♦ Slacktivist hits another one out of the park, this time on the subject of hate and it’s means of propogation.

♦ Most of the discussion surrounding the recent rumors about Marvel making a Black Panther movie revolves around casting, which makes sense (and I’m okay with pretty much any of the names floating about). What bothers me is the idea that a Black Panther movie somehow rules out the eventual existence of a Luke Cage: Power Man movie. Sweet Christmas, people, it’s not a zero-sum game. I think the universe (either the real one or the Marvel movie one) has enough room for more than one black superhero, don’t you?

♦ This week’s Savage Love hits on both reasons why I never miss Dan Savage’s column: The first letter ably captures the weird, silly, and oddly plausible, and the second is the perfect example of execellent advice to a common but often unmentioned problem, delivered simply and bluntly, with both humor and honesty.

♦ Finally, I shall never grow tired of this underappreciated meme:

The last few days have been very trying for me, physically and emotionally. Don’t worry, I’ll pull through, but don’t get concerned if it looks like I’m maintaining radio silence – I am, but only because I need some time to hide away in an undisclosed location and recharge.

before I go, though, I wanted to touch upon a couple of pleasant highlights from a period that was otherwise pretty damned stressful:

First, I had the honor of playing a small part in figuratively throwing a couple of pretty great teenagers over the bridge to “adulthood” (whatever that means) this weekend. I’ve spent a good part of the past year playing at being an advisor and mentor of sorts, and have been continually impressed with their engagement, energy, ideas, and humor (as well as their general tolerance of my old-fogieness). They’re both way more prepared to take on the world than I was at that age, and I can’t wait to see what they do next. Congratulations on the milestone, E and J.

Also this weekend, I spent a couple of hours with some of the Richmond Comix Encounters group running through the open playtest of “D&D Next”. There’s a new version of the iconic pen & paper RPG in the works, and the playtest is a chance for the publishers to put a “rough draft” version in the hands of a population of gamers in order to see how it works in “real world” conditions, who then report back with their experiences and findings. Essentially, it’s what I do for my real job, but this time, I get to try and break fun stuff instead of dry business software.

As for the experience? It was terribly enjoyable. The new rules play a lot like the very early editions of the game, making it much different than the current 4th edition. The table was largely made of up a experienced grognards who’ve been playing for decades, and we all spent a lot of time looking at each other with smiles on our faces talking about how “old school” it all felt and how it was tripping our nostalgia circuits, opening up memories of middle school afternoons around some kid’s kitchen table, sneaking the rogue around corners while balancing resources. It required a tremendous shift in thinking after playing 4E for the last half-decade. Thankfully, they’ve worked in enough modern tweaks to ensure that a first level wizard isn’t totally useless after expending his single daily spell slot.

That’s not to say that the system is perfect just yet – there’s a lot of rough around the edges, and some things that are contradictory or don’t work quite right; things like how to run surprise rounds, and exactly how some of the new healing rules work, for example. I’m already a big fan of the “advantage/disadvantage” mechanic, though – it adds an interesting wrinkle to the proceedings. I’m looking forward to the next iteration to see how they refine things, and so I can learn more about character creation. But mostly, I want to try out the new “intoxicated” condition to see how it plays.

And with that, I’m going to go hide under my blanket for a couple of days.

Even his fans spend a good bit of time making fun of “Crazy Uncle” Joe Biden’s colorful persona, but we shouldn’t forget that he’s scary smart, and perhaps more importantly, a genuinely decent guy who isn’t afraid to drop the politician mask now and then and just be a human being when the situation calls for it.

Go read this article about speech he gave to a military survivors group; you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Even better? Watch the video:

People talked about Bill Clinton and his “I feel your pain” schtick. He’s good, but Bill’s got nothin’ on the Vice President here. I’m glad we’ve got him around.

Because *I* have:

Witness: The trailer to the 2012 movie verion of the musical Les Miserables:

I must say, this looks right, and sounds pretty good, thankfully. The cast is theoretically very good, and the fact that director Tom Hooper, I’ve read, insisted that the whole thing be done with live vocals rather than lip synching to studio tracks is encouraging.

However, it’s the film adaptation of one of the most popular and beloved muscials of the last 30 years. It was my first Broadway show, and probably still my favorite (and not just because all the cute artsy girls in high school walked around wearing the t-shirt all the damned time). Who cares if it only has like four melodies across the entire show? It’s iconic, and rightfully so.

Which is why I’m so relieved that it doesn’t seem horrid. What we hear of Hathaway’s vocals are quite good, even if I’d personally prefer she go with the more defiant, pissed off at the world interpretation of “I Dreamed A Dream” rather than the sorrowful, piteous one (both are valid choices). I can’t wait to see Jackman chew up some gorgeously shot scenery.

So, these 90 seconds or so have, for the moment, set my mind at ease, at least a little bit. I really hope this ends up being as good as I want it to be. Too many of us have waited too long for it to suck (or get run over by The Hobbit, since I think they’re opening the same weekend).

So, this past weekend was Balticon. I was there. In dramatic contrast to the last 48 hours or so, I mostly had a pretty good time, basking in the communal glow of geekdom (or not…the communal “glow” can occasionally be described as more of a “funk” or “stench”, and is not particularly pleasant to bask in), mingling with like minds, meeting new friends, and spending some time with other great people I don’t always get to see very often.

I spent some time in panels about publishing, songwriting, and gaming, and may have been recruited to sit on one or two next year (about gaming). I listened to a lot of excellent music, and saw an interesting short film, and watched an award-winning webcomic writer wrestle with the implications of prodigiously foaming malt beverages.

Normally, I’d weave everyone’s links and such into a coherent narrative, but given the level of real-life stress I’ve dealt with since leaving the convention venue (mostly expensive things breaking and a couple of particularly daunting parenting challenges), I would probably get it wrong. Instead, I’m going to mostly just end up listing people; apologies up front if I left someone out. I will say, however, that I highly recommend all the people and projects I link to as Guaranteed Cool Stuff™, and highly suggest you follow a few links and exchange some of your money for some of their art. The transactions will be worth it.

I greatly enjoyed the music and company of talented musical performers and all-around good guys Jonah Knight, John Anealio, and Danny Birt. I also made the brief acquaintance of the very talented performers Heather Dale and “Sooj” Tucker, whose work I expect I’ll be enjoying for many years to come.

I also met some interesting new people, including Barbara and Mark of Mercury Retrograde Press, who throw a great panel (and a great party, as well as publish great books by nice people like Leona Wisoker), and an entirely different Barbara and Carl from Mysticon, another event we’ll be adding to our already busy schedule for next year.

So, yeah. See ya all next year.

Just a programming note that you may or may not notice. I re-jiggered the links to your right just a bit, adding a new section for all the musician types I had been including in the “interesting people” section.

“Interesting People” was a heading I had been using for people I’ve (usually) met out there in the world who have a blog or web presence they wouldn’t mind me sending a little traffic to. Often, these people are friends of varying degrees of “close and personal” whose work I enjoy just as much as I do their company.

It turns out that quite a lot of those interesting people make some wonderful music, so it seemed to make sense to create another section just for them, as I’ve always done with the “reading list” section (for some of whom the same friend/fan overlap situation applies).

So, I did. I just wanted to assure anyone affected by the change that just because your link was moved to “play list” doesn’t mean that I don’t still consider you interesting people, in case, you know, you were worried or something.

quoting myself from the previous post:

So yeah, it’s been a little bit crazy. Maybe it’ll let up soon, and maybe it won’t. We’ll see.

From here, I can definitively say that so so, far, it hasn’t let up at all. In fact, the universe has decided that perhaps I didn’t have enough crap to deal with, and heaped on a whole bunch more in the last 24 hours.

Perhaps once I get out from under at least some of it, I’ll write a bit about the good times at this years’s Balticon, because beyond logistics and travel issues, there were some pretty good times to be had. I prefer to do those good times justice, and honestly, right now, I find myself unable to do so.

At least to me, it seems like I’m not posting as much lately. I suspect that if I go back and count things, I’m probably running at about the same pace; it just doesn’t feel like I’m putting in the time.

Granted, there’s been a bit more of life out there to take up my time these last few weeks. Between the flurry of activities bubbling up around the idea of it closing in on the end of the school year, and the fact that work has entered an interesting new testing phase, which means that a lot more of my headspace is occupied with things like writing up system defects and learning about new and terribly interesting things like variable index-based pricing formulas, I haven’t had a lot of time to spare.

What time I did have to spare got taken up by things like a few evenings out with friends to things like exciting baseball games and ren faires, an excellent tapas dinner thrown by some aquaintances, throwing way too much money in too short a time into automotive upkeep, losing a couple of elderly fish, the usual stresses of careers, relationships, parenthood, and home ownership, working out those stresses by beating up dwarven cultists on Wednesday nights, and occasionally trying to carve out half an hour to just sit on my ass to catch my breath.

And in 48 hours or so, I’ll be headed off to Balticon.

So yeah, it’s been a little bit crazy. Maybe it’ll let up soon, and maybe it won’t. We’ll see.

In any case, being the time of year it is, lots of people are graduating from various institutions of learning (including a few friends of mine for whom I have quite a lot of pride), and a somewhat smaller (but still significant) number of people are delivering speeches at these graduation ceremonies. Sometimes, people in that latter group are occasionally interesting in ways that I completely wasn’t twenty years ago.

People, like, say, Neil Gaiman:

So be wise, because the world needs more wisdom, and if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise, and then just behave like they would.

And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art.

Good Advice. One of these days, I’ll get around to following more than the mistakes part. There may have been some art, though, depending on how wide your definition of “good” is.

If you’re reading this post within a week or two of my posting it, you’ll be able to look over to the left side of the window and see that Netflix brought a copy of the “family” film Ramona and Beezus to my house. It’s a rather pedestrian adaptation of a couple of Judy Blume books you might have read in elementary school if you’re of a certain age. The kids sorta liked it.

Dutifully, since I watched it, I listed over in the little box that I use for that sort of thing. Of course, when I typed it the first time, I made a typographical error; an error which was both amusing and offered some insight into what I might rather have been watching.

So, this evening, inspired, I spent a couple of minutes poorly gimping up the following image:

Well, I thought it was funny. Also, I’m a much bigger fan of Mary Tamm as Romana, but Ms. Ward, being rather more elfin and whimsical, seemed to fit the bill a bit better.