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Wrathful Sky Gnomes
Mar. 19th, 2003 01:35 amSince my last entry, probably the most interesting thing to happen to me was the recent attack of the wrathful sky gnomes. I was driving home late at night on the 15th, and something vaguely rectangular, light colored, and at least a foot across hit my windshield on the passenger side and, with an alarmingly loud 'bang,' badly cracked the glass. I had been changing lanes at the time, and I reflexively swerved back into the one I was leaving, figuring that I didn't want to be angled towards the side of the road at all in case visibility suddenly got even worse. At least, I think that's what I was thinking. It's funny how you can be unsure what you were thinking in a stressful moment like that. Anyway, I determined that the only damage was to the windshield, and decided that I may as well just keep driving. The driver's side of the windshield only had one long crack across it, so I could still see, and I didn't think it was worth hiking along the side of the highway to get to a phone to get the car towed. Once I'd decided that immediate danger had passed and resolved to just keep driving, I then had time to get upset at the damage, and then quickly move on to just being grateful that it wasn't worse. It's spooky to think that if I hadn't been in the process of moving into the left lane that whatever it was that hit me would have hit the center or driver's side of the windshield. I figured that whatever it was must have been in the road and gotten kicked up by the car in front of me, but I'm not completely sure about that. Inspecting the damage by daylight, I found that the roof is actually dented a bit, so whatever it was must have been pretty heavy, and I know it came at the car from above it. So I've decided that it must have been wrathful sky gnomes dropping heavy metal objects.
The windshield got fixed today, which is great. Nice to be able to drive the car again. It kind of sucked having to get up earlier than I ususally do on Monday to call my insurance company and the glass people, and then again today to wait for the glass people to arrive. It's left me without enough sleep and stressed out - worrying that something would go wrong with all of that, on top of the background stress of the apparently impending war. I really wish that we'd been able to handle things via diplomacy, or at least had the backing of more of the world before taking military action. I'm very concerned that acting on our own like this is going to turn out to be a very bad idea. If nothing else, I think it sets a bad precedent, and says to the world that the USA thinks it can do whatever it wants, no matter what other countries think. I don't think that should be our international policy. I'm trying not to think about it so much that it incapacitates me, but I know that I shouldn't ignore the situation either.
On the more frivolous front, I finally read "Neuromancer" by William Gibson. It's one of those books that it seemed like I really should have read, but never had, so when I found it at a library book sale I picked it up. Then it sat in my room for several months before I finally got around to it. It was...okay, I guess. I'm sure that it was groundbreaking at the time that it was first published, it definitely inspired all kinds of cyberpunk things, and was obviously the source for a lot of terminology in Shadowrun, but I actually thought it overused unexplained fictional terminology. I also found it difficult to really sympathize with any of the characters, and that always hurts my enjoyment of a book or movie. Still, I enjoyed parts of it, and I'm glad that I read it.
On the gaming front, we're starting up new games pretty soon. Big Eyes Small Mouth this Thursday, and the D&D prewritten scenario "City of the Spider Queen" in a couple of weeks on Sunday. I think we're having a practice combat session this Sunday to determine how our group functions together in a fight. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand I think it's great that we're trying to play a party that has history together, and established tactics for combat situations. On the other hand, it seems like there's an awful lot of extra work involved in that, and it feels very artificial. Rather than building relationships with other characters, we're just forcing them in. I hope people make a strong effort to make their characters easy to work with and at least somewhat likable. It's going to damage my suspension of disbelief an awful lot if I have to play my character as being a close comrade to someone who's a nightmare to work with. This may seem like a paranoid attitude to take regarding this, but there have been so many conflicts between characters in our games lately that I'm concerned that it's going to happen again - only this time we can't actually try to work out a resolution to a conflict, because there's already supposed to have been one in our history. Bleh.
The windshield got fixed today, which is great. Nice to be able to drive the car again. It kind of sucked having to get up earlier than I ususally do on Monday to call my insurance company and the glass people, and then again today to wait for the glass people to arrive. It's left me without enough sleep and stressed out - worrying that something would go wrong with all of that, on top of the background stress of the apparently impending war. I really wish that we'd been able to handle things via diplomacy, or at least had the backing of more of the world before taking military action. I'm very concerned that acting on our own like this is going to turn out to be a very bad idea. If nothing else, I think it sets a bad precedent, and says to the world that the USA thinks it can do whatever it wants, no matter what other countries think. I don't think that should be our international policy. I'm trying not to think about it so much that it incapacitates me, but I know that I shouldn't ignore the situation either.
On the more frivolous front, I finally read "Neuromancer" by William Gibson. It's one of those books that it seemed like I really should have read, but never had, so when I found it at a library book sale I picked it up. Then it sat in my room for several months before I finally got around to it. It was...okay, I guess. I'm sure that it was groundbreaking at the time that it was first published, it definitely inspired all kinds of cyberpunk things, and was obviously the source for a lot of terminology in Shadowrun, but I actually thought it overused unexplained fictional terminology. I also found it difficult to really sympathize with any of the characters, and that always hurts my enjoyment of a book or movie. Still, I enjoyed parts of it, and I'm glad that I read it.
On the gaming front, we're starting up new games pretty soon. Big Eyes Small Mouth this Thursday, and the D&D prewritten scenario "City of the Spider Queen" in a couple of weeks on Sunday. I think we're having a practice combat session this Sunday to determine how our group functions together in a fight. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand I think it's great that we're trying to play a party that has history together, and established tactics for combat situations. On the other hand, it seems like there's an awful lot of extra work involved in that, and it feels very artificial. Rather than building relationships with other characters, we're just forcing them in. I hope people make a strong effort to make their characters easy to work with and at least somewhat likable. It's going to damage my suspension of disbelief an awful lot if I have to play my character as being a close comrade to someone who's a nightmare to work with. This may seem like a paranoid attitude to take regarding this, but there have been so many conflicts between characters in our games lately that I'm concerned that it's going to happen again - only this time we can't actually try to work out a resolution to a conflict, because there's already supposed to have been one in our history. Bleh.
