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.
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”
A Curse of Wealth
Since I accepted the job in North Carolina and moved to Raleigh, I’ve often felt as though my life was a roller coaster careening in unknown directions. I simply hung on for dear life, not sure where I was going but having faith the ride was better than it had previously been. Even with that faith, there’s so much of my day-to-day existence on which I wish I had a better grip.
A sample: I still have too much stuff. I understand the philosophers who insist that your possessions possess you, I am confronted with this fact every day. I left much of it behind when I left the home I grew up in. I left more of it behind with every move I’ve made since, and still I have enough to dominate the second bedroom and influence much of the rest of the apartment. I can’t stand being weighed down by it all; but when I attempt to purge, memories overwhelm me and I end up jettisoning far less than I meant to.
We’ll be in this apartment for a few more months at least. I must get rid of more of these things before we leave – and preferably long before, so that I can enjoy this space more than I have been doing. The roller coaster’s exciting; but damn it, I want to feel as though I’ve got more control than this.
Rogue One overview
Apologies for any spoilers; I’ll try to avoid as many as I can. If you’ve seen Episode IV, you have a pretty good idea whether our heroes accomplish their objective.
So how was the movie? Well, Maya – whose first Star Wars in the theater was Episode VII – thought it was wonderful, and possibly her favorite of the franchise. Me, I think it was very well done, but I was rather unprepared for the tone. While the main-storyline movies have an adventuresome matinee serial feel, this movie is frankly grim. Bad things happen to good people in this film.
However, the bad things are not gratuitous. This movie has a point to make, and it makes it well. So I think that I will call it a very good movie, worth watching again, but it’s not an Episode. Notwithstanding the many references and linkages to main-storyline Star Wars, and even nods to novel and comic ideas, Rogue One is its own beast.
And why shouldn’t it be?
The Guru Trap
The Guru Trap is worse than the Dark Side. It is easy, seductive, and life-affirming. One can easily make all sorts of regrettable decisions without ever realizing it.
Let me supply a quote from the “Illuminatus!” trilogy by Shea and Wilson:
“That’s right,” Hagbard agreed. “I wanted to see if you’d trust your own senses or the word of a Natural-Born Leader and Guru like me. You trusted your own senses, and you pass. My put-ons are not just jokes, friend. The hardest thing for a man with dominance genes and piratical heredity like me is to avoid becoming a goddam authority figure. I need all the feedback and information I can get—from men, women, children, gorillas, dolphins, computers, any conscious entity—but nobody contradicts an Authority, you know. Communication is possible only between equals: that’s the first theorem of social cybernetics—and the whole basis of anarchism—and I have to keep knocking down people’s dependence on me or I’ll become a fucking Big Daddy and won’t get accurate communication anymore. If […] all the governments, corporations, universities and armies of the world understood that simple principle, they’d occasionally find out what’s actually going on and stop screwing up every project they start. I am Freeman Hagbard Celine and I am not anybody’s bloody leader. As soon as you fully understand that I’m your equal, and that my shit stinks just like yours, and that I need a lay every few days or I get grouchy and make dumb decisions, and that there is One more trustworthy than all the Buddhas and sages but you have to find him for yourself, then you’ll begin to understand what the [Discordians are] all about.”
