Dinner of Champions!

I was at Trans World Market, cruising the aisles, trying not to spend more than I could afford (and failed). And there it was: Friday night's dinner (see above).

How could I not spend $1.19 for Cock Flavored Soup?

Go to sleep, America!

I had a hard time sleeping after last night's shift, and found myself still awake at 10 am. This will not bode well for tonight. I hope my patients need lots of bathroom breaks so I don't zone out or worse, fall asleep.

Rachel Ray had a cool segment on sleep studies. I'm seeing more and more mainstream media on sleep disorders. 70% of Americans report being tired all the time, or something like that. I'll save my sermon on sleep and health for another time, but there's a link between obesity and poor sleep. Lose weight, eat better, you'll sleep better. Actually, it's not that easy. If you're too tired to make lifestyle changes, doing what you need to do to sleep better is that much harder. Okay, climbing off the soap box.

I love my job (I'm a sleep tech). I love it when people wake up and report having the best night sleep they've ever had, despite the fact that they're wired from head to toe, and wearing a CPAP mask for the first time. Getting a good night's sleep can be a life changing event.

The [cruel] irony that I couldn't sleep before going to work to watch people sleep is not lost on me.

One Grain of Sand

Someone asked me about Murder Ballad Blackjack recently. I haven't been doing too much with it lately, I've been focusing more attention on M'Alice. But I think I'll work on it some more in April. I'm re-energized after watching the PBS Pete Seeger documentary 4 times (see below). Without Pete Seeger, I probably wouldn't be paying homage to folk music with a role playing game.

Pete Seeger has influenced my life, and his life has inspired me countless ways through his music and commitment to community and social justice. It wasn't until after Bea was born and I picked up a Pete Seeger album did I realize it. It was an album for children. I knew every single song on it. Sure, many of the songs were in Rise Up Singing, but I probably first heard these songs at St. Anastasia's Montessori Pre-School. Now every time I hear Pete Seeger's children's albums it is clear to me that I became a folk music geek thanks to the music of Pete Seeger. Thanks, Mrs. Leong for playing Pete Seeger in Montessori.

The song "One Grain of Sand" is my all time favorite Pete Seeger song. Anything I say about that song will not do my love for it justice, so you'll just have to listen to the sample or read the lyrics. It speaks for itself. It's a lullaby and love song. Incidentally, Pete does an awesome version of "Pretty Polly", my all time favorite murder ballad.

Bea and Ingrid both listen to Pete Seeger, and like me, they probably don't realize how much he will influence their lives as they get older, musically, politically, socially.

In the American Masters documentary on Pete, there's a scene where Pete and his wife are walking around town and a woman comes up to him and just thanks him for being him, for doing what he's done, for inspiring and provoking and supporting. Yeah. She speaks for so many of us.

So why the orange singing Carmen? Well, I remember that sketch from my toddler-hood, my early Pete Seeger years. It's one of my favorites, from back when Sesame Street really spoke to children's sense of humor and appreciation for the absurd. It also helped inform my love for my favorite opera, Carmen.

Pete Seeger, Montessori Pre-School (cookies and juice, sitting on my dot in a circle, singing songs in groups), an appreciation for the absurd, oranges singing Carmen: that's a little slice of Julia at 3 years old. And 37.

Pete Seeger love links:
Clearwater (especially the Clearwater Festival)
Pete Seeger Appreciation Page
Pete Seeger's Notable Unitarian's Page
Rise Up Singing
One Grain of Sand: the Book

Thanks, Pete!

Elvis the Snowman

He doesn't look like this anymore, what with all the rain and snow and 50 degree days, but Elvis lived in our backyard for a week.


It's an early Elvis head on a later Elvis body.


The co-creator and her work.


A closeup on the face.

M'Alice Works!

Tonight we playtested M'Alice, and what I have so far works! The mechanics do what I want them to do, character creation works, the story telling was fun. I'm all abuzz with joy! We just did a few scenes to test out the mechanics and character creation, but I got to see how the dynamics between the PC's could change. The game is fun, too!

Anyway, here's quick description the characters and how character creation goes. I'm afraid I'm making it sound more complicated than it really is, but here goes.

There are 3 types of PC's: children, adults, and a doll. There is no GM. Each character gets 3 dice to roll in a conflict. The doll has extra dice, but I'll explain that in a sec. The first die never changes ("Fantasy" for children, "Mental State" for adults, and "Type" for dolls. The second die depends on who owns the truth. The third die is one of 3 powers, attributes, gifts, or in the case of adults, authority. In a conflict, you decide which one of your 3 descriptive attributes you use as your third die.

It was Meg, Vincent, and me playing. Meg played the child (Charlie, age 7), Vincent played the adult (Ed, an older man, caretaker of a cluster of cabins up in the backwoods of Maine), and I played the doll (Cosmo, a teddy bear made of real bear fur).

Die 1: Fantasy, Mental State, and Type of Doll
So Meg's character, the child Charlie, was 7. So her Fantasy was a d10. A child's fantasy lever is determined by their age. Ages 2-6 are d12, ages 7-12 are d10, ages 13-18 are d8.

Adult characters get this fun little thing to determine their mental state where another player reads a list of words for their mental state: d12 words, d10 words, and d8 words .The adult writes all words that apply to him. Your die is determined by the die size of most of your words. Here are the words Vincent chose:
d12's: dictator, step-parent.
d10's: shady past, citizen, friend, addicted to porn, clairvoyant, mood disorder, arrogant.
d8's: drug addict, poor, ugly, in denial.
I love the list. I'll post it sometime soon. It's one of my favorite things about the game so far. So Ed's mental state was d10. (All the words apply to the character, even if they aren't of the majority die.) I'm gonna have to make something similar for the child.

Dolls also have a list, but they can only choose one term. Other terms on the list may describe the doll, but the doll player chooses one. I chose "Teddy Bear". Cosmo was made of bear fur, and was hand made (which is on the list as well). Teddy bears are d12's.

Die 2: Gifts, Authority, Powers
Each character type writes 3, and each one has a die size. Children have gifts (d12, d8, d6), adults have authority (d12, d8, d6), dolls have powers or weapons (d10, d10, d8). Cosmo had other powers, like he could teleport himself, and he bled when shot, but they couldn't be used in a conflict, only in narrative. We had a tricky thing where Ed wasn't necessarily using any of his listed authority, so I have to think about how to work with that.

Charlie's gifts were "resourceful" (d12), "agile" (d8), and "charming" (d6).
Ed's authorities were "scaring" (d12), "belittling" (d8), and "teaching" (d6).
Cosmo's powers were "I whisper things in your ear" (d10), "soothing" (d10), and "made of bear fur" (d8).
I'm wondering if 3 for each character is enough. We'll see.

Die 3: The truth and loyalty
At the beginning of the game, children write out the original truth. It's a a statement that implicates one character. It doesn't have to declare whether another character is good or evil. When you win a conflict, you can alter this original truth, or completely replace it, or characters write a truth about other characters. Since children own the truth in the beginning, they get a d12. Adults start at d8. In conflicts, you can win the chance to alter or completely replace that original truth or create or modify a truth about another character. The truth at the beginning of the game was "Ed knows where the treasure is." Vincent modified that with "what's left of it". Vincent and I wrote the following truths about each other's characters:
"Ed got away with murder" and "Cosmo flinches at gunfire".

Dolls cannot modify or replace the original truth. What's more important to them is loyalty. When in a conflict against a player who plays the doll's shadow ally (I'll explain that in a sec), they roll a d12. If the conflict is against their child, the doll rolls a d10, and if the doll isn't in the scene, but wants to jump into the conflict (which all players can do) they roll d6.

Shadow allies
So NPCs can come and go, and can be played by whoever speaks up. Shadow allies are characters that only show up in flashbacks. They essentially write their PC's past, and they are always played by the player whose PC is in conflict with that character. So Ed's shadow ally was Hal, his step son. I played Hal. Charlie's shadow ally was Nancy, a girl from home, played by Vincent. Cosmo's shadow ally was Fred, the man who shot the bear and made Cosmo. Vincent played Fred.

We did one flashback scene, where it was revealed that the buried treasure was cash, drugs, and a gun, left by some drug dealers who were staying in Cabin #5, but took off mysteriously. Hal left the money and drugs for his step-father. What I didn't know in making up this thing about Ed's past was that Vincent wrote "drug addict" on his character sheet. It's so fun when things work out like that!

Malice
At the beginning of each scene, the doll rolls a d4 to determine the malice. When a conflict comes up, a doll can opt into the conflict or change the dice of the child in the conflict. So if a doll is acting out of malice and decides not to opt into the conflict, it rolls 2 d4's, and replaces those dice with 2 of the child's higher dice. If the doll is acting out of benevolence, it rolls 2 d12's and switches the child's lower dice for those. There's temporary malice and benevolence and permanent malice and benevolence. If a doll rolls a permanent malice or benevolence she still rolls the malice die, and can still act benevolently for a scene even if she's malicious. Make sense? As it turned out, I rolled temporary malice once and then ever other roll was permanent malice. Cosmo was out to get poor Charlie.

I'll save the story and mechanics for another day. I'm really happy about how well this game is turning out! It's inspired by horror flicks from the 70's and 80's, particularly ones that feature evil dolls (like Dolls), evil adults (The Shining), and bad children (The Omen). Not just the notion that there are evil beings in these movies, but also the relationship dynamics and how it can be difficult to tell just who is the bad guy. The research for this game is terribly fun, too. Horror movies from the era I'm working leave so much more to the imagination, they're creepier without being graphic.

I plan to have an ashcan of this for GenCon, which seems totally possible at the rate it's going. Yay!

Note: M'Alice is short for "My Alice", and of course, a play on the word "Malice". Alice is the doll who will be on the cover. Ingrid is very fond of Alice. Bea is afraid of her.

Stomping on the Olive Branch

In the spirit of the olive branch I describe, please remember that I can only speak to my side of the conflict. I asked the person in question to self reflect on some issues about friendship, and so here I do the same.

I asked someone who used to be a friend if we could sit and talk things out. It didn't go over well, and he refused my request. He has his reasons, and because we've not had a chance to really talk about things in a constructive manner, I have no real understanding of why things are the way they are, so of course my understanding wears the costume of no communication and my perception. It's a very ugly costume.

I'm left wondering why it is so important to me to repair this friendship. The rift between us has had a negative impact on my social circle and my seat in the circle, I feel like I've failed at keeping up my end of the friendship, there's a mountain of misunderstanding on both sides that I'm afraid will never be fixed, and it's a kick to my pride.

It's not like I have never ended a friendship, or been dumped by a friend, albeit those dead friendships are few and far between. In those previous cases, the person in question and I didn't have enough personal ties to make it important or necessary to patch things up. This time, the ties run deep, we have many mutual friends, we're part of a mutual community. Because of this conflict, it feels to me like my access to and participation in the community is limited to a great extent. The way I phrased it to this person was that I felt like I was being shunned by him. I'm not invited to goings on, and our game group has pretty much crumbled. At Dreamation a couple of weeks ago, he avoided me. On the other hand, said person claims to want to support my creative endeavors. Because of the hurt and the perceived shunning, the support comes off as insincere, and on my end it's unwanted. I like it when my friends support me, not when the support comes from an empty shell of a former friendship.

Disappointingly, the rift came in the midst of olive branches passing back and forth, but we spent too much time trying to fix things with the internet--the singularly worse vehicle for communication. It's marginally better than morse code.

So what happens now? Well, I said I wouldn't make the offer again, and I don't think I will. Even if said person reads this, things will continue as they are. We won't speak to each other, our social circle will remain broken, and given that from where I sit, I lose the most support a whole social and creative circle provides, and I'll continue to think the worst of the situation. And that's the end of that. I tried, I give up.

If I say anything else, my hurt, pride, and misunderstanding will take over, but here are the morals of the story:
Internet communication is harmful to friendships. Let me clarify that! If you take nothing from my sad rant, take this: Internet communication is toxic to friendships.
And sad but true, olive branches do not recover well from stomping.

Jar of Magic

We're on a decluttering campaign. In a box of knick knacks I found a jar labeled "Magic". Inside, here is what I found.

My long ponytail from the last time I cut my hair, pre-dreadlocks.
A lock of Chris' hair.
A lock of my hair, pre-dreadlocks.
A vial of my blood (dried).
The blood soaked (dried) bandage that covered the most painful tattoo I ever got.
A ring from an ex-boyfriend, silver and shaped like a fish skeleton, given to me on my 22nd birthday, the day before I went down to New Orleans.
An envelope with my wisdom teeth.
A funny button, much like the ones that Ingrid loves.
Another ring I bought myself, ceramic with a girl's face painted on it.
A torn movie ticket. I don't know what movie it was, or whom I went with.
Sage leaves scattered throughout.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to unpack this. It seems fitting to get rid of the fish ring, but I'm going to leave the rest of me in the jar. These personal concerns aren't me anymore, but I feel the need to dispose of them with care and love, because the me who packed them would have wanted it that way.

Then, of course, I'll have to refill the jar. Probably with the personal concerns I keep in my box of magic. These items include:
The ends of one of my dreadlocks.
Bea's baby teeth.
A lock of Ingrid's hair.
A lock of my hair.
Something that Chris gave me.