Wondrous Apparitions, Provided by Magicians.

Also, from metaquotes, the only way Bush could redeem his presidency.

... I'm sorry. I can't help it, I was born with a deformed sense of humor.

I don't usually like to journal about bodily functions other than the occasional declaration that I have become a plague zombie, which I think is necessary because it lets you know why I haven't been journalling and because it alerts people to the possible necessity to keep weaponry on hand in case my brain runs out my ears and I decide to go visiting. Anyway. I don't usually go there, but this is kinda neat. ( Read more... )

I'm just remembering this afternoon something that never fails to crack my shit up. One day, when I was in high school (or perhaps junior high), for some reason a lovely and stupid girl was totally unloading her personal woes on me. At the height of this bitch session about how everyone betrayed her and treated her badly, she looked at me and said in perfect sincerity:
"I envy you, because you'll always know that your friends aren't your friends because of your looks or your money."

Boy, that's as true today as it ever was then. (Some of you may have heard this story before, and I apologize for boring you with it again. To me, this is funny every time.)

Saturday night, kittenpants and I went out to Balanca's so that she could dance, and I could er... watch her dance, which is plenty of voyeuristic good times. Balanca's is a prime example of how people in the Midwest generally fucking rule. On Saturday, the place was full of punk lesbians, drag queens, elderly heterosexual couples dressed for square dance, black guys in hip-hop shirts, white fratboys and their skinny girlfriends, older gay men, cute indie girls, goths, programmers, rivetheads and cowboys, to name a few. You can pretty much play subculture bingo in this bar, is what I'm saying. And everybody gets along. The music is probably not diverse enough to make the crowd happy (I could have done with a bit less hip-hop, myself -- they are rumored to do industrial night on Thursdays, which is way way more my thing), but the drinks are strong, the bartenders are kind, and it's generally a good time. But that's not the point of the post. The point of the post is that at one point, the DJ spun up Michael Jackson's Thriller. kittenpants and I looked at each other, trying to calculate the irony coefficient for this turn of events. And then, two drag kings stepped out onto the floor, and started to do the appropriate choreography, complete with zombie leg-twitching and scary monster posing. The dance floor cleared. They did the whole fucking number. We were duly impressed. The crowd cheered and bought them drinks. It was, in a word, brilliant.

While we're on the subject of 80's nostalgia and unlikely talents, triadruid and I were tossing around the idea of running a one-off spoof D&D game based on the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. You open a box... inside is a shield, a bow, a hat, a cloak... A little bald guy in red robes comes walking out from behind a rock. All the players go "Oh, shit." This was just some idle car amusement this morning (you know how it is, you start talking about gaming, and then you're getting all nostalgic about killing Tiamat) BUT! triadruid can do a flawless imitation of the unicorn. Now we have to do it, because it is a shame to let a talent like that go unrecognized. :-P

In other news, after a conversation in which too many in-jokes were shared to allow proper explanation, triadruid said to me this morning, "He's just mad because you wouldn't be his minion."
And I spoke, saying, "I'm not his minion. I *have* minions."
And he said, "Do you?"
I was forced to admit that I did not know if I had any minions or not. Therefore, I ask you:

[Poll #1042789]

Not just wrong, bad wrong:
Elder Sign panties.

Apparently intended to keep shoggoths out of your bits, which I think is a fine idea. (Or at least, I'm pretty sure that having shoggoths in your bits is a bad idea, which is like the same thing, right?)

loltheorists.

Apparently, saffronhare will be out of town on the date set for the Wild Hare Beltane. That means that I'm doing the priesty bits all by my onesies. And that means you can more or less loook forward to it being all Welsh and whatnot. You know why? Because I want to get to say "Agorer y pyrth!", that's why. "Wele'r tân cysygredig" is fun, too.

Of course, there's always the possibility that someone will volunteer to help lead the rite. That would reduce the chance of Welsh by 50%, according to my calculations. (motivate, motivate, motivate)
:)

Ticketmaster brings me news that Morrissey is playing a show in Kansas City in May. I am, appropriately, conflicted about this. Do I go, because I never got a chance to see The Smiths? Do I abstain, because, frankly, very little on his last two albums has been worth a damn? (To be fair, I didn't get the last one, so I've heard little of it.) Would anybody even want to go with me? Would I be all alone?

It's all so fucking tragic.

EDIT: I was so excited about Morrissey that I missed the rest of the email, in which it was revealed that Social Distortion was going to play the Beaumont Club, also in May. That sounds like unmitigated fun. Anybody wanna go see Social D with me?

anachrotech is often full of excellence, but today, robert_from_ap is soliciting help for a song about airship pirates. Ever-helpful commenters want to know, "Is the song pro- or con- airship pirates?". This cracks me up for no good reason.

Another thing that cracks me up for no good reason, which also happens to be related to airship pirates is Tradewinds Legends. This is a shiny little commodities game in which you play one of four ship captains and trade, fight, and snark your way around the mythic Middle East. I lost much time to it this weekend. You start with a single ship, then build a fleet, and eventually trade your sailing ships for dirigibles and mystical flying dragon boats. On the way, you play with characters like Scheherazade and Sinbad, hook up lonely genies, steal phoenix eggs for the omelettes of sultans, and so on and so forth. Wildly funny. The character I'm playing with currently is searching the world for his missing "brother", who, it gradually becomes clear, is his 'brother' the way that Patroclus was Achilles' 'cousin'.

Also, only vaguely related to airship pirates, I'm becoming very enamored of the concept of a sort of retro-biomechanical tattoo. I'd like to have something that looked like a cutaway to reveal steampunkish gears, dials, and pipes. I've thought of this before, and it still seems like a good plan, but I'm still working out the finer points of where that goes and how to express it. Suggestions gladly accepted.