Half Measures Are For Weenies

I may have decided to challenge myself to finish my book at the same time that my current writing gig with AEG hit me with a new assignment. And I decided to take on a simultaneous, new project with AEG as well. Also I still have a full time day job, so it's not like I suddenly sprang free time. I'm not too sure, in retrospect, what drove me to do all of this without thinking about it all together. But there it is. For someone who was previously upset that he couldn't find a decent part time job, you could possibly say I have gained what is called the embarrassment of riches. But the first AEG job pays not so great, and sparsely, and the new one doesn't pay at all. I took it mostly because the time investment seemed low and I wanted to see about putting my name on another project that has a possibility of taking off. The book, of course, isn't paid either.

So really, no riches. Just embarrassment, I suppose.

Thanksgiving this year went off pretty well. Kim and I put together a pretty impressive dinner that had started off as a plan for six no-local-family Austin refugees (including ourselves). In the end, it was a dozen folks that we managed to accommodate without skimping on place settings or food. We watched UT beat A&M in the last game that both colleges would be in the same conference. I write this and still wonder why I even gave a fuck at the time. I think Austin's weird fixation with football is finally seeping in to my skin. It's taken six years to get this minor hold on me, but I expect like most diseases, the rate of diffusion through the victim will be exponential.

This weekend was then just Kim and I sitting, eating leftovers, and playing through the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO stress test. It was... a lot of playing. I don't see myself really playing for literally 12-14 hours a day once the  game is actually released, but I'm trying to save money both for my previous bills and forthcoming Christmas stuff, so it seemed like a good idea to just stay in all weekend. I had been in a previous Beta weekend, and Republic Trooper is still my favorite. I'm a little torn on a few things, such as what side to play and what class, but there will be a Trooper in there for certain.

We went with Nikki to a few Black Friday sales, notably the Round Rock outlets and Half Price Books. It was nice getting ridiculously underpriced clothes to replace some things that needed replacing, and seeing some books to give as gifts. It was especially nice to do this at 2pm when all the murderous, rampaging hordes of folks shopping for deals much like tribes shopped for land had passed.

I'll be heading back to KC for Christmas. I'm not sure if it'll be odd going alone or not yet. Probably.

All that icing and all that cake...

So the Occupy movement has been something that's been taking up a lot of my rhetorical time - that is, my time where I speak about things, not time that is... somehow theoretical. I've been pretty calm, all things considered, and there are many things to consider. The reaction to Occupy has been largely an exercise in watching confirmation bias drive many people to say hurtful, hateful, and irrational things all in the name of sticking it to (insert "the man" or "those jobless hipsters" as appropriate here). In the middle of all this, I've tried to commit myself to the Sisyphean effort of remaining calm and trying to speak to people who had forcefully set themselves against the movement, and cajole those who were losing sight of the actual problem back into more useful thought and action.

Today I kind of lost my shit. I didn't lose it so much as angrily begin flinging it around at anyone who dared get in my path. I could cite some excuses - and I will - but I will first say that I'm not too proud of how I handled myself. I believe that some people really needed to have someone finally get in, stop being polite, and blatantly say, "You are wrong. We do not need to be tactful or meek about this - you are wrong and you are misinformed." But I've been sick, and I was tired, and I hadn't slept well, perhaps the sun got in my eyes and I slept on my hand, who knows. I woke up in a shit mood, saw what was going on last nigh, and something in my dam of patience snapped.

It wasn't just that this was happening; honestly, it was one of the few logical conclusions to the Occupy camp in New York. The problem I was having was with the reactions I was seeing. Police officers were being used as a military to conduct unlawful actions against Americans: arresting protestors who complied, forcibly destroying recordings and denying press access, taking private property belonging to the protestors and destroying it, cutting off the airspace above to the media, and so on. Was the occupation illegal? That is actually up for debate, as the NY courts have begun fighting back and forth over that question while an order to allow protestors back in to the park languishes. But even if it was, look at what happened, and then witness Americans cheering gleefully at the treatments of their fellow citizen. Why is this ok? Simply put, it's always okay when laws and rights are conveniently ignored in order to expedite punishment of those who don't agree with us. This is the rule of the day - what Bush did and what Obama does, however similar, is either heroic or demonic depending on which end of the political spectrum you sit yourself on.

This is a fiction that far too many people have happily eaten up and clamored for seconds. The Occupy protestors are hippies and/or trust fund babies bored with their lives and trying to pretend their existences mean something. So many right-wing media outlets realized that ignoring the protest didn't mean anything, so the narrative quickly shifted - let's talk about how disorganized they are, how shiftless and worthless they are as human beings. Please for the love of God, let's just not talk about the actual issue at hand. And, again, so many were happy to take that direction and run with it as if they were scoring a touchdown for (insert political or religious idol here) itself.

The truth of the matter is this - what happened over the past decade in regards to the destructive and corrupt relationship between political power and financial regulation was a crime committed against America as a country. Executives at many levels across several powerful firms perpetrated a fraud that no intelligent businessman would have attempted, if they had the long term interests of their company in mind. They soaked up countless millions, even billions, of dollars that did not belong to them through misdirection and blatant lies, making bets they would never be able to cover. When the bet came due, when a company must finally be held accountable for the failed risks it took, the government stepped in and saved them all. Who will pay the price for the misconduct of these few? Everyone but them. To these privileged few, the idea that they could lose was an insult. They were largely born into money, and they will always have money, and the concept that this could change was laughable at best or otherwise simply a conspiracy. As far as they're concerned, they have a right to their lifestyles and wealth, not any need to earn and maintain it.

So instead of feeling the repercussions of what they had done - actually playing by the rules of the capitalist philosophy they all pretend to be such devotees of - the backlash fell to the public. Banks were bailed out. Companies were saved by the government. And in turn, these companies, in order to even out their bottom line, fired employees, stopped lending, hiked up fees, and squeezed every rock they could find for some cash - as long as that rock wasn't somewhere on their own property. And when the economy froze due to unemployment and a lack of moving cash, these same people shrugged helplessly and said, "oh, sorry, it's just how things are now" as if they had no hand in it and no power to make it otherwise.

Above: "Shiftless hippie bums".

But instead of worrying about this, we have people who snicker to each other that Occupy Wall Street has no clear direction (nevermind the fact that the living document known as the OWS Manifesto can be found easily by just Googling the completely obscure phrase "OWS Manifesto"), or that these people are just shiftless hippie bums who want to end the American way of life. Why? Why do we bother with this? Because, simply put, partisan hatred in this country has taken over every aspect of life. Every decision you make, everything you like or dislike, is now considered on part of the political spectrum. Do you drive a truck? You must be a conservative. Only liberals like Muse. And so on. In the middle of the rabble, the message is not only getting lost, it's getting actively drowned out and distorted, because so many people know that it's a message that the average citizen should not and will not ignore.

I would usually puff out my centrist, more-enlightened-than-thou chest and now admonish the other side, if this were any other issue. "They're all wrong, to some degree," is the chic political line of thought these days, and in some regards it's true for OWS. Occupy has done a great deal of damage to itself, and there are those within the movement that I, and many rational people should disagree with. End capitalism? Pass. Abolish all banks? You have no idea what you're talking about. Forgive all student debt and/or home loans? The damage that would cause is beyond what you can apparently understand. But beyond that, the basic principle - that the government has now enshrine the idea that reward is privatized to a select few and risk is now socialized to the whole country - is right. If you do not agree with this, if you want to spend your time smirking and rolling your eyes at the people, then you are wrong. Flat out.

This is a nuanced issue, to be sure, but there is very definitely a right side. If you want to waste your time counting the minor infractions of the movement, as if such a movement could ever be without people who act in such a manner, then that's your choice. And it's the wrong choice. I quoted this earlier, but it remains appropriate: Eleanor Roosevelt said, "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." If all you can talk about is how these hippies were asking for it, or how you heard a story about how some guy broke a sink, you've made your choice. 


Went to bed and didn't see,
why every day turns out to be
a little bit more like Bukowski.
And yeah, I know he's a pretty good read.
But God who'd wanna be?
God who'd wanna be such an asshole?

Wherein I Get Angry At Pandas

So, I wanted to take some time to digest the information about Mists before I went full tilt on it. My initial reaction was not a mature, nuanced view, which I realized didn't make for a really fair way to look at it. After taking some time to look over the information, my reaction is still almost universally negative about the whole thing, and I considered keeping it to myself because I didn't wanna be that guy bitching about a game I quit and acting like everyone is dumb for liking it. But honestly, I don't really care if other people like it or not. It's a video game. I thought Grand Theft Auto was pretty terrible, so I don't have any illusion that my viewpoint is correct and sacred here. With that in mind...

1. Fucking Pandarens.

There seems to be a lot of whining on the Internet about how talking pandas somehow makes the game kiddie territory now. Nevermind the singing sunflower, or the complete clownification of Goblins, the constant pop in-jokes, or the overall cartoonishness of the game in general. Nope, pandas are what did it. I think that's kind of ridiculous, mostly for the aforementioned reasons, but because there are a great many reasons to hate Pandarens without making up crap. I understand the race was was already part of the setting for some time, so the inevitable comparisons to Kung Fu Panda seem unfair. But look at what they did - they took the coincidental similarities, and just leaned into the curve. The folks at Blizzard really don't care about the Warcraft setting anymore as an actual property, and are willing to whore any little bit of it out as a quick joke or "clever" reference for a couple chuckles. You just cannot take the setting seriously anymore. It is not a fantasy game, it's a chatroom with attacks.

2. Talent Revamp

So when Blizzard slimmed down the talent trees for Cataclysm, players by the thousands were telling the company, "This is a bad move. With so few choices and this many points, there will be clear and obvious builds for each spec. Builds will not vary at all. It makes the points effectively irrelevant." So now, Blizzard seems to be bemoaning how specs became so cookie cutter, and they're sighing about it as if they have no idea what went wrong. Oh, how did we get to all these cookie cutter specs! How could we have ever foreseen this!

Worse than the blatant stupidity of the above is the rampant ignorance of the solution "Oh, I know, let's give everyone six choices per class." The point, apparently, is to make the choices effectively meaningless. You now are FORCED to be effectively a cookie cutter of someone of your same spec and class, with a couple of flavor abilities that don't really factor in a great deal. This... solves the problem. Somehow.

3. Another Tank/DPS/Heal hybrid.

Morons. You can't even get Paladin right after this long, so I feel extremely bad for anyone who picks "paladin but with, you know... asian shit."

4. Also, The Island

As I said before, I accept that Panderia was already in the setting. However, their "sell" of it is like we're in the fucking 70s where everyone thinks the MYSTIC EAST is a land of UNTAPPED MYSTERY and MYSTERIOUS KICKING OF SHIT and maybe some weird MYSTERY. The only thing I could think is this -



Senor Chang is watching you because of this bullshit. He will destroy you.


5. It Appears They Just Don't Care

I don't really care about the pokemon pets in the way some people do. It doesn't bother me that they're adding the shit in, it's just bothersome rolled in with everything else. This is all B- or even C-Squad shit at this point. These are all obvious ploys to just keep an old game alive through some cute toys and ignoring the fact that at the end, the actual game itself is the exact same. Really, it strikes me as someone who is embarrassed and trying to do their best to sort've apologize for what's going on. "Yeah, this is still a game about collecting 20 bear asses, heh, sorry about that. But now your Pinchy can fight their Hatchling, so that helps, right?"

There's definitely a good amount of panderin (hahahahah I'm totally not the 5,00th person to make that joke) to get players to re-sub. As someone who quit out of sheer apathy for the game, it's not even like an abusive ex trying to apologize and get you to come back, baby, it'll be better this time. It's more like a manic, psycho ex that's trying to tell you she totally took some classes at cooking and can do the splits now so c'mon give it another shot. And since I like to play games for the actual game immersion as well as the company (in the context of multiplayer games), all I can think of is the next time I wipe to Lord Evilfux, people will be battling their pets for lolz while people rez. And I think, "No, I believe it's time I dated someone a little closer to my age, sorry."

Frankenstein's Ishiken

So I wanted a place to ramble a bit about my current Frankenstein's Monster - a Void shugenja for the L5R RPG. I'm running a campaign now that just switched over to being a magistrate dealie. The players were previously an all-Crab party dealing with Crab lands being overrun by the current storyline problems, and I decided to drop a Black Scroll on their laps for a laugh. Anyway, that's wrapped up and they decided that though they enjoyed their first characters, they wanted to branch out some and I offered to start a newer campaign with characters that were possibly the descendents, students, associated of the previous characters. These characters would be given 90xp (+10 if they were players from the previous campaign).

I was talking to Elo-Brian about this, and he was jiving with the thematic flavor of the Phoenix - stoic masters of ridiculous power that they are reluctant to use. He also wanted to make a shugenja, so I decided to talk to him a little about what each element was good for. Now, at the time, I was still sort've in the mind set that Air had some of the best utility spells for social settings for things such as divination and manipulation. I told him that realistically, the biggest toolbox is going to be a Void shugenja with strong access to Air spells (either through a Air affinity or a high Air ring), BUT, I had already seen about 100 Void/Air and Void/Fire shugenja. What I had always wanted to see in play was a Void/Water shugenja, for various reasons.

Brian was kind enough to humor me and I explained to him what he needed to do, statwise to get this guy going. First, you have to go with the Isawa school, because it's the only one that allows you to pick any Affinity (so it's the only way to get a Void affinity), but you also get no deficiency. That is super important and I'll get to that in a second. Second, you need to pick a family that gives you a water-related bonus. Thankfully, the Agasha somehow get a Perception bonus despite being a Fire shugenja family. But even if you don't like the Agasha, you can pick a Shiba and be a super weird exception to the family of bushi (they also get Perception).

Since the Isawa school grants you +1 Int, you have a pretty quick jump to 3 Water, 3 Fire, and 3 Void (this wouldn't work at rank 1). Brian opted to go ahead and hit 4 Void, which is a pretty big XP dump, but for this character it really works since you can abuse the holy fuck out of your Void Ring and Void Points. The only problem is that it leaves a very small amount of XP for skills, since you have to blow 6 on the Ishiken-do advantage. Even after recovering 10 points of disadvantages, skills are gonna suffer a little. So really the choice was blow 24 points on Void 4 or have 24 points for skills. It's something of a toss up, since you're going to have a shit ton of Void to blow when it matters and some spells to help.

So this is where you play with the mechanics. Due to the need to have a good Water Ring for some ridiculous water combos later, you have a good Strength. Due to getting +1 Int from the school and wanting to push up another Ring to have another strong element to cast, you now have 3 Agility. You have now accidentally stumbled upon a competent melee shugenja if you focus on disabling and not killing (which, incidentally, fits with the Phoenix pacifist stance). Bo of Water gives you a free raise for knockdowns (and you'll get another at Staves 5, making every attack a possible knockdown), and with a 3 Agi and 3 Str, you can now get people into a grapple with Jiujutsu and maintain it relatively consistently.

Of course, bushi will have higher Agi or Str (if not both), but they don't get an infinite goddamned Void pool, now do they?

This is where the spells come in and really make the damned thing ridiculous. I told Brian he had his starting spells (3, 2, 1, and 1 of any given element), then three he would choose as spells "gained" after his character's rise to Rank 2 (so any three spells he could cast at Rank 2), and then his 3 Rank 2 spells. It's important to note that with no Deficiency, your potential spell list becomes goddamned amazing. But you also have Importune, which is the ultimate "I have some downtime, so now I can cast any spell" mechanic.

So for spell selection, I suggested -

Rank One Character Creation Spells - 3 Void, 2 Water, 1 Fire, 1 Earth

3 Void (Rank 1 or 2): Drawing the Void, which allows you to cast a Rank 1 spell and recover 3 Void Points (given his stats), or 4 if you're feeling froggy and Raise three times (twice, due to getting a Free Raise on any Void spell). Touch the Emptiness, which is a nice quick combat spell that confers the statusfuck of Daze. Altering the Course, letting you blow as many Void Points per roll as you like. Which is kind of ridiculous especially when combined with Drawing the Void, which allows you to temporarily have more Void Points than your actual Ring.

2 Water (Rank 1): Bo of Water, for a good standby weapon that will eventually turn into Excalibat. Path to Inner Peace, the standard healing spell. Yup.

1 Fire (Rank 1): This was a toss up between Fires of Purity, which deals damage whenever the target attacks or is attacked, causing a ridiclous amount of damage overall, or Never Alone, which is sort've like a Bless that works even out of combat.

1 Earth (Rank 1): Earth's Stagnation, making one or more targets useless piles of inaccurate, slow moving non-threats.

Then three spells he could cast at Rank 2 (So Ranks 1-3 of Void, Rank 1-2 of anything else):

Moment of Clarity (Void Rank 3): The ability to just assume Rank 4 (or higher, as your Void increases) in a skill has endless usefulness. Combined with the ability to blow a shit ton of Void on a single skill roll (per the previous Void combo) means you can essentially make master-level rolls on any one skill roll a couple times a day.

Kharmic Intent (Void Rank 3): You share your Void pool with another target, letting them draw from your ridiculous Void, and/or you can use their points, which you will put to potentially better use.

Rejuvenating Vapors (Water Rank 2): Shugenja can cast a number of spells per Element per day equal to their Ring in that Element. They then get a pool of "any spell" slots equal to their Void Ring per day. This spell will refresh that once per day.

Reversal of Fortunes (Water Rank 1): For three rounds, a target simply rolls twice on any given roll and picks the better roll. There is no point at which this is not handy.

Soul of Stone (Earth Rank 1): This grants a huge bonus to avoid mental coercion and manipulation, which will be pretty handy for a socially driven campaign.

Benten's Touch (Air Rank 2): As mentioned, this will be a very talky-centric campaign, what with the law and all. Giving out 1k1+2 to social skill rolls is going to be damn useful.

Now, that's a pretty standardized toolbox for a shugenja to have. This doesn't even abuse one of the most abusable Water spell combos in the game Silent Waters, which allows you to store a spell on yourself to activate later as a Free action, and Sympathetic Energies, which is already ridiculous when used with Silent Waters, but doubly good since most of the Void's best spells are self-only buffs. Being able to move spell effects off yourself to others is great, and then you realize that Importune, which allows you to get temporary access to any spell you could cast but haven't learned is a skill roll. Since you have no deficiency, the spells you can choose from to Importune are much more than most Shugenja. And you can have all the Void in the world to spend on that roll.

So you can potentially drop two spells - I suggest Bo of Water and probably Soul of Stone, to get those. But without Bo of Water, you can spend less time worrying about combat (sticking to Jiujutsu), and free up some skill points you would have put in Staves.

I'm not sure which setup I like better, but I'm personally leaning towards the latter one. I'm probably going to end up making this character as well and playing it in a game Kim is running.

Oh God They Let Me Mind The Kids

Above: my brother's kids. Sometimes, it's difficult to really grasp the relationship I have with them, since I hardly get to see them, and their father and I barely talk. But Vicki, their mom and my brother's ex-wife, moved to Temple last year, so I get to see them a bit more now. A couple weekends back, she needed a babysitter to handle the chitluns, and I was pretty happy to comply. I picked them up in Georgetown at about 10:30am, waiting in some sub shop there. It reminded me a little of when mom and Alex would exchange Alex's kids with his ex-wife at ice cream shops and the like. I was fortunate enough to not have to go through that, since mom and dad ended up living a few miles from each other.

I wasn't entirely sure what to do with the kids for the whole day, so I brought them back to the house and turned on the X-Box, opened a box of spare Legos, and hoped for the best. AJ and Connor liked the bricks, and AJ had a rotation of movies to watch over and over. I was reminded quickly of how I would watch Daniel a lot and there was a 3-4 year stretch of my life where I could recite The Jungle Book line for line.

We ended up going to Pease Park for a bit, then over to Amy's Ice Creams to screw around. I was careful to let the kids know that the proper name of the place is not Amy's Ice Cream, but Amy's Ice Creams, lest the Austin kids beat them up and start talking about underground music at them.

Two things stuck out from the whole day, to me - one, as I watched the kids play on the table with Legos and watch their movies, I realized that apparently certain insecurities of mine have no bounds. I was struck by the thought that they didn't really like me so much as my house. Naturally, that was a dumb thing to think. Of course they like my stuff more than me, or rather, they don't really see a separation between the two. They're kids.

Second, I wondered again at how things with Ian could have gone how they did. After having a prime example of our own parents in regards of how to efficiently destroy a home and marriage, did we learn nothing? Or do things like that get passed down as examples and models for "normal" rather than cautionary tales to children. Will Ian's kids grow up thinking how things went down is the norm? What I hope is something I think every generation hopes, once they've realized how they've screwed up - please let these children be smarter than us. Good God, please.

My brush with being a hipster

I didn't buy any skinny jeans, and I don't like PBR. However, I decided a few weeks back that I should take on a second job to help clean up the medical bills I racked up last year and the loan for replacing the AC uptake unit a couple months ago. For those of you who don't know what an uptake unit is and haven't tabbed over to Google Image Search yet, it's the big airflow unit that most people envision when you say "AC unit in my garage" or somesuch. The thingy that pulls in the air, cools it, and throws it all around your house. It's called an uptake unit because it takes air... up... ?

The problem with getting a second, part-time, job is that I already have one that eats up at least 40 hours a week, and has a tendency to need me on weekends and evenings with constant but irregular frequency. So scheduling would be an issue. Also, I am a grown-assed man, so I am not gonna go flip burgers or push carts or whatever. I have the luxury of not needing the income, so I can be a little picky. And like most things, I quickly allowed a little power and choice to go to my head quickly.

I found an ad for a pedicabbing company that was hiring. For those not familiar, pedicabbing was easily described to me as "rikshaws that white people drive". In this particular case, it was a little trailer I hitched to the back of my bike and would pedal people around downtown Austin. It seemed like a pretty good plan - the pay was completely in untrackable (untaxable) tips, my bike was in pretty good shape, I myself am in pretty good shape, and I'm pretty familiar with the bar district.

Pretty familiar.

So after contacting the guy, I was told there would be some licensing I would have to pay for. Understandable. Something to the tune of $50, which seemed ok, and the kind of money I would make back in a day or so. The annoyances, though, started early. The dude let me know I had to do a background check and a driving check, which I had to get one online and one in person. After spending time taking care of that, I went back to him and he had me fill out an application... one I could have done beforehand. At that point he told me to go downtown to some other office and hand all this stuff in plus another filing fee. So I did. Then there was a test that no one told me about. It was really starting to feel like some godawful WoW quest chain where you went back to the same place over and over and you yell at the monitor "HEY JUST TELL ME THE WHOLE LIST OF SHIT TO DO, I CAN GET IT ALL DONE IN ONE TRIP GREAT THANK YOU."

So finally after getting the license itself, come the rules. Or rather, that's where the rules were vaguely hinted at to me, and well after the rules should have been explained in full (or perhaps someone could have told me these rules even existed before I got $70 into fees to start). Now, I understood at this point that this is a city-regulated service, so there would be rules and regulations to follow. But it was starting to feel like one of those situations where you had to guess and hope you guessed right. Because any sort of "what should I know about this" question was met with "read the (300+ page) regulations online", but people were MORE than happy to jump in with "Oh you shouldn't have doooonnee thaaat!" whenever I took a step. People were already happy to get on my case anyway, as I guess the usual age for these folk was early to mid 20s, and I had to be a card carrying member of the Pitchfork music commentary squad or something. The fact that I had a decent car and didn't have the current "I'm looking homeless on purpose" costume going for me also alienated some folks.

But that's fine, because they had the personal odor part of "homeless on purpose" down pat. This isn't to say they were all stereotypical beardy I'm-not-a-part-of-your-SYSTEEEMMMM folk, but many of them were very much so. Everything seemed to revolve around how pedicabs were better for the environment, local co-op groceries, and what local shows and/or indie publications they just digested. It was seriously like a Mr. Stereotype Pageant, I honestly thought I was being fucked with for a little bit.

My training consisted of a nice guy following me in his pedicab for about ten minutes, making me drive him one lap around the drinky district, and then saying "alright!" That was really it. Where I could and couldn't park, how I got the trailer hitched if no one was around the shop, where I pay my rent or what the rent fees were, how the scheduling works.... none of that was explained proactively, only in jabs of "hey why haven't you done X".

As for the cabbing itself, it was alright. A ridiculously intensive leg workout, at the very least. Most of the customers were your usual downtown bar folks, which meant I loved them all in various ways. Angry drunk lesbians. Obnoxious drunk fratboys. Condescending drunk 50-somethings. WOOOOO-ing drunk party girls. Cause-headed drunk hipsters. You know, my people. The problem really came from two other groups - the cops and other cabbers.

The other cabbers were just about 20% nice, conversational types, and 80% cutthroat assholes. I don't really blame the assholes, because their ability to pay their bills and eat was living or dying with their ability to get asses on the cab. So when other cabbers literally cut me off, ran stop signs past me, or other such techniques to get riders that were waving me down, I didn't get too pissed.

On the other hand, apparently Austin has a problem with bored cops picking on pedicab drivers just for sport. Cabbers getting tickets for having their bikes parked somewhere that was fine last week. Cabs getting stopped and inspected by one cop, then inspected by the bike cop that was with him two blocks later. I managed to get harassed at least twice a night, all times I was able to get out of any trouble mostly because I know when my options are "shut up, shrug, and apologize for whatever it is" or "get fucked with by people who want you to give them an excuse and won't be taught a moral lesson, guy" that the former is usually the best bet. Unfortunately for the other drivers, they were definitely the types to yell at cops, call them pigs, holler about how the man is keeping them down, etc etc.

So, in other words, my fellow drivers were happy to screw out their peers for cash and then lose it all because they can't keep their mouths shut. It's like they do and don't want the money all at the same time. Very Zen, I guess.

After one particular night where I made literally $0 the night before and was busting my ass yet again the next night to have a grand total of $30 in my pocket after four hours, I stopped and analyzed my situation. My "boss" and fellow drivers gave me zero advice on how to really get rides, I was running around AND parking in places to get rides, realizing that I was paying for the privilege of being harassed by cops... I decided I was done for the night and any other night. Even if I made a decent wad of cash, there was an endless line of hoops to jump through, no real guarantee business would be good even if I broke my back at it, and one power-tripping cop looking for a little confirmation of his awesome power could make a whole night's profit vanish.

So I just put the bike rack back on the rear of my bike and decided I had made back about as much as I had spent on the licensing. The time and effort I chalked up to a lesson learned and a life experience and all that other "builds character" crap your parents used to talk about when they were making you clean out horse stalls.

Tiny paper worlds.

This is Abby's dice bag. It's relatively small, as are her dice - about 1/4th the size of standard D6s, D10s, D20s, and so on. The unfortunate thing for Abby is that we give her a lot of grief for being Jewish, so upon seeing that, I began to make a comment. She knew what I was going to say as soon as she saw my mouth move. "Abby, is that your pouch of Jew gold?"

It was not. Abby is in my Sunday game, that has morphed several times to now become a Pathfinder D20 campaign that I have set in a city similar to Silvermere from MajorMud. It's a whole smush of nerdery, and I think it'll do just fine. Ben is in the game, and as the only person (including myself) who has had much experience with the system, he's been very patient explaining a few things to us as we go. Kim, Tony, Stephen, and Nikki round out the group, who will be clearing out problem areas in the slums and overrun sections of the city.

I don't know how it'll go - it's going to be largely dungeon crawling with a mix of social/political issues to tackle. In this setting, Silvermere is a great city that has been cut off from the distant Empire that spawned it. It was effectively a miracle of modern magical travel - the Empire was able to establish a remote outpost that quickly grew into a thriving city, due to technological and magical advances. Of course, that all went away in an invasion that turned these marvels against the Empire from within, and Silvermere has been cut off now for two full generations. The power struggles are relatively obvious to imagine. With no greater power to answer to, local laws and certain unpopular mandates become harder and harder for the remaining few (power hungry) nobles to cling to.

The other game I'm running now is a Legend of the Five Rings game on Tuesdays. Ben, Scott, Monica, Brian, and Brenna play a handful of Crab samurai dealing with the Destroyer Invasion and the never dull prospect of working side by side with the Scorpion. This particular part of the campaign is drawing to a close and the players have opted to skip ahead in the timeline to keep up with the ongoing metaplot. Since this was the first time any of them have played L5R, it's going to allow them the ability to roll new characters with lessons learned from their first.

Of course, it also gives me a high incentive to push through as many tragic deaths as possible. Brenna's archer contracted the Taint and is now a thrall of two powerful maho-tsukai who have come into the possession of Black Scrolls. Monica's shugenja has had the misfortune of being saved by a Scorpion giving his life for her, meaning she is now deep, deep in the Scorpion's pocket. Brian's Yasuki has an unhealthy habit of trying to deal with courtiers of all stripes on their own turf - a habit that may cause trouble once they arrive in Bayushi lands to help defend the Scorpion.

Interesting times, as the saying goes.

Excellent work, you didn't die

Monica's birthday was technically Thursday, but this was taken Saturday at her combination birthday/housewarming. I don't think I've been to this particular sort of event, but as I had given the couple a housewarming gift beforehand, I felt secure in simply showing up with a gift for Mon, putting some cornbread on their counter, and then drinking all of their whisky. Here we witness the birthday girl in her natural element - opening boxes of tea, tea pots, and other sundries associated with the general craft of boiling dry leaves and drinking their harvested souls.

We also got to meet Tiddlywinks, their retired racing greyhound adoption. She seemed a bit tired and skittish, and it made me think of how rough that dog's life had to be. Sort've. There's a school of thought that proclaims dogs in general enjoy any form of bonding and discipline, so being trained to be a race dog would be great fun for the canine in question. On the other hand, it's a very disciplined, low affection environment. The dog seemed to be wary the entire time we were there, and I don't think it was just because of the number of people.

We milled around, Scott showed us bits from the Old Republic beta, and we did a sing along with the Buffy Musical. Between her need to genuinely clap and giggle happily at her gifts and how she flung herself into singing, I shared with her my general opinion of all that nonsense - that she was able to just be unabashedly gleeful about things, and it was a trait others should envy. The two of them together, Scott and Monica, seem to have a general clarity of purpose and vision that escape most. I don't think they're perfect people or some model of anything in particular, but they both seem very keen to find out what they want to do, and just do it. I suppose to someone like me, who gets distracted by so much so easily, that seems like a remarkable thing

Jigsawing comic books

Assignment for AEG is due in a week. I've been buckling down more on it, but there's a bit of a hump I can't seem to get over. It's not so much writing block as a writer's... slog. I know what needs to be written and how to write it, it just somehow feels excruciating to do so. I guess this is what technical work is like.

Plans for GenCon are pretty much finalized. Scott, Monica, and Nikki will be driving up to Indy with Kim and me on the Tuesday before. It's not going to be the most comfortable trip ever, but as the man in Lock, Stock says, "don't knock it, it's cheap." I'm interested to see how Scott and Mon manage the con, since they're definitely interested in the stuff overall, but they don't have a particular hook like Kim and I do. I don't imagine I'll be spending as much time in the card hall this year, but I didn't plan on doing so last year either. Since this trip comes at the cost of delaying our new windows even further, I'm goddamned certain I will have a good time. If I am not enjoying myself, I will start feeding anime cat-girls to the bloated Klingon cosplayers until something amuses me.

Last night was Abby and Rachel's X-Men themed murder mystery party, and it went off surprisingly well. I say "surprising" not because I had a lack of faith in those two, but because from my personal experience, wedging that many people in to a small space and giving them conflicts to resolve (fictional or not) ends ... dramatically. Things were pretty calm, though, despite the 80-degree-and-hey-did-we-all-wear-multi-layered-costumes heat in the house. There were a few people who were sore that they couldn't finish their objectives, but overall everyone seemed pretty happy about it.

I got to play Gambit, which was neat and a little intimidating to me. One, since he's such a Goddamned flirt, I always worry about people taking it a little too seriously and getting creeped out. Two, my Cajun accent is horrible. So hopefully no one would mind I was just going to talk like me. And Wade Wilson. See, I had originally decided to play Gambit as a slow-talking, sly man of few words like in the comics, but we were given backstories and told, effectively, "Look we had to sort've fuck with some histories here to make the game work, please use this information and don't argue with us about comic book canon." Which I totally understood. You had to pull some logical strings to get some of those folks into the field together, and you also had to have connections and goals that worked as a unit.

So, after reading Gambit's history, I decided that he didn't really sound like Remy from the comics. No, he came off, to me, as more of a quick talking dude like the blonde guy from Community. So I went with it. Gambit was pretty much half Gambit, half Deadpool, and a lot. Of. Words. I spent the whole night running around poking and prodding people about what they were up to and trying to get them to move in directions that I cared about. Considering the main thrust of the plot was that someone murdered Erik, and Remy wouldn't have really cared about that, I really focused on about 1/3rd of the group. But hooo boy, watching shit happen after I knocked one person one way and another person some other way was hilarious. Things didn't always go to plan (and it blew up on me a couple times), but that was pretty fun, too.

Also, Dawn and I were a pretty interesting duo. With her as Rogue and the both of us pretty much trading off on helping each other out, it was hilarious. All it takes for us to really bond and hold hands and work together is a fictional superpowered tyrant dying. Who would have thought it'd be so easy?

The costume was my only real regret. On one hand, I'm sad I couldn't find a nice brown trench, but, again - 80 degrees indoors. I also bought a pair of black jeans to wear which turned out to be some weird hipster skinny shit with a faux tribal art stitch on the back. Wayyyyy too douchebag for me, and even too douchebaggy for the newly-smarmy Gambit. Hopefully I can return them today. 

Subsidizing Self-Defeating Behavior

A recent exchange led to a bit of a rant regarding the identity and attitude of the poor. Figured I'd keep this one around, since it's something I like to talk about. The first paragraph is something someone had said, the rest is all me. I had to quote myself because we broke the topic into a new thread, not because I am in sloppy makeout love with my own writing.

Bloo Driver wrote:

LobsterMobster wrote:

I don't want to derail here, and I know this is a link to Cracked, usually not the most serious or profound website, but I've read a lot of this guy's stuff. It's kind of amazing he's still alive. I encourage everyone to at least give it a skim before calling poor people lazy, because he is poor despite working harder than is reasonable to ask of anyone: Link. Sure there are people who are poor because they're lazy. There are also people who are poor because life just does not give any quantity of any fraction of a sh*t over whether you live or die.

At the very least, pay attention to the part where he needs to pay $500 for a water leak because he couldn't afford $150 for a plumber till his next paycheck. That's not laziness.

I need to qualify some things before I make a statement regarding this article.

1.  I read Cracked daily. I'm often surprised at the insight put into the articles of a satire/comedy site, and regularly refer said articles to friends much as you have above.
2.  I work about 50-60 hours a week at a job where I specifically help the financially disadvantaged do things such as build credit, attain homeownership (if that's what they wanted in the first place), find ethical banks, and handle personal finance management.
3.  I personally make near-nothing because my job is a not-for-profit, and we are regularly worried about our doors closing on a quarterly basis.

That being said, that is easily one of the most ignorant and incorrect articles to ever appear at any time on Cracked's front page. It barely falls into the "correct in general but bad at details" category. I don't want to derail the thread too hard about why it's so bad, but I will if you guys like.

First of all, let's get some framework done here. The article in question cites a report (Workingpoor Project's periodic report) which cites a report (US Census Bureau (Factception!)) that focuses on the "working poor family", which is a relatively nebulous term. In this case, the definition here boils down to a "family" being at least three people - a couple and one child that lives full time with the family and is under 18. "Working" defines two or one incomes where the household puts together at least 39 hours of work time combined, or less if someone was recently out of a job and is actively seeking employment. So right out we can toss out childless couples or single folks. But we do want to consider them, in general, right? Now we get to the "poor" definition. So we look to the US Health and Human Services Guidelines for poverty last year - 10,830 for a single resident household. You'll notice the matrix counts up to 200% of the poverty line as statistics to be considered, and you may ask why? Are you poor at 100% of the poverty line or what, here? The reality is that, even above the poverty line, most government and charitable programs identify financial neediness in people all the way up to the 200% mark.

Or, as I was callously told once by someone who didn't like our company's policy of helping anyone, "Families who make over $40,000 a year don't have real problems."

It's really important that when we talk about the poor and poverty and all of this that we have some sort of baseline to view statistics from, because the word poverty is extremely subjective. Let's make sure we go back and get the correct context for this person's article, though, after all of the numbers fly by - a working poor, statistically average family here is four people (two adults, two nonworking children) that makes $43,512 each year maximum. That word maximum is important because I've personally noticed when you talk about income limits or poverty consideration limits, people tend to confuse the ceiling with the baseline.
So, with some of that in mind, let's take a look at the article.

Quote:

What I am saying is that people are quick to tell you to pick yourself up by your bootstraps and just stop being poor. What they don't understand is the series of intricate financial traps that makes that incredibly difficult.

This is a correct point. I want to emphasize this because I've noticed if I don't go on and on and on about how unfair the poor have it rather than try to look at it analytically, people think I'm a baby eater. Which I am, but for purely personal reasons.

Quote:

This is the future, where many businesses no longer accept cash as payment. That means you are required to have a checking account to function in the economy. And if you're poor, that means at some point you're going to get bank-****ed. Because having a checking account while poor doesn't just mean you have to be responsible and good at math -- you have to be perfect. Meticulous, flawless record keeping is the difference between surviving and having the bank seize your next paycheck.

This is true for everyone. The situation he's about to describe is a liability for a lot of people because nearly no one keeps excess funds in their checking account (assuming they have one). People move these funds to savings (which doesn't do them a lot of good, but that's something else entirely), and even overdraft protection doesn't work as well as people tend to think.

So he goes on to say, effectively, "If you don't balance your checkbook, the bank rapes you in check fees." Yes. Duh. I don't know what else to say about that. I think he had a point here that he failed to make so I will make it for him - proportionally speaking, bank fees hurt the poor way more than anyone else. A $35 overdraft fee is more likely to send the poor spiraling out of financial control, but it's not actually more likely to happen to them than anyone else. People, in general, are completely horrible about managing their spending money. And I don't mean "spending money" like "free money that you have after bills and baby maintenance". No, I mean money they spend, which for most people is 100% of their money. They are bad at all of their money, is my point, and this is not a "poor person problem".

After that, we get a marginal treatment of the actual damn problem - check cashing shops. Fees to use the money you earned is ridiculous, but thanks to the wildly inflated story this guy spins about the banks hating you and wanting you to die*, the poor are less likely to bank at all because they feel the instant they put their money into a financial institution, there is a man somewhere dreaming up ways to make it vanish. So they go to check cashing places, which will also helpfully give you title and payday advance loans (mentioned later). So already, this article is well on its way to reinforcing part of the problem! Hooray.

(*of course, he takes a line to mention that you can talk to them like they have real blood in their veins, almost like a person)

Quote:

Think you're too smart to ever use one of those shady "payday loan" places? Well, you should know that nobody thinks they're a good deal. People go there because they're choosing between which ****ing provides the most lube. Say the gas bill is a month past due, and they're threatening to turn it off (if so, it's $150 to get it reconnected). Or you're about to be late on a credit card payment (which would be a fee and a doubling of your interest rate). Or your favorite S&M whip broke, and Whipfest is coming up (entry fee is nonrefundable). That is when you find yourself swallowing your pride and heading to the payday loan place.

No, actually, people take out payday advance loans because 1) The aforementioned loathing of banks, and 2) They really don't understand how much trouble they're asking for the first time. The above situation is a distant third. Now, to be fair, there are a great deal of folks who finally get it (or, rarely, understand right off) but can't stop their "need it now" attitude.

The amazingly stupid part here is that he mentioned the cost of a payday loan is a flat 15.5% interest charge (which is wildly inaccurate and too low, but it's enough to make him look stupid here) and then later states that it's better than going back to the bank and their fee cycle. Really? Simple math tells us that it only takes us to get just over $200 in need to break even with the fees, and he uses a $500 example. And honestly, if you need $500, you can get a relatively inexpensive personal loan from the bank you don't have because you listen to people like this. The interest fee will be smaller.

Either that or you can, don't get the pitchforks and torches yet, get a credit card and use it wisely, for things like this. Getting a credit card is ridiculously easy, even today, even if your credit stinks. Of course, using the payday loans every few weeks is wrecking your credit, which makes his next point both wrong and hilariously misinformed.

Quote:

You'll find out the problem the next time somebody does a credit check -- having no credit will stop you from getting a loan or an apartment just as fast as having bad credit. And more importantly, if you have old bad credit due to a bunch of previous ****ups, simply vanishing off the credit map doesn't do anything to fix it.

The old "no credit is worse than bad credit" addage makes me cringe every time I hear it. Now, in this case, he's saying no credit is just as bad as bad credit, which is also incorrect. Sure, if you want a car or a house, then yes you will need a credit history. However, most of the examples he cites - rentals, utilities, cell phones, small loans - all deal with folks who have no credit: students and/or people who just moved out of their parent's house. They have programs, they make exceptions, because they know a large chunk of their business would go away if they didn't. It's not as ideal as having excellent credit, sure, but it's certainly not as bad as actual bad credit history/scores.

Quote:

So repairing credit means opening accounts (having a cell phone plan is a good one, having your utilities in your own name -- as opposed to the landlord's -- is another) and, you know, making sure to pay your ****ing bills on time.

Someone fire the factchecker. Bills where you are not borrowing and repaying do not appear on your credit history unless they are collections accounts. A recent exception to this is property management companies more commonly (but not universally) reporting your lease as a loan where the total borrowed is X*Y, with Y being your rent (and thus your monthly payment) and X being your term.

Quote:

And don't bother trying to shortcut the system by saving the shoebox full of cash, getting a loan, then paying it all off the next month. Length of credit is part of your credit score. They want to know your ability to make steady, long term payments without missing a month or being late.

Hey he got one right. It's the Beck Theorem - keep flinging stuff out there till something sounds good.
Onward -

Quote:

***t happens, always at the exact worst time. A tire blows on my car and, without a spare, it instantly becomes a paperweight. There's $80 for a new tire, $50 for a tow. Now, it's a good idea to have a separate bank account set up specifically for these situations because they are unavoidable. It's also a good idea to have a sex slave or two just sitting around in case your balls need shaved. It's not that ****ing simple.

Yes, it is. I get a lot of hate here but the simple fact is that if you have an income, you can save. You can save maybe $3 a month, but you can save. The hurdle to savings is not lack of income, it's a lack of validation. Saving $3/month feels useless, but out of literally hundreds of clients I've counseled, every single one of them that I convinced to carve out a ridiculously small amount of money did so, and within a year usually worked their way up to saving $25-$50 a month. That puts them ahead of the majority of the country. And they were making just around 120% of the poverty level in the majority of the cases. Saving money feels useless when you feel like you can't save anything useful. But when you start saving, it really is like working out. You see results, you get confident, and you get more dedicated.

Yes, crap happens, and the savings goes away, and that sucks, hard. But that's much better than everything he describes hereafter. And it is avoidable. The most damaging attitude among the poor right now is that there is no real way out and anyone who says otherwise is just out of touch.

PS Once again this guy is marveling at how this is a poor person problem specifically. And my attitude is the one seen as out of touch. (LARGE EYEROLL EMOTE HERE)

The last point is both huge and small at the same time. I say this because the point he makes is, effectively - You can't get a better job because you're too busy reacting to your crappy poor life to do anything proactive. Which, to be honest, is a large consideration.

Quote:

Sure, you can take classes at night at a community college or something. Maybe you'll even get financial aid or loans to pay for your books or tuition. What they will not pay for is the time you missed at work while you were in classes or for a babysitter or for transportation. And you sure as **** better be certain that you have some kind of aptitude for whatever you're studying (which, by the way, you won't know until you've spent a year or two studying it) because that's the only chance you're going to get.

This is... true for everyone. This is not a poor person's problem. This is any adult's problem. I will be honest, when people say "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" or some similar empty air crap, I want to knifehand their throat. But in this case, the guy has taken the extreme opposite - "What you expect me to invest time and hard effort to exceed my current situation? Bull!" Sleep six hour nights. Study your face off. Put in overtime to get on the boss' good side. And he even writes about how difficult it is to get a second job - what year is this man living in? Companies prefer part timers now - they don't have to pay as much for insurance (or any at all, depending on the state and hours), and those part timers will beg for "overtime" which doesn't have to be time and a half.

In the end, this is just a guy letting off steam about his situation. And I don't mean to belittle that situation - being poor is horrible. It's a pretty easy thing to get frustrated about and feel like there's nothing to be done for it, but this guy should have kept this crap on his blog and not been able to put it out there so other, similarly uninformed people, could nod their head and feel validated.

This ship is troubled only because this ship we're on is sinking.

What a month. I've been meaning to jot some stuff down here so I don't forget, but my resolve to write in this more has gone to crap apparently.

About a month ago was the Austin Kotei, and it was good to see some folks I hadn't seen in awhile, as well as meet some new ones I had only vaguely bumped into now and again. Jim, Gio, and Reese and some other folks came out Friday night to the Highball to see Karaoke Apocalypse, but only the aforementioned three made it downtown with us to 6th street. Was a long night, and we shut it down at Maggie Mae's before heading back to our respective beds to wake up for the Kotei.

I realized, far too late, that I had forgotten the existence of an entire expansion in my rush to get a deck built for a game I hadn't played since GenCon. Bryan was good enough to lend me some Crane Control mess that he would later remark about, "If I had known that'd get played in a tournament, I'd have built it different." Went 2-5, which was pretty horrific. It was kind of neat to poke around virtually unknown to most folks, as I was used to heading to events like this as part of a huge entourage and having a sort of meta-event where we just talked to each other. Briscoe ended up winning, then much later crashing at my house at something like 1am.

I had left after the first seven rounds to go to the combined birthday of several folks (Kim, Justin, Abby). Things were weird a bit, as folks don't like to lose trivia games, and Jim/Gio showed up for a hot minute then booked because they knew no one and apparently Jim was out of "meet strangers and impress them with descriptions of my dick" energy.

The next weekend was a lull, sort've a break for a breath, because that weekend was rough, and then the two weeks after the break were gonna be rough. Alycia's wedding was up the next week, which meant a 11 hour drive to KC. In the cold - or rather, in the "cold", as Texas has trained my body to believe that 50 degree winds is cold now. The wedding was a good opportunity to drive around the city, see old friends I don't get to see enough of, and see what's changed in the city for the past five years. I got to get sick on Grinders food with Adam, visit Sheridan's and Blue Koi with Jake, Tyler, Rob, Z, Dennis, Jon, and Dan. It was like a highlight of "old times shit" right there.

I stayed with Matt, and apparently he nor Marlena were used to having houseguests. We (Kim, Nikki, and myself) tried to be good, but we are a loud, boisterous folk. Alycia was unnaturally calm for a bride, and even Ian managed not to do anything ridiculously stupid for the most part the whole time. I didn't get to see Daniel, but I did get to see Ian's new kid, which I think was perfectly awkward, so there's that. The drive back was no bueno, as it was pretty much raining hard until we got to about Dallas. But, Sunday night, we got in, dropped off Nikki, and zoomed home so I could unpack, do laundry... and fucking pack again for Florida.

Since we hired a new counselor in Florida, it was my duty to head down there for a week, help him acclimate, and see what he'd need to get things going. The week was sadly uneventful, since between handling Luis' induction into the company and my own work, I left the hotel room only to eat, workout, and a single hour long session of sitting out, reading, and enjoying the weather. I was told, repeatedly, since I was flying on the Monday and Friday after Bin Laden was killed that I was taking a huge risk. Right.

Anyway, Friday I got back, got home to find bugs had overrun the downstairs, the upstairs main pipe was clogged, and the house was in general disarray. Some sushi later, I managed some laundry and kitchen work before getting to bed for a few hours. Saturday morning, we headed out to Lake Pflugerville to hang out with Claire, Erin, and Stephen... and the Sun. The burning, burning Sun. I promise with deep conviction that we sprayed sunblock on multiple times, but everyone who went (and we were only out for two, maybe three hours) all have sunburns. My particular fate was the most damned, as I am still recovering (two days later) from a burn that makes me gasp in pain just to put my pants and shirt on. It's been difficult to sleep like this, since rolling over in bed or shifting (both of which I'm told I do a lot) causes me to wake up in pain. Fun, fun.

Sunday was the raid, but I'm not possessed of enough energy to go on about WoW right now. Not yet. Today I rolled in to work, took care of all the stuff that built up and I couldn't get to remotely, and now I'm going to leave a little damn early because ... of... I say so. yes, that.

I smolder with generic rage.

So let's stop and take a look at the budget for a second, since I'm hardly ever right about things but I really want to take a moment to be sadly correct in my assumptions about Obama and his administration. First, some statistics. From the following two links, we can get good figures on the things that were cut in this budget "deal".

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/12/budget-deal-cuts/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-12/epa-budget-cut-will-restrict-enforcement-of-clean-air-rules-activists-say.html


With those statistics, someone on a forum I frequent took the time to look back at the previous budget and show how much was cut as a percentage from these programs. It's important to take a look at both the dollar amount and that percentage, because it really tells where priorities are and what these fine folks in Congress believe aren't worth much. The first line in each category is the overreaching subject, with the breakdown of cuts underneath there to illustrate what portion of the program they're coming from.

But first, some kittens. You will thank me in a few minutes.

Total Cut: ~40 billion (3.67%)

• -Agriculture Cut: 3 billion (12.9%)
• ____-Food Safety and Inspection: 10 million (1%)
• ____-Agricultural Credit Program: 433 million (?%)
• ____-Agricultural Research Service: 64 million (?%)
• ____-National Institute for Food and Agriculture: 126 million (?%)

• -Commerce, Justice, Science Cut: 10.9 billion (17%)
• ____-Increased funding for National Institute of Standards and Technology $? (?%)
• ____-Increased funding for FBI and prisons $? (?%)
• ____-Justice Department Appropriations: 946 million (?%)
• ____-Commerce Department Appropriations: 6.5 billion (?%)
• ____-Prohibits funding for Establishment of a Climate Service at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, approval of new fisheries catch-share programs, and for NASA or the Office of Science and Technology Policy to engage in bilateral activities with China.

• -Defense Funding: Increased by 5 billion (1%). Also includes an additional 157.8 billion as emergency overseas contingency operations. No money is to be used on transferring Guantanamo Bay detainees to the US for any purpose, or to construct or modify US detention facilities for them. The Secretary of Defense must provide a certification to Congress that a transfer to a foreign entity will not jeopardize the safety of the US or it's citizens.
• ____-Defense Earmark Cut: 4.2 billion (100%)
• -Energy and Water Cuts: 1.7 billion (5.1%)
• ____-Increases National Nuclear Security Administration: 697 million (7%)

• -Financial Services Cut: 2.4 billion (10%)
• ____-Reduces funding for construction of new federal buildings: 800 million (?%)
• ____-Eliminates the use of Federal and local funds for abortions in DC: $? (?%)
• ____-Reauthorizes the DC Opportunity Scholarships, including increase of 2.3 million (?%)
• ____-Eliminates the "Health Care Czar", "Climate Change Czar", "Car Czar", and the "Urban Affairs Czar"

• -Homeland Security Cuts:
• ____-HS Discretionary spending: 784 million (2%)
• ____-FEMA first responder grants: 786 million (?%)
• ____-Eliminate earmarks: 264 million (?%)
• ____-Rescind previous years' unused funds: 557 million ?%)
• ____-Increases fund for expected and existing 2011 disasters: 1.05 billion (65.6%) This is more than what was removed from first responders, so there are more disaster funds total

• -Department of the Interior Cuts: 2.62 billion (8.1%)
• ___-EPA: 1.6 billion (16%)
• ___-Land and Water Acquisition Fund: 149 million: (33%)
• ___-National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for Humanity: 25 million (?%)

• -Labor, HHS, Education: 5.5 billion (3.36%)
• ___-Title X (Family Planning): 17 million (5.4%)
• ___-Additionally Students can no longer draw two Pell Grants at the same time, which will provide an expected savings of 35 billion over the next ten years.

• -LegislativeBranch: 103 million (?%)

• -Military Construction/Veterans Affairs Cuts: 3.3 billion (4.3%)
• ___-Includes Increase of 13.8 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs. (?%)

• -State and Foreign Operations: 504 million (1%)
• ___-Prohibits pay raises for foreign service officers.
• ___-Contributions to UN and other International Organization: 337 million (?%)
• ___-Contribution to international banks and financial institutions: 130 million (?%)
• ___-International family planning activities: 73 million (?%)
• ___-___-US Contribution to the UN Population Fund Cut: 55 million (100%) This was a fun one, the document stated that is was “reduced to the 2008 levels. I looked up the 2008 levels to find that they were 0. Way to be open and honest.
• ___-The bill also maintains pro-Life policy provisions carried in fiscal year 2010.

• -Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development: 12.3 billion (18%)
  ___-High Speed Rail: 2.9 billion (116%) No that is not a typo. This completely cuts new High Speed Rail spending, as well as rescinding 400 million from last year, which I’m guessing was available because Republican States repeatedly turned down the money.
  ___-Transit funding total cuts: 991 million (?%)
  ___-TIGER grant cuts: 72 million (12%)
  ___-“Contract authority rescissions” (?): 3.2 billion (?%)
  ___-___-Old earmarks cut: 630 million (?%)
  ___-Department of Housing and Urban Development Cuts: 942 million (21.2%)
  ___-Increases Housing voucher program: 200 million (1.1%)

First, a note from the guy who put this together: "All numbers and percentages are from 2010 fiscal year, which was always provided, not from Obama's budget request. When Obama's request was included it was generally higher than 2010 fiscal year spending, but not always. And yes, you read that right. The $40 billion budget cuts include $140 billion dollars of increased military spending." So thankfully, we've actually cut 180 billion and put 140 of it towards military spending for wars that the majority of Americans aren't really too happy with. Let's go ahead and keep that in mind the next time someone levels a "how dare you fund Planned Parenthood with tax money taken from people who don't agree with it" type charge at some program.

I want to comment on the second to last line (Dept. of HUD) because I think that others might share my viewpoints on several of these budget items - "well what does that mean?" In this particular case, HUD's cuts are going to be felt primarily twofold: Obviously, employees will likely get laid off or have their salaries reduced. Also funding for housing and development programs is going to get hit extremely hard. HUD gives a large deal of funding to NeighborWorks, which institutes training and development programs nationwide for housing preservation (the softer term for foreclosure prevention), community development, and homebuyer education. The funding that doesn't go to NeighborWorks goes to similar, local agencies that help consumers understand the potential pitfalls and benefits of ownership, dealing with their mortgage lender on a fair basis, cope with the financial challenges brought on by ownership, and help owners understand their options when faced with a possible foreclosure.

Without this funding, a lot of these agencies are going to shut their doors, because they're not-for-profit organizations, and funding/granting from other sources has dried up hardcore in the past couple of years. Many of them have already gone through the cutback/salary reduction/layoff cycle to stay afloat. This is just a nail in the coffin for most of those. Without these agencies, there is literally no resource for consumers who need what amounts to a lawyer to help them understand the above topics. No one does it.

As was mentioned above, with budget cuts comes cuts everywhere and everyone believes that their interest is the one that should be exempt. But given the relative proportion of funding lost compared to other categories (21% vs most other areas suffering in the single digits), I am at that now familiar crossroad of enraged and exhausted. It has a particular dark humor to it as well, considering these agencies exist specifically to try and help counter the large abuses that led to many of our current financial woes - and Congress has seen fit to let the abusers stay merrily afloat but cut the lifeline to these not-for-profits "for the greater good".

Got my own thing now.

Just a quick update to write ~ post from my new tablet. I picked up the Asus slate yesterday.  As you   can see from the random tilde, the handwriting recognition and I are not best friends yet.  I hope this will change eventually. Either my penmanship will get better or this thing will eventually learn.

That is a Very Long Hallway

Monday night, myself, Stephen, and Nikki went to the Alamo on South Lamar to catch the advance screening of Your Highness. It was a triple feature, showing The Sword and the Sorcerer first, then Krull after Your Highness. Alamo had David Green (the director), Danny McBride (the dude), and Justin Theroux (played the evil wizard, and apparently the angry Scot in Charlie's Angels 2) there for questions and whatnot. It was a pretty good event overall, though I made the distinctly stupid decision of sitting through the whole thing on a worknight and getting to bed around 3am. Considering that my sleep time is a precious, rare thing, this is something I'm still paying for today.

Yesterday was a fucking marathon of classes, and I'm gonna bugger off work early today to go home and collapse. Just all around, work has been stressful in good ways these past couple months. We're still not entirely sure how long the company is going to be able to operate due to lacking income from grants and whatnot, but I've been burying myself in classes and writing material for the programs so I've had little energy to spare for the other shit.

That's mostly it for now. I'm just trying to make a goddamned habit of writing in this thing more often. I've put myself back to work writing on my projects and for other people, so I think it's important I get in the practice of this again.

Oh, about the blog title - yesterday I went to the new Travis County Jail building to give a class for the women's group there. I went through some of their airlock-type gates and eventually found myself staring down this hallway that was literally half a mile long. It was featureless beige with little green doors on the sides at regular intervals and I was struck by how completely isolated and buried I felt. I did the class in about an hour and left. After I got back outside, I turned and looked back at the building just to confirm it wasn't miles and miles below the surface; I was in fact simply in a building that whole time.

That night (last night) I had a dream that the world was in such a state that for some reason, the population had to take turns living in these big, multi-level domes underground for a year just so they didn't get too much exposure to radiation that had covered the surface. Everything was well-lit and the accomodations were good (similar to those space station shows like Babylon5 or Star Trek), but everything just felt slightly off. It was obviously unnatural, but it was also just sickeningly wrong in some way, like the rictus grin on a clown.

Happy Birthday, I Got You a Poke in the Eye

Today I am 31. Being 30 wasn't so bad, but it felt like a lot of time spent getting my footing right. I don't know if I'll ever really feel like an adult, but I know that certain things are different now, and people are at least looking at me like one. With the priveliges of being treated as an adult, there is also the responsibility to making sure you don't fuck it up too bad, I guess. I didn't get my novel finished. I didn't re-learn Spanish. But I did keep my home, I haven't managed to kill myself, and I'm slowly steering my day-to-day job back in a direction that I like. I need to get myself back in the habit of writing regularly.

I contacted Shawn a few weeks back to pick up some work from AEG. Medical bills are a monstrous bitch and paying off last year's trips is not going as quickly as I had thought. It really came down to "pick up a few checks from AEG" or "work part time as a waiter or something". The waiter thing may yet come to pass, I'm not too certain how going back to work for AEG will sit with me. It'll either be great and much better given the years I've had to understand what I want and what I am right to expect, or I'll just get disgusted and say nevermind after one assignment. Let's see what happens!

Raiding with the guild is on again. Cass asked me to pick up the raid lead spot because her semester this year is crushing her sanity. Fortunately, I haven't embarassed myself too bad, and Stephen xferred over to Blackhand to fill a DPS spot. Things are going pretty smoothly - two nights a week, ~3 hours each night, BWD one night and BoT the other. We're up to the end on both, though it's going to be a flustercluck till the end, I think. The threat of having to do Heroic raiding is looming large, as I'm currently playing a re-branded Shaper (Beerbraids!) as Resto, which is easily the weakest healing spec in the game right now. We wiped last night a few times and I kept thinking "Well, if this was a Paladin or Priest, we'd be alright." I'm not making many mistakes, but the simple throughput shortfall is making this harder than it should be. On the flip, I really like Shaman, and it's not pissing me off too much yet.

4.0.6 drops today, the first major rebalancing/tweaking patch since the expansion went live, and Resto Shaman is barely touched. It's not encouraging.

Took tomorrow off since I'm working this weekend. Probably gonna see if I can drag some folks to Mr. Tramps to check it out before we go there for Trivia for the first time tomorrow.