Blackmoor Vituperative

Prediction: In five hundred years, our current system of “intellectual property” (copyright, trademarks, patents) will be considered an archaic affront to basic human rights, rather like “creative feudalism”. It will be mentioned alongside multi-level-marketing and trickle-down economics as one of the peculiarly unchallenged scams of our era. People of the future will wonder how we could have possibly been so stupid.

Just had my heart attack moment of the day. I was moving this concrete planter (it’s about halfway to its intended new home, in this photo). I got it to this point, when suddenly a grey bullfrog-shaped critter leaped from right in front of me, in the middle of the the planter, away to the bushes on the right. And then another!

“HOLY FREEZING SHIP!” I shouted (except that’s not what I shouted). The camouflage on bullfrogs is AMAZING, I thought to myself. I had no idea they were sitting right in front of me.

So I grabbed the sides of the planter, and just barely budged it when ANOTHER ONE jumps away.

“FRIEND!” I shouted (except that’s not what I shouted). I looked closely at the dirt. How could there have been another bullfrog right there? As I was looking, ANOTHER ONE jumped away.

It was at this point that I noticed two things. First, two of the ones that had jumped away were slowly hopping away from me in different directions, and they were definitely not bullfrogs. They were little bunnies. Second, that fuzzy looking spider-webby looking area on the dirt, covering a hole (I now realized), was squirming a little bit, like there was at least one more debating whether to flee the giant monster (me).

“Well, fudge,” I said (and that is actually what I said).

What was I to do? I briefly considered trying to catch the little bunnies and put them back. Yeah, right. Even if I did manage to catch one, it would probably just run away again. More likely, I would only succeed in making them run even farther away from where mama bunny expects to find them later this evening.

So I took these photos and then left the planter where it is. Bunnies have been dealing with creatures much meaner than me for a very long time, and I am sure that mama bunny has a plan for situations like this. So I am not too worried about the little bunnies. The planter will just have to stay where it is for a while.

Also, I think I sprained my wrist.

Watched the Captain America movie from 1990 last night. You know, it really wasn’t all that different from the 2011 film. Yes, the 2011 film is better, but the 1990 film hits a lot of the same beats, and it has a good cast. It’s a lower budget film, but it’s certainly not a bad film. I haven’t seen it since I first saw it at the theatre in 1990 (YES, I DID), but to my surprise, I still like it. It still tickles me that the Red Skull’s minions are all beautiful young Italians.

FUN FACT! Darren McGavin plays an American General. The World War 2 era younger version of McGavin’s character is played by Bill Mumy. Danger, Karl Kolchak! Danger!

I think it’s telling that the only people in the Star Wars movies that treat robots as though they were people are Luke (who is desperately lonely) and Anakin (who is a mass-murdering, child-killing psychopath). To everyone else, the fact a machine can talk means no more than it does for you and I when our car tells us the door is open or our phone tells us that we have an appointment in 15 minutes.

That a robot has a red arm means exactly as much as the fact an old yellow Fiat has a red door.

[vur-choo siɡ-nl-ling]
verb
gerund or present participle

1. a phrase used by sociopaths when trying to explain the behaviour of someone who has empathy.
    
   “she is collecting cans of food for the hurricane victims, but that’s just virtue signaling”
   “my rape jokes were funny, but I got fired because my supervisor was virtue signaling”
   “people who call Donald Trump a bigot and a sexist are just virtue signaling”

One of the first things I did when I bought my Hyundai Tiburon in 2003 was to replace the stereo and install an mp3 player in the trunk (mounted on the back of one of the back seats). It was a full size 20 GB hard drive that connected to the “head unit” (the stereo in the dash board) via the interface that was originally intended for a trunk-mounted CD changer (basically a very long extension cord). Imagine that: 20 GB of music in a space the size of a large hardback book! Keep in mind that this was a year before the iPod was released: we are talking some cutting edge stuff here.

A couple of years later, I upgraded from that beast to a Creative Zen Touch portable mp3 player, which held as much as the Neo did in a fraction of the size. I replaced the stereo with one that had an auxiliary jack in the back, and custom-wired a headphone jack into one of my blank dash buttons. As the years passed, I eventually upgraded to an 80 GB iPod Touch (running Rockbox firmware — I have no love for iTunes). 80 GB in a package the size of a pack of cigarettes? Astounding!

Now it has come time to upgrade again. This time, the stereo has USB ports in the back that can support a standard thumb drive. I removed the headphone jack from the dash, and installed USB ports in the ash tray (which is normally closed). Into one of those USB ports, I now have a 128 GB flash drive: six times as much music storage as the Neo 35, in a widget the size of a nickel, hidden in my ash tray.

Freaking amazing.

Watched the first half of a movie called “Trainwreck”. The only funny lines were spoken by a big beefy weight-lifter looking guy (IMDB tells me his name is John Cena), but he was only in the first fifteen minutes or so of the movie. After that… not remotely funny. Not even interesting. Watching the sandwich artists at Subway put together an Italian sub is more entertaining. It’s not even interesting in an “oh my god this is horrible, who thought this was a good idea” way, like that Reese Witherspoon/Sofia Vergara movie “Hot Pursuit” (which is truly terrible, and I do not recommend you watch it). It’s just dull. I started checking the time at 18 minutes. At an hour, we decided to “take a break”.

It’s going to be a long break.

There is a computer game called Baldur’s Gate. It’s a fantasy adventure game based on Dungeons & Dragons, along the lines of Lord Of The Rings. An expansion for the game was released recently, and in that expansion there is a minor character named “Mizhena” who, if you engage with them and repeatedly ask them questions, will eventually tell you that they are transgender. If you are unfamiliar with Dungeons & Dragons, you might not realize that transgender characters have been a part of that game world for 30 or 40 years. It’s not new. It is, however, new to the Baldur’s Gate game.

As a result, a small segment of the Baldur’s Gate fan base revealed themselves to be vile bigots. These bigots created a “controversy”, objecting to the inclusion of this character in the game.

This “controversy” comes at an interesting time. Today, April 8 2016, is the 48th anniversary of the broadcast of the Petula Clark Show on NBC. Petula Clark was a very popular singer at the time, having fifteen consecutive Top 40 hits in the USA, starting with “Downtown” in 1965. Clark was joined on her special by Harry Belafonte, who had made Calypso and Caribbean music popular throughout the world with his singing in the 1950s. During a duet toward the end of the show, Clark touched Belafonte briefly on the arm. Doyle Lott, a vice president from Chrysler, the show’s sponsor, was present at the taping. Lott objected to the “interracial touching”. He pressured NBC to remove the “forced” contact between Clark and Belafonte, to remove this “social justice” from the show. However, Petula Clark stuck to her guns, and the special was broadcast with the “controversial” touching. When the show aired, it received high ratings.

It’s been over 40 years, and the Doyle Lotts of the world are still manufacturing controversies to defend their bigotry. I think it is right and just that people are enjoying the music of Petula Clark and Harry Belafonte to this very day, while Doyle Lott has been reduced to a footnote in the history of civil rights.

There are many cases where people of good will can and do disagree. That is usually the case, in my opinion. However, these cretins who wail and moan and gnash their teeth any time they see someone other than themselves represented are not people of good will. They are the bartender who says, “We don’t serve their kind here.” They are the prejudiced priest who refuses to heal the half-orc in the party. They are the pig-faced sheriff that says, “We don’t take kindly to outsiders around here.” They are the craven peasant accusing a midwife of witchcraft. They’re the corrupt king who doesn’t want the adventurers to fight the dragon because it’s never his daughter that gets sacrificed to it.

These are not people of good will. They are not defenders of the sanctity of gaming. They are, by their own choice and by their own hand, villains.

I have created a chart for Trail Of Cthulhu, showing when it is a good idea to spend Stability to improve a Stability roll, and when it isn’t (note: it usually isn’t). Maybe this will be useful to someone.

For myself, I do not think I will use this mechanic as written. I think that I will use the following house rules.

1. Players can’t “spend” on Stability rolls.
2. A player may choose for their character to lose half* of the potential Stability loss instead of rolling.
3. A character’s Stability can’t go to -12 unless it is already -11. The character’s Stability has to drop to -11 before it can go any lower. (This gives the character one last chance to survive.)

That’s orders of magnitude simpler, and will always work out better for the character than the standard “spend” rules.

(* Rounded in the character’s favor. Always round in the character’s favor.)

This afternoon’s matinee at Castle Blackmoor … Tomorrowland (2015).

It’s actually quite a bit of fun after it gets started. Unfortunately, it takes a full half-hour to get started. We were close to giving up on it. So if you’ve not seen it, give it a try, just don’t expect the movie to actually start until about a half-hour after the opening credits.