WNW: Trippy Fan Mail

I received this email yesterday, and I almost deleted it because I thought it was spam based upon the subject:

Pregnant Portent Clouds strike while the iron's ardor is most incandescent.

I'm so glad I didn't, as this is possibly the best letter I've ever received. At first I wasn't sure if it was just email from a fan whose command of English is... interesting... but profoundly poetic (or maybe just stoned), or if Skynet actually had a profile of my interests and had evolved a sense of context. I mean, it references guns, My Little Pony, Lord of the Rings,  and Firefly/Serenity... that's all of my nerd interests right there!

Strike when the iron is hot.

Well, I hope that the iron has cooled somewhat and that the portent pregnant clouds are troubling the heads and hearts of others more deserving. I intend not to strike but to offer support. I know you not at all save for the blogging; which I find entertaining, thought provoking and informative. For I didn’t know that My Little Pony was still a thing. Pegasus got caught, would this happen to a real pony?

It took a great deal of fortitude to paint yourself into that corner for a friend. And then to come out with it in a twist so twisty that the internet probably had to screw its knickers on the next morning. And then to come out with it in a twist so twisty that the internet probably had to screw its knickers on the next morning. I wanted to lend my voice, or at least, typed words of support; I’ve been reading your blog for not too long, and found it by way of View From The Porch, I think. Point is: I will continue to read. It matters not that my concept of what the one at the helm looks like has changed. It is the internet after all, and if you aren’t comfortable in the skin you’re born in, this realm can allow those thus inclined to fashion a more comfortable mantle; and to have cast that mantle aside for a friend in need is surely an act of nobility.

I do feel a since of camaraderie with many of the bloggers in your sphere that I read, a bit of a late blooming Brown Coat I’ve discovered myself; and the sense of Family and Loyalty you folks foster fits right in the breast pocket of that Brown Coat I’d discovered I occasionally wear. Guns, Books, music, Loyalty and Family, all shapes, all sizes; round, square, straight as an arrow or queer as clockwork oranges, we’re all just folk. Some a little strange around the edges, others so odd it drips all over them, and every smear along a broad continuum.

And in that vein, and though much geography intervenes allow me to join the chorus of people who may have never properly met you but who will wax Gilmli on the subject, anyone gives you any shit, you have my axe…Well, 11-87; at least.

It turns out that it's from a fan whose first language wasn't English and who wrote this while sleep-drunk.

Either way, it's pretty damn awesome. The turns of phrase are so delightfully weird that I'm actually jealous. And I'm definitely going to use the phrase "wax Gimli" in the future.

Z Mail (Z Kit)

A few questions from my readers!

Do you carry a mora?

I actually had to Google this to find what a Mora is. I assume you mean the knife? I hadn't even heard of one of these before, which is pretty odd, since apparently it's world-famous and favored by knife enthusiasts everywhere. Is it really that good? If so, I'll need to look into getting one.

What's your take on the value of those 'emergency rations' buckets from chain stores?

You mean like this?

I generally view with disdain anything that is "pre-made" because a large portion of the cost is the convenience of having someone do it for you. I think you'd be far better off assembling your own survival pantry using cans of tuna, jars of peanut butter, etc, and you'll be happier with the results. The only reason I could think of recommending this product is its 10-20 year shelf life,
so if you want to buy this for the peace of mind of not having to worry about emergency supplies for the next decade, then go for it. To be fair, though, there's really no reason I can think of for properly sealed canned food to go bad within a reasonable amount of time (2 years or so), and if you speak to anyone who's been in the military, they will tell you that food prepped for long-term storage usually tastes like reconstituted shit.

Here in Florida, we usually stock up on supplies at the beginning of hurricane season (June 1 - November 30) and then use the oldest stuff first. If you think of it as an annual chore, like putting up storm windows or cleaning gutters, then it becomes a dependable routine and you won't go OMG TEH STORM IS COMING and panic-purchase water and batteries.

I've only ever seen them advertised or sold in America and can't tell if they're a handy back up plan or something to keep the populace calm whilst the politicians evacuate :-/

It's fairer to attribute this to gross capitalism and humanity's basic desire to be lazy. "Here, buy this so you won't have to work/worry/think about it!" It's the same reason people buy fast food when it's cheaper and healthier to eat at home.

But there is a substantial "survival subculture" here in the USA (I expect there's one in any country with large wilderness areas) and it bivouacs upon a seductive, slippery slope. It's one thing to stock up on supplies, just in case. It's another to make it a full-time obsession, which is what many of these people do. It's rather like the difference between "I own a gun for self defense. I know how to use it. I keep it cleaned and within easy reach in case there is an intruder in the house" and "I have a gun in every room of the house and I can shoulder-roll to all of them. I have lines of fire clearly marked off and I know which pieces of furniture I can shelter behind. Sometimes I practice, in the dark, so that I'm ready for when the BATF comes to take my guns."

Like this.

I realize I sound a bit like a hypocrite here, but the purpose of my Z Kit is to 1) be a fun hobby and 2) pack the most useful stuff I can think of in an easy to carry container. Nowhere in that mission statement is "I will live in fear" or "I will pay huge amounts of money in order to survive at all costs." At that point it ceases to be practical and becomes a very expensive neurosis.

You may find it interesting in that I don't have a very strong survival instinct. Due to my personal belief system, I don't have any particular fear of death. What I do seek to avoid, however, is discomfort. If I'm the first to die in a disaster, fine by me (as long as I don't suffer). But dammit, I refuse to die of starvation or exposure, because those are miserable and painful.

Hopefully, my Z Kit reflects this belief.

Son of Reader Mail

Wherein I respond to many several two interesting comments which have sprung from my Curse/Or Grand Unified Theory posts.

1.
DemonicBunny, in response to my Theory of Magic post, did utter:

Agoramancers.
The more cats they keep the more power they get.
The more cats they get the less power they wield.
Neither cats nor fully fledged agoramancers wield any power at all.

Who are the agoramancers and why can't they wield any power?

I think you mean Ailuromancer, Bunny, because an Agoramancer would have something to do with wide-open spaces. You bring up an interesting point however, and it immediately draws to mind the fact that cats were revered in Egypt, even being accorded the same mummification and burial rites as nobility. The reason they were revered is because the cats preyed upon the vermin of the city, specifically the rats that would otherwise eat from the royal granaries.

So now I'm thinking of the old ladies who hoard cats, and why they don't have power. Well, for one, they don't properly revere the cat. They are, at best, spoiled by their owners, given kitty treats and not allowed to go outside because they might get hurt. But cats are predators, you see, they need to run free to stalk and kill. A proper cat isn't owned; it owns you.

So these hoarders are amassing cats when they should be amassing grain (or something else that vermin would eat.) They're short-circuiting the paradox by trying to control the cats, when it is the freedom of the cat that grants power.

So an ailuromancer wouldn't have a house full of cats. It wouldn't even own a single cat. A proper ailuromancer is allergic to cats, because as everyone knows, those are the people that cats like best. Of course, most people who are allergic to cats hate them (which makes the paradox stronger), and people who hate cats aren't likely to have them around, let alone develop an obsessive magical worldview based upon them.

Fear... fear the angry divorced homeless man who lives in an area curiously devoid of vermin. His ex-wife mysteriously suffocated to death in her sleep, and when her body was found it had been partially eaten.


2.
Ricochet, she of the Pinball Mind, asked:

So if the internet is a huge mad brain with a billion voices shouting within it at once and theoretically linked to each consciousness that touches it, does this mean that we are all at risk of contracting organic forms of digital viruses via the electronic impulses in our brains?

What do you think an Internet Meme is? (No joke. I'm actually planning on using this in the book. Both you and Bunny are likely to be amused and distressed when I introduce a certain antagonist provisionally known as K.K.)

Think about it. How long did it take for the "Chuck Norris Meme" to make its way from the internet to a mainstream media campaign commercial?

Answer: about 2 years. Pretty slow for a cultural phenomenon, but about right for a disease transmission from original source to new population.

Cos if so, not only could you make a mint selling cerebral protection software, it would explain a lot of the shit going on in the world today.

The first thing that popped into my head was the phrase "mind condoms".

The Return of Reader Mail

Why are you posting filler, Palette?

Fuck off and die, you elitist asshole.


How was your holiday season?

My Christmas was good. Very good. Shockingly good, in fact, considering that it was the first time in several years both of my siblings were present. Now I can get along with either my brother or my sister, but not both at the same time, for the simple reason that they are much older than I (7 and 10 years, respectively) but there is only a 3 year gap between them. Thus, when they are together, they usually team up against me. I'm pretty sure it's not intentional, but that's just the way it is. And if they're not ganging up on me, they're doing it to my mom (but not my father, aka The Colonel, who Brooks No Shit).

New Years' Eve, however, was a completely different matter. I went to my room at 10 pm to avoid the yelling and fighting, and stayed there until 2008.


What happened to your Khaotica posts? Weren't there some weeks left?

I was planning on extending Khaotica up through New Years' Day, but things got pretty crazy pretty quick in my life (see siblings arrival, above), so I decided to take my own advice and drink a large dose of Chill the Fuck Out.

Now that I've had time to think about it, the notion of giving weekly assignments -- i.e., imposing order -- for a holiday season devoted to enjoying chaos has the stink of Greyface all over it. Of course, I could also be guilty of over-analysis (don't forget, analysis has the word anal in it). So I guess I'll let the concept of Khaotica ferment and bubble in my brain for the next year. Maybe Eris will grant me enlightenment. Maybe she won't give a damn. Goddess likes to fuck with my mind like that.


How's your writing-as-career thing coming?

Slowly, I'm afraid. Far too slowly.

Quantum Mechanix had a good Christmas, I am told (if you bought something from them, THANK YOU!), so hopefully they will have more assignments for me soon.

Project Perseus has undergone a bit of a sea change. The original premise is dead, gone, and buried, due mostly to creative differences I had with my co-author (but we're still good friends.) But I like the name enough that I'm appending it to my newest project, which has less certainty of being published but is filled with far more awesome. No, I'm not ready to divulge details yet.

Heliumpunk is not forgotten, either; it's simply reached a stage where I, as a writer, am not yet skilled enough to pull it off convincingly. I continue to work on it a little each day, either through research or character development or what-have-you, but Project Perseus is getting far more clock cycles devoted to it. Heliumpunk is looking to be my second novel.


How many PCs did you kill in your L5R game last week?

Last week? None. By design. This week, however...

Short version without context for those who care: The PCs are at Winter Court in Crab lands. They are all Emerald Magistrates, so when someone in the castle is brutally murdered by what appears to be Maho, it's their duty to investigate, find the culprit, and punish the guilty. Of course, this being a castle within 100 yards of the Shadowlands, things are never straightforward. In fact, there are many contradictory clues and red herrings. The PCs, of course, insist on following up on every lead and entertaining increasingly ludicrous possibilities. Then, when called before Hida Kisada to report what they find, they make the mistake of waffling, disagreeing amongst themselves, and generally appearing incompetent.

Hint: When the Great Bear asks you a question, you answer. You don't start with "Well, we're really not sure..."

So Kisada has the most likely suspect brought before him, clubs him like a steer, and beheads him in front of the PCs, despite it being pretty obvious that said suspect has been framed. They are then told that if the just-executed man wasn't the guilty party and more maho deaths continue, it's their own damn fault for having let the Shadowlands mislead them. (Moral of the story: Confusion is a weapon of the Shadowlands. Good samurai do not succumb to confusion.)

In situations like this, a typical samurai would request permission for seppuku to atone for such failure. (There's more to the story, of course; they also failed to protect the bride-to-be of a Clan daimyo from the Taint, etc etc.) This being the land of the Crab, of course, ritual suicide is considered wasteful. Thus, they have three options:

1. Be assigned to the very tip of the sharp end on the Great Kaui Wall, where their deaths might actually slow down an Oni for a few seconds.
   
2. Be made Ronin. Fortunately for them, the Crab are having a Twenty Goblin Winter. So all they have to do is go into the Shadowlands poorly armed and armored (remember, with the exception of your daisho, your armor and weapons belong to your daimyo) and kill 20 goblins each for them to be accepted back into the Clan.
   
3. Or they can go on a ridiculously difficult quest -- bordering on the suicidal, in fact -- deep into the Shadowlands to retrieve a lost ancestral relic of the Crab that could tip the balance in the Thousand-Year War. This, of course, is the adventure I have prepared for them.
   

I feel I should note for the record that I'm not deliberately trying to slaughter the party; I do in fact want them to live. But I have a strong anti-stupidity stance, and the moment they cross into Hell On Earth, the dice fall where they may.


Ridiculous question intended to elicit twitters of mirth.

Snarky non sequitur response that enables me to end this post in a sarcastic fashion.

Kwestions about Khaotica

Why is it spelled "Khaotica"?

Because spelling it "Roderick Buttocktrundle" would be problematic.

All right, there are a few reasons why.

• This time of year is chock full of K's: Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Kris Kringle, Julebukking.
  
• Eris has a longstanding association with the letter K, specifically Kallisti and Kopyleft (K).
• It looks better than "Chaotica" and calling it "Khaotika" would be pretentious.
  

Doesn't the name suggest vandalism and/or anarchy from the participants?

I dunno. Do games like Grand Theft Auto suggest that the players should steal cars and kill people? Seriously, if people are inclined to do that kind of thing, they'll do it regardless of what I say or do. I am not a role model, and I am not your conscience.

However, if you vandalize Christmas decorations or churches, or otherwise act like an asshole, you deserve everything you get when people flip out and beat the fa-la-la out of you.

I'm just saying.


What are YOU going to do for Khaotica's Firstweek Festivities?

I'm not sure just yet.

What I had originally planned was to buy a manger, put it in my front yard, and decorate it with lights and outdoor ornaments and maybe some fake boxy presents around it. While I don't expect people to grasp the scathing commentary on the commercialization of the season and the lost intent behind the original exchanging of gifts, I figured I could get at least a few people to go, "A manger with lights on it? WTF?"

But according to Grem, who lives in Louisiana, he sees these kind of things all the time. So either Louisiana is far more Discordian than I expected, or this idea has been thought of before and is, therefore, lame.

So now I don't know what I'll do.

More Reader Mail

And now, it's time to answer more Reader Mail!

In response to my post A Taste of Things to Come, Jeff asks:

You've decided to become a samurai, haven't you?

Nice try, but no. However, I will confess an attraction to the romance of the Samurai lifestyle: the silk kimonos, the emphasis on honor and duty, the intricate and ironclad rules of etiquette; even the zen spirituality is appealing. I often entertain flights of fancy where I sell all my worldly possessions and move to Japan where I live high in the mountains and apprentice myself to a master artisan and commit my life to the pursuit of excellence.

This fantasy usually lasts about 5 minutes before I realize that without medication and a climate-controlled environment, my allergies would make me utterly miserable, and if they didn't kill me then the utter boredom of not having an internet connection would. Still, it's a nice little dream.


Regarding The Sisters Weirde:

While the strength of your premise is the dynamic of your characters, I think there would be some difficulty with a particular power they have in common, which is the ability to change age. This would require each character to be represented by multiple actors, which, while seemingly exciting, could prove to be difficult. Not only for the actors to work together on learning the character's mannerisms and personalities, but as well as hiring actors in the first place. I'm not a producer but I have to assume trying to get someone to sign a contract for only a few episodes could be difficult. That and the opening credits might be a mess. Perhaps I'm just overestimating how often the ability would be used?

You're overestimating, yes, both in how often it would be used and how severe the transformation would be. There's a lot that can be done with makeup and CGI these days, and that's one of the reasons I kept the two older sisters within a 20-year age range. As for Chloë , Anne Hathaway has a young face, and with the right special effects can easily pass for 16 and perhaps younger. On the rare occasions when she needs to appear younger than that, a guest star can be used, but only for the scenes where the transformation is necessary -- rather like how in Quantum Leap, the "Al is holographic" effects and the "ZOMG Sam is in someone else's body" reveals were kept to a minimum.

Will you marry me?

Oddly, this is my first internet marriage proposal, and I've been doing this since February. I suspect I'm losing my touch.


Regarding my synopsis of the first episode of Jericho, the mysterious entity known only as "c" stated:

Next Friday night (7/13), CBS will air a recap special summarizing episodes 2 through 11, skip episode 12 entirely, and follow the recap show with episode 13, "Black Jack." I hope this revelation does not unduly disturb the rhythm of your lurking.

Disturbed? Oh... a little.

Is Troy Hickman as strange as his posts make him out to be?

Darling, you have no idea how strange Troy is. He regularly sends me emails with subject lines reading "Floobity Flobbity," "I Just Ate A Dog," and of course my favorite, "CRACK COCAINE!" Getting a coherent statement out of him usually requires a half-hour of beating him about the head and shoulders with a chair leg:


The worst part is, he admits it. Here it is, from issue 5, page 3, of his indy comic Holey Crullers, wherin he is writing dialog for himself within the comic book:


Troy Hickman -- the Inappropriate Comment that walked like a man!

Reader Mail Day

It's Friday, and Fridays mean Discordianism. But I don't wanna talk about Eris today.

So I won't. I mean, what's the good of following a Philosophy of Chaos if you're gonna be slavishly bound to it, right? By refusing to conform I am actually upholding the sacred strictures.

Instead, I think I'm going to answer some viewer mail. I can't believe the attention I've gotten since Chris linked to me.


Dear Erin: why does your profile have a picture of cleavage? I'd think you were above such things.

Psychology, dear reader. The simple fact is that men are more likely to surf the web than women, and thus men are more likely to read my blog. However, men also have a notoriously short attention span. A picture of a bosom is guaranteed to catch the male eye, and maybe persuade them to look at the wordy-things surrounding it.


r thse ur boobz? if so y do u no have pix of ur face

First, learn to spell. Do you have any idea how retarded you sound in my head when I read that? I swear, every time I encounter "txt spk" I can't help but imagine it being said by a stoned surfer.

Second, I don't have a picture of my face because I treasure my anonymity. My father has run for political office before, and may do so again, and so in the interest of filial loyalty I'm not going to do anything which could have negative connotations for him or his future campaigns.

Similarly...


Is your name really Erin Palette?

Sadly, no. My true name is unpronounceable by mortal tongues, hence I have adopted this nom de plume.


What kind of guns do you like?

I have a fondness for the old-school Colt M1911A1. The .45 cal round is pretty much guaranteed to knock down anyone or anything I hit. Sure, I only have a 7-round magazine, but I don't intend to get into extended gunfights any time soon, and my hands are too small to comfortably hold a double-stack anyway. It does kick like a mule, though.

I also like the Winchester Super X3 Composite. It's a sweet little 12-gauge that's a little over 7 pounds. I haven't fired it as much as I'd like, though.


What are your thoughts on gun control?

Gun control is using both hands when shooting.

Seriously, if I ever find anyone in my house, I will empty my weapon at them. Why? Because if they're in my house, then for all I know they intend to rape and/or kill me, so I intend to kill them first. And I will kill them, because I don't intend to be sued by my would-be assailant for "excessive force."


your stories suck

Then send me what you've written, Shakespeare. I'll be happy to post it here and let the internet critics rip you a new one.


I'm confused. You're a Christian and a Discordian? How can you be both?

Well, it's like this: One is a philosophy, the other is a religion. Go to a Pentecostal service some time and you'll see Chaotic Christianity in action.


You're going to Hell.

I'll save a spot by the lake of fire for you.