“I can’t help myself in the grocery store. The eggs and the apples call to me, ‘Juggle us, juggle us!’ I don’t go to the hardware store for parts, but to find things to juggle. My hands go wild with motion. In the stores my kids act like they don’t know me. My wife hid my machete. She talked of leaving me when I looked at axes the other day. The first thing I think of when I pick up a tool, ball bat or fruit is balance, space and spin. My cats avoid me at all cost.”

— Tony Maurer, in Juggler's World magazine

Savaged Rules


As far as I can tell, the Savage Worlds RPG has never been playtested against veteran rules lawyers. Fourteen years after the first release of the core rulebook, there are still significant ambiguities caused by flavor text, inconsistent wording, and poor organization. The FAQs and forums do not clear them all up.

I suspect that the only reason the system thrives is that it’s largely taught at cons rather than learned from the book.

Update

Half the fun is figuring out which official downloads to ignore. The current version of the Test Drive rules is the one in the Lankhmar section of the site; the only sidebar link in the Savage Worlds section that’s current is the GM Screen Tables (and it oversimplifies some rules).

Dear Vox Day,


Please rally your troupe to nominate What Happened for the Hugo. It’s apparently a first-rate alternate-history novel, although I hear the main character is a bit of a Mary Sue:

“I ran for President because I thought I’d be good at the job. I thought that of all the people who might run, I had the most relevant experience, meaningful accomplishments, and ambitious but achievable proposals, as well as the temperament to get things done in Washington.”
— Hillary Clinton’s ghostwriters

Dear Amazon,


Sorry, but I’m transgenrephobic.

That said, “Night Of The Living A-Ko” does have a certain ring to it.

One-Finger Authentication


The standard two-factor authentication model of “what you have plus what you know” is usually poorly implemented, but the decision to use “what you have” to replace “what you know” is always a bad idea.

But that fingerprint recognition system is so convenient:

As her husband slept, she used his hand to unlock his fingerprint-protected phone, revealing the alleged affair in all its sordid detail.

Monster Report


One last group of little monsters just now, and I think I’m done for the night. 126 kids (according to a quick review of my Arlo cameras), so I went through 55-60 pounds of candy. The porch cats were determined to hang around even though they wouldn’t let any of the kids within ten feet of them. During one of the lulls, Scrawny even came into the house and poked around a bit before heading back out, which was a first for her.

Some things never change. About ten years ago, my next-door neighbor’s daughter picked a Halloween costume that showed off a sudden growth spurt highlighting her growing resemblance to her hot mom. New neighbor in the same house, and this is the year their daughter was ready to show off. If dad doesn’t already have a shotgun, he really needs to pick one up soon…

(and, yes, I overbought, but not as badly as last year, so I won’t be feeding the office well into January this time…)

No Man's Sky: Pinky's World


[note: Steam has a 60% off sale for Halloween. I think $24 is still a bit high, but a lot more reasonable than $60]

Out of the tiny number of people still playing No Man’s Sky on the PC, there exists an even-smaller number who have completed the main quest in Permadeath mode, and of those, a very small number of masochists who chose Raging Galaxy as their destination and ended up in Calypso.

So, for those dozen or so players, if you want to travel through a portal and visit someone’s base to either get the Steam achievement or pick up a decal, come to Pinky’s World:

Just watch out for the Bone-Stripping Acid Storms (not a euphemism).

Pinky’s World (PC, Permadeath Mode, Calypso Galaxy)
Portal Address 201103513B8C (038B:0082:0D12:0011)
Base is 3:30 due East.

(I also left a Comm Station with these instructions at the de-facto message-board portal 111111111111)

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What's Okina Kamino up to these days?


The Asobi Ni Iku Yo novels ended at 20 (I haven’t gone back to see how/if he wrapped it up). Cattail Output (the spinoff featuring an undercover Melwin) only ran for 4. He had another long series Hashire, Ute that was up to 12 books, but I don’t know much about it, apart from the loli cover girls.

It looks like his current series are mutants and yet another boy-goes-to-fantasy-world story. And this:

At least I hope it’s a series. “Machinegun with Elf and Bikini” has clear potential.

Dear lyrics sites,


Since there are dozens of you endlessly copying each other’s errors, all focused on SEO rather than quality, I know there’s no chance of submitting a correction and getting it propagated, but here’s one anyway.

In the Jackson 5 song I Want You Back, his brothers have some solo lines (Jackie and Jermaine, if I can still keep them straight after all these years…). The first set is pretty obvious, “forget what happened then/let me live again”. The second one, as rendered on lyrics sites, is baffling: “spare me of this cause/gimme back what I lost”.

Not only is the rhyme off, it’s meaningless. When I asked Alexa to play it for me just now, there’s a faint-but-clear “t” at the end of the first line, making it “spare me all this cost”; also, “give back what I lost”.

Why was I listening to a song that’s nearly as old as I am? Because I just found out Little Glee Monster covered it, of course. There’s no music video, and the fan-taped versions have bad video, bad audio, or both, so instead I’ll link to them performing with Earth, Wind, and Fire.

…and embed the original Jackson 5 version after the jump.

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“Need a clue, take a clue,
 got a clue, leave a clue”