Planning orgies in Ontario just got a lot more complicated. They aren't the easiest thing to plan at the best of times, but right now the challenge is extreme.
The government just announced that gatherings of more than five people are banned. This leaves the door open for orgies, but just barely. Three people is a threesome, four is a foursome, and five or more is an orgy, so orgies are still just barely legal.
There are some tricks to this though. If you invite exactly five people to your orgy you have the problem that if anybody ditches you don't have an orgy anymore. You might still have a grand time, but an orgy it is not. During the best of times getting everyone to show up to an orgy is rough, and right now it is extra difficult between covid-19 and anxiety about covid-19. Invite seven people and you might still not have enough, but if they all show up you are breaking the law, to say nothing of being extreme disease vectors.
However, we can get creative. Hitting exactly five for an orgy is tough, but there are some exceptions in the government's five person policy that could potentially get us a venue for a larger group without breaking the law.
We could, for example, hold an orgy with up to ten people at a funeral. I met The Flautist at a funeral so you can definitely pick up in that atmosphere. A funeral orgy would require some real planning, but the flexibility to invite ten people and still proceed even if some of them decide to just mourn instead of have sex is useful.
Another exception we could use is to hold it at a child care center for front line workers. This has some ... other challenges. I suppose we could just invite ten people to a closet in a child care center, but I don't know that actually completing the orgy would be likely. For some reason I imagine the police would have something to say about that. The funeral plan looks a lot better.
The last possibility is holding it amongst your household. Households larger than five people are allowed to hang out together, and nothing prevents you having an orgy amongst everyone living with you. You just need a household where you have at least five adults willing to have an orgy already living together! There is side benefit that if they accept the invite they can't beg off by claiming it is too far away or they don't have time - they are already there, and what else were they doing anyway?
It has been a long time since I lived in a household where an orgy amongst the residents would have been possible. It wasn't ever going to happen in any case, but it would have been legal for us to do that back in 2001-2002.
So in Ontario it seems that your orgy options are quite limited. A regular orgy ignores social distancing protocols, funerals are a tough sell for some people, and child care centers are full of children. The only reasonable chance is to live with at least four other people in a household who all want to have an orgy with you. Of course, if you already live in that situation you have it pretty good as far as orgies go! Another example of the rich getting richer, it would seem.
Sunday, March 29, 2020
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
Against the current
My life often involves me refusing to do what everyone else is doing. Other people wear shoes, I refuse. Other people refuse to put bananas in pasta sauce, I toss em right in. (They were delicious, by the way.)
This time it is all about employment. Around the world people are dealing with the loss of income due to social distancing protocols and the struggle to find work is real.
I have spent the past 11 years unemployed, staying home with my kid, cooking and cleaning. Getting a job seemed silly because I am needed here.
But now that all kinds of people are suddenly unemployed? I am looking for work!
Not because of some money crunch, because my household luckily is supported by an extremely steady income, but simply because there is a desperate need for the work to get done. A local hospital is hunting for people to do screening, so they need someone who can deal with upset and difficult people for extended periods while being assertive, authoritative, but compassionate.
This is a thing I am extremely well trained for. They are only asking for a high school diploma, but I actually have work experience interfacing between a medical establishment and challenging clients, as well as a bunch of generic sales experience. Heck, I was even known as the guy to park with a customer who had mental health challenges or who was having an emotional breakdown.
They need exactly me for this!
So I applied for the job, part time. I am sure the actual work will be wretched. The screening gear will be terrible, dealing with sick and terrified people isn't fun, and there will be endless bureaucratic protocol that I hate.
But this has to get done, it has to get done well, and I am the person to do it.
Plus I desperately need to get out of my place and *do* something.
Not that I have the job yet. They haven't called me for an interview or anything, much less given me the job. But I have no doubt the combination of my expertise at interviews, excellent qualifications, and straight white guy privilege will get me through.
Maybe what I was waiting for all these years was a job I really wanted to do, because it really needed doing and I am actually the person who should be doing it.
This time it is all about employment. Around the world people are dealing with the loss of income due to social distancing protocols and the struggle to find work is real.
I have spent the past 11 years unemployed, staying home with my kid, cooking and cleaning. Getting a job seemed silly because I am needed here.
But now that all kinds of people are suddenly unemployed? I am looking for work!
Not because of some money crunch, because my household luckily is supported by an extremely steady income, but simply because there is a desperate need for the work to get done. A local hospital is hunting for people to do screening, so they need someone who can deal with upset and difficult people for extended periods while being assertive, authoritative, but compassionate.
This is a thing I am extremely well trained for. They are only asking for a high school diploma, but I actually have work experience interfacing between a medical establishment and challenging clients, as well as a bunch of generic sales experience. Heck, I was even known as the guy to park with a customer who had mental health challenges or who was having an emotional breakdown.
They need exactly me for this!
So I applied for the job, part time. I am sure the actual work will be wretched. The screening gear will be terrible, dealing with sick and terrified people isn't fun, and there will be endless bureaucratic protocol that I hate.
But this has to get done, it has to get done well, and I am the person to do it.
Plus I desperately need to get out of my place and *do* something.
Not that I have the job yet. They haven't called me for an interview or anything, much less given me the job. But I have no doubt the combination of my expertise at interviews, excellent qualifications, and straight white guy privilege will get me through.
Maybe what I was waiting for all these years was a job I really wanted to do, because it really needed doing and I am actually the person who should be doing it.
Covid19 giveth, and Covid19 taketh away
Much of my life has vanished over the last week due to Covid19. My gaming groups have all called it quits, my trips to Ottawa and Waterloo for gaming and socializing got cancelled, and now my building has closed the gym and hot tub for the forseeable future. Aside from grocery shopping I have no reason at all to leave my condo anymore.
But while the virus has taken much from me, it has opened up new doors. For example, even though I can't lift weights anymore because the gym is gone, I found something new to do in its stead, courtesy of our viral overlord.
Grocery bags filled with emergency food are my new weight lifting solution. It isn't as good as proper weights of course, because exercises like deadlifts don't work with objects as large as this. However, there are enough exercises that do work that I can use these as a clumsy and annoying replacement for proper weights.
As I said in my post a few weeks ago, I bought a lot of groceries well ahead of time to get prepared for the inevitable supply chain disruptions and the possibility of quarantine. I collected the last few things this week, but my household was well prepared for this mess. I may get bored of pasta and vegetable soup, but we won't go hungry. Boost and ramen, as pictured above, aren't exactly my ideal meals, but my small person has particular tastes that must be accomodated.
You might wonder why I am weighing bags down with packages of ramen - surely those weigh nothing? You would be right that they a bag full of ramen would be nearly worthless. However, the bottoms of these bags are full of canned soup and bags of beans, which add considerably more heft. They still weigh quite a bit less than the weights I am used to using, but I just increased my reps to make up for that and overall it still works.
Grocery bags full of cans don't have nearly the flexibility of a proper weight room though, so I expect that there are certain muscles that won't be getting the workout I desire. I am going to be doing two hundred pushups a day in additional to grocery based exercises, so at least my ability to launch myself up off the floor will remain intact.
Covid19 can take away my gaming. It can take away my dates. But it cannot take my muscles!
But while the virus has taken much from me, it has opened up new doors. For example, even though I can't lift weights anymore because the gym is gone, I found something new to do in its stead, courtesy of our viral overlord.
Grocery bags filled with emergency food are my new weight lifting solution. It isn't as good as proper weights of course, because exercises like deadlifts don't work with objects as large as this. However, there are enough exercises that do work that I can use these as a clumsy and annoying replacement for proper weights.
As I said in my post a few weeks ago, I bought a lot of groceries well ahead of time to get prepared for the inevitable supply chain disruptions and the possibility of quarantine. I collected the last few things this week, but my household was well prepared for this mess. I may get bored of pasta and vegetable soup, but we won't go hungry. Boost and ramen, as pictured above, aren't exactly my ideal meals, but my small person has particular tastes that must be accomodated.
You might wonder why I am weighing bags down with packages of ramen - surely those weigh nothing? You would be right that they a bag full of ramen would be nearly worthless. However, the bottoms of these bags are full of canned soup and bags of beans, which add considerably more heft. They still weigh quite a bit less than the weights I am used to using, but I just increased my reps to make up for that and overall it still works.
Grocery bags full of cans don't have nearly the flexibility of a proper weight room though, so I expect that there are certain muscles that won't be getting the workout I desire. I am going to be doing two hundred pushups a day in additional to grocery based exercises, so at least my ability to launch myself up off the floor will remain intact.
Covid19 can take away my gaming. It can take away my dates. But it cannot take my muscles!
Thursday, March 5, 2020
Making it up as we go along
I like my science fiction hard. I want stories where a strange thing is proposed, and then the writer takes a long look at what that would do to society. I don't like stories that are set in the future but in which everything is resolved with techno babble and space wizardry.
When I watched the first season of Altered Carbon I quite liked it. It had some issues, notably the excessive sexual violence against women, the star actor having only a single expression, and the departures from the books in ways that weren't useful, but I still had a positive watching experience. It did the thing I want science fiction to do where it built a consistent, believable universe and explored the consequences of a particular scientific discovery - the ability to move human consciousness from body to body and preserve it after the death of the meatsack.
I read all three books in the series and enjoyed them too. The followup books weren't as good as the first, but there was still something there that I appreciated. When I heard of season 2 I eagerly awaited the adaptation of book 2. The reviews were positive and particularly highlighted how it was better than season 1, so I had high expectations.
Those expectations were dashed. There were good things - I liked the queer and POC representation in the show better. The lead actor was a considerable improvement.
But the story.... ack. Instead of writing an installment that built on the first season, they decided to just randomly change physics and technology whenever they had a cool scene to write. The AIs in particular were a neverending sack of nonsense technobabble in the service of unnecessary details. Want to have a certain spot look a certain way? Mumble about nano swarms and then have it just happen. Want to threaten an AI? Mumble about code and have it just happen.
It makes me sad when writers clearly give up. Instead of building a compelling story in the world they have created, they just decide to change the world any time the facts get in the way of whatever thing they want to do. I can't be excited about threats to characters when the threats are nonsensical, nor thrilled by solutions when they are pulled straight out of somebody's ass. It is especially egregious when they use a solution for one thing and then refuse to use it for another because they want to make up some new stupid random thing to solve that.
Character abilities also shift without warning. Sometimes people are unbeatable fighting machines, and then in the next scene they get bested by some random chumps because they needed to get arrested because plot. Equipment randomly acquires or loses abilities for convenience, so it is hard to have any idea what anyone can do. At one point the characters are standing at the scene of a battle, completely surrounded by well equipped dead fighters. However, the next scene needs them to be at a particular gun store, so they announce that they need guns and head off to the gun store, leaving reams of excellent armament just sitting on the ground.
I can't get into a story that silly. Nothing feels serious or real, and the emotional moments end up being contrived instead of poignant. It is sad, because the source material gave them a ton to work with, and instead they created an entirely new story, one that is held together by the flimsiest of plots.
When I watched the first season of Altered Carbon I quite liked it. It had some issues, notably the excessive sexual violence against women, the star actor having only a single expression, and the departures from the books in ways that weren't useful, but I still had a positive watching experience. It did the thing I want science fiction to do where it built a consistent, believable universe and explored the consequences of a particular scientific discovery - the ability to move human consciousness from body to body and preserve it after the death of the meatsack.
I read all three books in the series and enjoyed them too. The followup books weren't as good as the first, but there was still something there that I appreciated. When I heard of season 2 I eagerly awaited the adaptation of book 2. The reviews were positive and particularly highlighted how it was better than season 1, so I had high expectations.
Those expectations were dashed. There were good things - I liked the queer and POC representation in the show better. The lead actor was a considerable improvement.
But the story.... ack. Instead of writing an installment that built on the first season, they decided to just randomly change physics and technology whenever they had a cool scene to write. The AIs in particular were a neverending sack of nonsense technobabble in the service of unnecessary details. Want to have a certain spot look a certain way? Mumble about nano swarms and then have it just happen. Want to threaten an AI? Mumble about code and have it just happen.
It makes me sad when writers clearly give up. Instead of building a compelling story in the world they have created, they just decide to change the world any time the facts get in the way of whatever thing they want to do. I can't be excited about threats to characters when the threats are nonsensical, nor thrilled by solutions when they are pulled straight out of somebody's ass. It is especially egregious when they use a solution for one thing and then refuse to use it for another because they want to make up some new stupid random thing to solve that.
Character abilities also shift without warning. Sometimes people are unbeatable fighting machines, and then in the next scene they get bested by some random chumps because they needed to get arrested because plot. Equipment randomly acquires or loses abilities for convenience, so it is hard to have any idea what anyone can do. At one point the characters are standing at the scene of a battle, completely surrounded by well equipped dead fighters. However, the next scene needs them to be at a particular gun store, so they announce that they need guns and head off to the gun store, leaving reams of excellent armament just sitting on the ground.
I can't get into a story that silly. Nothing feels serious or real, and the emotional moments end up being contrived instead of poignant. It is sad, because the source material gave them a ton to work with, and instead they created an entirely new story, one that is held together by the flimsiest of plots.
Tuesday, March 3, 2020
Armageddon, only not quite
Covid-19 is coming. At this point the consensus is that everyone in the world is going to get it, pretty much, and a bunch of us are going to die of it. That doesn't mean you should not worry about passing it on, of course. Slowing the rate of infection is a great way to improve our response quality and lower the burden on the system at any given time. Somewhere between .5% and 3% are going to die of it, most likely, with a heavy lean towards older people dying. It isn't a thing to be trifled with.
Watching what people say about this is a fascinating exercise. I have seen posts talking about how scary it is and emphasizing that everyone needs to wash their hands a lot, but also posts talking about how the flu has killed many more people this year than Covid-19, so calm the fuck down. When something siezes the public imagination like this I can't help but stare at the human reactions in awe and wonder.
Personally, I am stocking up on food and medicine. Not because civilization is going to end, because it won't, but if a ton of people get sick and governments start implementing quarantines supply chains start breaking. Who knows what food and medicine I will be able to get when Toronto's infection situation is at its worst? Also if I end up having to be home ill for weeks on end and can't go out without risking passing the infection on, I should have all my shopping taken care of.
I talked to the Flautist about this and it worried her a great deal. Not just the news, but my response. I have a 'bah, the world will be fine, don't panic' response to all kinds of things in the news that get other people all aflutter. This is different though. I have extra packs of menstrual supplies, toilet paper, ibuprofen, and cleaning products along with tons of dried food. Not because it is time to panic, but because other people will be panicking and I need to get out ahead of them in building a stash. I will end up using all the stuff I have bought anyway, so it won't go to waste.
It is going to be extra difficult on those who are in precarious financial situations. I have the money to buy a month's worth of everything and it isn't a problem. Some people don't though, and as usual when there is a systemic disruption it is the poor who won't be able to stretch to get past it.
Seriously though, you should stock up. Don't fool yourself with things like "aww, it won't be that bad" because even if you are only kinda sick, you are going to be morally obligated to stay home, and you will need things. Don't try to weasel out with "meh, I will just get food delivered" because if 25% of the delivery people are out sick, and 10 times as many people as usual want food delivered, you aren't getting that delivery. Figure out a way to store a bunch of the food, medicine, toiletries, and other necessities of life now, while supply chains are still intact and getting those things is easy.
There are already stores that are running out of things, partly because of panic, partly because so much of our stuff is manufactured in China. Don't be the last person to realize what is coming.
Civilization is going to be fine. You, on the other hand, might not. So have a plan, and make sure that plan doesn't include getting scammed, because I have already seen Covid-19 based marketing out there, and more will be coming.
Watching what people say about this is a fascinating exercise. I have seen posts talking about how scary it is and emphasizing that everyone needs to wash their hands a lot, but also posts talking about how the flu has killed many more people this year than Covid-19, so calm the fuck down. When something siezes the public imagination like this I can't help but stare at the human reactions in awe and wonder.
Personally, I am stocking up on food and medicine. Not because civilization is going to end, because it won't, but if a ton of people get sick and governments start implementing quarantines supply chains start breaking. Who knows what food and medicine I will be able to get when Toronto's infection situation is at its worst? Also if I end up having to be home ill for weeks on end and can't go out without risking passing the infection on, I should have all my shopping taken care of.
I talked to the Flautist about this and it worried her a great deal. Not just the news, but my response. I have a 'bah, the world will be fine, don't panic' response to all kinds of things in the news that get other people all aflutter. This is different though. I have extra packs of menstrual supplies, toilet paper, ibuprofen, and cleaning products along with tons of dried food. Not because it is time to panic, but because other people will be panicking and I need to get out ahead of them in building a stash. I will end up using all the stuff I have bought anyway, so it won't go to waste.
It is going to be extra difficult on those who are in precarious financial situations. I have the money to buy a month's worth of everything and it isn't a problem. Some people don't though, and as usual when there is a systemic disruption it is the poor who won't be able to stretch to get past it.
Seriously though, you should stock up. Don't fool yourself with things like "aww, it won't be that bad" because even if you are only kinda sick, you are going to be morally obligated to stay home, and you will need things. Don't try to weasel out with "meh, I will just get food delivered" because if 25% of the delivery people are out sick, and 10 times as many people as usual want food delivered, you aren't getting that delivery. Figure out a way to store a bunch of the food, medicine, toiletries, and other necessities of life now, while supply chains are still intact and getting those things is easy.
There are already stores that are running out of things, partly because of panic, partly because so much of our stuff is manufactured in China. Don't be the last person to realize what is coming.
Civilization is going to be fine. You, on the other hand, might not. So have a plan, and make sure that plan doesn't include getting scammed, because I have already seen Covid-19 based marketing out there, and more will be coming.
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