xenoglyph » life

The Difference Between Reasoned Debate and Righteous Smackdown

joshua — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:05:26 +0000

Here we have Al Franken talking with teabaggers who turn out to be reasonable people who want to discuss something with their Senator that they don’t agree with. Below that, you will see Congressman Barney Frank being very funny and dismissive of an aggressively crazy lady.

Note how appropriately they respond. Franken gives a nuanced response that has the audience wondering if they’ve got the issues wrong and misunderstand his platform. Frank, a gay Jew, replies to a lady saying that universal health care is a Nazi position by telling her she’s ridiculous.

Eyes in the Night, Delivered To Your Doorstep

joshua — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 01:30:07 +0000

Beowulf is off to press on the morrow! I’m doing a very limited run, Ashcan-style, so if you want to read the poem, consider the exegesis, play the game, and give me feedback, this is your chance!

I’m selling it for $14+$5 S&H, or just regular $14 at Gen Con. Since the run is limited, I’ll be selling the remainder at Gen Con that I haven’t sold via my own site, so if you want to make sure you have a copy, preorder and I’ll shoot it off to you as soon as they get to my doorstep. If you want to wait until Gen Con, you can, but I’ve had a few people interested in preorders already, so you take your chances with the Wyrd.

Even better than picking up a copy at the Playcollective or Ashcan Front booths, order one from me, play with your friends, play with me at Gen Con, and give me feedback that will both be fun to generate and help produce a great final book.

It’s 244 pages long, 5″ x 8″, and I’ve made uglier things in my life.

(sold out. Please give feedback!)

Emperor and Golem

joshua — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 13:43:49 +0000

Carrie and I got back late last night from Vienna and Prague. We exhausted ourselves but good! I’ll be posting things about it as I edit my recorded thoughts into sentences.

Many of our pictures are shitty. It’s a poor craftsman who blames his tools, but I’m a poor photographer, and part of that argument is that a better craftsman gets the right tools. I’m just about there. In any event, I’ll be posting pics, too.

Recovering My Pants With Some Dignity

joshua — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 14:24:01 +0000

As is traditional in this day and age, I spent a fair chunk of my weekend trying to figure out if I’d lost all of my work from the last eight years. Fortunately, my backups were what they appeared to be and my machine’s running better than it has in months.

That said, I’m not sure I’m not missing email and there are several people in my friends list in IM who have lost their proper names leaving me with “raspeng39457″ as my only clue to the identity of said “friend”. So my communications might be hazy at first, particularly if you’re someone who, like my sister, has had no less than four IM names in the past two years.

(That computer in the post head, by the way, is running. A wardrobe was dropped on it. No, it’s not my computer. Mine is much, much better.)

On Beards and Bearding

joshua — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 02:34:29 +0000

I have a ritual. It goes like this.

At Thanksgiving, I shave one last time for the year so I look nice when the family’s together. That way, I’ve got a beard by the time ice can form on it.

On the first day it’s above freezing all day, I shave into whatever I want. Sometimes, that’s small sideburns, but usually, it’s big, Victorian ones that make me look at home wearing goggles, welding gloves, and overalls.

According to weather.com, that day will be Tuesday. And now comes the sad part: I’m going to be wicked fucking busy this week. I’m not even going to have time to go for a bikeride unless I do some self-delusion about the four clients I’m juggling this week. But when these projects are done, I’ll have money to get my bikes awesome. One’s to be a road bike convert and the other one’s a most impressive mountain bike built originally by my friend Daniel. One’s for going out the front of the driveway, the other out the back.

So I’m going to disappear for a couple of days. I’ll be back with work done and bike pics to show after the 19th.

The Beauty of Tools

joshua — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 06:22:10 +0000

Carrie and I just set up a knife magnet in our kitchen. I put all my knives up there and it was just really beautiful. Each of these knives has a little story.

From left to right:

A Bunmei tako-hiki, a wedding present.
On of my grandfather’s Sabatiers, which he gave to my dad. I’ve got another one that needs work that’s not here.
A $10 Chinese cleaver. This one didn’t have a story until I started making dinner tonight. See below.
My Mac Superior santoku. This was a housewarming present from my friend Jeff, who’d damaged a knife of mine in college, like 9 years ago. It was really touching. Also, it’s a bitchin’ knife. It’s great for making many teeny tiny slices of garlic or mushrooms.
The other of my grandfather’s Sabatiers. Note the nicks in the spine. That’s because my grampa used to whang it through mutton bones with a hammer. They know how to make a knife over at Sabatier.

So, the picture below. I was making cannelini con polpetti (“little octopuses”. We usually make this with squid and call it “squiddybeans” but with octopus, we were calling it “pussybeans”) tonight and I didn’t want to use all of them. So I decided to chop off a hunk to defrost for dinner. See how there are two cuts? The first one, the blade kind of twisted in my hand. I also noticed that it wasn’t where I expected the strike to be. Then I remembered that sensei often tells me that I turn my hips too far. I lined myself up like he’s always telling me to, and…

An Addendum to the Previous Post

joshua — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 15:41:14 +0000

A List of Things I Like, Arrayed Before My Eyes for 128 Minutes

joshua — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 04:17:15 +0000

Here are some things I love, in no particular order:

David Bowie
Nikola Tesla
Illusion
Late 19th – early 20th Century stage magicians and escape artists.
Really twisty stories about people who get themselves in over their heads.

Here are some things that I like, also in no particular order;

Hugh Jackman
Christian Bale
Scarlett Johannson
Andy Sirkis

So Carrie and I went to see The Prestige. I really enjoyed it. It’s a really good time watching characters screw themselves over because they can screw someone else over in the process. They’re not bad people, but they do bad things, and the goodness of their souls is like a flashlight in the harsh and burning sunlight of their deeds. They wind up at the very edge of reality by the end, where still they are trying to extract from each other what none have to give, and if they’d only stop and breathe and have some compassion, they could have all they needed. And they don’t.

It would be fun to play something like this in Sorcerer, and indeed I may propose such a thing at the end of our current arc.

Back in the saddle.

joshua — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 23:34:51 +0000

OK, I’ve mooned over my honey, and now I’m out of money. So I’m back from Block Island and back in the saddle.

I’ve got a couple of graphic design jobs going on — a landscape architect who seems like a really good guy, and a woman whose company makes baby slings. The second is an ongoing, large-scale (for me) corporate identity. The first, I dunno; I’ve only met with the guy a little bit for a tangentially related project.

But, of course, that’s not what I’m hot about (though I am excited to get paid). This is what I’m excited to do:

I’ve got some illos to do for Shock: and then it’s done. I think I’ll do three more. One, I managed to start on our trip to Block Island and needs a few more hours. I’m not sure what to do for the rest.

I’m working on a top-secret project with Clinton R. Nixon (probably one of many over the next year or so). The Eisner-nominated Jennifer Rodgers has already done the cover illo and it’s beautiful.

I’m also working on a collection of Japanese ghost stories with Timothy Kleinert, as a sorta-supplement for The Mountain Witch. This project is exciting to me because I love these stories. They’re sort of a Mother Goose of Japanese folklore, assembled by a relative outsider, Lafcadio Hearn, who eventually became an unlikely Japanese citizen. The book will be largely stories from Kwaidan, his major collection, with some others Tim feels are appropriate and full of Japanese ghost creepiness.

We’re not actually getting married at the crack of Mount Doom.

joshua — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 12:08:30 +0000

Sharp-eyed L-Dopan Jeff noticed that the ring in the picture below is really the One Ring. It’s true! I didn’t have any photos of our rings handy, and I liked the little joke.

But now the secret’s out! So here are our actual rings. Carrie and I made these of red gold. She made hers and I made mine, symbolically each bringing our distinctiveness to the relationship.

It’s hard to see in this picture, but they’re proportionate to our sizes. That means her whole ring fits inside my ring. Maybe that means I could eat her in one bite?