The trauma a ten-year-old experiences watching a bear attack – even a fictionalized account on screen, stage or page – is enough to send the child into a mild form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is what I believe I have, no matter how many doctors tell me it’s all in my head. The “learned professionals” are constantly bandying about words like “psychosomatic” and “hypochondriac,” but they still charge my insurance for services rendered. (more…)
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Stop the Socialist Fire Storm
July 24th, 2008 by Waldorf Van Buren
In particular, I’m speaking of fire and police departments across the country. These programs leech off us, allowing the government to steal money from our hard-earned paychecks for the sole purpose of saving homes, businesses, and people from the carelessness of liberals who want no accountability for their actions. Instead, they want the government to swoop down and intervene whenever a few flames engulf their property or lives. It’s a slippery slope toward ever-increasing government control and interference in our lives.
We shouldn’t have to pay to save them from their laziness. They should be responsible for their own actions and protection. The free market should dictate who is saved, when they are saved, and attach a fair price. It worked wonders for ancient Rome’s Marcus Crassus, and it worked after the great London fire of 1666, when homes certified by fire insurance companies got plaques indicating that they should be saved first. Homes without insurance didn’t get plaques, and the private fire brigades viewed them as so much kindling.
Public funds are growing scarce. Who wants to save the neighbor’s house when he’s constantly having annoying parties with loud music and an overgrown lawn which resembles an automobile hospital triage? Not anyone with any sense.
We must not let this Red fascination with “common good” invade “common sense.” We should allow those places who refuse to pay for protective services to get what they deserve. The owners of potentially burning properties need to take personal responsibility to keep fires at bay.
The bleeding heart crowd loves to sell out our country to a communist idealism that is present within modern-day fire brigades and police departments. These publicly funded bureaucracies are too inefficient to deal with today’s modern crime and fire. Privatization is the only way to go. Let the so-called victims of fire, theft, or other acts of man or nature pay a fee for services rendered before they happen. That’s the way business works in our capitalist democracy; you pay for services, and the more you pay, the better the service. If you can’t pay for the service, then you lose, or you give your property as collateral.
It’s a simple plan, and it will save us from the Godless Communism that threatens our sovereignty. The Founding Fathers would never have agreed to anything related to the Common Good, I’m absolutely certain of it, and since being certain without reason is good enough for our President, it’s good enough for me.
Links:
Get Your Geek On – LARPing the Night Away
July 28th, 2008 by Waldorf Van Buren
Brisk air blew over my freshly shaved head as I walked through the woods to the meeting point with the rest of the investigators — a motley group of mismatched geeks sweating in the strangely warm October weather. Most wore some sort of clothing that described who they were, albeit in a trite fashion. I stood around lamely trying to fit in with a group consisting of New Agers, a TV show host, intrepid adventurers, ghost hunting types, and other investigators.
Who was I? I really didn’t know. I was pulled in at the last minute to experience LARPing, or Live-Action Role-Playing, compliments of my friend Anton Kukal, the President of Mystic Realms, LLC. Mystic Realms is a role-playing game system, with rules designed for both Live Action Role Playing and Dungeons and Dragons-style tabletop gaming. While the LARPers act out improvisations with their characters and “fight,” nobody goes crazy like Tom Hanks in the sewers. They might be geeks, but they can distinguish reality from fantasy about 99 & 44/100% of the time.
Mystic Realms has events throughout the year, each a live action role play event, or LARP, based in one of several different realities. Kukal, a lawyer, has spent a lot of years working on the various aspects of the worlds, the rules, and how to run these events, and it shows. His company is funded by the players and selling of rulebooks, but the revenues cover the insurance premiums and that’s about it. It’s truly a labor of love, and it’s apparent when you talk to him about Mystic Realms. At this event, though, he gets the chance to play, and he’s given me the opportunity to tag along and see how it’s all done, forgiving any lapses out of character for rule clarification.
The “realities” or realms are as follows (without getting into the specifics of each): Glory of Guildhall, Empire of Tyrs, Wild West Adventures, Mercenaries of the Galactic Frontier, Realm Jumper, Heroic Earth, Apocalyptic Earth, Aberrant Earth, Modern Earth, and Historic Earth. The LARP of the evening took us from our current realm and transported us to an Aberrant Earth, modeled on things that dwell in the dark imagination, respectfully borrowed from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. It’s also referred to as a “Survival Event” or “Horror Event.”
That sounded pretty cool, being a Lovecraft enthusiast, but the actual gameplay? I wasn’t so sure. I’d played table-top role-playing games as a teen (okay, I still play), but to actually go out into the woods wearing a costume and smacking monsters with a Nerf sword seemed a bit much, a little too much geek for this geek. But that’s what I was there for, to get my full geek on and immerse myself in something that I would never do normally, something that just doesn’t seems to fit in my paradigm, nor most people’s. So, I grabbed some props that became a gun (fully loaded .38 – explosive beanbag rounds), a small EMF recorder (a wood block with electrical tape wound about it), and my wits (I didn’t have a prop for that one, so I just pretended). I made a character, a persona that fit within the world of this Aberrant Earth, gave him a name, skills, and a background.
The motivation was handed to us. We were all into the paranormal, and we’d gathered to film a reality television show investigating the remains of an old psychiatric hospital and the urban legends that surrounded it. It sounded pretty cool, very X-Files meets MTV’s Fear. We were all Ghost Hunters, and I could easily pass for Jason Hawes. Hey, one step ahead of the game!
I was no longer Waldorf Van Buren, intrepid blogger, but Lucius Nickle, Private Detective who always seemed to fall into a case where the impossible is probable. “My nickname is Lucky, but hell, the only luck I’ve ever have is bad. I ran into a couple bad cases a few years back, something with a congressman from PA involved in a cult of. . .” Nevermind, let’s just say he was doing the show for the money, and trying to salvage some of his reputation. Think Mickey Rourke in Angel Heart combined with Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense.
I believe I actually had fun getting into character, but truth be told, I was doing research. Lucky’s the main protagonist of three works of fiction I’ve been writing, and I was trying to see what he’d do in situations. So, motivation and character were out of the way — what next? Rules.
The rules are a bit complicated, but my mentor and creator of the game system, Anton, gave me a quick tutorial. In melee battles (close combat with handheld weapons) with opponents – animal, monster, vegetable, etc. – you use your prop, but you fight as if it were the actual weapon. Hits and misses are left up to the honor system, much like in historical fencing. A judge/stage manager can be called in for disputes, but they’re usually resolved quickly, without the need for intervention. After a certain amount of hits, you are down and “bleeding.” A bleeding victim counts to 100; if you’re not bandaged by a kindhearted fellow character, you’re worm-food (or worse, depending on what killed you).
Gun battles work in a different way. The shooter holds the prop gun at his or her side, aims with the beanbag and counts aloud, “AIMING ONE, AIMING TWO, AIMING THREE,” then throws the bag at the intended target. If it hits, he says the damage.
The action gets pretty fast and furious and chaotic in the midst of a battle, especially while crunching through underbrush on a moonless October night. While you might have a sword or knife or gun, the animals might have claws and teeth or spikes or whatever the stage manager might have whipped up. There’s a whole menagerie of beasts to choose from in the official rules. Most characters and “monsters” have special abilities like Dodging or Reduce Damage, that allow them to make your damage caca.
Special abilities aren’t limited to combat. They can be used throughout the event. “Urban Legend” skill is a good example. When you come across an “encounter” – a specifically set up area with props and clues – you can search the clues, and read any that are labeled as useful with your “Urban Legend” skill. You can then share the knowledge you’ve gained, or keep it to yourself.
I managed to use a special ability to stop a ghost from possessing me once, but only once. The other time the ghost used me as a speaker. I made an acting decision to use a clear voice, to make the other characters think it was Lucky talking and not some malevolent spirit. They didn’t like it. They thought I should have had the Linda Blair scratchy devil voice going on. Too much of a damn cliche for me.
Once the technical aspects were out of the way, we got down to the nitty gritty of LARPing the night away in geek heaven. All of the investigators were taken to a staging area, where they were each interviewed on camera about the show, told what look for, and split into four teams of five. We were to find our own teams, which required some socialization, IN CHARACTER, to get it together. Our encampment area had some tents. We were served pizza and iced tea, and met with a cute psychic girl, CPG I’ll call her.
CPG was our conduit to the other world. She could pick up on things that we mere mortals could not. The Psychiatric Hospital was burnt to the ground by the inmates, who rebelled against a particularly nasty doctor who was performing bizarre occult experiments on them. We faced several encounters, each giving us instructions or clues, but the true horror, the truly spine-tingling encounter, came without warning.
My group heard something in the woods near the encampment, and we were unsure what to do. As investigators, we should have investigated, but that was tempered by a desire to survive. Half of us went traipsing through the underbrush, as quietly as possible, to see what was happening. Isn’t that always the path to doom? We’ve seen it happen dozens of time, but when confronted with the situation, we still fell into that tired pattern.
The three of us who went looking into the noise saw a disturbing display. Several robed figures were carving into something on a makeshift altar. There was chanting, which grew louder and louder. Several strobe lights went off as blood poured from their mysterious sacrifice. We were spotted. Before we knew it, zombies began shambling towards us, in that shamblin’-zombie style. I aimed and fired several shots, but dammit, my bullets were of no use against the horde (trio) of undead. The crazed, morphine-addled doctor had more sense than I did. He pulled me from the scene, leaving our brave but definitely dead cohort to be a midnight snack, turning the trio into a quartet of the unholy.
Wait a second, did I feel my pulse pound? Did my imagination transform me and my surroundings? Did I just interplay and interact and run from perceived zombies? Holy shit! I GOT MY GEEK ON! I abandoned reality for the rest of the night, following the doctor around, evading zombies and ghouls, getting possessed and shooting a friend at one point, but ultimately surviving. By the end of the night, there were only about seven of us left, and none were uninjured. We had discovered the secret of the Evil Psychiatrist Ghost and figured out how to defeat him, but he had already fled, leaving us to ponder our next move.
I will admit that it was nothing like I had expected. My brains, body, and imagination all got some much needed exercise. I met some interesting people who all got their geek on that night. The CPG – yeah, she died in the action, but damn if Lucky didn’t try to save her. While I don’t think I’d do it all the time, I would give LARP another try. It’s a good way to keep acting skills sharp and an interactive way to escape reality, but you’d be a “W” class liar if you didn’t admit you were geekier than Hell throwing beanbags around in the dark.
link: Mystic Realms, LLC
Citizen’s Arrest: A Citizen’s Guide
July 29th, 2008 by Waldorf Van Buren
I’ve heard of a citizen’s arrest before, but I’ve never actually seen one performed. My best memory of a citizen’s arrest is from Mad Magazine in the 80’s, with a cartoon of two wrists with a rubber band around them above the caption Citizen’s Arrest handcuffs. Har-har! The topic piqued my interest today, so I began a short electronic quest to find out a little information about Citizen’s Arrest, and how it applied to Karl Rove.
I first checked some legal issues. I am not a lawyer, nor am I in law school. In fact, the only time I’ve been in court was to answer charges, but I won’t get into that here. I’m just a schlub writer trying to make sense of a nonsensical world. So, I checked a short page written by an alleged Constitutional Lawyer in Boston, David C. Grossock, circa 1994. The full text is here but I’ll summarize.
It seems that the Ninth Amendment gives citizens the right to arrest and detain someone who committed a felony in their presence, or if they have reasonable suspicion that the person committed such an act. The citizens are to charge and detain the suspect and turn the suspect over to authorities ASAP. The citizens are pretty much there to help out an overburdened police force, though I’m sure some may see this as vigilante justice. As long as tights and capes aren’t used, I suppose it would be okay.
I’m Praying for YOU! (Part I)
August 1st, 2008 by Waldorf Van Buren
“I’m praying for you,” or “you and your family are in my prayers.” They’ve become the all-too familiar refrain of people who want to do or say something meaningful to someone in crisis, but don’t have the desire or the knowledge to actually do anything.
Admittedly, when one faces a deadly disease (or sees someone close to them go through it), there isn’t much you can actively do to get well. You can follow doctor’s orders, you can try to enjoy life, you can do any number of things to take your mind off of the impact that the disease is having, and will have on the rest of your life. For those who don’t know how to do anything else, there’s prayer.
