antsy---
Okay, so...yeah. We're here, bracing for whatever Sandy's going to throw at Providence. The world is getting interesting. Bits of news filtering in. The city's pretty much shutting down early this afternoon. My doctor cancelled my appointment today (sensible, but inconvenient). Huge waves breaking against the seawall in Narragansett. Mandatory evacuations. Roads already flooded. Winds at 41 mph from the northeast. We have food, bottled water, batteries, all our pods charged, we got tactical smart missiles, phased-plasma pulse rifles, sonic electronic ball breakers...oh, wait. Wrong movie. I'm still asleep. Um...we have lots of Halloween candy and booze, though.
And last night Selwyn fell in the bathtub, which was pretty funny. Yes, there was water in it. No, just water, no people. Which reminds me that a city official commented yesterday that our rather impressive hurricane barrier has "never been tested."
By the way, I'm hearing that Sandy is now the largest fucking Atlantic hurricane on record, and the most severe tropical storm to ever make landfall in the US. From the National Hurricane Center, NOAA, by way of Wikipedia, "At 11 p.m. EDT on October 28, Sandy surpassed 2010's Hurricane Igor to become the largest hurricane in Atlantic history, with a maximum gale-force wind diameter of 930 mi (1500 km)." So...wow. Anyway, we're on high land, up here near Federal Hill and the Armory. I only have to sit tight and worry about my friends in Manhattan. Spooky's sister, in Brooklyn, is out of all three danger zones.
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Having set aside "The Interrupted Bone Sharp" on Saturday, yesterday I wrote 1,157 words on "Whilst the Night Rejoices Profound and Still." A harvest festival on a future Mars. Not a shiny, happy future Mars. It could be a very good story, if I don't break it. As for "The Interrupted Bone Sharp," I'm not abandoning it. I can't let myself do that. Kill your fear means kill your fucking fear. I practice what I preach. I am no hypocrite. I'll work on it a little here and there, and one day it will be finished. But my bad memories will not make me cower and whimper.
I'm not a coward.
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Spooky and I are very much enjoying The Secret World. It's sort of weird to be playing an MMORPG that was clearly made for adults. No, real grownup adults. It's smart, well written, scary, sometimes very funny, occasionally profane and sexulous, beautifully designed, and other good stuff. Which is not to say it's perfect. The animation in the cut scenes is sort of 1999. Though the overall design is gorgeous – especially the towns and cities and forests and whatnot – the avatars have a rubberiness about them. That is, they look a bit like injection-molded PVC action figures.
The available clothing assortment is very, very weird, but you can do good things with it. If you know how to dress yourself. Many players obviously do not, and someone needs to take them aside and explain they're not playing Alien Drag Queen Zombie Hunters from Outer Space. You can almost always tell when a guy is playing a girl avatar, because they dress them like Playboy bunnies and the cast of Jersey Shore. You know...like hookers. Then again, most female avatars are guy players, and they've have never even heard of practical. The doods jz want teh sexeh, lol. Never mind. I've made my point. Good game though. Addictive. I created a cabal (we have those, instead of guilds), Butterfly Innovation, a directive cabal (which makes sense if you're in the Dragon faction...and know something about the intersection of chaos theory and economics), but it's just me and Spooky with a cool cabal name. Oh, and I like that everyone in the game has to play humans. That also cuts down on the idiot factor. No nekos or angels running about with grenade launchers.
Okay. I ought wrap this up. I think I'm going to get Kathryn to drive me over to the East Side, across the river and back, before we can't get out of the house...
When the day's as dark as the night is long,
Aunt Beast