journal at ivorysanctuary.com

blog over!

2010-02-15T23:46:00.002-08:00

at least for now...

Pretty soon, Blogger is going to stop allowing people to publish via FTP. I'm not going to move my hosting over to Google, which means I'm going to have to find a new way to manage and update my blog.

Honestly, this whole site needs a serious overhaul anyway. I might take the whole thing down and rebuild.

...indeed.

2009-07-28T10:34:00.013-07:00

a good morning note from the kitten

2q3q4                                     too cute, three cute, four!
Zªˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆ  see, I'm typing! look up!
ˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆˆ  look up!
ˆˆˆˆO99999999999999999999999999999999999  look up! OH NO! sad tail
9999999999999999999999999999999999999999  sad tail, sad tail
9999999999999999999999999999999999999999  sad tail, sad tail
999999999999999999999999POOOOOOOOO555554  sad tail BIG POO! sigh.
6666666666666YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYTT  happy tail. yaaay, tail!
GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG  giggle.
GGGGGGGGB00BNNNNNNN0MORT                  giggle, boob! nap. français!
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT  teehee! teehee!
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT  teehee! teehee!
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT  teehee! teehee!
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT  teehee! teehee!
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT  teehee! teehee!
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT  teehee! teehee!
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTLLLL  teehee! lick.
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLFRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR  lick. lick. tasting fur...
RRRRRRRRRRRE433P[;C''NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN  fur, fur, hairball. yech. nap!
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN                    nap, nap, nap
RKLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL..  RAT! Kill it!! ...
......YT66666666666666666666666666666666  It got away. ... Yay! Tail!
6666666666666666666666666666666666666666  happy tail, happy tail
6666666XC                                 happy tail xoxo, Cat.

click ... click

2009-07-23T23:18:00.003-07:00

omg spoilers

Hi, long time no see.

So I was trolling the internet this evening looking for spoilers for the movie "Orphan" that comes out this week. I'm pretty sensitive to violence and gore, so there's no way I'm going to go in and watch a movie like this. I don't get a lot of media or advertising, but every once in a while a movie's ad campaign will hook me. Then, if the movie is too gory or too stupid for me to sit through, I look for the full plot on the internets, usually on Wikipedia a few weeks after the release.

Well, it's early. And while it's easy enough to find the major Orphan spoiler with a quick Google search, as of tonight I could only find one place that would spoil the plot for me: this site here. You'll notice immediately that this is a site by Focus on the Family, which means I wandered directly into uber-Christian territory. Tee hee hi nice to meet you.

What's hilarious to me about this is how clearly this article fails at its own objectives. Ostensibly, this article is trying to give parents information so that they can make educated decisions in entertainment choices for their families. In actuality, the article goes through, in detail, a point-by-point analysis of the most gory, gruesome, and scandalous points of the movie in the complete absence of any of the plot or story that might have motivated those events. The attitude of disapproval and false piety seems perfunctory; the overall effect of the article is titillating, as if an older child had caught a glimpse of a forbidden grown-up movie and was retelling the "best parts" to a younger child.

There's a big link on the side for Watchmen and so I got curious and read that article too. I had two favorite parts of that one: 1) The article chides the superheroes for "breaking the law" by being superheroes after the government outlaws it, because apparently the law is the absolute law no matter what period forever. 2) The profanity section, with perennial favorites of how many times we take various names in vain, also includes several individual curse word spelled out with dashes and rated according to relative frequency. "Twenty-plus uses of the f-word and at least a half-dozen s-words. God's name is abused 25 or so times. (It's paired with 'd--n' more than a dozen times.)" Etc.

Because apparently the phrase "there's a lot of swearing" doesn't get the point across effectively.

The reviews are written before the movies hit mainstream theaters, so I think each article tries to calibrate its tone of disapproval in proportion to the anticipated mainstream popularity of the movie. The Watchmen article culminates in a passionate description of our long-suffering author's experiences at the advanced screening, where he "saw a number of people leave the theater. Some never came back." With a strong visual image of the anguished reviewer in sheer torment, willingly making the sacrifice to sit through the film for the sake of his brethren, I started to wonder how he was keeping track of all the cursing. I imagined that he had some sort of specialized hand-held clicker like they use to count people entering a party or special event, but that his had multiple buttons including several for all of the popular deities whose names might be taken in vain. I need to find out where to order those.

Actually, one tangible benefit for me of tonight's internet adventure is that I clarified where I stand on profanity in writing. Honestly, writing "f--k" looks ridiculous. If you're not old enough to write the word out, you're not old enough to be using it. And if that's really the word you mean, just type "fuck" and let people read it and experience it and judge you based on what you actually write. Enough with the fake propriety.

Oooh, on another note, I totally went to the Labyrinth Masquerade with friends a couple of weeks ago, and I definitely want to go again next year. It was a blast, people's costumes were amazing, and sadly I haven't dug up any pictures of my finished costume from the evening... I'll keep looking, though.

125 feathers are en route

2009-06-03T23:58:00.002-07:00

starting up again

A friend recently invited me to go to the Labyrinth Masquerade in July. Note to reader: if you want me to attend an event, simply string some of my favorite words together to make the name of your thing... and I'm there.

Tonight I draped the pattern for the cloak, and I'm glad I did, because I never would have guessed the shape that the cloak needed to be. I know, I know, circle with a hole in it, right? Sadly, no. I drew a sketch, but I'm too lazy to pull out the scanner right now (it's late!) and besides, this one is so weird that even the sketch needs explaining. Be patient... you'll have photos soon enough.

Note to self: I really need to re-design this site. I haven't put up the steampunk gallery yet, and hopefully soon there will be another costume, if I can find photographers. Hee.

On another note, Monty no longer uses the computer for inappropriate Google searches. Now he likes to pull the keys off of the laptop and hide them, which has done a number on my H key in particular. This computer is 6 years old anyway. Maybe I'll get a visit from the credit fairy.

yay, it's politics again

2009-04-30T01:02:00.000-07:00

an open letter to North Carolina Representative Virginia Foxx

Representative Foxx,

Recently, you stated that the 1998 torture and murder of Matthew Shepard has been inaccurately labeled as a hate crime in order to support hate crimes legislation. Your statement has left me a bit confused, and I have some follow-up questions for my own clarity. In 2002, when Gwen Araujo was beaten to death with a frying pan, was that also a "robbery" in your view? When Angie Zapata was bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher, was that simply a "hoax?" When 14-year-old Brandon McInerney brought a .22-caliber revolver to his junior high school and killed his classmate, was that simply a misunderstanding over lunch money?

Representative Foxx, you are a well-educated person. You have a doctorate degree in education and were a professor for several years before entering the North Carolina legislature. I refuse to believe that you are simply unaware of the basic facts of the Matthew Shepard case. Your statement serves to spread ignorance and confusion, but it also protects those who would commit hate crimes against LGBT people. North Carolina has no hate crimes legislation, which certainly works to the advantage of homophobic arsonists in Catawba County. Your work protects gang members and violent bullies. You stand arm in arm with the Tampa, Florida father who beat his three-year-old son to death because he might grow up to be gay.

In fact, Representative Foxx, you might explore an opportunity to confer with your counterparts in Iran, where the government takes a more active role in the persecution and murder of LGBT people.

You sicken me.

oh the realism

2009-04-22T08:50:00.004-07:00

this morning's hilarious dream

The dream starts, and I'm in the bunk of an all-boys dormitory. Apparently, I'm a student. I immediately see another, more individual bedroom, and hope that when I'm an older student that I can have one of those instead of the bunk. Also, there are snow boots by the door, so it must be winter.

Suddenly there's an emergency and we are under attack, so we are conscripted into the army and told to pack.

Next, I'm on a large, luxurious plane on my way to (probably Iraq?) to serve in the army. In retrospect, it's some kind of passenger plane, because my friend Matt is a few rows away, and he's not going to be in the army. Then a blond woman who I vaguely recognize comes and sits in the row facing mine. She's clearly one of the leaders of this army thing. I'm trying to figure out how to get in touch with this guy who I had a crush on 10 years ago and was in ROTC, because... I'm sure he can get me out of the army.

Then we are driving down a dusty path with "army" buildings on one side. Everything's yellow terra cotta, so supposedly we are in Iraq now. And... I get put in my bunk.

I wake up in my bunk (which is more spacious than the school dormitory bunks, by the way), and everyone else is awake and out the door and doing their army thing. I'm probably in trouble. Maybe if I keep getting in trouble, they'll kick me out! I hear a gunshot, and remember that things here are dangerous, so I should try not to get shot. So I start going through my suitcase trying to figure out what to wear. In the army.

--cutscene--
The blond woman from before is Catherine Willows from CSI, and she's just entered a small abandoned shop among the army buildings. She's also in charge of this army thing. Inside the shop, she discovers that the villain (and her personal rival) has created a fake identity for himself and operated out of this shop while coordinating the kidnapping her daughter. She knows this because there is a poster of his face on the wall with his new identity. She gets angry and breaks a mosaic peacock ornament in the shop. This matches peacock feather headpiece that is in her hair... and she is wearing a blue empress gown.

meta-dream Tony: You're so gay. Even your dreams are gay.
--end cutscene--

As I'm figuring out what to wear from my suitcase in the bunk, I realize I'm going to have to go get food. What do they have in the army? I make up all these crazy things in cans and think, "I can't eat that, because I'm vegetarian. I hope they have something for me to eat. Wait a minute... I can't be in the army... they don't let gay people in the army!"

meta-dream Tony: It took you this long to remember that you are gay??

So I pull out my laptop and start to...

My alarm goes off. meta-dream Tony: I'll wake up in a minute, first I have to figure out how to get kicked out of the army for being gay. hits snooze...

So I pull out my laptop and of course there's wireless internet so I type into Google: How to get ~~dishonorably~~ discharged from the army for being gay. Then I decide that I don't need "dishonorably" and hit submit... and suddenly a different search engine pops up. With no results. So I try to go back to my home page, and this spammy "search engine" has taken over my home page and is opening lots of windows of itself.

"Stupid third-world internet..." I think to myself, and then, "Maybe the army doesn't allow you to search for how to be discharged on their networks!" I get back to Google and think, "I'm using Safari, and usually Macs aren't vulnerable to those kinds of manic Javascript pop-up spam..." and then, "Hey, this is a dream! I can get out of the army by waking up!"

real-life Tony: wakes up. Yay, I'm awake, and it's my real-life comfy bed! checks clock. Yay, I'm not late for work!

bring out the tiger in you!

2009-04-20T23:37:00.004-07:00

best birthday ever

So it looks like seven-year-old Kendra is going to receive the best birthday cake ever.

She's going to grow up to be a drag queen.

snarky as usual

2009-04-08T23:16:00.002-07:00

my rant about "traditional marriage"

100 years ago, you couldn't marry someone of a different ethnicity.

300 years ago, your wife was property and arrived with a bundle of goods from her family.

But 2000 years ago, I could marry another man and have our same-sex relationship acknowledged, peacefully, in any major culture around the world.

I'm all for "traditional" marriage, I just don't think most people go back far enough.

eep... now I'm bragging.

2009-03-28T14:48:00.003-07:00

tricks of the trade

I don't claim to have all the answers, but I have learned a few things. One of my favorite life lessons is that a little assertiveness can prevent a lot of silent suffering. As an example: I've seen a lot of respectable, well-educated adults get completely flustered when it comes to telemarketers. I've seen people take the phone off the hook and walk away, say hurtful things, fly into a tantrum, wait meekly and listen to the entire sales pitch with family members holding on the other line, or simply hang up. The telemarketers call back the next day, and the whole thing grows into a cycle of fear of answering your own phone.

I'm not sure how I started doing this, but somehow I learned to simply interrupt the telemarketer with, "I'm sorry, we don't take promotional calls at this number. Would you please remove this number from your list?" That's all it takes. Most of the people I've used this with have been very kind and gracious, and I never get the call again. And the telemarketer never sells my number to 15 of his best telemarketing buddies. In the one or two cases where people have persisted, I just inform them that there has been a mistake, they should not be calling the number, and they need to remove it from their database. Period.

It works.

I guess this is kind of a long way of introducing two assertiveness stories that Susannah linked in her blog this morning. I'm re-linking because frankly, both are awesome.

Kathrynt: "What's gonna work? TEAMWORK!"
Kathrynt: How to make an idiot shut up.

warning: cat medical TMI, not for the faint-hearted

2009-03-23T13:16:00.002-07:00

and.... it's back to the vet for Monty

As you may know, I sew from time to time. Before I got a cat, one thing people warned me about was that cats like to eat thread, and it can damage their digestive systems. There's nothing, these people warned, like having a thread sticking half-out of your cat's bottom and having to pull the rest of it out by hand. Nothing indeed.

Before I got Monty, I cleaned the house pretty thoroughly, trying to ensure that there was no leftover thread from the Steampunk costume project. On Saturday, as I was using my laptop and Monty was curled up next to me, my worst fears came true. I happened to notice a white thread poking out of Monty's butt. "Oh no," I thought, "Monty must have found a leftover thread somewhere and eaten it!" I knew at this point that I was going to have to pull the thread out.

I leaned in for a closer look, and much to my surprise, the thread squirmed and pulled itself the rest of the way out into Monty's fur. My 9th grade biology class came back in a rush: flatworm. I'd seen one in a petri dish. Flatworm!!! Ew.

Thanks to the magic of the internet, I discovered that this was probably a flatworm or roundworm, not a life-or-death situation for Monty. I called the vet and asked them to call me back Monday morning for an appointment. I spent Sunday pissing Monty off by periodically wiping worms off of his butt but refusing to cuddle with him or let him into the bedroom. And obsessively washing my hands.

I just got back from the vet, where I got a good lesson in tapeworms. First, the tapeworm had to come from fleas, which means from the shelter, since three months ago the vet started Monty on Frontline and today she confirmed that he's flea-free. Second, it's one tapeworm, sending off segments of itself with lots of tapeworm eggs that are wriggling out of Monty's butt, but there's no chance of re-infection because there needs to be an intermediate flea vector. (This has not stopped me from a rigorous routine of cleaning until the tapeworm is gone and gone.)

Finally, the tapeworm-removal injection that the vet gave Monty was a bit uncomfortable. We are home now, but Monty is itching at his sides and when I listen to his tummy, there are small gurgling sounds. The vet told me that either I wouldn't see anything unusual, or that Monty was going to vomit up a tapeworm. (I told her that I loved the scale between "nothing unusual" and "vomiting a tapeworm.") I assume that the alternative is that the tapeworm will end up in the litterbox, and I'm cheering for that one. Both the vet and her tech (both of whom were really kind and awesome) got that scientist's look of excitement on their faces as they invited me to bring the tapeworm into their lab, if I found it. My thought process: "grody, grody, grody, cool!, grody, grody, grody!"

So now I'm sitting at home with Monty, working from home and waiting for him to vomit up a tapeworm. Or not. (Please, not.) The good news: Monty is up to 7 lbs, which is double his weight from December. My little boy is growing up! Now if he would just stop hanging with the wrong crowd....

do not tempt my ire at 5:30am with bad poetry

2009-03-11T05:32:00.003-07:00

the things that truly matter

We all have our causes, and I am no different. There are things that I would like to see achieved in my lifetime: equal rights throughout the globe for queer people, widespread adoption of solar and other renewable energy sources, and Wikipedia neutrality. Just now, I have struck a blow for the latter.

I have been up most of the night, alternately sneezing and coughing so hard that it hurts my lungs, waiting for the antibiotics to kick in and make me a radiant dewdrop again. Even though the kitten was very sweet and kept me company through my tossing and turning and coughing fits, I eventually realized that I wouldn't be sleeping any more tonight. I began wandering the internet, and since all roads lead to Wikipedia, I eventually went from the Stonewall Riots to amazing queer activist Sylvia Rivera to Ellen Degeneres.

At the bottom of Ellen's article, after all of the descriptions of her achievements, awards, professional history, and estimated net worth, there was a half-sentence which mentioned that her life had recently been commemorated in a poem by a company I had never heard of. Still, if this honor had made it into a Wikipedia article, I assumed it must have been significant. I clicked the link to the tragically-named company, and found a self-indulgent advertisement masquerading as an encyclopedia article. The article includes a sample poem which was presumably custom written as a gift for Martha Stewart. I enlarged the image to its maximum resolution and read the poem.

Remember in second grade when you would write a poem about someone by spelling out their name vertically and then selecting a word that begins with each letter? This simple format has been elevated by an "American poet" in these "personalized poetry masterpieces" so that each letter begins a line with multiple words. That rhyme. Except when it's inconvenient.

Look, far be it from me to discourage an aspiring artist from exploring their craft. I don't expect every modern wordsmith to follow the old conventions of classical meter. But if you are going to graffiti across several people's biographic articles that you sent them a "masterpiece" from an "American poet", and if you are going to support those statements with links to your promotional videos on YouTube, do yourself a favor. Count your fucking syllables. Don't bring your trashy excuse for couplets (at least the ones you felt like attempting) all up in my free encyclopedia that anyone can edit at 5:30am after a night of no sleep unless you expect to get served. And don't make up an award so you can send your crappy product to Oprah and then list it in her Wikipedia article as a significant milestone in her life.

The offending lines have been removed from several biographic articles. This has been the most Wikipedia fun I've had since I added a [citation needed] to the sentence, "She has helped many people and is just all around amazing." It's going to be a beautiful day.

crumbling piece by piece

2009-03-08T23:02:00.002-07:00

childhood illusions

I miss the 80s. I was young, and my idea of heaven quite literally was an Atari 2600 and a glass of chocolate milk. (This was the treatment I expected in the afterlife, no joke.) As I've grown older, certain pillars of my vault of cherished childhood memories have started to crumble, thanks to the internet. The animation in Scooby Doo is not nearly as photorealistic as I remember. Pac Man, where I thought the ghosts were semi-random, actually can be beaten by memorizing a series of patterns for each board.

The latest in this series of crushing realities came to me because I've been sick all weekend, and an unusual chain of events had me looking up Peter Tomarken of Press Your Luck in Wikipedia. Well. I always loved Press Your Luck. I always wondered why it was so hard for the players to get $5000 + and spin (apparently they didn't have my Atari 2600-honed reflexes). Well today I discovered the sinster truth: in 1984 Michael Larson used a VCR to memorize the "random" patterns on the board, go on Press Your Luck, and win over $100,000. Apparently there were only 5 patterns to memorize.

Watching this video struck me with a couple of realizations... First, I don't play nearly enough video games any more, because that flashing square moves much faster than I remembered. Second, I always take random number generators for granted, but this is an extreme example of why programmers these days try to be meticulous about the seeds of their random generators. And finally, game show contestants from the 80s are terrifying. I mean... just the glasses alone on the guy on the right... luckily they had a reunion episode in 2003 with the original players so we can see how they aged.

As for Michael Larson, Wikipedia states that the "real estate investment" that he mentions on the show actually turned out to be a Ponzi scheme, and he lost a good chunk of his money that way. The rest was stolen, and then the man died of cancer.

On that cheery note, I'm going to get some chocolate milk and take my old-school games emulator for a spin... just not Pac Man.

lemon ginger tea

2009-03-07T12:15:00.002-08:00

sick like elvis

I am sick. Again. Bleh. My immune system is usually quite strong, but the past two winters I have been sick much more than usual. At least the stuffy head and congestion is yielding to the evil sore throat... it's nice to rotate symptoms, because at least it makes me feel like the virus is running its course.

Monty has been very cute and patient about the whole thing. He's 7 months old now... I think he's going to be a tiny kitty.

Now that it is March, I'd like to start thinking about my creative projects for the upcoming year. I have a few ideas... and I don't want it to suddenly be October and I've done nothing at all.

Okay, clearly the sickness is making me too delirious to write a coherent blog post. Time for more tea.

(I just learned what that phrase means... to read somebody)

2009-02-27T00:41:00.004-08:00

I know it's late, but I'm in the mood to read some people

I love Monty, but he's becoming a serious problem. "Kitten" has become my default word for "cute", so much that I called a friend's dog "Kitten!" last week. In that context, "Kitten" was an enormous black greyhound.

I've also been singing a song to Monty:
Kitten's drag race
Start your engines!
Kitten's drag race
May the best kitten win!

Which brings me to my next subject.... RuPaul's Drag Race! O.M.G. this is a phenomenon that just keeps getting better. Sometimes when I am sitting at work I just want to look at people and tell them, "The time has come to lip sync for your life!" Mostly in the spirit of archiving my thoughts for later, I want to give a quick, spoiler-free read on each of the queens.

Akashia: This is a serious case of bad behavior as a a defense mechanism, and it poisons everything. With Akashia's bad attitude, Ru could never, with integrity, recommend her for professional gigs. I was moved with pity when she said, "Reading was never my strongest suit..." after she seemed half-illiterate in one challenge.

Bebe: The judges hit it right on the head when they talked about her presence, physical grace, and dignity. She started off a bit invisible, but now she seems like a good candidate for the win. Cameroon! Pet Peeve: sometimes when Bebe's posing, she makes a bug-eyed-and-sucking-lemons face that makes her seem both surprised and horrified. Not pretty.

Jade: Super pretty, and great when she moves or dances. Twice in a row, though, she seemed to miss the intent of the challenges completely. To raise money for AIDS, you need to say a bit more than "I am raising awareness for various epidemics and stigmas that affect my community" in your commercial.

Nina Flowers: She's super fun and creative, but also very intuitive. I feel like she's avoided having to do some of the challenge tasks well because she's making them fun, but ultimately that might not be enough to win.

Ongina: This girl had me crying this week. I love her intelligence and quirky creativity, and she adapts well to what's being asked of her in each challenge. She'll do well.

Rebecca: A prime example of my bad taste in men, Rebecca's my favorite and the prettiest one. She seems to be getting the "villain edit" though, so maybe she's really a meaniepants. Compare her crying moment to Ongina's. Bad guy or no, Rebecca needs to fill up the stage more with her persona... she's not going to win this contest by being demure.

Shannel: If you've been a professional drag artist for 15 years, does that mean you started doing paid gigs at 14? Really? This is a serious case of "egotism as defense mechanism" and she's really abrasive to me. My fear is that they are going to try to make her into the one who "listens and grows and is on a journey" and take her all the way to the final... Where is my mute button? Like Jade, Shannel seems to miss the point of some of the challenges, or she's too set on doing her own thing to actually do the challenge.

Tammie: People keep making a Bette Davis comparison but I think it's a bit more Lucille Ball. There's a lot of humor and quirkiness there, although I'm not sure how many challenges in this competition will be opportunities for comedy to shine, in part because we are following Ru's career and she's not a comedian at all.

Victoria: Like Shannel, is hung up on how long she's been a professional. She keeps saying how much "training" the other girls need. Why come on a show called "Drag Race" if you insist that you are not a drag queen but a "gender illusionist" ? Seems a bit stuck in the past... but successful artists re-invent themselves as the times change.

I have a new favorite show

2009-02-05T11:56:00.002-08:00

in which I slowly get digested by the media

I don't watch much TV... really^*.... but thanks to Wil Wheaton, I discovered that Batman: the Brave and the Bold is actually quite enjoyable. And it's rekindled my secret desire to do a Firestorm costume. sigh.

Today's biggest thank you goes out to Tom and Lorenzo, my favorite Project Runway bloggers, for pointing out Ru Paul's Drag Race on Logo. OMG. Let me repeat, OMG. I only saw the first episode, but it was Next Top Model crossed with Project Runway and when someone is about to get eliminated: "It's time to lip synch for your life!"

The whole premise... the execution... it's amazing. If anything, the drag queen contestants aren't up to the challenge. I mean... clearly you are going to get Ru Paul with this. But Ru Paul in reverse man-drag as Tim Gunn??!? Glasses, jacket, pink tie?

I may need to buy this on DVD.

^*Only Battlestar Galactica, CSI: Miami, and some reality creativity show, like Project Runway or So You Think You Can Dance....

the hateful and the cute

2009-02-03T17:03:00.003-08:00

two separate tidbits

Someone just sent me a link to Prop 8 maps, which shows people and business who donated in support of Prop 8, which took away same-sex marriages in California. Each donor shows up as a pin on a Google map, complete with amount(s) donated and professional information. My favorite so far is the man in Alameda who lists his occupation as "Social Justice Coor." I've also found employees of Google, Yahoo, Apple, Sun, Adobe, and more... I can see donors are afraid that a tool like this might be used in a witch hunt against them. I don't have any plans to harass these people, but I do find the statistics and demographics to be very interesting. For all the hype there's been about Prop 8 supporters in Salt Lake City, I think it's especially fascinating to compare the Salt Lake City map to the San Jose map, for example.

In cuter news, Monty is still having trouble with mirrors. A few days ago, he had the following exchange:

"Hey, it's another cat!" *arches back*

"Hey, that cat is arching his back at me!" *runs away*

...he comes back to the same mirror a few minutes later.

"Hey, it's a cat in the mirror! But I know that cat is me."

"Hey, there's a tail behind me in the mirror!"

*turns around and sees own tail* "Hey! It's right behind me!" *runs away*

warning: yucky kitten content ahead

2009-01-17T01:29:00.002-08:00

grodiness that only a mother could love

So, as I may have mentioned before, Monty is a bit... different. He was born feral, and he still does some of the things that may have kept him alive in the wild. Most cats will wake you up at an ungodly hour begging for food, but Monty just starts hunting and pounces on insignificant things like dust or shadows or nothing. Most cats, when you give them wet food from a can, will eat the whole thing immediately. Monty will eat a bit of it and then ration it out for later; in the meantime he tries to bury it for safekeeping by pawing at the hardwood floor. In the same spot. Every day. Twice a day.

Most cats, if their litterbox is not clean enough, will use the carpet or some other inappropriate place. Today, Monty was acting crazy. Really super crazy, hiding and pouncing and scrambling around and meowing while I did some chores. Any time I tried to touch him, he was all claws. He also had eaten all of his dry food, which is actually very unusual. So part of today's chores was the 1x/week complete change of the litter, so I cleaned out the box completely and put in new litter. A few minutes later, Monty goes in there, and starts digging and digging all the way to the bottom in a couple of spots. Then, right in front of my eyes, he made the biggest, most enormous, stinkiest poo I have seen to date. So this was a valuable lesson for me: if Monty doesn't think the litterbox is pristine enough, he doesn't use another spot, he just allows himself to get constipated until I clean the box.

...

Since we are already talking about poo (hey, I warned you!), I will confess that one time while scooping the poo I found another extraordinary specimen. One end was shaped like a normal poo, but the other end flared off into many sharp spiky branches, each the same thickness as the original poo. It looked like a hydra or a caltrop or something. This leads me to conclude that either a) Monty had a really unhappy experience with that one, or b) Monty was trying to sculpt a model of a tree using the raw materials that he had available. I am, frighteningly enough, more comfortable with the first option.

red and green make blue

2009-01-07T11:22:00.004-08:00

a new friend!

Lookie who I adopted from the SPCA a couple of weeks ago!

I love him to pieces. He's super soft and cuddly, likes to play, and never wakes me up to feed him. I named him Monty, after Montecore, the white tiger who attacked Roy Horn of Siegfried and Roy. Monty was born feral, which means he had a few issues with fear and undersocialization when I first got him, but I've slowly exposed him to larger and larger rooms and he's pretty confident now. The only times he gets scared are when he's on the prowl and something (usually me) moves unexpectedly, or when he surprises himself by looking at the mirror.

"Who's this other cat in my territory?" *arches back angrily*

"OMG he's arching his back at me! Evil other kitty!"

...

Other than that, he's quite smart. He also gets very clawful and bitey at night, so he's not allowed in the bedroom any more when I'm asleep. Of course this means half the time I try to sleep on the couch so he can cuddle with me if he's not feeling rambunctious. Also... his adult teeth are starting to come in, and the teething process is making him very sensitive and bitey.

White cats with blue eyes are genetically predisposed toward deafness, but Monty doesn't have this problem. There are few clues that he's got some mix going on, like the 10 black hairs on the top of his head (I call it his mohawk) and the fact that his eyes reflect differently:

One red and one green! If anyone knows what causes this... I'd love to hear it.

And finally... after ~4 years of having this layout for my blog, I finally decided to write some PHP code so that the archives calendar gets generated automatically. And... it works! Yay! ... maybe I'll fix the comments one day. heh.

not your run of the mill holiday elf...

2008-12-16T02:05:00.002-08:00

a little me just like me

Lookie what I got today from figureprints.com !

I really love the detail on it... the ears, the eyebrows, the fingertips, the fabulous hair.

OMG long Warcraft diatribe, read at your own peril

2008-11-18T13:29:00.000-08:00

bartle types

A friend recently directed me to Joi Ito's talk on World of Warcraft, which in turn led me to read more about Bartle Types and the four personalities of gamers. I'm not-so-secretly interested in game design, and the idiosyncrasies of Warcraft have made me very interested in the ways that game design affects the social structures that form in MMOs.

Richard Bartle, who was the author of the first MUD (called MUD, ironically), says essentially says that there are four different motivations that people have for playing games. Some people need to explore, some people need to achieve, some people just want to socialize, and some people want to kill.... everything. (He then relates each one of these needs to a suit in a deck of cards: spades, diamonds, hearts, and clubs, respectively.) Okay. Underlying all of this is an unspoken need, at least in MMOs, to be recognized for doing each of these things. When you take their gamer personality test, it's not just about "Would you most like to do X?" but rather "Would you like to be well-known for doing X?" There's a bit of a difference, but the main point is that Warcraft gives people ample opportunities to fulfill the needs of each of these four areas. In fact, Warcraft does this so well that I might even argue that it was designed specifically to target these needs.

The problem I have here, honestly, is that at my core I am not one these four Bartle types. I am drawn to create things and to leave my personal mark on the game world. I want to customize everything; the look of my character, his clothes, his abilities, and his world. (I want to be really obnoxious and say that if the Bartle Types are the suits in a deck of playing cards, then Creators are the Major Arcana in a tarot deck, but I'm trying hard not to be that arrogant! Whee!) For me, the most rewarding experiences I've had with MMOs have been creating my own character and leaving my own imprint on the game world, like creating a house that was a scholar's library in Ultima Online, or designing islands for Puzzle Pirates. Joi Ito talks a little bit about this in the difference between Warcraft and Second Life, but by and large, the desire to create goes unnoticed in mainstream MMOs. Clearly, there is appeal for user-generated content in other parts of gaming (see Spore, Whirled, and Fantastic Contraption, just off the top of my head), but that hasn't made it over to the big MMOs. Warcraft forces people to think inside a very narrow box. Some people are very comfortable there, but I'm really waiting for something better to come along.

Since we are in diatribe mode, here are my 4 big suggestions for the game that I want to be playing instead of Warcraft. I stay because I've got RL friends who play, but realistically, these suggestions would make it so that I enjoy playing, rather than begrudgingly accept the limitations.

1) Character customization. On one level, this means simple allowances, like letting us choose the look of our outfit rather than having it be gear-dependent. Maybe, for example, winning that rare Tier 4 dungeon piece would unlock a new look or armor model in our wardrobe, but players would have some control over their looks instead of being forced into the mismatched thrift shop serious ugly that is traipsing all over Northrend right now. (The new Soul Caliber does this very well, buckos. Take notes!)

On a different level, though, this means allowing us to choose our abilities and design our own characters. Warcraft talents are an okay start, and some talent trees allow for a bit more class customization (like Druids that turn into scary owls if they do spell damage, or shadow Priests that become DPS instead of healers), but let's face it here, the classes and their builds are tight, rigid little boxes that we all get dumped into. There is very little to distinguish one shadow priest from another, one ret paladin from another, etc. Instead of classes, I would like to see characters that are assembled out of skills... As a first step, let new characters assemble their "class" by selecting any three talent trees they choose. "Core" abilities from the classes would be tied to their trees, and then there would be talent abilities, and hidden "synergy" abilities that come from having two talent trees together. For example, a character could be a "Warrior" but replace the Protection tree with the Mage's Fire tree... Now you've got a character who's essentially a melee class, but who has some fire abilities. His armor is weak, and his fire spells are probably weak (since he doesn't have other magic trees to boost his magic stats), but he probably has some synergy abilities like causing his sword to catch fire or having a localized fire effect as part of his sword whirlwind. This is the kind of character customization that I would like to see.

Player housing would be nice, too. That was one of the best parts of Ultima.

2) Eliminate levels. Make the game percentage-based.

Before I lose all of my credibility, let me just say that it seems like the developers are already heading in this direction. Instead of "restores 500 mana" we get "restores 3% of your maximum mana" in lots of abilities and spells in this expansion. I think what people are realizing, slowly, is that the game mechanics are fundamentally the same at levels 10, 20, 40, 70, and 80. You watch the bad guy's green bar go down and hope that yours stays up. We never say, "He's down to 5000 hit points," we instead say, "He's at 30%." So. If the game is based on percentages, why have levels?

The reason we have levels, primarily, is to make players feel better about their achievements. One of my friends, long after I quit playing the game that he played, used to brag about his stats to me. "I just got a sword that does 300 damage!" Out of context, what does that mean? Is that a lot of damage, or not very much at all? I was glad that my friend was excited about it, but it would have been more meaningful to me if he would say, "I can beat my enemy in 2 spells!" or 3 arrows or whatever. The fact is, that 300 damage sword was probably as well-balanced for my friend's new level as his old sword was at his old level.

For this vanity and the illusion of progress, the idea of levels puts enormous strain on the social structures of the game. In my RL circle of friends who play Warcraft, I know someone who plays for several hours every day, someone who splits her time between two different servers and is only around about half time, someone who used to play a lot but has recently been overwhelmed by work, and someone who only plays once a week or so, and mostly to socialize with us. The sad fact is that none of these people can play together. All of their current in-game goals are different, so if one person is doing the quests at their level, another is bored out of their mind. When I log in to play with my friends, I want to be able to actually enjoy playing with my friends.

Ultima Online didn't have levels, it just had skills. Use a certain skill and over time, it would increase. New characters were still weaker than more experienced characters, but the scale wasn't so exponential and overwhelming that it discouraged people from playing together. You could take a new player into a more advanced dungeon filled with dragons, and even if they didn't contribute tons, they could still contribute something and survive. This approach would only give the developers a single point to balance to, instead of trying to devise crazy numbers all along the level scale. I think that we could make characters grow stronger as they progress down the talent trees without having to make it so that taking a two-week vacation means that you can never play with your friends again.

3) Dungeons. I'm sick of having only 5 dungeons that people do, and everyone has them memorized to the point that they fly through on auto-pilot. Dungeons are supposed to be adventures.

In Diablo, the dungeon gets auto-generated out of building blocks the first time you enter. Similarly, I would love to see code where an instance gets dynamically assembled out of building blocks based on the number of people in your party and the difficulty settings. Maybe entering the snow cave instance one day will give you a big main cavern filled with Yeti, and the next day it will give you a series of small caves connected by corridors and overrun by spooky cultists. Or something. I would love for dungeons to be a chance for players to explore and use their skills and be rewarded, rather than mindless regurgitation of a series of known obstacles and Wowwiki's strategies to defeat them.

4) Loot. Loot kills friendships. In most guilds, you are in a subgroup with people of your own class, who are often your little clique within the guild. Except when the sword you've been eyeing finally drops off of the meanyboss. And everyone in your clique is trying to get it. Warcraft has more drama about loot, loot councils, DKP, loot ninjas, mains vs. alts, and need vs. greed than I ever, ever want to hear from a bunch of people who pretend they are elves on the internet.^* Ever.

My suggestion: in Dofus, when a group completes a dungeon together, the loot is awarded to each player automatically by the computer. I'd suggest something similar-- instead of having everyone roll or DKP or mud wrestle for that armor set piece, let the computer reward it automatically. Except... everyone who didn't get it instead gets a little increase on their "loot factor" somewhere in a cranny in a database. And, the next time that monster (or a similar one!) goes down, it makes a roll against each player's loot factor to see if they too can randomly get an armor set piece. If you kill a boss with 10 people who've never gotten the armor piece in the last 50 runs, there's a significant chance that all 10 of them will get the reward, independently of each other. You're competing against yourself instead of against your allies.

Also, I really really like the Badges and Tokens systems.... instead the "drop" being a class-specific piece when you don't have any of that class in your group (and seriously, Blizzard, the idea that your drop tables are simple random number generators is extremely unsophisticated and frankly, I am disappointed), let people decide which armor set and abilities they are working toward. And maybe, once in a long while, analyze a character's chosen talent trees and give them a custom object based on the synergies they have chosen. How cool would it be for the sword warrior with fire abilities mentioned above to one day find a flaming sword that boosts the things he's good at?

Okay, diatribe over. Still, I wanted to get these thoughts out of my system. This is probably why they don't let players create things in games very often.

^*All of my characters are elves. Shut it.

your turn!

2008-11-04T11:08:00.001-08:00

¡Ya voté!

I have officially voted. I don't really want to wait for the results; I just want someone to come onto the news and say, "Tony's votes are in, so here's what we are going to do." Even though I firmly believe in the importance of everyone voting, the process is still a bit unsatisfying. I wish that instead of just marking some spots on a card, I could add exclamation points, addenda, and commentary.

"Should the City of San Francisco blah blah blah etc?"

"No! Morans. That's a 50 DKP minus, and you lose a turn while you bring me some hot tea."

Since we have not yet conferred that level of power to the voting public, I mostly confine my ranting to my blog... and in this case, I'm using the Spanish bit from the "I voted" stickers, because the two exclamation points feel much more emphatic. I voted... take that! Eat it.

Please get out there and vote. And if you hadn't already guessed, I'd encourage you to vote No on Prop 8 in California.

it is happening again.

2008-10-22T15:04:00.003-07:00

it's that time again

I just got an e-mail in my inbox for my work's periodic blood drive. I've known several people over the years who were enthusiastic blood donors, and at one point, I even wanted to do this myself. Seeing my own blood makes me queasy, especially if it is outside of my body, and I would much prefer that it would stay put, thank you very much. Still, there's always a need for blood, and I count blood donors among the most courageous and generous private citizens around.

So, the request for blood came out today, along with the obligatory link to the website that says, among other things, that gay men can't donate blood. Nope. Not a drop. In fact, a quick internet search revealed that in 2007 the FDA renewed its prohibition for gay men to give blood, which was originally instituted in 1983 due to the blossoming AIDS crisis, even though now donated blood is thoroughly screened for HIV and hundreds of other things that you don't want to be passing along to people who receive the blood you donated. The only even remotely scientific rationale for this is that STIs travel faster in gay male communities, so the ban on gay men donating blood would "prevent" the transmission of a previously unknown blood-borne pathogen. Assuming that no one else ever catches the thing and goes to donate.

Which brings us to our next point, really... we are supposed to self-select out of donating blood. Have you ever had sex with a man since 1977, they ask, and then show us the door. So... what happens if I lie? "Why no, such a thing would be unimaginable!" I gasp, feigning shock. Does this mean that I get to donate blood? Does pretending to be straight streamline my blood past a series of tests that would detect problems that only gay men get? Here's my favorite: what if the poll worker notices my impeccable sense of style, flair for the dramatic, and lack of old football injuries? What if she finds out that I am a trapeze artist? What if she suspects that I'm lying about not being gay? Is she then obligated to throw my blood out? Is she entitled to make a judgement call?

This is institutionalized homophobia, underscored by the fact that even the Red Cross calls the rule "medically and scientifically unnecessary."

So what do I do, when these little e-mails come out? Honestly, I take solace in the fact that being gay is protecting me from seeing my blood forcibly removed from my body, even if it is going to a better place. I enjoy the small comfort that discrimination is preventing me from being asked to make a sacrifice that would be difficult, if rewarding. The alternative is to descend into a frothing rage, which is not something I like to do in a professional environment; I reserve outbursts for my blog.

preview photos are in

2008-10-21T07:58:00.003-07:00

steampunk, day 001

quick photo set
lots of previews

Enjoy!

...I gave at the office! har.

2008-10-14T15:08:00.003-07:00

on another note

I made a donation today to the campaign to defeat California Prop 8. I feel that in this historic moment, if I am going to run at the mouth as frequently as I do, I should also put my money where my mouth is, so to speak. I hope that you find the time to do the same.

a buncha random thoughts

2008-10-14T13:52:00.003-07:00

steampunk, day 00

We had our photo shoot on Sunday. Good gravy was it a lot of fun. Definitely worth driving to Vallejo at 7:30 in the morning... of course that was helped by having a strawberry scone in one hand and a hazelnut mocha from Peet's in the other. Nummy!

Here's a preview photo from Kim. This is all you're going to get until we get the real teasers in 3 weeks and the full set in 8, so please ration out your enjoyment until then.

Ed Pingol was amazing. He posed us like superheroes, and then he was overflowing with so much enthusiasm that several times he stopped shooting to show us the photos on his viewscreen. We did a "Mighty Ducks V" which looks suspiciously like the promotional shots for Heroes on NBC, and we did trading card-style solo shots, and we did some fun precarious shots on a bunch of old girders. I'm glad that I had practiced walking in heels, because once we started climbing on rusty narrow things, it was all I could do to not fall. I also did a good job of not clocking anyone with my cane (although Sho almost got it once, oops) and I mostly didn't crack up inappropriately during the shoot, except once with Aimee and once when I turned around and Lydia was pointing her gun directly at my face. She totally out-villained me.

A quick note on the bionic arm.... I really did make one the day before the shoot, but it had a serious problem where the paint flaked off really quickly, exposing white plastic underneath. It also hurt a lot to wear, so I am glad that I didn't try to wear it for 2 hours for this shoot... I might have lost my arm entirely. Maybe I'll try re-making it, but honestly, the costume doesn't really need it.

My secret hope: that the top jacket chain isn't stuck behind my corset in all of the Ed Pingol photos. I dunno when during the day that happened, in part because I couldn't look down, but I'm going to be really annoyed if my jacket is permanently askew.