I genuinely didn't feel better about my performance in sword class today until I said to myself, 'I am wiping on heroic mode.' And I don't feel bad about wiping, I don't beat myself up about it. I just learn the strat and do what I have to do.

And thinking about that, in the context of learning to be a better swordfighter, I instantly felt better about my prospects.

This is not me being a geek. This is the way I conceptualize my life.

And why shouldn't I? I got to be very good at playing World of Warcraft through nearly a half-decade of hard work, practice and research.

It's about high fucking time I applied that mentality to everything else.

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Today's 'lol japan discovery: Jesus/Buddha slash.

My, the earth is full of things.

-30-

So Sunday we finished building our swords. It's basically a length of PVC pipe and wire covered in foam and a shit-ton of strapping tape, with an outer layer of decorative and protective duct tape.

I covered the blade in a bright-lime-green shade of duct tape. I wanted to evoke the sort of light-construct sword my beloved Green Lanterns would tote into battle, you see.

I had intended to name the thing Lantern's Light (as in, Beware my power...) But wow this color is twelve kinds of ridiculous. And with the black-and-silver handle...



Without really meaning to, I'd managed to create a lightsaber. (For what it's worth, it's actually only an inch shorter than my, um, other lightsaber, the Master Replicas Darth Vader prop.) Leaving practice, I called it my lolsaber ...which, admittedly, sounds a lot better than my SWORDFIGHTAN IS SRS BIZNESS original name.

The last step was to put some grip tape on the handle - think tennis racket. When I got my tape, I decided to run with the theme and tart up the hilt a little bit with some aluminum tape:



I regret nothing. I can't stop giggling holding it.

Lolsaber, indeed.

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Listening to the Lord of the Rings trilogy during my work commute sparked a peculiar memory:

My first encounter with the word faggot was in Tolkien.

Sixth grade, and some overly-ambitious substitute teacher was having us read The Hobbit aloud in turns. We got to a part where Bilbo threw some bundles of wood on the fire and most of my class started giggling.

I distinctly remember having no idea what everyone thought was so damn funny.

-30-

I've been walking and standing very carefully lately.

After Penguicon, I signed up to take basic swordsmanship with Aegis Consulting. Franny signed up as well - and after roughly a month of this, I realize how hard I'm depending on her to keep me going.

It's hard. Not so much the physical exertion during class on Sundays - though it has left me sore and bruised - but the discipline to keep up practice, alone at home, is incredibly taxing. And it doesn't even look particularly interesting yet. As I said, it's very careful walking, standing, arm waving. Looks a lot like tai chi, actually. The pointy things come later.

But man, it hurts. My thighs haven't been so mad at me since volleyball conditioning sophomore year at Nouvel. Which makes practice at home so easy to put it off, to procrastinate... as I've done on so many other 'dream projects.' But she gives me strength.

On my desk at work is a purple rose made of twisted paper - a prize from my first fight. Which was (and I knew it would be) with Franny.

It was at a knife tournament, at a social gathering of past and present Aegis students and instructors. (To clarify: these are SCA-style weighted foam weapons we're talking about here.) The leader winced when he realized he had scheduled us against each other in the list. He pulled us aside.

"Are you two going to be okay?" He warned us that adrenaline can do crazy things to a person, that some people in relationships should never fight each other.

"I don't mind at all," I said. Then, to Franny: "But if you don't want to, that's perfectly fine with me."

She considered a moment, and agreed.

The fighting area was marked off with a circle of tiki torches. We took up our daggers, bowed to each other -

And I stabbed her right in the chest.

She got me right back - I still have a quarter-sized bruise over my heart.

It was best-two-of-three, and we had a lot of tie moments. "Double Kill!" the leader cried, no small amount of delight in his voice.

We double-killed quite a bit. There's a pleasant symmetry to that.

I won out in the end. (I would win another fight to go on to the basic division's final round, and lost to a member of our basic class, who went on to win the whole thing against the winner of the advanced division.)

An instructor gave each of us a paper rose - "for bravery," she said - and confessed that she still refused to fight her own partner. We just smiled.

It's a strange, fascinating group we've attached ourselves to. There's a certain ritual politeness surrounding people who regularly handle deadly objects that I find really appealing. (Me? Attracted to ritual formality and swords? YOU DON'T SAY.)

I can't wait to attend next year's Penguicon as a graduate of this program, instead of a wide-eyed hanger-on.

-30-

I had a mopey entry all ready to go about how I have this tendency to sabotage myself with procrastination and laziness, and how I undermine my best efforts for creative endeavors.

Then I spent all day Friday knocking out long-overdue items on my to-do list, and I'm feeling a lot better.

There's a lesson to be learned in that.

-30-

The subculture of RPers and people performing as WoW NPCs on Twitter is such a massive circlejerk

...so of course I'm enjoying the hell out of it.

-30-

Jets! The HAIR. The CHIN. And Arisia! AND HITTING A GUY WITH A CONSTRUCT FOLDING CHAIR!

Excuse me, I will be in my motherfucking BUNK.

-30-

I would have such a bromantic crush on Rachel Maddow if it wasn't for the fact that she's

uh

me

like in a slightly different universe

Earth-2, maybe

-30-

Finished the 'Arthas' Heart' quest chain last night. It's as if Blizzard looked at how much I love Arthas and Tirion Fordring and then coded a whole zone just for me.




also I can't be the only person out there wondering why there isn't any Tirion/Darion fanart, srsly

-30-

What do you do when the girlfriend is feeling ill? Cheer her up with the dorkiest My Little Ponies around. I did twelve of these, including Kratos, Old Snake, Arthas and Illidan... Check them out.

-30-

Ouch. Apparently Wizard Magazine just had a major staff culling akin to the 1upocalypse.

My desire to become a jrn was driven, in part, by mags like that. It seems to be a culture of nerd mags that I missed by a few years. (Wizard Magazine had dramatically declined in quality since I had those daydreams, but that's beside the point.)

This strange sort of creepy feeling crawls over me when I contemplate the fact that rising tuition costs would have made MSU unaffordable if I was a year or two younger - I get that same sort of feeling, looking at the death of magazines like this.

And it's always inevitably followed by uncertainty - is that really what I wanted to do with my life? If so, why didn't I just start a gaming or comics blog and stuck with it? So So Silver Age was a pleasant experiment for a summer, but I didn't have the stamina. And after a year off of writing in any professional capacity, do I even want to go back to being a proper jrn at all?

-30-

Working in online publishing for people who don't really understand the internet is... complicated.

You look like a damn miracle worker when you make shit happen, but you can't get people to understand why you can't get something done.

-30-

Feeling pretty meh about the latest wave of WoW action figures. It didn't take them very long to resort to their first recolor... demon form Illidan would have made way more sense as a variant. Tossing him in as this wave's deluxe fig feels really lazy.

Definately picking up the ghoul, though.

Good god, I'm such a neckbeard.

-30-

The Guitar Hero toys to come out of Toyfair 2009 are still all boys.

God damn, Activision is stupider than advertised. How many gamer women would love a Judy Nails or Pandora fig?

-30-

I just started composing an entry about possibly getting a Wacom Bamboo only to realize I've already written that here.

I've had too many moments this week where I've forgotten what I was supposed to be doing.

Feeling sluggish - I think it's my apartment. The place is a mess; the air smells stale. If it's not too cold after work I'm throwing the windows open and cleaning some crap out.

-30-

well that was a failed experiment. I've stopped posting the twitter thinger for a few reasons:

1) If any of you genuinely gave a shit about the inane stuff I had to say on Twitter, you'd follow me there

2) They're not as archivable as LJ entries are. Even if I were to save them with a service like LJBook (which I highly recommend if you ever want to back your LJ up, by the way), you'd only be getting half the conversation. There's no context to who or what I was reacting to.

3. It forces me to actually write a decent entry now and again, which I was letting myself slack on.

Edited to tone down the douchebaggery

-30-

• 17:33 sign of Michigan spring: potholes large enough to swallow a large dog, or perhaps a small horse. More reliable than the robin #
• 08:33 @lich_king Oh, lighten up. It would do you some good to get over Jaina, you know - and some of those Vrykul women are pretty hot. #
• 08:38 today's plan: work, get @neilhimself 's Batman, get my ears lowered and then go turn @Illidan_stormrg into a scratching post with 24 friends #
• 11:50 Of 66 twitters I follow, 30 are celebs (or at least interbutt celebs) 6 are newsfeeds, 19 are fictional characters and one is a cat. /sigh #
• 12:06 @lich_king correction: and one guy who makes me wish druids could equip swords. #
• 12:12 @lich_king it isnt kosher for an Argent Champion to compliment ya too much -not as long as @Tirion_Fordring still signs my paychecks, anyway #
• 12:13 @jeffkart You're in the highly-desired 'guys who tweet me things they could say from 8 feet away' category. #
• 12:14 @tesseractive Wikipedia Brown's always on the case #
• 12:21 @tesseractive only if you can get a chorus of a capella singers to follow you everywhere #
• 13:54 These Chips Ahoy I bought are NASTY stale. I think the world's trying to tell me it's time to quit the vending machine for good. #
• 13:55 [obligatory 'I wish I knew how to quit you' joke here] #
• 14:04 Listening to the 2009 WKC dog show while working and overhear a Aussie Shep named Copyright. If I get an AKC breed I'm naming her Stylebook. #
• 15:14 @porcupinetea oh I know. I'm a sucker for the whole herding group. Also: bit.ly/wRdGv #

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• 06:24 given the last 3 hours i would happily watch a 6 o' clock news show starring @caseymckinnon and @wilw . just sayin'. that'd be rad. #
• 10:21 conference calls are like being invited to the most boring raid of all time. /afk #
• 11:00 @mightymur I find myself listening to more Green Day as the weather warms. Can't wait to see your latest. (I got my gf into podfic via PFK!) #
• 12:14 @feliciaday Will Guild episodes come back to iTunes when the MSN deal expires?I miss watching them on my iPod. (Keep up the great work, btw) #
• 13:14 My life is consumed by managing a stream of repetitive minutiae. No wonder I like MMOs. #
• 14:49 Hey, look at that. Green Day is making a new album. And DAMN fark hates Green Day. (I wonder why people think they ever claimed to be punk.) #
• 14:52 1,012 entries in my starred 'to read later' pile in Google Reader, dating back to July 21. Hurf there's a homework assignment for you #
• 15:08 @lich_king What was that about death knowing no fear? Surely you don't fear pouches. #

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It's been entirely too long since I've done any pchat/oekaki. Like, years too long. Largely because my old tablet doesn't work with Linux/OS X based machines and my hand has completely forgotten how I used to draw with only a mouse.

So, thinking about picking up the Wacom Bamboo. (Not the Bamboo Fun - I don't need any of that extra bullshit software, or the mouse.)

Any of you folks have any experience with this beast? Have a favored brand/model in the $50-100 range* I should be looking at instead?


*Even if I had that enough bank for a Graphire or Intuos, I'd rather buy a gaming console. Or, um, a sword. You know how it is.

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