The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

A friend of mine has started up an Ironclaw campaign that he wants me in on. I’d love to, though my schedule is shitty! He’s working things out to have me there, though, so I am ALL IN. Or something like that.

The system seems fine enough, as far as RPGs go. The rolling doesn’t seem too stupid, which is always a plus. What really caught my imagination, though, was some of the potential careers for player characters. I could make a Functionary, who is basically a bureaucrat in charge of running a household or business. So my special powers would be involved in being literate and knowing math. This appealed to me. Like, for serious. How ridiculous for someone like that to be in an adventuring party! How completely awesome for that to be the case! Of course I made one immediately, drawing up an interesting deer lady good at math and business and talking.

Tonight, my friend asked me to help him with some more background for my character. My character has the noble blood perk, and he just kind of asked me a simple question: what noble house did I belong to?
I, of course, had no answer, because the way I build characters is just… well, it’s very me.

In general, I create a character, by which I mean I start fitting together a list of rules and feelings this character has in order to be able to make decisions. This is “character building” to me, and even as I was filling out stats in this game, that’s what I was doing. Coming up with this person’s values and ideals. I would then, normally, just let this character loose, let them bump up against stereotypes and eventually non-stereotypes to build up how they react and who they are. They tell me by making decisions. This also ends up building the world, because they tell me what’s going on in the world and why things are important to them. They bring the world into reality.

This is why I rarely work in established universes like the one in Ironclaw. Because I don’t have simple answers to simple things when the character is made. Those are created as I go along, organically. Sure, in editing I make it all work out better, but I just feel like this makes more… real people, you know? I get the person to the state where I can talk to them and have a conversation with them before I do things like decide who their mother is and so on and so forth.

I know this isn’t the only way to do it. Armadox (the previously-mentioned friend) walked me through some stuff in the universe and we came up with some in-world answers to these simple questions that set up more potential interesting character interactions, which I’m all for. He also put up with me as I made sure these in-world things didn’t interfere with the voice I had built in my head for the character, which must have been frustrating, but we got it done. Certainly, sometimes I wish I could make characters like that, where everything just fits in like a glove. As handy as it would be, though, it really isn’t me. I can fake it, but I don’t put enough heart into it.

This, though, we worked out in an awesome way, and I am excited to run the character on Sunday. I am going to math the shit out of things.

For a dream that spawned such vivid emotion, it sure did start out stupid. Anyway, here, let me tell you about it, I suppose!

I was with Essner in a mall, but it was not a normal mall. Every single “store” in the mall was actually a fancy restaurant/comedy club. There was basically every kind of food you could want. I remember a Mexican one, an Americana kind of restaurant, and a really futuristic-looking mostly bar kind of place. However, every single one had a stage, and every single one had a different comedy act performing for some reason. It was a pretty busy mall restaurant place.
I had apparently just finished up doing a performance at one of these restaurants. (Apparently I was a professional comedian. Who knew?) I had then met up with Essner for some reason I was not aware of. We were talking and walking through the mall, looking at the restaurants. Maybe we were searching for somewhere to eat?

Then, out of the shadows, someone or something jumped me. I got stabbed.

Essner and someone from a nearby restaurant pulled me off of the floor and into some sort of apartment. (Apparently there were also apartments above this mall of restaurants. The person who helped Essner carry me had some level of medical training or something, and basically just flat-out told me that this was fatal, and I wasn’t going to be alive for much longer.

This news felt incredibly real. I immediately pulled out my cell phone, and proceeded calling people and telling them I loved them. I made my mother promise to bury me in a dress and take care of Brer. I called my brother, my father, friends. I didn’t call Essner, because he was there, but I talked to him. I didn’t call Brer in the dream, because I was saving him for last and was just going to keep him on the phone until I was gone, and the dream didn’t get that far Most of these conversations had me crying.

Then I woke up, and I kept crying. I cried in bed for a long time. I texted my family to tell them I loved them, and I just let it all out. The feeling of needing to say goodbye, of not abandoning people like that… it was just overwhelming. It was really less the me dying part. That’s, you know, a thing, but I’ve been suicidal before, so it’s not very, like, odd feeling to me. I just found myself terrified that I couldn’t say goodbye to everyone, and that my dying would cause problems for everyone that I couldn’t fix. Frankly, that’s what always stopped me from trying, way back in the past.

In any case, it really shook me up. I’m fine now. I’m not going anywhere. But just… goodness. Dreams do not normally hit me like that. Or at all, really. Mm.

I ended the week of poetry. If you came here for a poem: TOO BAD. No poem for you! Ha, totally burned.

But seriously, that was an interesting experiment for me. It felt… nice. I really did feel that compulsion to write like I feel the compulsion to write these blogs every day, and I was thinking all day about what the poem I was going to bang out was going to be. Sometimes I got caught off-guard, and did something completely different, but, you know. I was working. Planning. There was creative output to it. That’s… really neat.

One of the reasons I always loved doing workshops was the demand that I create something. That demand made it happen. I so often had plans and ideas that I wasn’t putting down on paper, and suddenly I had a deadline where I had to. I loved that. (I also loved discussing all that stuff with like-minded people, too, of course.)

This really worked that way! None of the poems I wrote were totally great, perse. (I liked the one about the shoes.) But they were all certainly poems. I’ve written worse first drafts in the past. I created! It felt good.

Basically, what I’m saying is, you’re probably going to be seeing more poetry here. Not all the time: during the experiment, I really did wish I could have written some old fashion style bloegs. You’ll still see them too. But I’m thinking maybe a poem a week? Maybe more if I feel inspired? I don’t know. It was nice to live up to my screen name again. I think I’ll keep that up.

Yesterday I said “Screw You Work And Potential Sickness!” and went out to St. Louis with my brother for a day of fun and excitement! Oh my!

Basically, John Hodgman was coming to St. Louis to tell us about the end of the world, as well as signing copies of his new book, so we had to go! And go we did! We traveled up the interstate! I saw my psychologist! But that’s not the interesting part! It happened, though.

Then we decided to go waste time at the Science Center, and man, was that a disappointment. I hadn’t really been there for-serious in a long while, and it was just amazing how much was not there anymore. So much of the place has been gutted, and it really seems like they haven’t replaced that stuff with anything as far as exhibits go. Instead they put in a Build-A-Bear workshop (what?) and more spaces for them to sell tickets to little things at astoundingly high prices. I have such good memories of that place, and it just feels like it’s gone way, way downhill from when it opened when I was a child. Maybe some of that is nostalgia, and maybe not, but it really just seemed sad.

We left that place of sadness and went to the Art Museum instead. Neither of us had really been there, but it was actually pretty cool! We went downstairs where there was some sort of furniture as well as gigantic broadsword and armor exhibit. There was some really cool shit down there! Crazy swords and spears, super ornate armor, and just really amazing pieces of furniture. They even had these weird tiny “sample rooms” where you could see some of this old furniture in it’s “natural habitat.” It was pretty classy, and really lifted our spirits after the sadness of the Science Center. I really should go back there sometime. We only got to see one tiny part of one floor.

Then it was off to Red Robin, for a burger. I tried a Peppercorn burger. It was fine. I could see someone else really enjoying it. But I found it a bit odd, if edible. What threw me off, I think, was it was served on this Onion Bun? Which was just strange, and left the whole thing tasting weird. The little crispy onions should have been enough onion, right? Anyway, it was an experiment! I tried something, which I rarely do, so good for me.

We then rushed to see Mr. Hodgman. He was fantastic in person. Very funny, and very animated. He quoted from his book from memory in a way that made you feel like it was a prepared speech, and not a book excerpt, which is pretty awesome. There was also music. He played a ukelele, and hosted a sing-along. It was totally worth my time to come see him: it was basically a little two-hour show.
Afterwards, of course, he signed books. I worried about what I was going to say, and worried, and worried. Then, of course, we get up there, and Jonathan says something witty and fun without even trying, and I just try to ride his coattails and not look like the lame sister of a cool dude. But still, he was very awesome, and I thanked him for coming to St. Louis, because who comes to Missouri anyway? But he just stopped me with a “No, seriously, thank you for coming. Really glad you could make it.” And whether it was sincere or not, it certainly sounded that way. He is a classy dude, that John Hodgman.

So we got our traditional QT milkshakes and came home. I had a great day, and I am now the owner of a signed copy of That Is All, which is awesome. And now I will sleep.

It’s late, I’m exhausted, so you get to hear me bitch. Sorry about that.

Today sucked.

I don’t currently have the best job in the world or anything. Far from it. But I hardly ever hate it. I like most of the people I work with, and I enjoy being useful and doing my thing. I’m respected. It works really well. But some days, like yesterday, I really just fucking hate my job.
Let me just go over what happened.

I got up really early to go to work. I was tired, but work called! I got there, and apparently my shift had been moved. A note had been left in my mailbox, which I never check because it’s less a mailbox and more “where I keep the ad set supplies,” and there hadn’t been an ad set in awhile. So there was a big fuss about me showing up at the time I was scheduled instead of the time they moved me to without telling me. This wouldn’t be a huge deal, but it just bothers me that, if I had been anyone else, they would have called me, and there wouldn’t have been this stupid issue they were making such a big deal about.

Because I was there early, they moved me onto the truck, which I was not dressed for. I had dressed up kind of nice, wearing a new top I had bought the night before. I felt like this was hindering me, as I was trying damn hard not to get black from the boxes all over myself. Still, I didn’t slack off or anything. Things were happening. The shift was long, though, and I ended up unpacking freight in an area I had less experience with than most, away from all my friends to help the time pass.

After this, I ran straight home, took care of the puppy dog, and did work for class. I basically had time to figure that out before running to class and teaching. Class went okay, I guess, but shockingly, nobody in my class was familiar with Harry Potter. I had brought in an essay about Harry Potter, and they just did not get it at all. Phrases like “Cedric Diggory’s death in book four” completely confounded them. I didn’t expect them to be encyclopedias, but when you have plenty of context clues, shouldn’t your memory be jogged enough to at least go “Oh yeah, someone died in Goblet of Fire, right? Must be that guy.” Heh, I don’t know, I just figured everyone younger than me would be familiar with it. It was a shock.

I went home and ate then. This caused me to keep dozing off on the couch. I was pretty exhausted by that point already, but I had work to go to. I got up and went.

Work took forever. It was a huge ad, and we were being audited, so it took even longer than it should have. What’s worse, the store started playing Christmas music the moment we closed. This is even before Halloween was technically over at midnight. It was insane, and it didn’t add much to everyone’s demeanor. We eventually finished, very late. I was tired and cranky, but on the way out the door, it was pointed out that my new top has a hole in it. Fantastic! Fantastic. I tried to get some food from the drive-thru to eat my woes away, but I got trapped there for like 20 minutes waiting, so that was time well spent.

And now I’m here. Complaining. I didn’t much care for yesterday. Boo to you, Halloween. At least I have off today.

Tonight I went to an awesome party. And I didn’t even have to hire Party Pete.
Basically, Essner brought back the Halloween game, in the form of a scavenger hunt spanning Cape Girardeau and Jackson. There were questions, requested photos, and appeals to fuck with the other teams. It was well put together, and a quite fun time.

My team was Team Ghost, and we spent time rummaging through my parents’ house, driving to the Pony, and running around in the woods. One of the objectives was to take a picture of a whole other team, and we thought we saw a team coming in those woods! We actually hid in the bushes waiting to ambush them. It was a false alarm though. We drove a truck over a soccer field to take a picture of a wooden bridge. Layne ran into many fast food restaurants for ketchup packets. I ended up buying a bunch of candy, because each type of candy you had meant extra points. We also attempted to pass off Predator as a horror film. It was a fun time.
Our overall victory, though, came from finding the SECRET CATEGORY. Essner had hidden an extra set of questions in the CD case he manufactured, and we were the only team to find it, giving us an extremely strong lead, even though we didn’t complete everything in the category.
On the way back to the house to count up our points, we decided to have a flashlight rave. Josh turned his radio to the techno station, and a Jamaican man told us about all the sexy sistahs and sissy boys out there. We laughed, became Team Rave, and dedicated our victory to those sissy boys and sexy sistahs. It was only fair.

Afterwards, we stuck around and talked with everyone. Essner had these fucking amazing like… Chicken Parmesan Texas Toast things? So fucking delicious. I hadn’t had dinner, and ate like a million of them. Essner had also bought a fog machine, so there was fog. Some people roasted marshmellows. I had some weird conversations with people who hadn’t seen me in months and thus weren’t prepared for the whole me being a woman thing now very well. Of all people, though, I was most impressed at how well Dustin took it. He’s such a nice guy, but sometimes kind of clueless. But man, he just went “Oh, okay,” and it was fine from then on. Pretty awesome of him.

Anyway, it was a damn good Halloween party. A great night all around. Thanks, Essner, for putting that together. And internet, don’t forget that my team won. Because we totally did. Yep. We won Halloween by like 90 points.

I was asked the other day what I was writing. Of course, I haven’t written anything in awhile: work and moving and all that kind of sapped up all my time! I haven’t had time to do much of anything fun or constructive recently (though today’s day off helped that a bit, I suppose). I mean, I should be writing though, right? I’m someone who does that. Who makes poetry and whatnot. I should be producing creative material, right?

Anyway, after I explained this, I was told that “maybe you should cut back on the blog so I have more time to write serious-type stuff.” (That’s not actually a direct quote, but I put it in quotation marks anyway. That’s how I roll tonight.) It made me think.

The problem with giving up the blog is that the blog is a major source of “everything is okay” in my life right now. The fact that, no matter how stupid, I put a blog up there every single day means something to me, personally. This several years long at this point experiment with daily blogging has yet to fail. It says I can create a project, and actually stick with it for a meaningful length of time. The days I nearly go to bed without writing a blog are days where I remember, and am struck with fear that I might miss a day. I actually went to bed without writing earlier this year, and woke up at 4 am, raced to the PC, and wrote something so I could get back to sleep.
There’s also just this general sense of “someone might see this” that really motivates me to keep writing these stupid blogs. I don’t really think many people care about what I write here, but there are a few, and the fact that this is there, and my internet whatever, means I don’t want to fail. It makes that deadline real.

I rarely have deadlines for creative work. When I do, I do awesome things (See: book of poemtry I wrote) and whatnot. If I found a way to get myself writing on a deadline, I could probably do more creative work every week. But I’ll be honest: I don’t know how the fuck I made the deadline on this blog a day thing real. I don’t really understand how it went from something I just kind of wanted to do to a requirement that invokes the responses that occurred up top. Somehow I made that happen. Making that happen with creative work would be nice, certainly. Eventually I’d start cranking out something great, at least from time to time. I need to come up with a plan. I really do. I’d write creative shit and post it on here more often, like a poem every week or something, but I am told you are not supposed to do that, because then it is “published,” and then I can’t actually do anything with it. Which is frustrating, but so it goes. I don’t know. I haven’t decided what to do.

So what am I writing right now? I guess nothing. I have that short story that was supposed to be porn but now I think I can turn into something much better that I have a bad draft of. I have my next book of poetry vaguely outlined in my head, with characters. I’ve done one or two test poems on here from time to time. I really do want to do that. Alternatively, I’ve been thinking about it, and maybe that story is better told in a novel. I also still have my last novel attempt half-written, Every Other Day, I Love You, and I really do still like that story and would like to redo the whole thing and make it better. I want to write a sequel to a porn story I wrote. I need to do a lot of writing for my Festivus gift sometime in the next month. But what am I actively working on? Not a lot.

I should fix that. Is stopping this blog a way to do that? I’m not sure. I don’t think I’m going to, in any case. I love you blog. Never leave me.

Get out your dream interpretation manuals, because I had another vivid dream last night. This dream was weird in a lot of ways. For one, there was a lot of backstory in it. I felt I knew a lot about my “character,” who was me, but also was not me. I was still myself, and for part of it, I had the same friends, but my past was pretty different. It was also a dream where I distinctly remember me being female, which is always a good thing in my eyes. The events don’t really work too well if I wasn’t born female. It’s just nice that my subconscious is finally making that switch, instead of making me a genderless blob of a being like I always used to be. Finally, it’s just odd that, in this dream, imagry that I’m generally pretty okay with and tend to find fairly sexy, like puppy play and whatnot, was incredibly terrifying to me. I felt that fear. Odd. Anyway, here we go.

The first thing I remember was meeting at a big mansion type house with a bunch of people. I don’t really know who these people were: they were just friends of the owner. I apparently was too. He had a huge house, that had a huge grounds that were connected to many other buildings, lakes, buildings under the lakes, and so on, but we mostly stayed in the main house. I was spending a few weeks there as the owner’s guest. Apparently this was not the first time I had done this: we had all been there before. The owner was a rich dude, but he was also kind of a sleazebag. It was obvious that most of us, including myself, were simply using him to spend a vacation in some really obscene wealth. We were mostly free to do whatever we wanted, and we did. Most guests explored the huge grounds. I mostly stayed up in the little room I had claimed for myself, relaxed, slept, ate good food, and so on. I didn’t want to explore, for reasons that wasn’t clear to me at the time, but became clear later.

While staying here, the police arrived. It turned out the owner came into his obscene wealth by unscrupulous means, and they were doing a raid. All the guests scattered. Though I’d done nothing wrong, I got caught up in the rush and ran as well. I was being chased, and I headed out into the grounds. Each building I saw there filled me with fear. They were all fancy, in different styles. There was one which was under a man-made lake. However, they weren’t buildings: they were brothels. The grounds used to be, before the current owner bought it, a sex theme park of sorts, that had many, many sex slaves. The building I had been staying in was part of the area for guests, so it hadn’t inspired any fear in me. I hadn’t seen it. But apparently I had been a slave here, when it was open, and seeing the grounds I was used to caused me to have horrible flashbacks. I ended up having to hide in a building and run through an automated course for pet training that I had been through years ago. I was in tears. This was a bad situation for me. Traumatizing. I made it out, collapsing in the entrance to the building, and was eventually arrested by police officers. I told them what I knew, trying not to cry. I was eventually released for being co-operative and not being directly involved.

There was then a time jump. I was working at a store in a mall. This store was in a mall that catered to sex pet owners. This was apparently common in the world of my dream. People would come in with their pets on leashes, and it would make me shiver and shake uncontrollably. Nobody knew I had escaped that world. However, while I was trying to work, I was also attempting to organize some sort of mall-wide dinner event. It was going to be a big party, and I was trying to get everything set up. However, all the various store managers could not agree on what the main course would be, and it was all going to fall apart. Essner, Droid, Spaeth, and I were running around attempting to come to some sort of agreement with everyone so that the party could go on. We weren’t making much progress, but there was one person I knew could make a difference. However, ran a shop specifically for pet owners. I needed to go in to talk to him, but I couldn’t. I stood outside, frozen. I wished that one of my friends would show up and do it for me, but I was alone.

Then I woke up.

Yep, I have a strange, strange subconscious.

More ramblings, COMIN’ AT ‘CHA!

Flapjack did some sort of bad thing before I got to my dad’s birthday party. Jonathan and Shauna took him home. My mother was very upset. It’s a situation where it’s just really frustrating to experience. I mean, I totally get both sides. Jonathan and Shauna have to punish their dog how they see fit. It’s their decision. I’m not going to stand in their way, and I hope what they’re doing helps them. However, my mom constantly being on the verge of tears the entire time I am at the party is not something I want either. It’s something I would like to correct. I want my mom to have a good time. There’s no good way to be in the middle of this, not taking sides, AND find a solution, though. I certainly don’t know it. So I try to be nice to everyone without trying to stop everything. But it’s unfortunate. I wish I could find a way out.

In case you were wondering why Twilight Sparkle is totally my favorite pony, it’s because of shit like this.

I am really enjoying dressing up for work.
The whole concept still seems foreign to me. I’ve never liked looking nice. It made me look too masculine. I’ve always just been an asexual blob. But dressing up nice for work gives me confidence. I feel like I look good. Dammit, I do look good. I look good enough to say I look good. It helps me face all the people I have to deal with. They call my gender right almost always when I do. It makes work fun, instead of a chore. Well, I mean, it’s still work, which can be a pain. But it’s less of an emotional drain and more of a physical one, as it should be.
It just makes me wonder what else I can do. Cara keeps making suggestions. Normally I loathe clothing suggestions. But that’s because, in the past, they’ve been suggestions to make me look like something I wasn’t. While I initially dislike just about any suggestion like that, many of the things she’s telling me do grow on me. I should keep trying things. I can look good.

Back at my parent’s place, I only really watched television to fall asleep by. I’d put on whatever mindless bullshit was on adult swim and fall asleep. I’m finding I really miss that in the new place. I figured I didn’t need TV, and I sure as heck don’t, but there is just zilch worth watching on the free basic cable I have at the times of the night I go to sleep. Infomercials and such bullshit is all I get. It makes me worry. I’ve got to figure out how to cue up shit to fall asleep to, so it has to be something I wouldn’t mind watching, but it can’t be something so interesting I would actually want to finish it. It is like… the most stupid problem to have, but here I am.

Anyway, have to get up early for work in the morning, so I am going to attempt some sleep. Maybe. You have a good day, eh?

I guess I’m like… a T-shirt hipster or something. I’m very particular about shirts. They are serious fucking business. Because of this, I would never be caught dead in anything my employer sells. They are almost universally horrible, stupid garments, and I really just want to punch anyone I see purchasing them. Of course, tonight, I was left folding them for quite a length of time, so I got to get a good look at them. Here are some thoughts I had.

There was a shirt that said “Stewie” with a picture of Stewie Griffin on it that seemed to, obviously, be a sendup of Scarface for some reason. This made me think about Stewie as a character vs Stewie as merchandise. In merchandise, Stewie is as he was in, oh, the first episode of Family Guy. One note, only catch phrases from the first episode, etc. But recent seasons of Family Guy that I have had the misfortune of seeing have decided that Stewie is now a gay stereotype. He is the character they use for gay jokes. He is nothing like ANY merchandise with him on it. Supposedly someone who would buy such a horrible shirt would be a fan of the show. Do they really not see the huge change in character he’s made? Do they not care?

Even Kohl’s cannot ruin how awesome Adventure Time is, thankfully. Though of their shirt offerings, I feel the one with Jake and Finn fist-bumping really does not need the text on it. The other one, with the many action faces of Finn, is fantastic, and I almost would buy it. For serious.

I am really pissed that “Press Button, Receive Bacon” is on a shirt. I remember the first time I saw that particular piece of bathroom graffiti. I thought it was hilarious. Now it is on a shirt. It’s jumped the shark. Plus, the joke is not a joke outside of the context of the actual air dryer. It doesn’t WORK on a shirt.

There are a ton of Angry Birds shirts. It is obvious to me that someone saw Angry Birds being popular, said “We must make shirts,” but then did not actually have any ideas for shirts. Yet they made like 10 of them for Kohl’s alone. The little “humorous” sayings on many of the shirts just make no sense. Why does this have anything to do with Angry Birds? I will give a pass only to the “The Bird is the Word” shirt, which is acceptable, though nothing I would possibly wear. I could see people who play the game finding that entertaining, though.

The number of shirts with the exact same jokes shirts have had on them since I was young enough to think these jokes funny is just… depressing. I mean, I guess every year someone is old enough to find these funny for the first time? But you’d think that someone could actually come up with more jokes. When they do come up with another joke, about 10 different variants of that joke seem to appear on the scene. Someone must have thought recently “Ha ha, a pig being horrified at bacon is funny!” because there are tons of variants of that now. Sometimes, look, it’s a chicken and some KFC instead! Ha ha! Hilarious!

Yeah. Shirts. So wonderfully stupid. I’m so above this shit. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to lay out my My Little Pony Steampunk shirt for tomorrow. (I’m so cool.)