Grumpypants of Disgruntlement

Well, it seems that extremes of joy and malcontent are the only thing that actually drives me to blogging these days. I blame work mostly - the insane busy workload of the day and the ensuing vegetative state I fall into in the evenings. Several things things have happened since my last post but it looks like I recorded over the memory footage of the last few weeks much like an unlabelled video-tape. I now have the sense of "bother - was that something I watched to watch and recorded for a reason?" only the feeling is about my actual memory of the month of March. Is this what senility is like? Reaching the end of the month and feeling kind of confused about what happened? Many things about today bugged me. Hence the grumpypants. I was actually pretty grumpy at my students and they all commented on how I was being mean and grumpy, yet none stopped being loud and irritating. Firstly, reports were due. I have been hardworking and stayed after school earlier in the week to finish them and fold them up and stuff them in envelopes only to have it announced today that the dates of the report evenings were wrong so that all had to be reprinted. Obviously, it was more annoying for the computer tech folks that had to do a rushed reprint but I dislike the unkarmic sense of being punished for being organised. Unstuffing and restuffing envelopes is a lot harder than just stuffing them. Um, I'm trying to remember all the other annoying things that happened but as I type and slurp away on my tea I find myself become less grumpy and less aware of all the annoying things that happened. Hmmpfh - well I shan't complain. Needless to say teenagers could be irritating as can high-maintainence parents who show up unannounced at inconvenient times demanding second copies of Newsletteres that don't exist in the first place. But now is time for Weekend! Happy, happy, joy, joy and all that. Tonight is the inaugural meeting of our new Wine Club. We shall be 'studying' NZ Chardonnays. I personally disagree with the whole spitting out of wine but I like the idea of knowing about what you are drinking. I went to one wine tasting course and it was really interesting. I'm still not one of those people who can sniff and swirl the wine around and then list off half a dozen fruit flavours in it. I aim to be able to tell a little more than whether a wine is red or white, nice or not nice*. I also plan to watch V for Vendetta this weekend. Reading, bubble baths and drinking hot drinks may also have to feature heavily as the weather is becoming decidedly nippy. Yay for weekends! * At the moment my wine knowledge is limited to categorising wine purely as red/white, nice/not nice. I suspect I have a palette more trained for distinguish between types of chocolate. There at least I can categorise as white/milk/dark, creamy/not creamy, rich/bland, sweet/bitter, yummy/so-amazingly-delicious-I-would-trade-one-of-my-kidneys-for-this-chocolate.

Mega-roleplaying is, like, so Cockney! Part 1

Well, the end has come to a thoroughly enjoyable and action-packed weekend. I'm still feeling pretty energetic and happy in spite of the lack of sleep from last night. Normally, a not-in-bed-till-late Saturday night would lead to a groggy Sunday or the crash-and-burn asleep half-way through Sunday night's dinner scenario.* However, my energy and spirits have remained high throughout the day, not brought down by either marking or foraging about crowded supermarkets for food supplies. The marking, I believe, may turn out to have been a little unduly influenced by my good spirits. I seem to remember being rather liberal with the use of my cute doggy "Excellent!" stamp and the margin comments such as "insightful - well done!" and "brilliant explanation". I did manage to stop myself before I wrote anything too gushy or drew little smiley faces for the dots in all the i's. The games were tremendous fun but also quite tense. I played a teenage girl in two games on Saturday and then a giant 6 foot crab that had to drive a truck full of cheese in stolen refrigerators across the USA following the orders of the Crab Goddess. Oddly enough the crab was by far the most emotionally stable and well-balanced character. The first game I was lucky enough to play in was Jenni's incredibly cockney "Mean Girls" game which I have been desperately wanting to play in since FOREVER! Well, since I first heard about it. It was filled was lots of back-handed compliments and insecurity and laughs as I expected but I was amazed at how intense it was to play. I had been warned that it was upsetting but even Nick's war stories of evil boyfriends and betrayal were not enough to prepare me. I quickly fell into the headspace where looking uncool in front of your friends or having them decide they don't like you is just the most terrifying thing ever. Myself and the other players could not leave the table for even a bathroom break because we were petrified of what might happen or be said when we left the room. I think there is a line in Buffy where Joyce, her mum, comments that not going out to the Bronze with her friends "isn't the end of the world even though it feels like it." When you're thinking like a teen girl missing out on a social event is so MUCH worse than the end of the world. At least if the world ended you wouldn't have to go to school. There is no danger of having to survive a day when your friends or peers turn against you. That rejection and humiliated alienation is so much more terrifying than anything else. I guess what surprised me was how quickly I could start being really mean, and needlessly mean, to the other girls as the Queen Bee. It took about 5 seconds before I launched into bossing them and blackmailing them into doing things they didn't want to. The bizarre thing was that I felt my character was not enjoying picking on people, but that she felt she had to use her power over them. Being the Queen Bee was not a powerful character at all because you feel compelled to use and abuse your power all the time or else it will be taken away from you. As a player it was weird because I actually felt horrible doing and saying some of the things (especially being mean to Sam who was playing the Target) because I felt more sympathy for the other characters. I used to find that I wasn't really able as a player to do mean things to other PCs unless they were capable of retaliating - I'd feel too guilty. It wasn't like that in this game - you play to survive. It is fantastic for emulating the social cliques and getting players to really get into it. The other players were amazing and the great moments were too many to remember them all. The awesome 'cockney' trend was one of my favourites. Cockney was our clique's "fetch". The word was synonymous with cool and all things British (or what ignorant Teen Valerie decreed as British and 19th Century) were fashionable. Earl Grey tea and a toasted crumpet was the cockney lunch and rather erroneously "top of the morning to ya!" was the hip greeting of choice. Props to Talula for the awesome game! OK, enough for now. Bed time. Fear not gentle readers who are greedy for more tales of MRPGing. Part 2 is coming soon with the tale (possibly in Ballad form if I'm up to it - if I get at least 4 comments I'll feel forced too...) of how Queen Bee Valerie was dethroned, thrilling exploits of Prime Time series 'Phoenix' episodes 6 & 7 and other stuff of interest. * I have, on some rare occasions**, fallen asleep whilst eating with food or fork clutched in hand. It can lead to disturbing moments hours later when you wake up on the sofa only to find a half eaten chicken kiev staring up at you. ** Generally these tend to be those following extended periods of boisterous enjoyment of raucous social gatherings.