pedanther

Fiction books
Richard Beynon. The Shifting Heart
P C Hodgell. The Gates of Tagmeth (e)
John Ostrander, Luke McDonnell, et al. Suicide Squad volume 2

In progress
Paul Beatty. The Sellout
Terry Pratchett, Paul Kidby. The Last Hero (e) (re-read)

Non-fiction books
Havi Brooks. Dissolve Procrastination (e)
Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen. The Science of Discworld (e) (re-read)

( short, screen, and stage )
( books bought and borrowed )

Top of the to-read pile
Nnedi Okorafor. Binti

1. I've been listening a lot lately to the podcast Film Reroll, which has the premise that each episode a group of people play a one-off roleplaying campaign based on a famous movie, just to see how far off course the plot can go when it depends on dice rolls and player imagination instead of having an author handing out plot points and making sure things pan out in the way they intend. Pretty far off course, it turns out; apart from the obvious consequences like people muffing their dice rolls really badly and everybody dying, one of my favourite examples so far is an episode where one of the players ended up sitting on the sidelines for the whole thing, because the plot took a direction early on that completely bypassed the character they'd been planning to play.

Another example is the campaign I've just finished listening to, The Wizard of Oz. It follows the movie fairly faithfully up until the protagonists meet the Wizard (though a bit more smoothly in some places, as the players get some good dice rolls in when facing the obstacles the Wicked Witch puts in their path) -- and then the players have to decide how best to tackle the job of stealing the Wicked Witch's broom for the Wizard, at which point the plot jumps dramatically off the rails, and the campaign ends up turning into a four-episode, eight-hour epic fantasy quest with cut-throat politics and dragons. Bits of it are amazingly poetic and surprisingly moving, and it's the one so far where I really felt at the end like I had been immersed in a story and not just been listening to a group of friends joking around. (Not that there's anything wrong with listening to a group of friends joking around; that describes most of the podcasts I listen to regularly.)


2. Our run of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee has ended, as usual just when I felt I was really beginning to get the hang of it. (If I ever get to the end of a show and think, that's okay, there wasn't anything left to do here, that's when I'll really be sad.)

Next up is another production with a very long title, The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen's Guild Operatic Society production of The Mikado. It's this year's big production by the director who's done Oliver! and Chicago and suchlike in previous years, and I was actually quite looking forward to having nothing to do with it for a change, but then I was invited to come on board as assistant director and gets some hands-on experience in the running of a big production, and I didn't feel I could say no.


3. I got to go to exactly one meeting of the gaming group between the end of rehearsals for Spelling Bee and the beginning of rehearsals for Mikado, but I got to do the things I'd wanted to do, so that was good. As I mentioned last time, I had two games I wanted to play, and I got to play both.

Ingenious is an abstract pattern-based competitive game with a tricky scoring mechanic where each player is scored on several different criteria and only the lowest score counts, so if you get too focussed on building up on one score and neglect the others you can easily find yourself in real trouble. I started playing the app version last year and was sufficiently impressed by it to buy the physical game in the hope of finding people to play it with me. As it happened I found two, which made things interesting because the app version only does two-player games and so I'd never played a three-player game before. It turns out that, like many other games, it's rather more complicated and more difficult to get on top of with two opponents than with only one. I ended up not coming last, and considered myself well satisfied with my performance. The other two players seemed to enjoy themselves too, so I expect I'll take it along again another time.

Forbidden Island, which my brother gave me for Christmas, is a collaborative game in which the players are exploring an island for centuries-old lost treasures while dealing with the inconvenient fact that the island is rapidly sinking. (If memory serves, the manual claims that this is the result of an ancient booby trap set by the owners of the lost treasures, who apparently really didn't want them to be found again.) Mechanically, it's kind of like a more family friendly (less complicated, less worldwide catastrophe depicting) version of the collaborative game Pandemic, which is not a coincidence as they're both designed by Matt Leacock.


4. Recently the emergency jump start box in the car ran low on juice, which it announced by beeping loudly and regularly and loudly, which inspired me to drive directly home and look for the charge cable instead of stopping on the way to do the shopping as I'd intended. This prompted three observations:

First, that it was probably designed deliberately to make a loud and irritating noise clearly audible throughout the car specifically to make it impossible for its owner to contemplate putting off the job of recharging it, because it's not a good idea to put off charging a piece equipment you might need in an emergency. In which case, congratulations to the designer, it worked.

Secondly, while driving home I had cause to ponder the subjective nature of time, because the beeps didn't always seem regularly spaced; sometimes they seemed closer together, and other times further apart. The most convincing mechanism I've seen proposed for the subjective experience of time changing speed is that it's a function of memory; the same amount of information is coming in at the same rate all the time, but when nothing much is happening we don't bother to remember most of it, and then it seems like time has gone by really quickly, but when things get exciting more detail gets stored and then it seems in retrospect that the experience was stretched out more.

Thirdly, if I hadn't been able to find the charge cable when I got home, I'd have been stuck with a loudly beeping box that I had no way to shut up, and that would not have been fun. Here's where I benefited from some of the work I've been doing sorting my clutter into boxes. It took a few attempts to guess which box I would have sorted the charge cable into (gadgets and accessories? extension cords? stuff I'm going to put away as soon as I figure where it goes?) but it was still probably faster and less stressful than if I'd had nothing more to go on than "it's in this huge pile of clutter somewhere, probably".


5. We had the state election last weekend. Overall, it was a landslide victory for the Labor Party, which has been in opposition for the last eight years, and a crushing defeat for the Liberal-National coalition government. (Obligatory Aus politics footnote: The Liberal Party's name refers to their economic stance; they're conservative on social issues.) In my local electorate, the contest was much closer, to the point that we still, a week later, don't know exactly who the winner is. Normally by this point in a vote count it's clear who won and the rest of the ballot counting is just to find out by how much, but in this case it's split almost evenly between the three major party candidates, which never happens. In this case, the Labor candidate has the lift that his entire party's getting but is a newcomer to politics running against two well-known local identities with long track records in public service. The Libs' candidate may even have got a boost from his own party's misbehaviour, or rather from his response to it; a couple of times during the election campaign he got caught wrongfooted when his party announced policies that would have a signficant local effect without warning him first, and he wasn't shy about saying what he thought about that.

(In other news, the populist party that was expected to be a protest vote magnet did much worse in the election than expected, possibly because they were frankly and very visibly incompetent, with several of their candidates being kicked out of the party during the election campaign for doing things that a proper recruitment process ought to have caught ahead of time. It's all very well going "vote for us because you can't trust those professional politicians and we're not professionals", but being so utterly unprofessional inevitably invites people to wonder how you can be trusted to the run the place if you can't even hold the party together long enough to get over the finish line.)

I had wondered why the closing down sale for the Fluent Self online store didn't include The Monster Manual, which was kind of a flagship product. It turns out it's because The Monster Manual is the one thing that's still being sold now the store has closed.

Monsters, in Fluent Self parlance, are the creatures that squat in our heads and try to stop us doing things, because doing things will inevitably lead to getting things wrong and suffering horrible agonizing failure. I have my share chewing on me, and I've found that even just reading the description of the book was helpful. (The book itself I have not read yet; I probably would have bought it if it had been in the last chance closing down sale, but since it's available indefinitely, normal "well, maybe later" service has resumed.)

I was going back and forth about whether to do another Fluent Self post - would I be going on about it too much? - when I noticed that literally the first monster in the list of examples is "The 'PUHleeeeeeze, everyone else is doing the thing you want to do better than you ever could so why even bother - really why are you still even thinking about this' monster", which there have been sightings of in these parts recently - so I figured it was worth at least mentioning.

(The list also includes both "The 'Why even bother getting out of bed' monster" and "The 'Jeez, would you just get your pathetic lazy ass out of bed already' monster", which would be funny if it weren't so true.)

Fiction books
Gail Carson Levine. Ella Enchanted (e) (re-read)
Tamora Pierce. Trickster's Queen
Ellen Raskin. The Westing Game
Patricia C Wrede. Dealing with Dragons (e) (re-read)

In progress
Sharon Lee, Steve Miller. Scout's Progress (re-read)
Patricia C Wrede. Searching for Dragons (e) (re-read)

Non-fiction books in progress
Joachim Fest. Plotting Hitler's Death

( short, screen, and stage )
( books bought and borrowed )

Top of the to-read pile
Diana Wynne Jones. Deep Secret

1. Last week, the Rep Club had a quiz night to raise funds for renovating the theatre. I went along with a couple of friends and some of their friends, and upheld the noble and long-standing family tradition of coming second at quiz nights.


2. The house I'm renting is at that age where things are gradually wearing out and needing to be replaced, which makes me glad I'm only renting and not on the hook for what all this must cost. In the time I've been living here, I've seen the replacement of the hot water system, the toilet cistern, and the shower outlet pipe (which proved, on excavation, to consist of several large holes held together by rust), and at some point, something is going to have to be done about the rain gutters (see also: large holes held together by rust). In the circumstances, the fact that the kitchen sink takes several minutes to drain is such a minor detail that I haven't even bothered to mention it.


3. I caught part of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides on TV recently, including the scene where Captain Jack Sparrow learns he has a doppelganger who has been going around recruiting people in his name. Now I'm trying to remember if there's anything like that in the original novel; it's very much the kind of situation that would occur in a Tim Powers novel, though it would be played for understated horror instead of laughs and the scene where hero and doppelganger face off definitely wouldn't end with the same revelation that the scene in the movie leads to.

(While I'm on the subject, my opinion in brief of Pirates of the Caribbean is that the first movie was a pretty good swashbuckling pirate movie that happened to have some dark fantasy in, and the sequels tend too much toward being dark fantasy movies that happen to have some swashbuckling pirates in. And my opinion in brief of Tim Powers is that his novels are awesome, and I hope he got paid well for letting Hollywood plunder one of them.)


4. I've mentioned before that I have procrastination issues, which sometimes manifest in avoiding a job for months that turns out to be fairly straightforward and over in half an hour. A related problem is the one where I'm about to start on a job I know I can do when I notice an unexpected complication and decide to put it off while I think about (read: avoid thinking about) how it's going to affect things.

I think I've identified one of the underlying motivators for this sort of thing; put into words, it's something like "If I never start, there's no risk of it ending in everybody finding out I can't do it".

Having the words is useful; it suggests coping strategies. Due consideration of the actual probability that I won't be able to do whatever-it-is can be illuminating. Also, in some cases the fear that starting will lead to being discovered as a failure can be vanquished by the fear that not starting will lead to being discovered as someone who promised to do something and then never even started.


5. At the Toastmasters meeting this week, I was the designated MC, which also carried with it the duty of checking that people would be available for their rostered roles and arranging for gaps to be covered. The actual MCing part was not a worry, but the aspect that involved Being Organized and Phoning People kicked off the whole "this is going to end in disaster, the schedule will be full of holes, and it will be All My Fault" train, and up until a few hours before the meeting I was seriously considering calling in sick and hiding.

I got through it partly by the aforementioned due consideration of the actual probability of failure, partly by reminding myself that Toastmasters people are friendly and don't mind imperfect success as an outcome of honest effort, and partly by acknowledging that I also like my fellow club-members and wouldn't feel right dumping a potential disaster on one of them with a few hours notice -- but the single thing that tipped the balance was that I thought of the perfect joke to use in my opening remarks, and after that I couldn't bear the thought of not getting to deliver it.

(After all the stressing, the actual meeting ran smoothly and I'm very glad I went.)

1. There've been some upheavals in the United States since I last posted, what with the hurricane and then the election. I hope all of you who were in the path of either or both got through unscathed.


2. I had something timely to say about procrastination, and then I didn't get around to saying it. But recently I finally girded myself up and did a job I've spent hours actively avoiding over the course of several months. It presented no great difficulties, and was done and dusted in half an hour. (Rita Emmett has something very pithy to say in The Procrastinator's Handbook about putting more effort into putting a job off than it eventually takes to do the job; it's a common experience, apparently. It may be about time I read the Handbook again.) One thing I note is that after the first few weeks, I suspect I was largely putting it off because I'd been putting it off: every time my mind came near the thought of the unfinished job, and thus the thought of how late it was, it hurried off to think about something else instead.


3. At a recent brass band rehearsal, as a break between the big job we'd just finished and the one we're about to throw ourselves into, we spent the time pulling out old pieces we haven't played in years and trying them out again. Most of them had mysteriously become much easier to play since last time I played them.


4. For Halloween, the Toastmasters club did a themed demonstration meeting, with members of the public invited to attend, and a costume competition, and several talks about famous local haunted buildings. It was a successful night, well-attended and fun, and we even got a few new members out of it.

On Halloween night itself, I didn't do much except reading the big finale of A Night in the Lonesome October. It was a lot more dramatic than I remembered, possibly even more dramatic than it was the first time I read the book. That might have something to do with reading it late at night, if not with what night it was. (Note to self: If you start at 11.50 next time, midnight in the book will coincide with real midnight. That might be interesting.)


5. In other reading news, I seem to have neglected to mention that Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese is awesome.

1. I have achieved one of my occasional victories against clutter, boldly slaying the mess on the desk in my study. It started with just sorting out the Pile of DVDs To Be Watched (no small task in itself), but that left one small tidy corner of the desk that nagged at me until I tidied the rest of it too.

The Pile of DVDs To Be Watched was bidding fair to be taller than me, and had become completely useless because I'd lost track of what was and wasn't in it. It's been replaced by a proper DVD rack next to the desk, where I can see everything it contains, with positions of prominence given to the remaining discs of the six TV series I've started and not finished.

My next job might ought to be the back corner of the study that's been eaten by the Pile of Things That Might Come In Handy Some Day (which is not quite as tall as me, but makes up for it by taking up more floorspace than me-lying-down). That would make room for another bookshelf, and also proper shelves for my CDs and the rest of my DVDs.


2. When I call work to let them know I'm off sick, I always feel slightly awkward if whoever-it-is uses "How are you doing?" or something like it as a greeting. Taken at face value, it's an obvious opening to explain that actually I'm not doing at all well, and that's why I'm calling; but greetings aren't always meant to be taken at face value, and I've know people to get confused if their polite question receives an actual answer.

(I'm much better now, thank you for asking.)


3. The Rep Club's final production each year is traditionally a bit of knockabout dinner theatre in a pantomime vein. I usually beg off on the grounds of having too much to do at this time of year; I still have too much to do (if anything, I have more to do this year than usual) but I've somehow ended up roped into this year's show anyway. This year's show is a version of Snow White; I've been cast as the heroine's father, who in the usual way for fairy tale fathers if they're not actually dead is well-meaning but basically useless. It's been a while since I've done any acting in a broad comic mode; hopefully it'll come back to me.


4. I've finished reading The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles, and immediately began re-reading The Dragon Hoard, Tanith Lee's comic fantasy novel featuring a protracted spoof of the Quest for the Golden Fleece (with the eponymous Dragon Hoard in place of the Fleece). It's one of my favourite books since childhood, and it's still just as good as I remember.


5. Further field notes from Starship UK:

- The character model for Liz X has arm articulation that none of the other characters have, specifically so that she's capable of doing the "Basically, I rule" pose.

- Characters who speak entirely in cryptic verse: rarely a good idea. (I'll give 'em this, though: A valiant effort on fitting the obligatory technobabble into the verse scheme. There can't be very many rhymes for "quantum entanglement".)

- Other characters in Starship UK include women named Sladen and Tamm. And also Tamm's friend Caroline, who I assume is part of the set despite not fitting the pattern, because if she did she'd be named John, which you can see why that might have been confusing.

Fiction books
Sean E Avery. All Monkeys Love Bananas
Tamora Pierce. Alanna: The First Adventure (re-read)
Jo Walton. Among Others
Greg Weisman, Karine Charlebois. Gargoyles: Bad Guys (re-read)

In progress
(anthology). Liavek
Padraic Colum. The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles (e)
Tamora Pierce. In the Hand of the Goddess (re-read)
Roger Zelazny. A Night in the Lonesome October (re-read)

Non-fiction books
Douglas A. Anderson, Verlyn Flieger. J.R.R. Tolkien On Fairy-stories

In progress
Barbara Sher, Barbara Smith. I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was

( short, screen, and stage )
( books bought and borrowed )

Top of the to-read pile
Bram Stoker. The Jewel of Seven Stars

Fiction books
Barbara Hambly. Bride of the Rat God (re-read)
Neil Gaiman, et al. Sandman: Worlds' End (re-read)

In progress
Neil Gaiman, et al. Sandman: The Kindly Ones (re-read)
Naomi Novik. Crucible of Gold

Non-fiction books
Di Trevis. Being a Director

In progress
Barbara Sher, Barbara Smith. I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was

( short, screen, and stage )
( books bought and borrowed )

Top of the to-read pile
Ben Aaronovitch. Whispers Under Ground

After I graduated from university, I took a job that kinda-sorta matched my skills and interests, just to keep me going until I figured out what I really wanted to do with my life. Today I was informed that I've qualified for long service leave.

I'm really not sure what to think about that.

(I'm not sure what to do about it, either. Going off to see the world seems like an obvious one, but my reaction to famous landmarks tends to be "Yeah, that's interesting, I guess, can we go now?" I've occasionally thought it might be nice to go and properly meet some of the people I only know through the internet, but then I start worrying about whether they'd like me in person. I've got time to think about it, anyway; with my Rep Club commitments, I'm not going anywhere until September at the earliest.)