Monsters! Science! Giddy Joy!

You must join me in saluting an awesome article summarized by Scicurious at Scientopia. It is awesome because it looks at monsters from Dungeons and Dragons (in the course of some totally scientific research about gaze following).

I wish I'd thought of that.

Well, you can be sure that my entire future research energy is going to be dedicated to figuring out a way to make D&D relevant to some totally scientific medical library topic.

Perhaps this will give me the 'in' I need to begin my study of the information needs of liches.

You have inspired me, Levy J, Foulsham T, and Kingstone A! Time to haul out my battered research texts, by which I mean the Monster Manual and associated monster-heavy tomes. There are a lot of monster books published for the d20 System under the Open Gaming License, and for a while I bought every one I could find.

You can never have too many monsters, that's what I say.

I Could Use That Much Sleep, Though

Because everyone loves to hear about other peoples' dreams, here's last night's entertainment at the Theater of My Brain.

I dreamed that I was very tired (also true in real life), so I went to bed, and when I woke up I realized I had slept for three days straight, and missed my flight to Portland, OR, for Christmas (this flight is real).

I was very distressed that not only had I missed a holiday vacation of awesome familyness, but it was all my fault, and I was therefore not going to be able to get any use from the enormous amounts of money that I spent on the plane tickets (the high cost of these tickets is true in real life).

Doing a little highly sophisticated dream interpretation, I perceive that certain themes occupy my mind:

• sleep
• time/being late*
• money* 

Obviously my spirit is troubled, and vague premonitions of ill fortune disturb my peace of mind. I should take a nap.


*These themes also appear in another recent dream, suggesting ongoing preoccupation.

Goose-Related Observations

I saw that someone had won a "Golden Goose Award."

Why Golden Goose? I thought. What's a golden goose? There was never a golden goose! There was an ordinary-looking goose that laid golden eggs!

I was filled with outrage.

Then I found out that there actually was a golden goose (egg type unspecified), helpfully noted by Wikipedia as "not to be confused with the goose that laid the golden eggs." Upon reading the summary of the tale, I recalled that actually I did once know about the Golden Goose, because I remember all the people being stuck together. I suppose it must have slipped my mind in the 25 years since I first read it.

Thank you, Wikipedia. I will not make that mistake again, I can tell you.

It remains unclear why someone named an award after this Golden Goose, or whether the recipient now has the power to make people stick together after the first one tries to pluck a goose feather. One can only hope so.

In seemingly unrelated yet also goose-related news, I understand that kiwi fruits are also known as Chinese Gooseberries. Chinese geese must be enormous.

I want one.

At Least I Had Clothes On

My work sent around one of those helpful "check on your withholding status because the end of the year is coming and we're going to be preparing your W2" notes recently.

I can only assume that it was this which prompted my brain to deliver me a dream in which it was April 15th and I had completely forgotten about taxes.

I was frantically explaining to someone that it was all because of the baby having distracted me (a pretty good excuse) and trying to gather my paperwork, convinced that I could still get it done in time.

With online filing, this is probably true, although not recommended, so I was right not to be totally panicking in the dream.

"Having a baby should just automatically get you an extension!" I said.

So thanks, I guess, work. That was entertaining.

My Food! My Peanut Butter!

Darn it, my grocery store is going out of business.

Johnnie's Foodmaster (how can you not love a grocery store named "Foodmaster"?), which we liked to support because it was a small, family-owned local chain, is closing up after selling 6 of 10 locations to Whole Foods and apparently not feeling very attached to the other four.

Whole Foods has its charms and all, I guess, but a small, family-owned local chain it is not. And Shaw's, the small-ish, slightly local chain with a store I used to like to walk to, is no longer within walking distance.

I understand that grocery stores are a tough business, and maybe the owning family just felt like getting the heck out, so good for them for managing it if that's the case. I hope all their employees do OK in the new stores or find good jobs elsewhere.

And I suppose we'll just have to drive to Shaws. Even though we don't like their store brand peanut butter as well.

What about our store brand peanut butter? Nooooooooooo!!!!

Having Your Say

Since we just had an election, in which I certainly hope everyone voted, I greatly enjoyed this timely piece from Lowering the Bar about Susan B. Anthony's arrest for voting in 1872. That shows real dedication to the idea of participating in the political process.

As the piece notes, 'the "B" stood for "Badass."'*

There's a nice summary of her grave offense, arrest, trial and sentencing.


*Not really: it stood for 'Brownell,' which is less awe-inspiring but perhaps more dignified.

You Must Be (Mumble Mumble)

Like many people, I'm apologetically not that great with names. Odds are, if I'm introduced to someone in some sort of social situation, I'll have forgotten their name by the next time I see them.

And I kind of just figure, well, I'm not that great with names, sorry!

But then I was thinking about it and I realized that in fact, I'm not that great with names because I don't really pay attention to them. Odds are, if I'm introduced to someone, I'm automatically assuming I'm not going to need to know their name anytime in the immediate future, so I'm not even really making an attempt to remember it.

Then when I meet people again, usually I have to be reminded of their names, but after that I remember, because I paid attention the second time.

It's sort of as if I unconsciously decided, somewhere along the line, that unless I see you more than once, your name is irrelevant to me.

I'm not even going to listen to it the first time: you could say "Hi, I'm Morgethern Hanretty the Bold Destroyer of Marmite" and I'd just smile and say "Hi, I'm A'Llyn," and if someone asked me two minutes later "who was that?" I'd have to shrug. Not that great with names, sorry!

But next time I meet you, then I'll listen. Honest.

I must hasten to assure you that it's not that I'm stuck up and think I'm too important to bother with your name. I'm assuming you don't really care about mine either, so we're even. I would never expect you to remember my name if we only met once.

And if you do, well, good for you I guess, but also, you wasted brain cells on that that could have been devoted to important blog posts or something, so I'm not sure about your priorities.

So let's just all agree that we don't care about anyone's name the first time we meet them, unless we're going to be sharing an office or hunting werewolves together or something.

Even then, I'll probably give you a mental nickname like Office Dude or Werewolf Hunting Lady at first. You know, just in case you're eaten by a file cabinet or a werewolf before I really have a chance to get to know you.