I was reading an update on the Naruto manga and it reminded me of the whole mortgage and foreclosure situation. In the latest story arc, Pain (bigass evil dude) apparently goes all Godzilla on the village, killing tons of people including a shitload of main characters. Tsundae (who happens to be the leader of the village) goes out and fights him but even with her abilities, gets smacked around and it's only because of her amazing recovery powers that she doesn't die and is instead rendered comatose. The battle continues and eventually Naruto kicks the bad guy's ass and teaches him the meaning of Christmas. Well, okay, not really but close enough. The bad guy repents and as a final act of contrition, uses all of his remaining life energy to bring back all of those who have died in one giant squishy dues ex machina.

Now, the dick of it is that because Tsunade didn't actually die, she's the only person who's basically been clusterfucked by this encounter. If she hadn't been as resilient and strong and simply succumbed, she'd be doing just fine. Of course, if she had been the protagonist and had godly superpowers like Naruto, she would have survived as well. Instead, because she was better than average and planned ahead with her regenerative powers, she gets boned.

It got me thinking that this is exactly like the mortgage crisis we face now. If you are of Naruto calibur (read: filthy rich) then things don't really affect you all that much. If you were weak or stupid, buying a home that you couldn't really afford or making dumbass choices like getting an adjustable mortgage and just assume you could keep refinancing, the government will bail you out and 'bring you back to life' just like those crushed by Pain. Of course, if you were one of those responsible chumps who were fiscally responsible in either never buying in the first place or buying something within your means, you sort of get boned just like Tsunade. She probably wishes she had just died like the others and thus could be brought back with no downside. Instead, even if she does survive the amount of energy she spent to maintain her regenerative powers will severely reduce her remaining lifespan. It's not just a dick move, it's a double dick move.

In this end, this is why I hate bailouts and dues ex machina. It just doesn't seem fair that the least deserving assholes out there are the ones who get the help. The ones who might actually deserve it are usually doing just well enough because of planning and forethought that no one wants to give them anything to begin with.

So what do you think? Should I teach a class called Naruto and economic theory?

I finally got my Flip Mino back today and I've been hoping to upload the videos to youtube for the past few hours. The problem is that the site seems to be down at the moment and there's no telling when it'll climb back up to its feet. The upload process usually takes a great amount of time due to the combination of less than stellar upload speeds and huge file sizes. I'll admit that regardless of the tech snafu, it's really nice to finally get my videos downloaded from the Flip and know they're 'safe'. The unfortunate part is that it reminds me how I never did go and recap the trip to true realm. I uploaded all of the photos to facebook and that was about it. I would say that I should go and rectify that if it weren't for the fact that there's still the Origins update I'm in the middle of. What I should do is just concentrate and get the one I'm in the middle of finished and ignore the rest for the time being. Easier said than done though. The planning is always more interesting than the doing.

Other than that, I just haven't made any decisions about Dexcon. I finally got in touch with Lori last night and it turns out she's not even going this year. Dexcon conflicts with Shore Leave and she'd rather hang out with people dressed like Klingons than us. That means that as of now, there's no alternative than a daily commute and I'm not sure I'm willing to go through almost 2 hours of back and forth a day. It seems that many people I know are skipping this time around for one reason or another. I got an email from Ruth today still soliciting GMs to run slots but all I could tell her was that I think I'm going to take things day by day. It'd be different if there were crash space available but double exposure has really cut back on that over the years. Boardgaming just doesn't seem to rate highly enough to warrant it and there are too many others above us on the status totem pole when it comes to getting a room.

I'm going to try to knock out a couple day's worth of recap right now and we'll see how far I get. I've been feeling pretty cruddy today with the lingering gamer Pig-SARS and some pain issues that have flared up. I ran over to the Panera to drop off to game bits to one of the games I had sold to prismcat but even that little amount of exertion left me feeling blah and tired. I'm not sure if I'm going to end up going to the Bill's 4th of July get together tomorrow though I RSVP'ed for it. I guess it'll depend on how I feel as I stagger out of bed tomorrow.

Anyway, on to the recap.

( I almost considered drinking my own urine....well, not really )

I was just browsing on Amazon and ran across something entertaining in my account's lightning deals.



I dunno what color ducks are in their part of the world but that's not a shade I've ever seen on a quacker. I do think it would be sorta entertaining to dye a duck hot pink and then just release it into the wild though.

If you zoom in a bit you can see the color is actually named Funky Flamingo, which means this might just be an ornithological mixup. What's really surprising is that it's selling so well. I would have thought that men bought most of the duct tape in this world and would likely avoid hot pink.

So it looks like I'm finally going to get around to doing this. I've already posted the pictures from Origins up on Facebook, and now it's time to try and go through and annotate the whole trip. I'm always happy when I finish these but it seems to take longer and longer each time I do it. I think that's mostly a result of the fact that I get more long-winded as I go. Anyway, lets hope this doesn't end up taking forever.

( Origins: The Beginning )

I felt sort of congested last night and it's since exploded into fullblown gamer plague. My throat feels like sand paper which makes the coughing all that more entertaining. I really thought I had managed to make my saving throws this year since I was symptom free during the con and for a full day afterward. All I can say is that it seems to have made up for lost time with a vengeance. If I'm lucky, it'll end up leaving as quickly as it arrived but there are never any guarantees. I was going to work on the picture recap tonight but I think I'm going to push it off until I'm feeling a bit better. Right now, all I want is some sorta scalding beverage to try to burn the virus out of my throat.

Well, not really. These are just things that I need to do within the next couple of weeks rather than before I die. Frankly, I'm not sure there are really all that many things I would want to do before I die short of taking some of my enemies to hell with me.

Anyway, back to the list:

• Rent a car for the trip to Chicago: Done and done. I got myself a nice midsize car and it ended up being a lot cheaper than I thought it would be. I should have been using my AAA membership from the start rather than trying to priceline a car all these years. The membership was actually cheaper without all the obnoxious hassles and I don't even have to pay in advance. It was more than double the price I got on Orbitz.


• Rent a 1 night hotel room for the Tuesday before Gencon: This shouldn't be a major chore. Like last year, I'm thinking of flying down early in order to join some of the KFG'ers. They're supposed to be going to the Indiana state fair and I've never been to any state fair in my life. There are seductive rumors about climbing through a giant colon.


• Book a flight from Chicago to Indy: This is the one-way trip to get me down to Indy a day early for the fair and crap. Normally I would have dealt with this already but Shelley has a voucher from AA she wants to use and I guess I should get it from her rather than pay for the ticket.


• Get my driver's license renewed: For the first time since I was 17, I don't have a valid license. It expired yesterday despite my attempts to get another. The fucking DMV locked their doors when I got there at 4:20 pm despite the door and website saying they didn't close till 4:30. Feh. I'll have to get this sorted out as soon as I can.


• Deliver Runebound pieces: I sold a buncha games to prismcat a few weeks ago but one of them was missing some pieces that were in another box. I've made at least one attempt to get them to her but ran afoul of the meetup schedule. I'm supposed to pop over there Friday and get it sorted out.


• Ebay a whole lot of crap: I've got a ridiculous amount of shit I should be selling on ebay. Absolutely ridiculous. Gaming cards, video games, assorted rigamarole. Ebay is like a good/bad habit and once I stop doing it, it's hard to get the ball rolling again. Most of this stuff is useless to me and I really should get rid of it before it depreciates any more in value.

I think that's it for the time being. Oh, two more items.

• Caption the Origins pictures: Hopefully I'll get to this tonight.


• Get the Flip Mino back from Connie and download the videos: Another miss on this today. Connie was here earlier but forgot to leave the Flip.

The sooner I get all of this wrapped up the better. Crap. I just remembered one more thing.

• Register for Dexcon: I'm still not certain if I want to try to share a hotel for this event or just commute up and down. I'm also not sure if I want to attend the opening ceremonies and blow $20 on it. Feh.

I spent the first day back from Origins in bed. There was valuable sleep to catch up on and now that I'm back from the convention, my daily activity has flatlined once again. All in all, the trip to Origins wasn't horrible and certainly nowhere near as bad as I had feared. I was able to keep the pain management under control for the most part and there were quite a few bits of entertainment here and there. What is clear is that I'm no longer as young as I used to be. Just a few years ago I would spend most of my days at a con getting up at 7am and then in events back to back to back until well after midnight. I would snag a few hours sleep and then be off again in the morning. In contrast, this time around I spent more time sleeping and loafing than anything else. For a certainty, I got more sleep at Origins than I have ever gotten at any convention in the past, and this includes local cons.

Despite the extra shuteye, I did get to run through a few events including two shots through Terrorwerks, a couple RPGs and a few board/card games to boot. I'm not sure that the whole thing was "worth" the cost if you only take the number of games played into account, but I also got to spend a lot of time with people I don't get to see very often and that's always nice. Most of the time, I ended up wandering around with Chelle and Todd, though I also got to yak and wander with Sherilyn, Randy (Keeper), and quite a few others. I took a bunch of pictures which I have just finished downloading from the camera and will hopefully resize and upload in the next day or two to form the recap.

Oh, and I got a call from Connie while I was at the con. It turns out the Flip Mino wasn't stolen. She had placed it in the closet along with her digital camera and Jeff had put a bucket of paint or something in front of it, obstructing it from view. So it looks like I'm going to get all of my videos back after all. I still missed out on taking video for the trip, which is sort of sad, but things worked out better than I had any right to expect.

I wrote an email to Connie late last night asking her to bring my Flip Mino with her today so that I could pick it up for the trip to Origins. I got a phone call this morning from her saying that she no longer had it, and that it was stolen. I was beyond pissed.

It got into Connie's hands in a sort of roundabout way. After the True Realm trip (and the Flip's unlikely recovery), I put it aside and while I always meant to download the videos from it, never got around to it. At that point, Shelley had a vacation planned for Mexico and I lent her both the camera and the Flip. She said she didn't think she would need the latter but I figured it was a case of better overprepared than underprepared. She might find something spiffy to record while she was there. When she got back she returned the camera to me but for some inexplicable reason, offered the Flip to Connie. I didn't mind at the time since I wasn't planning to use it until the trip to Origins. Fast forward to this morning and it's gone.

It turns out that Connie doesn't believe in securing the valuables in her home even knowing that strangers will be traipsing about it. She's been trying to sell her condo and there have been realators in and out of the place showing it off to perspective buyers. They show the place (with her permission) even when she's not at home. All they have to do is show their business card to the security guy at the front desk and he hands over the key. It looks like during one of these showroom visits, someone helped themselves to a 5-fingered discount that included not only her camera but my Flip Mino.

When I told her how ticked I was, she flippantly responded that I should just buy another one and use her credit card. Grrrr. Even if it weren't the fact that I just lost a shitload of irreplaceable videos, the fact that she would only tell me this because I asked and the day before the trip drives me crazy. There's no time to buy another one before the trip from Amazon and it's either buy it there or pay $32 more to get it at some local Bestbuy. I know that most of you would probably say just buy the replacement since it's on her dime, but it galls the hell out of me to pay more on this crap when I don't have to. Chances are, I'm just going to pass and go without for the trip. I am not a happy camper.

So it's only a few days left until Origins. I've tried to spend as little time thinking about it as possible since I still haven't made any real concrete decisions. Should I leave on tuesday so I can get there by that night and participate in early gaming events or should I just wait until wednesday to leave for the start of the con in full. I also have to decide when I'm heading home and whether I want to cut the trip back into two parts, stopping somewhere overnight. My record for traveling home after cons in one single night hasn't been stellar. I haven't wrecked or anything but I've come close a few times and it's always a sort of nerve wracking experience. My nightvision isn't all that great and those cross-country roads are full of semi's barreling along at 80 MPH. It really wouldn't take much to become a premanent road pizza.

Origins aside, I popped over to Brian's place today for some cards. I ended up being down a couple bucks at the end, mostly due to a sense of recklessness near the end. That's one of the reasons I should never gamble for real. My personality has a flaw where if things start going wrong, I keep pushing to make it even more disastrous. Basically, I go on tilt really easily. As long as I'm thinking rationally, things are great but all it takes is a couple bad beats in a row and I start splashing around in every single pot like it's an open kiddie pool. Oh well. At least I'm aware of the flaw and it's always kept me from doing anything too incredibly stupid. I'm sure that streak won't last forever.

I just stumbled across this and I have to say that watching Dragonball Z has never been less painful or more amusing.



I'm actually still watching the real show, believe it or not. I guess I just felt sort of nostalgic for the old days where I would catch the occasional episode on cartoon network. The site where I found the episodes only allows you to watch 72 minutes worth of video in a 24 hour period so I've been slowly chugging my way through the series. It's not nearly as ridiculous as I remember, though that might be because a lot of the filler crap has been cut out of this version.

Well, I just injected myself with the last dose of Enbrel in the box. That means that I've successfully completed the first month of treatment? Net effect? Things seem to be getting worse. I'm not blaming the Enbrel (yet) but I've had way more pain issues the past week and I've had another 'breakout' issue which hasn't happened in quite a while. Things were static more or less for months and now, bam, it's like the resumption of hostilities. I feel like some general during WWI who thinks everything is fine in his trench when all of a sudden the entire german army appears on the horizon. Feh. No idea how it's going to go but it's certainly not a good sign. Sometimes I feel like with this condition all I can do is stuck my finger in the dyke as each new leak springs. That's actually a more apt metaphor than I might wish for. Anyway, there's nothing to be done about it. I should be getting another month's supply of Enbrel in the next day or two and all I can do is keep injecting and hope things don't get any worse.

Of course, all of this happens with Origins on the horizon. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do exactly. I really don't think I want to go, but I have a pre-paid hotel room and a badge and all that gobbilygook. Maybe I'll end up changing my mind once I'm there and everything will be rainbows and gumdrops. God knows that's happened before. Oh well. Nothing to do but try I guess.

I had to go out and pick up my prescription for more hillbilly heroin today after yesterday's attempt failed. Maybe it's just me, but when you say you close at 5pm, I expect your dumb ass to still be there and working at 4:56pm. Instead, when I got to the hospital, it was a ghost town and the only person I could find in the area didn't know anything about where to find my 'script. So I went back today around and managed to pick it up without any problems.

Since I was out already, I decided to go and do some grocery shopping. I discovered that lobsters were on sale for $5 a pound and snagged three of them. I've since decided to name them Bitey, Pinchy, and Food Poisoning. They were more than happy to steam the little buggers for me so I didn't even have to cook them. All three are sitting in the fridge right now and will provide for a few excellent meals in the next couple days. I've always been a big fan of lobster simply done. I don't even like butter with them, much less some of the more exotic fixin's. That applies to a lot of seafood really. It's just better when it's plainly steamed and prepared without all sorts of weird sauces and stuffings and whatnot. I also prefer them a bit chilled so dinner for tonight is a couple packages of dirty rice courtesy of one of those boil and serve pouches. Not bad at a dollar a pop.

I am feeling ecstatic. I just read an article announcing that Jammie Thomas-Rasset was found 'guilty' for the second time of pirating music through Kazaa. She was found guilty once before, but the judge in the case called for a retrial because of some minor screwup in the jury instructions. The first time around she was fined $222,000. This time, the jury hit her with $1.92 million and I couldn't be happier.

A federal jury in Minneapolis has ruled a Minnesota woman violated several music copyrights in the nation’s only file-sharing case to go to trial.

The jury found that Jammie Thomas-Rasset “committed willful violation” of the copyrights on 24 songs. The jury awarded the recording companies $1.92 million, or $80,000 per song.

It might seem sort of strange that I'd be rooting for the RIAA in a case like this. For one, while I don't care about music in general, I do more than a little pirating of my own. What makes the difference in this case is that I found this stupid bitch's self-righteous and transparent lies to be so beyond the norm that she deserved to be slapped down and slapped down hard. We all know that piracy is illegal much like we all know it's illegal to speed. Despite that, most of us do it knowing that if we're caught, there will be some price to pay. In the case of a speeding ticket, that can now range up to $500 or more depending on just how fast you were going and if it was a construction zone. When it comes to media piracy, that involves having to pay a fine to the RCAA or MPAA to an average tune of $3500. We all understand that this is how the world works and it really ticked me off when this dumb bitch instead tried to claim it wasn't her and she didn't do it. It's like those people who go to court raging that they really weren't speeding because the radar gun must've read the LED flashing lights of their vanity plate and thus read a speed of 120 mph when their car was really going 30 mph. In short, shameless bullshit artists.

If you actually read the facts of this case, her excuses were beyond lame. They were so transparently false that it made me want to punch her in the face just for coming up with them. First she claimed that perhaps someone was stealing her wi-fi signal and thus any pirating was really not her doing. Of course, we found out during the trial that she doesn't have fucking wi-fi. Then she claimed that it wasn't her because there were no songs on her harddrive. We find out in the trial that she was lying and had the harddrive replaced just 2 weeks after receiving the notice that she was caught pirating. She also claimed that she received no such notice despite getting a message through kazaa, a fed-ex notification, a certified letter from the lawyers, etc. Can you say compulsive liar or what? She goes on to tell some other really unbelievable whoppers, including the fact that maybe someone stole her userid, the same one she's beeing using for over 10 years, in order to pretend to be her and steal music to get her into trouble. Do you want to punch her yet? When this case first started, she also said that she felt that she was being targeted because of racism. That statement alone makes it so that she deserves no mercy whatsoever.

The sad part is that many people have rallied around this daffy cunt just because they hate the RIAA. Frankly, I just find her so odious I couldn't do it. I'm happier that she's getting what's coming to her than I would be to see a pedophile put in prison. At least no one's going to be on the side of the Pedo and you can be pretty sure someone's going to make sure he gets what's coming to him one way or another. This stupid cow actually has a support staff of idiots backing her.

It also makes me very happy that no matter how much idiots send her in donations, it'll never be enough to pay off this fine and her lawyer bills. Hell, I think the RIAA should sue to get her to pay for their lawyer fees too. I just want to see her destitute in a shack.

I just came to the realization that I have no clue what 'average height' really entails. I was watching an anime called Azumanga Daioh out of sheer boredom and there's a girl on there who's taller than all the other characters. She's so tall that at one point they suggest that she must be sucking the height out of one of the shortest characters. When she mentions that she's crossed the 170 cm threshold, they all gasped. So, since I have no real functional conception of the metric system, I went to google and found a converter, fully expecting her to top 6' or thereabouts. Turns out that 170 cm is only 5'7, which seemed pretty average to me. A little more searching about found that the average woman in the states is only 5'4 and the average man 5'9.

All I can say is that I feel sorta lucky having bucked the trends. I'm sure it wasn't easy with all those asian genes swimming around but I somehow managed to top 6' by an inch or two. It's a good thing too because the only thing worse than being a fatass, is being a short fatass. Not to mention I could use the extra give in height since I'm sure I seem shorter now just with all the slouching. I still remember once, checking one of those BMI charts trying to figure out how tall I would have to be in order to perfectly fit my weight. All I can say is that I probably would have made a hell of a NBA player. I could have just stood by the net and dropped the ball in. There would be no need for jumping, that's for sure. Oh well. What genetics gives with one hand, it takes with the other.

I'm having a bad pain management night. Sleep had been sounding like a good idea but there's no real point in trying when Mr Stabby's knocking at the door. I popped some backup pills and hopefully they'll take Mr Stabby into custody and beat him with a rubber hose. I do have to admit that it's rare nowadays that the hillbilly heroin fails to do its job. I went to the gameday at the Panera today and was remarking to Bill that my pain meds have been better than they've ever been. It basically means that as long as I'm at home and not doing much of anything, there aren't really any issues. Sure, movement causes twinges that vary, but if I were just sprawled on the bed reading or lounging or watching anime, things are almost normal. Considering how rare even glimpses of normal used to be, it's worth mentioning.

Of course, all of that goes out the window the minute I actually have to go out or do something. Still, it's better than it was in the past where I still remember days where I had my head buried in a pillow and rhythmically pounding the bed or wall or whatever with my fist just trying to wait and gut my way through the pain. It's easy to forget that that was often the norm for quite a while. Still, the recurrence of breakthrough pain even without activity is something to be a little worried about. It's only a week and change before I set off for Origins and I'm more than a little antsy about the entire trip. I just hope it doesn't end up being a complete and utter clusterfuck.

On that note, I ran into a problem with event reg for origins. I faxed in my registration form a couple weeks ago on a Monday and when it didn't show up on the site by Friday, I called Gama headquarters to inquire. I was told that the person in charge of registration/accounts was out sick and for some inexplicable reason, no one else could do her job despite the fact that badge/event registration were due to end soon. I was told that it wouldn't be a big deal since event reg wouldn't end until the following week and my info would get processed before then. So on Monday, I log onto the site to find that event reg was closed. I had a pretty steamed WTF moment and called up Gama again to rant and rave a little. In the end, I got passed around from person to person until someone offered to appease my righteous wrath by having me email in the events I wanted and someone would attach it to my badge. Well, it's now been almost a week since then and neither my badge nor events are showing up on my account and my credit card hadn't been charged. I know I should call back to make sure they didn't screw it up but the entire idea just makes me weary. All I know is that I don't think any good can come of any of this.

I think I actually found an anime where the dubbed version is better than the subbed. I know a lot of people who watch anime fall into two categories. Either they're dubbed only because they hate reading while watching the show or they're subbed only, usually because they're elitist diehards. For me, the original Japanese just tend to fit better. Language is more than simply communication through words. There's also tone and inflection and even though I only know a handful of japanese words, I always got the impression that I better understood the characters when the dialogue was subbed.

After finishing Naruto, or at least catching up to Shippuden, I was still interested in seeing somre more fighting anime so I went with the old stalwart backup, Dragonball Z. I had seen a few episodes before on Cartoon Network but had never really cared for it. It felt like I was watching a soap opera for little boys. Not to mention that if you simply erased all the gasping reaction shots and recaps, each episode would only last 5 minutes. Anyway, as part of the 20 year anniversary of Dragonball Z, they were re-releasing a remastered and re-edited version. It collapsed a lot of the repetitiveness, featured better/reconstructed art, and the original voice actors. I watched all 10 of the episodes currently out and it was pretty awful. The voice for Goku is beyond grating. It sounds like they got some old woman to do his voice. Why? This is supposed to be the manly hero type and he sounds like someone living in an old folks home with a squeaky voice. Many of the other characters sound just as....odd. I found myself missing those old Cartoon Network dubs and so out of nostalgia I found some sites that still stream the episodes online.

On a sidenote, if you have any interest at all in dragonball z, I found a pretty funny site that lists the power levels for all the characters across time. It's pretty hilarious if you think about it. It's the classic example of power-gaming run amok if you think about it in RPG terms.

The site is here. You can see that Goku, the main character starts at a level of 334, already enough to fly around, launch beams of power from his hands, and probably destroy a city block. He ends that series topping out at over 1 billion, basically 300 million percent stronger than when he started. You just gotta love crap like this. It's too bad we couldn't hook someone like that up to a generator. He could provide electricity for half the universe.

I just bought something online that, assuming it's not a scam and I get ripped off, has made me very happy. I'm pretty sure I made an entry about it once upon a time, buy damned if I can find it now. Way back I stumbled across a boardgame geek entry for Darkies in the Melon Patch which just tickled me pink. Just the sheer un-PC of it all made me happy. Well, that and the fact that when first listed it had the same printing date as the infamous Juden Raus. Sorta makes you think about how things really weren't all that different around the world. Anyway, I rated the game a '10' partially out of mischief and partly because I really did want a copy. The only problem is that I wasn't even sure it even existed. Most people had written it off as a mockup and a scam for the lulz.

That said, prismcat tipped me off earlier today that someone had 1 set left for sale out an initial batch of 6. Hell, I'd shocked to even find one of these but this guy was selling 6. God only knows where he managed to find them all. Maybe the KKK had a rummage sale or something. Better yet, the guy only wanted $30 for it shipped. I jumped on the deal and with a little luck, I should have my own copy of Darkies in the Melon Patch in a couple of weeks. I'm already thinking about where I should unveil it. Local gameday? Special event? Bring it to Origins?

If I'm lucky, this will one day appreciate in value and I can drag it with me to the antiques roadshow or something of the sort.