Much to do of an evening
Jun. 21st, 2005 12:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zdashamberLo! My evenings filled, yea each one among them, and I was imprisonéd far from the warming glow of the internet!
Hm. I'm going to start with the first one I remember, when the lovely![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
arenson9 came to Berkeley Wednesday before last and I met up with him at a poetry slam. We had a splendid and useful chat, and I am happy to think on it. :)
Then, the poetry slam! First I'd ever been to, and I had the luck to be randomly picked one of the judges. Muahahaha. My criteria were along the lines of, Looked at audience? Avoided cliche? Had deft bits of wordplay? I was never the judge offering the highest score, but not consistently the lowest-scorer either, so I figured I got it right.
The slam itself was fun, though the second round, where the top five scorers in the first round did their second poem, made it clear that there was a powerful gravity well in poetry slams; and that well manifests in the form of a poet hunched over to the left with his right hand held fingers together, elbow at a 90º angle, emphasizing his WORDS at the ends of his LINES; and that good slam poets fight constantly against the suck of that well by doing many rehearsals of their best poem.
Good times. I'm gladarenson9 and I got to see something like that.
Thursday was Howl's Moving Castle. Friday I went to Berkeley to buy a interesting ceramic bowl from a street vendor to use for a snake bath/watering bowl. Got to talking to him, and it turns out in the 70s he was a grad student doing research on monkeys. He was flunking his classes, though, and what he wanted to do was make pottery, so he stopped grad school and ever since he's been making a living as a street vendor... Not so much in the recent Bush years, what with the economy and his arthritis, though. Interesting view of what could be if I took the path of artist. Also, interesting to meet a person in Berkeley who recognizes that animal research isn't Eeevil.
I think every once in awhile that of all human uses for animals, research is the best. Because any other use can be made up for... Food? Humans have proven they can survive on vegetables alone. Leather and fur? More justifiable, since the human-made replacements for both are lacking in toughness or warmth respectively, but most uses can be substituted. But learning how life is put together? That can only be done with an animal.
Sunday was gaming, Heavy Feathers. Looking over the quotes I pick out on the first page, "Oh my god. You're trying to incriminate someone for murder—politely?" In a way I'm pleased; Keket's probably one of the most sane characters I've done in ages, in that when her boyfriend the sneak and her father the pharoh try to put her in the middle of their ridiculous little spats she doesn't think, "Oh, no, what will I do? Things are so screwed up! Did I somehow cause this?" No, Keket just gets more and more pissed.
Monday: I met Howard Tayler, webcomicer of Schlock Mercenary. I was an hour late, since all day the dinner looked cancelled due to gastrointestinal distress; but at 5:15 I checked again and saw that not only was it on again, it was on for 5:30. Hah! :) Also, there was some circling as I tried to find the place, since I hadn't taken the time to draw a map, merely impressed one on my mind. So I ended up at the right place, but there were no signs, and I eventually had to do the Indiana Jones leap-of-faith thing into a massive stripmall parking lot.
Howard rose to the occasion, keeping conversation going among the 6 of us normal Bay Area folk who showed up, while drawing us requested sketches (on full page nice paper with pencilling and inking... Dang!), while suffering the end bits of his Horrible Illness.
Tuesday was the 10th anniversary of Roger Zelazny's death. That evening was kali, of course, but before that was a half-hour or so of time finally, in which I washed out the snake tank, setting it up later.
Wednesday I went and bought a snake. Dang, it's cute! Tiny little pencil neck, maybe 15" long... Brick/orange pulp/white patterned, red eyes. Brought it home in a paper bag, put it in its hopefully-comfy home. Watched it stretch out to try for the top of the tank. I'd picked it over its nestmates because it was squashed up against the side of its petstore tank looking for a way out.
Thursday Silent E and I went to see Princess Mononoke at the PFA... Ah, forgot to mention that on Sunday before gaming I'd hit My Neighbor Totoro, which was sweet, like "Frog and Toad are Friends" crossed with Disney's Alice in Wonderland.
Friday was Porco Rosso followed by Pom Poko. Porco Rosso was excellent: it's repeating this Sunday, and you should all go see it. Glorious sun-drenched world with hints of Casablanca, great characters, fascinating setting. Ends at a neat place. The opening teletype was awesome, with the lines of languages going across the screen, the Arabic one chuttering along in the opposite direction as all the rest... And the flight out of Milan on the canal! Brilliant! Porco Rosso comes in only second to Nausicaa when it comes to Miyazaki.
By the time Pom Poko came around my blood sugar had crashed. Still, I stand by my assertion: you shouldn't see it. Unless you can't get enough of 50s educational nature films like "The Living Desert", except you were looking for something with less plot, characterization, and production values, but more preachiness. It just wasn't good. It was, in fact, bad.
Oh, and before we went to the movies Friday, we hung out with Sam and Rezaul, since it was Rezaul's last chance to hang out before going to Bangladesh to marry. I mean, this whole "I'm engaged" thing kinda came out of left field for all of us... And now he's going to come back in a month, married to a woman he'll see maybe 4 times in the next two years until she finishes college and comes to America... Huh. We got to see the ring he'd got; it was really nice.
Saturday was a parlor LARP as previously described by Badger anddruidsquirrel. I got props for shooting whumpdotcom and then when the other two ran in, misleading them into thinking it was justified... Every once in awhile, it becomes germane that unlike everyone else, my first ftf gaming was Paranoia. ;) And Badger deserves props for keeping us from looking at the 6 terminals for about 2:45 of the 3-hour game by sheer power of personality. Not only did we almost not realize we could destroy all humanity, we didn't realize she was in the process of doing so... That's a neat aspect of LARP, that those kind of interpersonal relations things can really be brought to bear.
After, we shot the shit about the next season of our Buffy game. It was really cool to be able to suggest plot arcs and things to add to the world in a situation of equality. Also, I figured out that my character, Carlos, is not in fact in some alternate dimension, so I'm going to have to decide what he's going to do with his life. Aside from piss it in a beery stream down a drain. Carlos, alas, is one of my not-completely-sane characters.
And then Sunday Bernie ran a "Dragonblooded Exalted, THIS IS YOUR LIFE!" session. We started with kids, and built them up by stopping at several points along their age range... I came to find myself doing someone exactly like Pel, from _The Phoenix Guards_. I mean, exactly; sneaky and tricky, she stayed in the capital, joined the guard, networked, hoped to stand out, and worked towards becoming an advisor to the Empress...
Also, I'd made cookies to test something out. E says the rolled chocolate cookies she makes are a pain in the ass, sticky and requiring refrigeration... The internet seems to agree. I thought, "Hm, what would happen if I just replaced half a cup of flour in my sugar cookie recipe with half a cup of cocoa powder?" Apparently, what happens is a slight chalky chocolate taste that's hard to tell from "over-browned sugar cookie" taste. I should have known it wouldn't be so easy. I apologize, internet, for having doubted you!
Oh, and sometime last week I ordered a mobile phone. "One of us..."
Hm. I'm going to start with the first one I remember, when the lovely
arenson9 came to Berkeley Wednesday before last and I met up with him at a poetry slam. We had a splendid and useful chat, and I am happy to think on it. :)Then, the poetry slam! First I'd ever been to, and I had the luck to be randomly picked one of the judges. Muahahaha. My criteria were along the lines of, Looked at audience? Avoided cliche? Had deft bits of wordplay? I was never the judge offering the highest score, but not consistently the lowest-scorer either, so I figured I got it right.
The slam itself was fun, though the second round, where the top five scorers in the first round did their second poem, made it clear that there was a powerful gravity well in poetry slams; and that well manifests in the form of a poet hunched over to the left with his right hand held fingers together, elbow at a 90º angle, emphasizing his WORDS at the ends of his LINES; and that good slam poets fight constantly against the suck of that well by doing many rehearsals of their best poem.
Good times. I'm glad
arenson9 and I got to see something like that.Thursday was Howl's Moving Castle. Friday I went to Berkeley to buy a interesting ceramic bowl from a street vendor to use for a snake bath/watering bowl. Got to talking to him, and it turns out in the 70s he was a grad student doing research on monkeys. He was flunking his classes, though, and what he wanted to do was make pottery, so he stopped grad school and ever since he's been making a living as a street vendor... Not so much in the recent Bush years, what with the economy and his arthritis, though. Interesting view of what could be if I took the path of artist. Also, interesting to meet a person in Berkeley who recognizes that animal research isn't Eeevil.
I think every once in awhile that of all human uses for animals, research is the best. Because any other use can be made up for... Food? Humans have proven they can survive on vegetables alone. Leather and fur? More justifiable, since the human-made replacements for both are lacking in toughness or warmth respectively, but most uses can be substituted. But learning how life is put together? That can only be done with an animal.
Sunday was gaming, Heavy Feathers. Looking over the quotes I pick out on the first page, "Oh my god. You're trying to incriminate someone for murder—politely?" In a way I'm pleased; Keket's probably one of the most sane characters I've done in ages, in that when her boyfriend the sneak and her father the pharoh try to put her in the middle of their ridiculous little spats she doesn't think, "Oh, no, what will I do? Things are so screwed up! Did I somehow cause this?" No, Keket just gets more and more pissed.
Monday: I met Howard Tayler, webcomicer of Schlock Mercenary. I was an hour late, since all day the dinner looked cancelled due to gastrointestinal distress; but at 5:15 I checked again and saw that not only was it on again, it was on for 5:30. Hah! :) Also, there was some circling as I tried to find the place, since I hadn't taken the time to draw a map, merely impressed one on my mind. So I ended up at the right place, but there were no signs, and I eventually had to do the Indiana Jones leap-of-faith thing into a massive stripmall parking lot.
Howard rose to the occasion, keeping conversation going among the 6 of us normal Bay Area folk who showed up, while drawing us requested sketches (on full page nice paper with pencilling and inking... Dang!), while suffering the end bits of his Horrible Illness.
Tuesday was the 10th anniversary of Roger Zelazny's death. That evening was kali, of course, but before that was a half-hour or so of time finally, in which I washed out the snake tank, setting it up later.
Wednesday I went and bought a snake. Dang, it's cute! Tiny little pencil neck, maybe 15" long... Brick/orange pulp/white patterned, red eyes. Brought it home in a paper bag, put it in its hopefully-comfy home. Watched it stretch out to try for the top of the tank. I'd picked it over its nestmates because it was squashed up against the side of its petstore tank looking for a way out.
Thursday Silent E and I went to see Princess Mononoke at the PFA... Ah, forgot to mention that on Sunday before gaming I'd hit My Neighbor Totoro, which was sweet, like "Frog and Toad are Friends" crossed with Disney's Alice in Wonderland.
Friday was Porco Rosso followed by Pom Poko. Porco Rosso was excellent: it's repeating this Sunday, and you should all go see it. Glorious sun-drenched world with hints of Casablanca, great characters, fascinating setting. Ends at a neat place. The opening teletype was awesome, with the lines of languages going across the screen, the Arabic one chuttering along in the opposite direction as all the rest... And the flight out of Milan on the canal! Brilliant! Porco Rosso comes in only second to Nausicaa when it comes to Miyazaki.
By the time Pom Poko came around my blood sugar had crashed. Still, I stand by my assertion: you shouldn't see it. Unless you can't get enough of 50s educational nature films like "The Living Desert", except you were looking for something with less plot, characterization, and production values, but more preachiness. It just wasn't good. It was, in fact, bad.
Oh, and before we went to the movies Friday, we hung out with Sam and Rezaul, since it was Rezaul's last chance to hang out before going to Bangladesh to marry. I mean, this whole "I'm engaged" thing kinda came out of left field for all of us... And now he's going to come back in a month, married to a woman he'll see maybe 4 times in the next two years until she finishes college and comes to America... Huh. We got to see the ring he'd got; it was really nice.
Saturday was a parlor LARP as previously described by Badger and
druidsquirrel. I got props for shooting whumpdotcom and then when the other two ran in, misleading them into thinking it was justified... Every once in awhile, it becomes germane that unlike everyone else, my first ftf gaming was Paranoia. ;) And Badger deserves props for keeping us from looking at the 6 terminals for about 2:45 of the 3-hour game by sheer power of personality. Not only did we almost not realize we could destroy all humanity, we didn't realize she was in the process of doing so... That's a neat aspect of LARP, that those kind of interpersonal relations things can really be brought to bear.After, we shot the shit about the next season of our Buffy game. It was really cool to be able to suggest plot arcs and things to add to the world in a situation of equality. Also, I figured out that my character, Carlos, is not in fact in some alternate dimension, so I'm going to have to decide what he's going to do with his life. Aside from piss it in a beery stream down a drain. Carlos, alas, is one of my not-completely-sane characters.
And then Sunday Bernie ran a "Dragonblooded Exalted, THIS IS YOUR LIFE!" session. We started with kids, and built them up by stopping at several points along their age range... I came to find myself doing someone exactly like Pel, from _The Phoenix Guards_. I mean, exactly; sneaky and tricky, she stayed in the capital, joined the guard, networked, hoped to stand out, and worked towards becoming an advisor to the Empress...
Also, I'd made cookies to test something out. E says the rolled chocolate cookies she makes are a pain in the ass, sticky and requiring refrigeration... The internet seems to agree. I thought, "Hm, what would happen if I just replaced half a cup of flour in my sugar cookie recipe with half a cup of cocoa powder?" Apparently, what happens is a slight chalky chocolate taste that's hard to tell from "over-browned sugar cookie" taste. I should have known it wouldn't be so easy. I apologize, internet, for having doubted you!
Oh, and sometime last week I ordered a mobile phone. "One of us..."
no subject
Date: 2005-06-21 03:25 pm (UTC)The evil thing I did in the larp - well, I was sort of proud of it, but it might have made the game less fun that I distracted everyone from the terminals (which I saw as the source of power in the game). "Are you a religious person? Have you ever been pregnant?" It was super enjoyable to snake-talk this way with intense misdirection and play the madwoman. But it was better when you realized you had to ignore all the stuff I was saying and go off and confer - and so very satisfying when you came back in the room and instantly shot me.
Was it you who programmed the replicators to put Ink in the tea? I never did figure out who did it.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-21 04:57 pm (UTC)I thought your crazy lady stuff was as fun or more fun than solemn discussion of the import of the terminals would have been. :)
And I suspect the Ink was Heather...
Porco Rosso
Date: 2005-06-21 04:26 pm (UTC)Re: Porco Rosso
Date: 2005-06-21 04:51 pm (UTC)