party springing for a resurrection that one time, I have a 20th level character. Gaerdin Barradawan, Chaotic Neutral Human (with Gnomish blood) Ninja 18/Fighter 2. Excellent stats, a host of top notch magic items, and the sword: a +4 Keen Flaming Burst Ghost Touch Gromasha Wood Katana. He ate a fruit from the grandmother tree of his people's legends, can see things others can not, as well as other stuff I can't reveal because my DM swore me to secrecy (Sadimac reads the blog). He is a ritualistic cannibal, a cheat, a thief, and is frelling awesome.

There, I'm done you can continue reading.

I've been playing pretty consistently since Jr. High school, although I first played in about sixth grade with some kids that kind of had a tough time grasping the concept, so I got bored and didn't try it again for a couple of years. I've played in great campaigns, lousy campaigns, and through stuff I'd rather forget. Even when I didn't have a game going, I still read the magazines, picked up the occasional book, and constantly made characters that would never be played.

I've been through all 3 and a half editions, dragged kicking and screaming into each new edition, only to admit after a couple of months that it was an improvement each time. I say now that if there is a 4th edition I'll never play it, but I expect that I'll change my tune with in two years, just like every other time.

There are now a total of 6 characters that I've played that are truly memorable(Niche the Halfling Rouge, Sira the Half-Elf Wizard, Voldam the Human Cavalier, Velsos the Elven asshole Archer, Dila the Dwarven Psionic, and Gaerdin), followed by dozens that are half remembered puzzle pieces that have become a jumble in my head.


Now, our current campaign is at end game. Our characters are incredible (If you think mine sounds impressive, you should see Sadimac's Necromancer, Jolene), and next Saturday we'll go and fight something that we'll probably not all survive. It will be immensely satisfying, and it will be over.

But you see, I have this new character...