I have some mixed feelings about Diablo 3, and as is the custom among my people, I will now share those feelings with you in annoyingly granular detail. (more…)

My birthday was this week, and as a present to myself I’ve decided to give me a ton of extra work! (more…)

I have walked the path Dear Esther laid out for me twice. Once, back when it was a free fan-made modification for Half-Life 2, and again, when it returned renewed as a fully realized work of art, released on Steam. The world is bigger this time, and significantly more beautiful. But even if the game had been identical to the mod, I would still have payed for it. I owed the creator for the earlier experience.

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Sometimes, visiting the geeky corners of the internet can make me downright glad to be alive. This is one of those times. (more…)

My favorite things from the Comptroller of Maryland’s taxable businesses “Miscellaneous” section:

• Morticians, Monuments, Markers
• Itinerant Vendors, Peddlers
• Horse, Cattle, Pets, and Taxidermy
• Aircraft, Space Vehicle, Missile Mfg.

I want  a peddler’s licence. I want one. But it’s not the most accurate listing for me, and I don’t want to screw with the comptroller. Sigh. Missile Manufacturing it is.

I just had an eye opening moment of Privilege awareness. Yes, that’s with a capital P, you can start your dismissiveness glands salivating, as I’ve a nice chewy thought for them to dissolve before it reaches your brain where it might infect.

This particular moment comes to us from the Scalzi Cloudmind: the amalgamated intelligence of all commenters on Whatever. Shut up, cloudmind is a real term, we live in the future dammit. Scalzi pointed out a really interesting comment (#255 from this thread, linked for your reading pleasure) on one of his articles while discussing privilege himself. The article is worth a read, as is practically everything Scalzi writes, damn him and his beautiful words. (more…)

and I’m very happy about it. I’ve cut this in to two parts for brevity. Click here for the rest of the story.

Finally, what happened today:

I went in for the first of four procedures today. It hurt, but not a lot. Somewhere worse than a toothache, but not as bad as a root canal. I wouldn’t repeat it if I could avoid it, but eh, we gotta fix what we gotta fix. I’m up and out, walking on the damaged foot. That’s required, by the way. Walking avoids blood clots. It stings a little, but not much, and my gait is back to normal. I can’t wear my boots over the bandages, but I get to take those off tomorrow. Then it’s on to compression stockings.

I have to do this again, once every Wednesday and Friday until the end of the month. After that, I’m in the clear. Also, today was the biggest/worst of the lot.

Oh, hi there Poverty! How’ve you been? I haven’t seen you since… what? Like back at the PTF when I was living in DC on $1600 a month. Wow, it’s been quite a while hasn’t it?

Me? Oh I’m good. Yeah, just moved into a new place this year. Same job. No raise for 2011, because of Boehner.

What brings me back around to you? Well, I could blame the move or my locked salary, but let’s be honest here, I’ve been living it up like I’m still only paying half as much in rent as I actually am. My bad, I know. But it’s alright, I’m going to tighten my belt and chew up my savings. By the end of May, I’ll be out of your hair and back in the land of relative ease.

I may even get crazy and sell some crafts to bolster my income. Don’t quote me on that though, it’s all quite experimental, very hush hush. Anyways, I’ll be seeing you around at least for the next 30 days or so. I’ve got to go for now, I need to console my weeping accounts before they stain my balance sheets with their tears.

I finished reading Spellwright during my weekend trip to Vermont back in April. The book was a very fast read for me, which means it only took me twice as long to finish it as it would a normal person.

Normally, I hardly notice the delay. It just comes with the territory. People like me read slower…

I’m shying around the issue. Dyslexics like me. Dyslexics like me take longer to read a book than a normal person. I love books, but I’m slow to pick up new ones because they’re such an investment of time. With a really good book, I hardly notice. I noticed it this time though. I noticed it a lot.

Spellwright is a fantasy-adventure with some decent world building and good writing. Not necessarily a deep book, but definitely a fun one.

Unless you’re me, or someone like me. If you’ve dealt with dyslexia, then you’ll find Spellwright a bit deeper than you’d like. Why? Spellwright is a an adventure novel about our scrambled brains. Cloaked in a story of international intrigue and magical aptitude is a deeper tale of a very smart person — One who can’t string two sentences together without screwing at least one of them up.

Nicodemus Weal is a Cacographer, a wizard burdened with an inability to spell in a world where spelling is literal. Magical language is very unforgiving to the wizards who use it. All but the simplest spells die in Nicodemus’s hands. Yet this marginally functional wizard must confront a massive mess of international intrigue. He’s forced to defend himself and his mentor from accusations ranging from murder to high-treason and blasphemy.

Spellwright isn’t without a few problems. Author-self-insertion being one of them, along with a few world building gripes here and there, and my own personal dislike of magic built around glowy floaty runes (I blame MMO’s for that bad impression). Most of that is nitpicking though, if I had to name one real gripe with the book, it’s the complete wish-fulfillment plot of the protagonist not being a true Cacographer (he was cursed).

I whine and complain, but honestly I really loved Spellwright. In the end, I can sum up my feelings with one sentence: I wish I could’ve read it as a child.

This book evoked a lot of bitter memories in the midst of its entertaining plots. I rather imagine it’s a similar effect to A Wizard of Earthsea for People of Color. The revelation isn’t nearly as important or profound for a white guy with dyslexia, but I can better understand the impact now. Spellwright reaches back through the years to my impressionable youth, and tells a younger version of myself that I am not alone; There are others like me, and they can be heroes.

Okay folks. It’s time to recenter and refocus this discussion.

Let’s be blunt, my old article is long, rambling, and easy to misinterpret. I find that a lot of the comments focus not on my core point, but on some aside or small element that surrounds the main point of the article. So, let’s take a breather and recenter on the actual point that I’m trying to make:

CORE POINT:

Guys wearing “Team Dickwolves” shirts make women feel unwelcome at PAX. The fact that Gabe intends to wear a “Team Dickwolves” shirt to PAX shows that he doesn’t consider the feelings of women at PAX to be worth addressing.

1. I don’t care whether or not you personally are offended. There’s a large community of women gamers who feel unwelcome because of this.
2. I don’t care if you are a woman who isn’t offended, or if your wife/girlfriend/friend/daughter/coworker isn’t offended. There’s a large community of women gamers who feel unwelcome because of this.
3. I don’t care about your interpretation of the original comic. We’ve already discussed that and the issue is well settled. There’s a large community of women gamers who feel unwelcome because of this.
4. Look. Seriously. I don’t want to hear your thoughts about the “Sixth Slave” comic on Penny-arcade.com. We’re talking about a shirt. There’s a large community of women gamers who feel unwelcome because of the shirt.

So. One sentence long. Practically a tweet. There’s a large community of women gamers who feel unwelcome at PAX because of the dickwolves shirts. Gabe saying he intends to wear his shows that he doesn’t care.

Do you disagree? Awesome. No seriously. I want to hear your point and I look forward to debating you on it. No, I’m not kidding or being flippant. If you have a critique of the above listed core point, I’m genuinely interested in discussing that critique with you.

If you want to discuss any other point in the Dickwolves debate, then I welcome you to start a blog and discuss it there. If you try to comment, and your comment isn’t relevant or doesn’t add anything new, then it’s going in the trash bin. Sorry. Learn to debate better next time.