Sunday, September 27, 2009

One Crazy Weekend

Alas, my parents have made it back to Florida, and I'm one chair and a half (slightly smaller than a love seat) and two cheap end tables richer, not to mention some new towels and some new sheets. I'm thankful for all that, but spending time with the parents was exhausting. We visited the 6th Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza on Thursday and the State Fair on Friday.

And during the nights we didn't go anywhere, they got to discover the power of Hulu, and boy do I really wish I'd not done that. I had to endure hours of Dancing With the Stars and Grey's Anatomy. I'm not saying that Grey's Anatomy is a bad show, but I've never seen it, and given that the last season ended on a cliffhanger, I had no idea what the hell was going on. So, while they watched stuff like that, I was at the computer playing WoW doing Brewfest stuff and other piddly stuff that didn't require a lot of attention or time invested.

Oh, here's something that didn't make it into a 140 character post onto Facebook/Twitter/Plurk because of certain people (family members) who are on my Facebook. Holy crap, I'm pretty damn sure that my dad's racist. I don't know if he's always been that way or if it's something new that's cropped up since moving to backwoods redneck Florida. This opinion comes from a couple things he said over the course of the week. First, repeated laments of "people who come to this country and don't even speak English." Secondly, there's his bitching about how every time there's some kind of white-on-black crime, it's automatically a "black thing." That said, in the case he was bitching about, there was a pretty obviously racist element to it.

Of course, his is an appended racism. He's only racist against people of color that he doesn't know personally. "Oh, I'm not talking about you; it's all those other black people/Hispanics/take your pick that I have a problem with." I don't care which people of color he qualifies, qualified racism is still racism.

Monday, September 21, 2009

It's like a god-damned family reunion

Okay, I've been very very bad in catching up on my RSS feeds, so if I normally comment and haven't lately, that's probably why. It's just kind of weird getting a comment to something you posted 3 weeks ago, so I tend to avoid it as much as possible. By the way, Glynis, that apple frangipane tart looks amazing.

I've finished four seasons of Doctor Who via Netflix and have now started in on Torchwood. I've only seen the first 2 episodes (Season 1 Disc 1), but I'm getting a distinctly Doctor Who After Dark vibe to it. Not that that's a bad thing. It's aimed at a more mature audience in that it drops more profanity and I don't think we'd ever see a Doctor Who Monster of the Week that's a sentient gas that gets off on people getting off. Well, not officially anyway. I'm sure something like that would have eventually come up in a Doctor Who fanfic if Torchwood didn't come up with it. All I'm saying is that it seems decidedly different from the show that spawned it, but that's not necessarily bad.

I do think I'm in trouble. I didn't even make it through a single episode without resorting to creating a macro of the show.



My parents are in town visiting. I took them to derby last night, and they really enjoyed themselves, particularly during the second bout (The Treasure Chests vs. the Booty Queens). I do hope they start going to bouts in either Tallahassee or Panama City as a result. Other than derby, I've gotten decidedly less sleep since they've been here simply because of the conflicting schedules. It's also weird and crowded having three people and four pets in my apartment for a week when I'm so used to it being just me and Mango. Speaking of which:



It seems that my parents have got it in their head that they're going to buy me a couch while they're here. On the one hand, free stuff is good, but on the other, I'm really bugged out by their motivation for it. I graduated in 2004 and, I must add, through nothing I have said or done, are still feeling guilty for my paying my own way through college via scholarships, loans, grants, & GI Bill. I think had my brother actually graduated after they'd paid his way, they wouldn't feel so bad. I'm just kind of uncomfortable taking their charity because there are people who have far greater need of their generosity than me.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Dem der netterwebs

So, I've been out of the loop and off-line for some time.

Catching up on my RSS feeds is promising to be a daunting task, but this post-PAX post by Mssrs Paul & Storm makes up for it. It really makes me wish I had gone to PAX. Seriously. That post is filled with videos that are so filled with geek joy and pure unadulterated WIN that it's hard to not get caught up in it, and that's just secondhand from crummy YouTube videos.

I've been gaming quite a bit as well. Yes, World of Warcraft. I'll get tired of it in a few months because the characters I've got on my main server are pretty much on their own because everyone I know that plays is on a different server and playing end game content. I'm on Korgath, but apparently some people I know play on Icecrown, Korialstrasz, and Gnomeregan as I have some lowbie characters on there but I don't know why. And there's the RP server Cenarion Circle. At least I know who's on that server. But it's really hard to just up and switch servers. I have so many characters on one server and they all mail stuff back and forth to each other because they all have different secondary skills. All the lowbie herbalism mats that my 59 Rogue got in doing the Exploration Achievements went to my Inscription toon, Voudoun, and any and all loot drops that I can't use get sent to Jägermonster for disenchanting. I wish I could ship all my toons on one server to another server for a single price instead of having to pay $15 for a single character. I mean, I could start a Death Knight on another server at level 55, but they're about as fun as Warriors and Paladins, and I'd have to start from level 1 playing anything fun, like Warlocks, Rogues, and Shamans.

Other gaming? I picked up The Beatles Rock Band. I said it on Twitter, but I've got to give my congratulations to Paul, Ringo, and Yoko for allowing Harmonix to make the game, and for making sure it was even better than Rock Band 2. Hell, I was playing the Ed Sullivan stage and it gave me freaking goosebumps. Sure, it's not like being there, but it's a hell of a lot closer to being there than the old fuzzy black & White video everyone has seen. My parents are coming to visit from Florida next week and I think they'll get a bigger kick out of it even more than the original Rock Band.

Ahh, and because I couldn't just pass up on it, I went to the Pirate Punk Pre-Bout party at the Barley House last night. I enjoyed the everloving crap out of it, finally met someone from the Livejournal face-to-face (who's far cooler than she lets on), and was thanked again and again for helping out and helping take down stuff. I'm helping, Bizarro! Feeling useful rocks. It's going to be even better next weekend for the pirate themed bout, given that not only will I be there, but my parents as well (and hopefully my co-worker that goes to Scarborough Faire as part of a pirate troupe). From what I've discovered is that it's hard as hell to actually get people to come out to see a derby bout, but relatively easy to make a fan out of someone once they're there. I'd love to see my parents become derby fans, even if their home teams would be Tallahassee and Panama City. Even if they aren't local fans, the more fans there are nationwide, the better it is for everyone.