Well, I have a couple of status updates and a couple of previews of posts that I'm too lazy to post yet.
Between one of my fellow players with whom I don't get on well and the stress of a really difficult late-campaign battle, I had another of my outbursts, which shut down a session of my favorite gaming group. With all the stress of the final battles of the campaign, I had to call it quits until I find some way to deal with my personality problems. I'm going to miss that one, because it had real storyline and character involvement.It's been a while since I got a regularly usable cell, and despite the fact that I had never heard the ringtone I picked before I got it, but since then, I've run into two other people who have the exact same one. I'd like to change it to something more unique and/or personal, but I don't know how far I can go with that. I'm on a typical cingular plan, which says I have to pay for downloading additional tones. However, I'm curious if there's some way I could, for a small fee, have a custom one made, possibly from a music or sound file. The one I would like is of course my favorite piece ever, "Dancing Mad" from FINAL FANTASY VI. That is to say, it's the one I like most that I can actually remember in part (which is hardly surprising, since I've finished off Kefka at least four times, and been beaten by him on occasion too, and that was probably the .mp3 to which I listened the greatest number of times in the days of yore before I accidentally deleted my music files). Of course, it's four movements, totaling over 4 minutes in the arrangement I used to have, but just the intro (or any individual movement) would be fine. If it can't be converted from a music file, does anyone know a good way to find a premade ringtone? (arifyn, which method did you use?) Of course, for optimum uniqueness and personalization, I could use my own "Flight of the Boryci," but I don't know anything about music composition, much less making digital audio.As noted before, I've been reading STRANGERS IN PARADISE (up to Pocket Book 4 now). Yes, that's right, an American comic, for which I actually paid money. This breach of my usual protocol has introduced me to a number of comic design elements (notably more realistic noses!) on which I'd like to expound at a bit more length later. I was also inspired a bit by the concept sketches by Talin for REAPER.On a more complex note, I've also been thinking a bit about the only one of my projects that has a two-digit age (in Gregorian years). It's come a long way from its origins as a hopeless writeup for a strategy "RPG" video game scribed during lulls in finals in middle school. (Yes, I am that old. Yes, I am still living with Mother. No, I still don't have a job. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, you should have no need to remind me of any of these things.) I particularly like the recent (partial) revamp I've made, particularly the new matriarchal society with the males of the ruling caste being bred out of the system. (Since there are no wild surges in this setting, it's quite difficult for two mothers to produce offspring with a Y-chromosome.) Unfortunately, although I maintain my vision of it as a society completely alien to human civilization, I'm worried about what conclusions readers and critics might draw about my "message" (which, as any longtime readers of this journal will recall, I always try to avoid including in my works), as the heroes' broadening horizons as the story progresses may well make it appear that I am meaning that the original inhuman matriarchal theocratic misandristic caste-based society is a bad thing. (Well, in terms of freedom and all, it technically is, but I like it, dammit!) This goes into a lot of sociological and philosophical things which mean that, as usual, I don't know what I'm talking about [sic], so I'd like some time to organize my thoughts on this one, meaning it's likely to be less promptly (if ever) posted than the previous bullet point.Incidentally, I also wanted to waffle about the ideas I had for getting back into converting and painting miniatures (for role-playing now, since I have long since given up on wargaming), until I realized that no one reading this journal gives a damn about that sort of thing. None of my gamer contacts who actually paint their own figs have blogs, as far as I know. Well, at the very least, let me present you with
another reason that the caveman from the stupid Geico commercials has a reputation for being primitive.