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Happy birthday, CH!
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Most of my trips to NY of late have been on a strict timetable. Arrive, go to demo, go to meeting, get on bus to DC for another demo, etc. Not much time to hang out, but end of June I have a vacation week and can take it easier. Talk to you soon!
Second paragraph: Awesome! First sentence of first paragraph: That sounds good. I had an extreme bout of situational depression from February to about, well, still in it I guess, but it's fading. Had a eureka moment somewhere in there and realized that, situational depression aside, I've probably been suffering from some kind of depression my entire adult life whose worst effects I warded off with heavy usage of [bubble bubble bubble]. Made a call to the union hall that didn't get immediate results, talked to my steward, he placed a call, they immediately got in touch and I have an appointment with the local's mental health team on Friday as a prelude to seeing a therapist which, I don't mean to brag, will cost $15/hour. Pays to go with the union card! Woops, sorry, relapsed into old, politoll ways. Point is, I am learning more and more about the mental health epidemic and its connection to late stage capitalism and...woops, sorry, relapsed again. Rest of first paragraph: Awesome!
Obligatory musical interlude.That song meant a whole lot to me back in ninety-whatever, but I was hoping it would be "The Boys Are Back in Town." EDIT: Musical Interludes live on on FB; honored to say they've been picked up by two comrades, one in Portland, ME and the other a student at Evergreen in Olympia, who, I am quite pleased to report, has turned me onto all kinds of postpunk/Cure- and Smiths-esque mope music I'd never heard before. For example, Sad Giants and Lovers
Limey I see all the time on FB, Bugley, too, although we don't often (ever) talk. Afraid our secret group with CrystalSeas sputtered out much too soon. Would love to hear how you're all doing, if you feel like sharing. Or not, your call.
Good to see you. Can’t believe it’s been two years since we went to that con up by your house. Jesus, two years ago? Damn. Good to see you, too, CC (although I see you on FB all the time).
well g$%**~n. It's time for bonchon. We've got a Bonchon in Lowell, but I've never been. I do still get down to NY with some regularity. Usually stay around the Cortelyou station. Probably be down next sometime at the end of June. How are things in Freehold land?
It's quite a liberating experience, to get to just show up without hours of prep and anxiety and just kick it. I do, however, find myself backseat DMing too much. How have you been, DM Cal?
The last book I read was Particularly Cats by Doris Lessing which was a lot sadder than I expected, but had its light-hearted moments. Lots and lots of dead cats. :( Now reading Brust's Teckla but not reading very quickly for a variety of reasons.
Or playing as much, unfortunately. I gave up my game a couple of years ago. Too much going on, politically, and I refused to DM anymore. Last August, however, Mr. Comrade and his girlfriend had a beautiful baby boy (Elias Tooley Weathers-Keating, how's that for a name?) and the prolonged periods of enforced free time in the life of a househusband (or, as I prefer to call it, a kept man) drove him to take up the reins of Dungeon Mastering. 5E D&D, alas, not Pathfinder. I made a male-passing female paladin with an Oath of Revolution (yes, inspired largely by Brienne of Tarth) named Sir Shelaigh "Sudsy" Sudskowski, a proselytizing militant in a splinter sect of Ilmater called (of course) the Conspiracy of Equals. Came into the game a few sessions after it started and went about trying to recruit all of the other players with leaflets I had made with info about the Ilmaterian church printed on the back of leftover leaflets from my appearance on a panel at last year's commie con in NYC, which is called Left Forum. Named ourselves the Company of the Broken Shackle. I guess we were playing in the module in the 5E start-up box, but, of course, we quickly went off the rails, ignoring heavily dropped plot hints in order to, say, organize miners into workers councils, assassinating corrupt burgomeisters, fighting against anti-goblin and -orc racism, and driving out representatives of the imperialist-annexationist Lord's Alliance. Unfortunately, things took a bad turn when our half-orc barbarian was disintegrated by a qbus (gender netural demon of seduction) and our half-elven rogue was transformed into a vargouille and consigned to the Abyss. One of the other players, an anarcho-nihilist fan of Max Stirner, had been f*$&ing with me for many sessions, pretending to be insane, trying to commit suicide in combat, etc., etc. and I snapped and decided to have Sudsy go all Lancelot-in-the-bushes, and started wearing spider webs on my face, spouting gibberish, and worshiping something called "the Prism Goddess". Heavy handed DM intervention as Ilmater appeared to me in my dreams and guided me back to the path of righteousness, but then I killed three or four wererats in the streets of Neverwinter who, when they died, reverted to their human forms as homeless street kids. Wracked with grief, Sudsy relapsed into insanity. I am hoping I get a chance next game to kill the Stirnerite and complete my transition to anti-paladin. Have never played one of those before. Anyway, it's been great fun to be on the other side of the screen and give the DM as many problems as they all used to give me. :)
Obligatory musical interlude. That song meant a whole lot to me back in ninety-whatever, but I was hoping it would be "The Boys Are Back in Town."
Glad to hear that many of you are doing well! Been following along with some of your lives on the ol' Facebook, others I often wonder about. Lot more to say, but I should prepare for the Marxist reading circle in a few hours. Til then!
Hey all! Who's still here? Last August I finally graduated to full-time box thrower status, which was great, but unfortunately it meant going back to the overnight shift, which isn't. Have been having trouble adjusting to a sleeping for eight hours during the day schedule and spend a lot of time trying to sleep and not, so I figured, hey, why not check in with Paizo, politics or no, and see who from the old gang is still kicking. This is just a brief hey and how do you do post; will check in later and see what's kicking.
I was in the Music Thread and saw Pan making a comment about you and figured I better look in the OTD and see what's up. I am glad to hear that you are alright, DM Cal, and I hope you continue to cheat death repeatedly.
Monday Morning Jazz Brunch
Daily Musical Interludes: Playing Catch-Up, Pt. 1 Black Box Recorder--"Child Psychology"
The Fall--"Cruiser's Creek"
Got this comrade/FB friend who is a Harvard clerical worker (actually, he might be retired, had a heart attack a year or two ago, haven't actually spoken to him much recently, should probably fix that) and he's always blasting his music listening all over his thread. Lots of classical stuff that I have never heard of. Anyway, he called this guy "Korea's greatest 20th century composer" and I'm all like, "sure, I can't even name a 20th century Korean composer," (or from any century, for that matter) so here I am listening to it.
Underground Youth, whom I have not heard of before, somehow managed to make it to my Youtube feed. If the name didn't tell you, it's very much a Velvet Underground derivative. Worth listening to once, unsure if it's worth listening to twice. This popped up on my youtube feed once, a whiles back. I listened to it at the time and will listen to it now while washing the dishes and let you know. EDIT: About halfway through. Yeah, it's got a third album vibe, cut with heavy doses of Galaxie 500 or some other late-eighties/early-nineties VU clones. Third album was always my fave, and I have a strong tolerance for third-album-derivatives, so I found it a pretty good dishwashing album. YMMV. 2ND EDIT:
Oh that, and say that The Tombs of Atuan was my fave.
I poured out my heart on various Facebook threads, so all I'll do here is sit in the corner and weep.
Monday Morning Jazz Brunch
Monday Morning Jazz Brunch
Heh. Sounds like The Pixies to me, especially on the "Hello" bridges.
also, this interesting autotuned version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in which the song is now in a major key and sounds much more pop.
The first woman president, Ivanka entertained, would not be Hillary Clinton, it would be Ivanka Trump. --Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House
Whisky Galore! (no trailer for the original on the internet that I could find, alas) Der Junge Karl Marx (trailer's in German, French and English, but pirated version I watched was all Deutsch) and a PBS documentary about slave revolts in Saint-Domingue: Egalite for All: Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution
"Reckon you're gettin' to be quite a gal, makin' coffee for your old pa," said Lucas. --Grace Metalious--Peyton Place [Comrade Anklebiter hat] Even after the defeat of the rebels during the most famous of the maroon wars in the 1790s, when the British cynically broke their promise not to expel those who surrendered, the maroons, after a brief stay in Nova Scotia, arrived as disgruntled exiles in Sierra Leone in time to put down a rebellion. --Eugene D. Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World Many American slaveholders also permitted blacks to keep chickens and sometimes hogs, to raise vegetables to supplement their diets, and to sell the products of their "kitchen gardens" to raise spending money. --Eric Foner, Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy and, since the latest commie pamphlet didn't make it to page 55, from page 5: "Their swords were not drawn and could not be drawn simply for themselves alone." --Frederick Douglass on the Haitian Revolution, quoted in "Birth of the First Black Republic: 1791-1804: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Haitian Revolution" in Black History and the Class Struggle No. 6: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Haitian Revolution (1989)
Peyton Place and Eric Foner's Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy.
Monday Evening Jazz Dish-Washing
And Other Yuletide Musical Interludes The Kinks--"Father Christmas"
Monday Morning Jazz Brunch
I think I read fewer and fewer books every year. Among other things, I'm years past, in age, when both of my parents got reading glasses. Every now and then, I accidentally get a large-print book from the library and I'm like "wow, this is awesome! I don't have to squint!" I know, I know, I need to go to the doctor. |