Sparkly and Pink

I got my nails done.  Are they not pretty?

It was a couple weeks ago.  They are chipping away and not nearly as pretty as they were.  Still, shiny.

This wasn't a professional job.  I was at a birthday party and part of the thing was a nail polish station, primarily intended for the small girls at the party.  Naturally an older man at the party made jokes about how the boys are going next, clearly thinking that no boy would do such a thing.  Because girl stuff, ewww!

I went next.

Apparently there were more comments during the event disparaging men or boys getting their nails done, but none of them made in my presence.  I guess none of the people there felt up to challenging my masculinity on the basis of a couple mL of sparkles - which is unfortunate, because I had some savage replies all locked and loaded.

The small boy at the party also decided to get his nails done.  I hope he didn't have to put up with a lot of flak for that choice, but this family runs pretty conventional, so I expect there was pushback.

I have gotten plenty of weird reactions in the weeks since.  Lots of people notice it and are surprised - it isn't normal for me, and it doesn't fit with the rest of my aesthetic. 

It does make me a bit sad though when people totally lose their minds about it.  I have had medical professionals demand that I parade myself in front of secretaries to show off my nails because a man with nail polish is JUST SO WILD and WOW.  It isn't the same as criticism, certainly, but I don't want a gigantic fuss made about me at all - I just want people to shrug and ignore it.  I like the idea that if I do something outside the normal gender rules people will be cool with it, not put it on me to be part of the show.

There are people that dress differently to get a reaction, certainly.  But most just want to do their thing and be left alone, and usually I get left alone because I look quite expected.  For the next few weeks though I will be hoping to just sneak under the radar and not have everyone make a fuss, aggressive or not, about a couple mL of pink goo that happens to be coded 'woman'.

Smashing limits

What would happen if people had limit breaks?

By limit breaks I mean the ability to suddenly be extremely powerful, far beyond their normal abilities, but to be seriously restricted in terms of how often this could occur.  I have been considering what it would do to society, and how it would directly impact warfare and crime in particular.

The exact rules are critical of course, so here is the structure I have been considering:  Each person can limit break once and only once in their life.  When they do this they become incredibly strong, fast, and tough.  Not strictly invulnerable, certainly, but powerful enough to laugh off bullets, car crashes, and other minor irritations.  Obviously while doing this they can easily kill anyone else who isn't also limit breaking.  The transformation would last for 1 minute and would make them look really cool - wreathed in flames, surrounded by shining armour, or giant claws - something impressive.

I think you would have to prevent children from limit breaking because otherwise everyone's limit breaks would end up being used at age 2 because they *really* wanted a cookie.  I don't know what age would make sense to allow them to be used though.  I assume that you can't actually test someone to see if their limit break is still available - only they can tell for sure, unless you see them using it.

Clearly this makes a lot of warfare really weird.  You couldn't, for example, attack a village of 300 people with 100 soldiers.  The villagers just limit break and wreck the soldiers, especially since the soldiers have likely used their limit breaks before!  In fact it might become standard to rotate civilians into combat roles temporarily just to use their limit breaks, presuming they are willing to be used in such a fashion.

This would upend a lot of situations where violent crime is involved.  You can rob a convenience store with a gun, sure, but maybe the clerk draws a sword made of rainbows and chops you in half... that is not how you want that robbery to go.  Policing would also be a lot scarier, since the police can't count on having overwhelming force at their disposal.  A couple of really angry people can stomp a SWAT team if that team doesn't have limit breaks available.

It would also lead to some bizarre situations where people might try to get others to use their limit breaks foolishly, bluffing dangerous situations or trying to trick people.  Once you get them to burn their one chance at nigh invulnerability, they know you can beat them at any time.

I wonder if this would actually end up in some kind of Orwellian dystopia.  The government recording every use of limit breaks and keeping track of which citizens have it available and which do not, monitoring every person so their level of power can be used, if necessary.

Maybe I am just overthinking this though.  Having a limit break available, for most situations, is no different than having a gun.  I can kill whoever I want if they aren't prepared, and they can't do much to stop me.

My limit break, in case you are curious, is a general glow combined with a gigantic 2 handed translucent orange battle axe.  Because I have some people I want to axe a question or two.

The apple, falling only a short distance

Recently Pinkie Pie decided to start blogging.  Not the same sort of blog as I have, where I yell about political opinions and vomit my brain onto the page, but rather a blog where she tells a story.  It is located at https://meetmeatdawn.blogspot.com/.  It is just a few weeks old now with a couple of posts, but it is her foray into putting herself out there on the internet.  It is a drama of sorts, focusing on kids in school, but it has lots of supernatural elements.  The kids have powers, are directly related to mythological beings, etc.

I wonder how much of her decision is related to me writing here.  She knows about my blog, and has asked about what sorts of things I put here many times.  For her blogging is sort of a normal thing that adults do, though certainly she is aware that most of them do not.

Most parents, when their child does something, seem to desperately pump it up, telling the kid how good it is, and trying to get everyone else involved.  That is definitely not my way.  Pinkie Pie asked me to mention it here, and I did, but I won't be pitching it or trying to twist people's arms into offering support.  I can say though that her first attempt at writing is going a lot better than I had ever thought it would.  It isn't polished the way published material would be, but for something written by a couple of 12 year olds without much in the way of editing I am impressed.

The question is, will she keep at it?  When I first posted here I noted that the average blog has something like 4 posts in it.  1 really excited post, 2 mediocre followups, 1 long drunken apology for not writing, and then silence.  I have gotten well past that stage, and although I am posting infrequently here there days I do not expect to stop.

I certainly won't be apologizing for not writing.  Down that path lies madness.

But you never know whether a thing like this will seize you and sustain itself over a great deal of time.  Sometimes the most promising beginnings fizzle with no sense of why, exactly.  And sometimes a post made mostly on a lark becomes a ten year project, as this one did.

In any case, what she has so far is an interesting start, and you are welcome to check it out if you like stories about weird, magical teens getting themselves into and out of trouble.

Fixing it up right

A few years ago I had to replace my toilet.  Doing this has taught me a lesson:  When you buy a toilet, don't buy the cheap one.  Since I installed it I have had to repair it on multiple occasions, and I wish at this point that I had just spent more.

Last year I had the problem that the flap that controls water flow into the tank wasn't sealing properly.  It was shifting along its shaft a little, and when it did there was a constant slow leak.  A normal person might have just gone to buy a more expensive and better flap, but I am not that person.  Instead I wound some elastics around the shaft on each side to keep the flap from shifting around, and my hack worked.  Fixed forever!

Until a couple of months ago, when the flap started leaking again.  This time even though the flap was sitting in the right place on the shaft it wouldn't keep a really tight seal as there wasn't quite enough pressure.  No problem!  I grabbed a rock and duct taped it to the flap (using rainbow duct tape, obviously) to add some extra weight and the issue was resolved.   Fixed forever, surely!

Then I heard the leak happening again.  The tape had let go and the rock was sitting on the bottom of the tank while water slowly leaked through.  This time I had to fix things properly.  No more half measures.  I got the right equipment together and this time I used TWO rocks and four times as much rainbow duct tape.  Now the leak is fixed.  For real.  Forever!

I wonder what my parents would think of all of this.  They fix stuff themselves, and my dad absolutely loves building his own stuff.  So maybe he would be impressed with my innovations.  On the other hand he does like doing things properly, so maybe he would be horrified by my silly hacks that can't possibly last.

In any case I find it really quite entertaining to fix things this way.  Wendy just shakes her head and wishes that I would buy some proper equipment and do it right the first time, but there is little joy in going to the store and buying gear to do it the way everyone else does.  Finding a fix in whatever I have lying around the house though?  That is a good time.  Pinkie Pie certainly finds my hacks funny, and I wonder what sort of lessons she will take from watching me fix things like this.  Surely they will be different than what I learned from my father, but what effect they will have I cannot say.