Luftmensch

I just remembered that the Illustrators of the Future deadline is the end of the year. I've seen the previous winners, and while I'm definitely not as good as the best of them, I'd say that if I work at it, I've got a fair shot in the running. That'd be a helluva way to get things started if I could even just win in the quarterly running. Given that I'm going to be moving out west ASAP, I think I'll go ahead and enter for this year.

I was looking for an options menu somewhere, I didn't even notice the pause button before.

What I've read is probably playing with statistics a little bit, but I've read that effectively modern military occupation is more analogous to policing than a traditional invasion. So, it's less like storming Normandy, and more like running patrols in gang territory. Anyway, like I said, that's probably oversimplified or manipulated or something, but the point is, violence is reasonably quantifiable, and if there's good statistical evidence to support that a given policy is effective, I'm willing to accept it might be valid. I think it's interesting that Singapore gets a lot of flack for having poor human rights, because it has one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world, one of the lowest homicide rates in the world, 15th in life expectancy, and an obesity rate lower than 10%. It's fair to say you're not interested in living in a country where you can still be publicly whipped, but it's hard to argue with the results. (I'm also relieved to see that my mother's precious Ireland stats she spouts are bullshit)

I overheard my mother lecturing my sister about the recent death of Savita Halappanavar, who was refused an abortion and died because of complications to her miscarriage. She insisted that it's "proven" that there's never a medical need for an abortion, and consequently it was impossible that her death could have been prevented. I don't have a problem with people being against abortions necessarily. There's several logically valid ways to look at women's reproductive rights. I don't practice veganism or necessarily agree with it 100%, but that doesn't make it necessarily invalid. It's all in the axioms you start with, which in turn are based on your emotional preconceptions. But damn, what the hell woman. This was a woman who died a preventable death. And by the way, the fetus died too. And you're saying it didn't really happen because you axiomatically believe that abortion is never appropriate? That isn't a valid moral viewpoint, that's sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "NYANYANYANOTLISTENINGNYANYANYA". I'm pretty lax about standards of morality, as long as they can be justified with tangible statistical outcomes. According to my mum's Catholic newsletters, Ireland has the best birth mortality, infant health, and child care in the world. I don't know that that's true, but if it is, I'm willing to acknowledge that they're doing something right. I've also read that foreign occupation in the middle east has driven down violence. I don't know if that's true either, but if it is, I'm fine with accepting it might not be all bad. But cripes. in no way does it makes sense to say, "abortion is never medically appropriate" and, when shown a very clear exception, dismiss it on the grounds that "it must not be true because abortion is never medically appropriate". That's a hypothesis, not an axiom. Sorry for the aimless ramble.

I wasn't a fan of the controls. It said I could use the gyro but that never worked for me. It was still good stupid fun though.

Man, I keep forgetting how much crap I have in my Steam inventory. My name on there is Luftmensch if you want to solicit me for games. Currently, I have: Portal Killing Floor/Defense Alliance 2 combo Audiosurf Cogs Half-Life 2 Torchlight and three two invites to Dota 2 Just catch me on Steam and ask for whatever you want.

My friend, Celia Gary, just released her first album the other day. She had a little release party with pretty much just her friends, which was really nice. I did a little sketching while I was there and everyone was really encouraging of the musicians and myself, which was pretty cool. Her website Her album, Harmony, on SoundCloud My sketches from the show

My friend, a trombonist, wanted me to make her some pictures naked trombonists with distinctive nipples. Last night I couldn't sleep so instead of sleeping I drew a few. this one, imo, turned out best, but I still managed to screw up a lot. I'll clean it up later. She liked it at least. Kids, sleep is important. Layer masks are even more important.

Speaking of Finns, I was reminded recently of the Leningrad Cowboys. What a great group. I had no idea they're still performing. What joy! Below is not recent, but they're still great. http://youtu.be/mgjNq-Y8NGk (okay it's not a picture but they're awesome)

Well if you didn't like my lady wizard, here's Boulet's wizard being philosophical:

Loosely related to puns, I decided that if I write a wild west story, it'll feature a southpaw gunslinger named Lefty Lucy. I have no puns for Righty Tighty yet.

I drew a lady wizard.

I view that idea much in the same way as I think about free will or fate. Can we really control our actions? Do we really have the power to change the future? Can you push yourself forward with sheer willpower? Whether we do or not, it's a counterproductive mindset to assume we're not in control of ourselves, or that we're naturally evil, or whatever.

A while ago I learned how to turn on the US International keyboard setting, enabling use of tildes, accents, and umlauts, as well as the famous Æ Ø Å those Norweigans are so proud of. But now I'm typing on an iPhone where special characters are oddly easier to type. Thanksgiving dinner with the family was nice. People didn't ask me what I was doing with my life, we just ate and drank and smoked and enjoyed the cool lake air. We had some sort of blue agave liqueur which was nice but way too sweet for me. Also I've been really fond of all the medieval fantasy web comics, I want to draw one but I haven't any mind for long form stories. Btw Nimona is a delightful comic, check it out.

I feel the need to throw in some Evolution Control Committee but I can't settle on a track. Maybe Rocked by Rape. I dunno.

Going back to my bout of depression, this is a decent summary of how I felt during that time. I'm glad to say I was productive doodling. All my other doodles had penises in them so I'll not post.

I really want to read this. My brother described some of the sections of this book any my first reaction was, damn, this book sounds just like Sean Vanaman narrating his experiences playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R., which is kind of incredible. EDIT: My memory of specifics from past IT episodes is a little fuzzy, I might be naming the wrong host.

Going through some depression these past few days. I'm not really emotionally upset, but I'm really sluggish and demotivated and I'm feeling a lot of friction against thinking too hard about anything. I'm trying to channel this into drawing naked pasty guys.

I doubt that any of the horrible things people predict will actually be that bad if they come to fruition. You have to do a lot of abstraction to be able to justify progress as a bad thing. A typical conversation I've run into is where someone complains about the modern world being more violent than ever, to which I retort, well no, strong statistical evidence shows that the world is dramatically less violent than ever and that people are becoming measurably smarter, to which they reply, "maybe, but at the price of freedom!" The definition of freedom varies wildly from person to person, but it usually has some justification at the end like, "now it's not like I intend to use my guns/money/land/body/children/animals/&c. for evil, but if I want to, that's my right! It's the principle!" I call bullshit. At the point when everyone's supposedly slave to a corporation, that abstraction will be meaningless. Sort of like the concept of the singularity: The point is that it's impossible for us to comprehend the perspective who lives past that point.

You know what games really got me thinking about game design? TI-83 plus calculator games. That was the first time I had a computer and realized that I could actually write and mod programs. I didn't understand it at all, but the fact that here was this platform that people were making these simple, refined little games, and that there was this odd little noncommercial student community spreading it all around sharing the best games and actually competing for high scores, that was crazy and formative. ticalc.org was my Macintosh Shareware site. Oh man. Phoenix. Block Dude. Cave. So many games I can't remember their names. It funny, cause the whole paper airplane thing really struck a chord for me like that. I think that TI calculator games are too fundamentally limited to really provide a robust game design background, but it was still really cool that there were a hundred variations of "don't touch the walls" and looking for the best ones, I really started forming cohesive thoughts about what I liked and why. I think I still have folders of college-ruled notebook paper where I would write and think about why Cave was so great. When I think back on it, I think that my idealistic notions about perfecting mechanics led me down the wrong path, but I can certainly say that it got me thinking.

Damn, sometimes that bug moves like an 80s stop motion FX robot. I dig. A show I want to see: Big Dog on ice. So beautiful.

Funny, all the men on my mother's side of the family have vanity license tags. My grandfather has the word peace in classical Greek (transliterated, of course). My eldest uncle decided to be cheeky; since his name is Charles III, he got CPP 111 for his tag, so it looks like an ordinary tag, but it's secretly a vanity tag. My youngest uncle, now his is interesting. His tag says MICHAEL, because his name is Michael. How did he get that tag you ask? Well, he's a cop. He took advantage of his insider database access to check the date that the MICHAEL tag expired, and ran out and snatched it before the other guy could get it renewed. Also for some reason everyone in my immediate family has a specialty tag: Two Hunley commemorative tags, and one Eagle Scout tag. I guess there is something to that whole people with vanity tags knowing each other thing. I don't know LAWYER, though.

Late this past summer I bought a gallon of honey from a local apiary, and I believe the time has come to finally get around to making mead. Last year I made six gallons of the stuff which turned out to be a pretty decent success, but altogether barely three gallons of the stuff was consumed, and the rest just turned sour and got dumped in the compost heap (also, I learned that water cooler jugs don't make very good fermentation vessels). It was a simple melomel, which was nice enough but did get tedious to drink, and I didn't have the foresight to bottle it and give it out. So anyway, this year I'm going to make several different varieties. I figure since I can make a gallon at a time easily, I'll do six different varieties, which will leave me just enough to make five standard wine bottles of each. I'll even make custom labels for the helluvit. So anyway, I thought I'd ask you guys for your opinions, because there's a lot of ways to make mead, and maybe some of you have tried some interesting recipes, or have some informed opinions. Here's a few things I've been thinking about: Hopped mead: Mead is naturally pretty sweet, but I've heard that hops are pretty good for balancing the flavor. I hear you get a nice beer-like flavor that's pretty approachable. A Braggot is a traditional mead that uses malt as well. Not sure whether to go with the malt or stick with a simpler and purer hop mead. Hard tea: I've read from some mead brewers that if you use spices, tea leaves are also a very good bitterant for mead. I'm not a huge fan of using lots of fancy spices, but I've had some fine teas and it makes a lot of sense to me to use tea as a base for my mead. Not sure what kind of tea to go with, but my local tea shop is very well stocked. Burnt mead (also called Bochet): If you caramelize the mead before you boil it, many of the sugars will become unfermentable, and you end up with a dark caramel colored sweet wine. (Here's a video of a couple making some: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LoPbfJ3BwwM). I've heard it can taste burned, or, if done more lightly, more caramely. Melomel: This is what I made before. You use just enough honey for fermentation, and add lots of fruit for flavor and sweetness. When I did it, I mostly used citrus, and ended up with a sort of hard lemonade. Good stuff, chicks love it. Milk and Honey: Milk isn't a very common brewing ingredient, and folks seem to strongly advise against it, but folks who have report excellent results. Honey-sweetened milk is a popular cafe sort of drink with the neo-hippie type. I'm thinking about using about a quart of whole milk, just enough honey to ferment, and using a chai base. Any suggestions? Licorice: I like licorice. Nobody else does. Fuck everyone else. Licorice has a good sweetness and a great aftertaste, and I'd like to use it as a major ingredient, but hopefully I can make something a little more elaborate and nuanced. Maybe I can make a menthol mead with licorice notes? Or I could use licorice to flavor the burnt mead. Making a black licorice mead might be pretty rad, truth be told. Also considering using marmite for a salty note, but that might not be a great idea. "Traditional": If you don't use any ingredients besides honey, water, and yeast (plus yeast nutrients as necessary), you get a so-called traditional mead. Historically there's no good reason to think this is any more traditional than any other approach, but what're you gonna do. Might be worthwhile, especially as a sort of baseline. If I do this, I'll probably make five different concentrations. and finally: Mead of Poetry: If any of you are familiar with Norse mythology, you may know that the dwarves slaughtered Kvasir, and mixed his blood with honey to make a mead that grants special wisdom to those who drink. That is exactly what I plan to do. Since I don't have any great wise men to slaughter, I was going to use beef blood instead, which might not grant wisdom but will grant badassery. I have no idea how this will turn out, but I know I'm definitely going to try it out. Anyway, that's what I'm considering. Any thoughts? Refinements? Additional suggestions? Anybody want a bottle when I'm done? I'll have 30 full wine bottles, if all goes according to plan. I also plan on making several wines, and I already have a gallon of cider all fermented and ready to drink in the fridge that I just finished a couple days ago, which might result in even more wine bottles. So yeah, if anybody wants to exchange some homebrew, let me know. None of my meads will really be left to age properly, since this is entirely experimental, but I will be making custom labels because I'm cool like that. I'll definitely be needing to get rid of the blood wine. Maybe I'll make the label extra nice and let four lucky saps have real blood wine to put on their shelves.