Voices

This blog entry is pretty challenging for me. Vegetarianism, once I got over the initial hurdles, was an easy choice because it felt like a simple means of living out parts of my ethics in regards to exploitation, and it didn't take that much effort. Approaching the problems surrounding the exploitation of the human labor involved in producing food, both plant and animal, is much more difficult and without anything resembling easy personal solutions. Why are big, difficult problems always so big and difficult, dagnabit?

Life continues and things occur. Most of them are boring are to read about.

Saturday night I wrangled together a significant portion of my local friends for a three week late birthday celebration. We had dinner at the Capitol Hill Tea Pot Vegetarian House, a vegan Chinese food restaurant that specializes in Buddhist-style fake meat cooking. Though the restaurant didn't seem quite as prepared for us as it should have been (considering I had made a reservation for 22 people a week and a half in advance, and we only actually had 19 people come), the food and company were fantastic, and I was glad I had done it. Thanks to everyone who came!

Earlier on Saturday, Lesley joined as the new player in our bi-weekly Exalted game, re-completing our circle after the loss of Jesse, whose new responsibilities as full-time bus driver and human spawn generator have forced him to cut down on his gaming activities. This is Lesley's first tabletop rpg; she's doing really well with it so far, though we have to work at times not to overshadow her character, simply because the rest of us are used to diving in, taking charge, and expecting everyone else to do likewise.

Neil Gaiman's new short story collection Fragile Things hit last week. I picked it up along with my copy of the new Compass of Celestial Directions Volume 1: The Blessed Isle at The Dreaming on Friday. I started the first story on the bus this morning; it combines Sherlock Holmes and the Lovecraft Mythos and promises to be irrevocably awesome (in addition to reminding me a great deal of our bi-weekly Adventure! game).

Saturday night my Microsoft ergonomic keyboard (one of the really old-school off-white models with no padding or special features) stopped working properly. I attempted to take it apart and fix it, which I think only exacerbated the problem. Of course, I've been using the keyboard for 8 years, so it's not a terribly surprising occurence. So, on Sunday, I bought a new Microsoft ergonomic keyboard, only this one does have padding and weird extra buttons (which I thought would be worthless, but I'm actually enjoying them). Of course, since I entered Best Buy, I had to also look at other things, and I ended up buying volume two of Basilisk, Iron Monkey, and Kung Fu Hustle. I'm such a sucker.

I've heard that some of you have been wondering whether or not Jason rocks, and if he does, why such a thing can be said to be true. This I will explain to you.

On Tuesday, we played our bi-weekly game of Adventure!, a 20's pulp game of globe-trotting adventure. Much of the session was spent with our characters in Constantinople and other parts of Turkey. About half way through the game, some of the characters sat down to talk with a rich Turkish man, and he offered them refreshments. When they accepted, Jason went to his refrigerator and brought out plates of baklava and lokum, more commonly known as Turkish Delight, for our consumption.

This, my friends, is why Jason rocks.

Saturday: I got away from work at noon and decided to forego the Best Buy run and just buy groceries. I then spent the rest of the day playing City of Villains, watching dvds, and reading. Not bad at all.

Sunday: I slept in and then opened the box o' stuff my parents sent me. For my big breakfast (you have to eat a big breakfast on Christmas; it's the law) I made eggs, sourdough biscuits, vegi-bacon, vegi-sausage, and strawberry-orange-banana juice. While I was cooking, Adam (one of my best friends, currently living in SoCal) called to give me my traditional holiday cursing-out, and we talked for a while about the general state of things. Post breakfast and phone was more CoV and dvd-watching, followed by a phone call from my parents and little sister.

When mid-afternoon finally rolled around I drove down to grandmoffdavid's parents' house and spent several hours with him and a his family (including preciousjade, of course). It should become immediately obvious to anyone who spends any time at David's parents' place that he came by his l33t cooking and booze-choosing skills quite honestly. It was a fun afternoon, with good conversation and presents and food and the like. I will henceforth be making all of my important life decisions using my "What Would a Ninja Do?" choice wheel.

I left there around 7:30 and headed over to Mike & Jenna's place for more food, movie watching, Xbox 360-playing, and conversation. It was mellow, which was good because I was beginning to feel very sleepy. I decided to head home shortly after 11pm, dropping into bed shortly after my arrival.

All in all, a very worthy Christmas, despite its unusual nature. Cheers.

It's been quite a while since I posted here, mostly because I can't access LJ from work anymore. However, I finally remembered to check the process for posting via email, and here I am. I'm assuming this whole post is going to be full of typing errors and broken html tags that I won't really notice until I get home and can actually look at how the post came out.

And what better way to mark my return than a boring list of the current media and consumer products that I am enjoying? No better way, says I.

Psychonauts: Available for the PS2, Xbox, and PC, this is one of the best games I have played in years. What is there not to like in a game about a summer camp for child psychics designed by Tim Schafer of Grim Fandango with a lead character voiced by Richard Steven Horvitz (aka Zim)? It is at least partially a platformer, but so far I've experienced none of the frustrations normally inherent in that genre. My co-worker Kurt told me that he already considers it to be his pick for game of the year. I'm having a hard time disagreeing.

Legend of the Five Rings RPG, 3rd Edition: Though I've never actually played a single session of L5R, I've been a fan of the game for a long time. It's basically feudal Japan with a fantasy twist; it is to the samurai era what 7th Sea is to swashbuckling Europe. The 3rd edition is a beautiful book. While many game companies aspire to put out full-color books, most don't have the art or designers necessary to make it look good (Are you listening, EDEN?). L5R 3ed, on the other hand, looks great from cover to cover. While some of the illustrations are better than others (as is inevitable), there is not a single piece of bad art anywhere in the book.

Fantastic Foods soup and noodle bowls: Fantastic Foods makes some of the finest instant vegetarian and vegan food in existence. These soups are incredible, particularly the Hot & Sour and Minestrone. Also of note are their vegetarian taco filling and falafel mix.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Vol. 7: I really couldn't be happier with the ending to this phenomenal series. I nearly cried during the Batou/Tachikoma scene.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke: Jason first made me aware of this weird and delightful novel that apparently took 10 years to write. It's a comedic historical fantasy that falls somewhere in-between the styles of Jane Austen, Neil Gaiman, Charles Dickens, and Terry Pratchet, and the more I read, the better it gets.

Ok, back to work, me hearties.