For the love of the art.

Or something.

In two hours I will be running around in the noon-day sun.

One a rugby field.

In a bunny suit.

For over an hour.

...

This had better win an award.

More of the same, Jeeves.

Life goes on. And on.

And on.

In fact life has settled itself into a mostly good rut. I’m progressing beyond junior schlub at work, mostly – I’m still Junior, I still do schlub work, but I’m not treated like one. In fact, my art director and I have finally been shooting some nice (if usually cruel) adverts, and entering them in awards shows.

Now they just need to win something and I might get a raise.

Speaking of my Art Director (hereafter known as Gareth), he was contracted yet another illness which you didn't think real people got - he has encephalitis. This is quite impressive, as last year he manage to get a run of consecutive weeks when he had pneumonia, scarlet fever and who knows what else. All this from a chain-smoking asthmatic prone to panic. The man is unhealthy.

The point (and there is one) is that my work has this habit of spreading disease all round the building. So I come with something that might turn into the flu on friday (it didn't), and I get sent straight home. Just in case it was encephalitis. I didn't complain, and spent the day playing Jade Empire on my Xbox.

Jade Empire is the next (and I say next knowing that it's about a year and half old) game from Bioware, those funny guys who brought us Knights of the Old Republic, and Baldur's Gate, and Fallout. Basically the "guys who do good computer roleplaying games". This one doesn't disappoint, though it's a strange mixture of rpg and fighting game. There's just something silly about testing your Legendery Fist style against your enemies Leaping Tiger.

As I said, fun.

In other news, the startrek roleplaying game started up again this weekend. Now with bigger, newer, faster ship. And no less geekery. Though it still runs into most of the same problems it did at the start - lotsa scanning, no actual clue how to solve thing (we're venting anti-matter? Why do we even have anti-matter).

But that said, I'm slowly working my way up to actually running my own game at some point. In this case a Buffy the Vampire Slayer game. I have ideas. I have planning (some). I even have a couple of interesting dming tricks I want to try - to get the players to bring the plot to the game, not I. And I've been watching more Buffy than is humanly healthy (up to midpoint of season 5 now).

We'll see.

After all that "and I did this, and I did that" in the best Robyn or Jason form, I've got to return to the openning point - this is all a lot of "more of the same". I'm in a roleplaying game. I'm looking to find another. I'm playing games. I'm working. It's a litle better, but all very same-ish.

I feel like I should try to kick myself out of this rut, but feel kind of comfortable in most (though definitely not all) ways. I don't know. I really just don't.

Anyway, opinion time: Local election voting is coming up, and I couldn't be any more underwhelmed by the DA. Sure, they may be the only semi-organised opposition that won't immediately go into alliance with the ANC after the election, but they are really running this campaign badly.

Our electorate is poorly educated, and for the most point ANC loyalists. But they're loyalists who have gotten the same promises now for over twelve years. Twelve years without delivery. They must be getting a little frustrated.

So what do the DA do? They stick a white guy on a poster and say in English and Afrikaans "We will deliver".

WRONG MESSAGE, ASSHOLE!

Don't be the passive polite idiots, get your staffers (and preferrably not Private School educated whiteys) into the township, the cape flats...whatever - and ask them why they think the ANC will deliver on the same promises they been making for 12 years. Don't assume they'll make the connection themselves. Do it for them.