Snow and Blue Balls

The D&D campaign has been on hiatus for nearly five months. Work was really busy, two of the campaigners got married (to each other - no one's significant other makes fun of D&D in OUR little gang), work slowed down but trips out of town gained in frequency, et cetera. FINALLY, we agreed on today, January 30. The DM handed out level assignments, dice were dusted, pouches retrieved, character sheets pored over. We were ready, man. Ready to ROCK THE UNDERDARK.

Actually, I was prepared to BE rocked by some vampire spider or an undead dwarf, since that is the DM's FAVORITE THING EVER to do to me.

(We all work in the same office. One day, I was sitting at my desk, typing away. A gentleman of my acquaintance wandered by, and he made me laugh about something. I pushed my chair back, so as to not whack my hands on anything - if it's worth laughing about, laugh with your whole body - and that's when I saw it. The office was shadowed, and under my desk it was downright dim. All I really saw was something BLACK and HAIRY and TWO FEET WIDE with RED GLOWY EYES. I screamed, literally screamed, and levitated back four feet. I fucking hate spiders, and this looked like the mother of all spiders. After the adrenaline slowed down, I looked a little closer. Gingerly I stretched out my arm to touch... the loop of elastic attached to its plastic fur? It was a giant Halloween spider decoration, the kind of thing that looks real only out of the corner of your eye. Suddenly my mind flashed to the campaign, and how in the last session the DM kept dropping giant vampire spiders on us. I said, quietly at first but rising in volume, "I don't know who did this but I have a PRETTY GOOD GUESS, E__ J___!" At the time, the DM sat three offices down, so he could of course hear every word. I left the spider hanging on my door for months, as a reminder to all that payback is a BITCH.)

Anyway, I was looking forward to it, failed saves versus webbing and all. I practically ran out the door this morning to shovel, dragging my mate behind me, since last night's weather report said it would be done by nine this morning. As we shoveled, a funny thing happened. It started coming down harder. I got a sinking feeling as I hacked the last chunks of ice from the car.

When we came back inside, there was a message from the DM. Sure enough, the gang decided to postpone, as some of us would have had to travel much further than the others.

One thing about Northern Virginia is that people absolutely CANNOT drive. They careen along in their SUVs, all psyched about their great traction, and then they act surprised by PHYSICS when they realize that the enormous mass of their land yacht makes stopping impossible. The news has reports of accidents everywhere this morning.

Anyway, if you can stay inside when it snows in NoVa, you should. Even if you were completely ready for some creative storytelling party time. And pizza.

So, I totally have fantasy blue balls. You can tell from the babbling.

The Pet Peeves Of the Frustrated Author, Part 2

"Irregardless" is not a fucking word.

No, This Isn't a Joke

A reporter actually had to write this without saying "Well, duh."

Washington Post Article

You've got to register to read it. But I'll show you a quote:


Headline: "SpongeBob SquarePants Has No Gay Agenda"

SINGAPORE, Jan 28 - SpongeBob SquarePants, the wacky cartoon character who sparked a gay alert warning by U.S. Christian conservative groups, is neither gay nor straight.

He is asexual, says his creator.

At least two Christian activist groups said the innocent and hugely popular cartoon character SpongeBob and his best mate Patrick Starfish are being exploited to promote the acceptance of homosexuality.

SpongeBob's creator, Stephen Hillenburg, 43, said the allegations are far-fetched and his agenda does not go beyond fun and entertainment.

"It doesn't have anything to do with what we're trying to do," Hillenburg told Reuters in an interview on Friday, two days before the Asian premiere of the SpongeBob SquarePants Movie in Singapore.

In related news: http://slate.msn.com/id/2112706

Nice Work If You Can Get It

http://www.syncmag.com/article2/0,1759,1738967,00.asp

The Pet Peeves Of the Frustrated Author, Part 1

"Hopefully" is an ADVERB. That means that it describes/modifies a verb.

"I would sure like more money," she said hopefully. (CORRECT.)

"Hopefully they will give me more money," she said. (FINGERNAILS ON A CHALKBOARD WRONG.)

Don't Eavesdrop On My Lunch Pod, Part 1

Two of the guys in the lunch pod are playing out every possible alternate history in Hearts of Iron 2. This means most of our lunch conversations lately have involved at least some discussion of World War II, and alternate versions thereof.

The table across from ours at the sushi joint was trying not to eavesdrop, but there were three moments where they were staring openly:

1. "I just really want to invade Hungary."

2. "I've got troops in West Virginia."

3. During the entirety of my slightly retarded big brother's rendition of World War I, Its Causes and Complexities. "Squirrelly" and "bitchy" were the main descriptive words, and the whole speech took less time than it took me to process one bite of tempura coated shrimp. It was brilliant.

You Lose All Your Cool Points If You Even Understand This Post

Actual conversation from my lunch group, somewhat paraphrased. I was laughing too hard to write the quotes down:

Guy 1: Remember meeting Boomer at that con?

Guy 2: You totally made his day.

Guy 3: How do you feel about Herb Jefferson being a little Korean girl?

Me: (mock horror) They can do that now?

Guy 1: I think I'm gonna change my mind about shems. Sure, it might be weird at first, but look what you get when you level them up a few times.

Girl Talk

I was having a fabulous, old-fashioned debate with three of my favorite people in the world. All three are male, as it happens. We were talking about a faint whiff of gender bias at our mutual workplace. (It's not a huge deal, mind you. I really do mean "faint whiff," as opposed to "the foul stench of oppression." In the immortal words of the guy who refers to me as his slightly retarded younger sister, "Sure, there may be bias around the office, but there are worse issues. It's like saying, boy, I have this headache OW OW THE BONE IS STICKING OUT OF MY ELBOW.")(Of course, I responded by saying that if I didn't have such a headache, maybe I could help splint someone's arm.)(I have to get the last word, even with myself.)(Must be a chick thing.)

The supreme irony of any conversation about gender bias is that the guys willing to listen are not usually the ones with the problem, and/or the power to solve it. My boss? Hired me, didn't he? The only manager in my fabulous lunch foursome? Four out of his five most senior staffers are female. The only other fellow to whom I mentioned the topic outside the lunch brigade and my boss, one of the few with the power to change things... turned white and went on the defensive faster than a cobra faced with a mongoose. A WEEPING, PREMENSTRUAL MONGOOSE, who might AT ANY SECOND become PREGNANT and QUIT HER JOB. Or something.

But gender bias at a nice place to work is almost worse than a place where the men make the women fetch coffee and slap asses. You can sue ass-slappers. You can mount nasty whispering campaigns against coffee cocks. You can puff up with righteous indignation, and call press conferences, and raise holy hell until you can retire and write a book, when you work at someplace dreadful.

I work somewhere NICE, where I'm treated with respect. I've never heard a "time of the month" joke when I'm angry, I don't take notes unless I'm closest to the whiteboard, and we all fetch our own coffee. If someone slapped my ass, they'd pull back a bloody stump, and I'd get a damned medal.

And yet...

At the very bottom levels of the company, when the boys and girls start out exactly evenly, it always seems like the boys wind up with the chance to run a small team, or manage a small project. Then, when it's promotion time, well, the boy's got that tiny edge. When they come "upstairs," where the opportunities are greater, the fellow has the edge. Maybe the fellow came upstairs sooner, because he had just a touch more experience. When they're both put in a spot just out of their comfort zones, and they both complain, the woman might get a pass, maybe a show of mercy. But the male is prodded without mercy to take a shot, make the effort, try harder. Grow.

In ten years, the female, who was once that male's exact equal, will NOT be equal. She will not be qualified for senior management. She will not have the experience you need to run a big team or a big project. She won't have the skills, the resources, or the connections. And if she got the job anyway, to fill some silly quota or in response to some hell raiser like me, it would be wrong. A genuinely more deserving male candidate who lost that job might walk away with a sour taste in his mouth, back to his middle management desk. And that might be the day he has to pick between a boy and a girl, exact equals in every way, to take on a little extra project and have a chance to shine.

We wouldn't want that, now, would we.

Spellchecker, Part 1

"Blog" gets tagged as wrong when you run it through the blogger.com spell checker. It desperately wants to be "bloc." Some days, the Eastern European jokes just write themselves.

I'm a Plus Size Model, Baby

Steven Tyler sure could spawn pretty people. Liv Tyler is one of those transcendantly lovely people that I want to hate, but can't because she seems funny and nice as well as a porcelain-skinned goddess. Last night, I saw the other Tyler spawn on VH1, the Mental Flypaper station. (By Mental Flypaper, I mean you intend to surf past VH1 on your way to Law & Order reruns, and suddenly you're captivated by the brilliance of Michael Ian Black talking about tampons or pet rocks or SOMETHING, and the next thing you know it's tomorrow and you've eaten all the cheese popcorn from the Christmas tin.)

The caption said she was a plus sized model. She didn't exactly LOOK like a model with her red eyeshadow and her flipflops, threatening to beat down a drill instructor, but it was an unflattering reality show depiction, so I headed for the net.

Yeah, she was totally a model.

Now for the part that tweaked my brain. She, a lady 5'7" in stature, began modeling for Lane Bryant (a clothing store for women sized 14-28) when she weighed 155 pounds.

I'm shorter, and almost that weight. I must be "plus sized," right?

Wrong. I have too much dignity to be plus sized. If I were "plus sized," I'd tell you I was FAT and be proud of it, thankyouverymuch. Euphemisms piss me off.

But wrong on another score. I wear size ten jeans, and they're loose enough that more willpower and less cheese popcorn could squeeze me into a pair of eights. I don't wear vanity tens, either, from a brand that wants women to "feel" slim and trim. I'm a ten in Levi's, Gap, Victoria's Secret, Ralph Lauren, Wrangler, and every other brand I've tried. I wear size medium tops, I'm evenly proportioned, and while I'd never wear a bikini, I also don't fear swimsuits. My mate likes my ass. Basically, I'm okay. And if I were 5'7" and 155, I'd be one size smaller than I am right now, or maybe a really loose fitting ten - certainly not a fourteen, the smallest size available at Lane Bryant.

In other words, Mia Tyler, the "plus-sized model," was about three sizes too small to wear the clothes sold to actual plus-sized people.