Posts made by surreality

More or less everybody thinks <thing> is perfectly fine when they're doing it, and an utter abomination when somebody else does.

It's how often it happens that ultimately makes all the difference.

@Cobaltasaurus Not sure if it's come up and been dismissed as an idea, but the tendency for WoD games to be crowded with high resources folks may make Beverly Hills a useful addition. People will likely ask for/about it.

Seconding @Lithium. I tried this at one point, many years ago. Doctor and nutritionist's supervision and everything. Apparently, I am meant to be as much the carnivore as possible. We could not find a balance that worked, even with some absurd costs in supplements and such to try to help balance things.

Weirdly, my body processes cholesterol very effectively. I get liver stones but they pass quickly while small. Despite being overweight, other than blood pressure (which is on the high side of normal -- drinking 2 pots of coffee and smoking a pack of 12 cloves a day, no less), the hospital stay involved all the testing, and they were genuinely shocked by how ideal my numbers were. Blood sugar, cholesterol, etc. All not just normal, but good. It baffled the hell out of them, re: 'then how the hell are you a fat person!?' They expected very, very different results... and they were running all of these tests twice daily to check on all the things constantly. (Blood sugar was 6x/day, even.)

So, uh, this is the roundabout way of saying: YMMV, I'm a weird example apparently, but be prepared to run into some unexpected weirdness if you try it and keep in close contact with a nutritionist to monitor at least for a while as you start out, it can make a really big difference.' I almost passed out while driving once during this period, so... yeah. It's not just potentially feeling sick or not being at completely ideal vitamin levels to be careful about.

@Meg I am reminded of this.

@Coin That deserves a rousing HELLS YEAH!!!, man. 'cause I feel you on creative blocks, and all the cheering on getting past them.

Unexpected surgical component of dental appointment.

Hearing the phrase 'hand me the laser' when in chair.

Hearing the word 'cauterized' spoken aloud when said laser is pointed at my face.

That is not a happy smell. It is a less happy taste.

Existential dilemma due to having reflexively swallowed, not sure if this constitutes self-cannibalism in some abstract fashion; this is more disquieting than the taste/smell.

Noping right the fuck out of the rest of this day, thanks. o.o

Am currently working through The Flash again. Most things out there are currently rewatches. Went through all of Supernatural before that, and am open to suggestions.

As for new things, The Mist is surprisingly not horrible thus far.

As for stupid but fun and entertaining shit, the Travel Channel is replaying Destination Truth, which originally ran on Syfy. It's monster hunting... but not. ("No one's better at almost finding monsters than us!" <-- actual quote.) It is very self-aware re: they are not going to find anything. If you like travel and weird situations, travel, frightening foodstuffs, and quirky observational humor in the moment, it is entertaining as hell. I ended up buying the full run of it once it left Netflix because it was a good background watch whenever I felt my job was somehow too hard. (Instant and snerk-filled attitude adjustment, done.) If you are bored, want a laugh, and it's on, it's worth giving a shot if you haven't seen it before. If nothing else, you may get a fun idea for a monster of the week scene out of it.

It's all sort of here-nor-there, too, when it comes to thinking of knitting things commercially. You have to be perfect at it, lightning fast, and have a very wealthy customer doing the commission, because practically speaking, even at minimum wage, a garment like a shawl or sweater will probably never have less than 20-40 hours of labor in it, and that's a really low estimate for someone fast as fuck.

The vast majority of people out there are really not even remotely interested in paying for that labor. This holds true for most artisan craftwork; it definitely crosses into jewelry all the time. I have pieces that may only have $50 in materials in them -- but 20 hours of labor. Guess which of the two totals out to more in the final price, even well below the standard of 'you really do need to be asking this much hourly' (which, in the 90s at least, was $20/hour for the wholesale price point according to all the 'experts').

@Arkandel I'd have to look at the specifics again, and there are weird things re: garments, but usage rights are listed on more or less every pattern of every kind you buy. Some allow use for commercial sale, some allow personal/gift use only, others allow personal/gift/can use for charity fundraising, typically. It tends to be one of those three with knitting patterns, anyway.

@Auspice Yup. Minimum wage and materials, that yarn alone would have been $85 at least. Without markup.

The most annoying thing is that she is the person who got me involved in fiber arts in the first place (seriously, when I was four) and she collected handspun yarn back in the 80s. She knows how much it costs. That's less than she'd pay for a single skein back then that was 20 yards of simple bulky stuff, not 250g of hand-dyed and mixed and spun luxury fibers.

We do the jewelry thing together -- or did, she retired with almost no warning last year and dropped the business (including all the things of it she did and would never allow me to be involved in to know how to do or who to contact/pay/etc.) on me -- so she knows. She actually has gone to the same 'how to price your work' seminars I have.

How she has become as brain-damaged as some of our worst customers is just... beyond.

My father just does things like tell me I have to create a web site for the 2k+ different items we have on hand from scratch over a three day weekend or we'll be sleeping in our cars, which, while more ridiculous and more extreme, is sorta forgivable because this is the same man I had to explain the use of scrollbars on a web page to when he thought the porn companies were trying to scam him by 'only giving him half a picture free' and 'did he have to pay for the lower half of the picture, this is a scam, it's a scam!!!' (We will just ignore the fact that he was using word processors back in the days of the suction cup modems as a journalist often on the road, 'cause... we have to.) As unreasonable, panic-inspiring, and certifiably insane it is, I can usually send my husband over to explain to him why this is impossible (because this answer is not acceptable unless it comes from someone with testicles and cannot be true if it's coming from... the person who had to explain scrollbars to him).

@Auspice That, exactly. That's even the most recent instance. Made a shawl for my mother for mother's day; instant pressure to make clones of it for sale.

First, no can do, not my pattern. (Law is law is law is whew thank gods there's an out.)

Second... holy shit. I dyed the raw fiber for that, carded and blended it, spun the damn yarn, then knit the shawl.

People don't just 'do' that like it's a nothing to sell for $25 at a frickin' craft fair.

@Auspice said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

And that is why I hate that "if it's important, you'll make the time" shit. Because it tries to guilt you into feeling bad about the relaxation that is so vital. Any therapist, hell even most doctors will insist you take that time off to unwind. Give your mind and body a break. Especially as you get older.

Exactly this.

My family has a habit -- and by habit I mean this has gone back to age four and persists now, 39 years later -- of trying to force me into monetizing absolutely everything I do, especially anything I pursue as a hobby. They do not see why this is so damaging or counterproductive, or, in many cases, astonishingly stupid.

We will not discuss how brutal the arguments about how and why I was not going to attempt to monetize this hobby have been, but I will mention they went on intensely and in earnest for over 12 years before they gave up trying to force the issue. (They threatened to disown me more than once if I didn't make a game for profit. We all know to laugh at that, but they don't know enough to realize: that isn't really how this corner of the hobby even works.)

These are people who took my old vacation photos out of the little boxes I kept them in to put on cards to sell them without my knowledge or permission after I told them I was not going to go take pictures for sale in order to force my hand on the matter. Seriously. "That isn't how you go about doing that thing," is huge, but not so huge as, "Oh, well. There went the thing I enjoyed doing as a hobbyist, at a hobbyist skill level... and now I look like a pompous fuck who doesn't know what they don't know skillwise trying to shill everything I do to make a buck, even though I had nothing to do with... any of that... and now I'm being yelled at that it didn't work?" Nnngh. (Of course it wasn't going to work, idjits. Sigh.)

Hobbies are important. Bigtime.

@Auspice This post is made of gold. It does not need to be bronzed, it needs to be gilded. For real.

I have spent the past 3 years skidding from one RL 'holy shit wtf where the hell did that come from' disaster to another, all occurring while working on whatever I was working on for 12-16 hours/day, with little time to spare for downtime or fun. (The folks who I played with here and there over the past couple years can verify how impossibly hard it tended to be to pin me down to times for anything without triple-checking the schedule, and then being prepared for some new catastrophe to arise, 'cause something always did.)

Burnout is real. So damn real. Living primarily in 'nothing but work and crisis control' mode for a period of years will fuck you up but good. (Hello, my name is Dee and I'll be your cautionary tale for the evening, how may I be of assistance?)

Seriously. Do not guilt yourself over time spent on fun. You don't get hours of your life back to catch up on enjoyment you missed because you were trying to be as productive as possible or handle a crisis, because there's always going to be work waiting to be done or a crisis looming in the future. Fun/chill time is important. It's essential to keep life in balance, and once that balance gets screwed up, it's really easy to crash and burn way beyond the level of burnout.

Do you know what con it was? Even if someone doesn't necessarily know the player by this description, some con networks are pretty tight; you may catch the attention of another poster here who may know someone they could ask if the circumstances sound familiar.

I don't do cons these days, but the husband does a few, and I'd be happy to ask him if this sounds like anyone he knows if the con is one he does. (I think he was doing Anime Next most recently.)

@HelloProject Sincerely, don't be too hard on yourself, man. We all have those moments. Been having plenty of them myself lately, anyway, so for what it's worth, there's at least one person who gets it. (And I would bet a lot more than one.)

Take the time you need for you. Everybody needs that sometimes, too.

Some folks may think they're entitled to be gatekeepers or whatever, but nobody really is that. Heck, even the folks almost universally on record for doing massive harm or have an intent to do harm as predators don't get blocked out of participation save for by a small few, in the end.

By comparison? A random argument on a forum's pretty much nothin', and perspective's a thing.

It'll be ok, even if it doesn't seem like it right now. Be good to you, dude. If that means taking time away, that's cool, but don't convince yourself you have nothing of value to offer here or that everybody's gonna hate you forever or something and let that keep you away if you decide you want to come back some day.

@Admiral said in RL Anger:

makes it so I can't go to the bathroom.

There was a thing on Shang, IC, that did this. Like some sort of... alien ass magic that just made everything not... there, or something. I dunno. I didn't ask. I didn't want to know the mental gymnastics behind it, because I bet there were some.

I do, however, recall many weird late night conversations with random people in which we'd debate whether or not we'd totally get that 'never have to go to the bathroom again' magic if it was really a thing. Nobody could ever come to a conclusion about this, but the observations were fucking amazing, like, 'you know, if it has no ill effects, wouldn't it just save money on toilet paper and ensure you never had to stand in long bathroom lines at airports?' or 'fuck that, when else do I get the chance to read?'

...at least it isn't Shang ass magic. Which nobody ever actually decided on, as to whether or not it'd be awesome or awful if it was real.

@mietze said in Raising Baby Gamers:

Being outside is great! Do you have enough land/a useable backyard? Does your city have enough money for park upkeep? Do you have a car/gas money? Are the outdoor/common spaces accessible by bus if not? Will you get CPS or will your children be harassed while at the park if you don't "look right" for the neighborhood?

This. My parents own the last two remaining vacant house lots in our neighborhood, and while the house lots in this development have enough space for some yard stuff, they aren't all huge. Two full house lots is pretty big, and they're empty (gardeny/grass kept up, not asphalt or anything) so while there are no young kids in the family, it's on record as being 'safe space' for neighborhood kids to play if they need more room for something like soccer practice or whatnot.

This has also led to serious weirdness once in a while, like finding a random ski pole in the yard when the snow melts in the spring... (we live on a hill, we never thought anyone would get that adventurous until we saw the actual ski tracks and couldn't stop o.o-ing), but the above is exactly why we've always committed to allowing folks to use that space (provided there's an adult supervising or an older kid in case of accident/etc. for their own safety).

@HelloProject said in RL Anger:

I legitimately hate my life and my parents make me wish I didn't exist.

Sometimes, I think this is the purpose of parents. If it weren't for the people I know in the hobby who are amazing parents, and the few friends I've had who had awesome ones, I'd think this was a universal.

@Admiral said in RL Anger:

My entire family recently cut me off over a bad online review.

...this actually beats my family for crazy by a mile. That is not easy. What in the actual hell, man. What happened?

@mietze You're a massage therapist, yeah? I know a lot of spas hire people who do massage therapy and are certified aesthetician (the one I go to does, at least) so if it's something you really like, it may be worth pursuing.

@Monogram Knitting. It is a wonderfully meditative fidget activity. I have more patterns I will never make than ones I will, but I collect because their ooh shiny factor is high.