WYRMLOG

So what, we're using this blog as Twitter now?

Friday February 5th 2010

Last night I dreamt that I was buying a pair of shoes from the girl in the office next door.

I have no idea what this means.

On the Democracy Front

Wednesday February 3rd 2010

Well thankfully it looks like South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson has backed down over his ridiculous and anti-democratic laws concerning political blogging. Excellent!

For those late to the party, Atkinson got some new laws put in in South Australia this week forcing anyone who wants to post anything anywhere online about the upcoming state election to sign their comments with their real name and postcode. It seems that he was motivated to create such laws because he believed the opposition were using a false identity to harass him in the comments section of a local newspaper website (oh poor diddums!). Apparently this wouldn't threaten free speech in any way because people could still say what they liked, they'd just have to say who they were at the same time (the fact that the option of anonymity is crucial to genuine free speech seems to have evaded his tiny mind).

In the face of (unsurprising) public outrage he's had to back down and promised to retroactively cancel the laws after the election. He's attributing this outrage to the "blogging generation", which only goes to show how hopelessly out of touch he is.

Additionally, in a nice bit of irony it turns out that the 'fake commenter' created by the Liberal Party to harass him in the Adelaide Advertiser is in fact a real person who lives less that 500m from his office. Nice to know he keeps in touch with his electorate.

Of course Atkinson is the same guy who's singlehandedly preventing an 'R' classification for computer games anywhere in the country, apparently on the basis that anyone who wants to play anything more sophisticated that Mario Cart is a ravening sociopath. He also claimed that the gamers lobby (who are trying to get such a classification set up) are sending him death threats - on the basis of one threatening letter that turned out to be related to a completely different case.

What can you say but roll on the election!

Social Energy Crash!

Monday February 1st 2010

One of the things about being both an Aspie and a severe introvert is that you have only a limited amount of social energy.

Social energy may be a bit of an odd concept for the majority of people out there (most of the population being extroverts) but basically it's a measure of your ability to be around and interact with other people. Extroverts replenish their social energy reserves by being around other people - making them sort of social perpetual motion machines - but we introverts need time alone to recharge before we can go out and do stuff - even with people we like.

This was brought home to me particularly this weekend. By Friday my energy reserves were approaching critical and I intended to spend a quiet weekend in doing chores, chilling out and recharging. Then Fabes called me up and suggested we all (that is to say me, him, Ryan and Paula) get together on Saturday. Against my better judgement I accepted - not to say that it didn't sound like fun, it's just that I really needed time off from people.

So I headed over. We had a great time playing Munchkin and running through an really old Dragon Warriors RPG scenario (I controlled a surprisingly intelligent Scottish barbarian named Grignr and an apparently mute Sorcerer named Zzardoz, while Ryan ran a very English Knight named Sir Spiffington and a Mystic by the name of the Comte Merde de Gallo). We then hung around for ages watching late night TV (including the end of The Core which we mocked mercilessly and a promo piece on the Commonwealth Games in Delhi which we also mocked mercilessly then felt guilty about).

Now the plan was to spend the night and head home in the morning but by 1:00am my levels of social energy had completely crashed. As a result I was overcome with an intense need to get the hell out and retreat to my own territory, so I called a cab and bailed.

I spent most of Sunday asleep, getting up only to walk down to the village for some laundry detergent and to watch a couple of episodes of the Boosh (Trapped in a box by a cockney nutjob! 'ave a cup a tea!). As a consequence my energy levels are now sufficient to see me through the working week, but I'm going to have to spend this weekend being totally anti-social to get back up to an acceptable level.

So, I guess my reasons for recounting this tale are to apologise to the gang for my sudden and rude departure, and to make a plea for understanding and tolerance for all my introverted kin out there. It's not that we don't like you - we just need time to recharge!

We need to get back in the Game!

Friday January 29th 2010

Some kind of worm, at least 800 metres tall, impossibly thin but with a trumpet-like mouth stands over the city, screaming "I HAVE FOUND YOUR GOD!! I HAVE FOUND YOUR GOD!!" The ground starts to shake as a hundred metre tall tsunami - black as night - appears on the horizon and the crowds start to flee. "HERE COMES YOUR GOD!!" shrieks the worm...

Don't you love those dreams that make you wonder just what the hell is going on in your subconscious?