The Finger

The child psychologist was missing the tip of his ring finger. The finger simply ended at the breach of the second knuckle, the abbreviated digit capped with smooth shiny scar-skin. The psychologist had a tic of tapping this cap against his thumb, in a regular drumming motion that might have been an automatic reaction he was helpless to control, or it might have felt good and transgressive like a Q-tip in the ear, or perhaps it hurt and thus concentrated his mind on the task of helping Allan to be well. Allan never asked, nor did he ask how the child psychologist had lost the fingertip, though he was dying to know. He hadn't noticed the shortened finger the first few times he'd come, being more entranced by the child psychologist's trimmed beard and wire-rim glasses and bright solid primary-colour shirts that made him look like a clown or a magician, and at eleven Allan was sufficiently mature to be embarrassed to ask about something like this on their fifth or sixth meeting.

There was a ring on the partial finger, which must have meant the child psychologist was married. Allan imagined their wedding, the bride whom Allan for convenience's sake imagined as looking exactly like the child psychologist's stocky secretary, but platinum blonde instead of raven-haired with a rebellious purple streak, and the moment when she had taken that ring and pushed into onto that finger that was not all there. The child psychologist's secretary-wife must love him very much, Allan decided.

Aliens Under Pressure

So I was reading Charles Fort, you know, as one does, and I came across an interesting notion. Dealing with mysterious objects seen glowing deep underwater, or diving into the ocean, Fort postulates that, like deep-sea fish, these ultraterrestrials are creatures of tremendous pressure, needing the weight of water in the dark ocean to keep them together. Fort on science is usually both impenetrable and outdated, but I'm having a lot of fun with this. For example, one could conclude that the UFOs sighted in our atmosphere and near-space are missed shots, unsuccessful attempts to navigate an unhelpful hyperspace from the depths of some distant world's ocean to the depths of ours. The process may be reversed as soon as instruments are materialized enough to sense the local atmosphere, hence the vanishing UFOs: If the safeties fail, the ship could emerge into our thin atmosphere and immediately tear itself apart, releasing its contents (and passengers) in the form of sky jellies or angel hair, or even explode completely. Space travel that bypasses interplanetary space entirely doesn't get enough play for my liking, and this way our aliens can exhibit all the features of super-deep-sea animals that make surface-dwellers' skin crawl: Translucent bodies with the eyes on the inside, giant eyes and many of them, tendrils and tentacles and pseudopods oh my. Plus, it means that actually dealing with the aliens directly will require serious The Abyss-style hardware, with the accompanying constant threat of messy pressurized death.

Public Domain Super Heroes

This was the last thing I needed to find when in essay crunch mode, but when I get around to running another supers game (that's definitely when, not if), I'll be all about using it as a resource, or at least inspiration. Which reminds me, I really need to finalize my currently-unposted screed on the problems and advantages of Mutants & Masterminds.

Oh, and this guy⇨? He's the Sparkler. He can turn invisible, and when he becomes visible again, "sparks caused by the broken light rays coming together leap about his body". And, of course, all the pink. So yeah, pretty much gayer than that time I had sex with a dude.

Why it sucks being a gamer

Trying to write an essay focusing on Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the war machine makes it extremely easy to slide into thinking about Warmachine, with the result that time better spent trying to root out what the hell those French bastards were on about ends up being spent on "Seriously, there aren't any Trollblood channelers?".

Scene at a Nexus of Dimensions

"So what do you call mine?"
"6338-Gray"
"Yeah, yeah, but what do you call it? Like, there's Anti-Earth and the Gorilla World and, you know, the one with the Nazi Crab-men..."
"Der BrachyuReich."
"Yeah! So what do you call it?"
"... the Craigiverse."
"Fuck off."
"No, seriously, the Arbiter who visited apparently met like a dozen guys named Craig in the three days he was there. It seems to have made an impression on him."
"Bullshit. Can we get a do-over?"
"You may have noticed we have all of the infinite multiverses to catalogue."
"Yeah, but you told me you have infinite other Nexuses helping you."
"That only divides it into smaller infinities, which are by definition still infinite. No do-overs."
"Shit, I can't believe you make decisions for such stupid reasons."
"Hey, when the Craigiverse invents dimensional travel, we'll talk."
"... Total bullshit."

A one-sentence summary of the advice I gave to the guy who responded to a Craigslist ad asking me to teach him to be funny.

"Funny alone is all right. Funny plus looks, money or a reliable drug connection is better."