alaimacerc

Back to dentist today for remaining filling, and a clean.  Not as sore either on the mouth or the wallet this time.  Dentist seemed to think that the wisdom tooth extraction site was looking generally OK.  (I'd thought so too, until I spent an age last night chasing a bit of baked bean around.)

Pleasantly clear and bright day, though somewhat on the chilly side.  Waiting for inspiration to arrive for HQ game.  Perhaps it'll come contained in players' heads.  Otherwise, might be time for less cosmology and cryptic references, and more ninjas.

Made spaghetti bolognese last night.  By no means the best batch yet (ObCaptainBeefheart), but it shifted a batch of mince that'd been in the freezer since I-hate-to-think-how-long, and used up the last of the mushrooms in the fridge.  Anthony Hyphen-Tory has a recipe for spagbols that doesn't use mushrooms at all.  Heresy!  (And for oat biscuits with no sugar, on a tangential but semi-topical note.)

Now munching on some Saint Agur on Swedish Krisprolls, while attempting to have thoughts semi-related to HeroQuest tomorrow.  (I'm not so far as I'd go so far as to say "prep".)  I could fall back on springing something food-related on them, perhaps, though as Brian's dieting at the moment, that might be cruel and unusual.

I happened to read some commentary in The Tablet(  -- no, really! )

Popped into Specsavers again to have them re-tweak my glasses.  Or is that re-re-tweak, or re-re-re-tweak?  I may be losing track.  Some actual progress this time:  by shoving the right nose-pad over the "lip" of the lens, they press in much less there, and seem to be more-or-less wearable now. They offered to check the details of my current and previous ones:  seems they're the same index of glass after all, it's just the different frame configuration that makes the difference.  The supervisor suggested I could go for 1.8 index glass as opposed to 1.7:  a snip at a mere 230 euros, for the lenses alone.  I somewhat suggested I wished they'd told me that might have been necessary/highly advisable before they sold me the 140 euro ones, but they weren't rushing to offer to absorb any of the difference, so I think I'll be suffering with what I've got for now.  I may just have to shop around next time, if the choice of frames there is no bettter.  Bring back smallish oval ones, dammit!

Brian Cowen was just on RTE News( ... and other 6-1 digressions )

My half-hearted attempts to semi-normalise my diurnal rhythms had a bit of a set-back, after Roman brought 'round Axis and Allies: Battle of the Bulge on Tuesday.  ( Hours of ludological masochism. )

To split a possibly even finer distinction, though...  One of the aforementioned "anti-tribalist" Tories (sic) complained, by way of illustrating the unacceptability of the DUP, mentioned that some of them were campaigning against the papal visit to the UK.  And given the whole "Orange Order working all the *UPs from behind" thing, it's hard not to agree with them on that point.  OTOH, if you're based in the UK (or otherwise easily moved to civic indignation, like -- say -- me), you might want to consider whether the public purse should be paying £20M for the "privilege".  The National Secular Society is running a petition to ask Panzerpapst to stump up for his own keep.  Given that he'll be using this visit as a platform for such "pastoral" thoughts as describing the UK Equality Act as "unjust", this seems like a plan.  (Personally, I find his thoughts on "justice" to be highly inequitable.)

(Sorry, Malk, I realize it hasn't even been a fortnight...)

Apparently, some NI Tories' noses are out of joint by their shameless, opportunistic hookup with the UUP being "endangered" by the UUP's rival (and shameless and opportunistic, needless to say) proposed pact with the DUP.  Cue aghast noises from Catholic PPCs of the first, and apparatchiks of the second (obviously with some cognition of how this transitive association of how this might play back on The Mainland).  One of the candidates that'd resigned in a huff came out with the (rather tortuous, but possibly apt) analogy that this was like starting off with a Tory/UKIP alliance, but then trying to add a UKIP/BNP one in parallel.  The hilariously optimistic phrase "non-sectarian Unionism" was used -- and with a straight face.  This all somewhat presupposes that the Conservatives, UUP and UKIP are all the acceptable face of the civic centre right, and the other two are an unacceptable tribalist fringe.  That's really only about as valid as the large, somewhat mad religions that bully smaller, slightly madder religions as "cults", to my mind.

RTE's just run a piece on Denis Walsh, who featured in a number of LJ comments in the middle of last year, and was in Dublin to give a similar cheerleading-for-natural-childbirth talk at a conference.  They managed not to describe him as as a "doctor" or "gynaecologist", this time around, without actually going quite so far as to say he was a "midwife";  nor did they explicitly comment on the "a man? how very dare he!" aspect.  Brief interview clip of him, followed by a gynaecologist with the party line of "epidurals all 'round", and some off-topic editorialisation by Fergal Bowers about pathological pain after delivery (which is clearly quite different from what DW is talking about).  On balance, better than some of the coverage last time, worse than others, strong feeling of groundhog day.

I'd like to think that the responses would file themselves under "I think natural childbirth is the bee's knee/a load of dangerous codswallop/all right in its place)";  I suspect, however, that a fresh 'round of "speaker has the wrong kind of genitals/is a sexist sadist/should have distinctly sadistic (and frequently distinctly gendered) things done to him" may be more likely.  Which if so, one can admittedly in large part ascribe to Walsh sticking to much the same script, so if he gets similar results...

Signed up for Airtricity as electricity provider for the flat today.  This was prompted in part by the other, larger beneficiary of the "rig the market to make it supposedly freer in the long run" exercise, the Gas Board, who'd cold-called me;  and partly by the ESB bill arriving.  It was a tad large, possibly exaggerated by the previous one having been an (under-)estimate, and obviously by the rare occurrence of some actually cold weather.  Noticed that no two consecutive bills have the same form of my name, or exactly the same version of the address.  The ESB on in particular has a couple of outright mistakes, and evidently the other suppliers have been given exactly the same database, since the oneline signup form replicates that exactly from an ID number, and won't then let me change it.  D'oh.  Will have to ring them up and try to sort that.

My wisdom tooth void seems to be healing up quite nicely, thus far.  Didn't really have too much trouble with it, in the scheme of things.  As Roman observed when he was 'round here yesterday for HQ, some people are laid up sick with such for a week (though probably moreso when they're surgical, I'm guessing).  Though it probably made me a yet-grumpier GM than usual...  sorry, guys.  Given the claw-like grip it seemed to have on my jaw, I seem to getting off fairly lightly (here's hoping).

Rather than waiting semi-indefinitely for my "No More Nails" to turn up again, bough some cheapo wood glue in Lidl, and stuck one of my clothes drawers back together.  Rather poorly designed, I think, in that there's a "load bearing" joint that's held together with only some dowels and some glue.  So, I made it a whole lot of glue, this time.

Back from dentist's;  one filling, one extraction and one bill.  Seems that the wisdom tooth was pretty far gone -- though it still put up on heckuva struggle before it came out.  Deep, wide-splayed and generally claw-like roots run in the family, regardless of the havoc I've managed with the crowns.  Also seems to have been significant "erosion" of the PRSI element of the cost of treatment, even before its final abolition.

Channel 4's "god slot" currently features Howard Jacobson on "creation".  Got my back up straight away by starting in on the "opposed fundamentalisms" of religion and atheism.  Sorry, but once again I call "total bollocks" on this sort of stuff.  Atheism as a cosmological position is pretty cut and dried: it doesn't have conferences, wings, denominations and schisms. Whether you're Richard Holloway, or dare I say Don Cupitt, on the one hand, or Richard Dawkins or PZ Myers on the other is hardy a matter of "fundamentalism".  You might argue it's a function of how much of a dick one is willing (or indeed gleeful) to be about it, but that's a very different proposition entirely.  Or to be more well-dressed, you can split the "explicit" from the "implicit", or the "strong" from the "weak", as logical positions;  you can disttinguish between those that feel that religious practice has or has not some value.  Also entirely besides the "fundamentalist" point.

Judging by the trailers, Stephen "never knowingly off the telly" Fry shows up later on in the series (possibly just as an interviewee, rather than as a presenter).

Opticians seem to have sold me something of a pup, in that it seems to be impossible to adjust one of the nose-bridge pads in such a way as not to become very uncomfortable after any period of prolonged wear.  (And since I need them to, well, see, prolonged wear is kinda the point.)  They do keep trying to adjust them for me, but I'm not at all sure that they're making such in the way of progress.

Am braising sausages with some beef stock, onions, mushrooms and carrots.  Or I may be poaching them, stewing them, or something else entirely, for all I know for certain.  Smells nice, all the same.

Just in case the global warming skeptics are onto something, that cat looks like it's well-prepared for the next Ice Age.  (At Actual Size, or otherwise.)

OK, this whole "voice of" thing is very overdone.  (How many "voices of tennis" have the Beeb have by now?  And didn't they essentially sack their "voice of snooker"?)  But if any one person deserved such an appellation, it was surely Bill McLaren.  I could go on at some length about what a superb commentator he was, and the amazingly near-universal esteem he was held in.  Perhaps I should just say, "they'll be wiping away a tear of fond remembrance in the streets of Melrose tonight".

I happened across this old Melody Maker interview with Gary Numan -- Simon Price was plugging it in a review in the Independent.  A bit shameless to be bigging up his own 15-year-old articles, perhaps (just to continue the self-congratulation theme), but I have to agree with him:  it's hilariously candid stuff.  I suppose it might also need a warning for sheer density of name-dropping, though it's largely himself that Numan's dropping in it.

Last night I was looking from some FATE 3.0 material (SotC and Diaspora).  As interesting as it looks (and on the basis of one whole session of any sort of actual play, plays), I can't be struck with some familiar recurrent themes in the writing of "indie" roleplaying games.  If one were writing a set of tags for them, surely one'd have to include "jargon-heavy", "character-advancement-free", and "self-congratulatory".  The first two I can see the rationale for, but I do wish people wouldn't find it so necessary to explain to the reader how clever a game mechanic is, before explaining the actual mechanic (or at all, ideally).  These people think they're Joss Whedon, or something?

I'm particularly interested in seeing how the fate point "economy" works out.  Whatever it is, though, it's certainly not on any sort of gold standard, as the GM is expressly able to "quantitively ease" them open-endedly.  That's something I imagine one would want to use very sparingly;  I always thought the idea of giving hero points to NPCs in HeroQuest was highly iffy, for example.

Got 70 quid back from the opticians today: final hurrah of PRSI.  Very curious sensation to be giving them some bumph from a government department, and them giving me hard cash, when that transaction's normally the other way 'round.  (I think I must have previously just got the free eyetest and the small amount of money off the lenses approved in advance, rather than having to have it repaid afterwards.)

Made a start at sorting through the Leaning Tower of mail, printouts, and other cluster in the living room.  Some progress, but still in that intermediate stage where it's fragmented into several provisional piles, making the place even more of a bombsite.

Interesting article by Germaine Greer ( ... on feminism. )

This 'thaw' is getting more and more ( ... foggy. )