I thought I was going to bed.

When I talk about my innerworkings, it sounds strange. Mostly because people don't usually go in as indepth as to explain every little personal symbol or perception.

I can only hope that it doesn't come across tainted, misconstrued, or frightened. It's just flat out honesty that I am trying to provide, but I'm not used to speaking that upfront at such lengths and without defenses. But if I was scared of how I sound, I wouldn't say it at all. It's not that I am nervous that I will make an impression, it just that i want to leave something that's closest to the truth.

There is a lot of thinking that's involved, editing, reviewing before I say anything which is a habit. Partially because I remember vividly most every indepth personal conversation I have with someone. As such I get a little awkward when I know it could be going down in the records books. the ironic advice I give to myself "act natural" just doesn't cut it.

I still don't know why I become so shy when I explain my views around you, probably out of respect, and in those situations I only know how to observe not how to involve myself.

It just doesn't come with ease. All that bullshit you can look through
and find all these shy strings of reason braiding together in a thick cord is a big reason why I see what I do in you.

Just more and more I find myself shy about these things and my own thoughts. I can speak my mind and about myself and my ways when I'm seeing red and mortally pissed off or in casual conversation, but not so well in an upfront purpose. It's new territory.

right on.

So I'll be talking about this alot, and probably other gaming elements.

One thing I find humorous is newbs trying to act like they're long serving experts.
Not the case. I'm just really interested in running the Sailor Moon rpg for old times sake.

I was skeptical of the Guardians of Order version of it, looked too based on the crucified dub but not until I read this. I am impressed by other guardians of order makings and will buy the BESM

One of the writers of the rpg guide talks about making it. And I loved the last part, exactly the point i'm trying to make about women used as glamor items to display things on game shows.

I bring this up not to be all like yeah I'm in the gaming world. Not really, I'm barely introduced to it. But this hard ass lassie and her experience in making this and other rpgs is really making it cool for me. I can see why she took on SM, very female solider based, and far far from the typical 'save me' Rapunzel shit or the polar opposite typecastings like Electra, Lara Croft, which scream 'do me'. Though I appreciate that heroines have becoming more popular and sought after, I don't apprieciate that they are, more often than not, created for supercharged sensual appeal.

cited from here

All of our books have examples of play that use female names as well as male names and the females are not only restricted to roles as players but are also portrayed as GMs as well. We have also used names that are popular in diverse ethnic cultures, such as Isaac, Devinder, and Thea, to name a few. Mark insists that text referring to characters or players directly must have "him or her" as the pronoun and not the more popular word "them" or "they". For example, a sentence would read, "A character can run at ten times his or her normal speed." instead of "A character can run at ten times their normal speed." Everyone recognizes that although not the majority, people other than white, male Americans role-play and we try to be inclusive of them in our products.

My biggest challenges usually involve people outside of the company who do not value the work and role of women. Some people automatically assume that simply because I am a woman, I could not have had a larger role than play-tester with our products. They do not take me seriously or find it hard to believe when I tell them my title and role in the company. Some men have made inappropriate remarks about my gender as well as my body or looked at me inappropriately. This is not surprising, considering the average portrayal of women in the industry, but it signals to me that although many products are justified as "intended to be fun" or "not taken seriously", many people do indeed take them seriously, cannot separate reality from fantasy, and believe that it is an appropriate manner in which to relate to females in the real world.

Another obstacle that I face happens during the con season when I have to walk into the dealer's room, and I am confronted with rows upon rows of images of women of unparalleled beauty, disproportionately endowed with perfect bodies. I have found myself feeling unattractive and inadequate next to these icons and there are times that I have to remind myself that this is not true and that the women portrayed in these images are not real and are anatomically impossible.

Despite all of this, overall I am happy to be working in this industry, especially with the people at Guardians of Order. I believe that women can be successful and influential in the male-dominated world of gaming. There is still a long way to go before the image of the scantily-clad female will be balanced with an equally revealing image of a male, but with every female we draw into this market signals the tides are changing.

Cool.

ignorance is piss

I just like it. Naiveities day spa and parlor really could blind the world. It's not bliss, it's stagnation if you choose to wallow.

Trying to talk, discuss made someone scream out and storm off again. I don't like naming names and try to be a little better by not pointing out names but it's obvious. I just get tired.

But all that at the simple suggestion we need to talk more as a family?

I get tired of ignorant adults having fits and me being put into positions where I need to pick up slack. After she slammed her door shut I walked downstairs sputting out that I need to move out again.

Just because I want to look at things that aren't going so okay doesn't make me vicious. The very fact that I speak independently gets me written out as provoking and off the deep end.

My dad empathized, totally agreed with me, but just said, 'you know you can't say things she doesn't like. There's no way we can win, you're always wrong. I've told you a million times to suck it up, just pretend it isn't there We almost divorced over it'. Something in his eyes looked like using the div word again was unbearable. still. "I haven't been able to pretend like that for a long, long time, and I can't go back.' I told him I said nothing wrong,nothing to provoke, his response I know, I know! believe me I know.

I can leave... but it seems like he has nowhere.

not like that...

We all know those crazy fill in the blank games to make even crazier stories. Example: Suzie Anne took angry (noun)s to town (verb)ing after the rusty shagwagon over the (adjective) (noun) last Tuesday.

The ad in the magazine Lindsey snatched had one of these... I didn't do it...

"Kay. name a adjective, ok a verb, k a noun"

"Crispy... um. sky dive, and uh Bill Clinton."

Which became:

There's nothing like a 'crispy' walk to 'skydive' your 'Bill Clinton'.

Palingenesia

I flick through the news channels, through the cartoons, half ass watching whatever sitcoms airing, or passing up mulchy morning soap operas (unless its the middle of a catfight), when I get curious about the ways of the television set. I like the commericials second best.

What I like first is the mixtures of content that I see. So many different things are presented, and hell just are able to be presented electronically, virtually anywhere. I was thinking that I liked that.

Right now I'm jamming along to Billy Joels hit, 'We Didn't Start the Fire'. 40% for creative and now classic musicality (omg it IS a word ) 60% for content. I likes it muchly. Greater even since it notes a lot of this part of the world's free radicals, all those crazy controversies that people have all sorts of reactions to.

Ain't it wonderful?

I think most people have been asked, or wondered when and where they'd best have been born in. I used to love that question, I didn't feel that these times bordered on what I wanted to see of life, where being too smart was considered a social flaw.

"Reinisance period" was the response I'd jut out, hoping to not sound like some cliche coffee house bench warmer. It was a time when Europe was questioning the foundations and the integrations of the church, the government, the culture (and everything that insisted the three were and should be all the same) were questioned, reevaluated. "... but only if I was a man would I be able to enjoy it then, in the way that I would want to observe it."

But not too long ago, walking down a busy road and running my finger through chainlinked fences, it hit me---what if, what if I wasn't born in the wrong time?
Why not here, now? Here is also important.

Society now, look at it and where ours fits in with the rest of the world, or simply (or unsimply) where we correspond into either. i think about the problems of todays world (at least through the scope of this society) The complexity and wide ranges of issues being faced-- excites me. Why?

There's so much to get caught up in, and as such, it's hard to find a dull moment in this countries events. There are a lot of opportunities in this modern world. There's a lot of disbelief these days here, in many things. Ways for ideas to be passed on are being utilized everyday. Todays kids are getting forced on them the larger issues their parents tackled all their lives, but I see so many being forged by such dilemmas. Homeland crimes are getting scary, making us wonder if there is some sort of pitfall in our society? People don't always agree but now have the right to disagree and what dangerous or honorable things they do with that power. Politics are becoming increasingly divided and heated as we try to map out what the core of order and logic is. How about how we are allowed and encouraged to be our own persons, and the pros and cons of that being such a highlight in our culture? How about our accelerated lifestyles and economy that we dwell in?

Life is getting easy to pass by, and it is asking more and more for attention to detail. With the rushed pace that we live in here, with all the various things that demand our attention, it seems like we are moving on to a higher level which asks for more of ourselves. It is a time to rise, not pretend the world is broken and unsuited for us.


"... schism in the soul, schism in the body social, will not be resolved by any scheme of return to the good old days (archaism), or by programs guaranteed to render and ideal projected future (futurism), or even by the most realistic, hardheaded work to weld together again the deteriorating elements. Only birth can conquer death-- the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new. Within the soul, within the body social, there must be-- if we are to experience long survival-- a continuous "recurrence of birth" (palingenesia) to nullify the unremitting recurrences of death. For it is by means of our own victories, if we are not regenerated, that the work of Nemesis is wrought: doom breaks from the shell of our very virtue. Peace then is a snare; war is a snare; change is a snare; permanence is a snare. Whe our day is come for the victory of death, death closes in; there is nothing we can do, except be crucified-- and resurrected; dismembered totally, and then reborn." -Joseph Campell

No, we didn't start the fire. But we're not just going to fight it, we're going to kindle it, and hopefully be passed through it a few times.

Troubles of today are wide and many. We are imparting from traditional methods of learning and thinking. Society here is becoming very decentralized and I would say getting the opportunity to evolve, instead of revolving around just one source. More and more it seems humanity is not disintegrating because of all this, but widening it's lens on scoping out long hidden truths.

Not any part of it is an easy thing to label, and this is what with I fell in love.
Why am I so taken with right now- Todays beautiful complexity and the ability that today has that has never been had to be able to invite such.
(though english is not my best fit of language, I seem to syntax every sentence without mention of subjective context)


"Just when you think you've got it down
Watch it fly" thank Shawn Colvin's song 'Trouble' for the clippit, helps to explain what I am trying to say. It's getting harder to completely know something nowadays. We can no longer afford to take our definitions for granted or as uneditable. We must be open for evaluting things at all times in our lifes. Now more than ever we are being called to live with our lives, our eyes, our minds, and our hearts open. Wide open and constantly scoping.


-------------------------------------------
And reminding me of all of this, I want to throw in a song I never listened to before. Apology already given to those who are sensitive to profanity, however I feel it was done for creativity's sake, especially the deliberate use of contrasting images in this song, and invitation of contrast and the right to disagree.

Amen-

I'm siphoning gas from the high school bus
Into the tank of my beat-up bug
So I can drive away from the shouting and misery
I drive into the night, to the hill, to the water tower
To lie on my back and drink in the meteor shower
Knowing that many men have lain as i do now
Ptolemy,Copernicus,Carl Jung
Pondering his existence,pondering,
Is God with me now?

And I look to the sky
And I ask these questions
Yes,I feel something I don't understand
Can somebody say Amen?

My life is but a short and precious seed
Like three seasons of life in a leaf on a tree
And when I cascade to the ground I will not be done
I will mingle with the earth and give life
To the roots again

Can somebody say Amen?

And I look to the sky
And I ask these questions
Yes, I feel something I don't understand
Can somebody say Amen?
Amen for the drivers in their garbage trucks
Amen for our mothers,for the lust to fuck
Amen for the child with innocent eyes
Amen for Kevorkian and the right to die
Amen for NASA,The NSA
It's all a front anyway
Amen for Marilyn Manson,Saddam Hussein
Amen for America and the Milky Way.
Amen for Elvis,for Betty Page
Amen for Gloria Steinham and Ronald Reagan
Amen for O.J.,Clinton too
Amen for the Republican witch hunt coup
Amen for Gandhi,for Malcolm X
Amen for the uprising of the weaker sex
Amen for Babylon, the third world's call,
Amen for the unity of us all
Amen,Amen,Amen

And I am not unique.
We are all leave on this great big tree.
this tree that is life,that is God,that is you,that is me
And I lie under my tree like the Buddhas before and after me
And I ask the stars, What for?
Yes, I feel something I can't explain
A light that flickers off and on again
And I look to the sky
And I ask these questions
Yes, I feel something I don't understand
Oh,can somebody say Amen?

-Paula Cole

Shroud

I had to leave the house of fashion
And go forth naked from its doors
'cause women should be allies
And not competitors
I had to leave the house of god
Because the cross replaced the wheel
And the goddesses were all out in the garden
With the plants that nurture and heal

I had to leave the house of privilege
Spend christmas homeless and feeling bad
To learn privilege is a headache
That you don't know that you don't have
I had to leave the house of television
To start noticing the clouds
It's amazing the stuff you see when
You finally shed that shroud

I had leave the house of conformity
In order to make art
I had to be more and less true
To learn to tell the two apart
I had to leave the house of fear
Just about as soon as I could crawl
Ignore my face on a wanted poster
Stuck to the post office wall

I had leave the house of self-importance
To doodle my first tattoo
To realize a tattoo is no more permanent
Than I am, and who
ever said that life is suffering
I think they had their finger on the pulse of joy
And the power of transcendence
Made its grace a practice we can employ

- Ani DiFranco from "Reprieve" album

snow duke

My family and I went up to the mountains today. I overenjoyed myself. We went way way way up where the snow is.

Couldn't help myself, here's my first snowman of the year! Took it on my dad's phone.

:D!