Fortress of Perpetual Midnight

I completely forgot to do the laundry on my long day when I had time. (I'd skipped it when I had the chance last week because I didn't have enough to make a real load.)

My new assignment from my social worker is to read Sections 1–4 of Chapter 9 (when they actually get to the exercises). We looked over some things during the session. I'm a bit ambivalent about the parts about how I'm supposed to act. For example, let's look at eye contact:

1. In high school, the "normals" claimed that if you look at someone, it's definitely because you want to have sex with that person (like how you're automatically masturbating unless you keep both hands above the table). This shouldn't be a problem, but one of the two main ringleaders in the department has stated publicly that he takes pride in being less mature than a high-school student, and both certainly act that way.

2. Lowering my head is the only compromise I've found between treating ladies with respect and not being considered a freak.

3. I've also ended up keeping my head down at work, as the only way I can find to avoid fights is to avoid any interactions entirely. It irks me to have to bow to a man, but I don't see any other option.

Of course, I didn't have the guts to say any of this to her. She says I'm going to have to start by practicing on her on Monday.

At work, I got in trouble for not completely disposing of things when I wasn't explicitly told how much to do. Admittedly, I haven't gotten in that many fights because people caught me cleaning up properly.

For the second shift, the operator gave me the choice of either working the station where I can't keep up or the one with two people. I didn't want to provoke people by thinking about it, so I made a snap decision to the latter. Unfortunately, I failed to consider the fact that they put me there replacing the one of the previous two with whom I actually get along, leaving me to work with the one person I despise most. (He's still only one of my three main enemies, as I don't fear him nearly as much as the other two.) I've deliberately been avoiding teamwork for some time now, but this really rubbed my face in the fact that, after more than six months, he's still completely incompetent at this job. Besides the usual slowness (he's one of the only two in the 20-man department who's slower than I) and sloppiness, he kept making obvious mistakes and then escalating them continuously. Even if I were willing to try to communicate with an enemy in less than an emergency, he has a track record of doing the opposite of what I say even when he asks me (hopefully because he's deaf and delusional, not malicious). It's a good thing they replaced him with someone else for the hard part.

Someone else also complains (admittedly in jest) about the fact that they make laws that aren't supposed to be followed. If you drive at or below the speed limit, you're a roadblock, and if there's one thing experience teaches me (about which I really should post), it's that you can't trust any man to act rationally even about the slightest things. And, of course, if they expected us to follow the laws, they wouldn't allow the police to drive well over the speed limit and make random U-turns all the time (not just when actually chasing someone or get to a crime scene, when they're supposed to use the lights on the roofs).

They also had an interview with a couple of Oscar-nominee/winners. The oldest significant memory I have of Downey is when my brother and I were watching one* of those movie CMs where they list and show a bunch of stars at the end. When they said and showed, "Robert Downey Jr.," we both said, "as Al Pacino?" The hair and the lines around his eyes did it.

Anyway, the comment about blackface relates to yellowface (which I had just looked up the other day, don't remember in what context), which segues to something I coincidentally (only noticed because I happened to see it mentioned on the front page right before I left work) found in the paper. I guessed what it was from the blurb, but was somewhat amused by the fact that they gave that headline, considering the fact that it was about English society (which they didn't even mention). Still, when I looked it up, I found here that, despite the fact that the play itself makes no attempt at having anything to do with Japan (as exemplified by how I searched for the URL with the word that I thought I could spell the same way and that would be in the article, which happened to be "poo"), Gilbert actually tried to put accurate Japanese elements in the production. (Incidentally, this section is also interesting, particularly the fact that they didn't argue against one bit being sexist. . . .) My mother also disagrees with the description of Peterson as "fluent," although I don't know on what bases she makes that claim. (Considering that I had only taken two years, which doesn't get so far as to actually learn much of any Japanese, I wouldn't have known the difference when I had the chance to observe for myself.) In any case, I don't see any need to go to it, as there probably won't be anyone I would recognize except Peterson himself, and even if I do get to speak a bit of Japanese with him, I'd also have to let him régale his current students with tales of how entertaining I am.

*I don't remember what it was. I thought it was Zodiac, but the pictures don't look right (particularly the ones with glasses, which would have prevented us from getting that impression). I remember the shot was of him sitting in what looked a room in a home, looking at a three-quarter angle. Does anyone happen to have any idea what that would have been?

What actor is famous for understating his dismemberment as two different characters: once through his dialogue and once through his name?

[Edit: The subject line is just something goofy I was taught in high school. It doesn't really relate to the riddle.]

The other night, I noticed that I had a tennen tate-roll (just one, on the right). This reminded me, I don't know where the stereotype that such a 'do is sported by rich ladies (as exemplified by the source for the subject line, which applies just as well to me as to Ms. Azumano; also includes three-point ellipses, which are somewhat half-assed according to the Yuri Dōjō in a recent issue) originated. The only support that comes to mind is Ms. Daitokuji from PROJECT "A" KO, which was itself a parody (in her case, of a character from the original Macross, if memory serves; I never saw it anyway).

Closer to my heart is the much more commonly obvious trope of the character with a lot of melanin in the skin but not in the hair. (I call it a trope because it doesn't seem to appear in real life, except where darker hair has gone gray/white or has been artificially changed. I've never encountered any accounts of such localized albinism. It's probably also popular because of the abstraction needed to differentiate characters when all but one human race in the real world seem to have the-same-colored hair, a point that the Japanese unsurprisingly have a tradition of stylistically avoiding. Incidentally, I also have found myself unable to find reference information about races' physical characteristics on Wikipedia, which makes it difficult for me to check the authenticity of my work. On example that I don't plan to use but that has bothered me for a while: I don't recall having ever seen a man of American descent with facial hair. Is this genetic or cultural?) As far back in time as I've traced it (through idle thought, not actual research, as I don't know any good places to look for such information on Japanese media), there are two main possibilities:

1. Ms. "Storm" Munroe of Ame-comi fame. As Watsuki's liner notes often illustrate, these are well known in Japan (although not enough that she influenced him to use a similar character design in Ruro-Ken, even though, despite the fact that all but five of the characters in the 28 books are native Japanese, he goes quite far in variety, including at least a 1,000% range in height of grown men; maybe he was just too lazy to cut all that tone). Unless we can find someone way back there who was so direct about his influences, it would be pretty impossible to pin this one down.

2. The Dark Elves from Lodoss-tō Senki (an island whose name, despite the official Romanization, is spelled exactly the same as "Rhodes"). In case you were living under a rock in the '80s as I was, this series was a thinly veiled retelling of a Basic D&D campaign, as illustrated by the fact that the starting lineup consisted of six of the seven classes from the original "blue box" (excluding only the one that was stolen entirely from Tolkien's creation). Even back in those days, there was already the policy that the dark-skinned subraces of the good peoples are the evil ones, but D&D avoided some flak by saying the drow were actually black-skinned, not a human skin tone. Whether it's because they hadn't made that point yet or because of creative differences, that safety was not present in Lodoss, so (other than the being evil part) it translates just fine to humans in versions of the real world. This one could be easily confirmed or denied by asking someone who's actually watched the major Japanese animation and read Japanese comics from before that whether or not there were any examples then, but I don't think I know any such person.

By the way, in one of the extra stories from Sapphism, Ms. Lee (Ley?) tries to talk Ms. Yang down by telling her that her loss would devastate all the dark-skin fetishists. Of the examples given, I recognized only Akamatsu (no doubt due to my lack of attention to mainstream stuff), but all were called "-Sensei," so I imagine the other two are of the same ilk. But from what I've read of Akamatsu's, he's less so than I am: no major character in his first work, one who starts ranking at fifth-most-important then is displaced further by new ones in his second. As if it's not maniac enough already, my taste is mostly restricted to the illustrated versions, as in real life I'm more narcissistic, preferring my own two races (now that I've been out of high school long enough to break down my prejudice against non-white blood). I feel as if I don't much like real-world African features, which is a hell of a generalization considering that they're thought to be the oldest and thus now most diverse human race. (The aforementioned Ms. Munroe looks good, particularly with the 'do in the third movie.) I don't seem to have any such preconception about ladies of South Asian or American descent, probably because I don't see as much of them in American TV and movies.

In terms of more general tropes, is there some name for the one where the hero thinks up a clever plan but keeps it a secret from his friends in order to maintain audience suspense? I'd look around on the eponymous wiki, but from what I've seen it just seems to be a bunch of people typing whatever they feel like typing, so I'm not bothering to learn how to find things there.

Since Thursday was my one night off, I stopped by the other side of town yesterday. Unfortunately, I had not realized that it was the release date of 4th-Edition D&D, so the clerk at the desk immediately asked me, "Have you gotten your books yet?" I made the mistake of telling the truth: that I had gotten a better deal elsewhere, which of course didn't make him and Carlos happy. They made fun of me for the fact that my copies hadn't been delivered yet. I neglected to mention (as a comeback, one of my principal weak points) the fact that, as over the last few months the Wizards have revealed more of their master plan to tell repeat customers to go to hell (as mentioned here), I wouldn't be buying them at all if I weren't intending to use them to save more than the money I paid for them.

Due to the fact that 4th Edition is trying its darnedest not to be D&D, there's also the problem of the theoretical chance of publishing my campaign setting. I have no intention of retconning it to the point of being 4th-Edition-friendly, so the only chance I would have of using the d20 System or something similar is if someone else ends up producing the books and allowing them, such as the Pathfinder RPG. The reason for this is that the d20 System requires you to note on each book that it requires the 3rd-Edition or v.3.5 Player's Handbook, which Wizards will obviously be discontinuing if they haven't already. The Pathfinder RPG is designed to allow people to continue to use v.3.5-compatible materials, so it would work with that, but I don't know whether they'll allow me to actually tell people to use it. I could instead use the OGL, but that would require publishing my own basic materials. Since this was designed as a D&D setting, that would mean either (a) repeating pretty much the same stuff that's in the Player's Handbooks and Pathfinder RPG or (b) changing the setting so that those have something original worth printing as well. The latter means completely reworking the setting, which may be a good thing considering that it's not very original so far, but it defeats the purpose of publishing something I've already developed if I have to go back and start from the ground up. Of course, the chances that I'll ever have the resources (money and name recognition) to do this are rather slim.

By the way, on the topic of the subject line, DUNKIN' DONUTS® CMs have nifty tunes, but the first two* have really dumb lyrics. The "doing stuff [things]" one is pretty self-explanatory (as is the issue with this one, the one for which it's not the creators who are stupid), but as Ms. Maelwaedd noted, it's an odd strategy to tell customers, "We understand your idiocy and provide for it!" The thing about this is, as with every spoken language except English (as far as I know), French and Italian have simple, consistent rules for how every word is pronounced. (lokodraucarn once tried to defend his mispronunciation of "coup de grâce" by saying, "I took German and Russian! No silent letters!" Yeah (again, a very belated comeback), I took Spanish and Japanese. That doesn't stop me using an American English dictionary. When I play a game where I have to vocalize a term often, it makes sense to know how to pronounce it and what it means.) A more common problem is trying to figure out which language the word is, but that's often easy, too.

*As usual, I tried looking for the videos to illustrate, but apparently now Google™ Video BETA doesn't index them anymore and instead has hardcore pornography openly displayed. (YouTube had both.) I never got that before.

Edit (2008.07.31): Easier to find when I get the lyrics right

I'm far too lazy to correct the titles, particularly considering I don't even recognize half of them.

Rules:

What we have below are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread*" by LibraryThing’s users--as in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded.

- bold the ones you've read,
- underline the ones you read for classes (at least once),
- italicize the ones you started but didn't finish,
- * if it's actually on your bookcase and you haven't read it.
- + for the ones that I really want to read but haven't gotten to yet

( As one might expect, the list is about 106 lines long. )

As you can see from the nonexistent Venn diagram, I don't do my homework—and I don't read prose given a choice. The Hobbit just barely made the cut; I imagine it'll fall off the list once the blockbuster comes out, too.

As you may have heard, the biggest earthquake in 40 years hit Illinois and Indiana yesterday morning. It scared the hell out of me, as it woke me up when I was heavily tranquilized, and I couldn't figure out what was going on. It did cross my mind that it might be an earthquake, but even when sober I don't remember ever having heard of an earthquake in the Midwest before. (The '02 one must have been when I was away at school or something.) Fortunately, I was heavily tranquilized, so I just fell back asleep and forgot about it until Mother mentioned it that evening. She says she was too sleepy to look at the clock, so she thought I had just gotten home from work and was running into furniture repeatedly. Her comment at the time was also about two letters off mine.

My readership appears to be at an all-time high (apparently at least two regulars!), but I've accumulated quite a lot of stuff during its absence, to say nothing of my sloth and the fact that I've built up a lot of new things due to year's-end-and-beginning splurging. So, I'd like to see if you have any requests or suggestions. What I've got in the works is as follows:

( Ridiculously long notes )

Project Cow Level in General: I've made some very brief notes on the page. I may look around and get some more interesting members of the team (a dwarf hunter and a gnome techno mage, perhaps?), because it's looking very thin at the moment.

This: I've done a few sketches, including some tests for different tauren horn structures (for variety). For logistical reasons, Aonghus's horns are in the same shape as those of a minotauros character from an old Slayers fan-story I first planned back in high school. This reminded me that arifyn might be another prospect for coloring this (on which I planned to comment, but haven't gotten around to posting), but I'd prefer if he used a different palette from our previous collaboration (to which he contributed without my knowledge).

This: Hell, even the most intellectual comic writer I know uses cheesy Scottish dialect/accent for dwarves. (When looking for that, it also occurred to me that someone has seen Alvissa and Gollum together. Also, remember that the Bridge of Khazad-dûm (dissed in the discussion of the Bridge of Khazad-Doom) was specifically designed to be hard to cross as a defense mechanism.) Come to think of it, I don't know where that stereotype originated, even after some cursory research. The legendarium apparently uses such an Anglicization, judging by the liner notes, but this isn't stated in the books, so only Tolkien scholars knew it until the live-action movies came out. The earliest well known source that comes to mind is WARCRAFT II: Tides of Darkness. Does anyone remember D&D players using cheesy Scottish accents before that?

This: In looking for other bases, I was reminded of the story of the dwarves and tauren's first altercations over Bael Modan. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, most of the description of this on Gann Stonespire and Bael Modan is just elaboration by users, as I haven't found any sources on that except the text for Gann's Reclamation. Has anyone heard anywhere reliable that it was Gann himself who tried the diplomatic efforts, or that the driving out of the tauren by the excavators and their killing by the League were two separate events? Any information related to this would be helpful. Of course, it's not terribly important, as WARCRAFT is probably the setting where the creators care the least about continuity of any I've studied, so probably not too many will mind if my story has a few inconsistencies with lore.

On the topic of the subject line: I can't believe we tried to do a skit about dialects and just used funny voices. Then again, how would one expect high school students to know multiple dialects?

On the topic of the post: you might have noticed that my comments about limited-edition products here and here seem contradictory. I don't like the concept, but I don't have much of a problem with taking advantage of it when it's convenient. With comics, I can get pretty stuff legally, and with miniatures, I have two reasons: 1. there's no point in just collecting the same miniatures everyone else has, and this helps me get something semi-(or completely, if I can think of a conversion)unique; 2. if I don't want it, I can likely sell it at a profit as a collectors' item after it goes out of production.

I of course bring this back up because this seems like a good deal. In essence, you're paying $18 for a limited edition version of a mini that normally costs $10, and you still get three issues of a magazine about a great setting and two great wargames. (The RPG is rather crudely written because the company doesn't care about it, but it's still good, as you might guess by my support for it.) I was going to try the zhevras first, but it turns out the upstarts have a great deal (in the sidebar to the right; doesn't say anything about a limited duration, but better act fast) going on, so I'll have to stop by there instead.

Alphabetized to avoid having to rate them even more precisely

4 Movies You Can Always Watch:
1. STAR WARS EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE
2. STAR WARS EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE
3. STAR WARS EPISODE V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
4. STAR WARS EPISODE VI: RETURN OF THE JEDI
I rarely rewatch movies (even the ones I watch in the first place) anymore. There's just too much else to see. However, I've listed a few classics that I wouldn't mind watching again, since I'm interested in the setting. I guess I picked EPISODE I as my fourth because it has Ms. Portman in it, and she's not making out with Hayden Christensen. Capt. Tarpals is cool too, for all the five minutes of screen time he gets. UTENA is probably complicated enough to be worth watching again, as well.

4 Bands/Singers You Can't Get Enough of:
None. Even if you take it figuratively, there aren't any of either about which I care. My favorite composer is Uematsu Nobuo, but I don't care much about him, either.

4 Books You Can Read Over and Over:
1. CODEX: DAEMONHUNTERS
2. CODEX: WITCH HUNTERS
3. INQUISITOR ANNUAL 2004: vol. 2 The EXTERMINATUS Files
4. INQUISITOR: THE BATTLE FOR THE EMPEROR'S SOUL
As you may remember, I no longer have the patience to read large blocks of prose, and I get tired of reading the same story comics repeatedly. (Even most volumes of HAYATE CROSS BLADE and Yuri Shimai I've only read about a half-dozen times.) Most of the stuff I reread is reference material, for which I don't have many big ones at the moment, now that I'm not bothering with D&D anymore.

4 Towns You've Lived In:
1. Northfield, MN
2. Norwich, Norfolk
3. Redwood City, CA
4. West Lafayette, IN
I'm counting everywhere I've stayed on a regular basis (including sabbatical and school, but not other trips).

4 Shows You're Watching:
1. BLUE DROP: Tenshi-tachi no Gikyoku
2. JEOPARDY!
3. Minami-ke
4. MYTHBUSTERS
I'm far too lazy to catch TV shows consistently, and I don't give a damn about enough shows to bother getting TiVo. I've got a couple of new ones due to this meme's occurrence at the beginning of a season.

4 Shows You Like to Watch (not necessarily current):
1. CA$H CAB
2. THE COLBERT REPORT
3. THE DAILYSHOW WITH JON STEWART
4. MAIL CALL
Since this is in the present tense, I'm listing ones that I would continue to watch, not ones that I've already seen in full and thus probably will never watch again. I've also omitted the ones from the previous item, since you already know those. The two fake news shows are about the only way I'm willing to spend time actually using my eyes to find out about news. Too bad I'm too lazy to watch them when my brother isn't here. UTENA might fit into this category, too (and I still haven't seen a couple of the filler episodes).

4 Websites You Visit Daily:
1. Allies
2. The Animal Rescue Site, etc.
3. Ecology Fund
4. PRIVATEER PRESS
Yes, I still click on all these donations for causes about which I don't give a damn, as long as they're free. The other two I only visit regularly because they don't have RSS feeds.

4 Favorite Foods:
1. Cheesecake (on principle)
2. Hawaiian bread
3. Milk chocolate
4. Rainbow sherbet
I don't have much interest in food now that I'm restricting myself so much, so these are pretty arbitrary choices. There are plenty of foods that I would enjoy eating more, but I don't count them because I don't eat them.

4 Places You'd Like to Be Now:
1. Darfur, the Sudan
2. Madison, WI
3. Nottingham, Notts
4. Tucson, AZ
I really hate Japan. Even back when I was willing to kill and eat innocents for my own enjoyment, I still had to put up with people smoking everywhere and having to be polite to men. I may post about the Darfur part later. (This seems an odd way to release that information, but whatever.)

Very generic. There's no mention of games played, or miniatures converted, or anything interesting like that.

Halloween Meme

arifyn eats negitorosan's spicy, spicy brains.

aseop_ gives you a toothbrush

bladeforge TPs your socks

blitzcon shows up with burning torches, pitchforks and dip

caelia devours the entire neighbourhood's candy

itazzy puts apples in your razorblades

ladybronwyn puts real eyeballs in your cutlery

lokodraucarn haunts your brains

lordjubatus buries oneirotsai at the crossroads with a sock through their heart

mizuno_youko sacrifices lokodraucarn's pumpkin

negitorosan TPs blitzcon

oneirotsai puts fake eyeballs in your gerbils

orbix tries to pick up Phantom Hitchhikers

phoenix_talon swoops on aseop_ and drains their Wings Greatest Hits

yimbly creates an unholy monstrosity from itazzy, arifyn and oneirotsai

LJ Name

It's somewhat odd that it's in Commonwealth English despite the fact that when I was in England (c. 1990), I was the only one trick-or-treating.

Also, it appears that, as I always predict, it's the men doing the killing.

Once when I was at college, I tried using a real razor. I learned my lesson quick.

By the way, I still really hate singular they. . . .

I've finally gotten around to reading Chapter 0 of the visual novel I mentioned way back. I'd never read one of these before, so it was an unusual experience. It took me several tries to realize that I needed to right-click to save, which was a big help.

My comments (no particular spoilers):

The circle that made the game is known as Atelier of Chiharu. The Japanese loving the word "atelier" aside, I only recall seeing the name "Chiharu" used for minor characters in yuri-themed works: HAYATE CROSS BLADE, PURE Marionation, and "Kanojo" (one of the main characters in this case, but only a short story, so relatively minor) (included here and probably here). I can only assume that's coincidence, as in the case of my _hizuru comparison.

The story itself is very heavy on the melodrama, with a good dose of graphic violence and some light moments (often switching moods very suddenly). I don't know the language well, but I can tell that it's a lot more poetic than anything I write. It was somewhat unfortunate that the engine used doesn't have a system for ruby text, so ate-ji and the like have to be added in brackets afterward.

The writing isn't the only fancy part. Despite this being a freeware game (and thus having a low enough budget that they had to use open photos for the backgrounds), there are numerous full-color illustrations and half a dozen BGMs composed for the game. That's presumably what helped me to overcome the attention-span problem I have reading prose. The men tend to be a bit ugly, but the ladies (and one yasa-otoko) look quite nice.

One minor thing that bothered me was that the main characters are members of traditional Japanese families, which means that the ladies all have to use polite forms when speaking to the men. On the other hand, I rather like the concept of the family dōjō where they don't teach actual martial arts, just whatever method can be used to kill most efficiently—much like Ms. Inferne's teachings in Project Artificer. And in any case, I have no complaints about the fact that the main heroine is ridiculously strong.

Another interesting thing I noted: The heroine was bothered by the fact that she has trouble with history class because they have to memorize so many dates; she wishes they would learn about the significance of events instead. I agree with this, and I think that in my schooling, it was more the latter style. This seems likely to be a common difference between Western and Eastern education, as we are more right-brained and they more quantitative (?). This reminds me of how I could never write anything with such metaphysical and artistic elements as this, since I can only properly process more down-to-earth themes. Maybe that says something about the difference between their mainstream society and their cult media.

Incidentally, if you want a taste of the illustrations, I've stored what I've collected for daily_yuri here.