Metamorphosis

Or, I have no idea what is going on what the hell you guys¹

I say this is the Abridged Version because it's not over yet I am still here. Although I am leaving today.

Without getting into details², the following things happened.

1. Spent time with Rob Wilkins, Terry's Personal Assistant, and drove him to a U2 concert in Chicago.


2. Had dinner with Terry and a couple other Awesome People at a nice place in Madison.⁴ There will be details later.


3. Performed TWICE officially.


4. Was given The Suit. For free. That parts of it were custom tailored for me.⁵ I get to take this thing home without paying for it is what I am saying you guys.

Not included in the numbered list is the far more awesome fact that I made a fantastic new friend who happens to be ten years younger than me, this is not creepy in any way whatsoever, this must be how Dayna feels all the time.

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1. Not entirely true.


2. Which, YES DAYNA I WILL BLOG ABOUT IT LEAVE ME ALONE³


3. Seriously, I will, don't look at me like that.


4. I think I made him laugh once. I was mostly listening, though, the man has the most interesting stories and is so incredibly quick with puns and innuendo that it makes me look boring in comparison.


5. People sometimes say, "Why bother to volunteer, I don't want to work when I'm there to have fun." These people are morons.

There's no shame in admitting it; practically half the Internet¹ has been rallying around Friendship is Magic for months, and the fact that it has a large male following has been absolutely no secret.

Granted, at first the animation style bugged me, but it grows on you. To be entirely honest, there was absolutely no reason for me to believe that I wouldn't have liked Friendship is Magic - the characterization is solid, the writing is spectacular, voice acting is absolutely stellar, and there are numerous pop-culture references that appeal to adults and kids alike, both subtle² and center-stage.

I honestly feel like I should expand upon the solid characterization; not only are the characters layered and intricate, but they also are beautifully-developed and realistic characters, with all the flaws and strengths of people that you know every day. It's no wonder that Tessa in particular has gravitated towards the character of Pinkie Pie, the over-excited sugared-up champion of happiness and free spirit; the character acts and feels exactly the way she herself does in a good mood.³

It is on that same note that I found myself captivated with this series, even more than I would have been already, given the comments I made above. No, what really got me hooked was the (arguably) primary protagonist.



Twilight Sparkle is Gifted, with a capital Gift. Her potential is an untapped wonder of the world, and Princess Celestia not only recognizes it, but fosters it in the only way she knows how. Unfortunately, this meant that she grew up in a life of solitude, reporting to the Princess from her workspace and dealing socially only with her baby dragon, Spike. It is only when a millenia-old prophecy predicts doom for the world that she ventures out into society, coming into contact with other people ponies for the first time since she was a little foal.

Her initial distrust of ponies actually wanting to spend time with her was what caught me initially, and the acceptance of the idea of new friends in her life was at once moving and excruciatingly heartbreaking. Like Ben Hanscom⁴, here was a girl whose only friends were the books she read, until she met a group of friends who accepted her - and even liked her - for who she was.

It's a really sad moment in one of the most recent episodes I've watched, where Twilight realizes she finally gets to have a sleepover, and immediately researches what it's supposed to be. It's played for humor, of course - silly Twilight, always with her nose in her books - but as someone who came into his own social life extremely late, it strikes a particularly painful chord to watch her try to rationalize Applejack and Rarity's argument as simply "not doing it properly".

I'm only a small part of the way through this first season, as Tessa and I have yet to find actual time for a proper Ponython, but I'm absolutely floored. Bravo, Lauren Faust, you've made yet another fan.

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1. Yes, I realize that oversimplifications and generalizations like that are passé. I dare you to find statistics proving my arbitrarily-chosen statement wrong.


2. Fluttershy's rabbit friend is named Angel, and Twilight Sparkle's dragon friend is named Spike. They don't like each other. Your minds have now been BLOWN.


3. She's an evil ENCHANTRESS, she does evil DANCES...


4. On a similar note, do we know what Uncle Stevie's opinion of this show is yet? I haven't seen him in Entertainment Weekly in a while, and I know he always tries to keep up with the pop-culture zeitgeist. I'd imagine he'd be completely in love with this series, though.

Sorry about the backlog. I've got a bit of catch-up to play. The weekend was relaxing and fun and I haven't really had any lazy do-nothing weekends in a long time, so I was taking full advantage.

On second thought, I'm not apologizing for that. Excelsior!


Your beliefs, in great detail

Wow, these prompts are really open-ended. "Beliefs" is a bit vague; by these rules, I could say that I believe the sky is pink as long as I say why.

Yes, yes, I get that it means "religion" in this case. Still, this whole exercise is vagued-up beyond belief.¹

( In any case, here's my crack at it. )

Things with Trekkiegirl have been excessively wonderful. We tend to spend most weekends together, either watching various TV shows or otherwise out and about - we want to go to the Bristol Renaissance Faire¹ and Wizard World² this month, but we decided not to because of our financial situations - and I'm pretty much just basking.

For her birthday our six-month Non-Specific Roughly-Celebratory Day, she picked me up a copy of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, which she knew I wanted and was sad I could not afford right away. I've been replaying the original to refresh myself on the story - which is extremely phenomenal for a game of its time - and when she got me the game on Friday, I was ecstatic.

"You know you've just voluntarily given up half your evening with me, right?"
"It had better only be half."³

Wings of Liberty might only be the first third of the game (Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void to be sold seperately as expansions), but it's a complete experience in and of itself. I think it has roughly 30 full-size missions? I haven't finished it yet (and I may or may not⁴ have been playing non-stop this entire weekend).

Fantastic, let me tell you. Blizzard has outdone themselves. Plus I've got something to do when my Warcraft subscription runs out this month and I don't renew it until my monetary situation changes.

Speaking of Warcraft, we're probably going to focus on that in this month's episode of Made of Fail. Dayna needed the time off⁶ - for really good reasons, mind you; I joke, but her life is pretty much a series of Murphy's Law anomolies - so I'll be enlisting Adam and Tessa for this. (Weston and/or Gendou, you guys want to join us? Let me know if you do. All you need is Skype and a headset.)

That'll probably record sometime this week or probably (read: more likely) this weekend. It depends on everyone's schedules.

I will leave you all with one Important Safety Tip. When you're driving, and you want to turn left, and they have a center lane specifically for people who want to turn without disrupting the traffic behind them? Pro tip. Use the fucking thing. Thank you.

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1. She has an outfit. It's a harem bellydancer outfit. She actually bellydances you guys.


2. Because she wants to get Brent Spiner's autograph. That tells you everything you need to know about her.


3. I was joking. She wasn't. She pointedly went to my TV and started watching an episode of The X-Files on my NetFlix queue just so I had an hour to give my new Anti-Social Device a spin around the quadrant.


4. Okay, who am I kidding? At least I remembered to eat⁵.


5. Mostly.


6. I wish I knew what it was like to be able to just take whole episodes off and not have to worry about the show crumbling to dust.

So, that happened.

Let's get this straight. I wanted to see this movie so much. The trailer was fantastic, but...

Tessa's doing her own audio review as I type this, and it's currently up on uStream.

( Spoiler-laden review coming up. You have been warned. )

Last week I enrolled at a comedy course - a stand-up seminar, if you will - at the Improv. Last night was the first class, and let me tell you, it was awesome. Even just walking in to the place was amazing. I had never been there before, and it is a high-class establishment¹.

The first of ten classes was last night, and it was amazing. The teacher - who is a stand-up comic himself; I had actually heard of him - gave us all a short lecture about how a routine should be pared down to its basics. A brief rundown of the rest of the lecture: Don't get verbose, don't lose your place by getting caught in tangents, don't force something that you don't feel. Go ahead and be offensive if that's who you are, but don't do it for the sake of being offensive; do it to prove a point or don't do it at all. Don't just go up there and curse - swear words are just like any other words in that they lose their power if you use them too often or incorrectly².

After that, he had us all take turns on the stage and give a demonstration of our jokes and comedy style. I went third³ and did a rough intro about being an Irish Jew, then went into a couple jokes that Dayna and Tessa helped me prepare. Everyone seemed to like them, and I got a couple bits of advice: "Use the Rule of Three, give it a bit of a rhythm. Also, keep working with the Irish Jew thing, that's good stuff and you can get a lot of mileage out of it if you work it."

Nine more classes, and then the graduation show. A real show, with a real audience. I'm going to be on stage FOR REAL at the Improv⁴.

I'm really excited.

---

1. I'd only been to Zanies in the city before, and it was a lot smaller, and - according to our teacher - smelled like 95 year old urine.


2. Like "sparkle".


3. Let me take a moment aside, please. I WAS ON STAGE AT THE MOTHERFUCKING IMPROV. Even though it was empty aside from the ten of us. ON STAGE AT THE IMPROV. *cough* Thank you. That was all.


4. DUDE.

I'm afraid I've been thinking¹. Mostly about stories lately. Not specific stories, but the idea of stories in general.

Where did they come from, really? Most stories told today are some adaptation of older, classic stories, with a bit of real-world influence thrown in. Lord of the Rings? It's World War II with swords. Avatar? Take a look at the imperialistic and colonial world of 1600-1900 Europe. District 9? Schindler's List with lobsters².

Most "fresh" stories are basically the old tales told through new means. Instead of a princess and her entire kingdom being put to sleep for a hundred years until Prince Charming comes along, let's put the prince under the spell and have the sexy warrior princess come and slay the dragon! While you're at it, throw in a whole cartload of anachronistic jokes for both the kids and the parents watching. (See also: The awesomeness that is Shrek.)

I'm not saying any of these are bad, necessarily (aside from Avatar; there could have been so much more awesome there than there was). District 9 was the best movie that came out last year, and should have won Best Picture hands-down. And the re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland was absolutely phenomenal³. I don't know, there's just something about pretty girls taking charge and grabbing the biggest sword they can handle. (They say it's a Freudian metaphor⁴.)

No, all these things can be great if they're handled well. I'm simply making an observation: There are too few original ideas left. Even the most original stories take influences from what has gone before; I've started reading Ursula Kaye Le Guin, who loves to take simple "What if?" ideas and run with them to their logical conclusions. The Left Hand of Darkness, for example, explores a society where a group of humans have evolved to be completely hermaphroditic; they turn male or female as necessary for breeding and are completely androgynous otherwise⁵. Definitely an interesting concept, and it's an incredibly captivating story. An extremely original idea, in fact, with influences and references to human history, psychology, and insights into basic human nature.

My point, though. Where do stories come from? Everything seems to be cyclical; new stories reference or pay tribute to those that have gone before, and in turn go on to become referenced in other stories yet to come.

Terry Pratchett puts a fair amount of this in his novels, even going so far as to make it self-aware. The Discworld is held together with magic the way ours is held together by physics, and a vast majority of that magic is ruled by a concept called "Narrative Causality". He goes on at length about it - especially in the Witches of Lancre books, since most of what a witch does is ride stories, using them to achieve the desired effect - but what it boils down to is this: Things work in that world because of stories. When a conflict arises between common sense and narrative convention, the story will always win out⁶. Stories are so much a part of the Discworld that it is now completely impossible for the third and youngest son of a king to go on a quest that has previously ended the lives of his older brothers and not succeed.

I've had a story idea kicking around in my head for about three years that plays a bit off that same concept. It's not an entirely original idea, but as I've said, it's hard to find something that is. What it is, though, is interesting, and I really hope I can do it justice.

You guys will be the first to know if I can.

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1. A dangerous pasttime, I know.


2. Which is funny in and of itself 'cause that means that they can never keep kosher.


3. Even without the fact that Trekkiegirl and I couldn't get past the fact that the girl who plays Alice looked so strikingly like Tessa that Trekkiegirl wanted to go out and buy an Alice dress for her right that moment.


4. Although this is a phallusy.


5. Not unlike Marilyn Manson.


6. Except once in the case of Nobby Nobbs, and even that doesn't count 'cause the humor aspect won out even against conventional storytelling.

Debbie and I, early on in the month, decided that we'd go out on a platonic date. She and I have known each other for nearly six years now, and we know that we'd only work as friends¹. But she and I were hanging out one day, and we both were kind of in a slump, so I told her to get dolled up and we were going on a date. No expectation, no anxiety of a real date, just two friends all dressed up and going out on the town.²

( Meeting a girl. )

This story, however? It isn't over.

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1. If we ever tried to go out, we'd kill each other. Besides, there's no interest either direction.


2. Except without the Gene Kelly interlude that tells us, through awesome yet superfluous dance, exactly what we had already been through not ten minutes before. Also without Frank Sinatra.


3. For dessert, mind you.


4. Those who know me will recognize this, but for the rest of you: I have a thing for girls in glasses. It is what it is.


5. Long story short: Jusenkyo fascinates me.


6. Speaking of the show, SHE HAS HEARD OF IT. She's a reader of Cleolinda, and when I asked if she remembers the podcast that gets linked every once in a while, she said yes though she hasn't listened to it at all. I got to use my podcast to impress a girl you guys.

Or, How I Learned To Read The Labels And It Worked

Really excited about trying out our quiXotic Brand Teas; I spent most of this morning checking out Adagio to make sure I don't make a mistake in brewing any of these¹. I looked through the kitchen supplies that Debbie gave us when we moved in² - thanks again, Debbie! - and we have a kettle but no teapot, and no filter for making tea.

I know enough about tea⁴ to know that you don't put the tea in the kettle - unless you want to spend a couple hours with a wire brush and no way to get it inside - so I'm looking at a couple different choices of teapots. There's an inexpensive one that seems to be getting great reviews, and a not-as-inexpensive but fairly low-priced glass teapot that is absolutely gorgeous. Both of these are the perfect size for just two people, and they certainly seem to be getting great reviews - the first one has over three hundred positive comments and only two negative ones - so I'm pretty hopeful here. (Tea-drinkers, any thoughts?)

As long as I was on this site I figured it'd be neat to check it out completely, and I was looking at the custom blends option. Turns out there's more to my present than arrived in the box - that, or I didn't look closely enough at the packaging. The blends have custom descriptions, which further show me how awesome Gen and Rene are. Not only do personal Warcraft playing experiences translate well to names of professional tea blends, but check out the description of MacRae's Divine Favor:

From the quiXotic collection: A traditional blend of Chocolate, Hazelnut and Cream allow this tea to imbue your tastebuds with a critically delicious flavor.

HOW AWESOME IS THAT⁵

That's not all, either. Let's take a look at Cosette's Presence of Mind:

From the quiXotic collection: A sweet blend of Caramel, Almond and Cinnamon make this tea perfect for giving a burst of energy right when you need it.

Seriously looking forward to this.

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1. I've never brewed my own tea before. I've always had pre-made tea, or someone's made tea for me. I've visited Melissa at Teavana and she's made me stuff before but I wasn't really paying too close attention.


2. No, seriously, it's a metric crapload³. The only thing we needed to actually get for the kitchen that she didn't give us were cups, utensils, coffee mugs and plates, and most of those came from my parents.


3. The difference between a Metric crapload and an Imperial Standard crapload is that only one of those changes when you go to the moon. Mass =/= weight.


4. i.e. I read it in a Terry Pratchett book.


5. See, it's because Divine Favor makes your heals crit. IT'S A TEA PUN.

(I'm trying out this Semagic thing that Cleo's always talking about. It's neat so far.)

This weekend was nice and relaxing, which was very good indeed. Unfortunately, I had to see that which cannot be unseen, but Twilight was for the show, damn it!

The episode recording was really awesome, though¹. We had a new special guest on², and she was awesome. Editing commences, and the episode will probably be up by Black Friday at the latest but I might have a lot more time on Wednesday than I normally do, so let's see what I can do.

( I got home from work today to find... )

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1. If you ignore a couple different connection issues that can easily get straightened out for the finished version. Which I do. Which makes this footnote completely superfluous.


2. What's really interesting is that she's indirectly responsible for making Made of Fail as big as it is now! I'll get into that later.