Munden's Bar

Sunday Morning Animals

2009-07-11T22:42:47Z

I was woken this morning by a cat bashing open my bedroom door. The creature did, however, have enough sense of self preservation not to come anywhere near me after entering the room and meowing at me. It is now sitting smugly by my right shoulder, after having demanded biscuits. No, I am not one who serves my cat masters gladly.

Having been forced out of bed way too early I found a baby weta on the kitchen bench. This was a baby weta, so it wasn't scary. I went to get my camera to capture it, but by the time I came back it was gone. That's a little scary. Ninja baby wetas infest my kitchen! Sounds like a Frank Zappa song title.

I did find tt most endearing that the cat also insisted on cuddles prior to biscuits. The forms must be followed. The cat gives you grins and snuggles and purrs and rubs, and then you give it biscuits. The cat is most put out if you just give it biscuits and can't be bothered accepting payment.

Speaking of payment @trentreznor has added the following to his great post about how to make it as a media star in the current climate :

Here's a truth: nobody knows what to do right now, me included. The music business model is broken right now. That means every single job position in the music industry has to re-educate itself and learn / discover / adapt a new way. Change can be painful and hard and scary. If any of these entities we're discussing are interested in you, ask them about their strategies IN DETAIL. None of them know for sure what to do. Some of them have an idea of how to negotiate these waters. Most of them don't. If you are young and use the internet, you know more about your audience than they do - for sure. This is a revolution and you can be a part of it. The old guard is dying, if you have good ideas - try them.

Heh! Meet the Singularity folks..

Just after reading that I noticed this exchange between @warrenellis and some followers, which starts at the end of a long twitter rant about how there are no good large capacity portable miuisc players on the market now becaue they're all trying to look like the iPod Touch. Remember this is Twitter, so start reading from the bottom :

I had a succesful CD ripping session last night, reaccquainting myself with Billy Joel and his early SciFi-ness, such as Miami 2017 (lyrics).

That's one of the songs that makes me wish I could play piano. This was written before SciFi was cool, before Star Wars. The original has a synthesizer at the start, evoking air raid sirens. It seems to have taken on a whole new meaning to a lot of USAians since 9/11, the financial crash, and the drug cartels in Mexico. Just look at a few of the "related videos" on it's YouTube page. I hope Joel survives long enough to play it in 2017!

OK, must now hoover, and do other chores.

Closing Tabs

2009-07-10T23:35:45Z

A brief round up of tabs I'm closing and stuff

So Serenity Adventures won Best Role-playing Supplement at Origins.

Kumi pointed me at Vex who do some interesting men's clothing

I've been doing chores all mornning, but that means the kitchen is clean and tidy and most fo the things are done.

Friday I worked at home due to the huge train fail. I spent the day writing image manipulation software in Javascript. Or should I say, finding examples of how to do varous differnt things on the web and trying to generalize them and join them together into a single package that does everything my customers require, and works on multiple images on a single page (which no single package out there already seems to do.) I now know more about differences in Javascript engines than I ever wanted to know.

Now to get washed & dressed & down to the bakery for some nice bread and baked things.

Dead insects and secret chimps

2009-07-04T00:55:56Z

Last night I was sitting here thinking that I should probably empty all the dead insects out of the light shade in the lounge. The problem with these new-fangled long-life low-wattage bulbs is that you don't get to remove the shade as often as you would with normal bulbs, and thus the dead insect collection becomes massive long before the bulb wears out.

I was surprised to receive an email from Avaaz recently with the title : Nuclear weapons: the only solution. You see, Avaaz are this liberal action group, and while I would fully expect to receive such an email from "Christians Wanting To Hasten The Rapture" or from a science fiction mailing list when discussing aggressive alien planetary infestations, I was intrigued to see what Avaaz would think that nuclear weapons were the only solution for. Solving the water problem in Saharan Africa perhaps?

But no, unfortunately I was disappointed. It was yet another call for "elimination of all nuclear weapons worldwide". It's depressing that otherwise smart people still believe that it's possible to put the genie back in the bottle.

There have been a number of things I have run into on the web recently that I want to record as being memorable.

I would have been more excited about FilthyGorgeousThings based on it's premier issue had it not turned out to be a teaser for a horrendously expensive monthly webziine. $19 a month ? Come on! Still it's got some good writing and some nice arty erotica, and is pretty styley for porn.

There are these visualizations based on Twitter from Mashable. I especialy like the "Just landed.." one. Then there are these pics of the Aurora Borealis from space.

And there's Paul & Storm. How can a website subttled "Music, Comedy, Occassional Nuns & Pirates" be anything but a lot of fun? I especially like The Captain's Wife's Lament, here's a couple of verses to whet your appettite, as it were

There’s seamen here in front of me
And seamen in the rear
My God—there’s even seamen
Hanging from the chandelier

There’s seamen on the windowsill
And seamen in the yard
The seamen even left a stain
Upon the Saint Bernard

Although I am a patient wife
‘Tis more than I can bear
To wake up in the morning
With your seamen in my hair

And just in via @violetblue, using sex for ~~adverising~~ education

Now onto cleaning the house.

Fog and the New NiN

2009-07-02T00:28:27Z

There was fog in the Hutt Valley this morning, turning the approaching train into a shoggoth with lights. I didn't blame the driver for being a few minutes late if his visibility of the line was anything like our visibility of the train.

The fog seemed to seep into my brain though, everything from turning off the alarm till the first coffee at work felt like I was running on autopilot. This was perhaps due to certain amount of sleep disturbance. It was comfortable sleep disturbance, but nevertheless I would have preferred to not get up this morning.

Probably due to the sleep disturbance, I dreamed a lot. The one dream I can remember details of was about attending a NiN concert. NiN had a new line-up, which consisted of Boy George (yes, the Karma Chameleon one) on an impressive array of keyboards, and Oscar Keightley on guitar, and Oscar's sister on drums. IRL, I don't even know if Oscar has a sister, but in the dream he did.

Speculation between audience members centered on whether it was Boy George, Oscar, or Oscar's sister that was making Trent Reznor happy at the moment.

Finally finished watching Dollhouse last night. Beautiful little twist in the second-to-last episode around the identity of Alpha. Found the end of the final episode poorly constructed and didn't quite follow what was going on. It felt like it had been edited to the point of removing the important bits. Would say more, but am trying to avoid being too spoilery for those that haven't watched it.

Things I Want

2009-07-01T03:03:18Z

I'd seen pictures of this Korean designer's work before, but it wasn't until @neilhimself posted this link that I realized that the guy who designs cthulhoid furniture like this

is named Chul an Kwak.

I think it would go very well with these concept yachts that @SallyMclennan and I will be running away on.

Any women willing to wear bikinis are welcome to joins us, because, well, if one has such a yacht, one has to be a Bond villian, and have multiple bikini-clad women lounging around. Bonuses available if you are also a ninja assasin.

Speaking of which, @SallyMclennan and I have finally been getting to the end of Dollhouse, and i have been enjoying the parallels between the Dollhouse and a geisha house. The characterization of the series is very anime-like anyway, the doll's favourite phrase "be your best" is more Japanese than English, as is the design and structure of the Dollhouses. The drive of the boss lady ( De Witt?) seem very close to that of the geisha house mistrss in Memoirs of a Geisha.

Also watched new True Blood.

wHICH tORI aMOS SONG AM i

2009-06-21T06:56:57Z

Your result for The "Ten Most Famous Tori Amos songs" Personality Quiz...

"God"

“God sometimes you just don't come through God sometimes you just don't come through Do you need a woman to look after you? God sometimes you just don't come through”

THE MUSIC: According to the Music Genome Project, the song features acoustic rock instrumentation, r & b influences, blues influences, a prominent rhythm piano part, call and answer vocal harmony (Antiphony), demanding instrumental part writing, a clear focus on recording studio production, groove based composition, mixed minor & major key tonality melodic songwriting, electric guitar riffs, an electric guitar solo, a dynamic female vocalist, prominent percussion and vocal harmonies.

THE FACTS: "God" is the second track on Amos' 1994 album Under the Pink. The song reached number forty-four on the UK singles chart as well as #1 on the US Modern Rock Chart which is to date her only number one song on that chart. The song was Amos' response to patriarchy and the repression of women through religion. Lyrically it was heavily confrontational of male-deity headed religions. American radio was very hesitant to play the song because of its heavy use of guitars, so a promotional CD was released in the USA with two commercially unavailable mixes of the song: the "No Guitar" mix and the "Some Guitar" mix. The b-sides to the American release included Amos' reworking of the traditional song "Home on the Range", with new lyrics reflecting her Cherokee heritage, as well as a two-song instrumental piano suite. The music video for God features Amos in a variety of religiously themed situations, notably showing mundane situations in day to day life and making visual correlations with religious rituals. This includes visually comparing a Tefilin used by a Rabbi with a basketball player using a belt on his arm while injecting drugs. The video is often remembered for scenes of Amos dancing with a plethora of brown rats; this was commented on in an episode of the television show Beavis and Butthead.

YOU are one of Tori’s most talked about songs, simply because it’s so left-of-the-middle. Challenging issues of divinity, religion, gender and everything else across the board, chances are, you’re pretty much of a challenge yourself. The song is clearly a jab at patriarchy, who has been subjugating and, at the same time, excluding women for much too long. Whether or not you actually are a feminist, however, is a different matter altogether. Perhaps not. But what’s safe to say is that you are quite unconventional. And not passively so, either. Yours is a snarky, witty, biting kind of eccentricity, one which leaves no norm challenged and abides by no principles simply because ‘it’s the thing you do’. You are passionate about your causes, and may even have a militant bone in your body. Or several, for that matter. Some of which may have been broken during various protests. When attacked, your best defense is your spear-headed tongue. Snap, snap, snap. And with that kind of coping mechanism, it’s probably safe to say you’ve seen your share of strife. The lesson you took away from those experiences was to not blame ‘authority’ or some sort of ‘higher order’ for your woes. Throughout your experiences, you’ve really grown into the belief that people are entirely responsible for what they make of their lives and their potential. Your worldview is wholly anti-deterministic, you have faith in humankind (in spite of your apparent cynicism) and you believe that we all have the potential to fulfill our potential – if only we’d stop being so goddamn sheepish.

Take The "Ten Most Famous Tori Amos songs" Personality Quiz at HelloQuizzy

Fuck, that has to be the wordiest meme result ever! Pretty close to the mark, though definitely not my favourite Tori song.

Octoporn

2009-06-20T23:50:17Z

Again it's Warren Ellis' fault, though this time via his Saturday Night Open Mic .

Those who don't like sex with octopi should not click on this link. Those that do*, should.

* You know who you are. Yes, there's more than one person on my flist who likes this sort of thing. Now you can all start speculating. Except for those who already know, who can cringe in fear of discovery, or bravely out themselves, it's up to them. .

#LOFNOTC NG2AFP

2009-06-20T05:19:15Z

Recorded for posterity :

One suspects the completion of that twat should be "...ne with hot boy"

Inspiration?

2009-06-20T01:52:37Z

On Twitter things go by too fast, and unless you tweeted them yourself are often hard to find again. So I'm gonna store a couple of links I picked up today, and if anyone who didn;t find them on Twitter, finds them here, then so much the better.

Firstly, via @warrenellis (y'know, the Transmetropolitan guy) , is the lovely steam-punk jewelery and design work of Molly Freidrich. Scroll through her gallery, there's some lovely stuff in there. @warrenellis is also responsible for pointing me at this BDSM Dress-Up Jesus paper-doll.

On the other hand I found this sequence of Sascha Baron Cohen's "Queen's Guard" all by myself.

Then via @neilhimself is an article from China Mieville about things he would like to read that other people have to write:. Speaking of @neilhimself, his last blog post contains a beautiful piece of prose.

I am currently doing my yearly (or thereabouts) sort out of all the paper bills I have. I've kept some for far too long. Also doing washing of bed linen, and airing-out of mattress in advance of the arrival of my love next week.

Just got back form doing some shopping and bought some bakery goods to spoil myself. Steak & mushroom pie, chocolate donut. Nom. Now for a coffee, and back into the sorting.

Addenda : More stylish erotica in magazine format : F/lthyGorgeousTh/ngs - Modern Love

Trainsong

2009-06-18T23:51:03Z

Two songs have gotten stuck in my head due to the riding of trains. Last night I decided that Nick Cave's Loverman is absolutely the best lyrical representation of male lust.

This morning I decided I really like AFP's Delilah. Primarily because of the ancillary vocals that are almost a yodel. And because of the ending line. "Let's see how fast this thing can go", it seems like a perfect musical segue into New Model Army's 125mph, or something similar.

And now I has some True Blood Season 2 crack. Will I be able to wait to watch a nude Anna Paquin with my lady next week? May be I can instead catch up on Dollhouse and Supernatural. I'm way behind on TV watching.

Queen of my nights?

2009-06-14T07:44:07Z

Your result for Which Woman of the X-Men is Right For You? Test...

Emma Frost

Emma Frost, the former White Queen of the Hellfire Club, is the X-Woman for you. Sexy, powerful, and completely self-assured, Emma is a bit much for many people, but not you.

Take Which Woman of the X-Men is Right For You? Test at HelloQuizzy

How appropriate!!

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#LOFNOTC is #LOSNOTC night for us...

2009-06-13T06:51:27Z

Another thing dug out of the piles reminded me of a certain friend :

Just downloaded Witch Girls Adventure Star Creation Guide for free! Will make myself some Witch Girls now. Just a minute... half of the girls I know IRL are witches... maybe I shouldn't make more of them?

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Musical Nostalgia

2009-06-13T06:01:46Z

Had an easy wake up this morning. Two people picked up TradeMe auctions they had won, and I did some tidying and sorting. Indulged myself writing some XSL to display various magazine databases I'm slowly compiling in XML. Such things are incredibly simple as web-apps, all XML, XSL, a touch of CSS. Add a directory of cover images if you want to be fancy.

Sorting through old magazines led me to discover an ancient 1981 issue of Rip It Up. Looking at the magazine was both nostalgic, and to me at least, interesting.

I discovered that in April 1981, Split Enz had just released Waiata, U2 were still pushing their debut album Boy, Phil Collins was selling his first solo album Face Value, Elvis Costello had just released Trust, and The Knobz had released their debut album Sudden Exposure. John Lennon had both the number one single with Woman, and the number one album with Double Fantasy even though, or possibly because, he'd been killed the previous December.

Split Enz were touring New Zealand prior to their first really big world tour, but Madness' tour was bigger news, taking up several pages of the rag.

What was really interesting though, was that the hot new Split Enz album cost $7.99, and you could get a free t-shirt with it if you bought from one retailer. This was before CDs, that was actual pressed vinyl we're talking about. So how did the cost of a hot new album, now sold on technology that is cheaper to produce, rise from just $7.99 in 1981 to a RRP of between $29.00 and $32.99? Well, inflation, which was at at 15% in 1981, hit the dizzying heights of 18% in 1987. Though it dropped dramatically at the end of 1987, and has been below 4% since about 1991(source), a little bit of calculation shows that, when adjusted for inflation, the latest hot album costs almost exactly the same now as it did in 1981.

That doesn't take into account technology changes, of course, and one can buy most albums for less than that as a download, or by hunting for a deal. Back then I used to buy sale vinyl for $2. I still have some of those, I got my copy of David Bowie's Space Odditty in a Woolworth's sale bin back in about 1976, and played it on a Columbia "portable" record player, that cost me $15. A couple of days ago OffTheBack was selling a half gig iPod-alike for $17.

Back then, we got to see Stanley Kubrik's A Clockwork Orange (but only if we were over 21!) after it was reclassified and finally allowed to be shown in New Zealand. Now I'm looking forward the new Bruce Willis Surrogates.

Finally, as promised for jennitalula, here's the Bollywood rip-off of Europe's The Final Countdown

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Soldier, Sailor, Tinker, Spy? In a Steampunk World

2009-06-08T08:17:15Z

Your result for The Steampunk Character Test...

Diplomat or Spy

In this New Age of technology, it is ever widely accepted that civilized, developed nations cannot wage a war profitably, as the destructive power of ordnance increases dramatically year after year. Enter the diplomat, the stalwart soldier and the brilliant tactician in the wars Great Powers wage with words.

As for espionage, it's really just covert diplomacy, isn't it?

Take The Steampunk Character Test at HelloQuizzy

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Months Passing Quickly

2009-06-05T10:24:13Z

I've been really slack in updating over the last few weeks. This is largely due to the amount of things that have been going on. If you follow seraphs_folly you may have picked up on some of what has been going on.

Basically, of the last month or so, much of it has been away from home, and much of the "away" was with seraphs_folly. But I want to try and capture some of it while I can still remember it, so here goes, an attempt to capture over a months worth of life in a single post. Note that it is huge, and has pictures!

Starting as far back as Easter on the 9th of April I spent a week visiting Christchurch. Two weeks later was Joel's graduation and I spent another three days in ChCh. wasup_bro, Ben, Ele, and myself flew down to Christchurch where seraphs_folly picked us up from the airport and took us into the Botanical Gardens, where we caught up with Doctor ferrouswheel in his robes. seraphs_folly took this photo of the family who were there (only panda_pitt was missing, as he was working and unable to come down)

Then we headed over to the Arts Centre, where Ben and I had a real German Frankfurter while we waited for the Graduation Parade to start. When it did, we got another surprise, finding that ferrouswheel was carrying the sign that helped prevent the PhDs from getting lost.

The ceremony itself was long, as they always are, but I actually enjoyed a couple of the speakers, who managed to find some good things to say. Once it was finally over, we ate the free biscuits and drank the free coffee while ferrouswheel got a frame. Then we drifted outside.

We hung around outside with wasup_bro& Ben throwing leaves at each other while ferrouswheel got rid of his gown, and then trooped into the bar for drinkies. seraphs_folly joined us, and we just managed to squeak in some pizza before we had to drop Ele, Ben, & wasup_bro back out to the airport for their flight back.

The next week was the local book fest, followed by the weekend of the 48hr Film Competition, when I spent most of the weekend at either svendelmaus' place, St. Pats town, or Indigo City. We got "revenge film" as our genre, and we created a noir movie, called Dedication, where I got to play a thug, as well as a number of off camera roles as usual. Still haven;t actually seen it though.

The weekend following that I flew south on Wednesday night to spend three days travelling north with my lady as she left Christchurch and her home there for the final time. We spent the night at the relatively cheap but highly technomological Hotel So. When I was dropped off there by a taxi driver, as my love was at that time saying a messy farewell to her friends, the driver told me the hotel had been financed indirectly by the Inland Revenue. Reportedly the IRD rented the building and then failed to pay the owner of the building. He had them evicted and later got a court judgement against them which forced them to pay him two million dollars, which he used to refurbish the building as a modern hotel.

Hotel So had free internet! Other, more expensive, hotels take note!

We left Hotel So and had parmesan dumplings for breakfast at the Nor'Wester Café in Amberly, and then had a quick coffee and comfort stop at the Two Rivers Café in Cheviot where we found some wonderful art. Expensive, but so far above the level of normal café art that even I could tell that this was special. Some of the seascapes and mountain-scapes were of such colour and detail that I would own such things if I could, even though they were priced n the ridiculous thousands.

We continued on to Kaikoura where my love had booked us on a whale watching tour. The whale-watching was well-organized and a lot of fun, especially as we were lucky to see seven separate sperm whales, when the operators considered two whales all they expect per trip .

While under way, the huge LCD screen at the front of the tour boat graphically displayed the depth of the water beneath the boat, not in feet or metres, but in "Auckland Sky Towers." As we headed out of the harbour this seemed reasonably pointless, with the depth over the continental shelf hovering around 80% to 90% of an Auckland SkyTower. But then we went over the edge, and reason for the choice became obvious.

When you see something you know is that big suddenly decrease in relative size such that within a minute what had taken more than the entire screen is now barely distinguishable at the bottom of the screen, you get a real sense of both the depth and steepness of the Kaikoura trench. Later they played a nicely produced CGI of what the sea bed in the area would like should it suddenly drain of water and the boat we were in become a plane. They also showed graphics and videos of the sperm whales diving in the area, complete with the current best guesses as to how the whales survive the cold and pressure of the trench. Reportedly much is still unknown about how the various odd structures n the sperm whale's body operate and even the action of the white "sperm" found in the head of the whale from which it gets it's name is not fully understood

After the trip we went out to the point so Sally could look for seals, and we found them, including one extremely cheeky one which had blocked the main beach access route. I filled my camera with photos, though most of them weren't very good, I've put the better ones up on Flikr

It was getting late as we headed for the inland route to Hammer via Mt Lyford, a way I'd never travelled before either. On the way a bunny so large that I thought it was a small faun bounced across the road in front of us.

The weight in the car caused Sally to misjudge the petrol requirements, so by the time we hit Waiau, as the sun disappeared completely, the petrol warning light was on, and we had to fill up at one of those one-pump country garages which was luckily still open. Even more luckily, they had EFTPOS! So we managed to escape the scary country town before night fell completely.

Then it was on to Hamner, where, after checking into the Heritage, we relaxed for an hour or so in an almost empty set of hot pools, which allowed us to be cuddly and slightly naughty as well. We'd already booked at one of our favourite restaurants, The Laurels, where we had the usual rich and lovely food served up by the sergeant-major and his wife.

The next day we drove thru Engineers camp and stopped off at the Japanese onsen at Maruia Springs . As no-one else was stupid enough to go out in the freezing weather, we briefly sat naked in an outdoor hot-pool in the rain looking at the hills and mountains, being covered in black algae, before being joined by South African Sally. Then we went to the interior baths where, because the management had failed to turn on the pumps, I couldn't rinse myself down afterwards while sitting on a little wooden stool like they do in all the animé. I did however get to relax naked in a huge hot bath with a wondrous view. It was peaceful and soothing and something special having it all to myself.

From there we travelled north to Sally's secret gold claim where I tried to remain warm even though standing in a freezing mountain stream. tried to avoid being bitten by sand-flies, and tried not to seem too suspicious to the locals. We did, however find gold. Even I could see it. Onwards we went to Nelson. managing to find the hotel we were booked into, and finding that a spa bath is not a spa pool. Out to the lovely Café Laffaire, where we had a very bouncy blonde and back to collapse in sleep.

Up on Saturday for brekkie at the same café, and then chocolate mousse at Zatori before rushing off to catch the ferry. On the road from Nelson I was reminded strongly of ancient history. Sadly the Rai Valley Cheesery was gone. But as we passed Pelorus Bridge I remembered a trip there with my RNZAF recruit course (R8/80) over a long weekend, when Ele came down to visit, and I was given a special dispensation to ride in her sports car rather than in the bus with the other recruits. Then we passed Canvas Town, where I remembered my first experience of gold mining and a much earlier love

We arrived at Kaikoura with plenty of time to spare, and boarded the ferry, my first time on one of "new" large ferries (though I suspect they were actually new over ten years ago). seraphs_folly had the wonderful idea to pay an extra $40 each to get into the deluxe lounge, which was sort of like an airline lounge, in that it had free (though slightly patchy) internet and free food and drinks. Damn good idea, meant we spent there trip in comfort with snacks, coffee and other drinks, and the time didn;t drag as I had the opportunity to play with my laptop and take the opportunity to Twitter from the middle of Cook Strait. I reckon I definitely got my $40 worth in snacks and drinks!

Sally Arrives In Wellington!
All the way to the boat we'd been getting warnings of gale force winds and rough crossings but the trip was relatively smooth with the stormiest weather not occurring until after we got inside Wellington heads, as you can see above. Of course a day later the ferry crossings were all cancelled as the southerly hit hard and temperatures dropped, so once again my lady's luck held.

Phew that'll do me for now, I still haven't covered our adventures looking for houses while seraphs_folly house-sat for tyellas, or Conscription last weekend!

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Angels & Demons

2009-06-03T23:17:07Z

I'm currently reading Angel's Blood by Nalini Singh, largely coz she was a lot of fun at Conscription.

It's basically a "paranormal romance" about a female vampire hunter who gets involved with an angel while hunting another angel. While Nalini can write, and I'm enjoying it as I would a TV cop show, the book is as cheesy as you might expect such a thing to be, very much in the Laurel K. Hamilton style (except less actual sex).

The book also could have done with some better proof-reading, there's a couple of places where the flow of the book stumbles, and it looks like words are missing. The latter is a little disappointing seeing as Nalini is on the New York Times best-seller list, you'd have thought the publisher could have afforded to take appropriate care.

Nalini really does understand how power is sexy though, and although it's cheesily over the top, if the things she described were real, the actions of those involved are highly appropriate. I could imagine being any of the male characters, who, except for the hero's father, are either angels, vampires, or hunter, and would take the same actions they do were I playing that character. In fact, that's the feel the book gives me, of playing a classic, (cheesy), high level, Masquerade game.

Having stopped reading to walk from train to work, I turned on my iPod and the oracle gave me the Macy Gray/ Fatboy Slim collaboration Demons. The chorus line seemed appropriate to the point in the book where I'd stopped :

All of your demons will wither away
Ecstacy comes and they cannot stay
You'll understand when you come my way
'Cos all of my demons have withered away

The oracle followed this with Depeche Mode's I Feel You

I feel you, your sun it shines
I feel you within my mind
You take me there, you take me where
The kingdom comes
You take me to, and lead me through
Babylon

Which also seemed relevant, especially if, in both cases, you do what my mind does and assume that the word "come" is being used in it's orgasmic sense. I like how my random music reflects my reading of soft-porn with angels in it. Actually I've always thought that so-called random (or even pseudo-random) processes are the most likely to be affected by woo-woo mind powers... damn now I'm channeling my old CoX character.

This book makes me want to play a nastily sexual vampire again. I think I haven't been doing enough role-playing lately...

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Torture

2009-06-02T22:58:27Z

A video of seraphs_folly torturing writer/actor/social media trainer Tee Morris at Conscription has been posted on YouTube.

The White House has issued a press release stating release that Tee Morris obviously deserves it, and that the USA will not be sending the Pacific Fleet to nuke New Zealand in retaliation. They also hope that this will distract people from those other torture videos they don't want to talk about.

(posted here so that those who missed it on Twitter get to see it, and so that I can find it again more easily!)

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Scorpio Rising?

2009-05-26T04:21:39Z

Scorpio Horoscope for week of May 21, 2009
It's your choice, Scorpio. You could be a creative dynamo who changes the course of local history -- or you could be a plain old boring sex maniac. What'll it be? We here at the Free Will Astrology Libido Management Center encourage you to at least partially sublimate your unruly mojo into beautiful works of art, innovative business solutions, and brilliant strokes of collaboration. You don't have to stop boinking altogether; just make it the second most important thing you rather than your raison d'etre.

Heretics! How dare they suggest making something more important than sex!

Not to mention, didn't someone prove once that the concept of "sublimation" doesn't work? That in fact, the more sex you have, the more creative/effective/whatever you are?

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Worse Than s92A : Cease & Desist Orders

2009-05-07T23:56:42Z

If you were upset about the assault on civil liberties represented by s92A you should be absolutely livid over the current proposal for "cease & desist" orders, designed for use against "boy racers", but of course perfectly usable against anyone who ever drives or rides in or on a motor vehicle.

No court, no hearing, no evidence, just a single police officer's suspicion. You don't even have to be suspected of committing a specific offence - being in the wrong place at the wrong time is enough. In fact, it's quite clear that you can be punished for the offending of others, without any requirement to prove or even allege that you were involved.

Also any breach of the notice becomes a summary offence (3 months imprisonment / $2,000 fine). Meaning that effectively, you can be put in jail for three months without evidence of a crime, and without a hearing, at any time on the word of a police officer. Because of course they will also have the power to decide if you are in breach of the order, possibly within seconds of issuing it.

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I Got Sunshine In A Bag

2009-05-02T23:16:39Z

While waiting for my morning coffee to cool, I started cleaning the laundry.

I often work that way, need to fill in some time so start something, and then find that the time has become more than filled. Had to force myself to sit down to drink the coffee before it got cold.

Anyway, I was cleaning and I realized that the Frigidaire dryer we have has been amazingly long-lasting. It's older than my eldest son ferrouswheel. I know that because Little Nan bought it for Ele and I while Ele was pregnant, saying that we would need it for the nappies.

This, as reminiscing often does, led me to think about Little Nan, and her partner, Big Nan, both of whom have now been deceased for many years. Big Nan was the one who was my actual grandmother. She was a huge woman, who did all the manly things, like drink., smoke, chop wood, etc. It was Big Nan who first taught me rudimentary woodworking skills when I was staying with them over the school holidays. These days, I'd call her butch, but I didn't know that term back then. It was merely the name of a dog in a cartoon. She was Big Nan because she always towered over me as a child.

Little Nan, however was "my size" as a child. She had grown chubby and roun, in her old age, but she must have been one of those tiny , elfin, size ten, women when she was younger. She, like the classic boggan, made the tea, cleaned house, and brought us breakfast in bed. When I had been a good boy and gone to bed nicely, or when I had woken from a nightmare* and they had taken me to bed with them to comfort me, I was allowed to eat breakfast in bed with them.

Little Nan and Big Nan slept together in what I remember as a wonderfully fluffy and warm bed, that caught the morning sun. My memories of that bed are of the safest and warmest place in the world, bright and white in the morning. At the time, the fact that the two nans slept together in that lovely bed seemed like a perfectly natural thing for a pair of nans to do. That there were two of them, and that Little Nan wasn't really my grandmother, I sort of understood, but they were the Two Nans, and they did what the Two Nans did.

Interestingly no-one else, at least in the memory of this child, made any comment at all about the potential oddity of this relationship. Now I look back on it and tend to assume that they were a lesbian couple, but one has to remember, this was England, and last century. The concept of pairs of women "companions" though potentially providing a cover story for some lesbian couples, was a strong one, and just the fact that they lived and slept together, and that one of them was tiny and feminine and the other large and butch, would not be considered enough evidence to pronounce them as lesbian to the world.

Now I wish I knew whether they were or not. Actually, it doesn't really matter if they were lesbian. They loved each other and me. They gave me some of the best memories of my childhood.

*I remember one such nightmare was triggered by the cop show Hawaii Five 0 in which a criminal was using special effects to make it look like the godess of the volcano, Pele was responsible for his murders. I dreamed of angry volcano goddesses.

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Last time I said "where's my hard suit?"

2009-05-02T01:31:16Z

Turns out I should have said "Where's my HAL suit?" Where are the superheroes one wonders? And should we be worried thatt it's being produced by a company called Cyberdyne?

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Bubblegum Crisis 2009 ?

2009-04-29T02:39:00Z

A chemical gel that can walk like an inchworm, or looper caterpillar has been demonstrated in a Japanese robotics lab.
...
Shingo Maeda and colleagues made the colour-changing, motile gel by combining polymers that change in size depending on their chemical environment. This is based on an oscillating chemical reaction called the Belousov–Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction. The result is an autonomous material that moves without electronic stimulation.

Where'd I put my hard-suit?

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Testing Dreamwidth : Part Two

2009-04-25T06:13:43Z

Today I got a Dreamwidth account in the "random lottery".

The first test post from my off-line tool appeared here fine. However, it didn't cross post to LJ. So now I'm testing cross-posting to LiveJournal from Dreamwidth's post page to see if that makes any difference.

This entry was originally posted at http://mundens.dreamwidth.org/446650.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Latex

2009-04-15T19:01:28Z

Passing on some latex fashion shoots that kumimonster linked to from Fetish Evolution, that some people might be interested in :

Ego Assassin by Phoebus(ego_assassin)

HMS Latex by Phoebus(hurtmeso)

WoTC panic and try to mitigate their liability.

2009-04-11T22:42:17Z

Further to my earlier post, I've just received the following letter from Wizards of the Coast (via DriveThruRpg ) :

WotC Download Recovery Day, April 15

[You are receiving this letter because you have purchased one or more Wizards of the Coast titles from RPGNow or DriveThruRPG.]

Greetings Valued Customer,

By now, you have probably learned that Wizards of the Coast recently decided to cease the sale of digital download versions of their books. This means that RPGNow and DriveThruRPG will no longer be able to offer you future downloads of Wizards titles you have purchased.

We are offering you a final 24-hour period in which to re-download copies of any Wizards of the Coast files you have purchased from us in the past. If there are any titles you purchased, and you need a new copy of the file for your personal archive, this is your last chance to get it.

This 24-hour period will begin at 10:00 AM EST (U.S.A. Eastern Time Zone), Wednesday, April 15th and will conclude at 10:00 AM EST on Tuesday, April 16th.

During this time you may visit DriveThruRPG ! or RPGNow, log in, and click the My Account link found in the upper right corner of the site. Or just visit one of these links:
DriveThruRPG http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/account.php
RPGNow http://www.rpgnow.com/account.php

For the “My Account” page you will find your order history and download links, including a handy option to view all products updated since your last download of that title (for example a file that was updated with errata since you last downloaded it). During your visit, we certainly invite you to take a look around and see all the titles we have to offer for rpg PDF fans.

As always, thank you for your continuing support of all that we do, and we welcome your feedback and any questions you may have.

Sincerely,

Sean Patrick Fannon
DriveThruRPG and RPGNow

This message from the publisher Wizards of the Coast was generated based on your settings at DriveThruRPG.com.

Of course, that wasn't the contract WoTC entered into, so they're still breaking contract, even with this attempted mitigation, but it's amusing to see them flail around like this. One wonders if all this will ruin their reputation as a publisher?