So, today, I posted the following thing on Facebook;
Now, my brother was first to respond and he asked me if I was going to have a good day, too. This allowed me to finally bust out the animated gif that I had been saving for just this type of occasion;
It makes me feel incredibly good to be quite this childish. :)
Tonight, we finished another D&D campaign under the leadership of DTH, who really ramped up the challenge this time. I don’t get to play very often, and of the few times I’ve been able to be a player over the last decade, I’ve rarely gotten as emotionally invested in a character as I’ve been with Leman, my warrior-priest. I built my character slowly and logically and I’ve enjoyed every step of the way.
The one thing that I’ve noticed with the third edition rules that we use, is that you level up more often than you do under the second edition rules that I’ve spent most of my D&D career using. Once every three or so session we seemed to level, which I thought was a bit much. It wasn’t because of XP rewards that were too high, but rather that the amounts you needed to gather before climbing another level was much more evenly spaced. In second edition the XP targets per level were almost exponential, so it took longer and longer each level.
Last night I went to a birthday party of an acquaintance of mine who had suggested to bring something to drink if you didn’t like beer. I dislike beer so I thought it might be a good idea to bring a bottle of Patron that Jim had brought for me when he came over recently. Now, for whatever masochistic reason, the rule is that once you open a bottle of Patron, you can’t stop until it’s absolutely dry. Luckily, I found some compatriots that helped me out at the party.
It’s a curious habit we humans have. We are literally slowly poisoning yourself into a stupor. I can imagine and understand that a long time ago we did this with hallucinogens in order to achieve a state of spiritual enlightenment, but that aspect has all but completely disappeared and now it’s a voluntary poisoning with little to no spiritual aspect to it.
Now it seems the purpose is three-fold; on the one hand it’s to enjoy the beverage as it is, but it’s likely that the alcohol doesn’t add much to the actual taste of the beverage. Second, I think it’s a tool we use to let down our social guards a bit and be less inhibited to interact with others, but if we try we’re likely to be able to achieve that without alcohol. And third, I think it’s in order to make good on an informal social contract where everyone drinks and you stand out if you don’t. Each reason by itself is a poor reason to drink alcohol and I’m not even sure that combined they’re an any better reason to drink alcohol. And yet we do.
I have that say that I’m glad I was mixing up glasses of this delicious tequila with glasses of water, otherwise I don’t think I would have woken up as painlessly as I did this morning. :)
I found a muppet, in the wild! I managed to obtain a photo of it! Look at how cuuuuuuuuuuuuuute!
Some time ago, an old school friend who is making his career in films asked me to play a little part in a short film he was doing. Having no experience whatsoever, of course I agreed!
Here’s the result. I even end up in the credits, even though I only have half a second of screen time. It was fun but tedious; long periods of waiting in between short periods of activity. Another experience under the belt.