MrHoatzin

Thanks for all the feedback, taking notes here! It is supposed to be a practical course, kinda hands-offish on my end; I'm supposed to help them figure out how to do things they want to do, teach them programming, and keep the scope of their projects manageable... I would imagine I might eventually have to (learn so that I can) teach Blender (last time I messed with 3D was 3D Studio Max ten years ago), some animation, how to develop efficiency tools, optimize production pipelines, etc. All handy skills to have... But it is also an art program, so it is my responsibility to educate them about how to think critically about video games and artistic applications of systems in general. I'm definitely going to have to (drag my PS3 in and) show them Noby Noby Boy, Journey; (steam up and show) Gone Home, Thirty Flights of Loving, Papers Please, Proteus, etc; things like Minecraft I seriously doubt they'll need to be introduced to, but maybe I can use it as a touchstone and a starting point of the conversation, explain what a huge important game it is and why, get them thinking about what interesting things they could try to make. I'll be able to set the agenda with assignments. Mac might not be too big an issue, we could do Parallels or—if it is some kind of memory-hoggy situation—dual boot. I'm definitely thinking about sticking to portable, open tech that kids can take home and continue work on, on their PCs or whatever.

It's impressive how effective the astroturfing was. So little is needed to raise the ire and conscript insecure demographics whose privileged status is being eroded. Practical Fascism 101.

I kno! You wouldn't think it, but this is totally so! Let me explain...

God, in five minutes I had dozens of notifications and people piling on me and was all like, oh shit, what did I do now?? Epic sarcasm fail. Horrifying that this—THIS!—is indistinguishable from the shit that gamerghazi scum have actually been saying.

Idle T has long been an arm of the International Gay Conspiracy, undermining the sanctity of the gamer identity since 2004.

""These hypocrites"" made Lee and Clem... not that this clears them from ever having to think about race again, but to imply they're abdicating responsibility is kinda prt. :fart: :fart:

There has to be a better way for one to digest (and save for posterity) his twitter rant.

Some days I really feel like curb stomping MRAs. Some days feel like weeks.

I think Daniel grabbed all the small shirts :/

I still have a box of them in the closet. The only reason I haven't worn out mine to shreds is that I have five of them in rotation ¬¬ It's not tilt-shift exactly; it's a mode on the Android camera app that takes some depth info and semi-unwisely applies post-process blurring. It sometimes works and sometimes things have really awful chunky outlines. Works best with backgrounds that are not too noisy and it will never be as good looking as a proper lens.

Oh noes, I've been found out! DELETE THE INTERNET

Yeah, it's weird. I never had any problems ranting about all kinds of controversial topics, but this topic was weird because I had no allies whatsoever and the risk of becoming some kind of social pariah was palpable if I said the wrong thing to wrong people. Monosexuals can be absolutist jerks. If they even really exist. I am kinda eager to say no, fuck all y'all. How does that feel, huh?? :shifty: :shifty: I haven't exactly been "haunted" by Thunderpeel, it was just a momentous moment, because I never ousted myself publicly before, s'all. I've had a bit of time to unpack my baggage, try stuff out and come to terms with things... The "courageous" long post from a few days ago was not as big a deal to me as that brief conversation two years ago. I figured it was time to put things into writing and ask others in a thoughtful forum about their experiences—so why not this thoughtful online web-forum on the internets! There really isn't anything like bi culture. The closest thing I can think of is this pretty rad comic anthology that came out recently, Anything That Loves. I didn't expect it to have as big an effect on me as it did. It is a really, really good collection, with a bunch of autobio comics, but also a lot of really good stories that deal with the themes and conflicts inherent in non-binary, beyond-straight-and-gay relationships, including trans, asexual, etc. It was the first time I saw some of the same feels and impressions I've had all my life verbalized and by a bunch of different people. If anything, it just illustrates double-plus-well how there isn't a bi culture... outside of indie comics, I guess. Erica Moen has a little abridged journal comic in there, part of which she posted online. And when you think about gay culture, there are so many aspects of it that have absolutely nothing to do with sex. To be gay is to be a member of a tribe that almost incidentally also involves sexual preference. Gay dudes and fussy old ladies would get along so well, if only so many of the latter weren't so dang puritanical. Drag comes out of a tradition of needing to hide, or blend in. Theater, Broadway and showtunes are uhh somehow related to fabulousness which is also gay for some reason? Because real proper straight dudes don't care about their appearance? Which is really a wider feminist issue... And lesbian culture is completely different still from the gay culture in equally arbitrary-seeming ways... I have managed to hone my bidar tho—I put all of the bi people I know in a pile and compared them amongst themselves and against all the straight and gay people I know to draw some kind of common thread—to where I can sorta definitely say that there is a "bi type"... Can't quite put my finger on verbalizing what the telltale signs are, but the general feeling is that bi people tend to be less neurotic (or something!!??) about their relationships, intimate or otherwise... maybe it's just that being straight and being gay are so taxing, constantly have to be affirmed, different sexes are inherently treated differently? I kinda feel that that bi personality manifests itself even in more quiet, closeted people so it doesn't really have anything to do with being out, but uhhh I dunno something something scientific method... I feel like it's impossible not to ramble on these kinds of uncharted touchy personal topics... Speaking of Fosse, I watched Cabaret recently for the first time since I was a kid and was startled by how much I remembered OUTSIDE of the love triangle... I remembered all the songs and the general vector of the nazi conflict, but I had completely forgotten (suppressed???) the central plot... Relationships are weird and difficult enough without throwing that cross-camp experimentation into the mix. People are emotionally manipulative, selfish and younger people so much moreso. There was a time in my confused early 20s when I dated a string of (in retrospect wrong) girls, had piss-poor chemistry, and freaked out that maybe I should be dating dudes... I wasn't absolutely certain I wanted to make that shift, since, like I mentioned, it seemed a permanent decision and not one to be made lightly... but still, inability to connect with a few girls = gay gay gay... and then with every subsequent girl I'd go out with, I'd be preemptively freaked out that I would fail to connect, creating a string of horrible self-fulfilling prophecies... Properly Gay™ people have it easier than bi peeps, in a way, since there is no alternative-sex attraction to muddle the waters and cast doubts... My recent impressions on the emotional side of bi-dating are further confused by the fact that most of my gay dalliances happened in a poly context... and that is a whole other can of worms. On top of that, I feel like Americans just date differently than normal ( ???) people... I've never been able to connect with Americans as emotionally unguardedly as I've been able to connect with foreigners... I've heard similarly vague experiences from other foreigners dating in the States. I'm a very competent, attentive lover—if they let me—so I am pretty sure it's not just me... I retumblred a cut down version of Kenji Yoshino's The Epistemic Contract of Bisexual Erasure a while back, and I'm gonna plop it here again because it is pertinent:

aaaaand I don't have pics of me biking all xtremed out, but I have these sorta neat fake depth-of-field pics of my bike taken while traversing some unbikable sharp stairs in the Hill Country... they're just as good, right? I had to replace all the ball bearings after that trip. Next time I'm gonna take a BMX with much smaller wheels... EDIT: Argh, sorry I broke the site, I figured the forum would shrink these...

Sit down children and let me tell you a tangential tale of times long past when people liberally peppered their posts with and . One day Chris Remo had enough and replaced the image files of those two smileys with and . Sometime later when we learned our lessons the olden smileys were given back to us, but with different shortcodes. The End.

⭐️ Favorite.

Hey, sup quiltbag. Last time I queered out on these here hallowed pages was in the early years of the Feminism thread when I snapped back at Thunderpeel about whether I "identified with bi-sexuality" which was also a first public thought I've ever shared about being any kind of queer. I had some time to think about stuff, play around, talk to people, and I have further thoughts to share. I've identified as straight for ever because—while the foci of my attraction have been dudes and gals at different times, places, people—the loud monosexual consensus on both sides of the divide seemed adamant I pick a team and not fuck around outside of my playpen. The tangential cultural tropes of gayness (femininity, Barbara Streisand, Golden Girls, etc) were just as unappealing to me as the cultural tropes of straightness (machismo, cock rock, mainstream heterosexual porn, etc)—but straightness is the default position and thus the assumed default of those who don't explicitly voice an opposition. The received view of what that opposition means is not exiting the monosexual binary, but just flipping within it. I've never been in love with a dude the way I've been in love with girls, so even though I had moments of doubt as to whether I've been lying to myself all this time and was actually super gay but repressed, it was comforting to simply set up some parameters, "choose" my sexuality, and decide to be done with it. So I kept my straight mouth shut. It's easy to not entertain disclosing any of this stuff when one is super happily lady-married for years and has parents who, while intellectual and not beholden to institutionalized bronze age superstitions, have throughout years blurted out ludicrous shit that I never felt like contesting—shit that more than anything showed a benignly folksy callous lack of reflection on any of the quiltbag letters. They are a product of a still very homophobic Serbia where skinheads beat up pride parades and cops let them. I have not known ANY openly gay people growing up, though in retrospect gay people were all around me. My parents have recently made some strides in processing gayness in their milieu, but leaving parent-facing closets is still not anything that I feel I must do. It would just baffle and confuse them. Bisexuality has no cultural visibility whatsoever. There was nothing out there for me to to try on for size as I wrestled with these questions of identity growing up. I'm 31 and this is still largely true (I now realize I should've searched out more punky places to hang out, but I never saw that kind of punk for the noise that punk-flavored Hot-Topic pop made)... Bi is perceived by both straight and gay people as a phase in becoming "fully" gay. When bi people get straight-married, it is assumed that they're no longer gay, or that they deserted their gay brethren. Lesbians are downright aggressive towards bi girls, to a much larger degree than gay men are toward bi men. When someone digs out a hint that some historical personage engaged in buggery, it is automatically proclaimed that so-and-so was GAY, often throwing away evidence of other-sex attraction. David Bowie says he was just fibbing when he was bi in the 70s—cause it was trendy!—and he's still holding on to that claim, that asshole... "Do identify with bi-sexuality" is just such an impossible question to answer because bisexuality is a cultural placeholder the existence of which is so casually denied. The only reason that B is in the quiltbag is to enlarge the alliance, but it is really just a GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGgggglllqtgggg(G!) for all practical, political and social imagination purposes. Thunderpeel's line of argument still rings as annoying. He holds that there is some kind of substance, a material that we're made of, of which the (highly culturally-cooked) sexual preference nomenclature/categorization is just a manifestation; that, naturally, we have to reconcile our internal identity of which we are well-aware before we step out and engage with other people according to that a-priori established substance... whereas really, the identity happens in the intersection of self and other people, at the point where we allow or disallow ourselves to follow our impulses based on outside cues as to our impulses' acceptability. The nature of those impulses is so much more nuanced than the official camps built for clearly demarcated identities such as gay vs straight allow for. That kind of identity-comes-before-practice thinking prevents a lot of people on fences from just fucking around with people they're attracted to, or trying the wrong kind of clothes, or whatever—because now the stakes are higher, they have to be true to their inner selves, define what they are, then adhere and not be damn dirty tourists. I have more somewhat disjointed thoughts to dump on the topic, but this is already getting long and rambly... TL;DR: I've come to prefer to think of myself as queer, to set myself apart from the normative impulses of our society, but everything past that is just elaboration which does not need to be institutionalized or searched out for in the genome or medicated away or whatever.

All fresh newcomers have two days to submit their dissertations on the topic of "Ethics and Journalistic Integrity". You will be graded for intellect and rationality. Brevity strongly discouraged.

Tuscan Scare Quotes FTW

Well, I've only had a little contact with the San Antonio hackspace peeps (even though they're walking distance from my house and I should participate more often), which is kinda dinky—and while they are mostly white dorky dudes, there is a fair bit of overlap and cross-pollination with the art scene which is bigger and a lot more female and queer and unwhite... I suspect any town (without a cutthroat art market) can foster a supportive art scene like SA's.

Right! With the helmet and the crossed M16s and everything!

I kno, rite!? Gotta stock up on that iodine! All the articles are super infuriating, but the ads more than make up for them.

Speaking of cults and homeopathy, here's some choice ads from Alex Jones's Infowars as mentioned in the Ferguson thread. All the ads are pretty much the same as these... ... proving once again that you can't be a right-wing (?) blowhard in this country without also being a petty grifter.

Internet is literally Hitler. I feel like warm, affectionate, real-life support communities of artists and hackspaces are the antidote to this noise. A proper indie dev community may not need to exist. To hell with the internet. Make pilgrimages to artist monasteries, set up residencies...

Yeah, upon further reflection i feel like revisiting my "often" and replacing with "once in a blue moon"...

Infowars is a weird baby of Alex Jones, an Austin legend/fixture who often once in a blue moon has cogent geopolitical commentary which he thoroughly undermines at the last moment by blaming lizard people for everything. You can find the mag next to other free publications in restaurants around town. It has really weird ads for gizmos and commodities that are supposed to help you survive in the mad Max apocalypse...