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"THINGS CAN GO WRONG, FAST...

...Maybe some dude from youth group talked you into boosting a case of motor oil, but now your cousin is dead in a swamp and you killed him. Maybe you and your girlfriend figured you could scare your wife into a divorce, but things went pear-shaped and now a gang of cranked-up Mexicans with latex gloves and a pit bull are looking for you.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time.

Fiasco is inspired by cinematic tales of small time capers gone disastrously wrong - inspired by films like Blood Simple, Fargo, The Way of the Gun, Burn After Reading, and A Simple Plan. You'll play ordinary people with powerful ambition and poor impulse control. There will be big dreams and flawed execution. It won't go well for them, to put it mildly, and in the end it will probably all go south in a glorious heap of jealousy, murder, and recrimination. Lives and reputations will be lost, painful wisdom will be gained, and if you are really lucky, your guy just might end up back where he started.

Fiasco is a GM-less game for 3-5 players, designed to be played in a few hours with six-sided dice and no preparation. During a game you will engineer and play out stupid, disastrous situations, usually at the intersection of greed, fear, and lust. It's like making your own Coen brothers movie, in about the same amount of time it'd take to watch one."

Comes out 1/25/10, $25 or $20 as a preorder.

That sounds like fun, and I recognize that my definition of fun is often not the same as other peoples.

http://www.scatoday.net/node/14738

Despite her ongoing dispute with the university, Cambridge scholar and professor of medieval logic Gill Evans has completed her history of the institution. The University of Cambridge: A New History will be published to coincide with Cambridge's 800th anniversary.

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I'm on a bit of a historical fiction kick at the moment, and I'm looking for good books set in my favourite historical period: Anglo-Saxon England. By "good", I mean both engrossing and with a reasonable amount of historical accuracy. I'm not especially interested in King Arthur, but just about anything else is welcome. Any ideas?

http://www.scatoday.net/node/14720

Archaeologists working on the excavation at the church of Ayios Nikolaos, on the site of the 10th century Georgian Monastery, at Gialia village in Paphos, have discovered four ossuaries containing human remains.

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If I was a beer geek *and* in Boston tonight, I would be at Redbone's any time after 5 p.m. for a wide variety of tasty Dogfish Head beers.

Trust me on this one.

Poll #1505094 hyphens
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 25

Is hypenating a couple's last names after marriage "dated?"

And if it's dated, to what "era" does it belong?

what will I say in front of you? what can I do so you'd turn to me where could I go, tell me the way into your heart

My dream stuck with me so hard all day yesterday (despite spreading the wealth out to all of you) that after work, I went out to the local antiques mall to just relax a little (some people shop for clothes, I shop for vintage doll house bits).  In the middle of the store, one dealer had two of those Government-issued "Fallout Shelter" signs from the '60s that were unused, and pretty cool, but they made me look around and realize that the building I was in had no protection from a blast, and I was right by the flimsy roll-up doors to the loading dock, and...

Whoopsie, panic attack.

That hasn't happened in a very long time.  I mean, I get panic attacks all the time, it's part of my charm, but getting a panic attack from a dream association is very rare.  I think the last time it happened, I dreamt I was sitting on top of the St.Louis Arch, and a nuke went off, and I fell, and woke up just before I hit the ground, like you do.  I had such a strong panic attack I had to get up and watch the news channels for hours to assure myself that no attack was imminent.  That was almost eighteen years ago.

I had not discovered the wonders of Xanax then, so I had a pretty hard time of it.  Indeed, I didn't realize that what I was experiencing was panic attacks.  Later, when I started getting them almost constantly (as the end of my first marriage came closer), I recognized them as such, but the option of going to a doctor for treatment was out of the question.  My ex even accused me of getting them deliberately, in a bid for sympathy that he didn't think I deserved (usually after some imagined trangression on my part - I hate arguments, and I got yelled at a lot). 

Panic and I have a long relationship.  Most attacks are of the petit weird variety; a vague sense of impending doom that grows and makes me twitchy. Occasionally, I get the "large crowds freak me out" kind - that's what half a pill is for, and why I always keep a stash hidden in my purse.  The minor ones I've learned to control by distracting myself, but the ones I get when I'm trying to sleep need to be slapped around by drugs before they go away.

I hate those ones, because jerking awake with a feeling like I just realized I left the kettle on is exhausting, especially when it happens all night long.  So I love my little pills, though I don't take them very often (it goes in phases).  I love pharmecuticals, what can I say?  They make my life functional.

Anyway, I'm just saying, that even with taking one last night to help me sleep (and I did), I'm still a bit in the throes of a petit weirdness.  I'm actually wondering if the weirdness in due in part to revisiting the bad days of my first marriage, as I don't normally think about it much, but writing about it brought back the helpless and trapped feeling I had back then.  Who knows.  It doesn't normally bother me, but then I don't normally dwell on it, except to compare my current happiness and know I'm damned lucky to be where I am.

No matter what caused it, I might indulge myself and self-medicate with a trip to the thrift store this afternoon (my therapies are usually pretty cheap, assuming I don't find a ton of awesome stuff at the antique store).  If I find something good, I'll be sure to take pictures. 

If thrifting doesn't do the trick, I'm buying more glitter make-up for the party tomorrow.  I may be a fierce and progressive woman, but I loves me some glittery makeup (and high heels).

Oh, and I finished all the outlining on the jacket pieces last night.  700+ hours.  Now I start the fill.  *anticipation*

Happy birthday to sonoffletch! I doubt he'll see this, but I hope the world is still treating you well, man.

http://www.scatoday.net/node/14712

Tudor humor hits the Internet with comedy routines starring Brian Blessed as Henry VIII on the BBC's Comedy Blog. The five videos from Henry 8.0 involve skits combining English history, popular British culture and the internet. (videos)

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http://www.slate.com/id/2239935/

Go read the article. Below is heavily excerpted.

Flying High
Why are we so bad at detecting the guilty and so good at collective punishment of the innocent?
Christopher Hitchens

In my boyhood, there were signs on English buses that declared, in bold letters, "No Spitting." At a tender age, I was able to work out that most people don't need to be told this, while those who do feel a desire to expectorate on public transport will require more discouragement than a mere sign.
...
For some years after 9/11, passengers were forbidden to get up and use the lavatory on the Washington-New York shuttle. Zero tolerance! I suppose it must eventually have occurred to somebody that this ban would not deter a person who was willing to die, so the rule was scrapped.
...
Why do we fail to detect or defeat the guilty, and why do we do so well at collective punishment of the innocent? The answer to the first question is: Because we can't—or won't. The answer to the second question is: Because we can.
...
What nobody in authority thinks us grown-up enough to be told is this: We had better get used to being the civilians who are under a relentless and planned assault from the pledged supporters of a wicked theocratic ideology. These people will kill themselves to attack hotels, weddings, buses, subways, cinemas, and trains. They consider Jews, Christians, Hindus, women, homosexuals, and dissident Muslims (to give only the main instances) to be divinely mandated slaughter victims.

The future murderers will generally not be from refugee camps or slums (though they are being indoctrinated every day in our prisons); they will frequently be from educated backgrounds, and they will often not be from overseas at all. They are already in our suburbs and even in our military. We can expect to take casualties. The battle will go on for the rest of our lives.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2914/whats-better-farm-raised-salmon-or-wild

Dear Cecil:

On the one hand, I want to eat farm-raised salmon because wild salmon is being depleted by overfishing. On the other hand, I hear there are all sorts of pollutants in salmon farms, and farm-raised fish are full of antibiotics. So which is better, farm-raised or wild?

— Judith

I've heard most fish served in fast-food eateries is an ugly whiplike critter from the waters off New Zealand. I don't eat at such places but wonder how far up the restaurant scale these things travel. How many fish once considered garbage are now served with a more palatable name?

— Chris

Interesting discussion at the site.

The year survived, I look ahead to future projects and a new office in St Petersburg. It's hard to describe what we went through in 2009; the mad hours of work, friends lost, great illness fought, careers changed, loyalties extended and tested, situations constantly changeable, and yet perseverance. One can only hope for greater focus, heightened tranquility and prosperity, all without settling into complacency.
In many cases of melancholy, however, I find myself the malefactor, so I will endeavor to take to heart this quote brought to my attention by a wise person, and perhaps in 2010, I shall pay attention:

"Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence."

Dogs ARE period (once yearly off topic mod post)

http://www.scatoday.net/node/14776

Estrella War XXVI Media Officer, Dame Katharine of Cate Hall, provides the latest news from the Estrella War staff.

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