Redwolf's Journal (continued)

My costuming has stalled out after I sewed a bunch of velcro to the vest, took a look in the mirror, and decided everything needed move up about an inch. So I really need to remove and re-sew all that velcro. Or just start on another vest entirely. Neither enthuses me. I've played a good bit of The Long Dark story mode over the weekend. It's not without its faults, but it does add some direction to the directionless sandbox version of the game it's been up until recently. I like it. It's not overly complex. The graphics are somewhat simplistic in style, but manage to be beautiful sometimes. I like hunting for resources, and exploring new areas, and judging how far to go and how much to try to accomplish away from shelter, and I like struggling to recover after overextending. In the story mode, so far at least, I haven't been mauled by three wolves in a row and killed. The bear hunt, however, may be a bit overly difficult in my opinion. I think I'm nearing the ...

I have a certain respect for, and reliance upon, the media when it comes to knowing what's going on in the wider world. There's a filter, though, even in the best of cases. In this day and age, it's easier than ever to get information - but the veracity and depth of it is often limited. I've often said I find politics to be simultaneously fascinating and nauseating. It's only fairly recently (in the scale of my life) that I've come to really consider the value of states as entities. And the recent trip to DC and seeing some of the history there drove home that the US government was fashioned in such as way as to make it deliberately difficult to pass new, sweeping legislation (it was a reaction to displeasure with a monarchy, after all). Religion is much the same to me. I've known deeply religious people who were some of the best and nicest I've met. And yet, I find the mere thought of any attempt to push such beliefs on another to be offensive. Plus...

Rrrgh. Where to start? Perhaps with "I shouldn't have stayed up so late last night finishing that book?" That makes sense. Though I really did need to distract myself with something. MUCKing wasn't working. MMOs weren't working. And while I wanted to just go to sleep early, that wasn't happening. I was given this nice, holiday weekend and I just haven't been able to enjoy it. Too many toxic thoughts killing my mood... A lot of it comes around to the usual "mid-life crisis" questioning of purpose stuff. That invariably comes up when I'm depressed. It's frustrating because I'm consciously content with my life. I'm mostly healthy. I'm more financially-stable than most people I know. I don't really have any desire for children (heck, I don't even like people a lot of the time). Yet part of me still clings to that subtle influence of upbringing that taught life is going to school, getting a job, getting married, and rai...

I try to expose myself a little more to political news than I used to. Admittedly, some tidbits come filtered through comedy faux-news shows, but I have CNN on sometimes too. And one thing that's bugged me a lot recently is the utter inflexibility shown by both Republicans and Democrats of late. So, while driving back from Arizona, I turned to one of the few people in the world who I truly respect and trust to being able to look at US politics from a realtively objective standpoint and I said basically: Okay, I see all this, with both sides refusing to give ground even if it means grinding the government's ability to do anything to a standstill. This feels so extreme, but is that just perspective? Is this just a part of the cycle, or is it really worse than usual now? My father was silent for a few moments before giving a very careful and measured answer: It is as bad now as I have seen in my adult life. He went on to point out some periods where the two parties have be...

A news headline point in the last couple days is a survey being summarized as saying people feel "marriage is becoming obsolete." Of course, there's a couple caveats to consider. First, I don't trust any survey or poll in a vacuum. They can be made to say just about anything. There's not totally useless, but to be taken with a grain of salt. Second, the long explanation I heard was not really an argument that marriage was or should be phased out. Rather that people were going into it later, having accomplished more. Rather than a mark of new adulthood, marriage is being seen more as something to do once you're established. So that headline is somewhat misleading. But it got me thinking. What if marriage were removed as a secular institution? That'd sure be one way to get the same-sex marriage issue out of the government's hair. Oh, there'd be work involved as we'd have to pull a lot of marriage-related laws and regulations (such as for ...