Oooh, must have been months, now!

How long has it been since I had a big ole misogynistic spew on wordpress? Since I expressed my opinion of the despicable airs they give themselves over shopping, and dancing? Since I repeated the old phrase “Mate, if they didn’t have pussy they’d be stacked ten high down at the tip!”? Since I cut loose?

Poor Dave. His fiancee dumped him. He’s been in in hospital, now he’s in pretty much continuous pain. Back at work of course. A fact of life for a man: you must work. Work or wind up a street person, especially in these economically rational times. No one will rescue you, no one will swoop in and take care of you, no – you don’t get supporting mother’s.

So Dave’s back at work. I was eavesdropping, as always. Turns out – with the chronic pain thing – that his fiancee began to notice that he just isn’t as much fun anymore. She wants to go out dancing. Cyndi let the cat out of the bag, you know: girls really do just want to have fun. Want to feel good right now, this moment. It’s your job to serve up fun. Entertainment. To make their day go zing!

As for that vaunted feminine compassion: pain that isn’t accompanied with obvious blood and pus doesn’t get much sympathy. “Yeah, he may have X, but I get period pain“. Thing is: a man living with chronic pain looks every bit like a man just kicking back and taking it easy, and nothing irritates them more. They seriously cannot bear the sight of a man – their man – lounging around and doing nothing. There’s something instinctive and primal about it. There’s always – why – so many jobs to be done. And if none are obvious, she’ll swiftly make one up.

I got the impression that the crisis came when she wanted him to put up some shelves or something. They always want something, you know. They got needs. It’s never quite enough. Of course – of course – Dave could not. I wonder if she actually came right out and said “Well, what use are you then?” or only thought it real loud. I can just picture the moment, the second she turned, that she simply wrote him off. They can do that, you know.

You see, a man loves his woman like a woman loves her children. “She can do no wrong”, as Percy Sledge put it. It’s biological: male romantic love is biological mother-love, re-routed and modified by the Y chromosome. The things that physically attract men – small, big eyes, fine hands and feet – are the same as get a female’s progesterone punping. Blokes tend to take relationship breakups hard.

But a woman loves her man like a rock-climber loves his rope. He’ll coil it, care for it, most of all continually monitor and keep an eye on it. The moment it exhibits weakness – straight in the bin. Hence the continuous stream of little jobs: always testing, always making sure. And you should hear them talk about how “betrayed” they felt when their man failed them. That’s the thing guys – they do not feel about you the same as how you feel about them. They use the same word, but the word that best describes their emotions is not “love”, but “hope”. And when it’s over, what they feel is not forlorn love, but disappointed hope. And anger at you for wasting their time, because they each know that their time is short. “Look at your watch now”, said Gwen, “you’re still a super-hot female.”. But not for long, and they know it, the ticking seconds draining away into years, conjuring forward the terrible, inevitable day when they suddenly turn invisible.

But Dave has it better than Jeff, who married and was divorced by one of ’em, poor bastard. Family court is one of the most harrowing things that one human being ever does to another, and blokes usually aren’t ready for it – the anger, the hate. They think that five, ten, fifteen years of marriage means something. No-one told em that when your woman writes you off, it simply doesn’t. Not to her. No-one ever explained to them that she never actually loved you, because they are incapable of it – they only ever love their children, their personal, intimate crotchfruit.

Speaking of which,

It’s almost enough to make you believe in synchonicity. e-Harmony (yes, I’m on a couple of matchmaking sites. So I’m a bit bipolar – sue me) matched me up with some person. I go to her profile, and guess what’s there:

Q: Who is your greatest inspiration?
A: well, I guess it’s my two kids blah blah blah

Someone please send this person a clue, and explain to her that other people feel about her kids pretty much the same as she feels about other people’s kids. “Inspiration”? Please. So some three or fifteen year-old has already achieved more with their lives than you ever will, and you aspire to emulate them? God.

Of course, the thing is that she has not really understood what the word “inspiration” means. She hasn’t actually read the question. Instead, she has read each item in the profile questionnaire as “What’s the most important thing in your entire fucking tiny world?” and to each she replies “Why, my rug-rats, what I made all by myself from my body! My life’s greatest – and come to think of it: only – achievement!”

And then, no doubt, commiserates with her friends over coffee about how there are no good men out there. Where’s the father of your kids? “Well – after fifteen years of marriage I suddenly realised that I didn’t love him anymore, so I accused him of molestoring his own children and took his house, the fucking loser. Fuck him. And so what? What about me? What I want to know is: where are all the good men, and why won’t any of them fall in love with me and commit – commit goddammit – to taking care of me and my kids for the rest of my life? Why are all the men such flakes and losers? How come all the good ones are taken?”

You can’t explain it to them. They are not able to understand, for much the same reason that you cannot explain the motions of the planets to someone who has not grasped that the earth is not the center of the universe.

Childless women are weird about their pets – animals specifically bred to be emotionally retarded (true story – you know that face licking is puppy behaviour?).

Feh. I think I’ve run out of bile quicker than usual, although I do intend to write a review for Lillith Saint Crow’s “Dante Valentine” books.

The sound track to this post has been any one of several dozen songs about how important is is to dance on a dance floor. And shop.

Kingmaker – Giacamo’s notes-for-epic

Hmm. We left the fort and went south, but is not very epic – everyone is talking talking “oh, we don’t really know where we are going”. And worrying about the kingdom. And then they decide to go back home and use Morgana’s cauldron, and maybe go through centaur fields because bracelet drawing have centaur writing on it and maybe to ask them about it. Maybe not very good plan, but turned out good.

And here did victorious Jope turn and speak to his companions, saying: Behold! Our trail ends here – unknown plain and mountain-hex before us. We shall turn home to seek guidance of witch-cauldron, coven of Morgana. But we shall make our way through Nomen-plain, knowledge of strange centaur rune and sigil to win.

And so journeyed he northward, though plain of Nomen until war-party came of centaur bold and free. Parley made he, and conveyed they him to their priest-queen.

Dave mentioned that the diplomacy succeeded just barely thanks to the fact that we hailed the centaurs in sylvan. Lot of role-playing that night, which is good.

Victory-token rendered Jope to Queen: ancient centaur spear hard-won from spriggan-fort. They did take counsel, and learned Jope of death’s valley southward – and priestess-heir there lost. Priestess-queen ancient centaur-ban lifted, and lay quest on Jope to venture to forbidden valley.

Yet Jope, always duty-mindful, delayed his quest, home to return, and counsel to take with Restov-nobles.

Rainor also found a centaur that spoke elven and they had a bit of a chat about the lay of the land. Mastodons. Bullettes. Handy things to know about.

Is not very epic – “Oh, ok, but first we have to do stuff.” I think have to fix this later. We go to Restov and do shopping, and give Report of why

Screw it.

• Giacomo did the epic for the Centaurs. it was not badly received
• We returned whatshisface’s sons sword. Sad story there
• Jope bought a carriage. We went home and did some kingdome building.
• We scryed on the other end of this friendship ring. Dave was totally “oh, one of the players has to be in on it.”, so Switch joined Morgana’s coven briefly. The scrying was interfred with by … something.
• Went to the valley of the dead. Guared by a heavy, which Jope took out.
• Switch was attacked by a thingy on account of she scryed on the valley. Thingy dropped her to a Wis of 0 before … actually, Rainor did most of the damage but Switch kill-stole by way of an Acid Arrow which she had dropped into the thing prior to being disabled.

Kingmaker – Giacamo’s notes-for-epic

A pretty simple game this week – take the fort. The main issue was whether or not it could be done without violence. It couldn’t. We are short a player, and feel the difference, I think.

Good fight! Much better than undead things. But not so much to say.

A mountain pass did Jope espy, stout defense not unguarded, and with word of friendship did hail, he always willing to make allies of strangers, peacemaker and friend-to-all, first to make fair parley. But rebuffed with impudent arrows, did assault wall and gate and make way for his companions.

The gate was fun. Jope was giant sized and we ran along him and jumped. They were all spriggans inside. I think the turn-everyone-undead thing didn’t affect them, so they just killed the zombies and took the fort.

I think Switch did big illusion so we could get to the fort without being shot. Very scary, very pretty! She did the levitate thing, and have to mention that because otherwise makes no sense how Jope got onto roof. Rainor was freeing some wolves, I think.

Then Rainor broke into the fort on the side. Most of the spriggans had gone and they left the back door open, or something. Don’t know what Switch was doing.

Switch was engaged in a running battle, firing Acid Splash cantrips at some spriggan archers concealed behind arrow slits. Both had cover – one from arrow slits, the other from Blur. It was some comic relief. Dave was granting sneak attack damage, which I’m pretty sure the rules wouldn’t permit (you can’t sneak attack something that has concealment from you). But really, once we had Jope on the roof and Rainor inside, the battle was over – the defences had been well and truly breached.

With curse and threat retreated fey defenders to hardy bolt-hole, stout made-of-man fort. But Jope on arcane wings did ascend to archer-roof and make battle, fey-giant to defeat. Then down into fortress to make mayhem, he and Rainor, and swiftly mighty battle-hand did mete out fair recompense to each foe.

Giacomo fails to mention that Jope had to sit around on the roof and wait for his Enlarge to wear off.

Well, not anything to add. Ho hum. Wonder if we will reach undead thing tomorrow? I hope not!