Yep, okay, movin' on.

soranokumo gives a good indication to the why of it; short form, the company sucks and the staff sucks and I don't want to be there any more and it's stupid. Also I have nine invite code. You know. If anyone else agrees. (Also, brand new OOTS icons.)

I told Twig the backstory of a D&D character I just made up so that I could have someone called the Swordsman of Rage, and she told me to post it, so I did. Will. Am doing.

( Montage! )

As long as you're advertising up-to-date news on the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Business Spectator, I'm going to wonder precisely what date you're up to. It certainly ain't this one.

Two minutes. Good for the soul. Guess who stars.

So, after being fired from Australian Idol for, you know, being a horrible person who has no place on this planet or off it and whose very existence means not only that we are not living in the best of all possible worlds but also that Satan is real and God is dead, Kyle Sandilands has a job as a judge on The X-Factor.

Frankly I disapprove of the existence of an Australian version of The X-Factor to start off with. We already have Australian Idol every two hours. We do not need another one. The current supply is sufficient for reasonable demand.

But the man who trivialises the rape of an underage girl, mocks survivors of brutal regimes (and he's not picky on which brutal regimes they were under!), taunts families by threatening to prevent their reunions, and... oh, what the hell, I don't want to get into picking through this amoeba's fetid leavings, especially when the blog Crimitism has already taken that martyr's task upon itself when the entirely expected happened just over a year ago (post 1, post 2, post 3, read them all even though the subject matter is an appalling waste of proteins and lipids because the blog writer is pretty damn fantastic). My point is, this man is the scum that grows on the underside of scum when said scum has been kicked out of all the better classes of scumbuckets by scum who do not want to be associated with that kind of scum.

His placement in this program, doubtless to get viewer cred for being 'edgy', now proves that we are rewarding people for being arseholes. Is that too scatological, not specific enough? Hateful, jeering bullies with the mindsets of particularly twisted seven year olds, desperate to prop up their own standings and their own egos at the expense of everyone else around them. We are rewarding and funding the pettiest, most banal kind of evil.

In short, there is no more reason to let civilisation exist. I'm calling, here and now, for global rioting, not in terms of a revolution to replace the current power structure with a new one, but a purely destruction-focused scouring of the Earth, leaving no pillar of society standing. Only when all traces of the current structure are gone can a new world be built, unfettered by our failure. I appreciate that this likely means that I, myself, will have to die. It is a small price to pay for humanity's all-too-necessary rebirth.

Seriously, fuck Kyle Sandilands.

(Now to clean this up and find a way to send it to Channel Seven. They're being very coy about any e-mail address. Maybe I'll have to dig up the show's major advertisers and send it to them.)

Superfreakonomics is a fascinating book for the issues it raises.

However, it disagrees with me politically, and is therefore wrong.

I mean, it's understandable. The authors are economists, that legendary discipline born of putting one part pure mathematics, one part statistics, one part psychology, and four parts pure evil in a vat and cooking it until something came out. So it's only to be expected that the same book that talks about "negative externalities" should commend Iran for allowing the sale of human organs. (I can draw a line from that to murder on the streets in three steps, by the way.) It's only to be expected that they'll swallow the 'happy hooker' business hook (pardon me), line, and sinker. It's only to be expected that they'll cast Al Gore as Jeremiah in a hairshirt and Boris Johnson as the far-sighted Alexander who sees through the emperor's new clothes. (I'm allowed to mix metaphors, because I do not have tremendously fake-looking blond hair that shows everyone the twat I secretly am deep inside. I'm sorry, Boris Johnson and I don't get along.)

In all honesty, they mostly do present themselves as showing that approaches can work and taking an amoral view on them. In almost all cases they're not suggesting that what they say is a good thing, just that it's a thing. However, after a bit of a rant about how governments like things to be costly and cumbersome (it's the pure evil, it tends to slant you rightwards) at the end of a section about how simple and effective the seat belt is, they have the following paragraph.

"Nor was it the government that put seat belts in cars. Robert McNamara thought they would give Ford a competetive advantage. He was dead wrong. Ford had a hard time marketing the seat belt, since it seemed to remind customers that driving was inherently unsafe. This led Henry Ford II to complain to a reporter: "McNamara is selling safety but Chevrolet is selling cars.""

Or, in short - "The government doesn't do cheap and simple solutions. Note how this one cheap and simple solution was put into practice by an ex-government employee against the wishes of his employer and lost the company money. This shows that when one's looking to solutions one should always look to the profit-centric free market."

If an editor has seen this paragraph, that editor deserves a smack. Then again, maybe the authors deserve one too.

I'm also planning a post about how the free newspaper you get on Sydney trains is trash, and to parlay from that into the general ghastly unconcern of "Lighter Side"/"News of the Weird" sections. Thus, I should probably start titling these the "Get Off My Lawn Series: Concerns Of The Most Elderly Twenty-Six Year Old In The World".

That said, I've been happy recently. For a wide variety of reasons. Not least of which is that University is Fun and since I have to be awake in five hours to go there tomorrow I think I'll sleep now.

Dear Internet,

Fear me, for I have a new hat.

That is all.

Because when a man exclusively dates younger partners, we call him a "man".

The term remains acceptable only when used to describe hunting cats.

whoo!

auuugh!

whoo!

auuugh!

whoo!

auuugh!

whoo!

whoo!

sob!

whoooooooo!

The end.

Here begins a recounting of my first single-player game of Arkham Horror, or, How Patrick Failed To Save The World From The Weakest Of The Ancient Ones And Then We All Died.

...So you've already got the gist of it right there.

The Ancient One was specifically chosen - Yig. (Yig being the easiest Ancient One. He only gets ten doom tokens if he awakens.) The investigator, on the other hand, I picked randomly. I ended up with Vincent Lee. He is a doctor! He can treat others or himself to boost his stamina, and has fairly average stats. So, nice and well-rounded! A very good single-player character. This means a good chance at success! Or would, if the start of this post made it quite clear that the chance of success ended up at zero.

Early game went rather well, actually. Vincent ran around the southern end of Arkham gathering clue tokens. So he got a lot of them! A stop in the Graveyard led to him recovering sanity due to nice memorial art. A stop in the Woods led to him being sucked into R'lyeh before he had enough clue tokens to seal the gate; still, he did manage to close it temporarily! With subsequently amassed clue tokens, he went through another gate - the City of the Ancient Race, I think, though maybe I've got the City of the Ancient Race and R'lyeh backwards - and managed to seal it! Things were looking up!

Then the Mythos card was a Rumour called the Terrible Experiment, and Miskatonic University opened a portal to a hideous other dimension. If Vincent let eight monsters show up in the portal, they'd break through, the Terror Level would raise to 10 (thus meaning that Arkham was controlled by monsters, rather than humans), and death would be basically inevitable. Indeed, given rules about monster limit and the fact that the Terror Level would be at 10, that amount of monsters might actually have caused Yig to appear right then.

So Vincent spent most of his turns fighting extradimensional monsters to save Earth (which I think was the plot of Doom), getting beaten up, and sent to St. Mary's Hospital (which would have been the plot of Doom if the Space Marine was replaced by a pasty Victorian doctor). As such, gates opened all over the place, the Terror Level skyrocketed anyway due to the amounts of monsters Vincent was... too busy... fighting monsters... to fight... And Yig came through anyway.

"Okay," I thought. "Vincent may have no weapons, but he does have Tom "Mountain" I-Forgot-His-Last-Name, and if he can get ten successes in the final battle, he knocks off all Yig's doom tokens and sends him back to sleep in the other dimension."

Yig starts the final battle by cursing all the investigators, meaning they succeed on rolls only on 6 rather than 5-6. Then, every turn, he forces investigators to make a Speed check, with the consequence for failure being the loss of 1 point of Sanity and 1 point of Stamina.

Vincent rolled a handful of 5s. Which would have been great, but... you know... Curse of Yig.

Due to all those monsters he'd been fighting in the Terrible Experiment, his sanity was down to 1. Which he then lost.

So Yig ate him.

And, presumably, Tom "Mountain" Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

This is why it is a good idea to stick with a friend when you're fighting the apocalypse.

There are two things I love about City of Heroes(/Villains/Rogues and Vigilantes, soon, apparently). Well, there's actually a lot that I love about City of Heroes, but these two come in for particular acclaim.

One is how customisable the characters are. You're not just making this orc shaman or that orc shaman, you've got all kinds of things you can fiddle with. A very small quantity is on display in this Photobucket album, where I show off thirteen character concepts I made.

Two is the NPC chatter. When you're passing by these guys - or, less often, running up to them to show them what's what - they talk. A lot. And what they say is... Well, it makes you happy to have listened.

* * *
( Baco, this can be your Very Belated Birthday Present, as I know you love hearting random guards. )

So, yesterday, we spent five hours driving to the country and back. Allow me to show you the fruits of our labours. Well, not really fruits. Fruits tend to be less furry.

Except peaches.

Though even peaches only have a nominal fur coating.

( I Can Neither Confirm Nor Deny Rumours That This Post Contains Cats. )

I was going to do one of those definition birthday posts for thorne_scratch. I had the start of it worked out - something about ancient ruins and the words "Toan Skret" inscribed, which would turn out to be a corruption of the actual et cetera et cetera. But by the time I'd been pipped at the post by flidgetjerome, twigcollins, and soranokumo, I realised that at least for my part, it is impossible to apotheosise thorne_scratch, because you'd have to imagine something that is more awesome than she is, and such a thing is not only practically but logically impossible.

So. This marks one step closer to the day thorne_scratch conquers the world and gives her first proclamation from a zeppelin in the exact anatomical shape of a human heart. And that is a very good thing.

Happy birthday, thorne_scratch. May somebody buy you a perfectly trained attack pony who spits acid and cotton candy.

nano_moose: Now, information monkey, tell me about these pies and pizzas and you shall have a peanut.
kadrin: INFORMATION MONKEY DEMANDS A FULL BANANA
nano_moose: You drive a hard bargain, monkey.
kadrin: I went to monkey business school.

Dear YouTube,

Using your old layout, I could hide all comments by default. Then I wouldn't have to read what people on the Internet think. This actually made me noticeably less stressed and angry every time I went to YouTube - which, given its wide penetration, is the only game in town. I was happier. Doubtless I would live longer.

Using your new layout, I cannot do this.

I cannot choose to go back to using your old layout.

This means that whenever I listen to the lovely "Daily Mail" song that foreverdirt (happydork on dreamwidth) linked to, there's a good chance I'll see and accidentally read (because I have a very fast reading speed) someone defending the Daily Mail and calling anyone who doesn't support it Communist paedophiles who want the country to fall and who will eventually be rightly slaughtered by the angry ghosts of King Arthur and Winston Churchill.

Your new layout, YouTube, makes my life demonstrably worse.

And I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually, since - see earlier comment about only game in town - I'll rather have to. But I still want to express my rage. So I will.

- Patrick

Lying in bed, far too awake for 2:10 AM, I am again forced to confront the fact that kids these days would not know good music if it sat on them, and should also get off my lawn.

Apparently my sister's library has a book sharing policy with Rapture.

( The following post will not be funny if you've not played Bioshock. If you have played Bioshock I'm still making no guarantees. )

( Frank discussions of urethras follow. )

I may have posted this one before. Tough break, you're getting it again.

kadrin: I just like being able to turn stuff into other stuff. In a previous life, I was an alchemist. I managed to turn lead into slightly differently-shaped lead, and then hit people with it.
thorne_scratch: I like how you are using the description "alchemist" to hide the fact you also tried to create things like the octoparrot, and that terrible thing you did to that poor golden retriever. I told you, the gold part was not literal.
kadrin: Look, the octoparrot was successful enough that I thought I was on a roll.
thorne_scratch: Polly shouldn't have been. Bad enough you sold it to that sketchy diner where they served it as a calamari and hotwings combo.
kadrin: And I'm sure it was a new level of technological delicious.
thorne_scratch: You are the reason octopus-and-parrot flu spreads, Patrick.
kadrin: I put that on my resume.
thorne_scratch: I know; I liked the font.
kadrin: I created the font myself, out of two lesser fonts, dissected and surgically reassembled.
thorne_scratch: ...is there no boundaries to your madness.

The trouble with sequels is that if any other game in the world was "almost as good as Bioshock", that would be an unbelievable compliment. But even as a sequel, go without comparing it and you've got a fabulous game there. Music's better than the first game, too, and that's something.

And by "you", I mean "I". While referring to myself as "my love", even by quoting Garbage, might sound strange, hopefully it proves that I don't hate myself all the time. Patrick, you are witty, mildly handsome, and kind to animals; I enjoy being you.

Anyway, onto Bioshock 2.

( No spoilers, I think, but still worth cutting. )

No, not really. I can't back that up.

I have finished Mass Effect 2.

I never thought I'd see a video game where Gwendolyn Yeo, Yuri Loewenthal, and Quinton Flynn are listed under "Additional Voices". Definitely went all-out on the talent.

Anything else would be spoilery. Maybe I will speak of this later.

( Unproblematic Image Under Cut - No Seriously, It's Just That It's 800x600 And That's Too Big To Leave Uncut )

I suppose I should make an effort, or Edmund Barton will come back from the grave to look very disappointed in me. So. Happy Australia Day, everyone! Or happy Invasion Day if that's the way your politics run!

So far I've celebrated by playing a game of Settlers of Catan. My first, actually. (I won. It was extremely close.)

Okay, I'm about to head into town, so I'm just going to put this up to remind me of that writing idea I should be going into. Witch, lumberjack, blessing the children, low tide, sunset, chicken dinner. That is all.

Well, no, it isn't, really. Public posting should never be only about filling one's own vices. I should tell you all that my jittery brain appears to be calming down, even if it is doing so appallingly slowly. And that my sister not only remains cute, but intensifies her cuteness. She's lost her first baby tooth, and has decided she wants to break the laws of geometry. "I want a dice up to three sides. Just up to three."

At one point, Chris Sims said that to count itself complete, every comic collection has to have one thing that you love wholeheartedly except that one bit that makes you hugely uncomfortable. Flicking through my book collection (I don't have enough comics to count as a collection; I lump them in with my book books), I've realised that I do indeed have one of those in The City of Dreaming Books. It's a gorgeous insane fantasia and Homuncolossus is such a brilliant character it hurts and the main character is a dinosaur called Optimus Yarnspinner and then... you meet Rongkong Koma, the evil Bookhunter who's been built up as essentially the Biggest Bad Possible, and he's an immensely racist "African cannibal" stereotype, and you make unto yourself a solemn vow that your personal canon will feature a completely remade Rongkong Koma who is very possibly a dragon zombie gargoyle monster. With Bookemistic robot parts.

In Fallout 3, I have two characters running around the Wasteland. Cassandra has a house in Megaton. If you know the game, you'll know what that means. Nicole, on the other hand, has a suite in Tenpenny Tower. And if you know the game, you'll know what that means. Maybe it's just my slightly-tinted-glasses prejudice but I still swear that Mister Burke looks like Satan to me.

It's really pretty easy to distinguish. The figures of over-the-top men in video games - I'll call them hypermasculine just to have a quick reference word - emphasise their musculature and endurance, in each case making them active and powerful. All the hypermasculine body traits are indicative of strength. The figures of over-the-top women, the 'hyperfeminine' to use the counter word, are very rarely heightened dexterity - they're heightened sexual characteristics, designed to make the female character more attractive, thus placing her in a position where she's looked at rather than punching and as such passive rather than active. Even if she is punching at the same time. So it's not really "something very strange" going on, it's just that making someone active or passive because of their gender is a bad thing.

That said, the more I see about Bayonetta the more it actually looks kind of interesting. It does seem that she gets a full case of active-protagonist stuff. (And she has glasses. Even in the fetishistic scale, 'glasses' are a shorthand for 'intelligence'. That's an active character trait.) Maybe I'll rent it.

Anyway, on to two things that make no sense when placed adjacent.

One, I had a really good birthday. It was truly fantastic and I had a lot of fun with games and talking to people and dinner at Hob Nob, the Thai place three blocks down and across the street. (I finally had a full dish of their Mussaman curry. Oh God. No main meal that sweet should be that delicious. Small wonder, as a table, we finished all the banquet servings of it.) Siobhan said, quite peacefully, that it was the best night ever.

Two, the last three days have essentially been one long panic attack with occasional breaks for breath. I'm nervous about so many things that I don't even know what they all are and I do occasionally get minor actual breakdowns. So if you don't see me around for a while, hey! ...Come to think of it, does anyone ever see me around on a regular basis? I guess I'm a hermit. I LIKE my hermitting, though.

I now have Fallout 3, Dragon Age: Origins, and Batman: Arkham Asylum. I haven't even booted the latter up yet, but just looking at the back of the box makes me happy. Oh, Kevin Conroy, Christian Bale can go suck a lemon you will ALWAYS be Batman to me.

Tonight's performance of Wicked has gone a long way towards healing my long-standing grudge against The Wizard of Oz.

I have the soundtrack, and the song whose title is my current subject line definitely has a date with a Dark Heresy session's background music.