Not the Best Anniversary
On this day in 2011, I tried quite seriously to kill myself. I was a second or two from succeeding when sense kicked in and I had my friend Jesse take me to a mental hospital, which I left two weeks later, as stable as I was gonna be.
I’m in no real danger any more. Haven’t been since that day. But the horrible side of my brain tries to talk me back into the idea whenever I’m stressed, which is pretty often. I’ve tried various drugs to calm myself and shut that thing up, but they’ve never really worked, and I still have to listen to the self-destructive asshole. It gets old.
Either way, I’m still here, which I’m thinking is a victory.
No Anime Mid-Atlantic For Me
I had to cancel the hotel room for AMA 2018. We really can’t afford it with the financial pressures of a single paycheck. Kara wasn’t going anyway, but I’ll miss Angel and the other Hampton Roads con-goers I’d normally see there. Not to mention I’ve got some great outfits I want to show off in.
Damn, I hope our finances get sorted out soon.
Nothing Working Anymore
So: fun week. We had the funeral for Mom a couple of days ago: a lot of people showed up, including a lot of the O’Briens I didn’t expect to see. It was lovely talking to Uncle Walter again, and my cousin Julie. Whitney of course was there with her kids, but we even had several Yeager folks including Jerry and Cathy. So, that was as nice as it could possibly have been. We buried her ashes along with the ashes of her cat Sassy.
Then on Monday I had to go to the hospital with violent stomach pain. Turns out something had swollen my intestines until they closed up completely. A round of antibiotics meant I only spent a couple nights there, and I’m doing much better; but even with insurance, our financial situation is such that I am pretty worried about paying off these bills. And I had such a nice credit rating this time last year.
End of a Story
Mom fell one last time, and we had to bring her to a care facility. As she’d always predicted, she didn’t last long there. Deprived of access to a stream of junk food and sodas, she started losing weight rapidly, and in less than a month, she was gone. She passed away the morning of April 14th.
By the end of things, we had an extremely toxic relationship. She abused my love for her to get almost everything she wanted, and continued to insult my friends, loved ones, and lifestyle choices. I hang on to the idea that it was bitterness and despair, not hatred, that drove her to this. She worked hard to bring me up as best as she could, and provided me with a basic moral sense that still serves me well.
I’m glad she is no longer suffering. I’m sorry that everything ended the way it did. I will miss the mother who did love me and tried her best, even if her best wasn’t always what she or I needed. Her funeral was well attended even by people she’d rejected in later years, because they remembered the good person inside.
In the meantime, Maya and I must finish clearing out her apartment and packing our own, to move into her apartment complex as part of a lease-forgiveness deal.
Regeneration? Fourth.
Back from ReGeneration Who 4. Exhausting. It’s that simple.
My job as Merchandise head wasn’t bad, but there were a lot of logistics to deal with preparation-wise and with tear-down. Maya, on the other hand, worked her butt off. The con was a major attendance success, and that means that as Registration head, she worked her catgirl tail off.
On the other hand, I got a picture I never expected to get: me dressed a Waitress Clara from the Season 9 Doctor Who finale, posing next to Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi! He loved the outfit… what a sweet gentleman. I got to pose with some other Claras as well… oh, and by executive Con Chair Order, I bought Princess Peach for pictures in Sunday.
Great con, proud to be part of it… but I think we are dropping out of staff duties for a while and going to a few cons as simple attendees. Maya and I need to recharge.
Nerf This
I’m playing Overwatch now – at least when I can spare the time to reboot my iMac over to Windows and install the inevitable updates. I’m not especially good at it, but I can play as a loligoth catgirl in a big pink stompy mech, so I’m having fun. At least against AI opponents; actual humans are all too good for me to touch.
Blizzard, please make this available for Mac someday soon? Pretty Please?
A Real Peach
I brought my Princess Peach costume to Mysticon this year. Sadly, Maya didn’t wear her Mario as it needs quite a bit of work. But wow did Peach go over well! People were asking for pictures all day, and I even made the local TV news for about 7 seconds. I wore it for NekoCon and Halloween last year and for the con we attended with my niece Kennedy, but these are some of the best pictures of it yet. I was dubbed “Princess Peachfuzz” by one attendee, which was hilarious.
There is nothing like a stranger telling you how beautiful you look in your dress to put the “pride” in queer pride.
I decided to dress up Sunday as well, even if it meant I’d have to find somewhere at the con to slip back into mundane disguise on the way out. So I’m wearing my Sailor Moon quasi-costume dress while loading the car, and a 65-year-old or so couple get on the elevator with me.
He looks at me and asks, “Is it okay to say something about your outfit?” and I give him a huge sincere smile and say, “As long as it’s a compliment!” He laughs and asks where I got it (Hot Topic Halloween) and for what event (the nearby con) and we chat for a moment. As I’m walking off to the car, I hear his wife say behind me, “He’s got better legs than I do!”
I’m kinda proud of myself. That could have been awkward or even upsetting, but everyone left that elevator happy. That’s one of my missions in life.
Do You Remember Second Edition?
I’ve had the Core Rulebook PDF for Shadowrun Fifth Edition for a while, but now I have the physically massive hardcopy. Thing should have its own Damage Code. I’m not crazy about how the setting has “grown up” in the last couple editions. Part of the fun of Shadowrun is that it’s a bit mad. It’s a solid brand, you don’t have to justify it now by going all SRS BZNS. Any Shadowrun I gamemaster will always have that Discordian wobble.
Also, Technomancers are still complete bullshit.
Mom is doing well in the Durham rehab facility. Driving an hour each way to see her is pretty rough, though.
Maya’s and my perfect Valentine’s date is the LEGO Batman Movie, and it’s up there with “Batman 1966” and “Mask of the Phantasm” as my favorite Batman film. Lots of fun, plus Real Talk about The Dark Knight. Also, it was that or a “Fifty Shades” movie, and we weren’t going any where near that one.
I found an English version of “Do You Remember Love” from the Macross ’84 movie of the same subtitle. I’m impressed, though as always I’d have chosen different rhyme and scansion options in some places. Not like I can sing.
Speaking of YouTube, here’s human beings landing a rocket at a spaceport: not crashing into the ocean, but actually landing. I’ve waited a lot of years to see this happen in real life.
Managlitch City Underground released Episode 27 – Shockwaves on February 22nd. Seven weeks between episodes isn’t terrible but I’d like to do better. I remember when it was every couple of weeks. Life, man.
Lastly, I’m going to invent a document type called the Journalled Information Format just so we can argue about the pronunciation of .jif files.
“Lightspeed Subway”
– another in the Sidequest series: fiction fragments which may be expanded someday –
The “incoming capsules” indicators lit up, and Josmin braced for the thud of air that would come from the subway tunnel. The gust wouldn’t knock you over unless you’d had an especially long day, but loose items would sometimes go flying.
The capsules burst from the tunnel entrance, already slowed to a quarter of their initial speed by the long line of control rings stretching back down the tube. Mana gems embedded in the rings glowed violet as the thaumatronic system absorbed velocity, and the capsules glided to a gentle, precise halt next to the platform. The passengers inside stood eagerly to leave, having never felt more than a gentle surge.
Josmin knew people who wouldn’t board the express capsules. Despite hundreds of years without accident, the idea of traveling through solid matter for most of the trip was one they couldn’t bear. He had to agree that the theory and engineering were far beyond him; an encyclopedia article lost him somewhere around “eight spacetime dimensions” and “phased etheric vibrations”. All he cared about was getting 30 kilometers to the other end of town in mere seconds.
He entered one of the capsules and took a seat, as did the other couple dozen folks. The capsule was full this trip, but not crowded; the afternoon rush hadn’t hit yet. He felt a tiny surge as it moved forward into the next set of control rings; the mana gems dimmed as they fed the speed back into the chain of capsules. The momentum field in his capsule could have prevented even that surge, but it turned out people liked the sensation of gentle movement even as the passing rings turned into a silver smear outside the window.
The rings disappeared. There was an electric blue darkness in the capsule with him. For a fraction of a second, Josmin had an eerie suspicion that he no longer existed –
– and then he heard the gentle thud of air being pushed out of the way by the decelerating capsules, and saw the rings reforming from silver blur outside. He’d just moved from south of the Scar to the Boreal Hills in practically no time. He stood to go, slinging his bag over his shoulder. Perhaps for a moment he truly hadn’t existed: it still beat the Void out of traveling by transbeam.
Glitchers Hospitaller
Let’s see… what was January 2017 like?
Well, we had to move Mom out of another apartment… cleanup was difficult and painful because of all the spilled cigarette ash. In the process, we took her to the hospital again for what was perhaps another stroke, and then again two weeks later because she couldn’t stand up on her own.
I released Episode 26 – Holiday Special of Managlitch City Underground on New Year’s Eve, so I’m counting that.
Maya and I introduced Professor Spines the Hedgehog, teacher of Dance Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts, at MarsCon 2017. Later in January, we went to see the “Hidden Figures” movie and loved it; I, of course, recognized some of the Langley locations.
I wrote an analysis of the progressiveness of the various Star Treks. Fair to say, though, that Star Trek fails in its ideals on a regular basis, even as we praise it for at least having some. I experimented with rating the various generations, but sadly things got silly in my brain, so you get this.
- ST-TOS: “We Got Rid of Some Patriarchy But There’s Plenty More”
- ST-TNG: “We Managed to Get Rid of a Litte More But This Is Hard”
- ST-DS9: “Working On It, There’s a War On”
- ST-VOY: “Our Second Most Complex, Rich Character Was Hired For Her Boobs”
- ST-ENT: “Vulcan Boobs This Time”
- ST-JJA: “Hell With It, Toxic Masculinity Is Awesome”
