The Doom That Came to Cowtown

Nihonryokō 6 - Canadian Rube in the Big City

2026-01-03T17:36:54Z

I had slightly different travelling plans from the farmers. Namely, my hotel was in Shinjuku, and their's was in Chibi. This would be rougly equivalent to me getting a joint in downtown and them staying in suburban Airdrie. Aside: they moved hotels when they realized that:

their hotel was next to marshlands.
It was mating season for the local frogs.
Frogs are not shy about making noise when fucking.

A Shinkansen, a regular subway train, and a short walk got me to another tiny (but adequate) room in Shinjuku. Note, Higashi-Shinjuku station is different from plain old Shinjuku station. I might have gotten a different hotel had I realized, but in the end it didn't matter, and I was still close to a lot of cool things. I settled into my room, and checked out the hotel's restaurant for a bento box.

The hotel also had a breakfast buffet that I could have had every day for an additional room charge. I elected not to do that and I'm glad, since the one breakfast I did have wasn't terribly satisfying. It was like someone had described a western breakfast buffet, but a lot got lost in translation. For example, the scrambled eggs were actually a bunch of tamago pieces. Novel, but not what I was expecting. Also, I mostly continued my habit of buying pancakes at the conbini the night before and stashing them in the hotel bar fridge for the next morning.

My first full day in Tokyo started with a trip to the Imperial Palace. If there were tours of the palace, I couldn't find them. The palace does have an impressive garden/park, and a museum - Sannomaru Shozokan - dedicated to showing off parts of the Imperial collection. The theme, given it was still springtime, was flowers and nature.

[A plaque describing the museum's mandate]

Note: That's the only picture from the museum in this post. I figure the museum needed a post of it's own so that I wouldn't have to choose between pictures of it, and the exterior.

After the museum I spent about an hour exploring the park. After that, I walked the entire perimeter of the imperial grounds. It was a very nice park, showing off parts of the city on one side, and the moat and palace walls on the other. There were other walkers, tourists, and at least one baseball team, jogging by in full uniform. I think they were the Ishikawa Million Stars.

[As you can see, the park/gardens are pretty big, and popular]

[Fujimi Yagura Turret]

[The founder of a local music academy]

[All proper castles should have a mote]

[Random statuary]

[It was the tail end of Sakura season]

[This is the official bridge into the palace. It's used by the Emperor to mark official residence, and is also for accepting diplomats and dignitaries. The hoi polloi can use it on January 2nd and the Emperor's birthday]

All in all I spent the entire afternoon exploring the area. It was closing in on supper time and I wanted to check out Tokyo Beer Lab, which is in the Harajuku neighbourhood of Shibuya. Since I was hungry in addition to being thirsty, I opted to try a hole in the wall Italian joint, Trattoria Sun House. I had inadvertently walked into a place that was decidedly not for tourists. I got there early for the supper rush, and as the place filled up, it was universally Japanese people in groups hanging out and smoking. I guess smoking is allowed in some places? Anyway, while they were perfectly willing to serve me, and were nothing by civil, the service was slow, and my pizza was of clear supermarket quality. It was OK, and cheap. Of note, when going back and researching my locations for this post, I discovered that it is now permanently closed. Make of that what you will.

[Four cheese pizza and a Sapporo Black Label beer]

Tokyo Beer Lab was very close to Trattoria Sun House, but was also several turns deep in a maze of back streets. I walked by the correct road a few times before realizing I had to cut down this narrow lane that I thought was someone's walkway to there house. The walkway opened up onto a plaza containg the brewery and a taco place. The taco place had a line up out the door. Both places were clearly liked by tourists.

[Just a typical side street in Harajuku]

I sat at the bar to discover I was the oldest person in the joint, by a fair margin. I could have been the father of anyone there. The guy next to me (who was turned away from me, because he was chatting up some girl) said to her “We're the oldest people here. I'm 30 and you're 27.” I chuckled at the statement, and his observational skills.

Man, I wish I was as old as the first time I thought "Man, I'm old".

I ordered a flight, and noticed, when reading the menu, that not a single beer was actually made by Tokyo Beer Lab. They were all guest taps. I commented on this to the bar tender (a NYC expat), and he said that they hadn't gotten their brewing license yet, because the Tokyo government works slowly. This was a shame because about half the beers on their website looked delicious. He did recommend his favourite brewery in the city, and I made a note of it.

Next time I'm in Tokyo, I'll have to see if they have their own beer.

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Nihonryokō 5: Mostly Osaka Expo

2025-09-10T22:49:55Z

As a reminder, I had friends staying in Keihoku, which is “near Kyoto” in the same way that Cremona is “near Calgary”. Except transit is marginally better – it being about 6 km from a bus that takes you to Kyoto station.

One of those friends, G, decided to spend some time with me so we could go on a grand adventure to see the opening day of Osaka Expo 2025. This required a two night stay, after which, the rest of the farmers would join us for the trip to Tokyo.

G got a ride to the bus stop, boarded the bus, and then spent the next 90 minutes riding it. Fortunately for him, he got on at the terminus and entered an empty bus with lots of seating. Apparently it filled all the way up sometime before reaching Kyoto proper, and the rest of the journey everyone was packed like sardines.

We met up at Kyoto station and I took him back to the hotel to get him checked in. Afterwards, there wasn't a lot to do before supper, so I gave him a tour of the station, since I'd explored so much of it a few days prior, and I love playing tour guide. Given the Japanese diet (at least the tourist-presenting diet) isn't really big on greens, I was craving a salad something awful, so we went looking for one and kind of succeeded.

[Behold, a salad!]

[ten story, animated, light-up stairway in Kyoto station]

Next morning we got up bright and early to catch the Shinkansen to Osaka, which is a pretty short train ride at that speed. Then we took some municiple trains to the shiny new station that was built expressly for Expo 2025. Finally, we ended up kettled in the “12 PM” pool and waited our tour. Eventually the line began moving and we made our way to the entrance gate. There were a lot of people with us. Also, this was when it started to rain.

Hello muddah, hello faddah,
Here I am at Expo Osaka.
Expo's very entertaining,
And they say we'll have some fun when it stops raining.
Osaka was... not fun. This was equal parts weather, poor organizing from the event, poor planning on my part.

[Myaku-Myaku is Expo's mascot. It's a shapeshifting mass of cells and water. So basically a chibi version of John Carpenter's The Thing]

G and I mostly wandered aimlessly trying to find lunch. Almost went to the American pavillion because they had a diner. The diner also had a two hour wait, and we weren't exactly anxious to give our money to the American government (or whatever entity built/ran their pavillion) since this was at peak Trump-51st-state-bullshit. Strangely there weren't may vending machines, making this the fewest we'd seen during the trip. We eventually found a food truck selling noodles and chicken skewers. We also managed to find a table where one corner wasn't in the rain and we ate our meals. We also decided that we should leave, but maybe should see at least one attraction while we were there. We opted for the Canadian pavilion, because rah rah Canada.

Then we spend a literal hour trying to find it on our map. The Expo site is a weird, non-euclidian nightmare, where we kept trying to find the Canadian pavillion, yet kept returning to the same little postage stamp-sized green space, despite trying every cardinal direction. Given my normally exceptional sense of direction this was very frustrating. G and I were starting to get snippy at each other (which, if you know how remarkably chill G is, is saying something. Me, not so much).

“I've had enough of this. Let's go up there” pointing at the Grand Ring that encircles most of the Expo grounds. It's about 2 Km in circumference, has three access points (stairs and escalators every 120° of the circle), and given the top has no cover, was not crowded at all.

[My biggest regret is not finding out what the Eggs of Possibilities are]

We made our way there, walked around 1/3 of the structure and spotted the Canadian pavilion. It was modelled after a glacier. Natch. We made our way down and got into line. And we waited. And waited. And waited. We got around the corner we thought would reveal the entrance. Nope, it was more lineup, indicating that we had not even gotten halfway through the line. Our last spoon long gone, we decided to just leave. We wanted dry trains, hot showers, and a hot meal. Thinking back, the exhibition was probably lots of scenic vistas of our home country and Canada-is-the-best propaganda. Normally I'm all for that, but not after being in the rain for many hours by this point.

[Just needs Dudley Do-right riding a beaver while hoisting a hockey stick]

[A friendly volunteer, ready to take your picture]

The lineup to leave the Expo grounds was really a crowd that heaved and rolled in multiple directions with no clear indication as to whether we were even in the line to leave, or if this was the right direction. Some exploratory probing revealed the ideal part of the mob to be in, and an hour later, we got out of the ground.

As one person on Reddit opined, the Japanese are very good at routing, and very bad on Ad Hoc problem solving when things go wrong. This was the latter, so instead of opening more exits (taking out a section of the construction fencing that surrounds the venue, for example), they just stuck with the small exit and no communication. The site also lacked shelter from rain (and coming into high summer, sun), and food venues. My guess is that the crowd estimates for this event were ridiculously low, or patron throughput estimates were too generous.

We eventually got through and boarded our trains back to Kyoto.

In retrospect, given we couldn't do anything about the weather, and had exactly one day to attempt this, we should have:

Taken snacks.
Did more research.
Research would have revealed you could reserve tickets for pavilion access for most of the big countries, allowing us to skip lines.
Spent more time in one of the four main halls devoted to the smaller countries. I'd have had a much better time checking out every island country in the Pacific, than waiting in line for my own country.

Returning to Kyoto, it was now evening. We warmed our old bones in our respective showers, got dry, and ended up having some decent ramen. It was definitely a ramen sort of day. In the end, I got to spend time with my friend, and we didn't lose any limbs. I'll take it.

Next day, we had some time to kill before meeting the other farmers for our trip to Tokyo. We opted to go to Fushimi Inari shrine, which is one of the places in Japan that people who have never been to Japan have probably seen. It's the shrine with all the orange gates following a path around the top of a mountain. There was a brief discussion the night before about going when it was dark (the shrine is open 24/7 and is lit up at night, which is apparently gorgeous), but we both acknowledged that that wasn't going to happen.

[A few of the 10000+ gates at Fushimi Inari]

[I would have absolutely taken pictures of the monkeys, but they weren't hanging around that day]

So we saw it during the day. The monastery that maintains the shrine doesn't charge admission, but will sell you a prayer talisman for assorted fortunes. I bought one, and keep it in my purse. Maybe my wish will come true someday.

[Inari Okami is, among other thingsKami of foxes]

[As you might imagine, the tourist shops are full of fox imagery]

We headed back to Kyoto station, window shopped for a few hours, and then chilled waiting for the bus from Keihoku to arrive with the other three of our companions.

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Nihonryokō 4: Solo in Kyoto

2025-09-08T23:01:25Z

I moved to a new hotel. First was on the south side of Kyoto station, second was on the north side. North side was better geographically, but the first hotel was run by JR West, and the second was run by APA hotels. The rooms were otherwise the same. Tiny, with a plastic-formed bathroom that they've probably exuded a million of. Everything was small, but still big enough. These are the salaryman hotel rooms for people who want one step above a capsule hotel.

While I was considering a capsule hotel just to say I'd done it, I opted not to because I like having my own bathroom.

The reason APA is troublesome (and I didn't learn this until after I'd stayed at three of them) is that they're the right-wing hotel. Each room had a bunch of Japan-First books, in the same sense that if I saw a Canada First book in a hotel here, it would raise red flags.

When I come back, I'll try to book better hotels.

The other shitty thing for the trip is that the cougher on the plane gave me what I suspect was Covid. And day four was when the symptoms started to hit. At first it was just general dragginess, but in the middle of the night it hit might throat and lungs. I would spend the rest of the trip with a hacking cough. Also, I started masking up in public. I wasn't going to seclude myself, but I also wasn't going to infect others. But it did mean I'd start off taking things easy. On the bright side, I had two days of cold/flu medication, so I could at least drug myself into movement.

But I was still going to take it easy.

I decided to spend a day doing a hop on/hop off bus tour. Unfortunately, it was super rainy, so all the buses got cancelled. Since I didn't really want to hike, I spent the day exploring Kyoto station and it's immediate surroundings. First, the station is ten stories tall, has a roof top sushi, two floors of restaurants at the top, and a department store like The Bay in its heyday. Also, I spent a lot of time in my hotel room.

[Assorted scenes]

[scenes from a walk]

The next day I was feeling marginally better, or at least well drugged up, so I tried the bus tour again. Successfully this time. For those of you who haven't done these, it's a tour bus, often with no roof, that rides a circuit around the city. You can get on or off at any stop, provided you have a ticket for the day, enabling you to visit lots of touristy spots easily. Many cities have these. I've done it in London, Quebec City, San Francisco, and now, Kyoto. They either have a tour guide, or headphones you can use to listen to a bottled description of the sights.

Kyoto's version of this has two routes, and I went once around both, just to get the lay of the land. I had a list of things I wanted to see, and first stop after doing the two routes. was the Nishiki Market. A multi-block street of mostly street food. This transitioned into a high street of mainstream shopping. I started with some cheap sake, graduated to assorted fried treats, including a wagyu skewer. Which is how I would up drunk and happy around lunchtime.

[This went on for several blocks and was mostly food and booze. And people. Lots and lots of people]

Remember kids, let your stomach plan your vacation.

(I originally wrote that as “spend your vacation on your stomach” and I realized that could be interpreted differently. It would still be an enjoyable vacation though.)

That shopping street also had an Easter egg. A secret I found out about because, when I was planning the earlier version of this trip, a woman I know in the SCA wanted me to get her hand-made sewing needles from a shop.

That shop, was down a narrow, non-obvious passageway off the street. The passageway led to a little courtyard garden with a small building in the middle. They sold needles. I'm not convinced that shop/courtyard existed in this universe. I might have wandered into some Ghibli-esque pocket dimension.

I bought a few needles (they were very expensive) and plan on giving them out someday. One to the person who recommended the place to me, one to SCA largess, and one to someone I know who crafts. That last one is a long list, so I'm not really sure who it'll be.

[Three of this needle in particular. It seemed like a good one]

Next up was Kinkaju-ji – The Golden Pavilion. There, surrounded by two blocks of tourist gift shops, is a gorgeous park whose centrepiece is one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen.

[If I do this again, I'll try to get this photo at the golden hour. I bet it would look even better]

Finally, I had time to speed run one last place between the second to last, and last bus - Kyoto Gyoen National Garden, which sits around the Kyoto Imperial Palace. I got there after the palace was closed for the day, so I circumnavigated the park instead. I was the only person on the bus. Given I also was on the first bus of the day, I'd say I got my money's worth.

[Big door on a big building in a big park]

After resting up for bit in my room, I decided it was time for food, and more importantly, beer.

First stop was a random sports bar (T's Garden Bar) about a klick east of my hotel. Basic supper special and a beer cost me about ¥1500. Nothing special, but not terrible. I had to search on google maps to find the joint so I could write the name for this post.

Next up Was Kyoto Beer Lab, a genuinely good craft brewery/tap room far enough off the main road to be quiet, close enough to a tree-lined canal to be adorable. They didn't have flights, so I ended up have four sleeves while I was there. The beers ranged from acceptable to delicious. My favourite was the Alpine Helles Bock. They cycle their beers quickly though, so if you're ever there, know that the beers you see on the pictures in Google maps probably won't be the beers you see on the menu there. Which is part of the fun.

[a 10% bock]

I had a pleasant evening's walk back to my hotel and crashed. Still sick, but also exhausted from a day's galavanting around, and several beers.

The next morning I had time to kill before meeting G, who had left the farmers for a few days to join me in Kyoto (and Osaka). I opted to do the Gekkeikan Okura Sake brewery tour. That wasn't exactly what I got though – at no time did I see sake brewing facilities. No, this was a sake museum tour. It was pretty cheap (tickets were about ¥600).

Getting to the museum was a quick train ride to Fushimi, a neighbourhood in southern Kyoto. This was the first real journey I'd taken to someplace that wasn't touristy – just people who lived there going about their business on the local high street. Going deeper into the neighbourhood, I was in genuinely residential areas with actual detached houses with yards. As I approached the museum that shifted to industrial plants that all smelled yeasty – Kyoto's brewery district. No craft breweries here, these factories made sake in the amounts you need for a country with more than 100 million people.

[Big damn silos]

The museum itself was a ten minute video (with English subtitles) describing the history of Gekkeikan and the Fushimi district, and a quick overview of brewing. This was followed by a large room with preserved antique brewing equipment, more history, and then a tasting.

[How they did it 100 years ago]

We had three tokens with which to sample the wares, along with a souvenir sake cup. Between drinks, you could go outside to a small courtyard garden, where a fountain was placed to sample the local water, and rinse out your cup.

Finally, the gift shop. I bought a bottle of my favourite of the samples. Apparently, I have cheap taste in sake.

Time successfully wasted, I took a train back to my hotel and awaited G.

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Nihonryokō 3: Any Plan Where You Lose Your Hat is a Bad Plan

2025-09-05T00:56:25Z

When I got to Japan, I realized I'd forgotten to pack a hat (I usually take two, a pub cap and a Tilley). So my first order of business in Kyoto was to check into my hotel, buy a hat, and grab some supper.

The hotel room was wee, but perfectly serviceable, though it did take some finding since Google couldn't figure out the address. Using the hotel's name did the trick after I circled the block twice. Basically I had a double bed, a desk, TV, and a bathroom with a shower. Not the smallest place I've ever stayed (that would be in London), but close.

Then it was off to the closest shopping mall. Asia has these multi-story malls that I'm not used to (tallest in Calgary is four stories. Most are one or two). I walk in and start browsing. The goal was to get a hat that fit my massive noggin, that didn't look too touristy. But really, anything that kept the sun off would be OK.

I found an I ♥ Kyoto hat. Big logo, wrong colour, barely fit. But it was a hat. Since I was in the cheap tourist goods part of the store, I figured I could find a better hat somewhere else in the store. Two stories up, I found better hats. I got a nice, plain black hat that fit well and was in cadet style, which I prefer. Perfect. I put the other hat down and went to pay for it.

As I was leaving that floor, I realized that the whole building wasn't one store, it was multiple stores per level. I had accidentally shop lifted the hat from a store on one floor to a store on another.

Whoops.

I slinked out of there pretty fast after that. That hat (the one I bought legitimately) served me well, and lives in my biking backpack, for those times the bike is locked up and I don't want to wear my helmet.

After my brief criminal career, I went to Kyoto station (I discovered it's a legit tourist spot in its own right, and not just a transport hub). I found a place selling okonomiyaki and settled in at their bar, ordered, and waited.

A few minutes later, I noticed that a server was hovering right behind me on his phone. I was getting a little weirded out when he tapped me on the shoulder and showed me his phone. In Google Translate this was written: “Apologies, we accidentally added cheese to your order. Do you still want it?”

I gave a thumbs up and a nod. My cheese-enhanced okonomiyaki was delivered and it was delicious. On the way out I had written into my own translation device, “White people never say no to extra cheese”.

The next day was my first full day at a single location in Japan, and I was going to explore. I was up early because of the continued jet lag, so I took advantage of it to get somewhere that normally has a hojillion tourists, and avoid them. First thing on my agenda was to see cherry blossoms (it was sakura season in Japan, which to my limited experience is probably the best time to come). One of the recommended places for this was Tetsugaku No Michi, the Philosopher's Path. By coincidence, this was the exact time I'd normally be having my weekly “philosophy” meetings with friends (Wednesday morning in Japan being Tuesday evening in Cowtown).

On the train/bus to the start of the path, I realized I was the tallest person in the crowded train car. I decided that I was going to keep a running tab of my “am I tallest on this vehicle” score. Spoilers: I didn't get 100%, but I got damn close.

[The Philosopher's Path, During Cherry Blossom Season. Gorgeous]

The Philosopher's Path is a paved trail, going several kilometres alongside a canal. The canal is lined with cherry trees, and abuts a forest at several points. It is, otherwise, just a path through a very pretty residential neighbourhood. After the path, I headed to Gion, where all the geisha hang out. No pictures of that because taking pictures on (some) of the streets in Gion is forbidden. And I want to be a considerate tourist.

[You'll note this sign is not in Mandarin, or Korean, or Spanish]

While I was doing that, my fellow travellers, the farmers, decided to also tour Kyoto. Their host, Hideyo, offered guided tours, and rides from/to their space in Keihoku for a flat rate that was pretty reasonable. We decided to meet at Kodai-ji temple where I would join them for the rest of the day.

When I got there, I touched base with them to find they'd left without me and gone on to their next stop. I was pretty salty about that for the rest of the day, but after grabbing a cab, I got to the next stop, Nijo-jo Castle. To make up for ditching me, they bought my ticket to get inside the castle.

The castle is surrounded by a significant moat filled with very greedy fish, as well as high walls. Great place to hole up in a zombie apocalypse.

[One corner of the outer moat]

[Nijo castle inner grounds]

[The inner palace]

After a pleasant 90 minutes checking out Kyoto's main castle, we found a hole-in-the-wall Ramen shop where Hideyo knew the owner, and helped us order.

Post lunch we went to Ryonan-ji temple. We were all pretty bagged by this point, and the temple was on the side of a mountain (note, this describes most of Kyoto as the center is the flat spot between a bunch of mountains, and they've had a thousand years to build out).

The temple is known for two main things, both well worth seeing. 1) It's rock garden, 2) the 40 panels depicting the life of a dragon inside.

[The stairs to Ryoanji Temple]

[Zen Garden]

[One of many depictions of a dragon]

The temple also has a very beautiful (non-rock) exterior garden.

After this, Hideyo went above and beyond and dropped me off at my hotel before taking everyone back to Keihoku. For reference, this was equivalent to driving from UofC campus to downtown Calgary during rush hour, then turning around and going to Cremona. This was especially a sacrifice for T, who ended up in the very back so they could give me the shotgun seat.

That night, I wandered around Kyoto station, looking for a place to eat, finding a revolving sushi experience with a lot of weird-ass kinds of sushi I'd never had before. Flounder? Pretty good. Mackeral? I can get it here, but never got around to trying it. I dig it. Raw horse meat? Took about ten minutes of chewing to get it down. Not going to repeat that.

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Nihonryokō 2: Liminal Spaces

2025-09-02T17:24:12Z

The thing about Calgary is, it's Westjet's hub. So couple #1 (S & G) had to travel from Vancouver to Calgary to catch the flight to Japan, and couple #2 (Y & T) had to travel from Edmonton. We were all on the same flight. Though that almost didn't happen because S didn't book the flight they thought they had (it was for the next day – they were tipped off by the over 24 hour layover in Calgary). An hour on the phone with Westjet managed to fix it.
We were all in the Premium Economy section. Couple #2 and I both just booked those seats. Couple #1 managed to upgrade at the last minute.

Boarding was easy, but there was a tiny amount of drama when a family of four (parents, two young kids) came on and had not chosen their seats, so they were spread throughout the cabin. I was asked to move to... a seat beside couple #1.

“I'm not sure I want to be seated next to these obvious ruffians.”
“Pbbt”

My seat has otherwise the same topography so I was fine with it. The flight was uneventful and comfortable. But good deeds do not go unpunished – Across the aisle from me was a guy who spent the whole flight unmasked and coughing his lungs out. I hoped he was just a chronic smoker. Nope – three days later I was coughing my lungs out. I suspect he gave me Covid, but lacking a positive test it could have been some other lung crud. Out of our party, T also caught it. I even spent the majority of the flight masked.

We landed in Japan and immediately went through the bureaucracy. The whole arrivals area was lines and brutalist architecture. We spent a fair amount of time waiting for luggage, and also took the opportunity to get transit cards, though I suspect if we'd gone for regular Suica cards, instead of Welcome Suica cards it would have taken a lot less time. But we did get them, so everyone's transit was taken care of. We also dealt with our phone's SIM cards. The Apple phones all just worked, but the Androids did not (reading the instructions helped with that the next day. I just needed to tell the Android phones to look for Japanese access points and after that everything worked for the rest of the trip).

Finally we transferred to a local hotel. We were all pretty bagged and our internal clocks were wrecked.

Now the plan was for us to spend the night in Narita, then catch a Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto, where we'd then take a bus into the middle of nowhere for the farm that Y had booked. I'd spend two nights there and then come back to Kyoto.

“Hey Y, thanks for letting our host know about having a fifth ~~wheel~~ person. What do I owe you for my share?” “What?”

Yeah, turns out that never happened, and I wasn't sure where I was going to be spending the next two nights. I ended up, in my delerious, sleep-deprived state, booking a room for two nights in Kyoto. This was a different hotel from the next four nights in Kyoto.

The next day, I wasn't sure if I'd dreamt all that. Thankfully the confirmation email was in my inbox.

The Narita hotel room was western style (i.e. huge, two queen beds, full bath) and only differed in that Japan has no concept of water conservation. Every flush of the toilet used about half a swimming pool's worth of water. This would contrast sharply with the other rooms I'd have for the trip.

That morning, we enjoyed the hotel's buffet. It was a mix of western and asian dishes. I tried natto, just to say I did. It wasn't as revolting as I'd been led to believe, but did have a bitter taste I wasn't fond of.

[Plush lobsters at the front of our restaurant]

After supper I threw myself onto the concierge's merci to have my luggage shipped to the hotel I'd be staying in Kyoto in two days. This service is available all through Japan's hotels, and I ended up using it twice. It meant navigating busy train stations with only a moderately sized backpack with my electronics and a change of clothing. Highly recommended, but you do need a clear idea of where to send it, and a native Japanese speaker to fill out the forms for you.

[Yamato Transport's awesome logo]

We made our way back to the airport and took the Narita Express into central Tokyo. There we boarded our Shinkansen and had a pleasant ride into Kyoto. I was in a different car from the others, so I mostly just grooved on the passing scenery. Note, when reserving tickets, you can request to be on the side of the train facing Mount Fuji.

[Mount Fuji, from the Shinkansen]

Side note: We used an online service to book our train tickets. If you're travelling outside of rush hour, this is probably unnecessary, the ticket kiosks are pretty easy to use. Also, reserve seats only cost a few bucks more so it's often worth it. If you're worried about missing your train, your tickets will still be good for the next train (they just stop being reserve tickets and you have to use an unreserved seat). Apparently they're good the whole day, in case you have major delays.

We arrived in Kyoto station and I hung out with the farmers while they waited for their 90 minute bus trip out to Keihoku. Then I wandered off to find my hotel on the south side of Kyoto station.

I was now in Kyoto for the next six days.

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Nihonryokō 1: The Long Awaited Trip Approaches

2025-09-02T04:02:13Z

I went to Japan this year. It was a trip a long time coming.

Originally, me and three friends were going to go in May of 2020. Well, you can guess how that went. It then got put on the back burner. Time passed, I lost my job, and decided to roll that into retirement. But I still had the money set aside. What was stopping me was not wanting to go by myself. So I bided my time, waiting for at least some of these friends to decide to go again. I tried not to push it myself, because when I do that, everyone clams up. Better to just wait.

Finally, one friend got invited to go to the annual Star Wars expo (which moves around, and was in Tokyo this year). A few months before, they pulled the trigger on going, and I bought my own tickets.

We ended up setting up a group chat and a google doc for things to do and helpful hints when travelling. It came in handy.

Myself? I let my anxiety get on top of me and didn't book my hotels or train tickets until about two weeks prior to our flight. But I did do it.

Sadly, the downside was that someone I didn't know (who shared that common friend with me) was doing all the planning. And they had very different priorities from me. The biggest is that they really wanted to spend a relaxing time in the countryside, and I'm a city boy at heart, who was really looking forward to exploring some of the great cities.

Remember I said I didn't want to go by myself? Of the two weeks I was in Japan, six-ish days were spent with my friends, and three of those days were travel days. While it wasn't ideal, I can say that being alone in Japan no longer fills me with panic-inducing anxiety. Now it's just the normal amount of anxiety if I ever go again. I'd like to go again.

Anyway, this is going to be the first of my Tokyo travelogue posts. I've finally gotten around to organizing my photos, and bullet points of what I did. Now to turn it into a narrative. I hope you enjoy it.

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The Best-Laid Plans of Elves and Men

2024-12-17T06:54:54Z

So I used to be friends with this guy Michael. (Aside: Don't read too much into that "used to be friends with", I don't hate or dislike the guy, we just haven't spoken/hung out/interacted in over ten years, because life.) I met Michael back in the 80's when I joined an ElfQuest fan club. This is relevant.

If you don't know Michael, look up "funny flight attendant" on Youtube. Better than even odds you'll see him.

Michael and his then partner bought a house back in 2002 and I was at the house warming. I wrote a message in a bottle wishing them both well and hid it in the rafters of their basement. I figured, they'd either find it in the first year, or when they decided to do home renovations, or never.

It was discovered this week. Over 22 years later. Michael posted about it on Facebook, tagging me.

I commented that I got the notification while watching an ElfQuest documentary on Youtube. Which is a helluva coincidence, considering I haven't really paid much attention to ElfQuest fandom in about ten years.

Anyway, That comment got several likes. Including one from Wendy Pini - who wrote and drew ElfQuest!!!

I love when my long range and/or secret shenanigans reach fruition. I should set up some new ones. All of this is giving me a warm fuzzy.

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GURPS Titanic!

2024-11-15T01:24:22Z

GURPS (the role-playing system) has a Titanic adventure they published back in 1992. I thought I’d write about it.

First some background, it’s a time travel adventure, and the players are all agents of an organization called Timepiece. Timepiece exists in a fully automated luxury ~~communism~~ social democracy future. Originally, when time travel was invented, it was used for research, but the society discovered that an alternate future also existed, which was a ruthless fascist regime, and they were actively working to make sure that their future came to pass. The agents or that future work for an organization called Stopwatch. Basically the setting is subtle fights between Timepiece and Stopwatch in historical settings, trying to set things up so that their future occurs.

The setting has a bunch of arbitrary rules in place to keep everyone from just pulling a Bill-and-Ted to get out of every situation: You can only go back to specific dates, not any old time you like (for example, the Player Characters in this adventure can only go back to April 8th, the next closest date is in August of 1911). Getting sufficiently injured gets you snapped back to the future (so mysterious corpses and future tech don’t screw up the timeline). And most importantly, trying to pull off a big change to history will send everyone back, shutting off that timeline, and making both futures less likely. You can’t nuke Ancient Rome, the multiverse won’t let you. In Titanic’s case, you can’t save the ship, it has to hit the iceberg and sink. Doing anything to prevent the sinking (including any action that slows or stops the ship) get’s everyone punted.

On to the actual adventure. Timepiece, through some good old fashioned espionage has discovered that Stopwatch has a list of people who should die on Titanic, and others who should survive. Timepiece would like to do the reverse of that list. If Stopwatch wants someone to die on Titanic, well that’s a good reason to make sure they live.

But wait! Timepiece has also come up with a list of people to save and people to sink. It’s up to the Game Master to determine if Timepiece is the sort of organization that assassinates people, and then quietly recruit a PC to do the job. Otherwise they just save their people.

So the mission is to lay low on Titanic, identify the enemy agents, and once the ship hits the iceberg, get your people on the lifeboats, and make sure their people don’t. Or at least make sure Stopwatch doesn’t murder a bunch of people who should survive.

It’s a neat adventure, and I’ve wanted to play it for ages (I bought it when it was new).

Pros:

There’s a pretty good (for 1992) timeline of events so you can role-play trying to get stuff done on a setting that’s rapidly turning chaotic. I could see this done in two sessions: The first is everything pre-iceberg, the second after.

The Stopwatch agents are actually pretty interesting, and would make great reoccurring villains.

Cons:

There are weird side quests that I don’t like, and don’t feel belong in the setting (for example, there is an NPC werewolf).

Pretty much everyone you have to interact with is fictional. If I were to seriously run this adventure, I’d replace the Stopwatch/Timepiece lists with real people. I understand why the writer and publisher did this - you don’t want to make light of real people who died on Titanic - but if I’m role-playing on Titanic, I want to actually interact in important ways with people on Titanic! Of note, the fictional passengers include cabin numbers, so you can look up the real passenger who stayed there. For example, the cabins for Madeline Astor, Col. Gracie, and Joseph Ismay are all on the list. Imagine trying to keep Ismay out of Collapsible-C. Or maybe you have to convince a reluctant Ismay to get on!

Titanic! (The adventure) was written by Steve Hatherley.

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2023 Portland/Vancouver Trip

2024-08-03T04:10:09Z

I caught wind of one of my favourite artists coming to the pacific north west, and since she doesn’t tour often, I figured I’d jump on that. I had an option of staying in Portland or Seattle. I opted for Portland.

The flight was uneventful (got a plus seat for $40, which was barely worth it on a Dash-8. I got extra leg room, but no extra width. I was planning on using the Westjet connect service for the flight, so I brought my tablet Turns out this was a mistake, since that service wasn’t available on the plane. Thankfully I was reading Legends and Lattes, which is an awesome book BTW.

My hotel was going to be hella-expensive, so I decided to cheap out in other parts of the trip, like taking public transit from PDX to my hotel, which ended up being three buses. Thankfully, Portland has day passes for $5. I had a giant bag of American change (that security theatre tossed my luggage for, ironically missing my knife) I’d been saving for years, so I used that. Discovered that you couldn’t put more than 30 coins into the machine at the airport though, so I had to try twice without using all my nickels and dimes.

My hotel was McMenamins Kennedy School (an old elementary school retrofitted to be a bougie hotel). About twice as much money as I usually pay, but it was walking distance to the theatre at least. Pls it’s super nice and I really do like it. Just wish I was rich is all.

I kinda crashed in my room for a few hours instead of trying to find some lunch (the hotel has several restaurants, and room service, so mostly it was just me being lazy). When the evening came, I decided to hit a local brewery on the way to downtown for a flight.

I ended up at Broadside Brewery on Dekum street (best beer, Wild & Crazy Kids, an Imperial stout). Most of their beer was good, and they had a decent selection of non-IPAs. The joint had a big patio and friendly staff. Give it a try if you’re in the neighbourhood (or other neighbourhoods, they’ve got a bunch of locations in Portland).

I was sitting at the bar minding my own business, when some old dude sat next to me, and asked me how I was doing. Now if you know me, that’s generally something that gets my anxiety up, and I’ll often react poorly. This time though, I thought, “you’re on vacation, and you’re not likely to really talk to anyone for the next three days except service people. What’s the harm in having a conversation with some rando at a bar?”

So I drank my beer, and had a nice chat with Bill (who admitted that he did this sort of thing all the time). It was a pleasant, paper-thin conversation about the weather and travelling. Bill and his wife were originally from England somewhere, and had emigrated to the US as young newlyweds (Bill was in early retirement, so a robust late-60s).

I can’t remember much else, aside from enjoying myself. I finished my beers, shook his hand, and caught my bus downtown to grab an upscale dinner.

The upscale restaurant I found was Q. Before going there, I double checked that their name had nothing to do with Qanon. It did not, as they were named about two years prior to Qanon becoming a thing.

Everyone on the staff was a delight. I got a nice seat facing the kitchen, so I could watch all the food getting their final plating before heading out to the customers (or being based forward to me, in the case of my own food).

On the recommendation of the host, I got the grilled pork belly to start. My entree was the house made saffron tagliatelle, washed down with a Sunlight wheat beer from Vatietal Beer Company. I finished the whole thing off with a really good Old Fashioned.

Q was expensive, but worth every penny. Check it out if you’re in Portland.

Next up I wandered over to Powell's Books, a must see for any trip to Portland. I think I bought one book for myself, and a whole bunch of birthday presents for the Port Wood folks. Books, the gift of choice for discerning nerds.

I wound out the evening at 10 Barrel Brewing (best beers (a tie): Raspberry Sour Crush - a fruited sour, and Smooth (feat. Rob Thomas) - Japanese rice lager ). I asked if they had flights and they said they did. Specifically they had one flight, with every beer they had. And now I can say I've had a flight with ten beers. Thankfully the beers were only three ounces each, so I walked away having had the equivalent of two "pints". Still, it had been a long and busy day. I lyfted back to the Kennedy School and had a good night's sleep.

The next morning, during my travels, I bought a pair of the Mega Millions lottery. This is the one that was a record breaking $1.5 Billion. I got one for myself, and one for my buddy G. What shocked me was that the tickets were $1 each. That's it. TL;DR: neither of us won.

(my one souvenir)

The remainder of the day was spent taking a long walk along Alberta Avenue, which is one of Portland's arty neighbourhoods. I had a nice breakfast, found some cool shops, and ended up downtown, where I spent an hour playing video games at a barcade. I ended up back at the hotel about two hours before the show and took a nap out of the heat.

Finally, the time had come for my concert. I dressed up nice, walked the kilometre to the venue (The Alberta Rose Theatre) and settled in to watch Vienna Teng.

First though, we got opening act Stephanie Schneiderman, who was pretty good, but I'm not familiar with her.

Vienna Teng came out and sat in a nest of instruments and got people to shout out suggestions for songs to sing. Not sure if this was just banter, or if it did affect the set order. I do know that she played lots of her standards, a few new songs (including an amusing ditty she wrote for her toddler called "When it's time to leave, always have a pee").

Seeing her live was a joy. She's a great performer, even outside of a studio. I'm happy to go. Except, she wound up the show and hadn't played my favourite song! Apparently it's not just my favourite, because it was one of the two songs for the encore.

I left the Alberta Rose Theatre happy in my heart. The sun had gone down, so the heat had subsided to pleasantly warm. I walked back to my hotel and ordered an expensive burger at the bar.

To summarize the hotel, I probably shouldn't have stayed there - it was an expensive two nights, for average hotel rooms (even thought the hotel is wonderful to stay at, and has much better rooms). In the end, I had stayed there before so it wasn't special. All it really had was proximity to my concert. I could have stayed at a nearish motel for 1/3 the price and used a fraction of the savings on taxis.

Next morning I took a bus to Vancouver, hung out with my Vancouver peeps for a few peeps, had a bar crawl, watched Barbie, and basically chilled.

I failed to land a premium seat on the way back, and since I was watching Barbie when check in started, I got stuck with a middle seat in the back of the plane. That said, boarding was a dream, everyone was calm and orderly, and we pulled back a few minutes early. I grabbed a chicken sandwich, wandered over to my gate to see they were already boarding (indicating that the previous flight was not late). I got in line, and got on the plane. The pilots practically glided into our gate with no delays whatsoever.

Here's the really weird thing - when the seatbelt light turned off, hardly anyone stood up. Maybe five people throughout the plane, and two of those were from the front row. They openned the door to let us out and everyone... just stayed seated until the way was clear. Numerous people commented on this. When it got to our row, we stood up, grabbed our stuff, and left. It's like every single person on the plane was rational. I got to the baggage claim, wandered around for a bit until I found the "Fragile" section. Within two minutes, they opened it up, and I was one of the first people to get my luggage.

All in all, it was one of the most seamlessly easy flights I've ever experienced, even with being stuck in a middle seat. It's like the universe wanted to make up for it.

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May Coronation 2024 GBU

2024-05-20T05:37:32Z

Morgan and I went to May Coronation this weekend. It was a long weekend camping event, but we day-tripped for just the Saturday.

Good:

Got to show off my new, Laurel-made, garb! Nice to finally scratch that itch after missing 12th Night due to Covid. Thanks Morgan!

Saw Elias and Kiera’s step-down. Also saw Skane get knighted. I don’t know Skane at all, but he’s always been civil-to-friendly to me. Good for him.

Watched the archery championship. There were some really good targets there - especially the combat blunt target, which I later examined closely to see how it worked (mostly gate latches, to keep the targets from bouncing back).

I participated in the OGGS invitational tournament. I did well enough to not feel bad about how I shot (despite not having shot in over six months), but not so well that I got called into court, which I don’t like. This is the sweet spot for me now.

Also, Morrigan did her best to make the invitational shoot an open shoot, through the simple method of inviting everyone who wanted to shoot.

Allert won the Chivalry price in the archery tournament. Nobody asked me, but if I was asked, I’d have recommended them too.

One of the heavy fighters I was cheering for ended up winning the Kingdom armoured combat championship.

Bad:

That OGGS invitational shoot should have been an open shoot. If you’re only going to run two tourney’s, and one is the championship (with only those vying, and no testers), the other should be open. We want to encourage participation, not make things cliquey.

Just before court, the weather turned windy and chilly to the point were everyone was grabbing cloaks and coats against the cold.

Entitled Dog Owner culture has gone past brewery tap rooms and random green spaces, and has entered the SCA. There was a serious number of dogs at this event, and they weren’t restricted to their camp sites (which would be fine, provided they are sufficiently restrained). Tons of people were leading their dogs around the whole event. Including one person who brought their dog into a procession and a peer meeting. Now to everyone’s credit, all the dogs were on leash, but as someone with a dog-phobia, it’s unnerving to suddenly have a dog sniffing at your feet because the owner lead their dog that close to you. I get it, you want your dog with you, but leave them at your campsite so the rest of us can enjoy ourselves.

To their credit, none of the dogs seemed bad. But when people tell me how good their dog is, in the back of my mind, I’m thinking “until they’re not”.

On the way home, Morgan and I were looking for somewhere to eat, and accidentally went to Brooks instead of Bassano. The atmosphere in Brooks was revolting, to the point where I was nearly sick to my stomach - and the last time I barfed was 1982. Seriously, it was rank. I’ve been told this is because Brooks is just meth labs sandwiched between a pig-slaughtering plant and a sour gas refinery. Also, we clipped the edge of a monsoon on the highway back to Calgary, which lead to an “entertaining” half-hour of driving out of our two hours.

Ugly:

My not being in the OGGS came up twice, leading to brief foul moods.

“That they gave it to both the fuck up and the malignant narcissist without giving it to me told me everything I needed to know about my chances.”
“Both of them were goosed against the wishes of the order.”
“Doesn’t matter. They still never recommended me. I was perpetually six months away for years.”

It pisses me off that I’m still bitter about this all these years later. I really wish I could let this shit go.

The usual suspects continue to snub me. This is irritating since I don’t deserve it, but I’m getting better at letting it slide off me.

Meh:

I don’t know the new King and Queen at all, even by reputation, so I can’t say how their reign will be.

Evening court was fine. Lots of people I don’t know getting awards.

I’ve hit an interesting equilibrium where I go to events just often enough that people are happy and surprised to see me.

Miscellany:

“Why was so-and-so one of the fighters you wanted to win?”
“He’s always been kind to me, and seems to treat everyone he meets like a fellow Player Character. Whereas such-and-such treats most people as NPCs. The other guy isn’t mean, or a jerk per se, but it’s clear there are people he considers worth it, and others who are beneath him.”
“OK, I understand that.”

Anyway, if I go to an event this summer, it might be Dragonslayer, or Quad war if I’m really ambitious. But that will be a last minute decision.

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I Should Have Gone the Other Way

2024-02-20T01:21:33Z

It’s above zero today, despite being, historically, the coldest part of the year. Kinda bad for humanity, but I might as well take advantage of it and get a decent walk in. The goal, walk around the neighbourhood once.

I went east. I should have gone west.

First problem, the green space I walk down had some dude and his daughter walking their dog without a leash. They were near, but not within an off leash area. To be fair, they were some distance away, and I got no indication that the dog had even noticed me, much less was aggressive. It did make me hyper-vigilant and anxious though.

Anyway, they went one way, and I went another. But now I’m tense.

I keep walking (towards an intersection that is controlled by a very long light), and see some random dude walking towards me. As I get closer, I see he’s waving at me. I do not recognize him. I’m not happy about random strangers engaging me in conversation, mostly because 90% of the time they’re pan-handlers.

He wasn’t a pan-handler.

As I walk by he continues to wave at me, while I scowl and walk past. This guy is not getting the message.

“How’s it going?”

Against my better judgement, I engage, instead of simply brushing him off.

“Why do you want to know?”
“Just trying to be friendly.”
“Hello. I’m fine.”

I turn to walk away.

“Do you need any money?”
“What?!?”
“Do you need any money?”
“No. I do not want any money.”

Ok, that genuinely surprised me.

By this time I’ve reached the crosswalk, and the dude is still standing where he was when I passed him. He has turned to face where I am, despite having been walking in the opposite direction. Neither crosswalk was indicating pedestrians could go, so I push the button to go west, since it will come on first in the cycle. Since I don’t really have a destination, I was going to go in whichever direction was going to go first, east or south.

The guy has not budged. He is about five metres behind me. I see him out of the corner of my eye. By this time I’m getting massive creep-vibes off him. I turn slightly so I can keep an eye on him. I’m not subtle about it. He is well aware that I am not letting him out of my sight. He approaches the crosswalk, but steers well away from me. Note that this means he has completely reversed direction for no apparent reason, except to go the same way I am.

“I’m… I’m just going to cross the street this way.”

He points the way I was going to go. I don’t respond. About a minute later, the light changes and he starts to walk across the street. I stay put and push the button to go south. He keeps glancing behind him to see if I’m following him. I keep an eye on him as I continue and he reaches a nearby bus stop just as a bus pulls up. He gets on and the bus departs. Not sure if he was trying to get away from me, but he picked the right bus to do so - the next stop is over six kilometres away.

I’m not sure what that guy’s deal was, but everything about his behaviour said he wasn’t “just being friendly”. He had an agenda, and I completely derailed his script. What was really weird is that I'm a Shrek-looking dude with resting-angry-face, and this dude was half my weight. That he approached me at all is frankly baffling.

Sadly, this made me brood for the rest of the walk, which is not the relaxing stretch of the legs and vitamin D that I was hoping for.

Oh, and on the way back, some old man in an SUV almost ran me over. Thankfully I was still on edge, so I stopped just short of it, as did he (I suspect my sudden stop is what suddenly yanked me out of his blind spot). His and his wife both visibly shrugged in a “what can you do?” gesture. Pay attention is my advice.

--- later edit ---

Consensus on Facebook is that he was either trying to sell me on Jesus, or an MLM. Given the "do you need money" query, I'm guessing the latter. Hopefully he rethought his life choices after encountering an ogre who didn't obey the script.

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The Visibility of Sanctions in the SCA

2024-02-17T06:39:56Z

A friend brought up Donnan today. It got me thinking about SCA banishments again, and the weird attitude the powers that be have about them. They're reluctant to do it, and equally reluctant to give any indication that it had ever happened. Seriously, I searched the Avacal website for indications of any sanctions. I know of five people who have been temporarily banned since Avacal became a kingdom - only the most recent is mentioned. If you look at the Avacal FB page, only the most recent two are mentioned. And my google-fu is excellent, so not finding anything suggests that it's just not there.

I'm not sure if those two still being there are a result of their being the most recent bans, or the severity of their alleged/actual crimes (both involved CSAM). Maybe the notifications just didn't survive a site redesign. In which case, I'd suggest that, of the information that makes the cut for survival between site redesigns, banishments should be included. It's important.

Anyway, I get it. No group wants to be judged by its worst members; maybe they think sweeping it under the rug is the best course of action. But they shouldn't, because it isn't. I think the fact that a ban occurred should still be discoverable. If some dude is a horrible piece of shit, I'd like to make my own decision about that person, even if the current monarchs have forgiven them. And I do think that not continuing a banishment is taken by most people as a sort of forgiveness.

Of course, you're welcome to forgive whomever you like, but you don't get to tell me, implicitly or explicitly that I must. If I can find zero evidence that someone like Donnan or Henry got banned, how would I even know that the choice is there? Maybe hanging out with someone is going to hurt my social standing, without me even knowing it's in danger. Maybe I'm in literal danger? Who's going to warn me?

Final thoughts: if someone's awards can be listed on their Avacal wiki entry, can their banishments? Isn't "banished during the reign of X" just as equally earned and worthy of inclusion as "Baronial rapier champion from AS12-AS13"? If I made that edit, are the Avacal wiki gnomes going to revert it?

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Alberta Under Smith

2023-10-14T16:48:08Z

The United Conservative Party released their Policy and Governance Resolutions for the upcoming legislature. It's pretty much a shit show from start to finish.
Governance Resolutions (1-19)are mostly minor changes to how government operates. Stuff like who's eligible for constituency associations, whether you can use a physical membership card, etc. The biggest thing is that #17 which says there must be a leadership review if the party leader loses an election/by-election.

I imagine these things could be manipulated to give subtle biases to rural or right-leaning ridings, but honestly my eyes glazed over. It's a case of me knowing that they're all bad actors, and assuming the worst.

And speaking of the worst, the policy proposals are where the real evil meat is. They fall into several broad categories.

Damn You Ottawa

No one ever lost votes blaming Ottawa for their problems.

#1 Defend Alberta’s economy and autonomy by opposing all attempts by the Federal government to impose net zero by 2035.

Straight up obstructing the federal government. You can tell what their main priorities are since this was #1 on the list. We might want to screw the gay kids, and support wing-nuts, but we will always, absolutely, support our Oil and Gas Overlords first and foremost.

#15 Recognize that Albertans have many endangered God-given rights and freedoms that are not formally affirmed in The Canadian Constitution, its enactments or Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

This goes into more detail, but boils down to wanting US-style bill or rights (especially the “rights” of the really wacky states, and guns guns guns). Also note the inclusion of “God-given”. This came from our Premier's riding, and I just wish she'd move to rural Idaho already, since she likes it so much.

Also, they describe the Convoy protests as the "2022 truck parking problem", and boy howdy, are they still angry that Ottawa invoked extreme measures to put a stop to it.

Let Assholes be Assholes

These are all about letting the wing-nut freak flag fly without facing any consequences. Note that it won't protect you.

“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” - Frank Wilhoit.

#2 Protect an individual’s right to free expression.

It goes on to point out that people are criticized for having opinions, and sometimes even fired for them. Basically, the UCP wants to make it illegal to suffer the consequences of your actions. This will become a theme as we go into different categories.

And remember, this won't be used to keep you from being fired for voting New Democrat. But if you try to keep convoy protesters out of your store, watch out!

#25 make the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal and all other administrative and regulatory body hearings subject to the same rules of evidence and burden of proof as followed by the courts.

Organizations can no longer have ethical obligations for their members, only legal ones. And because these organizations typically don't have the apparatus for investigating or prosecuting crime the way the justice system has, this effectively means no sanctions without a pre-existing conviction, or more effort than their willing to spend.

#28 Require all regulatory professional associations and trade organizations to limit investigations of their members for complaints regarding professional conduct of their members to instances of activities that occur while ‘on the job,’ and limit the application of any Code of Conduct to professional activities and exclude personal affairs.

You can be a tiki-torch wielding convoy participant wearing actual swastikas, but I can't fire you, provided you only do it on your day off.

COVID Bullshit

They rode in on a wave of wing-nut anti-vaxx/anti-mask bullshit, so you knew there was going to be a lot of this. Because even the tiny impositions we had to put up with compared to other countries was an affront to their right to hang out at Tim's and breath on the cashier.

#3: Protect a medical practitioner’s right to research, speak, and write; and protect Medical Doctors and all healthcare professionals from having their licenses to practice threatened for publicly expressing professional medical opinions in any public setting.

The goal here it to eliminate consequences for healthcare professionals who spout nonsense.

#4 Protect an individual’s right to informed consent decisions regarding their own body.

The goal here is to eliminate consequences for patients who accept nonsense. Also, patients already have consent. I think this is here to force doctors to put up with patient nonsense. i.e. it's less about refusing treatment, it's about not allowing the Doctor to contradict the patient who wants woo treatment.

#7 Protect an individual’s right to privacy and confidentiality of their health care information.

No vaccination status cards ever again. Because the rational people aren't allowed to protect themselves from the irrational people.

#16 Enshrine the doctor-patient relationship by:
protecting Alberta physicians from undue third-party interference,
to neither compel physicians to prescribe treatments nor prohibit them from prescribing treatments, and
to include the right of physicians to prescribe off-label medications using their best discretion with the informed consent of the patient.

Hamstring the Alberta Medical Association, specifically so they can't sanction doctors who prescribe ivermectin.

Anti-Trans bills

Of course they're anti-trans. Were you not paying attention? They'll go after the merely LGBQ folks next you know. And after that, people who don't perform Ozzie-and-Harriet gender roles close enough. Alternative sexuality terrifies these people.

#8 Require Teachers, Schools, and School Boards to obtain the written consent of the parent/guardian of a student under the age of 16 prior to changing the name and/or pronouns used by the student.

If you're dad is going to beat the shit out of you for being queer, the school isn't going to give you a safe space. Better stay in the closet. Also, they get to dead-name you.

#17 Support a comprehensive Bill of Parental Rights which ensures that all legislation will recognize and support parents’ rights to be informed of and in-charge of all decisions to do with all services paid for by the province, including education and health care.

I feel it's always worth asking, a parent's right to what? And the answer is to treat their children like property they can control, instead of human beings they have obligations to.

Mostly this is an anti-trans bill, but it's fractally bad since it also means under-age kids can't seek treatment for other things ranging from embarrassing to traumatic without exposing themselves to their parents. No birth control for you little Susie, and god help you if you need an abortion, or even something as simple as a vaccination.

#29 Protect inmates who were female at conception and are housed at correctional and remand centers for women operated by Alberta Correctional Services by refusing to house any inmate who was male at conception at said correctional and remand centers.

We're going to protect women, by making sure that some of them get the shit kicked out of them in the men's prisons.

Anti-Education

The more you're educated, the less likely you are to vote conservative.

#6 Ban post-secondary institutions from the use of race as a factor in any admissions program or procedure.

They want to eliminate affirmative action. Can't be a white supremacist if you don't keep the non-white's below you.

#9 Ensure post-Secondary institutions shall be places of free thought and learning of employable skills by eliminating all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices at all public universities, colleges, technical institutes, and trades schools and all adult education institutions. They are not places for indoctrination of identity politics, reverse racism, or radicalization. Any postsecondary institution that maintains a DEI office, policy, or equivalent shall lose government financial support.

They want to eliminate any accommodation for anyone not a white, het, cis, able-bodied male. And they'll starve post-secondary to do it. Also notice the language of “indoctrination”. You're free to be an anti-masking lunatic who screams at the cashier, but not to provide a hand up to a discriminated minority. Freedom indeed.

#19 Implement a school voucher system to ensure that education funding follows each student and enhances the vision of school choice.

We already have a voucher system. This makes it more explicit, and insures they get more funding (presumably at the expense of the public system).

#20 Ensure that teachers, schools, school boards, and third parties providing services to kindergarten to Grade 12 schools do not provide access to materials of a sexual, racist, or abusive nature, including, but not limited to, books, handouts, online materials, and live events that are not part of the Alberta Program of Studies.

No telling the kids you're gay. And certainly don't suggest books to kids trying to figure out why they're different from the others. Best to stay in the closet and implicitly tell them they should stay in the closet too.

Typical Conservative Bugaboos

Their hit parade. This is a catch-all for shit conservatives hate.

#5 Protect Albertans’ right to have access to goods and services using cash and the option to bank with provincially regulated institutions that supply cash instead of Digital Currency.

This is a combination of typical Conservative opposition to technology, fear of (((global elites))), and being pissy that some stores didn't accept cash during the lock-down.

Also, there's been no serious proposals to eliminate physical currency. Even if we were to do it, it's the sort of thing Canada wouldn't do first. We'd wait until a few European countries did it first. Which they're not.

#10 Oppose the federal expansion of Medical Assistance in Dying (“MAiD”) qualifying criteria to include those suffering solely from mental illness and oppose the future legalization of MAiD as a care option for minor children.

Because if you want to die, you must therefore be mentally ill.

Note the opposition to “future legalization of MAiD... for minor children”. Like, is anyone seriously floating this? Or are they just pulling a “think of the children”? Anyway, Cons don't like assisted suicide.

Wait! If they're successful at this, and then they subsequently get fetuses declared “people”, they've just done an end-run around legal abortions.

This one is worse than I thought!

#12 Prohibit any land use or development planning initiatives that would restrict movement of residents as per Section 6 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

They go on to say that this is explicitly anti-15 minute cites legislation, based off of the usual misunderstanding of Oxford's taxation proposal. Also, a prime example of Cleek's Law.

#21 Not support the establishment of solar farms in the areas of the agricultural Canada Land Inventory (CLI) Class 1, 2, or 3 soils.

Well, it's not a ban, just a “not support”. Probably because telling farmer's “no” outright might cost them votes. But they're sure not going to support renewables, because of our Oil & Gas Overlords.

#22 End provincial funding for supervised consumption sites.

Of course. Those junkies should just die or move to Vancouver.

Miscellaneous, Possibly Not So Evil Proposals

I can't really judge these, but I'll list and comment anyway.

#11 support programs, eliminate red tape, and reduce taxes for the succession of the family farm to the next generation of farmers in our primary agricultural sector.

I guess.

#13 Prevent concerns about electoral fraud in Albertan elections by (at a minimum) banning, except by plebiscite, all use of any and all electronic machine for tabulation or counting of ballots for any provincial election.

I do like paper ballots. And wasn't happy with the last bullshit senator-in-waiting election being part of a scantron with other measures. It mean't I couldn't effectively refuse the ballot.

#14 Support the establishment of a Digital Bill of Rights that outlines the following rights.

They list the rights, and I don't really have a problem with them.

#18 Encourage increased nitrogen production in our petrochemical sector to reduce costs and improve the availability of fertilizer for Alberta farmers.

Note they say encourage, not require. It's a motion to ask our Oil & Gas Overlords nicely to do something.

#23 Work with the provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Yukon Territory and the Northwest Territories, and the States of Alaska and Montana, and all associated First Nations as partners, to secure one or more Transportation Utility Corridors (TUCs) to the Hudson Bay, the Mackenzie Delta region, and/or Alaska.

This expands a previous bill so that we work with more jurisdictions than just Manitoba and Saskatchewan. It seems fine, but it is part of a “get a pipeline to somewhere” bill, so not ideal.

#24 Divide the roles and responsibilities of the Minister of Justice position into separate ministries of Attorney General and Solicitor General.

I'm worried this is an attempt to hamstring both proposed ministries (though it's likely just an attempt to expand the number of cabinet ministers), but nothing obvious is coming up. It does mean that the people who prosecute cops won't be the people in charge of the cops, so that's ok in a platonically ideal sense where a conservative government would actually prosecute cops.

#26 Support fair, efficient, open, and competitive consumer and industrial electricity market and conduct a review to determine market competitiveness and whether there is excess market concentration resulting in high electricity prices and if so, determine methods to correct the excess market concentration.

Half-measure. They should go farther and drag them back to being a government utility. I'd rather my utility bill was smaller and went towards making the grid better rather than a millionaire's yacht collection larger.

#27 Repeal the no fault Insurance (also known as Direct Compensation for Property Damage) legislation in Alberta and return to torte-based (also known as at-fault based) insurance.

I guess.

#30 Ensure that social assistance support programs such as Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH), seniors’ benefits, and the Alberta Child and Family Benefit continue to be indexed to inflation.

This is a good idea, but they should make the current amounts livable first. Having a not-good-enough value indexed to inflation means it will never be good enough. Also, note that this is the last proposal, so it's the least likely to be gotten to.

Summary

Anyway, it's about 2/3 evil (21+/30). If it's bad, they're for it. If it's good – especially if it gives a shit about real people, they're against it. Hard to believe we could do worse than a Kenney government, but Smith said “hold my beer”, and here we are.

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Retinal Detatchment

2023-09-20T22:42:53Z

At the beginning of August, I went on a trip to Portland and Vancouver. At that time, my eyesight was fine. Sometime after I got back, I started noticing my eyesight was... odd. I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was, because I had a problem with one eye, but you typically use both your eyes, and so the other eye compensated. I'm sorry to say that I went into bachelor mode and simply assumed that whatever the problem was, it would jut go away eventually.

It didn't go away.

After a week of this, I finally got fed up and decided to investigate exactly the extent of my eye troubles. This included such simple tests as closing each eye and measuring my peripheral vision. And I found that I had lost about a third of the top of my vision. That was troubling enough that I made an appointment with my eye doctor.

Also, the number of floaters in my eye had skyrocketed. Keep the blind spot and the floaters in the back of your mind, so if they happen, you'll seek treatment faster than I did. While a blow to the head can cause this, sometimes it just happens. That was the case with me, though I'm high risk for it (family history, previous cataract surgery, previous myopia, and just plain old age).

Aside: When you call up your optometrist looking for a routine appointment/new glasses prescription, you get pushed off a month in the future. But if you tell them you're worried you're going blind in one eye, they get you in the same day!

Appointment made I go to see the doctor. Exam ensues, and his conclusion is that my retina has become partially detached, but they can fix it with lasers.

“You go to a specialist, and they zap the ends of the detachment with a laser to keep it from getting worse.”

A statement that really under-sells the procedure on multiple levels. Both in terms of just how invasive it is, and also how efficacious it is.

They contact a retina specialist and I get an appointment for the morning two days later.

Two days later, I'm expecting to just see a specialist for an assessment. Little did I know that I was getting onto the roller coaster, and you don't get off a roller coaster half way through the ride. It being at North Hill mall, I opt to bike down. I also skipped breakfast, thinking I would simply have a big lunch after my late-morning appointment.

The specialist confirms my detached retina, and tells me I now have to immediately go to Gimbel to see the on-call optometrist. No one tells me this is because I am going to be treated today. I still think I'm getting assessed. I bike up to Gimbel, because it's on my way home. Knowing what I know now, I'd have biked home and then walked to Gimbel.

Now I'm fine with Gimbel because I'd had two earlier eye surgeries with them. They did a great job, and Dr. V (who did both my Lasik surgery 20+ years ago, and my cataract surgery 7ish years ago) was both an excellent surgeon, and also had a quiet and calm demeanour that puts you at ease. His bedside manner was fantastic.

Gimbel makes me cool my heels for many hours, while occasionally doing random tests. At one point, they dilated my eyes and then left me in the waiting room for three hours – I was worried the dilation would simply wear off before they had a look inside my eye. Finally, I see Dr. W. He explains that I need to have major eye surgery, and that they were going to do it tonight. This put my anxiety at high alert. Ok, surgery, I can handle this. ::breaths heavily::

Then he adds that I would need to spend the next 12 days face down. And I lose my mind.

“12 days?!? I can't spend the next 12 days face down! It's impossible. You might as well ask me to write a concert. How am I supposed to eat? Go to the bathroom? Hell, I can't lay face down in my bed for ten minutes without getting back spasms, and you want me to spend 12 days like that? It would be literal torture!!”

Aside: It was pretty bad, but it wasn't that bad. What they meant was that I would need to spend the majority of my time face down, but I could move around and do things. It ended up mostly being really really boring, inter spaced with sleep deprivation, and the occasional muscle pain. But no one bothered to tell me that.

Dr. W. Barely reacted to my very clear mental breakdown. He clearly did not give a shit. Probably the second worst doctor I've ever had to deal with. When I tell people that, they get the impression that he's a giant prick like Gregory House. This is inaccurate. It's more that the only thing he cares about is your eyes, and nothing else is his concern. Certainly not anything like your mental well-being, or the fact that you're in the midst of a giant panic attack. He was blithely unconcerned about any of that.

Anyway, he handed me off to a clerical assistant who got me to sign consent forms for the surgery, and admonished me to go immediately to Rockyview hospital for the surgery.

I was still in the middle of my anxiety attack when her pen-and-tablet stopped working, meaning I had to sign my name on a screen using a computer mouse. Try that sometime – it's super hard to do and have something that looks anything like a signature, much less your signature. I had to do it while my hands were literally shaking from adrenalin. After about ten attempts, I got something merely horrible, as opposed to impossible. I was very close to just using “x”. She gave me some pamphlets for recovery equipment (literally the closest thing anyone had came to implying my 12 days of torture weren't going to be literal torture).

“Go straight to the hospital.”
“I have to take my bike home – I'm not leaving it locked up here for two weeks.”
“No, you have to go immediately.”
“The doctor is still here, there is no universe where he's getting to the hospital before I get there, even if I do take a 3km detour”
“You're not the only person getting this surgery today. The sooner you get down there, the higher in the queue you'll be.”
“Fine. I'll go straight there.”
“And no food.”

Murray (who is a saint) had a day off, so I was able to get him to come fetch me and my bike, then take me to the hospital. He took my bike back home, and awaited my phone call to come get me post-surgery.

I checked into the hospital and then waiting around for about five hours, because – and this will shock you – the doctor did not get there before me). On the bright side, I got excellent care. Every nurse and porter I encountered, as well as the surgery team, were nothing but empathic and professional. Kudos all around. Except for Dr. W., who still had the warm and cuddly nature of a clay golum. At least he was good at eye surgery.

Waiting for the surgery, I got to hear a conversation between the patient in front of me (different suite and surgeons) and the nurse. He was a diabetic who did everything wrong, and now they were going to amputate his foot. He had a good humour about the whole thing (he admitted it was gallows humour), and made me a little ashamed about how much I had been panicking earlier.

My surgery was a vitrectomy (removal of the fluid in the eye), followed by laser surgery that reattached the retina to the back of the eye. Finally, there was a pneumatic retinoplexy (refilling the eye with a gas to keep the retina pressed against the back of the eye). The gas bubble in my eye is why I needed to stay face down for 12 days.

I haven't worked up the nerve to watch an example video of the procedure (I'm sure it's on YouTube somewhere, if you're curious). Of note it took about 45 minutes and I was awake for all of it. I had the option of general anesthetic, but the anesthesiologist assured me I was in good hands (again, if everyone else can have a decent bedside manner, why couldn't Dr. W.). I also had the option of a silicon gel in the eye instead of the gas. I very nearly went for this because it would have eliminated the need to be face down for 12 days. It would have required a second surgery (to pull out the silicon and replace it with “water” after I'd recovered. Spending so much time waiting around, I had plenty of time to read up on the pros and cons of each surgery. Begrudgingly, I had to accept that gas vitrectomy was the better option.

Another aside: while prepping for surgery, they weighed me and I was way lighter than I thought I was – 275 instead of 290. Still way higher than I like, but it was nice to get some good news that day. Especially given 275 is one of my internal mental thresholds on a day I was doing poorly mentally.

Anyway, after the surgery they sent me home. Murray (still a saint) fetched me and on the way home I finally got a burger to eat. It was around 10pm, my first meal of the day.

I attempted and largely failed to sleep face down. The face down part I stuck to, it was the sleeping part that didn't come. Too much anxiety, too little relaxing.

The next day I followed up with Dr. W. Again, he didn't care about my questions, and just gave me my marching orders. Stay facedown, take four different drops at varying times over the next two weeks. I went home and called Calgary Vitrectomy Recovery and they brought me all the linked equipment, demonstrated all of it, and made my recovery 100% better. Seriously, if someone had just told me about this stuff, it would have saved me a lot of anxiety.

And there was a lot of anxiety. My depression is always near the surface, but this was the first time in years I was seriously thinking about suicide. It was bad. Thanks to the assorted distant support I got during it all, it kept me going until I got used to the recovery. I hate thinking about my mortality, and I had 12 days with nothing to do but sit with my head down and nothing to do but be alone with my black thoughts. If you ever wondered why I bike so much, it's to distract me.

Over the next two weeks, I got a T3 prescription to deal with neck pain (it was bad enough one day that I sought a doctor's treatment). I renewed my library membership (lapsed in my 20s) and downloaded an app called Libby for audio and ebooks. Listened to several novels.

I also came up with a nightly routine to get a small amount of sleep: Strategic placement of pillows and the equipment I was renting allowed about 90 minutes of sleep before soreness woke me up. Then I'd switch to the massage chair, which was actually a comfortable sleep for 60 minutes. Repeat both of those twice per night, and I got enough sleep I wasn't losing my mind.

And how am I doing now?

My eyesight is slowly returning. I think the retina is healed, but the fact that my eyeball has slowly been replacing the gas with fluid means my eyeball is like a carpentry level – the top of my field of view is liquid that I can see through, and the bottom is gas that makes things fuzzy. Right in the centre there's a surface tension line I can't see through at all. Every day, the line moves a fraction lower and I have more vision. I can read and write (obviously) and watch TV, but I'm not safe to drive my car or ride my bike, since I can't effectively shoulder-check to my left. I figure it should all be back to normal by the end of October. The blind spot at the top that triggered all this is gone, so they actually fixed the problem, and didn't just stop it from getting worse. Today is the last day I have to take drops. I have to wear a medic-alert bracelet for another two months, which is also the amount of time I'm not allowed to fly. In both cases, because of the gas bubble in my eye.

Mentally I'm better. Not 100% (or more accurately not even up to my normal 75%) yet, still thinking dark thoughts, but they're responding to my training more now. Being hyper-vigilant about the fragility of my eye isn't helping, but that's not going away until my vision is back.

When I got my diagnosis, one of my thoughts was “I wish it was four weeks from now, and all this crap would be in the past”. Well here I am four weeks from then, and it was all in the past.

So there you go folks. If your eyes go weird, see your optometrist right away, and if it's a detached retina the recover will suck, but not so much that you can't do it. We live in a time and a place where this stuff can be fixed.

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Quad War

2023-06-30T23:05:23Z

I had grand aspirations to go to Quad War this year, and some half-assed actual plans to make it happen. tl;dr: I didn't.

Despite having gotten rid of most of my camping gear, I still have enough that I could pull off the minimum. I have a pup-tent, an air mattress, a (really quite stellar) sleeping bag, and a cooler. My food plans were going to be whatever I could get in Wainwright, plus leftovers of same. a friend made me some hearty bread, which along with peanut butter, would have been a decent breakfast.

There was going to be plenty of archery to attend, and a few friends were going, so I could socialize with them.

In the lead up this week, my anxiety was flaring up. And I more or less decided that now I had to go because I don't want to be a slave to my anxiety. I've got way too many friends who were simply broken by the lock down, and now just stay home all of the time. I don't want that to be my fate.

Anyway, the lists were made, and I was going to pack the car Thursday, and hop in first thing Friday. But Thursday afternoon I was going over the pros and cons of going. It was a lot of effort without much benefit. But it really came down to two things:

1) I don't have anyone to go with. The camping events I've gone to before where I've had someone to share the event with - the chores and the fun both - have been the best. Going alone simply underlines that I am alone. The editor in the back of my head would constantly be reminding me of that everytime I walk away from a conversation where I feel I've worn out my welcome, or every fire I avoid because I don't want to impose on anyone's hospitality. What kind of person would I be if I knowingly force someone to deal me? And this is a thing I worry about with people who have been my bffs forever.

I know that there are plenty of people in Montengarde and beyond that would be happy to see me, talk to me, briefly. But do I want short gossips and drive-by huggings? I mean, that's better than not having those things, but are they worth two 6-hour drives and two nights without my creature comforts?

2) I don't really feel like I belong in the SCA anymore. I mean, I enjoy garbing up and saying milord/milady as much as the next history-adjacent nerd, but under it all is an actual community, and for a brief shining moment around 2008-2010, I felt like I belonged to that community. After that was a long slow draw where things just got to be more of a chore with no reward. And once I stepped away from volunteering, the SCA stepped away from me. Hell, evidence suggests that the SCA stepped away from me even earlier, and I was just slow to realize the breakup.

Being reminded of that is not fun at all either.

On the other hand, what was I going to do at this event that would have been fun? Shooting. I haven't strung my bow in years, so shaking off those cobwebs and throwing some arrows downrange sounds like fun. The parties at Quad War are a lot of fun too, drinking and camping are a great combination. Catching up with folks I haven't seen in years (even with the caveats above) is fun.

Finally, there's the fact that I've put on a ton of weight over the last three years, and I'm worried that none of my garb fits anymore. Doing that triage was likely to be triggering.

I've long maintained that what I'd really like to do is get a moderate number of ex-SCAdians together and just go camping. I'm not the only person tho think about this, but it never happens - too much competing life bullshit. It's a pity, because I would fucking love to just hang out with friends late into the night at a campfire. I just don't want to drive six hours to do so.

Anyway, I know what my criteria is for future events: It has to either be day-trip distance away - so a Montengarde event that's not too far from the city. Or something that a close friend wants to attend with me. As the Venn diagram of BFFs and SCAdians has diverged into two distinct circles in the last two years, that pretty much means the former, like I did with this year's Montengarde 12th Night.

Or maybe the balance of avoiding-boredom vs potential-triggers will come down on the other side of the scale next year.

--- edit --- And then, after posting, it dawned on me. I'll travel that far for a genuine sense of community - either going where I'm welcomed, or going to share with someone welcoming. But I wouldn't go to that effort for a repeating event that is only providing light entertainment.

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Thoughts on That Missing "Submarine" Visiting Titanic

2023-06-20T19:59:49Z

There's a submarine that takes people to the wreck of Titanic. Three hours down, tool around for bit taking pictures, three hours up. A friend said "The CEO is an aerospace dudebro who seems hell-bent on 'disrupting' the submersible industry and being the underwater version of Elon Musk." Anyway, it's been missing for two days now.

I get that tech bros want to innovate by moving fast and breaking things, but in this case, the thing your breaking is your submersible. Which is bad if there are people on it. I mean, at least one of those people is the CEO, making this whole thing a lesson in hubris. But there were innocent people and a billionaire on board too.

At this point there are three possibilities:

1) They're bobbing around on the ocean surface somewhere, where hopefully someone spots them before they run out of air (the ship bolts shut from the outside and they only have 96 hours of air).

2) They're sitting on the ocean floor, out of power. They'll likely run out of air before rescue comes, if they don't freeze to death first.

Aside: Not a lot of other ships can even reach that depth, much less have the equipment to raise a 9-ton submarine. For reference, look at what it took to raise the Big Piece. The nearest one is in France, and I doubt it can get to the site in the time frame needed.

2.5) They lost power and hit the ocean floor with enough force to trigger #3 below.

3) The ship imploded on it's way down to the wreck, about 2/3 of the way there. Not only would no one have survived, it's unlikely they knew what happened. Implosion at that depth has the potential to be quicker than your nerves can transmit signals to the brain.

My theory: Repeated dives on an experimental vessel causes stress fractures to develop, likely between the porthole and the hull, and the whole thing just got flattened like a tin can. This happening directly over Titanic, so we'll likely find it at some point. In the next two years, someone will haul it up, assuming it didn't punch a hole in Titanic on the way down.

Among Titanic fandom, there's two schools of thought: 1) Visiting the wreck sounds cool as fuck, and I wish I had the money to do it. 2) The wreck is a gravesite that is showing extreme wear from all the people visiting it. We should restrict dives to the wreck except for legitimate research. I suspect people in the first camp are reevaluating their positions.

Would I do it? Not on OceanGate's equipment. At least one person (with enough direct knowledge about diving and OceanGate) would kick my ass if I did. Maybe if I was insanely wealthy, and I could use stuff like the Keldysh (the real world ship they used in Cameron's movie, as well as his deep sea documentaries) - or a more modern equivalent from a country not currently invading Ukraine. But even then, I'd donate an equivalent amount to charity so I wouldn't feel guilty.

Which does lead us to another more general problem. OceanGate was charging $250,000 for a dive. A quarter million dollars!. This (and things like space tourism or climbing Everest) suggest that tax rates on the ultra-wealthy are too damn low. Nothing takes the air out of space ship trips and giants yachts that carry their own, smaller, yachts, like a 90% tax bracket. More of that please. This has the added advantage of keeping the Elon Musks of this world in their place. Seriously, what's next? Bond villain lairs? They at least have the advantage of taking out their creators with them. Maybe that's what happened here. Shame about the regular folk involved though.

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On the Death of Monsters

2023-06-09T00:38:26Z

So an ancient evangelical with a huge amount of fame, wealth, and power died today. He was 93. And in those 93 years, he was a force for oppression in the world, and the world is marginally better without him. But he had his followers, and many current evangelical assholes learned at his feet. His ideology smoulders on, like a tire fire.

(it was Pat Robinson, BTW, but this post isn't about him specifically)

There's been this debate on social media the last decade or so when one of these creeps dies. Basically, don't speak ill of the dead on one side, and now is the perfect time to speak ill of him, because he deserves it. I'm generally on the latter side of that debate. I'm not interested in demonizing such people - to my mind an accurate description of them makes that unnecessary; and I'm certainly not going to sugarcoat it.

The debate itself is settling itself towards the latter. You still get the former (don't speak ill) types, but they're mostly not on the left anymore, whereas ten years ago it was a lot more popular. Now it's just the monster's defenders that call for this. Remember, when someone progressive dies, they're the first to demonize, so maybe don't buy into their bad faith bullshit.

The other big thing I've noticed, especially when the person is a preacher or preacher-adjacent, is a hope that they'll "get their just desserts" in the afterlife, or at least see the error of their ways when confronting god. I don't believe that, because there is no evidence for an afterlife. When we're dead, we're dead. The closest I might come to this reasoning is that I hope they had doubts or regrets that haunted them in their last seconds when their life passed before their eyes. I doubt it though - I think that requires at least a bit of empathy and self-reflection, and that's not a mental skill they spent any time exercising.

But, you know, if imagining such a person is suffering in hell makes you feel better, have at it. If you want to dance on their grave while singing "ding dong the witch is dead", go for it. It communicates to others that what they did is unacceptable, and it's likely cathartic. I'm not convinced it's healthy though, but I get it.

Maybe donate to a cause they'd hate instead? As ways of celebrating a terrible person's demise goes, it's better than just gnashing your teeth over the harm they've done and will never pay for.

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95th Academy Awards Predictions

2023-03-12T06:51:49Z

Some thoughts on the Oscars.

First, lets go through a bunch of awards without any real discussion. Note, I haven't seen every picture, so I'm picking from the ones I have seen.

Best Adapted Screenplay: I want Glass Onion to win, but it will probably be Living or Women Talking.

Best Original Screenplay: Banshees, EEAAO and Fabelmans all deserve it. Banshees was best written, but I suspect Fabelmans will get it.

Visual Effects: Avatar 2.

Sound (Wasn't this two categories last year?): Elvis.

Production Design: Elvis.

Short Film (Live Action): No clue.

Short Film (Animated): No clue, but My Year of Dicks should win based on the title alone.

Documentary Short: No clue.

Documentary Feature: No clue.

Original Song: I heard two of them, but neither slapped.

Original Score: Fabelmans, because John Williams.

Makeup: Wakanda Forever.

International Feature Film: All Quiet on the Western Front, because it's not getting Best Picture.

Film Editing: EEAAO. Or maybe Elvis.

Costume Design: Should be Wakanda Forever, but it will Elvis.

Cinematography: Elvis.

Now on to the big ones:

Animated Feature Film. I've only seen two, The Sea Beast, and Turning Red. I think it's going to go to the latter. Mostly because I'm not sure why The Sea Beast was nominated. Oh, it was fine, but it's the weird mashup of How To Train Your Dragon and Master and Commander nobody asked for. Pinocchio might upset this - I'm sure it's good because Del Toro, but I haven't seen it yet.

Supporting Actress. Curtis and Hsu are going to split the EEAAO vote, and The Whale isn't going to win for this. That leaves Angela Bassett and Kerry Condon. I think Bassett deserves it for that performance, but superhero movies are still 2nd class films for the Oscars, so I think Condon will get it. That said, she was the best part of Banshees.

Supporting Actor. Gleeson and Keoghan will split the Banshees vote. Hirsch is in Fabelmans for five minutes, so no. That leaves Quan, who has a helluva lot of buzz around his role in EEAAO. I think he deserves it and will get it.

Leading Actress. Williams has done better in the past, and will get her Oscar eventually, but if Yeoh doesn't get it, they should set the place on fire.

Leading Actor. Man, this is tough. Butler, Farrell and Fraser all did great this year. I think it'll go to Fraser, because everyone wants it to go to him. I just wish he'd get it for a better movie than The Whale. And I'm still never going to watch it, because I don't want to slit my wrists.

Best Director. This is one of those cases where I think Best Picture and Best Director are going to different. The Academy might want to praise Spielberg some more, but probably not - Fabelmans kind of flopped before the nomination, and Hollywood is still a business. EEAAO might be too weird for them, so that leaves the Daniels out. I think McDonagh will get it because Banshees is a moody downer. For proof, look at Nomadland, Moonlight, Greenbook, Spotlight, 12 Years a Slave from the last decade.

Best Picture. I've seen five of the ten Best Picture nominees, and they were all pretty good. Maybe not all Oscar-worthy (Avatar 2, I had a great time, but no). Now the thing about Best Picture is there's a lot of nominees, and they use ranked ballots, so often a very popular but polarizing movie won't win, and the movie that was everyone's 2nd or 3rd choice sneaks in. See for example, Greenbook. The two blockbusters are polarizing so no Best Picture for Avatar 2 or Maverick. a bunch of movies had microscopic audiences (probably undeserved if they got this far), so that leaves out things like Tar, Triangle of Sadness and Women Talking. All Quiet isn't going to win here, because people don't want a repeat of Parasite. That leaves Banshees, EEAAO, Elvis, and the Fabelmans. I'm not even going to guess at which one is everyone's 2nd favourite though. I just think Everything Everywhere All At Once should win.

Anyway, the Oscars are tomorrow, and I'll be watching them.

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Thoughts on a Test

2023-03-02T02:32:24Z

So the Alberta government tested out its emergency alert system today. If you're in Alberta you'll already be aware of that. Well fucking aware. It went off eight times in ten minutes. At first I was bemused then annoyed by this. "ha ha, someone must be leaning on the button!" "Jeebus, was eight tests enough?"

Then I remembered this was a test. The whole point was to see how it worked in the real world. And sometimes tests don't work. Or rather, tests always work, but sometimes they don't succeed in showing you everything works as expected. That's a good test

Maybe they were testing different geographical areas, and discovered that all of the tests went everywhere. That's something you'd want to know and fix in the future. Maybe they were testing different cell phone hardware, or compliance from every service provider? And doing that meant multiple alerts. Like, maybe I got the "all of Alberta" alert, as well as the "all of Calgary", "Samsung devices", and "Koodo network" alerts. All of those would overlap for me. Heck, maybe I got a "Telus network" alert thrown in there for good measure because Koodo is an affiliate. Maybe it just took eight tests, and you getting all of them means there's no holes in their coverage.

Was it irritating? Sure, but in the end it's ten minutes out of your day, and as a computer programmer, I'd rather QA found my bugs then the end user. For something like the alert system, the bugs could mean kids being abducted, or trailer parks not being evacuated before the tornado arrives. That being the case, I'll suck up the alarm.

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State of the James 2023

2023-01-20T03:38:32Z

I was looking back on my Dreamwidth and noticed that I did one of these exactly one year ago. So let’s do it again.

First off, last year sucked. T started off well - I was socializing semi-regularly, I was in a good mental place, and I was comfortably employed in a job I liked and was good at. None of that is true anymore.

The first start of this (though I wouldn’t realize it until months had passed), was that my players bailed on my D&D game. This was in March. They were all feeling stressed from upcoming finals (half the players are post-secondary instructors), so I told them to take a break and let me know when they wanted to start playing again. As of now, they haven’t.

I could nag them, but then that puts me in the headspace that, if I have to nag them, they don’t really want to play. And if they do play after nagging, they’re only doing it to humour me. I don’t want to be a burden on my friends.

July, I got laid off. This triggered a solid month of constant anxiety which only really ebbed away when I took a road trip to the coast. And aside from two hot tips from a friend, I have done sweet fuck all to get a job. I’m depressed, and that depression is manifesting as the complete annihilation of my Executive Function. Every day I sit down at my computer to start applying for jobs, and every day I just… don’t. On the bright side, I may hold the world record for most games of Klondike played.

I barely leave the house. I haven’t gotten any exercise since the fall. Haven’t even done my “daily” morning stretches in six months. I’m about 70 pounds overweight, which not only puts me well past “monster”, but actually intersects even worse thresholds that I’d rather not discuss. Walking to the store and back winds me.

The loneliness has gotten worse. Oh, the Philosophy nights help, as does having a roommate who isn’t a jerk. But I want a partner, and I know I’m never going to get one. And given my current mental, emotional, and physical state, that’s probably a good thing. I don’t want to be a burden on my friends, I certainly don’t want to be a giant mass of pain and neediness to a potential partner - why would I do that to someone I love?

This also coincides with some personal revelations about what kind of partner I am on those rare occasions when I’m with someone. Women who partner up with me very rapidly decide that wasn’t a good idea. Since I generally favour smart women, their judgement must be sound.

I’m in a state where I have to be very careful around my friends. I want to relax around them, but I also don’t want to accidentally pour my grief out on them. Keeping it in is mentally exhausting; letting it all out will drive people away because nobody likes an Eeyore. Therapy? Good in theory, not so great when I have no income and no health insurance.

As a final slap to the bag, I finally caught COVID just after Boxing Day. I still have a dry cough that could be developing into bronchitis. Just 2022’s last little gift to me.

Anyway, the solution is clear:

All I have to do is start eating better.
All I have to do is start exercising.
All I have to do is apply for jobs.

Simple, right? Who couldn’t do that?

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Thoughts on Wednesday on a Wednesday

2022-11-30T21:03:40Z

I've been watching Wednesday, The Tim Burton/Netflix Addams Family spin-off focusing on Wednesday Addams in !Hogwarts.

I'm digging a few choices that they've made so far (no spoilers):

Despite being focused on spooky-teens, there is very little male-gaze around it. The kids (largely played by young adults), look like their character's age, and are not sexualized. The one time I've really seen them dress up (the school dance in episode 4), no one looks slutty. This is refreshing.

After being indulged by her family and no small amount of script-immunity, Wednesday's anti-social behaviour is being called out by everyone: All of the adults in her life, all of her fellow students, random townies, are *all* saying no to her bullshit. She is facing social consequences for being mean to everyone. Hell, even Thing told her to pound sand until she apologized for taking him for granted. I'm sure that by the end of the show, she'll still be a spooky chick who doesn't suffer fools, but I'm hoping she'll at least have learned some goddamn empathy.

Her being a polymath/polyglot isn't really helping her because of her emotional immaturity.

The overall plot is genuinely suspenseful. I'm only half-way through, and aside from one major spoiler I was exposed to via the internet, I find it a compelling mystery.

As someone who kinda got over Tim Burton some years back due to him hitting the same beats over and over, this is fun. It's still obviously his aesthetic, but he really is going for a more mature take on "gifted kid goes to gifted school, hijinks ensue".

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When is a Vacation Not a Vacation?

2022-08-10T05:55:53Z

A: When you’re unemployed.

When I still had my old job, I was planning a trip to Vancouver for the fireworks, as I do every few years. Or rather, I plan a road trip every year, to reconnect with my friends in the interior of BC, and every few years, I have that trip coincide with the Celebration of Light. Dates were planned, and about half my rooms were booked. Of note, I had booked all the rooms in Vancouver, as well as the trip back, but not the trip to, because I wasn’t sure if I was going to go up to Prince George. Losing my job made that decision for me.

Since I didn’t have any of the rooms for the trip to Vancouver booked, and I had nothing but free time, I decided to leave early. Originally this was going to be on a Tuesday (instead of the original Saturday). However, losing my job meant that my mental health has taken an absolute beating (more on that towards the end). I had trouble focusing and getting tasks done. I hadn’t even booked my rooms in time for my new departure date. I opted, at the last minute, to skip Tuesday and leave Wednesday. This didn’t affect me too badly, because my original plan was to spend Tuesday night in Golden, and Wednesday/Thursday nights in Kamloops. I basically just drove longer on Wednesday.

Kamloops was fun, but warm. I ended up staying at the Ramada in a sketch area halfway between downtown Kamloops, and the nice hotels hallway up the hill. I got to share the hotel with an asian bike gang (which was neither good nor bad, just different). Also, there was a few good breweries.

The highlight was visiting Noah and Trista. We had Mexican food, spent time in the park listening to ~~dueling~~ dueting pianos. And Noah helped me out with my resume. Much appreciated, since updating it was filling me with anxiety.

Friday I drove into Vancouver, and set up in Port Wood’s spare room. I was there until the following Tuesday, when I moved to a B&B I’d previously booked for a week. I also spent another day after that in the spare room before leaving town on Wednesday.

There was drinking, and dinners with friends; thrifting in North Van; lunches on Granville Island, a last minute trip to the airport for a drop off. Mostly I visited with my peeps, albeit not all of them.

Some highlights:

Thrifting/beer with Rosie.

Quality hygge with Athena. Also, Studio brewing is pretty decent.

The Critical Hit show (aka #DNDLive). Good: it’s a funny show and I love it. Also, no one sat near me. Bad: Because there was maybe 100 people there in a theatre that sits over 400.

Festival of Light. Getting to and from the venue was great because Translink ran the West Coast Express for the occasion (it’s normally a weekday commuter thing). Wrong end of downtown, but it was a pleasant walk because the sun wasn’t blasting my skin off, even if it was very warm.

The fireworks themselves were world-class. Enjoyed the hell out of them.

The only bad news is I picked bad seats. First the front row seats were several inches shorter than the other seats in the bleachers - I had my knees in my armpits. Next, a light post was slightly in my field of view (it was way worse for the people next to me). Finally, there were some volunteers watching (standing, not in anyone’s eyeliner initially) next to me, but one of them kept drifting left until he was obscuring my field of view. Just as I resolved to tell him to move over, the fireworks ended. Next time, I’ll pick seats in the rearmost row, instead of the front row. But I probably won’t do the fireworks again for a few years.

Some lowlights:

The heat. It really kept me from doing the things I wanted to do, namely explore parts of the GVRD that I haven’t seen before. But it’s hard to do that when thirty minutes outside would give you heat exhaustion (which I got the edge of at least twice).

My B&B advertised a portable AC unit, so that was good, but when I got there, it said “do not move”, thus eliminating the whole “portable” thing. For two days, my bedroom was nice, but the rest of the suite was literally uninhabitable. After two days, I hauled my own AC unit up (I take it with me on these trips, and I’ve been thankfully every year that I had) and the suite managed to be decent on both ends, but not in the middle (it was a two bedroom suite, with the second suite having two single beds, so clearly the suite was meant for families). If I’d brought kids, their mattresses would have been hauled into the main bedroom, lest they die. I did mention all of this to the landlord, who was going to fit the rooms out with more AC plates, so the portable unit could be moved. But I imagine that’s not going to be until next year.

By a combination of timing and tree cover, the nights I was in the Port Wood guest room were pretty decent. Those were the coolest nights, and the topology of the room meant it was decently shaded. Bonus, they're next to a creek, which made a gentle noise that was easy to fall asleep to, provided you emptied your bladder thoroughly prior to bed.

I also didn’t see a few people I’d have liked to, due to instances of COVID and a rogue appendix. Bah.

Next up was Kelowna. I stayed at a shitty motel with a super comfy bed. Which reminds me I need to find a better mattress since my less-than-a-year-old one gives me shoulder pains.

Kelowna is where I met up with Lyn and Ash for a very nice dinner and a floor show. Dinner was steak, the floor show was some douchebag screaming at his date about how he had to pay more than her all the time. Good news: She walked out on him, and he got to pay for everything! Ash was poised to go into bouncer mode if things got violent. Sometimes I really wish I had the skill and temperament to do the same. I envy that man sometimes.

Aside from that excitement, it was a great time catching up with two people I wish I could see way more often. I didn’t see much of Kelowna. But I saw the best part.

I got into Nelson Thursday. Hung out with Judy and Janette for rib dinner. Along the way, I encountered a wizard.

Note: Nelson has many wizards, one of them (now passed away) was even named Wizard.

So I’m meeting Janette for dinner, and heading up to a ramen joint that we ultimately didn’t get into. Walking up the street, I spy a wizard leaning against a tree. As I passed, he glared at me and snarled "What do you know about brainwashing?"

"They've told me never to discuss the brainwashing", I replied.

Later, when I was with Janette, I pointed him out.

"Oh, you want to avoid him."

"Why? Is he a prick, or mentally ill?"

"Yes."

The next day, we hung out in the afternoon, and I had pizza/creme brûlée at the Library Lounge in the evening.

Driving back to Calgary, the newly constructed SW ring road changed my GPS instructions. In the past it sent me to Nanton and up highway 2. This time it sent me through Black Diamond, and up the 22.

So was this a good trip? The heat forcing me to spend time hunkered down around the AC wasn’t great, but it was relaxing. Visiting friends was always awesome, so that was good. But mostly it snapped me out of the worst of the depression I was in due to being laid off.

How bad was the depression? The suicide ideation I have to use my Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy techniques on every few weeks, I was using multiple times a day. The implications of having to use those tools so often was alarming. But at least they always worked. I was waking up with panic attacks. It was not fun.

Slowly, over the three weeks, it ebbed away. I’m not back to “normal” yet, but I’m a lot closer than I was a month ago. I attribute this to time, change of location, and being able to talk to my friends about it. And on that basis, this was a good trip, and certainly better than spending that time in my basement, even if my basement is cool.

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All Good Things...

2022-07-07T22:41:47Z

Got laid off today. Tonight, there will be drinking. Tomorrow, there will be paperwork.

Story time: About two months ago the old CEO got turfed and we got a new CEO. Third company he's helmed in five years. Red flag one and two.

He have a general meeting where he tells everyone "Big changes are coming, but nothing is going to change". Odd way of speaking. Red flag three.

Time goes on. Stuff gets done, including our annual general release, which got shipped a week ago. Last Monday rolls around we're told that another all-hands meeting is happening this Friday. Note that we are normally in the office Monday to Wednesday, and work from home on Thursday and Friday, so a "must attend in person, not virtual" meeting request for Friday seems pretty suspect. Red flag four.

But then my supervisor comes into the office (we normally have a meeting every Wednesday to discuss progress) to tell me... I'm getting a bonus. I normally announce these things on FB, but just didn't this time around. I joke with the boss that it was fifty fifty I was getting a bonus or getting laid off. Green flag?

Heading home, around 5:30, I walk through the parkade towards the bike room, and I notice that all of C-suite parking stalls have cars in them. That's normally not the case around here - it's usually pretty empty by the time I get there. Clearly there's a meeting going on. Red flag five.

"It's going to be a blood bath tomorrow, but they wouldn't have given me a bonus if I was going to be one of the victims." I think.

Of note, my immediate boss leaves on his motorcycle around this time, so he's not part of the meeting.

Today starts fine. I work in the morning, aside from the hour that the internet was down. I run some errands during lunch. After lunch I see my boss' boss wants to have a meeting with me. Red flag six. And that's enough red flags that I'm pretty sure I'm getting laid off now, regardless of bonus.

The meeting begins and it's the boss' boss, and the head of HR. The final red flag! Sure enough I'm getting laid off. They tell me a lot of insincerities, and I mostly just keep a neutral face and stay silent. I channel Mark Rylance from Bridge of Spies.

"Do you have any questions?"
"I have two. Can I come in right now to clean out my desk? And since you're giving me eight weeks, that puts me past the point where I'd have gotten my 25 year bonus, will I be getting that too?"
"We don't recommend that you come in right away. You should give yourself time before coming to the office, so you're in the right frame of mind. As for the 25 year bonus, I'll look into that."
"I promise I'm not despondent or violent, so I'm going to come get my stuff right now."

I've had a low level crush on her for years now. I should have asked if she was single.

At the office, the newest person in IT is sent to be my minder. I clean up what needs cleaning up (it's now in two totes in the garage - I'll deal with it later), wished him well (He confessed he was worried he was also on the chopping block, but wouldn't find out until quitting time), and drove home.

Fourth grown-up job: August 11, 1997 to July 7th, 2022.

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World-Building

2022-07-03T04:01:45Z

I’ve been running a D&D campaign for the last year (currently on hiatus, awaiting less player burnout). I wanted to talk about my thoughts in designing the world.

The genesis of this campaign came from two diverse sources. The first was a weird map someone made, in which the Mediterranean ocean was overlaid onto Australia.

This actually produces a nice fantasy world, where the inner sea is the home to commerce, and the outer sea is the home to monsters and exploration.

The second was this quote from fantasy author Scott Lynch:

You know what? Yeah, Zamira Drakasha, middle-aged pirate mother of two, is a wish-fulfillment fantasy. I realized this as she was evolving on the page, and you know what? I fucking embrace it.

Why shouldn't middle-aged mothers get a wish-fulfillment character, you sad little bigot? Everyone else does. H.L. Mencken once wrote that "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." I can't think of anyone to whom that applies more than my own mom, and the mothers on my friends list, with the incredible demands on time and spirit they face in their efforts to raise their kids, preserve their families, and save their own identity/sanity into the bargain.

Shit yes, Zamira Drakasha, leaping across the gap between burning ships with twin sabers in hand to kick in some fucking heads and sail off into the sunset with her toddlers in her arms and a hold full of plundered goods, is a wish-fulfillment fantasy from hell. I offer her up on a silver platter with a fucking bow on top; I hope she amuses and delights. In my fictional world, opportunities for butt-kicking do not cease merely because one isn't a beautiful teenager or a muscle-wrapped font of testosterone. In my fictional universe, the main characters are a fat ugly guy and a skinny forgettable guy, with a supporting cast that includes "SBF, 41, nonsmoker, 2 children, buccaneer of no fixed abode, seeks unescorted merchant for light boarding, heavy plunder."

You don't like it? Don't buy my books. Get your own fictional universe. Your cabbage-water vision of worldbuilding bores me to tears.

You can read the whole thing here

And so I wanted a world that would have a lot of pirates, or at least adventurers that behaved pirate-ey. And I wanted that world to be a little bit woke. Because realistically (ha!) a fantasy world would be horrifically racist/sexist/etc., I mean, if humanity gets worked up over skin colour, imagine what they’d do if they had to deal with actually different intelligent species.

Don’t get me wrong, large tracts of the world I develop are exactly like that, but a significant portion is not.

Bear with me. In a world where some species go into heat, or have no secondary sexual characteristics, or don’t have romantic feelings at all; and they differ in significant physical ways, strength, size, toughness; then why would you care about the minor differences in your own race. If lizard folk lay eggs, why does it matter if some humans are gay? If both Hobbits and Ogres exist, why care if women are fighters?

And so I wanted a world that was largely egalitarian and accepting of differences, in the small sphere of professional adventurers. These folks are, almost by definition, hyper-competent weirdos, compared to their normal countrymen. So be anything you want in the adventuring world. Sure, you’ll get the stink eye from the rubes, but what do you care - you’re an adventurer! The other adventurers you encounter won’t mind, so long as you’re good company in the tavern or a fight.

In short, being an adventurer among adventures is a little like being LGBTQ in a big city gay enclave. Your own social group is accepting, but the outside world tolerates you if you’re useful.

On a personal note, I didn’t want to have to do a lot of work world building, but also didn’t want to use a pre-existing universe, lest the PCs research it better than me.

So I decided on a world that was one giant ocean, but had a ring of islands where all of the adventuring took place. To explain why there were multiple fantasy races and unrelated cultures, I took a page from GURPS Yrth, and opted for a banestorm explanation. Basically, every few centuries, a giant magical storm will appear that transports an island from another universe to this one. And those islands look a lot like familiar islands. So one island is obviously Great Britain, but with wizards. Another bunch of islands is obviously Japan, with wuxia. This way, the players can assume the sort of knowledge that the characters would actually have. If they spend a week in fantasy London, I don’t need to explain a lot to them, their expectations will be close enough.

Along the way, I decided I needed a map. I hate making maps. I’m no good at it, and that frustrates me. On the bright side, my friend Gareth fucking loves making maps. I sketched out the islands on a white board along with some names and a bit of background for each, and said “give me an awesome map”. And he really delivered.

I actually got two maps, this is the latter one:

The first map was missing a key component for plot reasons. More on that later. The centre of the map is Tir na Holge, the land of the elves. The elves are ancient, aloof, and not available as PCs.

One of my players: “The elves sound like giant assholes.”
Me: “I think you’ve got it surrounded.”
Starting on the eastern most side, and going counter clockwise:

Albion/Ealga: Basically the Britain and Ireland. Populated my mostly Caucasian humans, plus Dwarves where the Scots would be and Hobbits where the Irish would be.

Pranam: Based off of Sri Lanka. Mostly South Asian humans, but with some fauns and centaurs in the mix. Until current events, this was the most recent banestorm addition, and they’ve spent the last two centuries being conquered/assimilated into the Albion culture. A lot of them are pretty sore about that, but the elites are mostly going along with it.

Zinjabar: Based off of Madagascar. Mostly populated by lizard folk, kobolds, and other minor serpentine races. They’re fairly ancient Egyptian in flavour.

Oyashima: Based off of Japan. East Asian humans, plus their own take on Dwarves.

Sanzhou: Largely not unified set of islands with multiple exotic races that don’t get along. Sort of pan-asian/Polynesian depending on where you are.

How do these people not all kill each other in an orgy of genocide? The Great Pact.

The Great Pact is an agreement between the races that defines a minimal standard of behaviour. And in return, those races aren’t subject to immediate killing. It doesn’t mean they get along, and wars still happen, but if a lizard man and a dwarve encounter each other, they’re not going to immediately attack each other because they’re both part of the Great Pact.

And what does the Great Pact say?

You don’t eat other intelligent races.
You don’t enslave other intelligent races.

That’s it, though there’s a constant back and forth between the major powers to add to the list. So far no one has come up with a definition of murder or piracy that everyone can agree on.

As an aside, the Elves invented a common tongue for inter-species communication. It’s sort of like Esperanto in that it’s no one’s mother tongue, and is easy to learn. It takes the place of “basic” in the game, though the farther inland you go, the less likely you’ll find people who speak it, since all the islands have their own languages.

The game began at the tail end of a war between Albion and Oyashima. There is a ceasefire, and the beginnings of a treaty. The PCs are part of that treaty being finalized. But on their way from Albion to Oyashima, something happens. A banestorm, that brings Zor Balgrin (the island at the north end of the map).

Zor Balgrin, in terms or geography is based off of New Guinea, but in terms of culture it’s a little closer to home.

I thought, what if the “bad guy” races got their act together and organized? What would that look like? I figure it would look a lot like the Confederacy, but with more cannibalism.

And so the PCs found themselves shipwrecked in a strange new world that shouldn’t be there (it was empty ocean when their journey began), but now they’re trapsing through the forest. And beyond those trees? A southern plantation, with goblins and gnomes as the slaves, orcs as the overseers, and it’s all run by ogre magi!

They enslave people! They eat people! They’re designated bad guys because they’re not part of the Great Pact!

But the goblins and the gnomes are all over this not-get-eaten-or-enslaved thing, especially if they just have to sign a few papers. But we still have to get there.

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Pay Phones

2022-06-11T04:18:12Z

Calgary is removing all of its pay phones. There's less than 20 left in the city, and they'll likely be gone by the end of the year. Killed off by ubiquitous cell phones.

Now the main reason why Telus wants to get rid of them is because of the cost. A payphone is expensive to buy/maintain/keep connected. They are tough beasts, but no one is making the parts anymore, which means areas that want to keep them have to order expensive custom-made parts, or cannibalize other phones.

I think we should keep them. Or rather, I think we should replace their functionality. Hear me out.

Why is a pay phone expensive? Well, they need to built like tanks so people don't bust into them for loose change. They need to have power and connectivity to the phone network. They need to be fixed. So how do you get around that?

One solution came from a talk I went to a few years by a city traffic engineer. He said that putting new lighted intersections in was a factor of magnitude cheaper now than it was twenty years ago. Then, you needed to dig up the street so the lights had power and could talk to each other (you don't want contrasting traffic lights both going green at the same time). Now you could do all of that with wifi/solar/batteries. An intersection that took a million dollars to build now took less than $100,000.

Next, don't charge for the phone call. A lot of why pay phones need to be tanks is to keep people from stealing them. Telus should simply provide this as a service (we'd need to legislate this - there's no way they'll do it on their own).

So what would these new payphones look like? You'd have the post in the ground/side of the building. It would contain a rechargeable battery and a solar panel. There would be a radio inside that talks to the cellular network (and provide the phone number). Now you don't have to worry about digging up the street.

Attached to it would be a heavy duty phone. Metal case, tough buttons, Metal cable and handset. And that's it. It would have a simple connection behind it that connects to the radio/power. It would bolt on so that all of the connections were hidden. And if it broke, a technician would simply unbolt it and replace it. The individual units would be repaired off site.

Where would you put them? In Calgary I'd suggest one at every C-Train station, plus every civic building or Telus facility. Give malls an option to set one up if they'd like.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I think it would still be useful, but I acknowledge it will never make a profit. That's why it's a public service, which isn't a dirty word.

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