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I was doing some stuff the other day, idly watching TV and "The Dog Whisperer" came on. If you don't know, this show is like a nanny show but for people who don't know how to handle their dog.

So the dog owner is this cute but kind of flat-chested girl ... whose name is Nelson. It was actually a guy. When I say this guy looks like a girl, I mean even Matt was couldn't believe it. Even after you know it's a guy, it's hard to believe.

Nelson Chang is the most androgenous person I have ever seen. Down to his voice. In fact, I dont know that androgenous is enough. lol

I would provide you with pictures but I have to figure out how to capture them off our TiVo.

I wish I could show you a clip.

The Episode is Pesky Paris (Paris is Nelson's dog's name).

Hello everyone,

It's easy to reach multiple people from here, so here goes. =P

There is interest in teh gaming weekend *but* most people can't commit due to July being a busy time. I'll try to work something flexible out with my parents for the weekend of the 17th (Friday would be the 21st). And the rest of you can try to figure out your crazy schedules.

I'm going to be in Ithaca from July 13th through the 24th.

I need a couple things in this time:
1) I have a place to stay for my time, but if Jim and Nina or Judd and Janaki wouldn't mind, it would be cool to stay with one of you for some of the time as well.
2) I need someone to give me a lift to the Syracuse airport on Monday the 24th for a flight at about 5pm.

To the Gaming crew, you know who you are:
I worked it out so that I have 2 weekends to spend in Ithaca and if everyone is not too busy I would LOVE to get my game on with all of you.

I also had an idea in passing: my parents have a country house about 1.5 hours (I think) from Ithaca, and it's *beautiful* out there. I easily have room for 6-7 people and, if people were flexible, I'm sure we could get more. So, check your calanders and see if one of those weekends might make a good get-away weekend for you all, and maybe we could have a gaming retreat. If everyone is too busy I understand but I thought it could be a lot of fun.

I'm probably going to email the lot of you about my idea as well, but gimme some response (email/phone/post a reply) so I can gauge the interest in this. I'm already thinking about what gluten-free goodies we could prepare. There are 3 queen size beds, one single, and a couch in the house already, so if we're creative we could probably fit more people.

Please get back to me! =)

PS Mirrormask was excellent.

Intro:
I'm sure most of you are familiar with "Obfuscated Perl". It's the idea that the syntax of the Perl code can be so obscure that what the program does is essentially unintelligible.

Well, what I want to do is amass a collection of English phrases and sentences whose meaning(s) are so obscure or ambiguous as to be nearly unintelligible. I think if I can come up with a list of phrases that is sufficiently long, it will be a rather amusing testament to the absurdity of the English language.

Rules:
1) Archeaic words and grammatical structures are fair game.
2) Olde/Middle English is *not*.
3) Obfuscation through specialization is off limits, it's too easy. This means to net-speak or medical terminologies etc.
4) Verbosity should be avoided. The idea is to boggle, not to bore.
6) Ambiguity is (also) encouraged.

What I want from you (please!):
As many bizzarre phrases/sentences as you can come up with. Post them here please! Link me to anyone you think would have fun coming up with stuff. I may also accept phrases that are just so bizzarre (yet correct) that they are worth posting.

Firstly, I know I said I would post Japan pics, but, well, I just haven't gotten around to it. It will happen eventually but currently I'm too busy with other stuff to stop and try to resize all teh images and sort through them. so there is the Lies part of this post. No pictures for you! (yet).

The second part fo the this post is more important and I'm making an appeal to those of you who know me. I need to write a personal statement for my application to the Univ. of Washingtoon's Computing and Software Systems program. Think of it as a undergrad application essay because that is pretty much what it is.

So where's the problem? -- I have no idea what to write about. When I was an undergrad I wrote about how growing up with an interracial brother gave me a unique perspective on race in highschool and in general and how it affected my personal views. I can't write about that again, it comes with too much baggage of what has happened with my brother over the past 10 years, plus it would be good to get a new topic anyway. =P

Additionally, I don't want to talk about things that happened to me, things that defined me in occuring. I want to talk about things I did, I need to sell myself as active and productive in facing challenges and whatnot. I'm sure you all understand how hard this is for me to write considering we all know the brutal truth: I'm horridly lazy. =P Of course, I may be biased.

So what am I asking for? Does anyone have any memories of things I've done that are memorable and show me to seek challanges and overcome them and to be an all-around spiffy cool person? Sadly, I am at a loss. Everything I think of is full of unfortunate circumstances and mistakes.

I was thinking of, perhaps, running MRave at Ris for two-years. But what else have I done? Damnit!

I need to brainstorm ideas, so suggestions are welcome and appreciated. Anything to ge the wheels turning -- currently they are covred in rust. =P

Thanks!

I just got off the plane a couple hours ago and I'm damn fucking tired. I'm gonna make a few other posts with various pictures from Japan. But for now, I'll say I had an excellent time, saw some beautiful temples/shrines and ate some great food.

On my way home I met a really cute Asian-American (Japanese?) guy and we talked for a while. Once we got on the plane we exchanged emails so maybe I'll get to make a new friend. My flight was full of oddly social people, but it made the time go a bit faster so it was cool. It was horrible once I got to San Fransico though - delays, amd addditional, useless security checks.

So very tired. I will post more interestingly once I've had some time to reast and go through the pictures.

I almost feel like this should be two different entries, but whatever.

Firstly, I've been getting a little nervous about my plans for the future but it looks like maybe everything is coming together. I found out that I can pay in-state tution this quarter, which is excellent, so I can take more courses which means it may be easier for me to get into the program I want at University of Washington next fall. Right now the only thing I'm really worried about is that I'm not going to get into the other class I want, which is a low-ish level ("intermediate") programming class.

The problem is that the class has like 2 or three pre-requesites, which I really don t want to have to take. oddly, on of the pre-reqs is *not* the intro programming class, but a class on Javascrupt scripting. Yuck. Good thing I have already spent some time with both Java and Javascript. I'm just really really hoping the professor sees it my way and lets me in. From looking at the sites for his classes i'm pretty damn sure I would do well in the one I'm requesting -- but all that matters is whether or not he sees it that way too. I'm sure I'll keep compulsively checking my email until I hear back from him one way or the other.

It's kinda funny, so far everytime I tell someone what I'm gonig to be doing at school this time around they say something to the effect of they think it will be good for me or think think I'll like it. Maybe I should have tried this before. Haha

Now, on to gaming stuff. I have a lot of people, but especially Judd, that I talk to online about gaming, but I have a much harder time talking to the people I play with in Washington. I think it's becaus eI tend to go for the crazy indy-rpgs and they all tend toward the familiar more traditional stuff like D&D. I'm having fun in our game, but in general, D&D and other d20 games bore me; they just don'tg et me pumped up and excited, before or during.

I'm hoping that as I start amassing a small indy-rpg collection I'll be able to GM a few games for these friends and maybe turn them on to some of the systems I enjoy more. But I think I made a mistake. I got really excited about conflict-resolution VS task-resolution and I started talking about it with a couple of my firend out here, and I'm afriad they have now prematurely decided that they are not gonig to like the games I run because they don't automatically think that conflict-resolution will work in a game. I feel like if I had just gotten them excited about a game and threw it at them they would be more open to it.

So, now I don't really know what to do. I know I'm still going to try running my wacky little independent games, but I have a feeling it's not gonig to work because only one of my players is gonig to even be open to having it work. There is a part of me that wants to reach out into the Seattle community and try to find other gamers that are more my style, but that's a pretty big undertaking. It is a very intimidating idea and I wouldn't even know where to start. At the same time I really would like to find some gamers that are more my speed. Dilemmas.

I suppose I'll just let all of that brew a bit and see what happens... suggestions or insights are welcome (especially of the how-to-introduce-people-to-new-systems and how-to-meet-like-minded-gamers variety).

Here I am listening to Judd's Sons of Kryos Podcasts, and I know that running one-shots is in my future. I've been thinking a lot about how to make an interesting one-shot, although I'm keeping in mind that I want to keep it relastively simple to start.

However, Jeff and Judd are talking about this one guy's method of running one shots which was much more character oriented, as in a lot of his prep went into defining charqacters in wa y that allowed them to jump off a page to players creating an atmosphere wher ethe game almost plays itself. This idea is extremely appealing to me, especially since I think it challenges the typical approach given to one-shots.

But I also had a few questions:
+ Do you use pre-gen characters?
+ How much or what kind of background allows your players to really connect with their characters?
+ And how do you address the problem of creating pre-gen characters while having your players not feel trust into certain roles. How do you ensure your players still have their creative freedom?

Right now, I'm a lot of talk, I admit it, but I tend to like to think things out and mull them around a bit before I act -- and running a game, even a one-shot isn't going to be any different. So if anyone wants to talk about this -- character motivated one-shots -- I would be happy to hear any opinions on how you would go about making this successful.

A few nights ago I had a sex dream -- about Steve Colbert (an old and amazing Daily Show 'reporter' who now has his own show). How weird is that? No more watching The Colbert Report right before bed... The strangest thing, though, is that I didn't even realize I was attracted to him. I mean sure, he not a bad looking guy, but he acts so insane on his show it makes it difficult to imagine what he would really be like and therefore almost impossible for me to be attracted to him.

In my dream though, he was a great guy. Haha. And he was irresistable when he got a calm-but-serious look in his eyes. It's so weird but the dream wasn't just a sex dream, it was kind of a dating dream, so there were a bunch of details and a real, consistent story. In the end, I suppose the oddest thing about this dream is it was almost entirely innerly consistent. Dreams are supposed to be wacky and never make sense when you wake up, aren't they?

I will never look at Steve Colbert the same way again! I'm going to have to keep telling myself that he's not really the guy from my dream, haha.

If anyone else has had any odd dreams, lately or a while ago or ever, I'd like to hear them. Dreams are fun.

Hey Judd and Jim (and potentially anyone else reading this who knows) I want to buy the Burning Wheel RPG, but as I'm looking around the net I'm having trouble figuring out what book or books I need for the core rule set, and/or to successfully run a game. While my grp is largely into D&D they also liek to try new things, and I have been curious/interested in BW for a while now.

Anyway, if you can tell me the title or ISBNs of the books I need, or even where to order them, I would really appreciate it. Thanks!