How do you know that you can't ride a rainbow in the sky

[austin_dern]

Long, heavy rains today. Localized flooding. My hopes of taking a picture of the campus squirrel were dashed, as were my plans to go to the Night Safari at the Zoo. But I got to watch another disc of the Looney Tunes DVD set.

In perhaps a dangerous precedent I also logged in to Spindizzy to watch o'er the Roleplay Expo from the office. Shockingly, I didn't do appreciably worse than usual in getting done the things I needed done at work. I generally keep mucking to home, but I wanted the head wizardly presence, which helps draw out the shy people to events.

Little roleplaying got done at the Expo (but Spindizzy regulars are advised to keep watching), but it did establish at least that people want to see more of it, and want to feel freer to improvise even with strangers. Also, most everyone feels they're personally no good at it. There's some sort of inverse law at work in online communities; the people who are least assured of themselves are nearly always the most interesting and the ones with the least to worry about. If they'd relax and be themselves they'd notice everybody likes them that way. Conversely, the most troublesome people I've had to deal with were abundantly self-confident despite really bad personalities.

But then I've got poor confidence in my skills at roleplaying, and on Spindizzy am an elastic coati with rabbit ears and tail (more matters pending). And while it's always dangerous to start bragging, I think the past month has been a real vintage season; more and more diverse things have been happening and I'm glad for the life. We'll see about tomorrow's rain.

Trivia: The Apollo Command Module leaked into space as much as a tenth of a pound of oxygen each hour. Source: The Partnership: A History of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, Edward Clinton Ezell and Linda Neuman Ezell. NASA SP-4209.

Currently Reading: London: A History, Francis Sheppard.

Comments

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

You have bunny ears and tail now? I have been gone a while. The last I remember is that you were elasticized, but I don't remember anything about bunny ears.

I should visit Spindizzy again sometime. Lately my online time is eaten up either playing a MMORPG (I admit it, I finally developed that particular addiction) or arguing with people on this infernally irritating mailing list I'm on (as mentioned in my journal).

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, the bunny ears and tail are new. I got to complaining about being bored last month, and a rabbit started trading parts -- first the ears, a week later the tail. The leader in the betting pool is we swap legs next. This sort of corresponds with the recent uptick in odd and interesting activities, teaching me that I should whine more, which seems like the wrong lesson to learn.

My time, when not eaten up by mucks, is being devoured by Europa Universalis II, which is to a grand-strategy game fan like me something like, oh, Boomerang is to a bad-cartoon fan like me. (Boomerang's not a channel here, though.) I'm not skilled enough to save the Byzantine Empire, but I have won the Hundred Years War both as England and as France, one taking over the other, and boy does that make a dangerous superpower. The game's artificial intelligence even figured that out and started using me.

Still, I'd be delighted as always if you did drop by. Alas, I'm most active in the mornings US time -- I'm 12 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time -- but the community's been really good lately. Most of the bitter folks flamed themselves out of existence last year, so we're left with people whose worst sins are inertia and self-doubt. I hope it lasts.

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Of course, this brings to mind the image of a wet squirrel. Forget crying clowns.. if the US Democrats would only put a wet squirrel up against the Shrub That Talks Like a Man, the world would be a much happier - and furrier - place.

I should look into these MU* things sometime..

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I think the campus squirrel has too little a tail to look really satisfying wet. His (?) fur's pretty short, and brown, too. Looks honestly kind of underfed. There's more geckos and lizards and such around, and they seem to be doing better. They really can move, too; it's amazing watching them. There's enough stray cats that the Office of Estate Development last year proposed a Cat Management Scheme, about which I've heard nothing past my initial giggles. And, of course, mynah birds and ravens dot the canteens.

Do stop by, though, sometime ... I've been planning a red panda (sort of) guest body, and if you connect while I'm there (and after I write it) I'll rig things so you get it...