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.

One honest girl

Pinkie Pie wants to have a movie night.  She even has a particular movie in mind, but unfortunately that movie isn't available on Netflix, to which we are subscribed.  The only legal way to get it is to pay for it on Youtube at a cost of 4.99, so she has decided to save her money until she has enough to buy it and then invite people over to watch the movie.  This has put me to a tricky decision.

I like the idea of training her to save up money for things she wants.  She has a tradition of spending everything she has instantly on the first shiny thing she sees, and this trend of thinking about purchases for more than five seconds is a welcome one.

On the other hand I could just pirate the movie and save her 4.99.  I want to teach her about the various options that exist in the world, and since I gave her that 4.99 I would ideally like it spent optimally.

I watch pirated videos.  I also pay for videos, as evidenced by my Netflix subscription, so I am only a part time villain, not fully dedicated to the cause of evil.  The question is, what lessons do I want to impart to her, and what sorts of things will she learn from each tactic I might employ?

"Wow, it sure is easier to steal things rather than save up for them!" isn't exactly the lesson I want to deliver.  On the other hand "I can look around to find out the cheapest and easiest way to get stuff." is a good thing for her to take from the experience.

If only one could figure out ahead of time what sorts of lessons a child will take from an experience. Unfortunately that is not something that is available to parents.  I can attest to the randomness of children's learning from all the times my friends have told me about their parents attempts to instill values or lessons that completely failed.

Metal Feline

On Sunday I took part in a thing called Aluminum Cat.  It is a totally unique (in my experience) online experience where four players take the part of fresh recruits on a futuristic spaceship called the Aluminum Cat.  An actor plays the roles of everyone else on the ship, and the only way each player can interact with them and with each other is by moving their icon around the screen and changing what their icon looks like.  It is hard to describe, but highly intuitive the moment you try it out.

Also it is really fun.

The actor really got into the roles, rapidly switching from person to person.  It was largely comedy, but all of the people playing with me seemed to take it seriously, and they tried to stick to the role and fit into the world being created for us.  It is funny to be able to get so much out of a single icon moving around the screen, but we were able to communicate pretty well, I found.

The production values aren't high.  The costumes are simple, there were a few technical glitches, and the backgrounds were just basic drawings.  However, it turns out that none of that lessened the experience at all.  That simplicity and the rough edges aren't surprising because it is still a new sort of endeavour, but the joy of the show was undiminished on that basis.  It was the interaction that was the fun part - it kind of reminds me of old BBS games in that way.  Even though the view wasn't that exciting, the experience overall was great fun.

The overall effect ended up being somewhere between a play and a roleplaying game.  Much of the plot had to happen, but we did have some real choices, especially near the end.  We also got to set the tone and pace and have some fun with it which I enjoyed.

I don't know that I would do this on a regular basis.  I do know that I am glad I tried it, and it feels great to be part of an experiment in new ways people can interact with technology.  I would recommend giving it a try to anyone, really.  Pinkie Pie was intrigued by it for sure, and even younger kids could certainly play.

Link:  https://escape-character.com/

One thing I would note is that if you sign up, you just need to check your email a couple minutes before it starts to get the link to click to join the group.  I missed that originally, and spent some time searching trying to figure out how I actually do the thing.

Banking is dangerous

I just finished book five of the Dagger and the Coin series by Daniel Abraham.  It is a high fantasy story with magic swords, dragons, and epic battles.  It is fantastic, but not because of the magic swords, dragons, or battles, but rather because of the amazing people that inhabit the world Abraham has created.

In particular, the villain is *amazing*.  Geder Palliako is a jerk.  Not a Sauron-like "I will cover the land in darkness!" kind of evildoer, just a person who is an asshole.  He is bigoted, entitled, selfish, and cruel.  But he is entirely human.  He has crushes on people, loves his father, attempts to do the right thing, and genuinely thinks he is really a good person... but he is also willing to burn down a nation to avenge a slight against him, will commit atrocities to save himself admitting he is wrong, and is more than happy to treat other people as tools for his whims.

Palliako doesn't even have any powers, abilities, or really anything at all to recommend him. He just ends up in the right place at the right time to do all kinds of heinous things, and he seizes every opportunity that comes his way.  It feels very much like the real world, where evil people like Trump are in power not because of being particularly good at anything, but simply because opportunity presented them with a chance, they seized it, and things went their way.

All this makes Palliako believable, frightening, and worthy of all the hatred I can muster.  Unlike "I am the prince of darkness" type villains which mostly make me laugh, Palliako feels absolutely real.  I can't just dismiss the story as silly, because I know people like him.  The things he does truly could happen.

It isn't just the villain that sells it though.  The circumstances that grant Palliako his power are a fantastic condemnation of religion, though I suspect that religious folks might not see it that way.  They might see it as a debunking of false religion, but I think the author is really pointing an accusatory finger at the way religions tend to make people think, and how they treat dissenting thought.  It is possible to reasonably argue that the villain isn't in fact Palliako, but rather a way of thinking, and that makes the whole thing have a lot more weight and interest.

But I am not done with the praise.

The heroes also make me swoon.  Seriously, you know that a fantasy novel is working its magic when I desperately want to play a particular character or set of characters out in a roleplaying game.  Yardem and Marcus' interactions are a gem.  Abraham sets it up at the very beginning when the two have the following simple interaction:

Marcus:  So, Yardem, is today the day that you toss me in a ditch and take over the company?

Yardem:  No sir, not today.

This interaction sets the tone for their friendship and working relationship for five books, and the payoff is just perfect.

The story also features a hero who wields the power of economics.  She doesn't swing a sword, or cast spells, or command armies.  She just thinks about money and banking and how power really works, and her thoughts *matter*.  It is a rare thing for an author to manage to make a banker a compelling character, and her insights on banking into an important plot point, but Abraham does it.

I loved these books, and I recommend them to anybody who wants a fantasy story that has great villains and lovable heroes, both of whom manage to be flawed, messy, and believable.