Tim is Bored

Thanksgiving

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 04:23:42 GMT

I'm spending this Thanksgiving in Seattle. It gives me a bit of a different perspective on things.

This year, I'm thankful for all the people who I hardly ever see, but who I can still strike up a friendly conversation with as though I talked to them yesterday.

I'm thankful I can take a week's vacation, even if it is the first one in two years, and may be hte last for a long while.

I'm thankful I have relatives who will cheerfully let us stay with them, borrow a car, borrow their gps and their child.

I'm thankful for all the people who I'm dubiously related to by way of several marriages, but who will happily invite me into their homes and feed me pie.

But you know what I'm mostly thankful for? I'm thankful that I have a life I can't wait to get back to.

I'm thankful that two projects I've been thinking about for a year are suddenly coming together.

I'm thankful I work for a company that trusts me enough to let me borrow the resources I need to make things that shouldn't be financial feasible happen.

I'm thankful I have a house, complete with cats who love me when I give them food.

I'm thankful for all the families I have.

For my awesome wife, who puts up with me when I shut down for four hours to think about things, then abandon her to spend quality time with a notebook.

For my biological family, who still gets along, even if our communication is sometimes sketchy.

For my friend family, who keep showing up to things at my house, even if they have no obligation to put up with me at all.

I'm thankful for all the people standing behind me, supporting me even if they're not entirely sure what's entailed in what I'm doing. For all the people that make me able to stare in the face of a Thanksgiving form letter rejection from something I thought I had a chance to make it into.

The people who make it possible for me to look at the craziest, most ambitious ideas I've even had, and say "You know, I think I can do that."

In the end, our world is soylent green, and it's made of people.

And you know what the thing about you people is?

You're pretty awesome.

Fantasy Ferret Legging

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:54:01 GMT

Note: the following links may not be work/sanity safe, but entertaining.

Ferret Legging

Hyena Men

Cock Fighting

Bear Baiting

There is a general rule here: any animal that can be caught in some form will, sooner or later, be turned into a sport and probably a pet.

In a fantasy setting, I imaging this would lead to such exciting things as capturing baby wyverns, sticking them in barrels, and standing in the barrel for longer than your opponent, and hoping that the swelling in your balls from the wyvern venom ever went down.

Or the ever popular pet displacer beast.

Corpse Fuel!

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:37:53 GMT

Bunnies are being made into biofuel.

Possibilities here are endless.

The ad council releases a "Power Puppies" commercial, a light-hearted, cartoon look at how your pets can become superheroes in the afterlife. Possibly with a shot of shovelling dead puppies into a vat.

Wealthy Indian CEOs finally find a use for their untouchables. Now they can power your car.

Poachers snagging pandas and elephants to sell to biofuel vendors.

An encouragement by ecologically minded radicals to reduce the population and polution at the same time: kill yourself for fuel.

Etc.

Relationship Avoidance

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:20:36 GMT

"Every time I want to talk about us, we get attacked by ninjas. Did you hire those ninjas? You're just trying to avoid talking about us getting married, aren't you?"

"Um..." *shifty eyes* *adjust tie*

*Ninjas attack*

"Well gosh darn it, no again. Guess we'll just have to fight these ninjas and have this conversation later."

Ninja Economics

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 15:24:33 GMT

Consider the Ninja Turtles.

The Ninja Turtles attempt to thwart the schemes of the Foot Clan. They are (due to the inverse ninja hypothesis) almost impossible to defeat. In order to override, the Foot thereby has to put a tremendous amount of time, money, and energy into the purchase of more ninjas.

It is unlikely that the Foot can independently produce all of these ninjas, and so they turn to outside contracts. These outside contracts exist, not for the purpose of enacting the wishes of the foot, but to generate a profit. Luckily for them, ninja production is an ancient and secret art, so there is not much in the way of competitive bidding. And so you have a handful of ninja-production entities that provide Foot Soldiers, trained in the ways of the ninja.

However, this is where that profit motive comes in. The mass production of ninjas require a standardization of ninja standards. Because not every ninja can be cool but rude, or a radical rat, the standards for ninjas must be the lowest common denominator. This is precisely was the ninja-industrial complex sets itself up to produce: a ninja that can barely pass minimum ninja standards with the minimum of training, thereby allowing themselves to reap the maximum profit.

This produces a self-perpetuating cycle. The disposability of the foot ninja means that a huge number of them are required for the simplest task. This generates a huge demand, which keeps the overall cost of a ninja unusually high. In order to pay for these high ninja costs, the Foot Clan leadership (generally Shredder) is required to engage in larger and more dangerous operations, in the hopes that they will be more profitable. These are precisely the sort of operations that allow the Ninja Turtles to brutally devalue a large number of foot soldiers, requiring the purchase of even more foot soldiers. This, in turn, requires Shredder to purchase more trained foot soldiers, which he then has to pay for by having them take powerful or expensive things, which allows the turtles to devalue them, etc.

Perhaps the Shredder will not, himself, even use the power of all those artifacts he's after. He just needs to sell them to pay off the interest on his deficit.

In this system, the worst thing that could happen to the system would be the elimination of the Ninja Turtles. Without them, the expected life span of a foot soldier increases exponentially, and demand drops. In top of that, the Foot Clan may suddenly find that it can accomplish it's goals with a small handful of in-house trained ninjas of a higher quality. Ninja demand diminishes by an enormous amount.

The ninja-industrial complex, however, continues to be set up to mass produce ninjas at minimum cost to itself. In order for them to stay solvent, they would need new buyers, and would have to be willing to accept lower profits, as their low quality goods are suddenly exposed to the cruel laws of supply and demand.

The result would be a market flood of inexpensive ninjas. As a ninja is not, strictly speaking, a single use good, all manner of uses could be found for them. Ninjas could find themselves employed working club security, or being members of pop-star entourages, or helping your grandma go grocery shopping. The extremely low price of the ninja would make it a dream that all Americans could share: a chicken in every pot and a ninja in every garage. A ninja would be your first choice for any mindless task that required a warm body, but not quality. This would include working for low-rent overlords, standing in the woods holding directional flags for some really lame contest. Clearly, Gymkata is a post-Ninja Turtle world already.

Note that "Ninja Turtle" could probably be replaced with "Steven Seagal" with no particular issue.

Outline for a Pre-Dirch DK story

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:36:36 GMT

We begin in a reasonably high magic world. Something along the level of Monkey, where there is a world filled with gods and spirits and saying the appropriate rights will work, regardless of what god or gods the individual in question is dedicating that sacrifice to.

The society is still fairly scattered, non-centralized, with individual villages striving for themselves. There might be some degree of trade, some degree of political centralization, but for the most part each village is on their own.

The primary right-performers are a priesthood. It's not an organized group, but women who are taught by the woman who had the job before her, who learned from the woman before her, etc, on back down since the gods only know when. Whenever the old priestess dies, her trainee takes the position, and the next girl born becomes the new trainee. There might be minor regional variations, of course, but that's pretty much the standard.

The priestess lives on the edge of town. A romantic entanglement or two in their teenage years is expected, perhaps even encouraged, provided that it ends before the girl become a priestess. If the girl becomes pregnant, the child is sent off to another village, so that the priestess can remain truly neutral and help her town as a group, rather than being distracted by any sort of protectiveness towards one individual, be it lover or child.

The rights which the priestess performs take a personal toll on her. Her life is sacrificed for the village. If she wants rain to come, she has to give her own blood. If she heals a broken bone, her own bones weaken a little. If she cures an illness, she'll cough a little bit more at night when the cold comes. That, combined with years of training, teach the priestess to use her magics as little as possible; for instance when asking for rain in a drought, she knows that the whole world is in drought, and that she understands the plight of the people around her, but if the rain gods could spare just a little water, it would make a huge difference. She might not produce a bumper crop, but she'll keep things alive. It's personally painful to her, its slow, but its balanced.

Into this world a hierarchical priesthood comes. They are mostly young men who have figured out how to make rites that work and are young and idealistic enough to have no idea why they wouldn't use their power however they can. They do it without much personal cost to themselves, too. Their trick is that they hold group rituals and help direct the will of the people. The people, not being trained in such things, tend to shout rather than whisper. The gods might not be able to ignore their cries for rain, but might be sufficiently irritated that they'll send a flood. It may be bad, but it's damn impressive.

This hierarchy sends out missionaries. One of these missionaries find themselves a village that he believes to be vulnerable somehow (youngish priestess who hasn't quite gelled into her position yet, or an old woman who isn't going to have this fight, and believes that the world will return to her way sooner or later, so why have a big confrontation?) This man begins by claiming that his book is not the only source of truth, but it is a powerful one, so why not pray to both? (Jesus will save your soul, but Thor will save your boat kind of thing.) When he holds rights, he'll have the whole village there, but make certain that the priestess has a place of honor, that it's them doing the rites together, but she can also do her own rites on her own.

Until, of course, things goes wrong. The priest has the advantage here: he can say that the people are at fault, that it's their belief that faltered, so clearly not his fault. The priestess knows damn well that it was all her, and can't help but wonder if it's not her fault, if she felt too much the drain on her blood when she asked for rain, if she feared her aching bones, or her faltering lungs, and looked away from the gods for just a minute, and now they've abandoned her.

When the people of the village are looking for someone to blame for their issues, they'll go for her. Because the priest at least clearly did something, immediate and flashy and maybe too extreme but hey, that's what happens. And she could have done more, but didn't. She wasn't willing to make that sacrifice.

So, with a little encouragement from their priest, they sacrifice her.

They feel awful about it later, though. The church feels their pain, and sends out a replacement for the priest, someone less extreme. They'll be sure to roundly chastise the over-zealous priest, and make sure he's dealt with properly.

Which means, of course, that they'll send him back out to another village to find some more converts.

Of course, it wouldn't work everywhere. That's what Katakaw is for.

Euphamism District

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:52:13 GMT

"I've got to go leave some shits in the toilet."

"Wait, what's that a euphamism for?"

"Oh, it's Tuesday. His kids have swimming lessons."

Re-Branding

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:54:53 GMT

Qdoba is advertising about the wonders and glories of authentic Mexican street tacos, and about how DANGEROUS they are to acquire. You might have to go OUTSIDE, to the STREET, near MEXICANS. So instead you can acquire Mexican street tacos in the safety of Qdoba.
Meanwhile, a Lasik company has released a whole slew of commercials advertising the sheer INCONVENIENCE of glasses and contacts. With glasses, you're always putting them on and taking them off and having to put them on in the morning. With contacts, you always have to put them in and take them out and *gasp* find space in your luggage to carry a spare pair on trips.

How many other easy/harmless things can we rebrand? I'm thinking:

"Having lungs was such a pain. All that inhaling and exhaling. What a hassle!"
"Now I can get a five dollar hooker in safety and comfort."
"Now you can experience the dirty, urine-smelling back alley, and we'll guaranty our hobos won't attack you!"

How To Fuck With Puny Humans in the Future

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:21:13 GMT

A pay parking lot, long after the days when there's anywhere that you can park for free. A man parks his car to go get lunch in a restaurant, only to find that someone has set up an invisibility field around the payment machine. (You can tell it's a field on account of all the cars missing their back halves.) He tries to work the machine, but can only find the button to make it give him his card back, which is good, anyway, but that means he can't pay. Oh, well, there's another meter near the door.

Which has a crowd of about 20 people around it. Which would make sense, based on all the motorcycles on the way in, including the one someone had just bought and asked if he wanted to ride. So this meter will be a while.

Screw it. He'll go in and see how crowded the restaurant is, and maybe he won't even go here.

So he does. It's crowded. He doesn't want to go here.

Only now his car is gone. It's already been towed.

The problem with video phones is that you can see the tow truck drivers laughing at you as they wind their way down back streets, towing your car as far as they can, so that they can charge you for the mileage. Also, the invisibility field is gone. Coincidence?

In the end, they bring your car back, anyway. But they charge you 90 bucks for the privilege. Someone at the restaurant feels terrible about it, though. You end up with a gift card for 90 bucks to make up for it. It's not cash, but hey.

Then again, you'd have to park in the parking lot again. But at least you feel better. So the aliens don't win this time.

A Mountain Home and That Cat Shaft is a Bad Mother

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 19:05:16 GMT

A Setting: A tiny cabin up in the woods, a 19th century style home, with only the door outside and the rest of the house buried back into a moutnain, mostly still with 19th century furniture and ammenities. Inhabited at any given time by 2 people, whose job is to live in a (more or less) 19th century style and give tours of their home to any interested tourists who stop by. On the downside, there is only one room where more modern implements are allowed, there's electricity, but it's sketchy and goes out a lot, and food is mostly canned, as the road *will* go out from time to time, and that house is at nearly the bottom of the list to clear out. On the plus side, there's not many tours, as hardly anyone knows the house is there, so no one ever really asks for tours.

Also, there are wolves, and it's possible to find the door by stumbling across it from the other side of the mountain.

A Character: "My daughter broke both her legs. She was in a full leg cast for like a YEAR. It was awful. She couldn't even do dishes, and I had to do them all. And it was so bad she couldn't even use crutches, so I had to carry around this wheelchair in my car all year."