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★ Jenny Lewis ★

June 7, 2014, 8:07 am
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So I guess some other stuff happened but cut to the chase & yay Jenny Lewis, my favorite. I've only seen her once before; I'm not necessarily a concert fanatic, & I have pretty curmudgeonly opinions. Notably, I just won't go to your show if it is at a big venue. I have no interest in that, no matter how much I like your music. Since Jenny Lewis tends to play in NJ venues or open for folks, I usually don't try too hard to make it happen, but I am really glad we did. Jennifer & Kuba were good sports & went there early so we could be close to the stage. A lot of new material, which is great, because-- well, it means new material exists. Also some classics: I didn't expect to hear "A Better Son/Daughter" yesterday. The show didn't blow my mind but it did make me very happy. Oh so now let me back track a little. We went to Governor's Ball with Kuba, confusingly on Randall's Island. I knew it was on Randall's Island, & we were going to Randall's Island, but when I mentioned it Jenny was like "are you trolling me?"& inside my head I went ("well, I am starting now!") & teased her about it for a bit. Then a ferry & an island & music! Lots of food truck food; corndogs from Jalapeño Dog, nuggets from some nugget place-- fried food, on a tender stomach, as I'd been sick the day before-- really good corn, Momofuku Milk Bar cookies...basically just better quality fair food, but at least that justified the cost of the concessions a little. Music festivals are fun (Jenny & I had fun at Sweet Life, too), but I wanted to leave earlier than everyone else. I don't care about the headliners: see above re: big venues. We hung out on a hill a bit, picnicking; that was fun. So hold on, what did we see? Well, we missed HAERTS, which is a bummer, because I like what I've heard of them & want to see if it holds steady. We saw Janelle Monae, but mostly at a distance. La Roux, same thing; I guess La Roux is popular? Um, Kurt Vile, which I didn't "get." TV on the Radio was pretty good but we wandered away to see Grimes. Grimes, who I wish I "got," but don't. Then Outkast was last & despite the friendly Kiwi next to us, it was just one of those occasions that reminds you of the stupid casual selfishness of the human species. Opinions on large venues & their ilk: validated. We left, walked across a bridge back into Metropolis, & trudged home sharing a train car with a crazy guy.
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Oubliette Session Thirteen: an Auction at the End of the World.

June 9, 2014, 11:00 am
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(Masui; Tian Yi by Oliver Stalmans.)

So here's a true thing about Oubliette: when you make a choice, the other paths not taken? Still happen, just without you there. The world keeps moving, even without the PCs there to meddle with it. So, to give a couple of for instances, because they decided to go into the Arboretum, the players adventured a little with Iroha o-Lung, the Shogun's representative. Different choices could have led to closer interactions with one of the other first round bidders, like Toshi Kyoryu or Hokusai Nezumi no-Kappa. Or another example is their exploration of the Pyramid; while they were doing that, the second group of bidders arrived. It's not a bad thing, it's a good thing; choices have consequences, & if they'd gone on the mini-quest I had planned for when the second group of bidders arrived, they wouldn't have gotten to go into the Pyramid. The choices that the characters make matter; they impact the story & the world. I think I sold that message pretty well, but I didn't do what I set out to do, which is have a Big Fancy Party. I've traditionally done very well with that in Oubliette; I use minis to keep track of the NPCs, I separate them out into cliques, & I try to co-opt the Players to portray side-characters. I didn't have one here, & I think it left the other guests somewhat one-dimensional, since the PCs didn't get to mingle with them. Note to self for next time. Actually, that's the solution right there; make sure there is a next time, bring these NPCs back in later stories.

We are finally to the auction! The players-- bedraggled & blood-stained, but healed by the powerful golden Sekhem of the mummy-- stumble back into camp after last session, unable to muster up any kind of pomp or circumstance. Inside, as they change into finery, Haru o-Kitsune pauses, purposefully & artfully half-dressed, as Luke sends his manservant Gong to bring Iroha o-Lung, the one-armed emissary of the Shogun's to speak to them. She arrives, agreeing with the kuge Haru &Amina o-Kitsune-- Lilly's bushi-- that they should form an alliance. Nicole's zaibatsu agent, Keku Kin, wants to politely excuse herself, but Iroha wants her to stay, & eventually Keku shares some of the information she is able to obtain with them. Ren Jokoizumi, Eric's geiko-trained host, was hired by the warlord whose auction it is in the first place-- their childhood frenemy, Goro Tako-- but his loyalty is to his friends, & if he can help them out, he will. (The Royal Physician, Silissa's character, is meditating near the Pyramid; Eric & Silissa are planning on attending alternating sessions.)

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(Toku o-Kirin; "Dream Sequence III: Dormant" by Madame Peripetie.)

There are new tents set up; since the tents from earlier were blown down by the same sandstorm that half-buried the longhouse, these are obviously recent. One is small-- the players call it a pup tent-- & another lavish. That one they recognize, by the unicorns & flowers: Toku o-Kirin, the most eligible princess of the great Sakura house, married into the Kirin house. &, thanks to their Fame & Political acumen, Keku & Amina know her personally, & know that she's a transgender devotee of Kaguya, the moon goddess who became a boy hero. The other tent is...well, a yurt, not a tent, & the flickering light from inside Nicole describes as "like someone welding." The inhabitants of the other tents are reveled later that night, at a nightcap toasting: Masui is a beautiful woman with sharp metal nails with no given family name or affiliation, &Goldur bint Agrat...is a giant vampire? Seven & a half foot tall & wrapped in veils, with wildly bloodshot eyes, from the Gaki lands to the south, the land of cannibals & necromancers. They join Iroha, Toku & the others: Toshi Kyoyru, the old man with the giant mechabacus who rode in on an ankylosaur, &Hokusai Nezumi no-Kappa, a foul-mouthed brute, a Clegane of a man.

Happily, the players immediately decide to go all out. When I played Legend of the Five Rings, the thing that most impressed me was that the courtier did feel balanced, compared to a bushi or a shugenja. Balancing courtly etiquette with samurai sword fights & spell-casting is tricky, but doable. Some of it is testament to how Ron runs his games-- how he always has, which is why he was a good Vampire: the Masquerade Storyteller-- which means that I should feel free to be proud of the same thing going on in my game, too. First: they decide to pick a side! Which is one of my Quick PC tips; when I make a character, I always try to pick something in the campaign to care about, & when I come across feuding parties, I always pick a side. It's nice to see the players agree, & throw in their lots with Iroha & the Shogun. That could have long-term ramifications. Haru & Amina have a private, intense conversation & then Haru-- invoking a background in theater & disguise we'd realized we'd been ignoring-- bribes Mifune with some coins & a promise of a rice paddy of his own to oversee.

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(Goldur bint Agrat; Hansel & Gretel concept art by Ulrich Zeidler.)

Ren is helping the group out by convincing Goro to let Keku have another look at the canopic jars, even though officially everyone's already had their chance. Goro is willing to bend the rules for Ren-- after all, they are the two with the most in common, both lower class boys raised in a Geiko town, only Ren fell in with the Geiko courtesans & Goro fell in with the Gokudo gangsters-- but he needs Ren to do a favor for him in return. He needs Ren to go to the Yurt of the Gaki &...let her drink his blood a little. Just a little! Amina decides to go along too, & sure enough, the three of them end up bleeding for the witch Goldur; they don't even really talk. The yurt is full of wire-less bulbs, flickering light like fireflies as a tesla coil flickers, & the eerie scene is sort of like the witches' esbat in Sleep No More, ecstatic more than transactional. As payment, the expert got to flex her muscles; Keku was able to take a look at them, using her newly re-integrated cybernetic eye, & knew which had malfunctioned or faded, & which were still puissant, seals intact.

When the auction actually starts, the tables have been flipped; Goro wants them all to reveal their bid, & then he will bid on them, with the jars. Two rounds of this ought to clear out everyone's pockets, he figures. In the end, Goro gives: the Red Skull to Guldor bint Agrat, for five years of tutoring; the White Falcon to Iroha o-Lung, in exchange for a decommissioned castle of his choice; Masui got the Green Scarab for something called the "Black Sutra"; Keku Kin obtained the White Skull for zaibatsu's script worth 500,000 mon; & the Kitsune obtained the Black Skull for 550,000 mon...only 400,000 of which they actually have. Goro turns down Toshi's offer of a flock of Terror Birds, Hokusai's offer to serve as yojimbo for five years, & Toku's offer of breeding horses & even a household kami. What is most shocking is what happens to really sweep the table: House Kitsune gets the Black Frog, White Scarab, Black Scarab, Red Lion, Black Lion& the wreckage. All they had to do was have Amina propose to him; Goro is going to marry into House Kitsune, & be made an aristocrat, a samurai.
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La Belle Capuchine. (21; 7:14)

June 10, 2014, 8:10 am
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Clik here to view. Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi.

Hate the Ratcatcher.
He's abusive & toxic...
but his name is Frank.

I'm rarely this angry at a book. Screw you, Boy, Snow, Bird for being a good book for about 90% of your length, & then using the final 10% as a poison pill to retroactively sabotage the rest of the story. Screw you for being an ending so bad that I am going to stop reading Helen Oyeyemi. Which is a real shame, because I was digging it after reading White is for Witching. "Let's do retellings of fairytales-- the old school, bloody kind-- while dissecting issues of race, class & gender" is my whole thing. Ah, dangit. & there are so many little bits of it-- Bird talking to spiders, cosplaying while black, La Belle Capuchine-- that I really liked. Does everyone have a different way of looking in a mirror? I liked that bit particularly; I spend all my time looking in a mirror actually using it to look behind me; I don't usually look at myself, I look past myself. Found that to particularly fit into the novel's study of gender & beauty; that's some male gaze metaphor right there, huh? Or the part where they talk about different styles of love, the "fiercely interior convention" of ardent love, which is only a good thing if it is a side-dish to "other forms of integrity," the whole schema was coming together. All of that is washed away by the last section of the book. See, the book follows three viewpoint characters; the beautiful mother, product of abuse, the beautiful stepchild, product of racism, & the beautiful child, product of being a weirdo. The fourth act returns to the mother, to the "evil queen,"& it is tempting to dismiss the terrible ending of the book as being flawed because she is a flawed vessel...but really, the voice is never questioned, is never subverted, just really seems...distressingly authorial. Because here's the "twist"; her abusive father was trans & he came out at trans because he was sexually assaulted. Right there my hackles were up, but...well, Oyeyemi writes about women, & race, & beauty, & she doesn't flinch back. Violence is a reality for many trans people, & I wanted to trust Oyeyemi to pull it off without it being terrible. Well guess what. She doesn't. It gets worse, in fact, with the characters not only persistently misgendering him, but ending the book going on a quest to go "save her." Ugh, what a gut-wrenchingly terrible turn of events. You could argue that it is the narrator who is terrible, or that because the book is historical-- set during the early days of Civil Rights-- times & attitudes were worse than today's. Here's the thing though; the story doesn't dispute the narrator's account. There isn't an authorial check. In fact it ends with a triumphant bonding odyssey to go "rescue" the trans character. & then...well, the silence of the end of the book. Could I imagine a way in which a hypothetical fifth act that redeems the story? I'd like to, but I am not going for a no-prize here. I'm taking what is actually on the page, & it is incredibly disappointing. I'm done with Oyeyemi, I think, unless she announces a sequel to this called "Ratcatcher."
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Typing One-Handed.

June 12, 2014, 2:49 am
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So, surgery on my shoulder was yesterday. Got nothing much to report. I was most nervous of getting a IV in; heck, mild irrational needle phobia notwithstanding, I was unconscious for everything else. Arm numb all day yesterday from nerve block; pain didn't really start till the middle of the night. They gave me oxycontin for it, so I'll probably spend today in a bit of a haze. Jennifer has been very tender & kept me company all yesterday. Mostly watched QI. Not much else to report except, oh yeah, they did give me two anchors, so yep, I'm a little more cyborg than before.
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But the Flesh is Weak.

June 17, 2014, 7:09 am
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Due caveats: written in a few sittings on various doses of painkiller. What follows may be total Lovecraftian gibbrish. Had told my bosses that I'd be okay for work on Monday. It quickly became clear that I had been deceiving myself about my recovery time. Side-note: it seems like the secret to Hemingway-esque prose is just typing with one hand. Anyhow, I was able to get off the couch-- I spend my days & nights anchored there-- on Monday but to do so for hours or to ride a train or to not zonk out asleep with no notice? That's beyond my skill. Doctor's check-up today will be my test case: will I be up for the subway? How ruined will I be after? All I did yesterday all day is sleep. Otherwise I've watched a ton of QI, Burning Love-- which ruins it with shitty trans "jokes" in the eleventh hour-- & all of Kill Bill. Oh & the Game of Thrones& another truly exceptional episode of Orphan Black. Jenny has been super great, down to basically giving me sponge baths. I was asleep when she got home last afternoon & stayed down all night; clearly my body is engaged in heavy duty repair projects. I am improving; I can stand up, I can sit up, I even just managed to clip my nails. Still, it all takes a lot out of me; for every "ah-ha, I managed to do it on my own!" there is a recovery period of hibernation, it seems. Similarly, there are sweet spots in the pain med cycle; pain, a brief sargasso of lucidity, goofballs, nap, pain. I've been stretching the cycles longer & longer between doses. So oh, the picture: one of three holes. Mostly the jammed a camera & remote controlled robot tools inside of my arm, so the real cutting was inside. Possibly getting the stitches out today. Considering finding out if I can take a shower on my own, or more likely a bath; Jennifer had to be on call all last night & is sleeping on my spot on the couch as we speak.
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Omega City! (22; 8:14)

June 22, 2014, 3:38 am
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Clik here to view. Zeroville by Steve Erickson.

Left, HAL 9000.
Monolith on the right side.
Logic & magic.

This was Jennifer's pick for Eleven-Books Club-- I think this is her third pick, after Art Girls Are Easy&This Dark Endeavor-- but it was Rasheem who summed it up by saying "it's Forrest Gump. Yeah, yes it is; it is a story of a man with a fictionalized mental disability who just happens to fall ass over tea kettle into celebrity cameos & wink-to-the-camera adventures. Hits the nail pretty well on the head. It's also part of the macho cult of middlebrow litsnob fiction-- which does feel to me very West Coast, with your Bret Easton Ellises & Chuck Palahniuks, Beats on 'roids-- with a "he just gets these violent rages, it's not his fault!" protagonist who is a non-sexual creature & thus has to talk about masturbation & blow jobs & obsessing about trans people's genitalia for page after page. The novel acknowledges it at the end, with Zazi eviscerating Rio Bravo for the same reasons as a "pointless exercise in guyness." Good for her, & for her calling out Casablanca's mansplaining. I don't mean to sound so hard; I think the book is knowingly what it is...I just don't like it, self-aware or not. Still, it was an easy read, & entertaining enough to keep my occupied in Matt's lobby for a half an hour the other day.

My opinion I think was contrary to a lot of folks; particularly, with the screwball third act. See, for the reasons mentioned above, I didn't like the first two acts much; Rainman& then, like Scorsese's Hugo, it just became a self-important "dreamers who dream the dream" indulgence (& frankly that part bothered me least, because I don't mind pretension). That's why, when the curveball at the end started coming, I jumped on board. I thought that the focus on Judeo-Christian mythology's obsession with fathers killing sons was a really effective Sword of Damocles hanging over the novel, from the beginning, & bringing it back around to that is better than your average "religious" element in most stories. & for all that I might have derided the machismo, I think it got the "male relationship" between Vikar & Viking Man right on; they reminded me at times of me &Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. kingtycoon. Toward the end of the discussion, I asked everyone who they would have tattooed on their shaved head; my answer was HAL 9000 & the Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, & I stand by that. Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. fatbutts hit it out of the park with Miss Piggy & Kermit, but I forget what everyone said-- if you remember, leave it in the comments!

Liz was in first, so we tried to talk about The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, but like everyone else, she didn't really have a lot to say about it. Yep, sad that it almost willfully passed up any chance to have a female character, wasn't the worst otherwise, but wasn't so great, either. Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. carmyarmyofme's husband works in film, so she had a close relationship to the behind the scenes elements of the book, & found that frustrating; she felt like she knew too much to suspend disbelief in those sections. Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. fordmadoxfraud& Rasheem have a serious amount of celluloid under their belts, & they both liked it & engaged with it on a level that I don't think I was able to: I compared it to Among Others which really hit me because I had a personal relationship with a lot of the old school fantasy referenced in the book. I did take a few film classes in college with Ryan, so I picked up on a decent amount of the unspoken context. Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. littlewashu& I hung out in Spare Oom, looking at some of my notes for the next Oubliette story arc, & gossiping about D&D 5e. I don't remember Beatrice's opinions on the book-- she came in at the end-- but we closed out the night talking about Black Twitter, which I always find fascinating.
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There Is No Cow Level. (23; 9:14)

June 29, 2014, 4:14 pm
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Clik here to view. Mogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw.

I want to play it--
a good faith experiment.
but tl;dr.

My Eleven-Books Club pick, & I don't expect it will be very popular. I don't think it will be hated, either, though there are things that I could understand folks hating. My first pick for club was Kraken, which was pretty well received but I was rather tepid on as sort of belonging to the "dark-lite" urban fantasy genre that Gaiman dominates, with a weak Gaiman ending; The Invisibles #1 was next, & while no one liked it, that was because the first volume is just not quite "there,"& over-all I liked the whole series, finding it easy to forget its flaws & remember the good bits; then at last The Hum & the Shiver was both enjoyed by the group & by me, which isn't surprising to anyone, since it is just a plain old fashioned "good book." This book is I think going to be remembered like The Invisibles, but without the actual subversive backbone that Morrison's writing has. I (jokingly) blamed Luke&Nicole; they had recommended the book to me in the first place, though they point out that they specifically recommended the audiobook. I told the book club that, but maybe Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. carmyarmyofme&Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. littlewashu should specifically take note of that.

This never really gets subversive. I'm all about subverting fantasy tropes; orc player characters, the cowardly protagonist, the meta-fictional users. This just manages to go through the rote of that, somehow. Not quite self-aware enough to be pretentious, not quite funny enough to be Douglas Adams-y, it parrots the tropes of things like gender representation without really having anything to say about it besides "well, that's pretty much how it is, actually." I don't know, what can I tell you; stories from the male perspective that presume a male audience just are...gross. This in theory eschews & condemns that, but in practice just sort of...takes it as a given. All that said, I didn't hate reading this. It was easy enough, & maybe if I hadn't selected it as my book club pick I would judge it more easily, but if wishes were horses, beggers might ride. Still, there is no protagonist to like, there is no side-character to displace your affection to...the whole world is so cynical that I can't be bothered to care. I probably should have read the audio book; listening to that guy read it may be the missing ingredient.
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The Dark Will Rise Again. (24; 9:15)

June 30, 2014, 3:26 am
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Clik here to view. Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo.

To the Shadows, say:
"we were old when you were young,"
"dark on the waters."

Somehow my review of the second one fell through the cracks-- I was terrible about this last year, which is why I resolved to do at least a short, slapdash, lackluster blurb for everything this time-- but if you recall from my review of the first one, I like this series, Henry likes this series, everyone likes this series! I hardly need to gush about it. My favorite thing about it is that it is, you know, Russian. Not Eastern European, but Eurasia. Ravka shares a Sino-Russo border with Shu Han, & Bardugo uses this to paint a more nuanced pastiche, whose diversity-- both in population & in mythic background-- deepen the story. The tortured love triangle-- of course there's a tortured love triangle-- didn't grate on my nerves at all. I think because the problem I have with most tension like that is a failure to communicate; I hate problems that could be solved by a conversation. This isn't that; the web of feelings & temptations & obligations is out there. Everyone involved know all the pros & cons; the story is about how those dice actually will shake out. We get just enough more Darkling; enough to make him manifest & present in the story, enough to flesh him out more, to really embody him...but not enough to spoil it, not enough to make you go "okay, listen, the dude is basically Magneto Stalin, he's not an okay guy, I've had enough of the humanizing him already, jeez." I know what I would have tweaked, my little "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?"-style wink to the camera, but that's the sign of a good story, to me-- if I get inside of it & want to start tinkering with the engine.
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Blood on the Rock. (25; 9:16)

July 10, 2014, 3:02 am
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Clik here to view. Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta.

Keep the ruby ring.
It bears the blood of princes.
So does all the land.

Jennifer really likes this book, & has been after me for years to read it. I think I've gone so far as to throw it in my bag before, but never actually cracked it, until Jennifer suggested it to me again recently. I pledged to do a 2:1 author gender ratio this year, & the last batch of book club picks threw me off, so the time is finally now. The quick verdict is that I liked it...in spite of itself? & by that I mean: the book is driven by some of the stuff I really don't like in YA. For instance, the core "twist" is misunderstood prophecy & dramatic irony. That bugs me; in real life, human beings are smarter than this! Then of course, the romance is built around this sort of willful stupidity that gets under my skin; I tend to be wary of any story where the conflicts are the sort that could have been avoided by a thirty second conversation. I did like it, however, despite this grousing. The details sold it...well, & frankly, with the drama Jennifer & I had when we first started dating, I can't be too judgmental about that sort of histrionics. What I liked most were the dream-like rules for blood magic & the fact that the religion wasn't just word salad set dressing. I'll read the next one, but I'm not really interested in Froi's redemption arc-- for the same reasons I complained about at the beginning of this-- so I will put it off for a bit.
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Booze Will Have Booze, They Say.

July 12, 2014, 10:01 am
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Last night we went to go see Drunk Shakespeare for Jennifer's birthday. A lot of fun, first off-- the gimmick is quite simply that one of the actors gets wasted & then the troupe does improvisational Shakespeare scenes. In our case, the ever popular Macbeth. They auctioned off the Throne, a seat at the center of the bar complete with champagne & caviar, so we bought it & sat up there. Meaning Jenny got her throat slit-- remember, Macbeth-- complete with a red velvet bib of blood. Much laughter & flirting & drinking. Lots of flirting; people were very taken with Jennifer. Not a lot of eating; I ordered a shepherd's pie but didn't get a chance to dig in. At the time I was busy watching the show, but I regretted it this morning when I realized I'd been drinking on an empty stomach. Oopsie daisy! I got Jenny the stuff to make her own umbrella with for her birthday; I felt like that was up her alley. A necklace & a floppy hat, too. Otherwise life is pretty relaxed, with one major exception: we're been in a war with our landlord & our super about fixing the ceiling. How long would you think it would take to do that? How many half-days would you think you have to take off work to get it done? The arm is getting better. Not that you'd know it, but I can tell.
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(26; 9:17)

July 16, 2014, 1:56 am
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Clik here to view. Sea Change by S. M. Wheeler.

Skinless, she waited,
patient for the Monomyth.
Reskinned, she twirled, danced.

This is a book for someone else. I mean that in the best way, though it sounds backhanded. What I mean is, this is a good book that I quite enjoyed...but in the hands of the right reader, I think it could be a bigger deal than that. The right audience will bond with this book. I read it on a few people's strident recommendation, so I know they are out there. It has a Gaiman-y feel to it; yes, it has the contemporary "bespoke children's tales & vaguely pomo mythology" Neil Gaiman the novelist's shine, but it is as if old school scary trousers Sandman Gaiman wrote it. The stakes are a little bit more graphic than Gaiman goes for these days, being more Clive Barker & less Tim Burton. Gender is in flux, memory is tampered with, Stockholm is syndromed. Structurally this is an odd duck; the biggest section of the book is a side quest. A heist that involves bandits, betrayal & witches. Oh & I almost forgot, the "damsel in distress" is a kraken. Sorry, sort of burying the lede there; yep, giant kraken pal. Like I said, I liked this book, but I am more interested in knowing about the people who the book really works for.
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At Least There is New Jenny Lewis.

July 18, 2014, 2:22 am
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At this point, the worst part about my hurt arm is that it has moved me into having insomnia. I've never slept well; I used to have chronic nightmare, then there's sleep apnea...I try to cover the spread, psychological & physiological. That improved drastically when I moved in with Jennifer, both because of comfort & her kicking me if I stop breathing. Things were going great until my arm made it impossible to sleep in any of my usual positions & started pinging with pain every few hours. Things are a lot better with the arm, but there is still plenty of pain, but even worse is that I have trained my circadian rhythms to basically give up & stop working. I don't mind so much that my body wants to go to bed at ten & wake up at six, I can be a curmudgeonly old dude, but now I just can't sleep. I have a pet peeve about people who brag about their lack of sleep (or how "busy" they are) but this sure isn't bragging. This isn't some hyper-adapted trait. I didn't stop needing sleep, I stopped getting it. Plus it comes complete with chronic nausea! Waking up in a panic & having to throw up is something from growing up that I didn't miss. Also you know, snarly & disassociated. A raw nerve who needs constant reassurance. It is unflattering. I trying things like "going back to bed after you wake up" or "try sleeping on the couch" or "what if you stay up late to reset the clock?" have been failures & I worry in some cases even counter-productive. The arm is improving though, I'm ahead of the program that the doctor gave my physical therapist. Oh & I haven't cut my hair in forever, because I need both hands to go against the warp & weft of my hair with the buzzers. So that's my medical update. In other news, Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. fordmadoxfraud& Libby just arrived at my apartment for this weekend's July Shenanigans.
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No God, No King, No Country. (27; 9:18)

July 18, 2014, 2:49 am
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Clik here to view. Froi of the Exiles by Melina Marchetta.

Tongue-twisters, word games
& well, etymology.
The little moments.

Ugh, as I got closer to the end of this book, I started to suspect the worst: despite being a doorstop, there wasn't going to be an ending. Lo & behold...there wasn't. So first things first; I liked this better than the first book</i>, but not as much as what I'd say it's nearest comparison is, Bitterblue. "I heard you like sad in your sad?" This book is one big trigger warning; it is a story of rape survivors, & without wanting to sound cavalier about it, pretty much every major character has been raped, including the men. Consequences of war, of prison, & of...a curse that makes the whole country institutionalize the rape of young girls. So it is...pretty bleak! & also driven by the same tropes I dislike, like romantic tension fueled by over-the-top willful miscommunication & plot points "foreshadowed" by drowning them in dramatic irony. I like the book though; it overcomes those flaws. I mention them specifically because even though this is a bit of a brick, the book doesn't "break" in the middle on them. You know, the moment where the characters all go "ohhhh!" about the twist or the misunderstanding? For example, basically everyone is a secret twin, too? Or characters who have racial or gendered biases & need to get over them, those arcs are dragged out, too. Get it together! As I got closer & closer to the end I was like, "oh man, this is just going to be a cliff hanger."& it was. Which I'm grumbling about, not actually critical of; that's the author's choice, but now I'm left unresolved. The sales guy in me is okay with it though-- drive some customers to the conclusion while it is still in hardcover! What I like best about the series is the sense of history, out of the grasp of the characters. There is a world, they are just living in it. Things like religion, which might seem like set dressing to the non-religious characters, actually matter a great deal & have a pretty tight mythopoeic core. Also I like spooky weird female characters...so the fact that one finally gets to be the star of the next book makes it that much more appealing, after the last two.
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Melatonin.

July 22, 2014, 3:26 am
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Tried out melatonin last night. Results-- not that I think a single data point is all that useful-- is that I slept from nine to five, with an hour long period of half-awake torment in the middle where I tried to meditate to keep the nausea under control & fall back under. That's not shabby, though other factors like the aforementioned forcing myself to stay in bed, our guests being gone, built up exhaustion & listening to Jenny Lewis' new album "The Voyager" were obviously involved. Still, I'll take that; even if it is just a contributing factor, even if it is just placebo, I'll accept it. So I'll keep on living the teetotaler lifestyle & keep on being anti-social. Seriously, if you are reading this & you think I have a social obligation to you, do us both a favour & don't try to call in your marker. I'll be all snarls & sorrow, & I'll be miserable. Just let me try to regulate my life so I can go back to not sucking, to not being a spider with half his legs pulled off. This whole "four hours of panic attacks" thing is not my style. Oh, sure, when I was in college that was the blank canvas, but...remember how self-destructive & unhappy I was? Right. I'm perfectly glad to have modified my behavior, & now I have to undertake slightly more effort in that direction. With any luck, only for a limited time. This is a pretty obvious physiological response. I don't sleep, I don't sleep for weeks, for months, because my arm hurts. Then suddenly I start having symptoms consistent with sleep deprivation, like nausea & anxiety? There is no great mystery, Sherlock. As my arm heals, the catalyst should resolve, leaving only the feedback loop of nausea & anxiety causing sleep deprivation which causes nausea & anxiety. If I can unhitch it from the post, I should be okay. & the arm is getting better; still hurts, still limited range of motion, but it seems like every two days, it is a little bit improved on both fronts. Oh, also, I shaved my beard off.
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Triptych.

July 23, 2014, 3:59 am
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Before we lose track of what has been going on, let me drop two pieces of history in here. We had July Shenanigans, for one thing. Basically, everyone who isn't me in the Television Night Crew has a July Birthday, so rather than have a whole bunch of social obligations, we pancake it into one big event. Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. fordmadoxfraud& Libby flew in from San Francisco, Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. ranai& Dennis came from Queens & Sleepy Hollow, & we got ready to roll. Because of my aforementioned sleep problems-- by the way, last night, melatonin night two, we got home later from a concert than I had wanted, but I still got five hours of sleep, though it was a higher percentage of forcing myself to stay in bed & when I finally got out of bed at five I felt anxious & nauseous-- so I was out of it all night & left early. First we went to a taco place in SoHo where they make the tacos in a bus that is inside. I didn't have an appetite, so I just drank juice. I'm a real fun guy lately. (Gif is from there, taken by Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. fatbutts.)

The real highlight was Escape the Room. I first heard about this from Terra, then from David, then from my...physical therapist? I guess it is the hot new thing. Built by the people who build haunted houses, it is essentially a themed puzzle room. Ours was the "Theater"& the theme was puppets. You're locked inside with a few Rube Goldberg devices & a host of padlocks, & have an hour to get out. Despite the fact that it sounds like you'd think I'd be good at it-- getting out of a trapped dungeon?-- I'm not actually a whiz at riddles, less so with sleep deprivation. Still, I figured out one puzzle & manifestly helped with two more, so at least I pulled my weight! Afterwards, the crew went to karaoke but I went home, because I'm broken. For extra points, the trains were messed up, so I had to deal with that. Which doesn't sound like a big deal but just about broke my heart at the time.

Then last night, Ryan came into town, & he took Jenny & I to go see Sarah McLachlan, since we met in an AOL chat room about Sarah McLachlan in 1998, & went to the Surfacing tour together. We both went pretty deep down that rabbit hole...in retrospect, very confusing. I mean, I've always had a thing for female vocalists, but come on. I think the problem here is the exegesis of her later work informing her earlier stuff. A young woman singing airy ballads in honest terms is one thing, but eventually that honesty become pablum. Not to mention my fundamental disagreements with her hermeneutics on Lilith. Anyhow, first off, Beacon Theater is gorgeous. Second off, she sang "Fear," which is the song I still have feelings for...she killed it, vocally, but it typifies the problems I have with her now. One, it didn't really feel like she was connected to it in the same way...I mean, she had pathos, but it was just of a different sort now that she's grown up. Which is fine! For her as a person, I mean. & for those who identify with who she is now. But I guess that's the crux; I was a sad teenager, & I want sad teenager songs. I get it though; I am happy to grow up along side Jenny Lewis, for instance. Two, all of the silences in the song are gone, replaced with smooth jazz riffs from her band. The lacunae are important! Don't make this up tempo easy listening!
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Cabin Fever. (28; 9:19)

July 24, 2014, 3:31 am
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Clik here to view. This One Summer by Jillian Tamaki & Mariko Tamaki.

Chocolate, marshmallow;
press it between graham crackers:
it makes the sound "s'more."

This sort of genre, of telling might-as-well-betrue stories of childhood, can be a tough line to walk. You risk, at least with a reader like me, the story becoming too universal, too banal. The Tamaki's never really do risk that, because they are smart enough to anchor the story in relationships, not just the interior world of a hurting kid. Two friends who spend their summers together, because their families have cottages next door to each other. Rose, the protagonist, is a girl on the cusp of puberty struggling with family stuff-- her mother's depression & parents relationship around that-- while feeling the allure of the older teenagers. The younger, Windy, is the daughter of hippies, & her story is one from a distance; younger than Rose, she sees the attraction to the more "adult" things-- like slasher movies & sex-- but doesn't feel it herself. She's outside of the circle of the fire. Really I would say what this comic is about-- thematically, not narratively, as this is hardly a polemic-- is the insidious nature of misogyny, & how the shitty cultural narratives of sexism try to get their toxic fingers into young women. You probably can feel a connection to the mise-en-scène if you've ever been a camper; the divide between you & the townies, the mayfly friendships that might just, on a freak outside chance, survive when the summer ends, but probably won't, the small quests & nothings that fill the hours. There's a lot of real life inside of here. I was reading this when the trailer for Leigh's movie Honeymoon came out, so in my head the cabin where they watched all these horror movies totally transformed to the cabin her family has in Canada where we spent a chunk of a couple summers.

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Bow Ties are Cool.

July 25, 2014, 3:00 am
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I made an appointment with my doctor to talk about my sleep problems, & he couldn't see me for a week. Then I went ahead & filled in the pre-appointment survey, & he called me up & was like "this sounds sort of serious, I can slot you in today?"& so in I went. Talking about it, he pretty much agreed with my diagnosis about a sleep deprivation loop, though he did through in the wild card idea that maybe I have post-traumatic stress disorder from the surgery. & then I went "wow, I totally have all this crappy cultural baggage that says 'if you weren't like, tortured by the Red Skull for three years in a POW camp, then your PTSD diagnosis is crap' huh? That's not cool." Anyhow, the moral of the story is, he called in the heavy hitters & prescribed me valium. I've taken it two nights now & had similar experiences-- that is, I still wake up fairly frequently, but then if I get up to urinate or just roll over, I'm able to fall back asleep. No freaking out about being abandoned by angels or crickets living in the walls; panic attacks & vomiting haven't even been a factor, & that is such a massive relief that I'm really hoping that I'm actually breaking the loop, not just putting a bandaid on it with medication. Which, frankly, even if I was doing the latter, I'd be happy for it. That is an important step; my phyiscal therapist said she thought I seemed to be hitting a roadblock in regaining some mobility lately, & that lack of sleep could be interfering in my healing. I'm trying to Behave Rationally.

Gerd is in town! If you are a gamer, you know the bond you can share with someone that you have played in multiple campaigns with; we played in Mike's Oisos campaigns together, notably the epic level game, the Spelljammer campaign, & Scott's game, plus he was a key member of my first full Oubliette campaign. I gave him a hard time about how he gave the messiah-baby to an angel after we explicitly all agreed not to let anyone have the baby, & the angel kidnapped it; he reminded me that it was after he survived six attacks of opportunity from a marilith to grab the baby in the first place, & that his cleric in another game had made my orc monk a white cape that let him use the spell wind walk. Good times indeed. Last night he came over for board game night, & so did Alicia & Rasheem & Jess, & if you recall, Rasheem & Alicia were in David's Temple of Elemental evil campaign, so we talked about the star-crossed lovers of the elf thief & the human thief who never resolved their romantic tension, & of course about Rasheem killing Zuggtmoy with a natural 100 on a rod of wonder. We played Snake Oil first, which I dominated, I must admit, & then Cards Against Humanity second, which Alicia dominated. Plus, I put on Jamie Lee Curtis'stripping scene for Jess, because she was surprised to hear that she was super hot. Yes she is (I think Jenny has a resemblance, but don't tell her I said that, because she doesn't particularly like the comparison.)
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Tariq of the Citavita. (28; 9:20)

July 25, 2014, 10:21 am
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Clik here to view. Quintana of Charyn by Melina Marchetta.

Pluck the barb from flesh.
Clean. Sew with needle & thread.
Repeat as needed.

Phew. I'm finally done with The Lumatere Chronicles. I have powerful mixed feelings about this series. On one hand, it is the apotheosis of everything I dislike in fiction. On the other hand, I chainsawed through the series like a famished wendigo. There you have it, in a nutshell. I fundamentally disagree with the entire tone & structure &...everything of these books, & on the other hand they are an addicting, obsessive read. The answer to both questions is quite simply dramatic irony. The cards are on the table & you spend the book screaming at the characters to pick them up &look at them. The conflict in these books is driven by two things: the grimmest grimdark, like the institutionalized rape of children, or the dumbest of miscommunications. "Suddenly, all the characters you like had swords to each other's throats, because they couldn't take five seconds to have a quick conversation. I'd call it a classic example of Ebert's Idiot Plot if it wasn't so damn well executed, if it didn't....well, work. Basically this book is just "why don't you make yourself feel terrible & stressed out until at the end you get catharsis?" Which...whatever, I liked this book! All these books. They just infuriate me. They did succeed in making me like Froi, though, which is an awfully tall order. It came at the expense of Isaboe, though; she fell quite far in my estimation, especially from the first book where she was the only character I really liked. So. I feel really lukewarm about these books, powerfully lukewarm. Yes I know that is a contradiction. No, I don't care. This series is a soap opera of incredibly damaged people-- mostly, like I said, rape survivors, because especially in the first two books, that's what most of the main characters are-- but I found it an equally incredibly compelling read. If you like that sort of thing-- you might well, because that's a flavour of thing people like, I've noticed-- then you should check it out. When you find yourself gnashing your teeth, don't say I didn't warn you. & don't worry. You'll fall into a hole & ignore the world until you've finished, anyway. That's what I did.
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Where Civil Blood Makes Civil Hands Unclean.

August 7, 2014, 8:31 am
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Another episode in Tom's series of thematically linked one-shots, Dead World! This time, set in the Civil War. We were supposed to play extraordinary individuals, so I made "Poor Mister Threadway," a convalescent in one of Dorthea Dix's new mental asylums. How'd he end up there? Well, in another life he was Lieutenant Colonel Gaius Threadway, an officer in a Union Zouve unit, one of the Civil War's special ops. His soldiers were out-maneuvered & out-generaled by Lee, & they perished in a bloodbath. Badly injured, Gaius lived, & woke to find himself in a shallow mass grave with all his men. After digging & cutting his way out, he was left a shell of a man. Nerves broken, mind in a protective fugue, he was retired to care in a new-fangled mental health facility. I gave him wonky stats; only one dot in Composure, Stamina & Resolve, & highest marks in Dexterity, for shooting & swording. (Photography by Jessica&Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. fatbutts respectively.)

He woke up in his nightgown & therapeutic rose-coloured glasses, in a clearing in the woods surrounded by a thicket of unnatural thorns. Clearly, to Gaius, he was having an "episode." Along the way he met Alicia's character "Nurse Wendy," a Confederate nurse who was the only person I thought was "real": I assumed she was from the asylum, come to look after me & fetch me hope after my "constitutional.""Rusty" was Lilly's Wild West scoundrel; I don't know her history but she's trouble, & she gave me some money to buy a crushed red velvet suit, pink shirt with lace, a pistol & a saber. Because obviously that's what I should wear. Cyrus was Rasheem's character, a Confederate Negro. Yeah, playing in the Civil War is one of those things where you have to bite the bullet & decide what to call black people. I went with Negro or "coloured folks," since I figured that was the inoffensive-in-historical-context terms...plus I cheated & just played an abolitionist from the Union. Cyrus was awfully angry, & disappointed that we never went to the bawdy house in town. Felton was the last of our number, Ken's character, who was a Revivalist, a travelling preacher...but also a Santería practitioner, passing.

All of us, thrown into this odd & prickled clearing, hedged in by massive brambles with dagger-like thorns. Slashing, stabbing, mist-covered. I have to admit, Poor Mister Threadway was little help, convinced as he was that he was in a hallucination. Mostly waited for the nurse to lead him back to his hospital. Eventually the thorns opened, closing behind us, & we found a dead Confederate, a withered husk, with some paper money & gold coins. & a town! Hallelujah & pass the ammunition, Rusty just bought me a new Colt .44 Dragoon. This town is great, they gave the crazy guy guns! & then of course, while we are sitting in the common room of the saloon talking about whist or old timey stuff, it goes sideways. The sounds of the meat tenderizer smashing bones is the innkeeper hammering her hands into pulp, shattering her forearms into jagged splinters to try to stab us with. We actually beat her up pretty well; pinned in a hallway where we can stay in charge of the fight. The next fight is not as easy of a thing, now is it?

No it is not. So here is the thing: I bought a gun, but my plan from the beginning was that Gaius would react badly-- as in, post-traumatically to gunfire. That was my "trigger"& I think there were only...two gunshots? One from a PC, & one from outside. All the zombie, Silent Hill stuff? Well, I just decided that was what it was like for Poor Mister Threadway, all the time. The corpses of his men, that he'd hacked up to dig out of, all around him, haunting him in his fitful sleeping dreams & insomniac waking thoughts. Everyone is clearly trapped inside of his hallucination, he says, as a ghoul jumps on him, spearing him in the neck & getting one of those big lumber hooks right in his belly. Ouch; I'm almost dead right there! Eventually the next wave is fought off & I know where to go: the church! The barricaded, fortified church. Heck, that's the only thing I haven't seen in my dream before, so that has to be it! At this point I should mention that Jess hosts a party like I host a party. You finish your beer, there's another one before you notice. Wine half empty? Top it off. Try this whiskey we have! Easy to lose track of drinks.

What's in the church? Exposition, creepy church stuff, ghosts & the dead. & the Nuremberg Clock! Showing up in the first Dead World-- "like a dream, I've seen this in my dreams!" as Gaius loses his grip on real, hallucinatory, dream, awake-- he thinks they can use it to fix their mistakes. People who've been giving in to their Vice are starting to show signs of it. We discover that there is a big bad devil or undead or Problem at the cemetery; religious Nurse Wendy says it is the Devil & Gaius thinks maybe he can use the clock & the Devil to save his "boys" from being killed by Lee's forces. Or instead the monster is a giant maggoty blob, obese with cancer & throwing tombstones like frisbees. It is a dark scene but then...it always was a dark campaign, as the note we get from the Narrator is Tom telling us we've been dead all along, & we've been trapped together in Purgatory. Gaius set the fire to escape from the asylum, but ended up killing the other inmates; I had stolen the keys but was too afraid to stop & let them out, & when I finally threw open the window to make a break for it, the backdraft burned us all alive...& I woke up in having traveled to Hell, or near enough to it, geographically. In a southern direction.

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#TorDnD: Practical Demonology.

August 8, 2014, 1:09 pm
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The triumphant return of #TorDnD, where Tim runs a game for Irene (Wren, human ranger), Jonathan (Aegwyn, half-elf paladin), Sam (Kit, human cleric), Bridget (Columbine, tiefling rogue) & me (Pantalone, tiefling wizard). Last session saw us in the depths of a crypt, having killed a necromancer Molgi & her troll "igor". Hey, I took her books; I'm hoping that I can convince Tim that at least one of them is a spellbook! One of my biggest pet peeves about Dungeons & Dragons is that divine casters just get automatic access, out of the box, to every single cleric spell ever, & if a new book comes out, they instantly get those to, while meanwhile wizards are left begging the Dungeon Master to throw a spellbook into the treasure every so often. Spellbooks are better game design, if you ask me. I think clerics should have a similar mechanic limiting their selection; maybe by the invention of the Domains their religion has access to? Anyhow, neither here nor there, just that spell lists & Vancian mechanics are things I have a fondness for but lots of Opinions about, like "if you are trying to balance a class by building its own bespoke spell list, you've already messed up." That said, the "no overlap on the Venn diagram between Divine & Arcane spells" is something I can live with; mostly I just think heck, you've already got spell levels. Build the class to restrict or allow access using your existing foundation of spell levels!

Anyhow, we had killed off the necromancer, so Pantalone got to the business of looting. There wasn't much. Meanwhile, other PCs were like "why don't we rescue the kids in this pit?" Okay, you got it. From there? We deduce that what the mark that the evil cultists are looking for is demonic parentage. Tieflings, in Tim's game like in Fourth Edition, are a distinct race, distinctly diabolical in fact, not like Planescape's general Lower Planes thing. Notable, since right-- Pantalone is definitely a creepy old jester-wizard who adopted Bridget's character Columbine as a daughter just because she was a tiefling-- we've got a "thing." The next step? Across the water, there is an island; there is a rowboat tied up at a secret dock & there is a lantern for signaling so we're able to Sherlock where to go next. Across the pond!

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Into a totally stealth little cove! Uh, I kind of want to just...take over this dungeon? Set it up as our stronghold & go tower defense kingdom builders. It miiiiight be a little too evil for that though; the door to the lighthouse-like structure was a barbed, needled demon hand. Kit grasped it, & it grasped him, slicing him badly, & I made a mental note to prod Columbine to try to disable traps next time. Sorry, I was busy talking to my chicken familiar, Scaramouche. In & up into-- the hideous ritual! Well, two huge, blazing braziers-- a word I am notorious for mispronouncing as "brassiere" on occasion-- blocked the way, at first, & in fact shot flames at us when we used the stairs. There we fought albino troglodytes, gooey lizard-people, who protected a demonic figure, writhing in different aspects; incubus wings, hezrou arms, vrock head, what have you. Wren shot off an arrow & it hit him dead on & barely scratched him. He flew, & below him were a swarm of dretches, loathsome lowly demons. Behind them all, shackled to the floor, were three children, writhing in pain from visible bands of divine & arcane energy snaking together to power the mad demonologist, Wulgreth.

Wulgreth & his minions put up a fight! There are a few things you should know, up front. The first is that I have been having such shit luck with my polyhedral dice, every freaking d20 mechanical set that uses the full mix. If it was just my d20, I would just get new d20s. Oh, & it was the d20s, but remember Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. fordmadoxfraud's Stories of Our Youth campaign, & how I rolled only 1s & 2s for my hit points every single level? Well, I went out & I bought two new sets of dice, & I did not screw around: I bought a black set, with white numbers, & I bought a black set, with red numbers. As Rob & Big would say, I got 'em murdered out. & guess who wasn't a completely useless buffoon for the battle? Pantalone! Oh, don't get me wrong; as the Dungeon Master, Tim's luck is uncanny, in the way that The Terminator is uncanny, it's unlikely in an Uncanny Vally, oh well this is doomsday, of course he rolled two 20s. So there were a lot of unlikely saves that were all out on the table for us to see, mocking our characters. Still, I coloursprayed the troglodytes & dretches, used my suggestion to counterspell Wulgreth's suggestion on Aegwyn, caused fear on the troglodytes & took a decent number of them out of the game, one of them completely, used my enchanter kit ability to give all attackers Disadvantage & soak up a good number of attacks-- unscathed-- I have to say, daddy needed a new pair of shoes & the new dice rolled the hard six.

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The other thing you need to know is that our crew is a rope-a-dope party. In David's game, the "Thieves Three" were a surgical group with a glass jaw; we were stealth & assassination & then vanishing into the maze of secret tunnels in the Temple of Elemental Evil that we had seized control of, & lived inside of, carrying out special ops missions from within. That is now how this crew rolls. We roll in with Aegwyn in front, for one thing. Way in front. The paladin charges into it &...goes down a couple of times a fight. It's a scary thing. This time-- oh god, we were cracking up, things looked grim-- I had just turned him invisible to buy him time while the cleric's turn came up, since there were a truckload of monster's initiatives between then & now-- one of the blindly flailing dretches or troglodytes rolled a natural 20, on the randomly picked right square, & put him down. Down &invisible in the middle of the brawl. It turned out, Kit had an area effect heal spell, & it saved the day, but we are bruisers. We come out of a fight with bloody knuckles. I cast my mage armor& give all attackers disadvantage, so I actually stick around the edges of a fight, try to draw attacks-- I hope to get some bracers of armor or a ring of protection or magic robes,-- & I think I got my first kill, smashing a dretch in with my slapstick. Tim was proud that I didn't take magic missile-- I am Evocation light, by avocation-- but that means this was first blood.

The real blood letting was back behind everything, by the urchins writhing in agony. Kit, Sam's cleric, goes to slit one's throat, to mercy kill it, & the DM asks about his alignment, his god. Ehlonna, Kit says, is the fertility goddess, & the harvest goddess & sometimes there needs to be a reaping. Well that sounds like boilerplate doctrine to me, & Sam gets a just little kudos...& Wulgreth gets a little less mighty, dropping to the ground, one of his power sources taken away. Wren, meanwhile, has no such moral qualms or high-falutin' quandaries; she takes out the other two-- Tim swapping minis as he slowly loses demonic aspects, going from fearsome to just another crazy evil wizard. Listen, I'm a crazy not-evil wizard, I get it. & he gets it; I can't remember who got the kill in the end, Aegwyn's blade-- speaking of alignments, being a Paladin of a god of trickery has come in handy-- or Columbine's knife or another of Wren's arrows, heck-- Kit could have brained 'em. He went down. (Edit:Jonathan notes that Aegwyn did indeed get the justly deserved Finish Him.) They all went down. We took a lickin'& kept on tickin'. Put us in the ring & it is going to get a little bit messy. & I hope this freaking guy has a spellbook.

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(Map by Jonathan Roberts; photo & map--click to enlarge-- by Tim Paul.)
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