Meme Responses
infinidimcorp: "Love, or lonliness. But not both."
There have been a fair few posts as a result of this meme on the subject of love, so I'm going to go with loneliness just for a change.
I've never really thought of myself as being lonely, but I guess the fact that it was given to me as a topic in the first place suggests that maybe I come off that way sometimes (why yes, I do tend to over-think everything people say to me, why do you ask?).
The internet seems to be full of definitions for loneliness, but the one that I would say fits with me most is "the feeling that no one understands one's situation". That makes me sound like the biggest emo ever, but I don't mean it in the woe-is-me sense, just that there are things in my life that for various reasons I can't talk to most people about, and in the places these overlap I can't really talk to anyone. Not that I really have any particular desire to talk about those things, but knowing that I couldn't even if I wanted to can sometimes be a bit tiresome. I'm not really sure that would count as loneliness by any sensible definition though...
I guess I don't really ever feel lonely, because I'm just so used to keeping to myself in general. Most of my childhood was spent reading or playing with k'nex or what-have-you, so I tend to think of friends as being an occasional luxury, like chocolate, rather than anything particularly important.
I have no idea if that really covers what Tim was asking for, but he probably doesn't know either. So, moving on...
lux_fiat: "Your carbon footprint."
I've always been faintly aware that I'm actually a very selfish person, in a big-picture sort of way. In the back of my mind, underneath a stack of childhood memories, there's a dusty old box containing all the things I choose to ignore. Occasionally I'll feel a bit guilty, grab something at random and put it on the mantelpiece for a while, but it's generally pushed aside quite quickly to make room for whatever else I have in my head at the time and eventually gets returned to the box.
My carbon footprint did actually have its fifteen minutes on the mantelpiece a few weeks ago, after Alex made a comment about Sony having stuck with the PS3 having a standby mode like the PS2 did. I've pretty much always left my consoles (etc.) on standby, in fact sitting here at home writing this, I've just realised that both my PS2 and my PS3 are probably both still on standby, even though I won't be back there until Friday evening (unless Huw rolled his eyes and turned them off after I left, which is entirely possible). Mostly I'd just never really thought about the power consumption, particularly with the PS2, which as far as I can tell does nothing when it's on standby except have a tiny red LED on.
My main problem with these things is not so much that I don't care, but that I find it hard to convince myself that the result of doing something about it will be worthwhile. According to a report on the BBC, equipment on standby in the UK is the cause of 3.1 million tonnes of CO2 per year, which seems like a lot, but by my calculations even if every single person in the UK turned off their electronics rather than putting them on standby, the amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere would only be reduced by about 0.01% and I find it really hard to care about that.
So the point I'm trying to make here is not that I'm right and you should agree with me (I'm not, and you shouldn't, although you're welcome to argue with me in the comments if you think it will help), but that there are a whole load of things that I wilfully ignore, because I can't convince myself that they're worth acknowledging. I'm pretty sure that makes me a bad person to some extent, but fortunately I can ignore that just as easily.
tehexile: "A duck"
If I remember correctly, my user info did actually contain reference to a duck (of the dyslexic variety) for about a year, but I don't believe I've ever actually posted about one. Despite this however, I seem to be somewhat lacking in duck-related topics, so I'm going to resort to relating a story from my NoDDSoc game.
The group had been sliding between various worlds and had come to one where the people spoke a strange language that they didn't understand. Whilst being held in a church while they waited to be put on trial as demons, Lee decided to attempt to find out about this world by reading some of the books. Of course, not being able to read the language made this somewhat difficult so he found a pop-up book (from the Sunday school) and read that.
Now as the GM I knew that there was one story I wanted to be in the book, because it was a plot piece, but in order to hide this I put two other stories in the book as well. I forget what the first was, but for the second I just decided to make up something completely random just to mess around with the fact that they could only understand the pictures, not the words. I think it went something like this:
- A duck comes to a river with a bridge built of sticks.
- He tries to cross the bridge, but a crocodile eats the bridge.
- The duck meets a chicken
- The duck rides the chicken across the river (yes, it was that way around).
- The duck gets across the river safely (I forget if the chicken did as well...).
Now this was something I had just come up with to fill space essentially, but I think in the end every single person in the party tried to use this completely nonsensical story in their defence at the trial, and Lee ended up carrying the book through the entire campaign trying to find someone who could tell him what the hell it was about.
And that is the story of why no game I run will ever contain a duck again. The end.
There have been a fair few posts as a result of this meme on the subject of love, so I'm going to go with loneliness just for a change.
I've never really thought of myself as being lonely, but I guess the fact that it was given to me as a topic in the first place suggests that maybe I come off that way sometimes (why yes, I do tend to over-think everything people say to me, why do you ask?).
The internet seems to be full of definitions for loneliness, but the one that I would say fits with me most is "the feeling that no one understands one's situation". That makes me sound like the biggest emo ever, but I don't mean it in the woe-is-me sense, just that there are things in my life that for various reasons I can't talk to most people about, and in the places these overlap I can't really talk to anyone. Not that I really have any particular desire to talk about those things, but knowing that I couldn't even if I wanted to can sometimes be a bit tiresome. I'm not really sure that would count as loneliness by any sensible definition though...
I guess I don't really ever feel lonely, because I'm just so used to keeping to myself in general. Most of my childhood was spent reading or playing with k'nex or what-have-you, so I tend to think of friends as being an occasional luxury, like chocolate, rather than anything particularly important.
I have no idea if that really covers what Tim was asking for, but he probably doesn't know either. So, moving on...
lux_fiat: "Your carbon footprint."
I've always been faintly aware that I'm actually a very selfish person, in a big-picture sort of way. In the back of my mind, underneath a stack of childhood memories, there's a dusty old box containing all the things I choose to ignore. Occasionally I'll feel a bit guilty, grab something at random and put it on the mantelpiece for a while, but it's generally pushed aside quite quickly to make room for whatever else I have in my head at the time and eventually gets returned to the box.
My carbon footprint did actually have its fifteen minutes on the mantelpiece a few weeks ago, after Alex made a comment about Sony having stuck with the PS3 having a standby mode like the PS2 did. I've pretty much always left my consoles (etc.) on standby, in fact sitting here at home writing this, I've just realised that both my PS2 and my PS3 are probably both still on standby, even though I won't be back there until Friday evening (unless Huw rolled his eyes and turned them off after I left, which is entirely possible). Mostly I'd just never really thought about the power consumption, particularly with the PS2, which as far as I can tell does nothing when it's on standby except have a tiny red LED on.
My main problem with these things is not so much that I don't care, but that I find it hard to convince myself that the result of doing something about it will be worthwhile. According to a report on the BBC, equipment on standby in the UK is the cause of 3.1 million tonnes of CO2 per year, which seems like a lot, but by my calculations even if every single person in the UK turned off their electronics rather than putting them on standby, the amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere would only be reduced by about 0.01% and I find it really hard to care about that.
So the point I'm trying to make here is not that I'm right and you should agree with me (I'm not, and you shouldn't, although you're welcome to argue with me in the comments if you think it will help), but that there are a whole load of things that I wilfully ignore, because I can't convince myself that they're worth acknowledging. I'm pretty sure that makes me a bad person to some extent, but fortunately I can ignore that just as easily.
tehexile: "A duck"
If I remember correctly, my user info did actually contain reference to a duck (of the dyslexic variety) for about a year, but I don't believe I've ever actually posted about one. Despite this however, I seem to be somewhat lacking in duck-related topics, so I'm going to resort to relating a story from my NoDDSoc game.
The group had been sliding between various worlds and had come to one where the people spoke a strange language that they didn't understand. Whilst being held in a church while they waited to be put on trial as demons, Lee decided to attempt to find out about this world by reading some of the books. Of course, not being able to read the language made this somewhat difficult so he found a pop-up book (from the Sunday school) and read that.
Now as the GM I knew that there was one story I wanted to be in the book, because it was a plot piece, but in order to hide this I put two other stories in the book as well. I forget what the first was, but for the second I just decided to make up something completely random just to mess around with the fact that they could only understand the pictures, not the words. I think it went something like this:
- A duck comes to a river with a bridge built of sticks.
- He tries to cross the bridge, but a crocodile eats the bridge.
- The duck meets a chicken
- The duck rides the chicken across the river (yes, it was that way around).
- The duck gets across the river safely (I forget if the chicken did as well...).
Now this was something I had just come up with to fill space essentially, but I think in the end every single person in the party tried to use this completely nonsensical story in their defence at the trial, and Lee ended up carrying the book through the entire campaign trying to find someone who could tell him what the hell it was about.
And that is the story of why no game I run will ever contain a duck again. The end.