I suppose I should write something about who I am, so here it goes. (Damn you, Rustin, I suppose this will count as a psuedo bio, you can use it if you like it better than the current.)
Ah, crap. Once again I find myself at a lack of words for a description of my own life, probably because I live it and find it somewhat, well, regular.
Some points of interest (mine) are in no particular order:
1. I am a twenty-year Gamer and proud of it. I own with great pride what I consider the best SF PnP RPG, Marc Miller's Traveller. I have all the various editions in some form or another, from the 3 black books (and lots of supplements/JTAS), some Mega-Traveller, some of the Far Futures 4th Edition, and of course, GURPS Traveller. Did I mention I LOVE Traveller?
I also play Steve Jackson Games Generic Universal Roleplaying System (GURPS). In fact, I have way too many GURPS books, I have been playing and collecting since the Pit Days (1988-1994).
Befor that it was Villians and Vigilantes. However, that was too four color for the game I was running. (More on that later.)
Now, I play a high level, MU in a 3rd Edition D&D game run by landlord/roommate; Magnus of Thornwood, Archmage, Grand Vizier of Evermeet (in Exile) and Guardian of the Green Blade. Mags, likes to flaunt his pretty much BS titles around like fighters in a dungeon with out a thief toss around bags of flour. He actually is all the things he claims to be; he's a 13th level Wizard/1 level Archmage (he dies alot, high INT, low WIS, he used to be 17th level and we started the current campaign at 15th level), was the Grand Vizier of Evermeet till it got blasted to bits in the latest god war (Mags has what's left of the Grand Library in a portable hole for proof) and well, the sentient Green Blade said it really couldn't care if he called himself it's guardian. And he loves that Mastery of the Elements Chain Lightning ("Sonic Boom"). Oh, and he's buff, 18 STR, 16 DEX, 18 CON, he does Reverse Gravity push ups on the ceiling of one of his many portable holes. He's also a pack rat, hence the multiple portable holes.
2. Which brings us to my another of my interests. Comics, the old fashion four color, the much preferred graphic novel, and the adored, english translated manga of Masamune Shirow (all of it).
3. Then we move from the slightly distopian futures of Mr. Shirow to the outright frontier of yucky futures. Your view out your window, no wait, that's next weeek, sorry got confused there for a second. Actaully, I was speaking of the early days of the Cyberpunk Movement. (That's right, I know exactly what my handle means.) That includes almost everything published by the Lord of the Future Words Bill Gibson. (Who by the way, I seem to remember is a member of the other true faith: Apple. O.K., call me biased, but then ask Rustin about the Wintel box in his living room with a little used Red Hat Pro 6.0 dual boot install. Command line is hard, and really kinda cool.)
I have been on the Streets of the Sprawl, to Villa Straylight, to the New Rose Hotel and lots of places in between. I have also, read Bruce Sterling (including the frighteningly, true "Hacker Crackdown"). I left many of these beloved books in NYC, when I ran like a bitch, complete with the sissy arm movements and shrieking like a little girl, for increased speed. I miss them, they seem somewhat nicer that what it's looking like our real future will be. World War 3, Live on TV!
4. O.K., I used to be Lawful Dense (I mean Good, yeah, that's it), but have since switched alignments to Coo-coo Nuts (Chaotic Nuetral). And yes, the DM is not f*cking you when you catch all that crap when you shift alignments, it's very, very difficult to do. Your brain hurts dealing with all those new and frightening concepts. That and it's just plain hurts to have all the foundational myths of your childhood reduced to shreds of and revealed as grey, not black and white.
So, what's that got to do with anything, you ask? (You don't, well pretend you did and keep reading.) I bring it up because it explains a couple of things to follow.
5. I know way too much about the Police, from city cops to the USMS. I have studied the Police, Military and the United States Goverment for the last ten years of my life the way a historian of religons goes after the Dead Sea Scrolls. I have studied their Administrative methods right down to the Street and Officer Survival (got the whole Street Survival set, actual Officer Survival textbooks). Again those in doubt can ask Rustin, who saw and helped get rid of a couple of paper boxes of police related books that I had been collecting for research for my Game.
6. Creating RPG simulations, based on the premise of superpowers and what their effect would actually be on the world. This is why, I know so much about the above. If you're curious check out my homepage:
http://www.geocities.com/ionicproductionsus
7. I am a big science geek. I dig it all, I just don't get much of the math. (O.K., I don't dig Math, sorry.)
8. I used to live in NYC for about a year with the Great Brain, Rustin the Mad Scientist, and I still miss it, even though it whooped my ass. (You fall in love with the City, but She doesn't fall in with love you.) I love the feel of living in movie land, of having Eithopian (my absolute fav, I'd eat every day. [You know some Eithopian is think right now "I'd eat cheeseburgers every day if I could."]), Indian, Chinese, Sushi, Famous Familia Pizza and of course Afghan (had it well before we invaded them) all within walking distance of my crib, and just hanging out in the defacto capitol of the world.
9. I'm huge, maybe even super huge technophile. I'm still waiting for all those marvelous gadgets we were promised when I was a kid. I want my flying car and robot factories making household goods.
10. I enjoy researching stuff. Yes, I am a big old geek. In fact I did my serious research internship (other than my game related subjects) on that damned poster of Rustin's. "Here, Craig, check out these particular campaigns for me." "Sure, I'm a sucker, I'll do it!" If I see that same damned tri-color chronology again, I'll scream. Come to think of it, I may have, I'll have to check with Rustin. I know I wanted to cry sometimes when it came up. It did on the other hand teach me the reality of the Net, that if you see it once there is a 50%+ chance of seeing it a dozen other places, especially if it's something like that bloody chronology. It's everywhere, aaarrrggghh!
11. I got a slight thing for our Nation (that right, we're a nation of immigrants, how the hell, do we lay claim to being any sort of homeland? Nation, yes, Homeland, Not!). This stems partly from my mother's Mass. upbringing and interest in one of it's number one export; the late great John Adams Clan, including Abigale and John Quincy (poor bastard, still seems to have done a better job of living up to his pop's rep than what we got now, but hey, look at his dad. Wait, you may not be cleared for that.)
The other stems from an un/fortunate artifact of my birth. I share a birthday with Thomas Jefferson. I keep having the feeling that I'm letting him down by not doing something dramatic to end all the craziness in the world and at home. This is even more amusing when you find out I am an athiest and don't believe in an afterlife. I had the occassion to actually touch a dead friend once and in his last act above the earth, he taught me that dead people are effectively furniture. Feel just like a sofa. Kinda makes ya think about it all. Besides if there is something else, I don't know what and so I am trying my lazy best to be immortal and get everything done before I die, just in case I'm right.
The sad part of this is that to me the dead are just that, dead, furniture waiting to be planted. It makes the current military actions of this Nation even more depressing, and each death even more a reason to stop the insanity of war, period. Once those people are dead, the only way they live is through the memories of living, and I'm tired of trying to keep up with the rolls. Shit, 3000 is more than I can really handle. I had to stop reading the obits in the Times for all those we let die on 11 September 2001 (we got the government we deserved and I know that I do bear some blame in that). This still lies heavy on me, then to top it off with seven more deaths, this time in my family (I watched moon shots, NASA is family to me, maybe 100th cousin, thrice removed, but still it makes me hurt and sometimes still, cry.)
12. I'm a big ass Apple freak. Rustin introduced me to Macs back when we both lived on Park and Shepard in Lytheria the half way home for Gamers, SF fans, and geeks of all ages and types. We did a treatment for a little cyberpunk movie on a Mac SE/30. That's right I was old school. Then he moved and I fell out of computers and into my game. Then when I did get a PC, my pops bought me a generic Wintel machine. It had 48MB RAM, a crappy vid and sound card and the HD crashed within three months of purchase. I end up getting 128 MB RAM, new cards for vid and audio and new HD. Wow, give it enough RAM and stuff and blue screens go way down.
Then it came to NYC with me and got traded for a Mac 7100/80 (which I frankenstiened motherboard up, a few times) and a PowerBook 520 which I also frankened up to a 540c. These came back to Milwaukee (yes, I live in Wisconsin. "Don't like the weather, wait a hour, it'll change." This is true just the other day we had snow, sleet, rain and sunshine and 50s, all in one eight hour period.) When I got my first tax return, upon returning, I purchased a friend's PowerBook G3 Lombard. This year at tax time I got the iBook I'm doing this JE on, and traded the Lombard for a Palm m505. Yes, upgrading to the digital lifestyle.
And last but, by no means least...
13. I am a Conspiracy Theorist and Historian. Why, you ask, do waste your time studying such obvious crap. Well, to put it bluntly, I have seen more evidence of the Conspriracy than I have of any deity and if I am going to spend my faith on something I'd like to have some proof it exsists.
The Score so far: God-0, Conspiracy-You're not cleared for that. (Don't feel bad, I'm still not cleared for it either, though a friend of mine says that I am Illuminated. Sometimes I believe him.)
Speaking of the Conspiracy, peep this theory. If you have been watching the news you've seen all the coverage of the new Mystery Illness that the media is hyping like mad. Think of this, they are spending an whole lot of air time on an illness that has get this; infected a wopping 400 people out of 5-6 billion and killed a dramatic 17 people. Wow, it's cold virus that kills people. Oh, no, what ever shall I do?
You should avoid contact with people who may be infected so you don't catch SuperCold too. Thus, you won't go out to protest the illict actions of the ruling Junta of the US and thus are even more easily fed you're daily dose of pap from the boob tube, and there by more easily controlled.
Wow, Secret Masters, you've really outdone youselves this time. I mean if I went by just the reporting the media gives I should be terrified of catching this. Of course, I just did the math and said you've got to be kidding right. I mean, 17 people probably die from the common cold in just the US alone, much less the whole world. Why again should I even pay attention? Oh, it's really infectious. Oh, shit, a really infectious cold, run for the shelters. And they set up the Chinese to take the fall for this one. Real cute, SM.
See how easy and fun the Conspiracy can be?
In additon to this I had an aquaintace who had a MIB/UFO encounter. The UFO part was as far she and her friend could tell was of the 3rd order, sounds and lights. The MIB on the other hand was a full on freak show MIB encounter complete with disappearing in plain sight. The funny thing is the description of the MIB she gave sounded like one of my roommates at the time (now supposedly in the USAFl, but hey mabye the Secret Master called hime back for another mission, as I said before, I still not cleared for it.) And in case your wondering yes I have studied interrogation techiniques (more cop research) and did multiple debriefs and angles of attack to verify the answers. Still came up as old Black Ops Ken (the roommate, the black ops ken is something else unrelated, houseful of single guys, we can get kinda freaky sometimes).
Now comes the fun part. During this time many weird, and I do mean weird things occurred, including what appeared to be a potenial energy weapons exchange in our neighborhood on the same night as the UFO/MIB encounter. In the process (I know, Rustin. [He also is not real big on process, he's about results, but then again sometimes the two go hand in hand.]) of all the debreifing it occured to me that I may be getting a visist of my own, if I was lucky (?). So, I told all my roommates that if Mr. Smith stop by to let him in and tell him where is was. That's right, I have not much fear of MIBs. I know Mr. Wright after all.
Well, I had not much fear, till Black Ops Ken catches me in the room chilling with our friends at the time, looks me dead in the eye and with a completely straight face, says "Mr. Smith says hello.", just like that. Well, O.K. I found I have some fear of MIBs because another of my friends had to look over at me because I went invisible on a psionic level and he stopped sensing me. Was BOK kidding or not? Beats me, remember, that's right I'm not cleared for that. Still reminds one that the Universe is a very strange place which we know very little about.
Anyway, enough of my boring life.
I remain,
Craig A. Glesner
Citizen of Planet Earth
Citizen of the Untied States of America
Illuminati
and sometime Speaker for the Dead
