Thoughts on my Penultimate Semester

• Why are all my important classes this semester?
  
• Dear god, it takes how long for the busses to get to this new place?
  
• I'm going to be really good about going to class, despite the busses.
  
• Everyone in my program is in all my classes, and my boss teaches half of them. I really can't slack off.
  
• Oh god. What if I slack off?
  
• I know for a fact I am going to spend so much time pretending to study and just watching funny cat videos.
  
• I should find some way of blocking cat videos on my laptop.
  
• Cat videos would be so much better to watch on my desktop anyway.
  
• Maybe I should set up a program for collecting cat videos on my desktop, that way I'm not tempted to watch them during class.
  
• Wait. Was I really thinking about watching cat videos in class?
  
• Maybe if I show my boss cat videos every morning before class, I won't be tempted to watch them in class.
  
• Then if I do watch cat videos in class, it would be alright.
  
• I can't watch cat videos during class.
  
• These classes are important. It doesn't matter if my boss is alright with it, she only teaches half my classes.
  
• I could totally just stop watching cat videos for the semester.
  
• Seriously just cold turkey. None what so ever.
  
• That sounds stressful. I'm going to watch a cat video real quick.

• I think this semester is going to go swimmingly.
  

(Replace cat videos with facebook, twitter, tumblr, books, music, fencing, board games, writing, blogging, eating, sleeping, working out, and/or cat videos.)

Kittens and Dinosaurs

I have no content for you this week. Here are pictures of cool kittens and dinosaurs.

Locked into a struggle of life and death: the loser will undoubtedly starve.

Play is extremely important for developing spacial awareness and social skills.

Simply adorable.

A vicious hunter eyes it's unsuspecting prey.

A medium-sized, heavily built, ground-dwelling, quadrupedal herbivore that can grow up to an estimated 16.4 ft long. 

Cutest little orange fluff ball.

Things You Should Read

Mostly horror, but the good kind. Like the monster in my closet that I feed stuffed animals to.
(It also eats house centipedes.)

Apothecia -- Taz Muir and Shelby Cragg

• Free Downloads of 'Speculative Fiction 2012' and '13 today as listed on Reddit. A combination of excellent articles and blog posts about writing and reading better.
  (Profits typically go to Room to Read, so if you like these collections you should send money that way. Thanks Angus!)
• The Shirley Jackson Award-winning short story, 57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicides, by the most excellent Sam J. Miller.A truly wonderful horror story that speaks for itself.
  (Which was just awarded this past weekend.)
• The up-and-coming horror comic Apothecia by the exceedingly talented duo Taz Muir and Shelby Cragg.
  Lots of weird biology, so that's just A+ in my books.
  (Things are really starting to pick up and move. I'm very excited.)
• Jeff VanderMeer's Story Bundle which has such range that all I can tell you is to go pick these bad boys up and take 'em on a date to your personal reading nook.
  (Seriously, if you like weird fiction: this is your cup of tea.)

Games, Prize Pools, and High School Werewolves

--But mostly the first. Here are the video games and tabletops I've been playing around with since I've gotten my desktop back up and running:

• Monsterhearts
  This table top is all about teenagers who are monsters. But seriously like supernatural monsters instead of the traditional rigamarole of just social incompetence. Play about the same as Twilight: The Movie: The Game except fully aware and embracing all the absolutely broken, destructive, confusing, and manipulative behaviours that come with it. Brilliant, beautiful, and fun.
  
• Diablo 2 and Diablo 3
  After waiting to play the successor to my childhood favorite "Kill the Big Evil Dude: Save the World", I've felt like I've been in a bad relationship. I played the second, mostly to try and alleviate any nostalgia I might have. But even now I feel that with slowly aging graphics and often blatant clique usage, it is the better game narrative wise, and I think it has a lot to do with tone.
  The 2nd feels like you are barely succeeding. The hero is not coming in to save the day--they are two steps behind and trying desperately to perform damage control.
  The 3rd is all about the chosen hero having witty banter with the lords of hell and then defeating them even as the armies of hell bear down upon them.
  With a second expansion slated for D3, I can see a glistening path that would make me finally happy with it's narrative direction. I'll hold my breath to see if they manage to salvage it.
  
• Transistor
  A beautiful, tactical, and complex game in a similar style as SuperGiant's first major success, Bastion. Cyberpunk with heavy art deco influences, it follows the escape/revenge of Red, a singer who has lost her voice, with a giant talking computer-sword as they uncover the plots of a mysterious organization that created it.
  Transistor does not want to give up its narrative easily. The plotline is broken into tiny bits and hidden within both the world and also combat itself, as using certain abilities unlocks longer biographies of the city's residents. That combined with the narrator, who is an absolute treat, makes the game highly replayable. I'm going to be sinking a lot more time into this game in the near future.
  
• DOTA 2
  A free-to-play 5v5 isometric wizard'em up produced by Valve. A complex and difficult game which rewards teamwork and communication with a community that often ignores both of these. An exceedingly fun game to play with friends, it is about to start the International 4 (TI4), its 4th international tournament with a staggering prize pool of Ten Million Dollars. (Well, $10,507,475 to be exact.) This is not only the highest monetary prize in all of e-sports, but it is more than all the previous DOTA prize pools combined. This is also impressive as it also held the highest prize pool at $2.8mil from TI3 last year.
  So, if you are interested in witnessing the most heated e-sports event in the world, you can grab a stream or watch from the in-game client as the games start today.

Things I Hate...

... about myself which are unhealthy and I should learn to deal with better.

• Deadlines and procrastination. (This was meant to be posted Monday.)
  
• Obsessing over my own faults. (Hence writing this list.)
  
• Inability to appreciate my own successes. (Which seems quite a martyrish thing to say.)
  
• Simultaneous need for isolation and interaction. (An exceedingly human quality.)
  
• Assumptions that guile and previous experience trump practice. (Always.)
  
• Assumptions that literally everyone else is more experienced than myself. (Not always a fault.)
  
• My body image.  (I really don't

Screw that. I'm twenty three and sick of dealing with this insecurity.

I'm going to go write about robots and eat ice cream and drink more coffee. Maybe a good book. Transistor is actually really lovely and I really dig the aesthetic. Not good for my sleep schedule, but I'm alright with that. Maybe I'll write Transistor fan fiction. That sounds like a good plan. Yes. 

Also, contribute to my Clarion Write-a-Thon drive and get awful haikus (one per dollar). 

My current haiku completion stats are sitting at a solid 20/40 so those will get done and sent out before week's end.

This will be all green by the end of the week without your help.
FIGHT THE GREEN MENACE! DONATE TODAY! 

First World Vacation Issues

Hey guys, I'm currently on the road with the family on our great tour to rescue my sister (her Imperial Majesty) from her marine studies in Louisiana. We can only rescue her tomorrow so we are spending the weekend in Universal Studios. So rather than make you all jealous about the cool stuff I've been seeing, here instead is all the stuff that has gone wrong thus far:

• We ran into three troops of boy scouts as we were trying to get food on the way down.
• We stopped to watch the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket go off. The mission was scrubbed.
• My sister's (the Wild One) tickets were all in my other sister's (her Imperial Majesty) name.
• We arrived one weekend too early to get into Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter section of the park.
• We completely missed the Jurassic Park Discovery Center on our circuit of the park.
• I did not get a picture with Captain America.
• One of the pianists at the bar was mixing up their Irish and Jewish stereotypes when they were singing Irish drinking ballads.

If this seems short, it's because it is. We've had an absolute blast thus far.

Bonus Write-a-Thon Update: We've got a list of C'13 instructors and students participating on our year's official home page. Help spread the love to some of these wonderful people! (And also to me. I'm currently only 20 haikus behind on my backlog.)

Haikus! (and the Clarion Write-a-Thon)

    Guys, I'm about to begin a journey for the Clarion Write-a-Thon which helps eighteen fledgling science fiction and fantasy writers each year attend Clarion USCD, a six week workshop with absolutely amazing set of award-winning instructors. It was a completely life changing and insanely positive experience when I had the privilege to attended last year, and I honestly can't say how much it has impacted me as a person let alone as an author.

    But I was only able to attend with help from the MSU Knight-Wilhelm Scholarship, and not everyone is so fortunate to attend Michigan State to qualify for it. So, I am going to be writing to raise money for scholarships to help people afford to make the leap.

    For my Write-a-Thon, I will be attempting to get six stories out the door in six weeks. While doing that, I'm also trying to get my MS thesis done, fit in a few adventures, and trying not to devolve into a puddle of self-loathing. And while this seems daunting, I am happy to share a little secret:

You Can Help!

 If you want to help here's the gameplan: 

Haikus for Donations

• By donating to my drive, I'll personally write haikus for you.
• For each dollar that you donate, I will write you one haiku.
      ($1 = 1 Haiku, $20 = 20 Haikus, and so forth)
• I will send them to you via Facebook, Twitter, or email.
      (Your preference.)
• If I cannot send them via those, they will be posted in a weekly abandoned haiku post.
• Anonymous donations will also count to the haiku count and go to the abandoned haiku post.
• Making a pledge means that for each story I send out, I will write that many haikus for you. 

Warnings and Disclaimers

• I am not a poet.
• These will not be edited.
• You have no say in content, but that's half the fun. 
• Expect awful prose.
• It will take me time to keep on top of this, but all haikus will be written within a week of donation. (Threats of further donations are encouraged.)
• Vulgarity, obscenity, and crude jokes will be avoided to the best of my ability.

So, you donate money to support fledgling authors and I write haikus and short stories. It's a win-win.

Again, you can find my drive page here or on the list of authors participating. (I'm right under Kim Stanley Robinson!) And if you have more money burning a hole in your pocket or you want to spread the love amongst several other authors, these are other Clarion USCD 2013 folks that would appreciate your support:

• Jessica Cluess 
• Thom Dunn (whose spiel can be found here.)
• Gabriella Santiago 
• Marie Vibbert 
• Alyssa Wong