thegameiam prompted me with I'm always interested in religious belief.

Not a great topic for helping beat writer's block . . . but here goes.

Simply put, I don't have religious belief. I've tried more than once but wound up going through the motions, trying to will myself into believing and failing. It's not that I'm opposed to belief. I've seen what it's done for people and I think the universe is too complex to be described with equations alone. It's more a case of being someone who can't believe in a divine being. In Kipling's words, "To these from birth is Belief forbidden."

soldiergrrrl posted the link to the Iron Man trailer. I watched it and said, "Okay, I'm in the target demographic for that one." (Note that I've never read an Iron Man comic)

celticdragonfly said "I really didn't follow that."

selenite: "Defense contractor CEO gets kidnapped by bad guys, escapes, and builds himself a supersuit to go fight crime." (Note--going purely by the trailer here)

celticdragonfly: "Yeah, you ARE the target demographic."

xinef posted the list of 20 Pop Culture Obsessions even geekier than Monty Python. Let's see. Am I obsessed with these?

1. Star Trek - Not since Babylon 5 started, but in high school especially, oh, yeah.
2. Renaissance faires - Yep, to meet girls. Found one, now it's a more casual interest.
3. Fantasy sports leagues - Sports? No.
4. Michael Jackson - Dude did some good music once, not that I bought any.
5. Wikipedia - Useful resource, I'm not a contributor.
6. Battlestar Galactica - Seen six eps. Will probably watch the rest sometime after I'm done with Buffy.
7. The Rocky Horror Picture Show - Went once.
8. Joss Whedon - Firefly, yes. Buffy, getting there. Angel, TBD. Never saw Aliens 3.
9. Media-specific role-playing - Star Trek (FASA) in high school, Firefly now.
10. Magic: The Gathering - I've played using other people's decks.
11. World Of Warcraft - Some of my best friends . . .
12. The Simpsons - Used to watch it, enjoyed it.
13. Doctor Who - Like what I've seen of the revival, the originals are kinda slow for me.
14. Frank Zappa - See #4.
15. Game-show tape trading - I live in a glass house and shall not throw stones.
16. Anime - I like Cowboy Bebop.
17. Cosplay - Ren faire/SCA count?
18. Live-action role-playing - See #17
19. Second Life / MySpace / FaceBook - How'd LJ not make that list?
20. Fanfic - Write fanfic? Moi?

Table-top role playing games are less geeky than Monty Python?

Your Score: Rabbit

You scored 17 Ego, 15 Anxiety, and 15 Agency!

IT was going to be one of Rabbit's busy days. As soon as he
woke up he felt important, as if everything depended upon him.
It was just the day for Organizing Something, or for Writing a
Notice Signed Rabbit, or for Seeing What Everybody Else Thought
About It. It was a perfect morning for hurrying round to Pooh,
and saying, "Very well, then, I'll tell Piglet," and then going
to Piglet, and saying, "Pooh thinks--but perhaps I'd better see
Owl first." It was a Captainish sort of day, when everybody
said, "Yes, Rabbit " and "No, Rabbit," and waited until he had
told them.

You scored as Rabbit!

ABOUT RABBIT: Rabbit is generally considered Clever by his many friends and relations. He is actually a much better reader and writer than Owl, but he doesn't consider it worth mentioning. Instead, Rabbit's real talent lies in Organizing Plans. He organizes rescue parties, makes schemes to reduce Tigger's bounciness, and goes on missions to find out what Christopher Robin does when he's not at the Hundred Acre Woods. Sometimes, however, his Plans do not always go as Planned.

WHAT THIS SAYS ABOUT YOU: You are smart, practical and you plan ahead. People sometimes think that you don't stress or worry, but this is not the case. You are the kind of person who worries in a practical way. You think a) What are my anxieties about and b)what can be done about them? No useless fretting for you. You don't see the point in sitting around and waiting for things to work out, when you could actually work them out today and save yourself a lot of time and worry. Your friends tend to rely on you, because they know that they can trust you help them work things out.

You sometimes tend to be impatient with people who are less practical in their ways. You don't have much patience for idiots who moan about things but never actually DO anything about them. You have high expectations of everyone, including yourself. When you don't succeed at something, or when something goes wrong despite your best efforts to prevent it, you can get quite hard on yourself. You need to cut yourself some slack and accept that everyone has their faults, even you, and THAT IS OKAY. Let yourself be faulty, every now and then, for the sake of your own sanity.

From

telophase:

Choose two of my icons and I will tell you what happens when those two people, or things, or concepts get together. Definition of "get together" may vary. Response may be phrased in the form of a snippet or sentences of random blathering.

You've probably seen mentions that Steven Brust posted his Firefly fanfic novel. It's good. It's in the continuity shortly before the movie. This time the job goes right . . . but Mal manages to find some trouble anyway. He did a superb job of getting the characters right, especially River (which impresses me--she's hard to write). His Guest Star is an interesting person and plays a key role without overshadowing the BDHs. Go read it, y'all.

I haven't been that familiar with Brust before this. I'd enjoyed Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille but not enough to go seek out more of his work. I think I'm going to pick up Freedom and Necessity and give it another shot.

I do know better.

At church yesterday, socializing before and after the service, I mentioned that we're doing fine. "We've all been healthy for weeks." No more of the always-one-or-two-in-the-family-sick we've been having since October.

Well . . . then Jamie started crying in Sunday School and spent the next hour in my lap. When we got home he fell asleep and had a fever. By midnight he'd thrown up twice. I'm taking him to the doctor in an hour.

You'd think I'd know better than to taunt Murphy like that.

From

autographedcat:

YOU'RE ON MY FRIENDS LIST, and I want to know 36 35 things about you. I don't care if we never talk, or if we already know everything about each other. Short and sweet is fine ... You're on my list, so I want to know you better!
( Cut for length )

From

mostuff:

The rules:
- Link to the person who tagged you.
- Leave a comment on their blog so that their readers can visit yours.
- Post the rules on your blog.
- Share the seven (7) most famous or infamous people you have met.
- Tag 7 random people at the end of your post.
- Include links to their blogs.
- Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Burt Rutan. Before Space Ship One, Scaled Composites took a subcontract to design the airframe structure of Pioneer Rocketplane's Pathfinder vehicle. We kicked it off by taking a Cessna up to Mojave (yes, we could fit most of the company in a Cessna), parking at Scaled's hanger, and getting a tour before the meeting. Burt came in to chat with us a bit before leaving us with the technical team for our project.

Merril McPeak. Was Chief of Staff of the USAF when I was a lieutenant. Never met him then. But he became chairman of the board at Pioneer Rocketplane. Not a fun guy to brief. I remember trying to skip a slide on the grounds that was irrelevant after a design change he'd insisted on earlier in the review. He made me put it up then repeated the whole rant he'd made the first time.

Lois Bujold. First met at Wiscon in 1993. Since then I've seen her at other cons and mini-Lois-cons, where a small group of fans would join her for dinner. A wonderful lady.

Larry Niven. First met at I-con (the one on Long Island, not the Iowa one) in 1982 or '83. Saw him at lots of cons in California.

celticdragonfly and I danced with him and Fuzzy Pink Niven at Westercon in 2002.

George Hochbrueckner (former congressman, which is famous in mundane circles even if no one on my flist has heard of him). My mom worked for him when he was a state legislator and I handed out leaflets for campaigns.

Gary Hudson. Never worked for him, though I did try for a job at Rotary Rocket at one point. I met him at the Space Access rocket cons.

Steve Jackson. Also first met at I-con. Last saw him at ConDFW. Him I'm actually working for, sort of. I've sold seven freelance articles to his webzines and hope he'll publish some longer work of mine.

Not sure who to tag, so anyone wanting to do this one, feel free.

Last week we were watching Buffy: the Vampire Slayer. It ended with the dramatic reveal that SPOILER was a god.
Me: "Oh, we know how to deal with that. Nail him to a stick."

celticdragonfly: "Nah, that only works for three days."
Our handbasket is marked "Express".

Saturday

fordprfct,

mostuff,

aedynn, and

trollsabre came over for another game day. First one out of the box was The Good, the Bad, and the Munchkin. Literally out of the box--it was part of the payment for my space elevator article and had just arrived the day before. It's one of the better Munchkin games IMHO--they didn't have to stretch as far to find Western themed jokes and the game stayed more balanced instead of letting a few players run away with it.

celticdragonfly skipped the game to get lunch for everyone--thank you, love! After that

fordprfct and I tried out an old game of mine--Invasion of the Air Eaters. It's an SF microgame, never reviewed on BGG, so I wanted to relearn it so I can write one up. The aliens won despite a slow start, mostly because the humans had ridiculous die rolls.

The rest of the crew played chocolate Scrabble and then went into the living room to try out Guitar Hero.

celticdragonfly got to show off her skills to the newbies. Then after we finished with the Air Eaters

fordprfct really showed off.

Everyone got together again for Apples to Apples, followed by Family Fluxx while I put the kids to bed. I joined in the last round of Fluxx, then we played Unexploded Cow, which

fordprfct won by taking the biggest pot I can remember seeing in the game.

The last game was Zombies!!!, which is appropriate for midnight. It was the first time I've played a full game but I suspect it went on much longer than normal. The board set-up had all the buildings with supplies close to base, with just regular streets on the way to the helipad. So there was no chance to get more ammo on the way and the heroes would get wiped out by the zombies before getting to the finish line. Finally we respawned enough to attrit them down . . . . "Worst monster hunters ever" was the refrain.

We're hosting a gaming day at our place on January 12th, 2pm-11pm. Come on by and bring any new games you'd like to try out with folks.

Well, this time I have an impressive excuse for not getting done the projects I'd planned for the holiday break. I came down with pneumonia. Not very suddenly--I'd been having a cough through most of December, but I was also dealing with a rib injury, so I tried to suppress the cough so the ribs could heal. I succeeded. So the suppressed lung problem developed into pneumonia from being a basic cold or something. Fortunately I already had an appointment set up with my GP for a couple days after Christmas to ask for a sleep apnea study referral. I got that, plus a couple of prescriptions for some stuff that left me snoozing for the rest of the week. Now I'm cutting back on the dosage so I can function. The lungs are healing nicely, but I'm behaving myself.

I'm looking forward to being healthy in the new year.

Three years ago Pyramid published a gaming article I wrote, The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Panic. It was mostly an excuse to explore the Hysteria Department at Illuminati University, but the plot focused on the invention of a "Fear Projector." I wanted an appropriate mad science gadget to drive innocent bystanders into a panic. Naturally there had to be a bit of technobabble describing how this thing worked:

Had an awfully busy weekend just past. Saw The Golden Compass with

mostuff Friday night. Fun eye candy, but I kept falling out of the movie. I think in pulling out the controversion elements of the story the producers also took out the dramatic tension. It's like Hagrid telling Harry Potter "There's this V-Man guy--nasty dude, hurt a bunch of people. We don't like to talk about him." What's the big deal again? Casting famous actors didn't always help. My reaction to a scene would be "It's Christopher Lee and Derek Jacopi! Cool. I wonder who they're playing." Sam Elliot didn't help either, mostly because his history and his outfit screamed COWBOY! in a movie that didn't have cowboys. Kidman, OTOH, was great as the setting's Darth Vader.

Saturday Maggie was invited to a classmate's birthday party. The host site was a bounce house outfit--they had four of the things in a warehouse. The kids loved it, running all over like crazy. A couple of the bouncers were specialty items, a very tall slide and a slide when had an obstacle course to get to it. Maggie wanted me going through them all with her. The slides were fun, but the obstacle course one was sized to require interesting maneuvering from the kindergarteners. For me it required some serious contortions and my rib cage strongly objected to one maneuver. It's still sore. So I only went through that one the once, no matter how many times Maggie cried, "Come on, Daddy!" After a few hours we adjourned to the "party room" for pizza and birthday traditions. Maggie turned her nose up at the pizza since it wasn't her preferred brand. But she ate the cake, and sang the song.

Jamie had been kept out of the party because he'd been sick on Friday, but since he was doing better I took him and Maggie to the Saginaw Fire Department Open House. They were celebrating their new offices. With the growth of the town the police department moved to a new building and their old building was remodeled to be offices and training facilities for the fire fighters. The kids got to look at the fire engines. The new ladder truck was at full extension. Looks like "top of the grain elevator burning" was the reference scenario for the specs. The Texas Firefighter Museum folks had brought some old engines which the kids could climb into, great fun for them. One of the ambulance services was letting kids into their vehicle for a guided tour but that line was longer than Maggie's attention span. The best part for me was getting some disaster preparedness info from our local FEMA-equivalent. We got to chatting while the kids played. Turns out Walter Jon Williams' The Rift is a popular novel in that crowd (and well it should be). She agreed that it was a terrible book to read right before visiting the Gateway Arch.

Sunday Maggie and Jamie got to see their godparents again for the first time in weeks (and also the last time in weeks as they'll be out of town for the holidays). Jamie's been making a lot of progress lately, not just in talking but in behavior. This was the best behaved he'd ever been in the service, at least since he was weaned. Maggie was swept off to learn how to make cookies with her godmother afterwards.

That evening we went over to

fordprfct's place to play Rock Band. Amazingly to me I'm being somewhat competent at it. Sure, I'm playing bass on "easy" but I'm someone who normally can't match rhythm or tune at all. The music selections aren't aimed at me. I suspect getting access to music you like is one of the big incentives for progressing in the metagame. I have to wonder about the future of the game--seems like there'd be a lot of interest in letting people access user-generated songs. Thousands of budding composers could get their tunes out to people by letting them play them.

I admit I want this so I can play filk in the Rock Band II game . . .

Your Score: Rabbit

You scored 17 Ego, 15 Anxiety, and 15 Agency!

Your Score: Outstanding!

You scored 100% correct for the Notebooks of Lazarus Long!