Sorry, Mitt
I have two apologies to deliver to Mitt Romney, and one kind-of defense for the Mittster:
I mocked him, via Twitter, for asking why airplanes don’t have roll-down windows. It’s been reported that Mitt was joking, which I certainly can see happening, so sorry about mocking you for that, Mitt.
I also dinged Mitt for saying that “Middle income is $200,000 to $250,000 and less.” Now, I think that this statement is thoroughly troublesome in that it defines the starting point of middle class way above what the average American earns, and I think it is symptomatic of Mitt’s inability to understand what normal Americans make. It was a terrible phrasing to make on television. However, Obama’s policies define the middle class as “under $250,000,” so what he said was technically true and in line with Obama, even if I’m pretty sure Obama understands that $250k is still an awful lot to make (and I’m not sure Romney does). But Mr. Romney was technically correct – the best kind of correct, as the bureaucrats on Futurama like to say.
And lastly, I’m a little uncomfortable with the way Romney’s 47% comments have been taken. Not that his interpretation of those 47% as being slacker wastrels with no sense of morality was good, at all – it summarizes the elitist way that Romney views anyone who disagrees with him.
However, his statement of “My job is not to worry about those people” was miscast. He was discussing himself as a candidate, not a President. His current job is to get elected. And from a marketing standpoint, no, he really has no incentive to reach out to those 47% of people who will never vote for them. He cannot worry about the people who will vote for Obama no matter what, just as Obama really can’t worry about the 47% of people who will never vote for him. Both candidates have to worry about a) energizing their base to get out, and b) attracting swing voters. If you’re a Democrat, fuck it, “pleasing committed Republicans” probably shouldn’t be a part of your campaign strategy.
Reframing that as “Here’s what I’ll do as President” was incorrect, and problematic on many levels. The rest of those comments were sufficiently damaging, really. I’m not sure you needed to take that bit out of the context. I feel the same distress I do at, say, the Republicans taking “You didn’t build that” out of context.
However, there is a certain irony here: in discussing what his job was as a candidate, he was sufficiently cold and businesslike that he’s alienated at least some swing voters. His job wasn’t to worry about those 47%, but he probably should have thought how some of that 6% would have interpreted it if they heard him – which, in this age of “a videophone in every pocket,” he should have anticipated.
Anyway. Sorry, Mitt. Now that I’ve apologized and clarified, I’m sure you can rest easy.
Things I Feel Bad About
“Why don’t you talk about me more often?”
As a semi-public figure, The Blog becomes a figure of dread in my relationships. Because I’ve never dated anyone for whom a mention in The Blog wasn’t a major bennie – to a woman, they’ve all felt the soft-n-fuzzies when I dropped a mention of them in here. And usually I’m happy to mention them, because I think they’re wise and interesting and full of neat things to say.
But there’s always that weird pushback. Say, you haven’t mentioned me in The Blog lately. What I said about you on The Blog wasn’t necessarily fair. That portion of The Blog seemed inspired by me, was it? And so there is this weird dance between “I want to be on The Blog” and “But I want to look good and beloved.”
Which causes issues. I don’t like mentioning all the people I’m romantically entangled with on The Blog, because if I bring them on stage and introduce them and say, “Hey, this person is neat and fuzzy and wonderful and we are together!” then I must likely one day go, “…and now this person is not with me any more!” Which is painful.
As public as I am on The Blog, I actually prefer to keep most of my non-core relationships off the books.
Which is a distinction that most don’t get, and possibly can’t. It’s not that I won’t mention you on The Blog – if you do something sufficiently interesting, I’ll discuss it. I’ll certainly mention we’re dating, if it’s something that’s relevant to the discussion at hand. But I’m not going to go out of my way to establish you as a personality on The Blog, establishing you as someone who’s hand-in-hand with me, linking in my readers’ minds that we are, indeed, Emotionally Combined. Because chances are good that at some point in the next year or so, we won’t be.
I’ve seen other bloggers do that, and I personally find it exhausting. Charting other people’s relationships from NRE OMG THEY’RE WONDERFUL to OH THERE’S HOT SEX to WE’RE HAVING PROBLEMS to OH WHAT A JERK is something I don’t want to do in my personal space. So unless they manage to make it all the way to a “core” partner, of which only three have ever managed and I’m married to one, then I’ll just discuss them as I would politics, or Magic, or any other issue: oh, they did something spiffy, let us note it in The Blog.
The reason I mention this is because an ex mentioned that me not having her on The Blog as a part of my cast of characters was, perhaps, the beginning of the end. And that’s a perfectly fair reaction – if you’re dating me, why wouldn’t you want to be listed on The Blog’s official cast list? It was a slight (and one I intended to handle in a follow-up post, which turned out to be more complex to write than I’d thought, and then we broke up before I got around to that).
But it’s also a part of who I am – this is the way I run The Blog, and it takes a lot before I start taking effort to chart the emotional dynamics between the two of us in public, and if that’s an issue, well, I guess we shouldn’t be dating.
And as I said: it often is an issue. People dating me want to be part of The Blog. But as I’ve said time and time again, The Blog is not Me. I am not The Blog. The Blog is a carefully crafted subset of my life, one that often leaves out very important things – my mother and father were not on the cast of characters, my upsetness over my recent breakup is not on here, my fights with Gini are not on here, my work is not on here, even some of my most precious secrets that I share with Gini are sealed away forever. Many bits are elided and censored for various reasons, and if you do not make it onto The Blog that doesn’t mean that you’re not relevant or precious. It means that this part of our relationship did not fit The Blog’s criteria.
I’m open. I share many things. But do not confuse The Blog for The Ferrett. Ever.
Stop Getting Your Email Hacked!
At least five of my friends have been email-hacked over the last week. Which is just proof you all need to move to two-factor authentication.
Look, people steal passwords all the time. They pluck them out of the air over wi-fi, they steal them via keyloggers, they even guess them if you’re an idiot who uses “letmein” (or anything on this list of common passwords).
But if you have a Google or Yahoo account, you can make it so that no one can log into your account without two things: the password, and a security code texted to your phone. This makes it all but impossible for anyone who’s not you to log in, and will save your account from all sorts of embarrassment.
This sounds inconvenient – what if I lose my cell phone? I have to do this every time? – and so Coding Horror has a very good walkthrough as to how two-factor authentication really works, which I encourage you to read. I’ve been using it for about six weeks now, and have found it not a problem at all to use. And I’m a lot safer. Go look at it, then do it now.
If you have a Hotmail account, delete it, burn it, and then burn the ashes. Microsoft’s security on Hotmail blows, man. Sorry.
Why Twitter Has Made This Blog No Fun
Twitter has had a weird effect upon me; it’s made my blog less fun.
Because for Twitter, I have these weird little toss-offs that I put in there – things like wondering at Mitt’s airplane comments, or discussing fall’s inadvertent gift-giving, or delighting in wretched combinations of alcohol that shouldn’t work but do. They’re fun, they’re often goony, and they’re in love with the world as I am. I think my Twitter feed is reflective of my personality; an odd mixture of strange takes on life and political links.
My blog has become where I put my “big” thoughts, and those tend to be weightier. Also less funny. Looking back over the past two weeks, it’s all “Here’s media bias! And forgiveness! And Republicans!” Not a laugh in the bunch, I tell you. It makes me appear even more bloated and gasbaggy than I tend to be.
I’m not sure how to deal with that. It doesn’t help that LJ’s app is terrible, whereas Twitter’s app is very good, so if I have a weird idea on the fly or in the bathroom, I just fire up the Twitter client. But it has segregated my thoughts into Big Serious Thoughts and Fleeting Silly Thoughts, which makes this appear ponderous and lumbering.
Dunno how to fix that. I used to post four, five times a day, which drove many nuts. Now I just flood Twitter, but that’s normal there. So how does this site feel more like me? Do I just post seventy times a day here, with silliness? I don’t think so.
There’s all these weird things I kind of want to do with the blog, but haven’t. I kind of want to start an advice column. I’d like to review magazines again, but I’m too sporadic to do that regularly. But whatever I’d do, I’d like to make this feel a little lighter than the collapsed-souffle feeling I get when I read my archives.
Ah, weird problems to have.
For Thee, Not For Me
If you’re interested in polyamory, today Shadesong is giving some fascinating and detailed looks into how she does polyamory. Which gets into her now-closed relationship, how it became closed, the issues she had with other people and sex, why she doesn’t make out with people, and so on.
When I first started beekeeping, Neil Gaiman told me that I should get not one, but two hives – mainly because if I got one, I’d think that’s how all bees were. And lo! It’s true. Our second hive of bees is positively mean, and a major reason we’re less in the hive these days. (We’re going to requeen come spring, if these vicious little sonsabitches survive.) The danger of reading me as Your Poly Representative is that the way Gini and I do poly is not the way everyone does poly, and it’s useful to look into other long-term stable relationships to see how thing works for them.
As for us, it’s a moment of change. In the wake of the breakup, our whole dynamic is changing somewhat – as it should, with the loss of a major partner, as we reexamine what needs we now have as a smaller group. Though I’ve been on an unofficial six-month-that-became-ten-month hiatus from new partners, we may discuss opening my possibilities for new physical partners. It’s not a rush, exactly, because I’m sufficiently happy that I don’t need to run out and get some. It’s all about keeping my two main partners happy and feeling loved as I explore other relationships, which involves learning to rein in my own all-too-willingness to try for capital-L Love when, perhaps, I should be looking for little-L love. (With the accent being more on “healthy friendships” than my usual regret of “ZOMG THIS IS INTENSE LET’S THINK OF FOREVER.”)
Which is a way of saying that I’m in a transition zone, just as Shadesong is hardening her boundaries. Good poly relationships, I feel, are always in a bit of flux – just like good relationships in general. Anyway, go read her. I’ll be here, answering questions as usual.
Don't Make The Game So Deadly If You Want Big Damn Heroes: A Rant On RPG Design
As a GM, I’m cursed to endlessly fall in love with the wrong games. I always, always want to play the games with the beautiful settings and the most awful mechanics. And Deadlands was the worst of both worlds.
The wild west setting of Deadlands is, in many ways, the height of what roleplaying settings should be – colorful, vibrant, saturated with a rich alternate history. In our world, the Civil War’s turning point came at the battle of Gettysburg, proceeding towards victory – but in Deadlands, that’s when the dead rose back to life and began devouring both sides. Turns out some rogue Native Americans, absolutely sick of the white man’s interference, unleashed some havoc in the Hunting Grounds and created a literal hell on earth. As such, it’s fifteen years later and the North and South are still at war, while lurking horrors grow in every corner.
Deadlands gets the tone perfect with the right word choices – a critical hit is “to the gizzards,” you have Wind and Vigor and Smarts as stats, and you don’t steal, you “Filch.” The core of the game involves drawing a poker hand and chips from a pot. You want to feel like you’re a crazy cowboy? Everything in the game soaks you in that sensation, makes you talk like an old cowhand just to discuss your character sheet. It is unabashedly brilliant.
And stupidly fucking deadly.
Just fighting other humans would be deadly enough – you only have about 12-20 Wind points, after which you pass out, and every wound you take not only gives you significant penalties to all actions, but you take 1d6 wind. In my game, one lucky shot was often enough to knock a physically weak character right the hell out. You have Fate Chips to help fix that, to some extent, but there’s still the very real possibility of going bust – all you have to do is roll more 1s on a couple of dice, and you’ve just screwed the pooch.
Plus, if you’ve got any kind of magic powers, you’re kind of screwed. The Huckster (who casts spells by drawing poker hands – the better than hand, the more successful the spell, and how insanely awesome is that?) gets Backlash with every Joker he draws, which is to say often. Mad Scientists have Reliability Rolls. Your chances of your elaborate superpowers working without having a roll that does damage to you? Slim. (Hell, the Huckster’s powers were so unusable out of the box that they had to make an emergency rules change later just to have them survive.)
So you’d be fragile in a normal world… But then you have to face otherworldly horrors. They make you make Guts checks, and if you fail those, you get permanent paranoias and significant penalties. They all have superhuman strength, and their magic powers rarely have backlash. And they usually have some obscure weakness that you can’t kill them permanently without a lot of research to figure out that this flaming monster killing off drunkards used to be a bum who was killed by being set on fire by gang members, so the only way to kill it is to douse it with liquor.
Don’t get too attached, in other words. You’re going to run through characters like toilet paper. Hell, even the opening sample of “How the game works” has the sample character die. Horribly. (Don’t worry, he comes back.)
If you’re thinking, “Why, this game is like Call of Cthulhu! You avoid danger at every turn, using magical rituals only when you have to, creeping from place to place as you stay away from the monsters until you dope out the one way to kill them.”
Nope. The game actually expects you to be heroic, despite all of these easy ways to die. In fact, it expects the GM will cheat, considerably, to ensure that you live.
Now, don’t get me wrong: there’s nothing wrong with “being heroic against dire odds” in a game. Sometimes, it’s even more heroic when you and your character do Big Damn Hero things despite the fact that living through three sessions is very unlikely.
But the problem with Deadlands is that the setting wants you to do Big Damn Hero things, but the mechanics treat your PCs like tissue paper. Botching is easy, two wounds in an ambush is likely to take you out, you’ll shit your pants and run whenever the monster raises its ugly head. The entire mechanics of the game are devoted to making you, as the PC, an incompetent – particularly at the early levels, which is where you all start. (One of our notable Deadlands adventures involved two gunmen falling off a horse, both dying.)
And yet the later adventures assume that your PCs are experienced! How the hell are you going to get to be experienced? You’ve given us a 1st Edition D&D campaign, where PCs are expected to die on a regular basis, and then give us a setting that assumes we’ve surpassed your challenges. How?
Oh, it’s the old trick: You want the GM to save them. Just have the GM fudge a few rolls, and keep these guys alive.
So why’d you make all of these elaborate rules for GMs to memorize, then? Why did you make it so complex, with five kinds of dice and poker chips and decks of cards and different-colored paper clips, if in the end it’s all going to come down to “Just make it up”?
I don’t mind deadly. If I’m running a WWII campaign on Omaha Beach, one gunshot should have the ability to kill. But then you’re not expecting me to live through the session, either. You’re not expecting me to get through that fight, then fight through Germany, and eventually battle my way through the hordes of guards at Hitler’s bunk to grapple in hand-to-hand combat with a mecha-tank Goering.
As a GM, occasionally, yes, you’ll have to fudge if you want to keep a band of PCs going through a long-term adventure. But the game system should not assume that you’ll have to do that, nor should it force the GM to fudge on a regular basis. The mechanics of the game should jine up with the goals of the game – so if you want to have Big Damn Heroes doing impressive things, then you should have rules that encourage that to happen. You don’t have to make it butt-simple easy on the players, but you should make it so that every failed dice roll doesn’t include the strong possibility of death, dismemberment, or insanity – only some of them.
Sad thing, it wouldn’t have taken that much to fix Deadlands. Making botches more difficult would have been a start, and making the Guts checks a little less onerous would have probably massaged the rest. But as it is, Deadlands has a beautiful setting, and a game mechanic that’s designed to get in the way of that. And the mechanics are so unique that I want to run a Deadlands campaign, but I’m not entirely sure which of the many, many mechanics should be shaved and altered to make it encourage what the setting so strongly wants us to do.
As for the rest of you, learn the lesson: have the mechanics of the game line up with your stated goals.