Discourse.net: Virtual Worlds, Real Rules
Also Terranova, a blog devoted to academic questions about MMORPGs.
Asumanga Daioh: the Manga #1
by Asuma Kiyohiko
Azumanga Daioh is a comic strip (there's also an anime series) about a group of High School girls and their teachers. That's right, it's an actual four-panel gag strip--though the panels are laid out vertically--and I laughed out loud while reading it almost as many times as when reading Matt Feazell's Ert, or Murray Ball's Footrot Flats. That's pretty darn funny, by my standards.
It's mostly a comedy of square pegs in round holes, or to use a Japanese metaphor, the nail that stands up getting hammered flat. Sakaki is tall and elegant, so even though other girls admire her, they treat her as if she were regal and above them--and she's too shy to make it clear that what she would like is to pal around and play with kittens; Ayumu is from Osaka, so that becomes her nickname, and she ends up talking with the accent the region is famous for even though she speaks perfectly standard Japanese; Chiyo is a ten-year old genius who's in High School because she skipped grades, and the gags about her play on the cognitive dissonance this causes in most of the adults who encounter her (e.g. the lunch-room ladies decide that she must be undernourished to be so short in High School, so pile her plate with mountains of food). And so on.
You can see some of the fan-translated strips posted to the web at Azumanga-Toons. The professionally translated ones are a bit less literal, but I think punchier.
And in other news, RH and SO have arrived in Vancouver. Read all about it in milkbreath and me.
I hopes all ye scurvy swabs be observin' Talk Like A Pirate Day--or else it'll be kissin' the gunner's daughter and standing watch-on-watch fer ye, mark my words! Arrr!
Cronaca: Ashmolean acquires dickhead platter
I've set up a Yahoo personal. I haven't yet shelled out any money to write to anyone, but I probably will soon. At least it seem like a different set of women--not, as far as I can see, a different kind of woman, but at least a different group. After three months on match.com, everyone who was remotely a match was someone whose profile I'd already looked at.
So why am I doing this? I don't really know. Even though I know that I'd most likely be mistaken to think that finding someone would greatly increase my happiness, it seems like it would be nice.
has done been and gone, and we had a good--if rainy--weekend. Actually, he seems to bring the rain with him, since last time he visited it was the same way. Not that I'm blaming him for the hurricane bearing down upon us...much.
We played a bunch of D&D, and had uber-geeky conversations about what's changed betwee v3.0 and v3.5 (it's mostly Red's doing that I've bitten the bullet and "upgraded" to 3.5). We even introduced J's nine-year old boy to D&D; it went surprisingly well--I think all the video-gaming, including some RPGS, that the kid has played in his short life made it pretty easy to explain things like attributes to him. Actually, I kind of thought Red was really talking down to him at some points--I'm guessing he doesn't have a lot of interaction with bright nine-year olds recently. I found that if you just explained the mechanics to him in terms of mechanics (roll a twenty-sider and add your attack bonus there and tell me the number) he got right into it.
We also watched some of His and Her Circumstances, which Red surprised me a little by enjoying. I had put it on just to show J the first episode, but they both wanted to watch the second.
Red should be back the weekend after next, I think. Unfortunately, he's probably bringing the Beast this time. The saving grace is that a) they'll have to stay at a hotel, 'cause there's no way she'd agree to sleep on my couch, even with the bed folded out, and b) she goes to bed early, so Red and I should have most of the evening free.
I noticed on badgerbag that one of the google ads currently at the top of the page is for "Used Poetry." I don't know why, but that amuses me somehow. "Get your used poetry, it's luverly. Practically like new, only recited by a little old beatnik in a coffee house on Sundays. Or try this one, it's bit of a fixer-upper, but it's metrically solid--you can't get craftsmanship like that these days for love nor money."
Rhode Island Red is coming to visit, so I probably won't have much time to blog; and if I did, I'd probably not do it to this blog if you know what I mean. Fortunately he's not accompanied by whatserface, although I think that she's now on this coast. One more thing to dread: him trying to get the three of us together.
Okilidokily, the blogroll works now. The stylesheet is a little wonky (in that if there aren't enough blog entries on the page, the right-hand column slides left), but I can fix that for now just by adding a couple entries. Hence this one.
I've moved this blog over from blogspot, so that I can abandon blogger. I've still got a few things to fix (blogroll, etc), but it seems to have gone pretty smoothly.
The new URL is http://www.webamused.com/blogosity/
I don't know whether this will make me any happier with blogger, but it can't hurt. As it stands, most of my blogging is now done to my website using MT, where I have a lot more control over it (and the frickin' comment counts work!). I haven't been doing much blogging where I've felt a need to keep it anonymous--I'm about all blogged out on the J and K situation, for instance, and haven't even talked to my family for about a month. If I could just get badger and minnie to read what I've come to think of as my "real" blog, I could probably just abandon this one.