This year, my family’s Christmas celebration was held at a co-housing community in Saugerties where my aunt and uncle live. Jason is constantly ribbing on my family (or at least my mother’s side) for being stereotypical liberals, so naturally the location didn’t help. In most families, religion and politics are subjects of conversation to be avoided at all costs. In my family, politics is pretty much the only thing to talk about. It’s a pretty safe topic of discussion, since everyone voted for Gore—except for the few who voted for Nader. But if there’s one thing that defines my mother’s side of the family more than liberalism, it’s creativity. My mother is in a folk band, my cousin is a folk singer, my other cousin is a classical violinist and also an orchestra conductor, my uncle is a poet, my other uncle is a photographer, he and his wife (my aunt) also play folk music, my sister is an actress, I’m a writer, my grandmother was a poet, and after she died we uncovered a book of Russian poems copied by my great-grandmother in gorgeous calligraphy with exquisite pen-and-ink drawings of flowers. Basically what I’m saying is, we have a history.

Cross-posted from the Fifth World weblog.

I’m going to put all my cards on the table right now: I’m not a role-player. I have never been a role-player. Jason has tried many times to get me into role-playing, and it just ain’t sticking. And I’m not alone. Many role-players have wondered why more women don’t get into tabletop RPGs. Which is strange, since with its focus on communal storytelling and improvisational acting, you’d think that if anything, role-playing games would have trouble attracting male players.

Cross-posted from the Fifth World weblog.

The Mythos System Core Rulebook is now in a beta release. Corners have been cut and a lot of polish is still undone, but between this and the character sheet, you should have everything you need to actually play the Fifth World RPG! If you do, please let us know how it goes over on the forums; this is an open source project, so we’re relying heavily on the idea that lots of eyes makes bugs shallow.

Some of the interesting things in the beta:

• You don’t have an alignment; instead, you have an MBTI type.

So many of our carols mention making Christmas last all year, but it’s obviously one of those ritualistic phrases that we’re not supposed to think very much about. With malls and stores marketing for Christmas shopping as early as October in some cases, we can certainly see some headway to make the “holiday shopping season” last all year. Christmas gifts account for a full quarter of the personal spending that takes place in the United States, so the desire is obvious. But what would it mean to the rest of us, if we took those songs seriously, and actually did make Christmas last all year?

We are the champions, my friends.

Yesterday, I got a strange sensation. I read an article that said that the Bushmen of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve actually won their case against the government of Botswana and were going to be allowed back on their ancestral lands. After I read it, something strange happened to my face: the edges of my mouth began twitching, and then drew upwards. It was as if I was baring my teeth, but not at all in an unfriendly way. I was very confused as to what was happening. I had read an article about indigenous people, you see. But it was good news. How is this possible?

I have made the case that the kind of structures that Jeff Vail describes as rhizome will emerge less through any kind of awareness of their theoretical superiority, than simple necessity. Long-term trends and historical examples highlight that argument, but it is still exceptional to see three different approaches that so clearly point to the same conclusion, all on the same day. Such a coincidence is worthy of commentary.

Escherichia coli—usually abbreviated as E. coli—is one of the most common “gut flora” in mammals. It is a species of bacteria that flourishes in the lower intestines ; in the course of a day, a typical human being will excrete anywhere from 100 billion to 10 trillion E. coli. Though you can occasionally find it growing in other areas—along the edges of hot springs, for example—it’s almost entirely native to the mammalian digestive tract. While harmless (and even crucial to proper digestion) in its normal habitat, when introduced to other parts of the body, E. coli can cause disease. When it’s introduced in food, it can often cause food poisoning very similar to dysentery. Of course, its presence in food makes the genesis of such poisoning quite clear: your food is covered in shit.

The video at right, featuring “the coolest 8 year old in the world,” was released on YouTube to help promote the Bastard Fairies‘ song, “We’re All Going to Hell.” There’s been a lot of blogger speculation that this is the daughter of Yellow Thunder Woman, who is herself the daughter of Native rights campaigner Greg Zephier. The Bastard Fairies also were involved in the production of The Canary Effect (we posted a clip from The Canary Effect, uploaded to YouTube, earlier this year in commemoration of Columbus Day). Of course, I disagree with some significant portion of this—since no one dies for religion—but her ultimate point—”the way to keep kids away from gangs and violence is to start treating us like human beings”—couldn’t be more spot on.