many mumbling mice's Journal

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theories of peace
seems to be in the news today.

goblins!
d&d game still going well, but i wildly overestimated the effect of the first monster i threw at them this week (it rolled really poorly and they rolled really well; also the monk decided to fight defensively, which was apparently the right call). also carrion crawlers are slightly less badass in 3.5e, i think (their tentacles are only 2' long! shameful). i expected it to paralyze the entire party except the no-damaging-spells kobold sorceror, who's immune to paralysis (

baronet: "i am?" me: "i guess that wasn't the reason you took that feat, then..."), who'd then bravely fight it off one-on-one with, you know, a dagger or something (he's creative, and carrion crawlers don't do much damage if they can't paralyze you). instead it took out only one pc, and was finished off by the kobold rogue standing on the paralyzed pc's head. at least it was dramatic. :)

two other bits from wildfire
overhearing a guy explaining to someone else what balancing ladders (he called them "roman ladders") were, and how he was planning to build one with wick on the bottom rung so he could light it on fire.

a woman in the whip class with a red, black, and yellow whip which i think (i just got a brief look) was plaited in coral snake band order.

now i'm ready to fret about wildfire
wildfire's this weekend. i feel like although i've been working steadily on it for the past year my juggling hasn't really improved in a way that anyone who's not me could tell; and my poi hardly at all. there's a different guy co-teaching the juggling class this time; he's from a newly local group of performing jugglers who were quite good when i saw them. so i'm sure he'll be fun to meet, but it's a little intimidating right now. :)

also i still need to make a lot more beanbags for the class.

unrelatedly, last night i got it into my head that i needed to add pages for the meathook and its opposite to the silks wiki, and wound up poking around the net a lot looking for more formal terminology... which was ultimately successful, but which also led me to videos of this beautiful but basically crazy climb that seems to be based around the reverse meathook (which apparently is more formally called "side planche"), and also this rough but completely insane climb based around a one-armed pullup.

goblins, monsters, sleestack
last night my d&d game reached a climactic battle with the horrible monster that had started the story arc. i've had a whole lot of game-balance worries about this plotline since starting it (it all sounded so simple on paper!), but i think it came off pretty well: even though they were fighting a monster way above their pay grade alongside much higher-level npcs, the newly-2nd-level pcs were vital to the fight this time.

also, after i'd already decided that maglubiyet was going to give the party of his weirdest priest some obscure magical help defending his shrine against the unnatural thing attacking it, two pcs started the fight by praying for divine intervention. why yes, your prayers are answered actually. in the form of... *consults notes*

also integrating a new pc went pretty well. since the boss fight was the only thing i had planned for the evening, i just let the pcs fight amongst themselves most of the game. :)

now, though, with that plot arc closed, the pcs are at a huge choice point. last time the plot arrows weren't too clear the players got frustrated by it. this time i hope the arrows are clearer even though they point in a lot of different directions. but, unfortunately, it means i have to be ready for a bunch of different possible next games...

in not-really-related news, all the old episodes of land of the lost are available on hulu. i remembered it as being cheesy, but didn't remember that a lot of the episodes had been written by pretty well-known science fiction authors. but i keep really admiring the story as an rpg setting: a valley full of large wandering monsters, inhabited by two different intelligent races of natives, one of them the descendants of an ancient lost culture whose magical artifacts are lying around everywhere. plus random visitors from other times. so rich with possiblities!

two movies
star trek: fun action flick.

quibble: maybe a remake of a famously-diverse-cast-for-its-time series ought to do a bit better on the allison bechdel criterion. once in the movie, two female characters have a conversation about something other than a man. but a) they're two of the only three female characters who have significant speaking parts; b) one of them barely appears outside that scene; and c) she thinks the conversation is about a man.

otoh

moominmolly noticed a subtle within-the-movie comparison between a nearly 100% white male human old starfleet and the starfleet of the movie's setting. go figure.

land of the lost: fun if you have zero expectations. which we did! but

moominmolly was laughing that 30 seconds into the movie i commented to her that it had already diverged significantly from the original series's title sequence.

surprising subtlety for a comedy remake of a 70s action series: the crackpot scientist who wasn't ever right about anything else in the entire movie did not invent a fully-functional dimension-travel device from scratch; instead he built a device that amplified an existing natural process (meow meow tachyons meow meow) and used it in a place where an existing natural phenomenon already used that process to pop people to an alternate dimension sometimes. so, i was thrilled that a movie in which a tyrannosaurus rex can understand modern english was so protective of my suspension of disbelief.

also has a long scene that we were convinced was a burning-man tribute.

boggle of the day
my aerial silks visual glossary, now finally moved to a wiki under

badoingdoing's kind auspices, is one of the first half-dozen google hits for "aerial silks."

which i guess underscores the point that there's really not a lot of expository stuff on the web about silks yet. but it makes me wish i'd dressed better for those photos. :)

also makes me want to fill the pages out a good deal more...

x-ing the y, if you know what i mean
this is going to be my new generic innuendo.

"where are alice and bob?"
"oh, you know them. probably off in a corner somewhere, x-ing the y."

circus show at the somerville armory this friday
i'll be hanging from the ceiling, i hope. also

harm_city_heart will be on lyra. y'all should come.

( flyer below cut )

that's something anyway. until it's overturned.
the state secrets privilege fascinates me because it's now a matter of public record that it was founded on a lie-- that is, in the case for which it was invented, since-declassified records show that there actually were no secrets implicating national security involved... just secrets implicating some government officials who didn't want to be implicated. with that history, it amazes me that anyone's willing to invoke the privilege with a straight face. but it seems to have been invoked more often in the few years since its founding lie was finally public than in the many years before. weird, huh?

still, seeing an appeals court actually make the government work for it makes me feel a little better.

yikes
worrisome word of the day: "apophallation."

bacon-fueled thermal lance
i wonder if this was inspired by sluggy freelance? :) (link from

sweets00)