I have only one burning desire

(poor taste? probably)

So, things have been eventful. First, as most of you probably know by now, I am not on fire. I am, however, off work for the week due to poor air quality, and am slowly losing my mind. It's funny how I was able to spend 6+ months unemployed without any trouble, and now that I'm working, three days off is enough to drive me stir-crazy. I've been playing Steamband, which ig recommended, and doing some reading and cleaning lots of things. By the end of the week this place is going to be cleaner than it's ever been. I should probably have people over or something.

Steamband is a pretty good game. It's a variant of Angband, which is a roguelike ((like nethack) (see also here)) with a lot of emphasis on skill trees in character advancement. And Steamband is, yes, steampunk-themed, so that in addition to there being the typical character classes like rogue and adventurer with skills involving stealth, trap detection, and the use of swords, there are also naturalists, engineers, and aesthetes, whose skills include things like clockwork chassis, velocipede, and even art appreciation. The monsters are all literary references, and the armor consists of top hats and petticoats and such. I think I've plateaued, though, since I keep getting killed by White Fang. He gets like 8 attacks per turn, so the instant I see him, I might get one action in which to teleport away, if I'm lucky. It's almost reached the point of a running gag, the consistency with which it happens; I get up to about level 4 or so, feeling pretty good about my hit points, armor class, and ranged attack, and "oh look here comes White Fang." Then he bites me like 20 times and I die. Screw you, White Fang.

Anyways, here are some useful fire things to look at, if you promise not to check them obsessively. Fire blog. Story about KPBS's fire services map. As scary as the map makes things look, everything I've read suggests that my part of town is pretty safe, so at this point I am mainly just hoping the eastern half of it doesn't cause too much more damage

And some other internet diversions, for those of you who, like me, are really pretty bored with this whole staying-at home thing. The complete Calvin and Hobbes. Lots of educational websites (some of which you probably know, but it's nice to have so many in one place). And this, via I-forget-who, possibly Pinguino.

Domo. Domo.

Vegetarianism update: There is no "e" in "tofurky." What's that about, vegetarians?

Orchid update: Here are some of the orchids I got.
The others are not in bloom.

Steampunk update: fascination is in temporary decline, due to other things going on.
I was going to tell you my theory of why it's so cool, and I'm glad I didn't, because now I think it was probably false. Definitely the anachronistic aspects play an important role (e.g. the juxtaposition of victorian aesthetics with robots and space flight, or of abraham lincoln with cyborg weaponry) as does retrofuturism in general, but what is it about steam and the 19th century in particular? My best guess is that on the one hand, it is an era with which we can longingly share their enthusiasm and optimism regarding technological (and social) progress; anything prior to the Industrial Revolution would just seem weird (Even cotton gin punk is kind of pushing it. Though, come to think of it, alchemypunk would be pretty cool. I digress.). But on the other hand, it is not so recent that such notions of boundless progress lose their ring of quaint innocence. We can smile at the idea of clockwork servants serving us tea, and our suspension of disbelief need not be hindered by the jadedness of postmodernity.
Man, I hope you didn't have to read that paragraph. This is what happens when I post at this hour.

Aging update: 28. Festivities have been very pleasant.

Meat-eating orchids forgive no one just yet

So, my ravenous consumption of everything the Internet has to say about steampunk has not yet abated. Indeed, y'all can count yourselves darn lucky if I don't put on some goggles and a cravat and throw a neo-Victorian tea party in a couple weeks for my birthday

HOWEVER

further discussion of this topic has been momentarily preempted by The San Diego International Orchid Fair, which my mother just called to tell me about yesterday. So I went this morning, and it was totally cool. I made sure to charge my camera's batteries overnight, but then when I got there, it wasn't working. Boo to that. But yay to my otherwise very crappy cameraphone doing a surprisingly good job in its place. I uploaded all the pictures I took here (I hope I'm doing this flickr thing right), and some of them are pretty decent. If you don't have the patience to look through all of them, here are four of my favorites.
These were all from the show, which was a little smaller than I expected, but still really neat. And then there were a bunch of vendors. Oh, the vendors. I have way too many cattleyas now.
Also orchid people are very polite and pleasant, and not all weird like one might expect.