jack

Friday night was CUSFS games evening. This was almost entirely new CUSFS, but full and fun.

Poohsoc people came too (hi!) stressing the forming giant geek collective :)

There was zendo, which was pleasant. Rules were guessed which were simple and elegant, and had pretty koans. I'm trying to articulate the sort of rule I want to make, but can't manage better than "one that makes everyone laugh when they work it out"...

There was a game I can't remember the name of. Have a grid of indented hexagons with lots of balls resting on, and take it in turns to drop a ball on other balls. The aim is place all your balls: balls which end up on hexagons of the same colour are deleted.

Any game that uses real physics is really fun. You could do something similar with dice somehow or other. But watching a ball skitter chaotically (literally) from hexagon to hexagon once they're jarred loose is really cool. You have an intuitive understanding of how the rules work, despite not having seen the game before, because much of them rely on your already-understood notions of dynamics.

And there was a massive 15-player game of roborally. The quote sums it up, "For the first two and a half hours, it was pretty fun." I'm glad I did it, though probably it's something to be done only once, as it is insane.

Variants making robots race past each other are 100% more fun. Demolition derby may be over the top, but configurations designed to produce interactions are good. Watching six robots skitter back and forth on a conveyor-belt as half tried to move one way and half the other was worth the price of admission. A long solitary dash to the last checkpoint was not very fun.

I did eventually win though, though Ed was close behind at the end as I stalled for about four turns due to having three damage and no good cards. In your face, people good at roboralley! :)

The most satisfying moment was breaking from back end of the pack with two judiciously-timed-dealt move-three cards to dash across the maelstrom board, and due to a robotic arm tag the checkpoint on the conveyor past as everyone ahead fought to disembark. Followed about two turns of me scooting round the conveyor to the next checkpoint while everyone argued about who was in the lead, until I made a break onto the next board and everyone languishing in a big pileup said "Wait, did you touch the checkpoint already? Maybe I'm not in the lead after all" :)

Then I came home and got six hours of sleep.

Reeve: You're polychromatic and overly large!
Companions: You couldn't light up a face, let alone a world.
Reeve: Yah, boo, you blow!
Companions: Yeah, s'right! So's your mother!
Companions: Sun! Sun! Sun! Shun! Shun! Shun!
Spectator: What are you doing?
Reeve: We're winding the sun up. Didn't you read website?

OK, for the record that was completely fictional. But CUSFS and Jomsborg the New did successfully raise the sun for the next year. Dan invoked a fearsome vaguely germanic speech exhorting the sun to rise, we circled, we libated mead, we shouted, and the sun came up.

It had the shape and aspect of like a death circus, with lasers and stuff, which is the best shape it's had for ages :)

And the wake was fun. We played Penultima, and Zendo, and a long bridge session, and a few rounds of Concrete, Abstract or Squoingy, kept the reeve awake, and got to Castle Mound in plenty of time.

Oh god[1], coming down from omnipotence[2] is a major headache[1].

I was just about the right amount drunk last night: drunk enough to be mad, but not enough that I had blackouts; drunk enough to be wobbly but capable of finding my way home; drunk enough to kiss beautiful people but only after asking politely; drunk enough to twist nipples, but only after someone else started it. Someone's been an influence on me, generally good apart from the final points[1] :)

This morning (well, reguarly from about 5.30 am) I wake up and go "graaaaaah."

Body: I want to be sick.
Me: *stagger stagger stagger* Well, there's the vomitcepticle. Go on, we always feel better afterward.
Body: Uhhh. I want not to be sick.
Me: I'm *trying*
Body: Wa-ter...
Me: Quaff, quaff, quaff, quaff, quaff, *pretends it's B12* quaff
Body: Mmm.... sleepybies
Me: OK.
Body: *stagger* Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...... *bring*
Me: Ooh! It's two hours later. At this rate I'll get through the night.
Body: Staggerwatercheckemailstaggerbed.
Me: Why did we check email? What could that possibly have achieved.
Brain: Addictedmumble. No inhibititons, not my fault. *He's* trying to be sick, but I have all the ache, can't I do my thing for once?
Me: *shrug* Up to you. Was there anything interesting?
Brain: I don't remember.
Me: *sigh*
Body: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....
All: *repeat*
Me: Ooh, afternoon, how I like your face.
Body: Aaah, I don't feel fixed yet.
Me: Shut up, you know you enjoy it really. If we can't sleep we'll get up.
Body: Want chocolate!
Me: OK. Did it help?
Body: No. Want ribena!
Me: OK. Did it help?
Body: No. Want cornflakes!
Me: *sigh* *chomp* Better?
Body: No. Want to lie on the floor!
Me: Um. Well, ok, we'll try it.
Body: Want to stand up and watch telly!
Me: What? The football's not till later.
Body: Don't care.
Brain: Want Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose, sort of, though not technically, with Sean Connery.
Me: *reads* Does that feel better?
All: Surprisingly, yes. Eco, panacea. Also, it seems considerably more penatratable[2] than the last time I read it, I still spot new nice touches, and it's still loooooongish, but it's escapist.
Brain: Want more UE, but like Rose or Pendulum, not Island or thing, I didn't like those.
Me: Sorry.
Brain: Want comedic rant!
Me: OK, fine. How's this?

[1] Pun.
[2] No sniggering.
[3] And then I pottered around in the afternoon, and went to Tim's for evening. It was nice catching up. And we had the Portugal/[2]Holland game on, when there were four red cards and >= recordbreaking 16 yellow, which :

(a) was very entertaining to watch -- they should have green cards for players *not* kicking shins
(b) lets us use the word 'knackers' in about 15 different contexts
(c) good for england because Portugal won, but had two star players sent of and iirc unable to play next time, and several others probably regrowing their gonads
(d) we get to watch history being made, which the other matches afaik haven't been and
(e) the charity Rachel works for gets donated to from the fines, so this moderately sweet girl on behalf of a third world charity is bouncing up and down going "Yay! Knacker more knackers, you load of knackering knackers! Aim for the googlybits! Kick the ball, no not that one!"

And slightly out of order, but while I'm on the subject, on sunday was cusfs croquet, to elect vice presidents[1]. It wasn't entirely clear how this was going to work, but it transpired quite well: we attatched coloured nomination slips to the hoops and peg and dandelion, deleted those passed through by balls, and elected the last six remaining.

It was pleasingly elegant, but annoying in that a ball going through a hoop out of order, or backwards, removes the paper without counting for croquet, so it misleads you.

Croquet is a great sport. No great strength but some dexterity is needed, and it's veyr vicious and manipulative :) I hope to play more often: upcoming games hopefully include cts vs cusfs[2] and cts vs winkers[3].

The mutual agreeing of house rules immediately suggested a more mao-like variant of croquet, but we managed to restrain ourselves, and played penultima afterwards to make up for it :)

[1] These are perhaps the elections least related to reality I've been involved with. People nominate various candidates, which have no requirement to be in cambridge, members of cusfs, people, existant, non-squiggy, or non-lizard-men. In fact, most tend to be abstract nouns or spanish railways. And then they are elected by some mostly-random system.

[2] Cambridge Tolkien Society and Cambridge University Science Fiction Society. Strangely the more specific society seems to have more active involvement, but cusfs probably has more intertia. And there is fair overlap between them. Several people would have to play on both teams or choose :)

[3] The Tiddlywinks society seem to exist mainly to drink a lot and play every other society anywhere at any sport, including tiddlywinks and croquet, which are very good aims. But we always loose because they have lots of players who play croquet and we don't :)

But of course, I could always throw in half a deck of african mammals or other tarot deck to give a wider range. Cards -- of any sort -- with porn on always seem just tacky and ugly, but I was browsing I was browsing loscarabeo.com and some of the not officially "exotic" decks like Witchy were pretty. However, tell me Gay Tarot isn't funny somehow?

Doh! For the Veizla "Dress code is fancy dress or black tie or some combination, e.g. black tie with corset or cloak." I forgot to say wedding dresses were approved :)

I am about to order a couple of boxes of mead for myself and for the Veizla from Moniack. If anyone would like me to add one or more bottles to my order for them and save delivery cost, please comment below. I'd rather just get mead, not anything else, to avoid much adding up.

It will cost less than £6/bottle, exactly how much depending on how much I order.

I will try to put a note on CURS/Assassins wiki, for the benefit of people who may pine for Meadith :) Anywhere else?

I aim to place the order on monday (8th).

I assume it goes without saying that if you ask for a couple of bottles I will give them to you next time I see you, and if you want many, you might as well order them yourself would have to pick them up.

For posterity, I shall record the (not-completely-traditional) order of my Afmaelisdagr. IIRC everyone but me joined hands, and circled three times widdershins. Then I handed an avatar of the earth (an apple) to a Reeve or Companion, and asked them to hold it aloft while I called on it in the name of maybe twenty aspects, relatives, or parts to aid. This was repeated for five planets.

Some of the names were mildly mangled, as even the kinder rot13 was tongue-twisting, but the kicker was the Aztec-god aspect of the sun.

Five assistants were intended to form the points of jomscarf-pentagram about me, but at the last minute I listen to the baying of the new sun and decided this particular one would appreciate strength of feeling more than ritual.

Then they circled again, I called the names of the five planets and the sun, everyone had a *small* sip of mead from the horn, a libation was poured on the ground, and the sun rose. Just about.

Several people joined us that morning, including davethedog, of whom we still have his mark-signature added to the list of Jomsvikings. Unfortunately I was made to promise not to name him as the next reeve.

For that day the day was beautiful -- crisp, cool, but warm in the sun, and all round a perfect morning. Unfortunately since, it seems to have been uniformly grey, to the extent that I wondered if we were under a nuclear fallout and I just hadn't seen the news.

On sunday, CUSFS has a guest -- Susannah Clarke. Woo!