Schedule Change
But is it really a schedule change if there was never any schedule in the first place, eh?
From now on Thursdays* are going to be gamedays around here. I figure it’s about time there’s some consistent content on this blog, and I’ve stolen so much from so many other gaming blogs that posting my own stuff seems only right. Not to mention most of this stuff has already been written in some shape or form even if it’s only scribbly-scrawl at this point. Pretty much all of it will have been used in play and pulled from my Vaults of Ur game. Whether there’s any other content remians to be seen.
*Times are listed in Korea Standard Time. My Thursday may in fact be your Wednesday.
Lois the Witch and Other Stories
My review of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Lois the Witch and Other Stories is now live at Innsmouth Free Press as part of their Women in Horror Week. Like most Victorian writers Gaskell wrote her share of ghost stories and those in the collection are a nice grim assortment. Not only that but I suggest that Gaskell’s ghost stories serve as proto-noir and precursors to the works of Patricia Highsmith, Shirley Jackson, and Dorothy Hughes.
I also make a joke about bonnets and four-in-hand neckties.
Go check it out.
The Eagle-Shark Has Spoken
Once upon a time one of my 3rd grade students drew this:
THE DREADED EAGLE SHARK!
And I was like, yes, my players will have to fight this. And they did! And then afterwards they all drew pictures of it, because they are greedy for sweet sweet experience points because EAGLESHARK!
As you can see the description sort of shifted because it was late and I was like eagle wings, no bat wings, no two legs, no four legs – two tiger, two eagle…
A Month or So Ago
It is frustrating at times because one day you will be reading a book and thinking “This is great – This is the way to do it”, then two days later you’ll be reading another book and it’ll be doing the exact opposite thing, but you’ll think the exact same thing.
When faced with two opposite truths the issue is no longer to find the fault in one, but to decide between them. Which path will lead you to the place you want to go.
All of the Faces
“All of the faces, young, old, male, female, white and brown and black, were part of the many faces of the great sad thing that moves itself from here to there and back again in all forms of transit. Faces staring into space, faces reading faces looking inward at the stories inside them.”
– From Russell Hoban’s Linger Awhile
Brand New Silver
We reach the place after wandering. It’s her favorite place she tells me. It wears its history like thrift-store treasures: a trellis railing from its years as a Hof bar, stained and worn coffee lounge couches with mismatched cushions, its roadstall tables and chairs. The stove’s chimney pokes out from a hole above the wooden door — shiny and silver. We sit. We order. “The table’s are big,” she says. “I come here sometimes to work.” The owner talks to someone in a room beside the kitchen. A young woman comes out and leaves. A man comes in. Sullen and alone. He disappears into the back for a bit. Another man comes in, leans over the kitchen counter, peering at the work area. We eat – beansprouts in soup flavored with pink briny shrimp the eyes still on them. The men take seats, one in the room’s corner, the other beside the stove. He spreads his legs, pointing himself right at the heat. We eat, pay, and go. “You have to be in the mood for it,” she says. I tell her I’m always in that mood.
We’re Moving in Two Days…
… but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the utter lack of packing going on in our place. It’s not a big move. We’re just switching neighborhoods and going into a bigger place, but I’m getting surprisingly sentimental about this one.
One of the most amazing restaurants I’ve ever eaten in is right around the corner from our current apartment. I get all misty-eyed now whenever I walk by the place. Of course our new place is only a half an hour walk away, so it’s not like we’re moving to the moon or anything – but still, it was right around the corner.
The semester ends this week. I’m pretty happy about that.
Lastly let’s hear it for boiling soups you crack raw eggs into.
Rainy Saturday
There will never be a rainy Saturday afternoon long enough for all the movies that require a rainy Saturday afternoon to be fully appreciated.
Yesterweird 