Love and choice

Johnny Depp - if you really did say that - if only you knew. If only you knew.

Here's my take on it:

"Loving two people at the same time means there are two people  who will spend time with you, smile at you, and give you support; in turn, you can provide these things for two people you love."

Or, more snidely:

"If you love two of your children at the same time, put your first one up for adoption. Because if you really loved the first one, you wouldn't have wanted to have the second."

The State of the State's Freethought Clubs

Recently, I had the pleasure of joining the movers and shakers of WA's student clubs at a lovely dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant in Northbridge.

I am currently the co-ordinator for the university clubs in WA, so I tried to get the discussion going and make sure the clubs were able to support each other and share resources.

Here is what we found out:

UWA Atheist & Skeptic Society (UASS)
This is my former club and also, coincidentally, the oldest and most successful of WA's clubs. We have always enjoyed a good relationship with our Christian Union - even though we disagree on some fundamental issues, they've always treated us well and it's important to me that this relationship continue as, being a larger club, they have many resources that we don't. I made sure the vice president was aware of the good history that she's going to be trading on. They're planning on having a debate in the first four weeks of semester, but the exact format hasn't been agreed on.

We're also hoping to hold a skepticamp. It is being run mostly by people from the Perth Atheist/Skeptic community with some support from UASS members. UASS is able to provide the venue.

UASS is hoping to run a "Devangalisation" campaign, with a debaptism with unholy water. They're considering handing out a post de-baptism care package containing essentials for the seven deadly sins (e.g. a small mirror, a condom, chocolate...). Additionally, there are many myths about the bible and its contents that might be interesting to discuss in a formal talk.

The "Atheists in the cafe" meetings are going well and are well attended by first year students. The "Atheist in the tav" meetings are not as well attended by any stretch. This interested me because in the past the situation has been reversed.

UASS has two great poster guys (both named Daniel!) - should seek to provide these posters as a resource to other clubs. To discuss with FSA how to go about doing this.

Murdoch Atheist and Agnostic Students Society (MAASS)

MAASS has started in earnest this year and are looking to do a great job under their current unleadership; they've bought some badges from cafepress and are having success selling them. They have a stand every Thursday with about 5 regulars. Their relationship with their Christian Union is not as good as UASS; that's something they might want to work towards improving. They might have a debate with them in the future; if that's going to happen it might be a good idea to practice working through some more common arguments since the religious folk tend to have a lot of practice discussing and defending their beliefs.

ECU Atheist Society (EAS?)
Kylie is running a one man show more or less; she's hoping to advertise and attract more members to provide support etc. She's making connections with staff members - very useful.

Freethought Student Alliance
The FSA is offering mid year packs - all the WA clubs definitely want some! ECU is probably most in need though due to its lack of membership; at the same time, its lack of membership means it might not have anything it can DO with the pack.

A little poly-hack I figured out...

Recently, me and Mr Wonderful have been able to go to bed together on weeknights while Mr Wrong hung out with our roommate. (Understandably, Mr Wrong doesn't want to be left bored and lonely by himself so I can sleep with Mr Wonderful).

However, our roommate is moving out so no longer will Mr Wrong have company. This made me sad, as I was left with the choice of not bedding Mr Wonderful nearly as often as I would like (bad), or leaving Mr Wrong to be bored and perhaps a little uncomfortable at the noises he heard coming from a nearby bedroom (also bad).

So I came up with a nice workaround - to take advantage of the fact that I won't be able to seduce Mr Wonderful by teasing him on those days, but not going to bed with him. I let him know my plans in that regard, and his response was to express a desire to be so dashingly sexy that he would seduce me despite my plans.

It will make our planned "date night" so much more satisfying after that much build up, whilst keeping Mr Wrong from getting too lonely in the meantime. Win-win-win!

This has taught me to look for opportunities in the restrictions that polyamory inevitably puts on your love life.

Steve Irons

Steve Irons, the liberal party member for Swan, is quoted as saying:

“Gay marriage supporters want us to rewrite the Bible.”

No, Steve: I don't want to rewrite the bible for its attitude towards gay marriage any more than I want to rewrite Heart of Darkness for its attitudes towards Africans.

You can keep your book with all the same words in it, honestly. I don't give a damn.

New World of Darkness... IN SPACE!

I recently GMed a session of New World of Darkness... IN SPACE!

It was for a bunch of new friends and one old friend who I'd never GMed for before. I love GMing, I've run a couple of games, but being human I'm often doubting my abilities.

I'd been building this session up and talking about it a bit - mentioning it, saying it was fun, trying to organise a time for it to occur, etc. I was worried it wouldn't live up to the expectations. In fact, right beforehand, I was super nervous that nobody would enjoy it because there wouldn't be enough direction, it would stall, and I'd make a bad impression.

Strangely enough, when you're GMing, it's really easy to read a room and know whether your players are having a good time or not. It stalls when people aren't quite sure what to do, aren't attached to their characters, aren't attached to the story, too busy redditing or playing LoL to pay attention, whatever.

But sometimes, it works well and everyone is like a well-oiled machine. You can see people having fun, making quips, and getting into the story. This was one of those times - even though the characters were pre-made.

Here's what I learned:

• The story really doesn't have to be complicated. It was a simple storyline, which made it easier because the players didn't have to keep track of much.
• You can have tension/horror (cannibalism) and humour (everybody's dead, dave) in the same story and it can still work. 
• In past games, when players got distracted on their laptops, I should have both been firmer with them and made a better effort to entertain them.
• I'm better at improvising than I thought (and, being arrogant, I thought I was pretty good before).
• Corollary: I come up with lots of ideas (space manatees!) DURING sessions. As such, re-running games with a fresh set of players is something I should do more often.
• Given there were two NPCs I really should have spent 10 minutes making each of them a full character sheet.
• It's important to accelerate things so that way the game can be finished before it's time for everyone to go home.
• Players will often help with this.

After that experience I'm seriously considering running a new campaign of my own, perhaps a short one (say, 6 sessions) with some clear goals. Based on what I've learned, I'm also considering streamlining and re-running an old campaign (or at least reusing its premise). 

Triggering dysphoria

Dysphoria is a concept well-known in the trans* community; essentially, it's the feeling that your body is wrong and those primary or secondary sexual characteristics are not part of you. It's very unpleasant to say the least.

I'm a cis girl (meaning, at birth they assigned me the gender of "female" and I am cool with that), so I haven't had occaision to feel it properly or in the constant, background-levels way that trans* people must feel it weighing on them at times.

I think I've managed to cultivate a feeling of dysphoria once or twice for a few seconds at a time which has led me to perhaps have some tiny twinge of understanding of what trans folks must go through every day.

I imagined being a man. Not in the "Awesome I can pee standing up and get all the jobs and not have periods and get paid more for the same jobs!" sort of way; in the way where everyone looks at me and calls me "sir", where my self is inside a big, hairy male body and everyone sees this as 'me' and just... accepts it. Where you go shopping and you buy pants and a button up shirt or t-shirt. Where you have a flat, masculine chest and a penis. Imagine actually HAVING a penis. Something growing out of your crotch, all... soft and bulbous. Imagine having to touch it and use it each time you go to the bathroom. Really imagine it and bring these feelings to the forefront of your mind. Focus on them.

The other way I did it was by buying a chest binder (something many men wear to hide their breasts). The first time I wore it and dressed in men's clothing and looked in the mirror it felt so... wrong on a fundamental level.

If you really concentrate on it, the feeling is HORRIBLE. I won't pretend to know or guess whether it emulates the trans experience, but it can definitely affect you.

101 Reasons to Be Abstinent

On facebook, I found a reference to a pamphlet entitled "101 reasons to be abstinent" and I managed to track it down and find an online copy of the majority of the pamphlet. It was... interesting to say the least.

I felt like it deserved a thorough response (OK, rant...), so here we go.

60 is a LOT of reasons, though. I didn't even realise. Thank fuck I don't have the full 101 to contend with. So my coverage gets a lot less in-depth as time goes on, since my other option was to break it down into posts with sets of 10, or organise them by category, and I'm not sure if people are actually all that concerned about these things.