The other day I dreamt my teeth were falling. For a long time I hadn't had recursive dreams. That is "waking up" but still being dreaming. So, in this dream I was loosing all my teeth and waking up just to again loose them all and so on. I was concerned and disoriented, "why is this happening?". As the wake up progressions happened I realized I was dreaming. So I kept loosing them but my mind was just "why am I dreaming this?".

I woke up for real and my mind kept asking me. Dream dictionaries are bullshit so I just started a free association chain. Teeth are white. No, that's not a clue. Teeth are bones. Nop. And so on. I know myself so after a while I let it slip. Let my subconscious work with it.

I get tons of ideas while bathing so it's natural that my subconscious sprouted then. Teeth change when you grow up. :D

I knew it true when I consciously thought it.

Bottom line, some part of myself thinks SF will grow me up more than I expect. So the lesson is "don't be shy, this is a huge step, accept it!" :D You win, I mean, I win! This is huge, it's a big deal and I don't fraking know what will happen, but I want to be there NOW.

ps. This Polloday I want to tell all my friends how much I care for them. The positive influence you are for me and that you are not taken for granted.

Nothing to call home about. I just want write. No lame life update. No dream narrative. Nothing. I'm getting attuned with life. I might go live in SF. I will get married. I create games. I'm writing a comic. And yet, all seems the same. It's not a bad life at all but I'm feeling less awed by the world. In two months I will travel to places like Amsterdam, Paris and London. By all accounts this is an ever improving experience, life that is. Yet, I have lost something. Every night I watch the stars. Beautiful. Hubble has fantastic images. Nonetheless, ¿when was the last time my breath was taken away? I still get merry by babies trying to play with my hair. I'm not getting bitter, but that's not enough. I need a change.

Truth is that I started writing this post without knowing where it might go. That's the way literature must be lived, I guess.

This blog was on a road to sadness.. People reading it might conclude I'm having a bad year. (It is tempting to apply the "emo" qualifier, but it is overused and inaccurate.) I was saying... No, I'm in the middle of a very good year. I do have sad circumstance casting shadows, and my life is kinda roller-coastering but thinks are good over all. Anyway, I want to share with you a thing. My latest rpg adventure.
I was storytelling one via a blog and some mails. It was fantastic. I'm officially finishing with that story. It's kinda sad to end it, this way, but I'm happy no less. It was good while it lasted. So here I'm gonna spill my beans. I have two stories to tell. One is about the literary elements (includes spoilers) and the other one is about the meta-game. I know myself, if I write one I might never write the other one and I really want to share the campaign's back-story, so sorry for the meta content. If I ever have time and memory, I should tell that other one.
Disclaimer: I'm gonna tell silly things which from your perspective might soud dull, however here I am pointing "hey, this is interesting". Besides, if you were playing with me this campaign, you might read things you didn't want to read. So in a way, I'm telling you, sorry for the rant.
I chose a Hunter: The Reckoning based game, because that setting was the first one that inspired me a story worth playing. I wanted something fresh for my players. We munchkinize everything we touch. I wanted to exalt the mundane world. It is, after all, my new year resolution.
Players rightfully can ask me "Who the frak do you think you are to try to force me to actually role play?" I'm no one. I just want people to see if they enjoy a less hack/slash game. Anyway, even though my goal was that one, I had another one far more important, to be a better ST. So, I listened attentively to my players. That's why I finally added fight scenes. (Those sound easy to do but are very hard to create in an asynchronous media.) Yet above all I always tried to make them have meaningful choices/consequences. The only problem with that idea is that I thought too much the back story... You see, for any change to be visible to them, I had to pass it through a large chain reaction; Characters lived in a huge world. :S
Let me start from the beginning. When I decided to have a die-less game, my inner writer looked for something awesome to write about. Here, I found the Heralds. The cannon doesn't tell much about them, as usual in White-Wolf. However I have read enough of their books to put together some clues. With them I played to see if I could put something interesting. WW said there should be two, Yin & Yang. In a supplement from Demon: The Fallen, Lucifer said that there where only 2 angels left. Like this, there are a dozen more clues which I intertwined. I decided I liked the angel idea, but I couldn't do the estereotypical angel. I'm really tired of the "angels are so good that they are stupid" or the "angels are actually mean". It was a challenge.
How to portrait good epic guys accurate? My inner writer really likes to try new points of view. First thing, God had to go. I couldn't play them as tools and be interesting. Second, they had to be really good, no evil hidden agenda. They have an agenda, but there should be no confusion they are good in the Santa Clausian way. Third, I'm also tired of the "they were really powerful once now they don't". That's a dilemma, I want them powerful, but if they are too powerful why is the world in such a state? I had to find a balance. These guys were to be diminished gods, but still good epic gods compared to mankind.
I made them out of the tarot. The Priestess and Judgement Day. Near enough to Yin and Yang? They were to represent the ultimate Mercy and Justice. But how to portrait epic beings? I decided to battered them down with a hard world. As a discoverable backstory, I set them to be survivors of the first war between angels and demons. D:TF tells about what happened from the demon side. Well, Maria and Pancho, where to be the ones to tell the other story.
The angels that won the war, lost their God. And they never got a chance to know why. Most of the angels lost their will to serve after the war, becoming just stars. An important Literary Design decision was to answer, what happens when an epic being dies? Or can they die? I chose to let them die, but the universe couldn't be without one of the principles, so from their remains spirits were born in the Werewolf: The Apocalypse fashion. So for example, nowadays there's a Luna Incarna, well that's actually a dead angel. It's a really creepy idea. That Angel of the Moon was so epic, that its corpse is still far more intelligent and powerful than almost anything in the Creation. This is a worthy idea.
Only 21 angels decided to stay with humanity after the dust settled. These are the Mayor Arcana of the Tarot. Not to be expected, Lucifer is not the Devil, he's the Fool, the Zeroth. One of the first things the angels decided was to split the world and reign over them. They made an oath to not intervene in each other's realm. That's why the World of Darkness is so different in Africa than in the Middle Kingdom. Angels thought that without the original Chorus structure, they couldn't rely in each other. That was obviously a very bad idea. A singer usually doesn't know how to lead a band. Anyway, our story is about the two who ruled Middle Kingdom. (Wait no, it is about the players! But I'm still in the backstory... you see how this could be a problem??)
Another chore I put myself to do was to study. I read about the real Chinese history and about the WoD. I wanted to do the best possible mix, keeping them both honest. (Of course in case of doubt, players were to decide...) Kuen-jin backstory tells a big chunk about the golden age of that realm. I decided that there was never an August Personage In Jade. It was always Pancho or Maria pulling the strings. They needed one of these guys. They are utterly incapable of taking the credit for their actions. They need a head. They need to believe that they are serving God. After all, having worship is akin to being a demon! They rightly describe themselves as forces of nature.
It's interesting to note, that these guys are inhumanly intelligent and powerful, but they do make mistakes! NP-Complete. Not even they can foresee every consecuences... that's why they went to war. They fraked creating the Wan Xian for instances. That's why they now create Hunters. "Powerful" enough to beat some bad guys, but not too much to be cocky. However their most significant mistake was to trust Mikaboshi. You have to understand, as any angel, they love humanity. Sad epic beings, they are programmed to love without control these monkeys. So they thought that Humanity could be better with a reencarnation plan. Something to give all of us an edge to Transcendence. Strange how these angels think. Worth thinking about.
Anyway, they helped Mikaboshi to get on top and be a Yama King. Unfortunately, all Yama Kings became corrupted and hungry for more power. Luckily that old oath protects the rest of the world from these beings. Unfortunately María and Pancho were inside of their realm... Mikaboshi's greates victory was to imprison the angels! That's how the world became ever the worse in the standard WoD way.
I should mention that all the 21 angels eventually failed. These guys should have known that they are gregarious in nature. Only one of them "survives", Loki, the Hanged Man, Kishijoten, father of all Nuwishas. Though he is not an angel anymore. He is just himself and is about to disintegrate for that exact reason. Too much dissonance. Yes, I'm a bit influenced by Destruction from the Endless. However this guy is actually important for the playable story!
These 2 angels were imprisoned in no other place but Nagasaki. These guys were in a mini-hell :( They would have died there if not for the H-bomb. I don't want to be disrespectful here. I want to say that for all the bad things that happened that day, at least one good thing came out. Kinda like Pandora's box, having Hope as the last thing.
So after the bomb they are once again free, but they are battered down. Too much time in the box. They have kinda fallen. They doubt themselves. They are so weak and starving that they go to do the exact same thing years later demons will do! They possess people. That's a worthy nice twist. They had to do it, the fifth great maelstorm is all over the place, it hurts as they have never ever felt it. And the worst is what they discovered. There are no more angels and humanity was at war. Too much for these good guys. They were crushed by despair. They lost faith in humanity. That's why they didn't start right there rebuilding Creation. They were about to quit.
Yet some years later (few for an angel). Man goes to the moon! Wow, they can feel the Glamour. That's enough for these sappy beings. They would help mankind be better, once again. However they are weak. With surprise they discover that their nexus with the universe was cut. Actually it's the doubt in themselves. A doubtful angel is not an angel for too much. As fast as they can they need to fix this world! Haste is the mother accidents. Anyway, in this weak state they fear Mikaboshi so they flew outside of their former realm. They come to Mexico.
Actually they go through out the world for several years, it's a bit slow with the whole problem of having to have a body, but they manage it. An important thing to mention is that they develop an etiquette of angelic possession. only guys that are open to them can be vessels. For instance Maria's body is actually a Nicaraguan teacher that everyday prayed for God to help her have the capacity to teach the deaf. (She got her deal.) Obviously Pancho and Maria are just "nicknames". Angels just as demons can hear when you say their names, however these beings are so powerful that they just have the human name they wish to have. If you are in Mexico and you want to have a good pulse of mankind, I could swear hearing everything said around "maria" would be really useful. How lucky is that these guys won't go crazy by all this information (but they would react a bit more slowly that usual). So, in other words, Maria and Pancho act like people, because they are inside real people, they are weak, they are afraid of Mikaboshi and because they use their resources in having a better grasp of the world... I'm proud of this.
I have tons of things more to add, but I have to sleep. Let us see if I can continue this tomorrow. Sorry for the rant without structure...

What is pain? Is it the fire to forge a man's sound character? "Pain lasts a minute or a month but if I quit, it will hurt forever." All these thoughts and more I try to bring myself to believe. A charade.
Today, I found myself trying to be workaholic to avoid my situation. That's useless. Has alcohol ever been effective to avoid reality, when you know you want to avoid it? No, I don't think so. You need to fool yourself. Maybe by writing. Maybe if you plot it like a big drama, you would secretly know you aren't so bad and feel better. Yet, you know. Dreams are lousy friends, repeating what you already know. No matter what you do, it doesn't matter.
Every thought is worse. You are safely in the road excrufuckingciatown. Self-pity told me, we should see other people.
Should we count our age by the painful moments? That's why I whine, I'm a baby. Had I count by joyful moments, I would be father. Interesting Freudian slip. If you hadn't catch, this entry will not be edited. I want to remember this moment. My life is good, that's a fact. It has this terrible inconvenience, but I can't blame the reader who think I have had it too easy.
What is pain? After all this rant I have convinced me that I was overreacting. That I had not known real pain. That terrifies me, but for now it is enough to feel a bit better. Stupid naked ape, I'm not match for a Hofstadter argument.

Back again. At home. I mean, I have twittered a bit when I feel bloggy. Yet, here's my domain, less people looking, more space. I have a renewed respect for space, so I won't write and write without sense.

Life seemed to change abruptly, each day harder than the previous one... and then nothing... People didn't seem to notice. All is fine. Well, no, some things are shit and I have no control whatsoever about them. Everyday was harder, because I wanted to fight back. No, I didn't realized the futility of this fight. Nor I got tired. Life just changed so much that it loose any meaning. It's kinda disappointment from a storytelling point of view.

When is it okay to accept fate, when is it coward? Mythology seems to agree that people should accept Mortality. Refer to The Time Machine, Frankstein and so on. All of these have the implicit assumpion that you should accept someone's else Mortality. Your own, that's not settled. Some do, some don't.

Science Fiction in the best possible light, should be understood as stories that talk about "what of Humanity remains when you change the setting". Under this light, Tarzan, Crusoe and so on shows a possible way. I'm reading Stephen Baxter's Vacuum Diagrams. I'm hooked. Contrary to my examples, Hard Science Fiction seems to talk about Humanity without naming a Hero. Dune, Foundation, Ringworld and so on... Yet they are better judged under this light than any other. Their characters suck, and that's not an accident. Baxter is ingenious in using aliens to show us about Humanity. Or am I stretching it too far? Should I redefine scifi as talking about Sentience? I wouldn't mind.

This posts is really me streaming out. Sorry for the lack of structure.

My life is perfect at the moment. I guess that's a rich way to say why I haven't blogged for a while. I even feel the need to have an excuse, hehe. This doesn't come as an epiphany or out of struggle. I have known this for quite some time. And I know it won't last and I enjoy it nonetheless.

For some days, I have been specially "inner lifey", maybe "dreamy" is a better name. I call it "literate". I have this vice of thinking that if life is too pleasant, then there's no story. So I create one. Nowadays, I don't start from scratch, not most of the time. I have a couple of inner stories that keep getting better. I hope to write them down one day. However, if I never do that, almost certainly; I will smile wondering if ever some other human ever thought that story. I have come to love-hate archetypes. I have gone so far as to assume they are specie-bound. What kind of archetypes would my imagined species have. I have this sentient worm like race fighting for a life without culture. What kind of dreams bind them all together? They mostly don't die or have sex. They cannot trust. They have but one rite of passage. What tree of life could they adore?

In another line of thought, I have this series of short stories about adventures across the omniverse. Basically, the omniverse is everything. There we exist and so does the marvel universe or ranma 1/2 or star trek. Each separated and normally unaware of each other. The thing is that the omniverse is really a tree. Does three universe exist because someone in our "verse" thought them out. Though star trek probably has their own version of cinderella. If it is just the same story, then both universe most be able to interact with the cinderella-verse. As you see, verses are one-way mirrors. Someone "real" in the parent verse, can interact. Enter almost at will. You are not necessarily a god among them. Hey, you can't be almighty in the world of warcraft. There are rules. These stories are supposed to be about misterious crimes across the omniverse. No regular cast, but a common goal. I haven't read "seven soldiers of victory" but sounds like a good reference. Ironically I won't do any fanfic. I don't want to get all nihilistic with these stories, though I won't mind exploring what can we do to survive knowing we aren't real. I will try to be as disrespectful of abraxas as possible. I know all this sounds so postmodern, but I'm trying to explore characters that make mistakes. With any luck the omniverse is a good place to notice special errors. I, as a writer, have the problem that in my characters are too smart in their verses. They get things the first time something happen. They do have problems of attitude, goals and dreams, but they are just too efficient. Maybe if I do a verse so bizarre that I myself don't get it, I will have them trip over the edge.

Anyway, good luck.

Four things to do when you don't have an internet connection:
-Keep up with your novella!
-Learn your Teach12 courses
-Grow your German via Rosetta
-Write one more page for Inane

Four things you should do:
-Your portfolio (eipipuz.com)
-kaRma
-Arming
-MonkeyJump

Four things you actually do when it happens:
-Listen to Teach12 courses
-Blog entries

These are notes to myself. I remember when there was no internet. Before Reddit, Gmail, MSN, Blogs, Webcomics... It is a rainy day all over again.

---

Eight random thoughts that I may have written elsewhere.

1. People say 21 is when males' sexual desires are at their maximum; They are wrong.
2. People say I'm arrogant. I am, and it is a strength.
3. There are four kinds of multiverses and it is math all the way down. That's what I have come to believe.
4. There's a moment in everybody's adult life, the bacon point. It is when you realize you can eat all the bacon you want, when you want. I think most of my friends haven't fully grasped this, which is a shame.
5. Now it is official, most women of my age would classify as MILFs. That makes me more pervert or less?
6. I'm working with right-wing organizations. Helping them. I wonder, am I making the world any favor?
7. Allan thinks a person shouldn't be insulted by things that only insult a few. That's like arguing jokes are bad if only a few get them. And bad jokes are the only worthy jokes.
8. Truthfully I'm a little worried about Allan. He seems dim. Less an Allan, more a gray. His quest for pragmatism is turning him into a boring guy. Or more specifically, a risk adverse guy. If he thinks he isn't strong enough in X area, he will avoid it. Unfortunately he has good enough sense to know he isn't particularly strong in any area. Just like you, or almost any human being! He would claim X isn't his style... He's scare of his 30s. I'm not yoda this point, though.
9. Kamilo is pinoccio! Damn it, I should have seen this comming from afar.
10. I am no longer worried about Jaime. Thanks to Polo Polo.
11. I am doing something right, I keep finding I have great friends.

I'm adjusting to this new life. It's funny how a person can really reach your core in a year and so. Last days I was deep blue, but I'm coming out of the cave. So what's my surprise when I find the world changed for my friends just as much as for me. I think all this could be traced to a trip I didn't went. As usual, if you inquire they say it was a vanilla trip. However, being the outsider I can feel that something went different.
They went to existencial lake and no one thought it was worth mentioning. I can see why allan went there. Even pollo. However, what could trigger padilla's journey? Maybe peer pressure, who knows.
I'm reluctant to go there. Why? Because I know it fully well. It's like disneyland. It's great to be there, once in your life; but camping there, I'm not fan of it. The night life sucks. There's not much to do, except rest and relax. It's a fantastic place to meet yourself, but once you do it, go home. There's a good reason why it is a virgin place. It's beautiful, but there are better things to do, elsewhere. Beware of the high tides.
Anyway, sorry for that alegoria, I got carried away. My honest simple answer to "what's the point of existence?" is this. "None whatsoever. There won't be a moment when all makes sense. That's a Platonist point of view that doesn't help you in any way. " However, that doesn't seems to make the trick. They seem to take it literally the "have a dream?" Or imply that you need to focus in one, the best. As if you wasted time following another dream. Or maybe worse. Maybe they can't see anything worthy. That, I don't have a general answer for that argument. I can only tell what works for me. Yes, that sounds as if I have my life set. It isn't. However I know a few tricks. I know, more important I live by the precept, that worthy is whatever you believe it to be. That "transcendental" is an apt illusion we cast for fear in our mortality. That all this questions, they aren't really important. You are getting it wrong. Answering them doesn't make you a better person, nor looking for those answers. You can get the answers, but you won't come out any less existencial. It's ironic. These questions can be thought as the answer of life. This quest is really an excuse to keep you busy. Maybe that's your drift. I prefer enjoying life. Am I a hedonist? No. I'm just saying, do with this life whatever your imagination propels you to do. If your imagination is a bit dry, maybe it is because you are taking your dreams too seriously. Maybe dreams are meant to be fuzzy.

People ask me, "how does it feel to be 28?" They are being Vocative, but anyway...

In my short short life I have come to see life in so many ways. I'm too old to call karina my girlfriend. I'm too young to call her my love. I don't play without a warm up. I love candies. I don't small talk through life. I will always love role playing. I'm growing sideways. I'm loosing inhibitions and some hair. I feel crushed by circumstances. I dream. I love without regret. I know what I want, though I don't have decent words. I am harsh. I am forgiving. I am loosing patience and innocence. I old enough to not care if you went to my birthday party, but I smile like a fool when you do. My eyes glisten when my father hugs me. I want to live with her. I'm too young to marry. I can't remember a better time to be myself and yet this is the dark age of my life. Well, medieval times have a charm, isn't? Today I feel myself a paradox. It sucks; and I pwn!!1one

Despite all of this, they are just being polite, so I answer "Great!"

I'm pissed off. I've already read hp7, so it isn't about spoilers. It's about a kind of mind. The kind of mind who thinks it's good to read the end of a book. What dumb-ass doesn't know that a book is worth for the experience you have through the pages?? What fool can think that he can know a dick of a book he only read the end? Moron.

There are some guys, commonly referred as smart-ass, who delight in the misery of others. Congrats pal, you are that short of becoming one. It's important to remember that those guys are commonly low in self-esteem. They want to procure some power at the expense of the people around. It's like they want make us pay for the misery they have. Having not found the patience/wits/guts/willpower to do the pleasurable activity, but feeling alone they have only one thing to do, try to keep all of us in the same misery as they. It's the proverbial crab in the bucket.

I know Schadenfreude is kind of a natural feeling, but this is beyond it. It's sort of evil to enjoy inducing pain to others.

I no longer visit /. but for old time's sake I went. Maybe it changed in my absence, right? The only article of interest was that MS security got #6 in the "Worst Job" list, this year. In the middle of the thread I found:

I work in a hospital, and ER docs like to swap stories. The worst I've heard is of a woman who was kidnapped, beaten, repeatedly raped, and thrown into a ditch to die. She didn't die, but she did land on a fire ant mound, where she stayed until someone found her, which was not enough time for her to die. Tragedy happens, crime happens, but sometimes you just have to think "that's not fair." I always think of that story when I hear someone say "well, everything happens for a reason."

Hehe. Now I will thing the same...

I rejected a very kind invitation from james. He told me if I wanted to rpg on Saturdays. I guess, I never expected to say "No" to that kind of invitation. The reason is simple. By what james has told me, they seem Munchkin. No thanks, I still dream of playing Wraith: The Oblivion one day...

---

On a side note, today I received the notification. Now I know how much my new salary will be. Good news, I won't work much longer here. I know, it sounds strange to receive the "you won't get as much as you expected". That means to me, "Let's face it. You won't be receiving what you think is fair. Therefore, there's no need to stay there." It's sad to say it this way, but I have lost any faith on my bosses down here. So there's only one place I can go, UP!