This guy knows something we don't.

A friend of mine in law school showed me this link about a man named Dalton Chiscolm.  Seemingly ordinary man (with an unordinary name) filing an extraordinary lawsuit to Bank of America...

for 1.784 sextillon dollars american.

How much is that?  Well it's 1.784 billion, trillion.  If I think I type it out correctly, numerically is looks like this:

1 784 000 000 000 000 000 000

That is a ton of zeros.  This is the kind of number you make up when you a kid and you decide you want to be a bajillionaire, and you have to write out how much money you'll have, so you just put a bunch of zeros at the end of some random number like 1,784.

One of the problems with suing Bank of America for this much is that the world itself only produces 60 trillion in GDP.  There is no physical way (other than printing money and devaluing everything to ridiculous prices) that Bank of America can pay this.

Unless... Bank of America has holding on other worlds across the cosmos.  But how is that possible?

Then I realized that Mr. Chiscolm must know something very dangerous, a dark secret that Bank of America has to hide.  You see, the only way that this is possible is that the CEO of BoA is...

CTHULLU!

RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!  SAVES YOURSELVES!  HE WILL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL!

I'm now 23 and I now want CAKE!

I turn 23 today, and since yesterday I spent 14 hours with camarilla people which included LARPing and good food with good company I'm having a quiet birthday Sunday.  A nice dinner with family while me and The Boyfriend continue with Skies of Arcadia.  Totally chill.  I am getting together with friends at home next weekend so that's pretty much when cool stuff will happen.

But for the years that I actually do want a spectacular birthday bonanza, I think I am going to consider some of these cake ideas.  What do you guys think?

Resistance is futile.  Your birthday will be celebrated.

Cakes that I wish I could find included ones for Bioshock, Mass Effect, and the Sims 3.  Has anyone seen one of those?

And if you want a good cake blog, go to cake wrecks.  It's hysterical to see the bad cakes during the week , but on Sundays the blog showcases great work.  And they have a book of wrecks out right now, and they're on tour for it!  Go go go!

Meme=Character Inspirations!

A really good friend of mine who's on the trip of a lifetime just thought up a meme idea.  I know you might first be thinking "why are you posting about a meme?"  Well my friend suggested it would be good for RPG or LARP characters too, and it clicked:

This is a fantastic way to figure out a character idea randomly for a game!  This is a great way to make a character that needs some character depth.  Here are the steps, edited to be a little less lj meme and a little more character creation:

1. Figure out your character's  Zodiac and Chinese Horoscope signs, and any attributes that you so choose.

2. From any site you choose, copy and paste the word/phrase lists, positive and negative, that describe your particular signs.

3. Highlight those words/phrases, positive and negative, that describe your character's particular manifestation of his or her zodiac signs.

4. Explain your character in as many or as few of the highlighted words as you so choose. For every positive trait you choose, also choose a negative; for every negative, also choose a positive.

***

I think I may do this with some of my LARP characters. If I do, I will totally post the results on this here blog.

Let me know if you guys use this and if it works for you!

Celebrating the Whedons

This post is partly because a good friend of mine just bought the Dr. Horrible Sing A-long Blog DVD.  If you don't know what this is, then you need to go here for your life to be complete.  Trust me.

Don't trust me?  Well fine, here's one of the fantastic songs from this musical.  Watch it as a sneak peek, and then watch the entire thing.





I actually watched this over a year ago and fell in love with it. It's hard not to.  It's a fantastic cast, a great sound track and it's really well written.  That's what you expect from something produced by Joss Whedon.  But the great thing to find out was that it was somewhat a family affair.

Joss brought in his two brothers Zach and Jed.  Zach helped with writing the script, bringing a lot of dry humor to the whole thing.  Jed helped with the lyrics and with the music.  And if I mention music, I shouldn't forget that Joss brought in his friend Maurissa Tancharoen to help with that as well.  This family team helped produce one of the best free webisode series out there!

I just find it very cool when family members jive together well enough to make something of creative genius.  Not every family can do that.

And for those of you who have seen Dr. Horrible already, please go back and listen to the commentary, that is completely sung.  That's right, it's Commentary: The Musical.  With great song including "I'm better than Neil" by Nathan Fillon.  That's always a favorite.

What are you waiting for, see it now!

YARR! Talk Lik'a Pirate Day it be.

Me land lovin' self ain't talk enough lik'a pirate t'day.  Although these sea fairin' theives be the terrorists of their day, I be appreciatin' them t'day. So t'day's post be in pirate speak.  Yarr!

If ye be annoyed by this here post, walk the plank!

If ye like 'umor involving pirates, ye should be readin' Savage Chickens.  Th' artist is a pirate lover 'imself, and a great captain to his... ship on the seas of web comics!  Arr!

Here be a comic t'appreciate.

If ye seek more of pirates and savage chickens, look no further than here.

I wish ye all smooth sailin' fer the rest of yer evenin' and calm seas the rest of yer weekend.  Arr!

Wait, they're making what a movie?

They're going to make Neuromancer into a movie?  And I didn't know?!?!?!

I LOVE that book and I didn't even finish it.  High school homework and activities got in the way of leisurely reading.  But the Gibson is a fantastic writer and I think everyone should read something of his, especially considering he is the father of the cyber punk genre.  That's right, without Gibson, there would be no Tron!  Or anything close to the awesome hacker stories... that don't happen enough.

The movie doesn't come out until 2011, and for once I will go out of my way to read the book to see if the movie is a good translation.  I just love Neuromancer that much.

Also, clicking that link shows off some great artwork for the movies.

I totally LARP now.

This Saturday I did something I thought I would never do before... and I liked it.

I LARPed.

For those of you unaware, LARP stands for Live Action Role Play.  For those of you that are aware, you may understand why when I first heard of this past time, I was skeptical.  In high school my standard image of someone who LARPs, a LARPer, is someone who does live-action Dungeons and Dragons in the woods with boffer weapons and ren faire costumes.  This not only gets costly, but awkward if you do it in a state park where hikers and campers see you pretending to be something you're not.  But this isn't what turned me off.  What turned me off from it back then was the stereotypical LARPer idea of someone trying really hard to escape their loserdom in real life by pretending to be an 18th level barbarian in the woods.  Later on I heard about the stereotype of goth kids being vampires in the woods too, which in some ways was even creepier.  Anyway, secondhand knowledge of what LARPing supposedly was turned me off from it.  I never pursued it.

I went to college and there wasn't much LARPing going on over there either, even though some alums of my sci-fi/fantasy group used to.  Anyway, meeting cool people like you do, I met a LARPer and she was (to my surprise at the time) a normal well adjusted young woman.  I will say I found out she LARPed after we became friends and when she told me about it, I could see myself doing it.  However, once again she LARPed in the middle of the woods in costume.  I didn't and still don't have the money to get the kind of costume I'd love to wear at an event like that, even though I'm sure as a first timer I would be forgiven.  Also, I'm not as interested in role-playing a person from the past, just not my thing.  But at least I learned LARPing is not fully of weird people... at least people not too much weirder than I already am.

When I was told there would be an event by a new found friend of mine last Saturday of Mage, I jumped to the opportunity.  Not the biggest fan of White Wolf's system, it's ability to help make a fantastic setting for present day fantasy games can not be ignored.  I tried to play in Mage before but general college busy-ness got in the way. I already had a character concept in mind so I was excited to try it out.

I have to say it was really fun, although it's one of the things that's a little more fun reflecting on it afterwards.  My character can be a bit of a prude and although she doesn't want to seem she's on a moral high ground, she really is, so that made some character interaction very interesting.  If you're wondering, my character is a Texan assistant funeral director up who works and lives in the north side right now.  She is a perky former cheerleader who is Christian and well read.  She has a thick accent (grew up about 30 miles away from Corpus Christi) and came from a family where here dad was a dermatologist and her mom stayed at home and stayed active in the PTA.  She has a younger brother, is in her mid twenties and isn't breaking out as a wild child like her mother was afraid she would.

Anyway, the game was fun and interesting, and there are definitely a lot of interesting characters out there other than my own.  I am definitely sticking to the Mage game, definitely going to join the Changeling game, and I am on the fence about joining Vampire but we'll see what happens.  I like pretending to be other people (hence some of my RPG love) and I love hanging around cool nerdy people, so I approve.

If you're interested to see what the White Wolf LARPing community is all about, check out the Camarilla fan page here.  If you're in the U.S. you can even try the 6 months free trial to see if it's for you.  I totally encourage it!

This Current Vampire Trend Needs to Stop

Argh!  Okay, so apparently there's now going to be a series called The Vampire Diaries. And it's showing an evolution of vampire lore that I'm starting to despise.  There are two things to this evolution that I really hate, and I hope you all can see my point.  So ThingIHate #1:

They are in friggin' sunlight!

Why should this matter?  Well, part of the thing about Vampires is that they technically are invulnerable during the night.  They are these powerful beings that have incredible strength, captivating charisma, and eternal youth.  Why wouldn't everyone sign up to be a vampire then?  Because you will NEVER see the sun again.  The sun and you are no longer on speaking terms, and because of your choice to become a monster with all these advantages, the checks and balances of nature make sunlight your kryptonite.

Part of this shows how separated a vampire's state of being is to a human.  People generally love sunlight, and need it for life.  Without it there would be no ecosystem for our plants.  Sunlight also reveals everything as it is.  There's a safety in it.  Being in the middle of a grassy field in high noon is one of the safest feelings people have.  Humans need the sun.  Vampires, on the other hand, needed to be cloaked in mystery and deception to get the nourishment that they need.  You can't just saunter up to somebody and say "Hey?  Can I nibble on your wrist I'm pretty thirsty."  Vampires need to convince a person that despite the darkness, despite the lack of revealing sunlight, that the potential victim certainly is safe.  Vampires can't truly reveal who they are, because what they are is so unnatural and such an assault to human morality, that no society could ever 1) let them exist or 2) keep them safe from those who felt it was necessary to kill them.  This is why vampires are creatures of the night.  

Getting rid of the deadly sunlight allergy, as one could put it, makes vampires way too powerful to not already take over the world.  Seriously.  Vampire armies would be all around us, hunt humans and farming them for their sustenance.  It also shows that there is no punishment for eternal beauty and power, which would mean everyone would want to be a vampire, and no vampire would ever really lose touch with his humanity.  Well, other than being 600 years old and thinking that the stuff I worry about at age 22 is extremely petty.  

That brings me to ThingIHate #2...

They hang out and fall in love with high school students?!?!?!?!

This is incredibly unbelievable in my opinion. I don't get it at all.  Let's think about this: Say I am a 128 years old with the body of a 22 year old.  I haven't aged since I was 22.  My mind hasn't deteriorated either.  We can even say I've been able to survive daylight.  Also to survive I need to continuously commit acts of assault and/or homicide.  I'm essentially someone who's been murdering for over 100 years, haven't gotten prosecuted for it, and have had to stay on the run to make sure no town got used to me.  I also have been able to acquire all the experiences and wisdom for someone my age without having to suffer physically for it.

Do you really think I'd be able to relate to a 17 year old enough to fall in love with him?  

Why would a guy with all the experiences and troubles of a centuries old vampire fall in love with the incredibly naive junior in high school girl who's troubles are probably considered far more trivial when compared to having to kill people to survive and making sure no one knows you're immortal?

This makes as much sense as those marriages that happen between men and women who have much more than a decade between them.  The experiences that either one have had are probably so vastly different that there's no way one could want the same thing in life as the other.  Sometimes that's not true, but usually in successful couples you see two people who are at the same stage in life and will be moving along around the same pace.  How is that even possible to achieve if the age difference is at least 100 years?

I'm not saying that it's not impossible for an immortal to fall in love with a mortal.  I'm saying it's probably not going to happen between an immortal and a teenager.

This is part of the reason why the character Claudia from Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire was so intriguing.  Claudia was made a vampire when she was a little girl, and kept that body.  Her brain continued to age with wisdom that surpassed her looks, and she began to resent it.  She was no longer a little girl, but was easily perceived as one.  In her mind she understood about sexuality, deception, philosophy, and all those other things adults ponder about, but she would never look like the adult woman she really was inside.

The character flaws that need to be inherited to be a vampire are part of the reason vampires are followed in numerous cultures across time.  There is a price for everything including eternity, and the idea is that vampires have to pay that price every single day of their lives.  Stripping that price away to make some teenage love story full of angst and danger takes away what made the myth so strong in the first place.  

So do I have a problem with shows that have vampires in them?  Of course not.  I mean, not that I was a Buffy fan, but I did watch some of it and those conflicts made the show interesting.  And yes, vampires can definitely be sexy.  But the Vampire Diaries shows a disturbing trend in the lore, wear suddenly all you need to be perfect is to be a vampire.  Vampires need to be seemingly perfect, but incredibly flawed, like a dystopia of the soul.  That's what makes them worth caring about as characters.

I'm Part-Time Employed!

I got this great theatre internship with a theatre in my community.  It's an internship they're hoping to make into a part-time job, so I'm hopeful that I can keep it and see what happens.  SQUEE!

Still won't be making a ton of money.  But that's not what's important.  What's important is that I think I'm starting out with a job that I like.  Also, the 20 Sided Women Project is off to a great start, so I'm hoping this great luck in life streak continues.  

Also, if enough of you guys joins, I'm thinking... T-SHIRTS!  I don't know, I think it's too soon right now, but I wold love to get a logo or two for some T-Shirts.  :D  Look for them in the future.

Fear of Girls: Hilarious

I don't want to perpetuate any kind of stereotype, especially amongst my fellow gamers, but this video is still hilarious in many respects.



Thank GOD I have yet to meet gamers like this. I don't know how I would respond.

Shiny, pretty, and sickly.

If you want to see a beautiful sculpture of a virus, go here.  There are eight of them!

And happy Labor Day!  I hope most of you are staying home and enjoying some rest by either cuddling up to a sci-fi book or warming up your gaming console.  Me, I'm going to get together with the Boyfriend and our other friend and we're going to play some video games.  Some RTSs for sure.

Oh!  Discovery!  Just because something in a game annoys the heck out of you, doesn't mean it's a flaw in the design.  Example: Command and Conquer 3 requires to guide your armies away from the tiberium crystals you mine.  Yes, your army should be smart enough to avoid the crystals on their own, but part of your strategy is guiding them in the right areas.  Having that happen does NOT mean that the game designers should know people are smarter than that.  It's not about if the army is smart enough, it's about if you are.

And my quick link post has now turned into a rant.  Again, Happy Labor Day!

The Sexbox: the key to humanity's downfall.

Alright, I know that adult toys are fine and dandy, but god dammit, there's now a console that only plays Adult Only rated games.  And it's called the Sexbox.

Jeez, talk about a horrible pun.  Also, it's a little to easy to see what kind of market they're trying to go for.

I  don't understand how one could make that medium the right kind of interactive that you'd need to fully enjoy the experience.  Then again, do I want to know?  I probably don't.

Also, I think this is probably something more geared toward men, but I could see the console selling well to women too.  The theory is that women are more stimulated by fantasies then by visual aids.  Maybe this can help the fantasy be realized.

Alright, I've discussed this topic enough.  Not like I would ever buy anything called the Sexbox anyway.  They could've at least thought of a better pun!

A song about rarities

This kind of pertains to my latest blog, but I thought you guys here would enjoy it more.

I'm tempted to enter every gaming store with a shirt that says "Warning, I have two x chromosomes. Do not be alarmed."

Tetris made me smarter!

A study showed that adolescent girls playing Tetris for a three month period or more had brain matter growth and increased efficiency.  

When I was an adolescent girl I played Tetris.

Obviously that means video games have made me smarter.  

I will now force Tetris on my children so that they grow up to be evil geniuses!  YES!  

Okay no it doesn't work like that.  But that is awesome to find out.  If I had time I would see if there were the same results for adults since their brains are more developed, but alas I am busy doing other things.

Like getting ready for a job fair and an interview tomorrow. WOOT!  Things are looking up in the income department.  I should say the future income department.

Announcement!

Please give a big welcome to THE 20 SIDED WOMEN PROJECT.

Visit it here!

Yes, this is the big announcement!  I am starting a new blog hoping to showcase women in the role playing game community.  Where will this lead?  I don't know, but I'm hoping some place fun.

For the project I now have a AIM screenname: d20sapphire.  Also If any of you know of any leads to help with this project, anyone who you think has a good say about it, please let me know!  I'm going to start with people in my area.  I've joined the RPGchicago group on meetup.com, and hoping to meet people that way.  In fact there's a meetup today I'm going to!  

So wish me luck!  I'll still be posting a lot of my normal stuff here.