On Talking Bunnies

   Caught some Sophia the First a couple of days ago to finally see what all the hype is all about (this probably tells you a lot more about me than you'd care to know, but apparently I define "hype" by the number of coloring books are about something.) From coloring books, it appears that it's traditional hand-drawn, but it's not even that; it's CG. And I'd always thought from the tie-in junior novelizations that there's a guest Disney princess who stops by at the end of every episode who delivers some platitude, but from what I've seen they don't even have that, so I don't know where that comes from.

   What they do have is Tim Gunn. Tim. Gunn.

   And Wayne Brady, so hold on.

   I was watching, like, this show's not all that great, thinking of maybe not even getting through a whole episode, when Sophia's bunny spoke up and it was the most majestic beautiful sound I've heard in my life. "Oh my gosh, bunny," I found myself saying. "Say something again." I saw during the end credits Tim Gunn plays Bailiwick, and Wayne Brady did... something, maybe at least miscellaneous voice acting, which is common for bigger-named voice actors to do from time to time so I didn't think that much of it. Aside from, of course, Wayne Brady how awesome is that. I had to stick around for a few more episodes until someone called the majestically voiced bunny by name (Clover, apparently) so that I knew what name to look for when the end credits came around again.

   And the credits came around again.

   Wayne Brady. You glorious man. (He's on my shortlist, alongside Craig Ferguson and maybe one or two more people, of voice actors/comedians who are not only smart but also very probably geniuses.) I'm not saying that between him and Tim Gunn they make the rest of it worth sitting through, but... man, I'm even considering watching Food Fight --Food Fight!-- just because he voiced the chocolate squirrel thing that's on the cover, of all of the, coloring books...

5% of the Day

   Though 80% of my waking productive life yesterday was spent watching television and 15% was spent goofing off online, for some reason that last 5% was super satisfying and the day felt like a total win. What's 5% of 24 hours? That's, 1,440 minutes a day, so, 5% of that should be, 72, minutes... and I'm sure the stuff I'm thinking about took less time than that, by maybe just a little bit, so, less than five percent. But that five percent, man. Breaking it down, in case you want to, timestalk me, or something... that's, stalking THROUGH TIME, somehow; if you ever need to assassinate me in the past, well, here's my schedule:

   Woke up around 6:30. Got bunted from bathroom to bathroom until I could finally take a shower.

7:30-12:00: Watch Burn Notice and Leverage; good shows, so I wouldn't call this time a waste. WINNING. Probably eat something in here as well; I don't know. That's half of the entire day so far, and about a third of my time awake. My time spent on the internet, from here to 3:30 is generally aimless but also not a bust-- finished up the last of the YouTube creative writing class playlist first mentioned here, for one. And here's the good stuff.

   Cailin has an old Alphasmart, or, did have an old Alphasmart (or, CamelCaps? so, AlphaSmart?); she didn't need it anymore since she got a newer model, so she put up an open invitation for me if I needed it. Alphasmarts is how she does all of her fiction writing-- straight-up word processor, no distractions, so it's pretty nice, she says. We'll see. She writes when she's not doing, other things, I guess, like, her real job. I've been collaborating lately with her a bit on Persistence of Memory 5.0 but she's also got one or two other writing projects going on for when she needs a break from that, kind of thing.

   Planning to spend a bit of time on a road trip coming up, I decided yesterday to take him up on that. Ran into town to pick that up from him right before his 3:00-4:00 lunch break ended; we didn't have much time to chat, but. First face-to-face in a quarter-decade.

   And then I got Grandma and Grandpa's check for graduating deposited. And got stuff back into my savings account, so that it's not empty for the first time in two years almost to the day (don't. ask.)

   And then back home, more internets (or, um, moar, internets, because, yes, I spent my time here on that side of the web (being the side that spells like that.)) After that, I suppose I did take that long walk, so perhaps my period of "solid win" does extend to 5% of my day or more.

   And then I made popcorn chicken and watched a bunch of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Which was plenty better than I expected, with all the talk I hear about it about how it doesn't really have a direction of its own to head in and thus needs to be thrown into the wind to be tugged by the currents of whichever MCU film came out the most recently... It's even got a few moments that make you say, "holy crap this is a good show." Not as many as has, say, The Blacklist, where such a moment happens about every five minutes on average (with all the intrigue, not to mention James Spader, flyin' around,) but, Agents does have its share of moments. That being said, it can be kind of a mixed bag sometimes, but there's probably a website or some other tool out there that tells you whether any given episode is worth taking the time to watch or not...

   In case you're wondering: my three daily activities I listed a couple Tuesdays ago: television watching of course, but, also got in piano practice in between shows, and got in scripture study in the car running those errands. Solid. 80% of the day spent on those three daily things, 15% spent surfing the web, and those 72 minutes spent walking, banking and Alphasmarting, and that made that day even more solid.

   Put that way, with so much time goofing off, the day shouldn't have been that solid, right? But out of 24 hours, I've got it figured out, man. If just 5% of a day can make that day having been worth living, imagine what it would be like if you spent more than that amount of time spent pursuing a worthwhile goal...

Mythology Wednesday: Polyphonte

   Polyphonte was the daughter of Hipponous and Thrassa. Thrassa's father was Ares, god of war, and that's going to be important. Remember that now. Alright.

   Polyphonte was a total devotee of Artemis, and Aphrodite didn't like that very much. Being goddess of love, she figured she could totally mess with Polyphonte, though. If there is one thing that Artemis likes, it's wild animals, and if there are two things Artemis likes, it's wild animals and virginity, so Aphrodite totally realized, dude, I could make Polyphonte fall in love with, crap I don't know, a bear, and she and the bear would totally get freaky, and it'd be a twofer to break up the Artemis/Polyphonte sismance (which is like a bromance, but with girls?)...

POST PREVIEW VERSION... CHECK BACK "SOON" FOR FULL POST

Mensiversary

   So much was spent the day before yesterday focused on how I'm graduated and everything, and how this blog reached the 1,000 post milestone, that I totally overlooked another milestone. I'm not entirely certain that it's a "milestone," actually, but it's an anniversary, or, half of one... It's just a couple of days off now, this post, but I'd totally spaced how the 19th also marked the advent of being home off of my mission for half a year. The 20th was the first full day, but yesterday 6-months-after-that was a Wednesday, which means myths, and though I could have posted about this six month mark yesterday I figure myths are appropriate enough, coming from my mission anyway, and all.

   Mensiversary? Like anniversary, from the Latin, but with months instead of years? My spel czech isn't red-flagging it, so, hey! Mensiversary works.

   Here'd be traditionally the part where I talk about being home for half a year, and how it feels, and how home life differs from my mission life... and how one quarter of the people back on the mission have never met me, by now...

   And here's the part where I either shrug that off with some lame excuse, or follow through with that promise. Hoo boy.

   It comes down to expectations, of course. Expectations of now, from then. If it were only that, though, you figure I'd be a lot less hesitant to tackle the subject, with which I am quite comfortable, thank you very much, so either I just lied to you there or it must be something else. What I think it is, it's not really anything that I haven't covered at least briefly elsewhere... and if I wanted to go deeper, I'd have to go, a lot deeper. Like, not likely to be covered in a single post, deeper.

   Who's ready to get angsty?

Open Field

   Let me start out with what has to be the quote of the day. Not that today hasn't been filled with some excellent quotations, but I've got this one within easy copy/paste reach, and it's applicable to the topic at hand (being how, it's been quite a bit longer than two years, but, I received my two-year degree yesterday and am now I suppose a graduate of more than just compulsory education.) Here, plucked from the heart of correspondence with old companions still on the mission, it is for you now:

   The open expanse of life sits before you with no limits or bounds, and opportunity around every turn, except I already called it an open expanse didn't I? Not too many turns in a flat field... well, opportunities all over the place then. You'll just have to build something to turn by for them to be around. That way life will be more interesting than a field. 

   It kind of reads like the back of a Dominion box, doesn't it? My goodness. It would probably be more powerful imagery just keeping the first... two, sentences, but the remainder is pretty crucial too, and, anyway! Yes. That gem is from Elder Rose there. I've tried to respect the identities of people on the mission, refraining from naming names except in specific cases like all the blogs I linked to where it's a matter of public record anyway.* Mentioning Elder Rose by name is unavoidable, however, considering, reasons. Expect more from (and with!) him in the future...
 
   It was almost a month ago, but still just a couple of posts at press time, that I was explaining how now that I had 1,000 posts and wasn't holding myself back internally from posting, I could get on more blogging of things I'm thinking about anyway, being barred only by external, um, entities. Quite a few of those lately with finals and all, but that's all over. I just kept thinking Sunday evening how there were no online discussions that I needed to respond to on selected assigned readings...

   There are still a few things I'd really rather like to get done before cranking out polished backlog hardcore... What is on this list? In no particular order:

1. Ward membership clerk duties.
2. Application for further educational pursuit.
3. Journal backlog (non-blog.)

   Those are larger, more major goals. Clerk duties are most important to the present; college application is most important to my future; journaling is most important to my past. All of them need to be done. Probably set aside a day to work on them, or find a few hours in a day to make some major chipping away at them. Big obstacle: procrastination. If these things can be done at basically any time, why not just keep them on one's chest indefinitely? On top of those, there are the things I try (and generally succeed) to make time for everyday anyway:

1. Scripture study.
2. Piano practice.
3. Copious amounts of television watching.

   Why am I so successful at these things and not the longer-term stuff? I can see how I manage to fit watching cartoons into my day, even if it is for hours at a time, but, the other two? I think it's because those can be in chunks as large or small as I want, and so they don't require much apparent commitment to do them. Which isn't how I view blogging, or journaling, or clerking, to my detriment.

   It's been a pretty big post so far, so I think I'll wrap it up here, right before recapitulating the main theme in a satisfying way and/or getting to the meat of the issue, as I am maddeningly wont to do...

To Forge a Realm (POWER GRID Problems)

   The "To Forge a Realm" game expansion for "Kingsburg," by Stratelibri and Fantasy Flight Games, arrived today. Five new modules are added to the base game, including not only new rows of buildings to build along the technology tree, but additional rows that you can choose to replace preexisting rows, variable player powers, special conditions, and an all-new system of determining reinforcements at the end of the year when the kingdom is besieged by dangerous threats. So much variability is added to the game.

Behold. (Via Fantasy Flight Games.)

   Kingsburg is a great game, but, I wouldn't be making a post just on it if there weren't a "but." Kingsburg is a great game, but there's really not much in the base set to prevent it from getting stale. The same stuff happens each game, each season... you influence the king's advisers, you collect your resources, you build your buildings, and you fight your monsters. The only thing that changes from game to game is which monsters come at the end of the year, and there's only so much variability in those. You can choose to build your buildings in a different order, sometimes you roll poorly, and sometimes people influence advisers that you'd like to have been the one to influence for the season (which requires you to modify your strategy,) but other than that each game plays out the same.

   That's what Alex says baffles him about the popularity of the game "Power Grid": once you've played one game of it, you may as well quit, because there's not really much replayability. Different maps you can choose to play with, sure, and different orders of opportunity with which the power plants present themselves, sure, but the game remains basically exactly the same, with replay value next to nil. He'd be happy to play if someone else owned the game, but he'd never consider buying a copy for himself. As light-and-casual yet strategic Kingsburg is, it suffered from the same problems as Power Grid: the underlying strategy is always going to remain static from game to game, with little thought needed how to achieve victory.

   With Kingsburg: To Forge a Realm, though, after one game (and not even all of the modules!) it was clear that Kingsburg was jumping up back to its previous high position on Alex's list of his top tabletop and cardgames (it had slipped lower and lower as he became aware of the replayability issue.) It's even getting higher now than it previously had been.

   So yeah.

On: The Kind of Stuff We Mormons Watch

   When I first got home from my mission, the first thing I watched (besides, like, Scott Sterling getting his face caved in, which had come out only a day or two before I'd come home) was, well, you could probably guess what I would have wanted to watch first.

   It was Ender's Game.

   The first movie I actually watched, though, was Catching Fire, because there's a trailer for it on the Ender's Game DVD-- and I saw that it was on Netflix, and I wanted to catch it before it disappeared like Netflix movies do sometimes (for those of you counting, though, yep, it's still there.)

   (The other YouTube videos I watched beforehand were the Hunger Games parody music videos, from the same dudes who brought you Scott Sterling, being BYUTV's "Studio C." So.)

   The first movie my brother who just got back wanted to watch-- well, it was The Saratov Approach, actually. The one about the missionaries who get kidnapped and held for ransom? (Which is... well, I suppose it's a decent enough choice for when you're off your mission...)

   And then we forced him to watch the LEGO Movie, because it's so awesome.

   And then he watched Ender's Game. Got around to it last night. So.

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, May 3, 2015

   Coming "soon."

Eldritch Horror Organization

   Fans of tabletop boardgaming can agree: Eldritch Horror is a pretty flippin' sweet game. Also, it's got like a grazillion pieces that you need to fit back inside the box somehow. Everyone's got their own system of storage. Usually it's fitting them all into their bags; I'm not sure how many people remove the standees from the standee bottoms, but that takes up a bit of valuable box room.

   The layout of the box, I should mention. This is how the box comes. It's such that there's a raised cardboard shape for the board to go, and a narrow valley down the middle that the pieces all must go in, underneath that, with cardboard slats from the bottom that can be used to give the game's card decks their own space at the ends with the baggies of chits and everything dumped in the middle.You'd better make sure that the baggies have the air squeezed out, to fit, and even then (if you're ingenuous and/or ingenious) you may want to shove some of the baggies in underneath the storage box standout.

   As such, it's not very surprising that some people opt to go for storage like this, this or even this or this, but, personally I find this unfair to the original box designers (unless... they'd intended us to come up with such solutions...)

   Is there no way to achieve both? Well, actually...

The myriad pieces required at various points in the game, once dumped into various baggies that only separated them fundamentally, could now be separated almost entirely uniquely (tickets, for example, we still just put into the same cubbie, and the miscellaneous bits like the omen track markers can go together as well.) The standees get put under the custom Fantasy Flight storage tray cardboard.

   The plastic container had been used to house dice for as far back as I can remember having dice that needed storing. The container is divided up into 6 bins, which is nice but we weren't really divvying the dice into categories at all and they didn't need to be separate in the first place. We dumped those into a ceramic handmade bowl.

Bonus points to those who can name the source of some of these dice? I guess

   Thanks be the fact that we're on a no-sweet program right now, there used to be sweets in the bowl but we put the dice in there since Mom emptied the bowl Tuesday-ish.

   The standees, those we put in the empty space underneath the cardboard box fold.