Madcap Adventures and Distracting Hijinx

Sri Lankan Love Cake FTW

So the QWC Bake-off is over and I’m pleased to report that my shameless pandering to the internet has succeeded in securing me first place in the fund-raising. Net result: I get myself a hat of awesome and you guys get the recipe for kick-ass Sri Lankan Love Cake *and* my inevitable humiliation via the medium of dance and the internet (Assuming, of course, the chap who gets to decide the music for said dance actually makes up his mind at some point. At the moment he’s wavering between having me dance to All the Single Ladies and having me do the opening cheer sequence from Bring It On). I should really point out that the real winner here is Pancreatic Cancer Research, on account of the fact that our bake-off raised over $1,400 in a two-week period. Near as we can tell, you guys are responsible for a good $630 of that number, give or take a few donations that didn’t

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

For what it’s worth…

…I still maintain that this is the sexiest two minutes and seventeen seconds to ever exist in music. If you can resist dancing while you listen to it, you’re a better person than I. The second-sexiest thing ever done in music is Nouvelle Vague’s cover of Guns of Brixton. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what this says about my psyche.

Journal

For instance…for instance…for instance…

6:25 on a Saturday evening. Listening to Joy Division. Thinking about writing something and deciding to blog instead. And, ye gods, man, I’d forgotten how much I love Joy Division. Love Will Tear Us Apart rattles around my head all the time, appearing on all sorts of play-lists and compilation CDs I listen to with regularity, but it’s been years since I sat down and went through Unknown Pleasures in its entirety. It makes me wonder: when, exactly, did I stop being a Joy Division fan? The things that I find myself wondering when I’m not really paying attention. Especially when there were things I actually intended to talk about. I’m sitting here, nodding my head, and all I can think is for instance…for instance…for instance… For instance – plots are afoot regarding the QWC bake-off and my various commitments post-victory. I’m still awaiting the hat of awesome, which may take another week or so given that I’m on holidays at

Gaming

Three Uses for Splash Pages in Superhero RPGs

So the last time I blogged about Supers gaming, I was in the middle of putting together a list of things I could use to streamline my preparation for games. This is still a work-in-progress – despite my efforts, I  came to our  last session with fairly minimal prep work outside of NPC stats and an overview of the plot – but even the beginnings of the process has been fairly useful. For starters, actually writing down the post-game debrief after every session, even after two or three sessions, is already starting to clarify the kinds of habits/tropes I want to make sure I hit every session. One of those, which I’m starting to put on my session planning sheet, is the notion of an in-game splash page. It’s one of those habits I picked up somewhere along the line – if anyone can remember the RPG sourcebook that explained it, please let me know – and I’ve used it

Journal

Night of the Wolverine

ONE Wednesday morning. The office – home, not dayjob – is humid and muggy. In the coming months it’ll be muggy as hell, which is probably the queue I need to go buy a fan in order to get through summer. Although, knowing me, I’ll just open a window and go, geez, the office is muggy as hell today. This will usually be followed by the phrase fuck you, Brisbane. ‘Cause, really, there’s no need for this. TWO Meetings at the day-job yesterday. Good meetings, for me, at least. In 2013 I’ll be working at the day-job three days a week and keeping the other four to use for MY OWN NEFARIOUS PURPOSES. Which means, you know, writing. If you do not believe that writing counts as a NEFARIOUS PURPOSE, you obviously don’t live inside my head. This is, however, a case of getting what I wanted without necessarily being a case of getting what I planned for. I dislike living without

Journal

Four Years On

This is what my author bio used to look like, circa early 2007: Peter is a perpetual student and occasional writer. He lives in Brisbane with a fiancé, two cats and a never-ending thesis. I had reason to look up the story it was attached to over the weekend – a flash piece that was among the first pieces of fiction I unleashed upon the world – and it was a profoundly weird experience. I mean, that was from February-March in 2007, which means it’s a little under six years ago, and pretty much everything in that bio was irrelivant by the time I launched this blog a few later. These days, the only things that remain in any way accurate is my name and the fact I live in Brisbane. I’ve been kinda worrying at that thought for the last couple of days, putting it into perspective. It all feels like stuff that happened to someone else. I mean,

Journal

No blog post today

I’m taking Bowie’s advice, putting on my red shoes, and dancing the blues. In fact, the red shoes are already in place, and I’m ready for my long weekend to begin in 9 hours or so. Catch you all Monday.

Journal

Scattershot

 BAKE-OFF UPDATE So, an update on the QWC Bake-Off and my quest to win the hat of awesome. The Good News: We’ve hit our $1000 target, which means that should I win the Hat of Awesome, you’ll definitely be getting HIGHLY EMBARRASSING video of me dancing to a song selected by the most generous of the supporters who chipped and vote for my Sri Lankan Love Cake in the bake-off. Currently that honour is held by my friend Craig, who was last reported using phrases like “Beyonce” and “Single Ladies” and “If you like, you should have put a ring on it.” I am, it must be said, a little nervous about what might happen next. Of course, all this OUTRIGHT HUMILIATION only occurs if I win the bake-off, and I’m currently only $70 ahead of the gratuitous stunt-baking of my workmate’s Cherbumple. Given the pace that donations have been coming in, I could be in second place by the end of the day.

Big Thoughts

Pledging My Allegiance to the Fake Geek Army

There are days when I feel insufficiently geek. Don’t get me wrong – I do plenty of things that are geeky as hell – I play, on average, 1.5 face-to-face RPG sessions a week, have a semi-regular influx of graphic novels appearing in my mailbox, and the staff at my local Fantasy, SF, and Crime bookstore know me on sight. I can just about make it through an entire week of wearing shirts with pictures of C’Thulhu on them without having to do laundry. When I run out of Lovecraft inspired T’s, I’ll move on to my collection of web-comic shirts without missing a beat. That should keep me going for a month or so before it’s time to hit the washing machine. Two of my favourite TV shows are Justice League: Unlimited and Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. I just dropped a whole buttload of cash on the reprints of Larry Hama’s classic GI JOE series from Marvel in the

Madcap Adventures and Distracting Hijinx

Bake Off! or, I Offer to Throw My Dignity Away to Make Up for My Lack of Skillz

We’re in the midst of a competitive bake-off at work this week, endeavoring to raise money in support of International Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month. QWC staff have diligently unearthed the most impressive cakes they can, pitched their merits via facebook, and asked people to donate and vote for their favourite baked treat. Funds raised will go towards supporting the ongoing work of the Garvan Institute and the Australian Pancreatic Cancer Genome Initiative. That’s the serious bit. The not so serious bit is that the staff member who raises the most money will be required to wear the Hat of Awesome, which I’ve been assured is an actual hat, and therefore MUST BE MINE. ‘Cause, you know, hat…awesome. I can spend an entire day pretending to be a Jäger, speaking in a German accent and generally befuddling my colleagues with random Girl Genius references. I may also declare myself LORD OF THE CAKES, simply because I can. Now I suffer a disadvantage in this contest ’cause I’m

Gaming

Post-Session Notes from Last Night’s Game

So we ended our Mutants and Masterminds hiatus last night, although in retrospect I wish I’d waited an extra week or two – working a whole bunch of weekends in a row means I don’t get a lot of time to prep sessions and, man, I really wish I’d had time to do a little more prep work on this one. On the other hand, while the lack of prep hurt the session, the counter-argument is that the holidays are coming and there’s usually disruptions to gaming schedules anyway. Getting back into the groove of regular gaming is probably more important than running a perfect game session at this point. In either case, what’s done is done, and I’m sitting here doing my post-session debrief, trying to figure out what worked, what didn’t, and how the campaign world is destined to change in the coming sessions. This is something that I’ve always done fairly informally and in a free-form kind