when its not enough just to be lonely...

This post is hereby dedicated to people who code links to PDF files as though they were regular links (i.e. to further graphics or HTML or whathaveyou, as opposed to download-style links), or as I like to think of you, the biggest assholes of the new millenium. Newsflash: Acrobat is a worthless, terribly written program with a very few specific uses. Web-browsing is not one of them. The program is a resource hog, and the vast majority of users click on a PDF link only to find their system crippled for a matter of minutes as it grapples with Adobe's bullshit. It is because of you fuckers that I hard-killed Mozilla and lost the first version of this post.

So its time for the traditional post-weekend wrap-up. Wow... relatively speaking its been a while since I posted here. And by skipping straight to the weekend, I'm totally failing to mention having hung out with lady_eleret again. Imagine that.

Friday night I returned to Court of Storms for a few hours of play. I was a little miffed to discover the city has no Harpy, but that apparently has something to do with at least one of the STs hating the Status system with a vehemence it frankly deserves so I'm willing to let it slide. (Note to self: ask devringalbrath about their spending-XP policies.) I didn't get involved in too much at game, aside from an interesting conversation with a ghost (its a long story...)

Late Friday night I was supposed to head over to Dave A's for his monthly poker night. Because I didn't have my cell phone with me I missed the first message telling me that things had been moved to earlier, but that's OK, because in my absence the game was scrapped due to insufficient players. That, uh, that happens to Dave a lot. So he and I ended up sitting around for a bit and talking about the Changeling tabletop he's trying to pull together. Then he sent me off with a copy of the Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox (which is actually a compilation of a trilogy, Bridge of Birds, the Story of the Stone, Eight Skilled Gentleman). As of this posting I'm 80 pages into it and enjoying it immensely.

My sister Sarah came into town, so Saturday I saw a bit of her. Things were a little hectic around here as my baby sister was preparing to leave for Paraguay under the auspices of Team Tobati, a charity organization run through my school that I was too much of a bad person to ever take part in. She left Sunday morning, marking the start of her first significant absence from home ever (she, unlike me, never did overnight summer camp.) The high temperature there today is somewhere in the upper 70s or low 80s, about ten degrees below where its predicted to be for most of her trip. And this is apparently considered unseasonably cool.

Sunday I went down to New Haven to march in their St. Patrick's Day parade for the Celtic Learning Program. I came, as instructed, wearing plaid pajama bottoms and was issued a tunic, a mantle, an eight-foot spear and a nicely painted shield. The parade route seems like it couldn't have been more than two miles, and yet by the end I was fairly tired. That was mostly from carrying the spear & shield, as well as shaking them, thumping the one on the other, screaming at the top of my lungs and periodically charging the group ahead of us, the crowd, and whatever else our leaders saw fit to point the standard at. I had a blast. I had such a good time, in fact, that I forgot that I was fighting desperately not to get into an argument with any of the CLP folks over the fact that I don't, y'know, believe in Celtic Culture as they understand it.

Sunday night was syganzychick's weekly D&D game. I missed a bunch of stuff (and an accompanying bunch of XP) during my trip to Chicago but am doing my best to get back into the swing of things. Apparently there's a bunch of stuff that only a Bard can get at in our current module, which is a heartening thought. Having reached 4th level I now have some 2nd level spells, and as our party Sorcerer already has the role of artillery capably taken care of I've decided to go the route of party buff. There's all sorts of good stuff along that route (like, say, Cat's Grace.)

And tonight I'm driving up to Boston to meet sleetfall. The two of us are then continuing on to his family's timeshare in New Hampshire, where we will remain through Friday and do some skiing. Because, y'know, nothing tops off two weeks of vacation quite like another five days of vacation. I lead a charmed existence.

and I got no illusions about it; guess what? I never did...

I would swear sometimes that my brain is miswired, metaphorically speaking. It spends a large amount of time (and, presumably energy) on things I swear I did not actively direct it towards. Case in point?

Its compiling a musical.

As those of you who read this blog regularly are probably aware, whenever I am in the area of Ev IL I play in a game of Mage: the Ascension run by the inestimable pax_malificus. Partially because the game is quite good and partially because I love Mage on many, many levels I find myself fairly fixated upon this game. I think on it a lot; I analyze it and I cherish it and I miss it when I'm not around. And somewhere along the line it broke into that part of my brain I'm not precisely in control of, into that part of me that isn't quiet even when the rest of me is still.

I think the catalyst in this case was that I heard a song by Colin Hay, and because I was listening especially to the lyrics (as I tend to do when hearing new music) I thought to myself, "Huh. If [rollick's character] had a theme song, it might well go something like this." And then, spontaneously, other songs started to populate a list in my head that previously had not existed. I have long been in the habit of associating songs with people (and moods, and sets of circumstances.) Insofar as I have a useless superpower, it lies in having a song lyric or six on hand for anything that comes up.

Its not like this is the first time I've applied that knowledge to the meta-life of Gaming. I've had characters with theme songs before. I use music when I ST. But this game is different, more serious in tone somehow. And so now its like I've broken through some barrier. A less geeky person would have been deeply troubled by that. And I have to admit that I think its pretty weird, and ultimately pretty worthless. But its diverting and its harmless and, like I said, I'm not sure I could stop if I wanted to.

Without further ado here's the stuff I've got (more or less) for sure at this point:

[rollick's character] Shae's Theme: (excerpts from) Colin Hay -- Beautiful World
[spreadnparanoia's character] Helen's Theme: Green Day -- Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Song for the early interactions between [my character] Kit and Shae: (a modified version of) Wicked Soundtrack -- Popular
[Zoe's character] Psyche's Theme: Dispatch -- Two Coins
Song for that one time with Nick: Jefferson Airplane -- White Rabbit
Song for recent conversations between Helen and Kit: Lucky Boys Confusion -- Something To Believe