Ozzy Osbourne, Music, and Overreaction #PMRC #music #law #suicide #Ozzy #80s cc: @OzzyOsbourne

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I recently came across an article about 10 songs that wouldn’t work in today’s social climate. Sure, I’m kind of old (56), so for the most part, those songs didn’t bother me, but culture revolves around the young, so my opinions don’t matter. However, I never understood the stupidity of the objections to one song in particular that appeared in the article: Suicide Solution by Ozzy Osbourne.

I post this with no fear any of you will kill yourselves after listening.

Ozzy was famously sued for causing the suicide of one of his fans by releasing the song. (That was the dumbest sentence I’ve ever written.) The article seemed apologetic to those from the 80s and today who objected to the release of the song. The idea is that Ozzy is trying to advertise suicide as the solution to your problems. Moreover, there’s a part of the song where Ozzy stutters over the word suicide, saying, “Su, su, su . . . .” I remember the attorney representing the plaintiffs saying that it sounded too close to “Shoot, shoot, shoot,” which, of course, is how the fan committed suicide. Ozzy fought back saying that the song was about the dangers of alcoholism, which is a sort of slow suicide by way of the chemical solution of alcohol. (I know there’s some disagreement on whether alcoholic beverages are “solutions” or “mixtures,” but that’s not a concern of this post.)

So, who’s right? (I am right.) Well, form your own opinion. (Your opinion will be stupid unless you admit I am right.) Here’s the opening lyric to the song.

Wine is fine, but whiskey’s quicker.
Suicide is slow with liquor.

Do I really need to post the rest of the lyrics for you to understand what this song is about? Well, just in case . . . .

Take a bottle, drown your sorrows.
Then it floods away tomorrows.
. . .
Now you live inside a bottle.
The reaper’s traveling at full throttle.

Seriously, may I stop? While the other lyrics can be interpreted in a multitude of ways, they should be interpreted within the context of what you just read. Clearly, this song is about the dangers of alcohol excess. It’s actually a fucking public service announcement, but because a couple of parents couldn’t accept that the life they provided their child with a life he felt wasn’t worth living, they needed a scapegoat. That’s some serious cognitive dissonance, but their personal failings carried potential consequences for society at large, and ideas like this still swirl around in people’s insecure brains.

Of course, there could be even more to this argument. Suicide requires a complex combination of circumstances and emotions. No song could be causally linked to a suicide. Free fucking speech. But none of that should matter because the song itself is telling you not to commit suicide through irresponsible alcohol use. Ozzy knew something about this, as a fellow musician he knew had recently drank himself to death (so to speak). This song was absolutely the wrong target to attack.

I’m probably preaching to the choir among my few readers, but apparently there are still plenty of people who cling to this incredibly stupid position. Even my YouTube search warned me about what’s coming.

I don’t mind the phone number going viral, but I really don’t need the warning at the very bottom. Duh.

It’s worth reminding society of this.

If anyone’s even reading.

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While we’re on the subject, here are the most important lyrics Rush ever wrote.

Some Cheer for Your Christmas #holiday #Christmas #ski

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Because it came up on Facebook, I want to share a funny story that might give you a little laugh. It relates to the only time in my life I went skiing.

Not just thematic. Foreshadowing!

Context

It was the early 1990s. I was newly-graduated from the University of Maryland, as was my cousin, Mike, but from the University of Virginia. Mike and I were taking occasional trips to Boston where his younger brother was attending MIT. Mike had been skiing before and suggested driving up to the Killington Resort in Killington, VT. (Spare me your “East Coast skiing sucks” claims. They mean nothing to me.) This was a relatively expensive trip for me, because I didn’t have much disposable income, and I was on my own financially, suddenly having to buy things for myself previously taken for granted. Bill Clinton had gone on late night television and when asked, “Boxers or briefs?” said “Briefs.” While that seems like a diversion, it really isn’t. On with the story.

Killington Resort

Mike took me on the bunny slope so I could get the feel for skiing, but we both agreed that if I were to learn, I’d just have to get on a real slope, so I did. I went down the slope the first time and thought, “DId the temperature suddenly drop? My legs are a bit cold all of the sudden. And why are people staring at me?”

I chalked up the latter concern to me being paranoid for being a new skier, and I got back on the lift for another run. Halfway up, I realized my jeans had ripped. Yes, I was wearing jeans because I didn’t want to spend money I didn’t have on skiing equipment I might never use again. Also, I was wearing gaudy, bright-red briefs, which were hard not to see in clear weather. To me, brightly-colored briefs were new and cool.

Never accuse me of being cool.

So, I took off my jacket, tied it around my waist, and made one more run down the hill. Mike tried to get me to change my pants and try again, but I had only one more pair of jeans with me, and as far as I knew, there were no clothing stores nearby the resort. With limited time to ski, driving off site didn’t seem practical. I changed my pants and spent the rest of the day in the resort, hanging out and bored out of my mind.

I never skied again.

And there’s some holiday cheer for you.

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Halloween at CTG #holiday #Halloween #employer #work

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My office really gets into the holiday spirit regardless of what the holiday is. For Halloween, most people are in costumes, and the office is decked out in Halloween decorations. For the past two years, everyone in the office was assigned someone to whom to give a gift bag. Once they received it, they’d have to give one to their assigned recipient. Both years, I was the last recipient, so I didn’t have to give anyone anything. (As a recovering Catholic, that makes me feel very guilty.) That’s probably a good thing, because as you’re about to see, I don’t understand these people at all.

For the past 4 years, my coworkers (yes, primarily women, including the boss) have been decorating my office, insisting on a pink motif right down to the mouse pad (not shown).

I also don’t want plants in my office.

Maybe that’s why my costume this year is “old guy with no sense of fun.”

Here’s my gift bag.

Digging a little deeper, I received some socks. Women’s fuzzy socks.

I don’t think they understand me either. If they did, they would have included this in my gift bag.

HR would not approve.

Fortunately, I also received the following to wash away the frustration.

Maybe they do understand me.

Happy Halloween!

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Celebrity Deaths: Not My Greatest Concern #aging #death #celebrity #TeriGarr #RIP #travel

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Another day, another celebrity death. Today, it’s Teri Garr.

I never understood the concern for celebrity deaths. If you don’t know someone, their only value to you is the work they’ve done, whether in film, TV, music, or whatever. Everything they’ve done is still available to you. Sure, if they die young, then you know your’re missing out on what could have been, but that’s a selfish interest, not a concern for the celebrity in question. I have more to worry about than people who, because I don’t know them, can easily be replaced to the extent they affect my life. What do I have to worry about?

Towers 3 and 4 on the left were my home for 4-1/2 of 5-1/2 years in Chicago.

This weekend in Chicago was great. It really was. It was filled with nostalgia from my law school days, and allowed me to catch up with great friends. I saw the Commanders beat the Bears in improbable fashion while within enemy territory. However, there were almost as many discussions about bad news as there were discussions about good news. We discussed friends who’ve cut off contact presumably because of depression; friends who have had recent or current, serious health issues; and friends that have died. Not people I’ve heard of, but friends. Quite a few of them. People with whom I’ve dined, drank, and paintballed. One I should have married.

At my age (56), someone in my life dies every four months or so. The last one was July 16, which means November 16 is about when I should expect the next one to go. This weekend reminded me of that. That’s why celebrity deaths don’t bother me very much.

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Updates to My 4e D&D Resources Page #RPG #TTRPG #DnD #4e #synDCon #gaming

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FYI, I’ve updated my (modest) 4e resources page. It includes support for the Masterplan campaign manager. For those that don’t know, some guy (a pro software engineer) built a campaign manager for 4e and left it on GitHub for all to use. It’s a great tool. The glaring problem it has is that some of the monster files cause the application to crash if you try to open them. (A good example are several of the hobgoblin files from the Monster Manual.) Well, I’ve fixed a lot of those. I can’t say whether I’ve fixed even half of the issues, but I’ve made a ton of progress. I’ve also updated a lot of the stat blocks to Monster Manual 3 format. My edited libraries are available on that page.


In addition, I ran convention in 2010 and 2011 (synDCon), and one of the events I created was a dungeon delve we called synDClash. These were common in cons. All combat. Just try to finish three combat encounters in 45 minutes. Rather than have only one adventure that people would have to play over and over again, I created six, each based on a classic 1e adventure. (In hindsight, I wish I had added “Revisiting the Mountain” or whatever as a homage to S2: White Plume Mountain.) Those files are up there too as separate Masterplan projects.

In other words, there are project files and libraries available for download. Moreover, the character sheets — both the ones used for synDClash and the offline Character Builder versions I created over the past couple days — are linked to there. (Please let me know if the link to my dropbox file works.)

All of this is a work in progress. I’ll continue to create whatever fixes are necessary and update sourcebook stat blocks to Monster Manual 3 format, but if you’re running an in-person 4e game and weren’t aware of Masterplan, you should consider it for tracking initiative, etc. We use it with a big screen TV as our battle map. This was my goofy way of letting everyone know that the set up was ready for what was the upcoming session: Reveal.

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Star Wars Oreo Cookies #StarWars #Oreo #food

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If you enjoy this post, there’s something wrong with you.

And now for something really stupid.

New, overpriced Star Wars Oreos! Will they be Jedi Oreos or Sith Oreos? Only those dumb enough to pay for the same exact cookie with an intellectual property markup will ever know.

Sorry Not sorry for the naughty word.

Somehow, this video received no copyright strike. Go figure.

May the Farce be with you.

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C.C. & Company and Sid Haig #movie #1970s #70s #GoodWatch

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Here’s one out of left field.

I accidentally stumbled across a movie I saw as a kid: C.C. & Company. It came out when I was two, but I saw it a few years later and loved it. It’s memorable to me because 1) Joe Namath plays the main character, and 2) it starts out with a scene where Namath is making lunch in a supermarket. That is, he opens a bag of bread and steals a couple of slices, opens a package of cheese and puts it on the bread, etc. After eating the sandwich he just made, he politely asks an employee where the cupcakes are, and then calmly goes over there and eats one.

What I didn’t know then, and didn’t find out until I re-watched it is that Sid Haig is in it.

A Horror Icon

Wait, that’s not right.

There you go.

Sid Haig threw me a little bit. Some of my friends won’t stop talking about the guy’s impact on horror, but because I don’t like slasher-type horror, I never saw House of 1,000 Corpses. (I assume that movie is of that genre.) As far as I knew, this is the only movie in which I’ve seen him, but looking at his credits, I saw him in THX 1138, Jackie Brown, and Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2. Not knowing who he was, I never noticed. I wouldn’t have noticed here if Amazon Prime didn’t display the scene’s cast during the movie.

Review

Anyway, a couple of early scenes of C.C. & Company hold up, but the movie in general? Not so much. It’s one of those movies about a particular subculture (bikers in this case) written by people who I assume don’t know anything about the subculture. It’s also quite dated. If you’ve seen it before and have even vague memories of it, it might be worth a watch. Everyone else my age should be watching Cobra Kai. I finished part one of the new season of Cobra Kai the night it dropped.

On second thought, no one should watch it; it sucked.

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Another Loss #death #dying #aging

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It seems like once every two or three months, someone I know dies. This is to be expected; I’m 56. However, some hit harder than others, and this is one of them.

In College Park, MD after the UMD-UVA lacrosse game.

Yesterday my friend, Robert Eugene Merlini, tragically lost his life (other coverage here, here, and here). We were fellow students at Good Counsel High School, which then was in Wheaton, MD. (It’s now located in my home town of Olney, MD.) We both went to the University of Maryland, but we never hung out there. Over 35 years later, Bobby and I reconnected via Facebook.

As an old guy, nostalgia is a big deal to me (see, e.g., my many posts on my return to 1st Edition D&D), and Bobby was very much a part of that. Because of him, I’ve recently been to a Maryland lacrosse game (both of us are/were fans, and I’m a former season ticket holder), hung out at bars, and I went to my first high school football game since I was actually in high school. He also is responsible for reconnecting me to our fellow Good Counsel High School alumni, both on social media and in real life. This was as important to him as it is to me.

After his mother died last year, which hit him pretty hard, he found a bit of joy starting his return to piloting commercial aircraft. He had a gig with American and was recently in Ohio for training. He was well on his way. He once posted to Facebook tagging me and several others as his inner circle who had his back during his tough times and his return to commercial piloting. I’m glad to know that I was able to do my part to help him along his way. I wish he could have regained those wings. He earned them.

RIP, Bobby

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I’m Stupid #duh #stupid

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Yesterday’s post sucked, so here’s something light-hearted.

I’m stupid.

If you know me, you probably disagree.

“How can you get a physics degree if you’re stupid?”
“You’re such an intellectual.”
“How stupid can you be if you have a law degree?”

Very. The answer is, “very.” Seriously, have you people never met a lawyer?

But those that really know me would say, “Yeah, he’s stupid . . . in his own way.”

The issue here is one of colloquial semantics that most people reading this blog (i.e., gamers) understand. I’m smart but, in many ways, unwise. But don’t worry. This isn’t a philosophical post. Nope. I’m going to tell you a funny story of how stupid I am.

The 1990s

In 1994, I was working as a contractor at Bolling AFB. Things were different back then. Widespread ownership of a Discman or something like it was relatively new. I finally bought one, and when the headphones wore out, I bought a nice, new pair. The problem with the new pair is that the audio was always too soft for my liking. So, I replaced them, then when the replacements ran out, I just stuck with the “quiet” pair. About a year later, I was on a business trip in Miami, and I finally realized that the headphones had a dial for controlling volume independent of the device I was using.

Now, this isn’t so bad. That sort of dial was a new thing for headphones. Besides, I was in my mid-twenties. Every one is stu . . . errrr, unwise in their twenties, right?

Fast Forward to Today

I bought my house in January, 2022. That’s about 2-1/2 years ago, and by “about,” I mean almost exactly to the day. One thing about the house that’s been super annoying but not worth spending money to fix is that the light fixture in my master bedroom, despite lightbulb changes, has always produced far too little light.

You know where this is going, don’t you?

Last night, I accidentally discovered something.

That small slider to the right of the switch acts as a dimmer, and all it took was 30 months of using the fixture multiple times almost every day for me to discover it.

I’m stupid.

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My Cats: A Mixed Blessing #cat #pet #Caturday

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On May 15, 2024, I adopted two kittens. The boy is Tezcaatlipoca, and the girl is Ishtaar. (The double a’s in their names are intentional misspellings of their mythological namesakes.) I have tons of Caturday posts, including discussing my preparations leading up to the adoption, yet since adopting them, I haven’t posted about them even once to this blog. In fact, I didn’t even post about them to social media until I was (amusingly) scolded for it. I’ve been a bit busy and at times distracted. More on that in a moment. For now, here they are:

Tezcaatlipoca (“Tez”), born 8/1/2023
Ishtaar, born 6/22/2023

Ishtaar, when feeling good, is remarkably social. She always wants to be near me, and usually wants to be on my lap. She’s also remarkably easygoing, accepting whatever circumstances she’s given. Tez is somewhat antisocial. That doesn’t stop him from crying for attention, especially when he feels Ishtaar gets too much of my attention, but if I acquiesce, he usually runs away. Occasionally, he’ll allow me to pet him, but that quickly devolves into a clawing and biting attack. It’s playful, and he can control the intensity of the bites, but he has no such control over his claws, so I often have cuts on my hands. That’s okay, though, because I like playing with cats, and he’s far more active in that regard. Overall, though, they’re both good kitties, just in very different ways.

The Bad News

Ishtaar got (I guess you’d call it) a cold. Lots of sneezing and an eye that eventually swelled shut. It was time for their first vet visit anyway, so I took them to my local vet. Long story short, Ishtaar is very sick. She was running a fever for which she’s on antibiotics, but that’s not necessarily related to the underlying issue. After several less-invasive tests, she had a surgical biopsy last Monday. The results should have come in no later than yesterday (Friday), but I’m still waiting. So, we know she’s sick, but we haven’t even diagnosed her yet.

It’s images like this that convince me she’s not going to make it regardless of what she has. She’s disturbingly thin. If I ran my fingers down your back, I could feel you spine (right before I was arrested), but I couldn’t feel the sides of your spine. There’s “stuff” in the way. Her spine is almost complete exposed, and I can make out her entire skeletal structure by feel. I know she has two kidneys, two lungs, a heart, a small intestines, etc., but I have no idea where she fits them. They must all be so small that they can’t function properly. She has good days and bad days, but her bad days really suck. I’ve had to isolate her because Tez attacks her. This makes matters difficult considering she’s reluctant to eat unless he’s nearby. She actually likes him.

Though I can’t figure out why.

I’m getting her all the care she needs, but if the worst happens, my next question is whether to get a replacement cat. Not only would Tez be bored without a companion, but he needs to learn social skills. It might be helpful to get him a cat that could put him in his place but not be aggressive, simply defensive. That’s a tall order, I suspect.

So, this post became a downer, but this is my current mood.

Sorry.

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