Regarding Jeff Sessions

Regarding Jeff Sessions

My letter to Senator Rob Portman- R. OH

Senator,

I’m deeply concerned about the conduct in your chamber.  I don’t care for Judge Sessions, but I expect that he will be confirmed.  That being said, the tactic employed by your colleagues to silence Senator Warren is unacceptable.

This process is intended to verify the character as well as the judiciary experience and credentials of a man who will spend the term defending the law of this land.

If we are to consider giving this man the power of membership in the highest department of legal defense authority in the land, whether a letter is condemning or praising cannot be considered as grounds to dismiss it.

It’s at once immaterial and highly pertinent that this letter was written thirty years ago.

On the one hand, you are, again, considering an appointment of great power.  If this man is to wield this power for possibly this entire presidency, then how he has wielded his power in the earlier part of his life must be considered.  It doesn’t matter if he persecuted the black community 5 years or 30 years or 50 years ago, it doesn’t matter if he was saying racially charged remarks in jest or in a court of law.  He’s being considered for a mighty appointment and the conduct of his entire lifetime should be open to scrutiny.

On the other hand, it is incredibly important that Mrs. King wrote this 30 years ago.  You and your colleagues by silencing Senator Warren have at once opened a discussion about the rights of women in the Senate compared with their male colleagues, but at the same time she has thrown into stark relief what it really is we are thinking about here.

Thirty years ago Mrs. King wrote these words and they evidently fell on deaf ears.  You and your colleagues are determining in these deliberations what progress has been made in that time.  

If you choose once again to turn a blind eye to these complaints, to indeed even forbid the suggestion that he behaved improperly, then you are not only failing to properly vet this man in the interests of the American people but you are also declaring that we have made no progress in these thirty years- that white people as a whole are still as rotten as ever, that if a white man obstructs the right of black people to vote it will go uninvestigated.

In the 80s he could still be nominated to a federal circuit with no serious questions asked about these matters.  Is that still true today?

I’m not telling you that you must reject this man, but I am telling you that you have no choice but to examine these allegations with the seriousness they call for.  It is absolutely unacceptable to once again sweep these charges under the rug.  This conversation needs to be had, and it is your duty to have it.  Indeed, even if you think that these matters were sufficiently addressed in 1986, it is time to re-examine them and see if he would pass muster under modern standards, to see if we really have become a better people.

Adam Locke

The Festival in the Forest 2018

So I’ve completed my feedback survey, and I thought it the best way to sum up my experience attending this event as a player.

“I appreciate that you drew a note of frustration from expecting to be countered, and I deeply appreciate that you did not notice that all my islands were already tapped.”

Q: what did you love or hate about the festival?

This was a treat for me getting to see the game from the player side of the screen.  Exposure to other DM styles is healthy and any DM should spend time playing, to observe where others hit and miss in their styles and methods.

I think that the DM team concept was a strong offering this year, while still somewhat disjointed this did a good job of unifying the experience.

That being said, you Need to sack the NPCs.  Unprofessional, unattentive, unavailable, and clueless to put it mildly and succinctly.  I see no use in this collection of bumbling hangers on that failed to deliver any of my rumors when I DM'd this event and were absolutely useless and maddening to interact with as a player.  The wizard was on nap break more often than he was available to consult with and when I finally did get him he helplessly leafed through a sheaf of papers and explained that he had no helpful information on any subject I wanted to cover.  It became very clear that I was quizzing the student who had not done the reading.  My friend offered a similar remark regarding consulting with the ranger NPC about a magical beast they encountered.  This is a logical character to talk to about that, but he was completely unprepared.  I did a roleplay with the hand of the king type character and secured some extra coin for our party, as our group of mostly introductory players went three sessions with no treasure to speak of, only to find that the man who spoke with the voice of the king was in fact impotent to pay out sums in the name of the crown.  If they aren't even going to be allowed to solve player grievances I don't see what point this cast serves.  I can bring you a dozen nerds who will happily put on fake ears and makeup and who will deliver a better performance gratis.  I dunno if bringing back Pasha is just not an option or whatever but this NPC crowd lacks the rules knowledge, has not studied the story or game, and is unprepared to deliver more to the experience than passing out candy.

I perceived from all the arcane sacrifices going on that the DM teams have worked to try and claw back the treasures and riches given out in past years.  This plan was a disaster for first time players who walked away from the weekend nearly empty handed, and deeply frustrating for several of the returning players I played with.  This wasn't just a gold penalty to go regrow a limb or bring someone back to life, there was a lot of hard-won treasure that some of those guys physically winced to part with.  The difficulty should have been managed and more ways for people to voluntarily part with wealth should have been used instead of a story-mandated item tax.  Say what you will about the deadliness of my encounters, I've never stolen an item from a player by way of plot or taken any limb that wasn't earned in strictly legal adherence to the combat rules, and frankly killing some of these PCs would have been kinder than nerfing them in this way.

Q: 3. How organized was the event? (Please provide examples of how you would like to see this improved)

The DM teams are on point, the management of facilities is solid, but while the Live NPCs remain integral to the story their continued underperformance will always hurt my assessment.  The DMs prepared for months to come to this event and put on a game, they deserve an NPC corps that knows the game, knows the rules, is knowledgeable about the story, and is behaving in a professional manner consistent with the expectations of a player attending a paid event.

Q How would you rate the DMs on your team?

Plane of Water - Clearly presented story, goals, and player expectations.  You knew what you were getting yourself into and you knew roughly what you'd be on about.  Your use of handcrafted terrain is clearly a joy and you should keep at it, your encounters are also planned in tactically interesting ways and you made use of survival mechanics which are a personal delight of my own.  I would caution you only that you weigh whether you're trying to entertain and present an interesting experience for your players or if you are over-accommodating in the fear that they might encounter difficulty and be turned off to the game.  Some players want that faceroll experience, personally when I play as a wizard or as a barbarian, I want to feel that the fights are genuinely dangerous and that I must make my choices with care.  In that fight with the big water demon at the beginning of the weekend, I felt that he went down like a bitch.  You can take off the kid gloves a little more, and I think that your players will get an adrenaline rush out of your style of play if you let loose a little and reduce someone to zero hp every once in a while.  I definitely felt the difficulty while steering the ship around the ice and managing our resources, if you can allow yourself the permission to hurt PCs and bring that kind of intensity to your combat encounters you'll have lightning in a bottle.

Plane of Air - Dealing with an evil PC in the party is not always easy when you have an expectation of heroism and your plot hooks are opportunities to be heroic.  I could see the "oh shit" moment when I decided that that mother and child in a burning building was not worth our time, and felt the relief when the warlock's familiar caught the slack.  That was an entertaining moment and also a good way to handle the situation in order to get to your critical encounter.  Your use of zombies delighted me, and I enjoyed using Magic Circle to simply shut them down as a combat threat.  PCs should get the opportunity to revel in their powers, but you also brought in non-zombie combatants that presented a new variable and that was a great move.  I don't know if they were planned or you were just sick of my shit, but it complicated a battle that would have otherwise been shooting fish in a barrel.  Well played either way.  I also appreciated the library and the way research was handled, doing those kinds of abstract tasks can be hard to adjudicate, especially when you are trying to create a sensation of limited time and the task is story-critical.  I would offer as constructive feedback that story-critical information and events are formatted more actively. Your mother and child for example were passively waiting for us to save them, and if I had had my way they would have burnt to death while I got the party to go about my business.  Instead, if they had come barreling out of an ally right into the party with a mob of zombies in pursuit, then, while a less interesting tactical experience, the party would have gotten the story critical NPC interaction regardless of where we decided to go.  If it really needs to happen, make it happen instead of expecting the players to stumble upon it, because some of us evil aligned players won't make the time to go looking for someone to do good to.

Plane of Earth - Oh Chip.  We disagree very widely regarding what makes good dnd.  This I need to just get off my chest, and I've already lambasted the NPCs elsewhere, but the first 40 minutes of our session in which no one in the party had a clue what we were supposed to be doing, why we were here, and how to go about finding out what to do were some of the worst minutes I've spent in the game.  I don't mean that to be harsh, I just need to clearly communicate to you that a 40 minute scavenger hunt at the beginning of the game was tiresome and should not have been necessary.  I should have to figure out where the thing I'm looking for is at the table, I should not spend a third of the time finding out what I'm supposed to be looking for in the first place.  Now I like investigation, I like intrigue- I enjoyed passing the dwarf off as a halfling, I got a kick out of breaking into the print shop, I had fun scrutinizing that fortune teller to check for fraud (for surely who knows fraud better than Evik-azul?) but interacting with the live NPCs was a waste of my time every single time I tried it, and while I appreciate the immersive experience you envisioned this cast of NPC actors is simply not up to snuff to fulfill your vision, and my enjoyment of your game suffered for it.  To a degree, I agree with you that combat should be fast paced and that people should not be deliberating where to center a fireball for 5 minutes.  We differ in that I expect them to know precisely which square when their turn comes or go to the bottom of initiative and i'll come back, where you have simply done away with the squares.  I don't disagree with you on technical grounds at all, I played theater for 15 years before I ever laid hands on my first grid, but the complexity of play available with it is a delight in my opinion.  I feel like you could have pulled fewer punches with that purple worm.  By the end of the session I still had significant spell slots and the warriors still had a lot of hit points, the combat could have been more exciting had it taxed our resources more heavily, but I did appreciate the coal collection task that added a good layer of complexity to an otherwise so-so boss encounter.  Apart from over reliance on these bumbling NPCs, the only feedback I have in terms of your story is that while I'm glad that the Shadow Lord is starting to appear in the game world, I found his cut scene at your table strange.  Why didn't he simply kill us all?  What's the point eliminating the forgemaster if you're not going to do something to track or tag the weapons that can kill you, or at least the fools that bear them?  The sensation felt very much like a video game cutscene where I neither had any agency nor did I feel that any truly relevant new information was gleaned.  Your portrayal of the be-grieved grandmother was a nice treat to take from it however, and you were the first DM of the weekend who actually paid out, which was a desperately needed thing for first years.

Plane of Fire - Ah now here was a dungeon after my own heart.  Clear goal and expectation, an instant death environment hazard out of the gate, swarms of ravening ghouls, a banshee that put half the party down, and horrible demon skulls that shoot fireballs at you.  I would have liked some chances to deal with the ghouls a little more, but your dungeon delivered the tactical experience I felt I was missing at the other tables.  Now, I don't know if you are aware, but towards the end of the altar encounter, the warlock and I had both gone through all our spell slots countering those fireballs.  You could have blown us all to hell and ended the session in fire and ruin.  I appreciate that you drew a note of frustration from expecting to be countered, and I deeply appreciate that you did not notice that all my islands were already tapped.  I enjoyed dropping a sailing ship on your hapless monsters, and look forward to future opportunities to match wits with you on the game board.

How well do you feel the DMs on your team were coordinated?

I'm only rating this so low because I got three differing answers regarding how to cure Blood Plague.  Now, I want to be clear, I loved the blood plague, and I absolutely loved contracting it.  My character was NE only because I wasn't allowed to submit one that was CE, and the blood plague gave me real motivation to solve the adventure for reasons relevant to my character.

That being said, when I went to water it was water elementals specifically infecting the people, then shadow on earth, and on air it was simply zombies.  Now these are not necessarily mutually exclusive answers, but there was no unified response or place where I could confirm my suspicions beyond the first session.  DMs seemed to be scrambling between themselves trying to decide what spells or methods other than Wish could be used to clear an infected individual, and there were no symptoms or further saving rolls I was required to endure.

The blood plague was a unifying element between tables, and everyone should have been closer to the same page on this, and fleshed out rules and ideas about what happens when a player is infected should have been worked out ahead of time.  When we get Contagion or Bestow Curse or even possessed in RAW 5E, the ways that a PC can get un-possessed or freed from a curse are clearly stated.  I'm not demanding that that should have been known off the bat, but I invested a significant amount of time in game (and out talking to those useless prosthetic-decked chumps) investigating the matter and should have been able to divine more than I was able to.  Again, the live NPC situation is a mess, and I'm willing to accept that you guys expected them to be on top of some information you gave them.

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On the whole I had a good time, and i’m thinking of coming back to DM next year.

Rage

So, here I am, almost a year since my ex dumped me, still yelling at him in my head at least once a week and often more. It’s not a daily thing anymore, thank god for that. Point is that in spite of the healing I’ve done I’m in a place where I need to be honest with my anger. I’ve made a serious effort at focusing this around forgiveness and addressing myself to what I then perceived to be legitimate criticism and to make this year be about growth and regeneration and all that. I’ve demonstrated that I’m not just a loser who can’t make plans for himself with career, I’ve shown that my body isn’t inevitably doomed to smallness and weakness, and I’ve shown that I’m not afraid of responsibility or unable to plan for retirement. I’m a homeowner now, and as of this week my equity has officially increased by 1,000 bucks or so due to my payments, which means that I now own roughly 1% more of my house than I did when I bought it (as I understand this anyway). I have a garden filled with beautiful and fruitful growing things and my cat is healthy and warm and safe. It’s not the home together I thought we were building but I have made a home and a little family of my own, and I’m proud to look after it all. I’ve done a really good job reconnecting with people I lost track of during the relationship or who I alienated in order to meet Chris’s demands of my time or his paranoid jealousy. I was so isolated in the end, I didn’t feel like I could reach out to anyone. I’ve either made one new friend or reconnected with an old one each month since he left, and my life is again a fleshed-out, robust social experience. In the past year I’ve turned to my medical concerns, and by changing the meds I take to manage HIV, my doctor has freed me from what I did not understand was chronic, chemically induced depression. The results in my life have been transformative, literally. He dumped me at 187 pounds with 33% body fat. I wasn’t even a big drinker or anything but I looked like a goddammed gollum. Managing my own endless sadness from the drug and also serving as a buttress for Chris’s anger about his parents or his work or whatever was on the menu that given day withered me. I cannot overemphasize this. When you wake up in the morning and stare at the ceiling and wonder what in the world you’re gonna do to get your feet over the side of the bed the last thing you need is a high-maintenance boyfriend angry about god knows what today. You know you can’t get out of bed because of the eggshells but you also know that if you stay there you will wither and die, so what are you supposed to do? It’s not even breakfast yet and you’re already in crisis. Today, I weighed in at 188 pounds. After having gone down to 170 to lose the fat I’ve eaten like a horse and applied the discipline and added all the weight back as muscle. I could never have done it in so little time on my old medicine, with it’s bone deletion on top of the depression. It would have taken twice as long to do this. My last body fat check put me around 14.5 percent. Not because I need to prove anything to him about my worthiness, but because I’m getting back to the goal and hobby I loved before he turned it into a terrible chore I needed to do in order to be loved. I’ve adopted the view that I and no one else am the most important person in my life and that my time and hobbies should focus around goals that ensure my comfort and happiness. So, while I do indeed remain hung up on this anger, it’s not without reason. I need to acknowledge that constantly accusing me of cheating, demanding that my body be better without giving me the freedom to go to bed, wake up, or go to the gym when I needed to, constantly bombing me with one emotional crisis or another and forbidding me to discuss the relationship with my confidants even as he had lengthy discussions with his about it were not just the childish insecurities of a younger lover. I was stupid to wait around for him to grow out of these behaviors. I should have known that making allowances and giving the excuses and even excising my friendships to satisfy his demands were unhealthy things to do, and that doing them just surrendered more of my autonomy. I was involved in a controlling relationship and I need to say that publicly and without apology or equivocation. I was involved in a controlling relationship with a person who saw me as an accessory, and I need to say that publicly because I can’t go on just quietly being angry about it and waiting for that sensation to subside, because it hasn’t in a year. I need to acknowledge- honestly and publicly- that I am pissed. I’m pissed off about how I was treated, I’m pissed off that I was dumped with the excuse that pursuing career goals and being with me were incompatible after I was specifcally told that he couldn’t handle my taking a career in archaeology because he “couldn’t handle” me being out of town for weeks on end at digs. The irony of that excuse and the truth that he simply wanted to chase dick in bars fills me with fury. I’m pissed off that I was so weak that every one of his misbehaviors I put on other people or apologized for, I’m pissed that I made him so central that I was willing to explain away any stupid way he treated me or other people. I’m pissed off that he had the gall to say “I’m also living with HIV” and make my health concerns and arguably the biggest tragedy in my life into something that was entirely about him. I wasted so much time with psychologists because he told me to talk to them about depression, I was silent about my status around his friends and relatives in order to avoid embarrassing him while he discussed my status with who he wanted and then sought my permission retroactively. I’m angry that I didn’t have the good sense to make my health be about me. I’m most pissed off about the remark because living with HIV doesn’t end when you dump someone. Being in a discordant relationship doesn’t equate to a diagnosis, and if we had discussed my condition honestly then it wouldn’t have been a mystery to his crass, judgmental friend that I needed to disappear every night at 10 because the old drug stopped me being able to drive after dosing. The matter of my survival should not have been made into a discussion about etiquette so that a droning old queen could feign offense. I should never have to apologize for attending to my health. Fuck I might have not even been on the same fucking drug if we’d approached my depression as a drug side effect (it was) and not made it into a counseling mental health issue. But in a relationship in which my judgements and opinions were not relevant, where only his life experiences mattered, the routines and remedies that worked for him- in the gym or in the counseling chair- were the only ones worth considering. Finally, I don’t care if it was in anger over mariokart or if it was because he didn’t wanna horseplay anymore. It was not okay to hit me in anger, not even if I wasn’t meaningfully injured, not even if the stinging went away in a minute or so. It was not okay to go on shouting fits of rage and beat on walls and slam his fists on steering wheels or scream into pillows demonstratively in front of me or stamp his feet when things didn’t go as planned in his work or when there was a disagreement about house work. I am not responsible for his anger issues, and the people who are have not been able to substantially hurt him in years. It’s not about little boy Chris who was treated badly by his parents anymore, it’s about a 220 pound man who can’t control his temper in adulthood. Regardless, it is not about me and it is not my fault. PTSD is not an excuse to lose control with people. Control with people is a litmus for how well one handles PTSD, the ability to get on with other people without fits of rage should be the standard against which one rates recovery for PTSD, not just an expected PTSD thing that the rest of us are responsible for quietly tolerating. I need to say all these things, and I apologize if this posting seems dramatic or demonizing or attention seeking or whatever, but I need to say these things and give voice to my anger because being privately angry has just left me more and more progressively angry and I need to release this in some way. I’ve taken back every other aspect of my life, and yelling at no one during my commutes to work instead of enjoying music or listening to an audiobook is not who I want to be. I want to let this go so that I can be a good boyfriend to whoever I get serious with next, I want to let it go so I’m content in my life. I can’t do that silently on my own like dark clouds that clear, and so I am here to make some noise and just let a storm be a storm.

Breakfast

I enjoy breakfast the most because it’s the meal of the day when I don’t feel like I’m eating as a chore.  More than that, it also has the best things to eat like ham and fried eggs and oatmeal and no one looks at you weird for eating fruit at breakfast like they do with pizza.

So lately I’ve had the weirdest run of interactions.  I slept with a dude a few times, told him I wasn’t into a long-distance monogamous relationship predicated on three hookups and a party, and his reaction to this was to go out buck wild and message me specifically to raise the subject of how much fun he was having fucking other people.  This person, who shall remain anonymous, reached out to me again regarding a minor STI he picked up along the way.

Following that rather tumultuous experience I decided on a focus on common interests.  Went well for a couple weeks, then he got invited to his ex’s grandmother’s funeral.  On the one hand I could be angry about “I am sufficiently close with my ex’s family that being a pall-bearer is a possibility” not having been said to me from the outset but I opted to be an adult and assume that I was dealing with an equally emotionally aware adult who could tell the difference between grief and romantic emotional connection.  Got dumped, reconnected with him friend-style last week, turns out gran didn’t take the old relationship problems to the grave with her.

Went on a couple dates lately, dude didn’t know what gentrification was when I mentioned the word on our first date.  “Okay” I thought “he’s from a rural community and has otherwise moved in white-collar gay circles so maybe he’s just not aware like that.”  I had a harder time justifying to myself how I was explaining to a 31 year old man what is bubble tea, and given that the shared interest was supposed to by lifting I was similarly scratching my head trying to figure out why things like volume vs. weight were alien to him.  I feel like in three encounters I should be on the other end of the learning at least once.  I’d also appreciate it if he made himself accessible in a predictable or at least transparent way.  He told me he wants another date, I don’t think he does and I don’t understand why those things are not consistent with one another.  I sense a pretty gay boy juggling dates with two or three dudes trying to decide which is the best investment of time.

I haven’t done as good a job as I ought to have done regarding holding others to standards.  On the one hand I’m cautious because I’m tired of being treated like a side dude or a plan B or an occasional sex partner.  On the other I’m adequately deliberative that I tend towards patience where I suspect it’s probably not deserved.  Certainly if we take my last three examples we can say that expecting adult behavior, being accommodating of strange circumstance, and giving the benefit of the doubt are not serving me well.

This is of course to say nothing of the yoga instructor who felt that not until after several sex encounters and two weeks of sexting was it appropriate to mention he already had a boyfriend.  This is of course horseshit.  If I have the time and courage to do an HIV disclosure the other dude can tell me honestly whether or not he’s single.

Then of course there was the man looking at the world through a wallet, who felt that telling me that he was an angry customer on the phone was a good way to open a date with a CSR.  Closing the date with an unsolicited ass-grab was also not the best choice, I laughed it off at the time but I was angry about it later on.  The laughing was the mistake I think.

I suppose the take-away here is that I’m tired.  I’m exhausted with first dates.  I’m worn out with introducing myself over and over and I’m completely burnt out on both analyzing behavior and guessing at intent.  I’m certainly over being the understanding and accommodating one in these affairs, and certainly I’m at the end of my patience with being the chaser.

I honestly have no clue about what I’m doing wrong.  I show up on time, I keep my commitments, I’m neither financially distressed or emotionally demanding I’m engaged in a diverse and active social life.  I’m skilled both at getting people out of the house to go be active and at showing up to offer some emotional nurture and fucking artisanal bread and I’m evidently pretty attractive.  I’m meeting and exceeding standards, and I don’t get why I’m still falling short in this dating game.

Meeting a guy tomorrow for a chest day, he’s actually pretty promising; immediately identified me as PC master race, was down with the star wars RPG books lying all over my house and he actually squats.  Also does social work for his studying, so he’s pretty exciting.  Or at least he should be.  I’m wiped out with all this to the point where I can only manage a wan smile and polite tilt of my head in response to the idea.  I should be excited about such a dude but I’m just exhausted with the idea of my 8th first date in 5 months.

Buuuut here’s to saturday lifting date #4, if the dude doesn’t work out then at least I’ll have a spot for bench presses ;)