Hey all, here's what the current situation is as I understand it: Mike is in town and Stone is arriving this evening. Tonight we're going to try to hang out, Saturday is Mike's birthday dinner followed by more hanging out. Last night we played Castle Ravenloft at the Filth Hole and Aaron stubbornly fought a Dracolich. Aaron is set to run an awesome Dark Heresy game, and I'm set to run Shadowrun, Warhammer, or old-school D&D (Rules Cyclopedia). I've also got Castle Ravenloft, Last Night on Earth, and Doom in case we want to play something but don't have an RPG ready to go.

4th Grader Punished For Bringing 2-Inch Lego Gun To School

"A tiny toy led to big trouble for one fourth-grade New York City boy.

Patrick Timoney, a 9-year-old student at PS 52 in Staten Island, N.Y., was in the school cafeteria Tuesday playing with LEGOs when he was taken to the principal’s office and threatened with suspension. One of his toys was a LEGO policeman that holds a 2-inch plastic gun. The school has a no-tolerance policy when it comes to toy guns."

Are we so determined to turn the next generation of men into sniveling pussies that we can't even let little boys play with Lego guns? Really? I say our society has been demonizing masculinity for long enough. Men are not women. Women are (theoretically) beautiful, nurturing, sensitive creatures. Men are aggressive and enjoy violence, because sometimes shit just needs to get done. It's in our genes. When we're children, we blow off steam by playing with toys. Forcing boys to not play with "violent" toys out of a fear of future violent behavior is like forcing boys to not masterbate out of a fear of future rapes; by taking away the testosterone release valve you're begging for the awful behavior you want to avoid. I say let boys play with toy guns and beat off, so they can grow up to be healthy men that know how to protect and satisfy their women.

And while we're talking about the pussification of men, what's the story with men actively watching American Idol? I regularly see men posting on Facebook about who they're rooting for on American Idol and it makes me clinch my asshole. It forces me to watch scenes from Predator on youtube to regain respect for my gender. Is it no longer politically correct for men to like sports? Has karaoke replaced sports as an acceptable male competition interest? Or, have men in our society been so neutered that we're just surrendering our balls?

The irony is that the women/gay guys who are forcing this cultural shift are not sexually attracted to the pussified assholes that they're creating; they still get hot watching men act like men, because they're wired to. Tonight I'm going to lift some weights before drinking vodka, playing loud Zeppelin riffs on my guitar, and watching a violent movie. My girlfriend will casually complain about it but she's not fooling anybody. She loves it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/us/27dungeons.html

"Prisons can restrict the rights of inmates to nerd out, a federal appeals court has found.

In an opinion issued on Monday , a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rejected the claims in a lawsuit challenging a ban on the game Dungeons & Dragons by the Waupun Correctional Institution in Wisconsin.

The suit was brought by a prisoner, Kevin T. Singer, who argued that his First Amendment and 14th Amendment rights were violated by the prison’s decision to ban the game and confiscate his books and other materials, including a 96-page handwritten manuscript he had created for the game.

Mr. Singer, “a D&D enthusiast since childhood,” according to the court’s opinion, was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 for bludgeoning and stabbing his sister’s boyfriend to death.

Prison officials said they had banned the game at the recommendation of the prison’s specialist on gangs, who said it could lead to gang behavior and fantasies about escape.

Dungeons & Dragons could “foster an inmate’s obsession with escaping from the real-life correctional environment, fostering hostility, violence and escape behavior,” prison officials said in court. That could make it more difficult to rehabilitate prisoners and could endanger public safety, they said.

The court, which is based in Chicago, acknowledged that there was no evidence of marauding gangs spurred to their acts of destruction by swinging imaginary mauls, but it ruled nonetheless that the prison’s decision was “rationally related” to legitimate goals of prison administration.

“We are pleased with the ruling,” said John Dipko, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, who added that the prison rules “enable us to continue our mission of keeping our state safe.”

News of the decision spread quickly though the network of blogs that discuss such games and to those devoted to the law, where many commentators revealed perhaps more of their own history as gamers than they might have intended. On The Volokh Conspiracy, a legal blog, a particularly rollicking discussion ensued, kicked off with a post by Ilya Somin, an associate professor of law at George Mason University, who asked, “Should prisons ban ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ on the grounds that it might encourage escape attempts?”

In an interview, Professor Somin said the prison’s action was reminiscent of a media frenzy in the 1980s surrounding the supposedly pernicious effects of gaming. “Ideally, you should really have more evidence that there is a genuine harm before you restrict something,” he said.

The comments accompanying Professor Somin’s post ranged from hoots of outrage over the ban to constitutionally nuanced discussion, but they showed that there were many lawyers who at some point owned a pouch with some dice of more than six sides. And none of them seemed to think that the risk to the nation’s prisons could be found in the works of Gary Gygax or other creators of the genre.

As Andrew Oh-Willeke, a lawyer in Denver, wrote, “If more inmates were über-nerdy D&D players, life would be good.”

I've decided that I'm going to force myself to use all of the RPG books I've stockpiled and never touched. I suffer from gaming ADD; I hear about an interesting new book, buy it, read it, get psyched to run it, and then something else catches my eye before anything materializes, resulting in nothing ever getting played. That cycle has repeated itself for about 15 years now. I now have several complete gamelines that have never been used. In the case of Star Wars, I have a complete gameline that was never used, and has been obsoleted by a new Star Wars gameline that I own and have never used. I think that sobering realization was the straw that broke the camel's back (well, that and my g/f asking me at Borders why I'm always buying RPG books that I never end up using).

We recently had fun trying out the new Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd edition (with Lio as a Troll Slayer and Action Widow as a disgraced Wood Elf Thief), and we're getting pretty comfortable with the new system. Next we're trying out Shadowrun 4th edition (which I own every book for and have never used). After an adventure of that we'll try out something else. I do plan on getting back to WFRP3 though, because I really like Lio and Action Widow's characters, and I've got some solid ideas for a long-term campaign. Lio's Troll Slayer (Olaf Runebreaker) is nursing a fallen dwarf back to sanity (when he's not beheading greenskins or trying to create a Dwelf), and Action Widow's Elf (Moonthistle) is seducing haggardly peasant cooks while developing various con-jobs and poison-crafting skills.

Aside from forcing us to finally make use all these books, this approach serves a few other purposes. It gets us comfortable with the rules for all these different games, which makes the prospect of playing them in the future far less daunting. Also, we'll start to figure out which games we really like, and which games we don't; I suspect there are games that we buy books for and wouldn't even enjoy (if we ever got around to playing them).

I think the major benefit, however, is getting comfortable running these different games for our monthly gaming weekends (which I really hope we get going again, because that weekend at Stone's place in Boston was fucking awesome and I miss having us all together). It'll be much easier to get a variety of games going if Lio and I are comfortable running them, so that the burden doesn't always fall on Stone and Calliander to run D&D. I'm envisioning a setup where we get several different games going at once, riffing off each other and trying lots of new stuff like back in the day.

Do you like Phil Collins? I've been a big Genesis fan ever since the release of their 1980 album, Duke. Before that, I really didn't understand any of their work. Too artsy, too intellectual. It was on Duke where Phil Collins' presence became more apparent. I think Invisible Touch was the group's undisputed masterpiece. It's an epic meditation on intangibility. At the same time, it deepens and enriches the meaning of the preceding three albums. Christy, take off your robe. Listen to the brilliant ensemble playing of Banks, Collins and Rutherford. You can practically hear every nuance of every instrument. Sabrina, remove your dress. In terms of lyrical craftsmanship, the sheer songwriting, this album hits a new peak of professionalism. Sabrina, why don't you, uh, dance a little. Take the lyrics to Land of Confusion. In this song, Phil Collins addresses the problems of abusive political authority. In Too Deep is the most moving pop song of the 1980s, about monogamy and commitment. The song is extremely uplifting. Their lyrics are as positive and affirmative as anything I've heard in rock. Christy, get down on your knees so Sabrina can see your asshole. Phil Collins' solo career seems to be more commercial and therefore more satisfying, in a narrower way. Especially songs like In the Air Tonight and Against All Odds. Sabrina, don't just stare at it, eat it. But I also think Phil Collins works best within the confines of the group, than as a solo artist, and I stress the word artist. This is Sussudio, a great, great song, a personal favorite.

http://www.stileproject.com/flash/skeet.html

Not at all safe for work, and lower your volume before clicking as it's really loud.

That was a good rant on the socialist nightmare that is Europe. Another thing I hate about Europe is their laws for "Squatter's Rights". The way that works is, basically, if someone trespasses onto your private property and stays there for long enough they can gain ownership of it. There was a recent Hollywood propaganda piece for squatter's rights called "The Garden"; I really hope we don't start adopting bullshit laws like that in America.

I'm sorry man, that's really horrible. I went through something similar a few years ago (my nephew was stillborn) and it was a really surreal/unsettling/fucked up experience. I talked a lot with my brother about it afterwards and I think that helped me deal with it. I kept reminding myself that the baby probably would have had terrible lifelong health problems, and that in a way it might have been a blessing that he wasn't suffering anymore. If you ever want to talk about it I'm around dude.

Mislead is the wrong term, it's salesmanship. Presidents have agendas they want to push, and they focus on the most persuasive aspects of them to get things done. That's fine, as long as there is no deception. Bush focused on the national security ramifications because the average citizen doesn't really care about humanitarian causes on the other side of the world. I'll be the first to criticize Bush on irresponsible spending, social conservative bullshit like abortion and gay marriage, or keeping Rumsfeld around for so long to fuck up the wars we're in, but I still support going into Iraq. You're right that we could (and should) have spent more effort getting more allies on board, but a lot of countries were never getting on board because they were happily abusing the Oil-For-Food program (like the spineless French, although I do like Sarkozy).

As for Hitchens, I quoted him because he's the most intelligent and well-informed commentator on foreign policy that we have (as far as I know). I always enjoy his writing, even when I disagree with him.

Franken's going to continue shamelessly fighting for a long time. It's got to be embarrassing for him to be losing to Norm Coleman, while sharing a ballot with Obama, in the worst political climate for Republicans since 1932.

I'm confused Calliander. Are you saying that Hitchens is a shitty excuse for a liberal, or that I'm the equivalent of a racist for questioning your false accounting of events, or both? I suggest you read the actual speech Bush gave to the U.N. in September 2002 instead of bumper stickers; he clearly made a humanitarian case for liberating Iraq. You can find it here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html , and for the sake of convenience here are the closing paragraphs:

"Events can turn in one of two ways: If we fail to act in the face of danger, the people of Iraq will continue to live in brutal submission. The regime will have new power to bully and dominate and conquer its neighbors, condemning the Middle East to more years of bloodshed and fear. The regime will remain unstable - the region will remain unstable, with little hope of freedom, and isolated from the progress of our times. With every step the Iraqi regime takes toward gaining and deploying the most terrible weapons, our own options to confront that regime will narrow. And if an emboldened regime were to supply these weapons to terrorist allies, then the attacks of September the 11th would be a prelude to far greater horrors.

If we meet our responsibilities, if we overcome this danger, we can arrive at a very different future. The people of Iraq can shake off their captivity. They can one day join a democratic Afghanistan and a democratic Palestine, inspiring reforms throughout the Muslim world. These nations can show by their example that honest government, and respect for women, and the great Islamic tradition of learning can triumph in the Middle East and beyond. And we will show that the promise of the United Nations can be fulfilled in our time.

Neither of these outcomes is certain. Both have been set before us. We must choose between a world of fear and a world of progress. We cannot stand by and do nothing while dangers gather. We must stand up for our security, and for the permanent rights and the hopes of mankind. By heritage and by choice, the United States of America will make that stand. And, delegates to the United Nations, you have the power to make that stand, as well.

Thank you very much."

The fact that we did a piss-poor job executing the war does not change the fact that the decision to remove Saddam Hussein's regime was both correct and long overdue. If things stay on course, and we're able to safely pull our troops out of a free Iraq in 2011, the long-term prospects for a lasting peace in that region skyrocket. Barack Obama said something that really jumped out at me early in the summer. It was (I'm paraphrasing): "We should not be blind to the opportunities that Iraq now presents us." Obama kept Robert Gates as the Secretary of Defense today. How do you feel about that?