Posts made by surreality

@Kanye-Qwest All the hells no. Definitely under the heading of 'nobody has time for that shit'.

@Arkandel Well, yeah, but none of us are getting paid the "big" HBO bucks (and substantially bigger fame) as a reward for having to stand in the same room as the people we can't stand.

Shit. I would gleefully play evil queen torture-happy smugbutt at Rex or Jeurg for free if my profession demanded it, man. Being paid for it would just be a fucking bonus.

"I am just getting into character. Method acting." <cough>

@Aria I'm in Delaware, so that could absolutely happen at some diner somewhere some day.

I only ever met the resistance dude relative, but I can only imagine. He's another great 3am diner story, because wow... he was a character all right. It rightly should terrify nigh everyone that I'm one of the handful of people in my family that even bothers to try to pass for sane. (Resistance Great Uncle was... well, he was a baron. Really, no shit. Of course, he lived in the crappy middle-middle class suburb one over from ours, was more broke than we were, and insisted on playing 'Lady of Spain' on the accordion at every. single. family. holiday... could cook a mean veal cutlet, though.)

@Sunny OK, peacock feathers are truly magnificent as well. I didn't even think of that as an option!

We have a few weird family bits of bric-a-brac, some of which... they will never see the light of day ever. My father's mother's side of the family was Italian, as in half were living in Italy and half were living here of her generation (she had 10 siblings that lived to adulthood) and... well. One of them was in the military (and not on our side of that particular war) and was stationed in Ethiopia. We know none of it was pillaged or looted or valuable at the time -- was just tourist trinkets of the day of a man and a woman in the local village's art style -- but, uh. Some of it we think is real ivory, and that is a whole world of 'I don't want to display this and potentially inspire more people to acquire similar items' and also, uh... like, for real, Nazis. (Family dinners with the dude who was a resistance guy must have been amazing after that, what I wouldn't have given to be a fly on that wall. An Italian-speaking fly. Unless I could just read all the hand gestures? Possible.) All the nope, though, I mean, Nazis. But it somehow feels worse to throw away something that's probably carved ivory? Nnngh. So it all sits in a drawer until I figure out an appropriate museum to donate it to.

@Sunny said in RL things I love:

I think it's felt but it may not be, I don't know. I had it for many years, until my brother in law's friend (he was helping me move) saw it and thought it was the greatest thing in the history of things. So it's in his garage now getting the love and respect it deserves.

There's flocked velvet paper out there for exactly this. It's what all the 'velvet paintings' are done on.

Bonus points if she's riding a tiger. Please tell me she's riding a tiger? Because that would be even more amazing, and quite possibly actually be the greatest thing in the history of things.

The microsoft scammers are calling again.

...from an easily remembered number on Caller ID. Spoofed to be from Washington D.C. and ends in 1234 -- and they've used it exactly three times today. So they're not changing it.

OMG IMPROV PRACTICE CHRISTMAS CAME EARLY THIS YEAR!!!

There are precious few people I think should be fucked with as often as possible in a manner that wastes as much of their time as can be wasted with minimal effort on my part. The microsoft scammers are on that very short list, for all the older folks they do successfully scam and steal money from.

@Coin said in Good TV:

I would also love for them to do some East Asian or even Indian stuff. That would be fucking fantastic. Or some of the South American stuff would be great. Honestly, they could use a little diversity, especially since their flagship show is now Ash vs. Evil Dead, which is great, but very slapstick and a half-hour show.

Don't they have American Gods now, though? Or is that somebody else? (I get all the networks confused every so often.)

Henry VIII has been done, pirates done, Spartacus done, time traveling through Scotland is done, Versailles has been done, there was Deadwood and the dustbowl with Carnivale -- a lot of the interesting periods have been covered by the networks in recent years. Netflix has Marco Polo, too. There was the (goofy) DaVinci's Demons. HBO did Rome an age ago but I still love it.

I am still hoping somebody picks up Nightbreed for a series. It looks increasingly unlikely, but every so often it gets kicked around as a notion.

@TNP That's just it: this last time, it was written down: DO NOT PRESCRIBE THIS.

...he did it anyway. I was too out of it to argue with him before he left the room (immediately after the cutting and prying and... ) I was cringing too much to even speak; body horror is a thing.

They called it in, so we only found out when we picked it up and I immediately began swearing like a sailor. It is so head-desk-worthy. We're going to have to call the GP to tell him to refill the other one, essentially.

It is only marginally less frustrating and ridiculous on the 'no, really, reading things is important, especially medical things!!!' front than the dude earlier in the year who wanted me to come in -- for what they were as casual about as if it was just an office visit -- for major surgery to remove a stent... from an entire organ I no longer had. Admittedly, getting to tell them they could remove it if they wanted, but they'd have to check it out of the pathology lab, was somewhat entertaining.

@Coin I'd love to see them do a prequel surrounding... damn, I am forgetting his name, but the first pirate that they all constantly refer to as the origin of 'the black spot', and the initial foundation of the pirates and their culture in Nassau, from roughly a half-generation or so before.

Edit: Or the continuing adventures of Jack, Anne, and Mary. I want that one so damned much.

@Arkandel It's not Black Sails, but I suppose it will do.

<ducks and runs away very fast>

(Sorry, had to. I'm gonna miss the shit out of that show. I hope some day they do something similarish, like a prequel or something. There was brief talk of such a thing, but I don't think it got anywhere. Though three cheers for any series that has a target ending goal and doesn't just putter along past it, and instead ends the way they mean it to, when they mean it to.)

@Roz I was really impressed with Jessica Jones.

First, it was good to see a female hero story.

Second, the whole 'but since she's a girl she must be without flaw and a paragon of all the virtues ever' sort of routine that sometimes gets applied to female heroes was out the window.

To me, at least, that showed the struggle behind actually being heroic really well, and it has more of an impact to me than some other attempts I've seen over the years.

(I also think it should be required viewing for anybody who deeply engages in any of the player agency discussions sometimes, on all sides of the argument. Not particularly kidding about that, either. It's a great resource for folks confronting all the crazy powers in a variety of games that are going around and how they can linger; I thought it was a pretty good depiction of how traumatic it is to have the kind of control we so often take for granted in our lives taken away.)

@Ganymede Oh, believe me... that one I know. I've had all kinds of weird allergies over the years. Some were effectively treated, some I grew out of or developed a resistance to. (Cats, for instance -- I was allergic as a kid, but I can snorgle the dickens out of the fluffbomb with my nose now without so much as a hint of red eye.)

They basically wrote down a 'meh' side effect as a major allergy, though, and it's been repeated so long through my medical history that there's no going back on it now. They did use some penicillin derivatives on me while I was in the hospital, though, and there were no adverse effects from it. Partly why this is so frustrating now.

That side effect, even if it recurred with more temporary itchy blotches, wouldn't be as bad as the constant nausea, my skin sloughing off in patches, and the inflammation level. What they keep insisting on giving me does a good job on the 'pushing out any hint of anything that could be infected', but it does it in an extreme enough manner that it turns everything into a disaster. Tiny ingrown invisible hair on my arm that would never cause any problem and go away on its own with no harm done? Suddenly may as well be a nasty spider bite. And so on.

@Coin @Ganymede Admittedly, this is more or less the same schtick we see on MU*s a lot -- it's more or less the equivalent of the 'end of the world' plot.

@Coin I am still hoping for another Jessica Jones. I suspect that's even less likely than more Iron Fist, though.

Having a mild allergy to penicillin. Holy shit is this a pain in my ass.

...Bactrim doesn't work, GP-Doc. Stop giving it to me, please. No, really, really Bactrim doesn't work -- you've given it to me for everything for so long it's useless now; all it does is hyper-inflame everything in its rush to push the infection out of my system to the extent that I break out everywhere and my skin starts abrading if I do so much as dare to wear clothes other than a night shirt, just in time for the antibiotic to run out and I'm covered in peak-level awful in places where there was never a problem in the first place, which then becomes a bigger problem than whatever I started off with.
^ The long-standing problem exposition.

This has been my life for over a month now:

GP-Doc: "Sorry, I know that sounds really bad, but we can't see you until next Friday at the earliest. I'll set that up for you now."

(By that weekend it was ER time again.)

ER-Doc, no, please don't give me Bactrim. It hasn't ever worked for me properly and makes things worse rather than better, and damn it does a number on my stomach in the process. Oh, they've just been not having me take enough of it to get rid of the problem? OK... I guess I'll give it a try... 5 pills instead of 2, ok, you're the one with the degrees and that you insist that the problem before was because they weren't giving me enough of it, that makes enough sense that it's worth trying.

(Cue the problems just being 5x worse and it still not doing the necessary job; the moment the Bactrim runs out, it goes back to being worse than what it started out as that sent me to the ER in under 2 days.)

Surgeon, seriously, don't prescribe Bactrim for me. It makes everything so over the top inflamed that when I remove the surgical tape it pulls my skin off with it in patches. Oh... which antibiotic it is doesn't matter really because you did the surgery and that's what'll ultimately resolve it? OK, I guess I'll give it a try...

...did he seriously just give me 2/day again when 5/day didn't fucking work? FML.

(The same day... ) GP-Doc, I have a problem. Yeah, we called you and the surgeon to get appointments and he was actually able to have me come in immediately, which was handy. But here's the problem... <places empty pill bottle on counter, places full bottle on the counter> 5/day didn't do the trick on this. 2/day is not going to do jack and we both know that. While I'm going to try it, can you please get me an alternative so when this inevitably goes sideways I don't have to have that seriously emotionally rattling surgery again? (I am not saying what it is or giving the details about it here because it is definitely the sort of thing that'd put everybody off their lunch, fuck knows it redefined 'body horror' for me for years to come, no doubt. It's not embarrassing or anything, it's just horrifyingly gross.) Thanks, man. I have a feeling I'm going to need this.

(Cue the week trying Bactrim 2/day leaving a veritable ring of scars around the incision from dressing changes -- with the sensitive tape and everything. Incision? So inflamed the skin around it is showing the initial signs of going necrotic. FUCK. Switch to the alternative; in under a day and a half I stop shedding patches of skin like a snake and the incision returns to the appearance of healthy tissue.)

Followup with surgeon: "This is doing very well!" "I dunno, doc... it was gone before and I can feel it swelling again, but the incision is closed, so I'm really concerned about this... " "Oh, that's just a thing that happens. You're doing really well! It will take about 2 months for the incision to fully heal, but in a week or so you should just be able to cover it with a band-aid." BTW please don't give me Bactrim? It is really messing me up, look at this, my skin looks like a map of a string of islands made of scabs here! Nurse: "Let me write that one down, that should not be happening!" ...at which point I watch her write down: NO BACTRIM.

Three days later... : WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THAT?!

Two days later, surgeon: "Oh, that really is a problem. I'm going to have to repeat the procedure, we can take care of this quickly... " Worse, because I know what's coming, and I have now seen what this looks like in demo vids. WORSE worse because the local didn't hit the right nerves in all areas.

"I'll give you another two weeks of antibiotics, and come back in about 10 days so I can take a closer look at that."

...and the motherfucker seriously went with 2/day Bactrim again.

Bonus irony: I never knew why I was allergic to penicillin. My folks had just told me I was since I was tiny, so I repeated it. Apparently, my 'horrible allergy to penicillin' was... I got a minor reddish splotch-rash on my legs that went away after a day and a half, sort of like a very mild case of hives. Which my folks weren't sure even then weren't just my normal allergies. ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!

Seriously, FML right now.

@Coin ...<3

Was referencing your timeskip-on-same-game concept. I figured you might want to chime in on that front as it could work with this kind of game. (It strikes me as something that could be exceptionally well-suited to it.)

Edit: P.S. Totally saving that to warn tag victims in advance some time.

@ThatOneDude addresses this much better: provide defenses and means of evasion.

I handled the PCvPC vs. PCvE/NPC issue by making all PCvsPC consent-based, which covered the physical and social equally. (I am also looking at options for above: having defenses and means of evasion/etc. built in as social defenses in the same way most systems have physical ones if I get back to doing a thing.)

@Tyche This is probably why all of those 'as the crow flies' directions are like, 5 minutes, but the drive takes three and a half hours. I'm just going to stick with that one.

@Aria I don't think it's on either of those, but if you have Starz, I will advocate for Black Sails always, because goddamn.

@Paris Reno1 had a fair bit of new crew, too. It was really refreshing. People seemed to pick it up pretty quickly, too. It helped that we had one new person who did a fantastic job helping them adjust, making resources and similar. While she and I didn't see eye to eye about a great many things, I would never hesitate in saying she did a genuinely phenomenal job with that and was a huge help that way.