For those who hear the call...

I have been playing RPG's since D&D came in small booklets with low-impact dice. Rogues were called Thieves. Then Traveller came out. I disliked it because I could never think of things like making a laser pistol out of three paper clips, a coke bottle and some toothpaste. Plus all my characters died in the academy after eight straight hours of rolling them up. But I played it anyway because it was a game.

The only game I really played poorly was Call of Cthulhu. I just never got into the hang of it. Don't get me wrong. We had a really good GM. I enjoyed the other games he led. It was just that I knew there was a monster in the basement. Why would I want to go into the basement? There was no possible good ending to the game. I always ended up choosing to go research in the library. We never got anywhere. Sorry, not my genre.

But that doesn't means I don't appreciate the culture of Cthulhu, or Lovecraft's work. One may imagine that a great cheer has gone up at Miskatonic U. with the completion and release of the silent film "Call of Cthulhu". Just in time for Halloween, too.

Okay, It Bugs me

I had a bit too much caffeine this afternoon and my mind is still working when I should be in bed. Something's been bugging me so I decided to do something about it.

There's an Lj personality I stumbled onto whom I will not mention that is quite widely read. He's witty and comes up with some pretty good stuff sometimes, and the discussions were good as well. I started reading and before I knew it, joined in. He is somewhat right of center to me - but, then, I'm pretty far left myself.....

There was a discussion of gay marriage in which a statement was made that no culture in history had ever sanctioned gay marriage. I knew this to be blatantly false because because there were a number of tribes here in the Americas that did have marriage of both men with men and women with women before the Europeans came. Besides, statements like "no___ever___" just beg to be challenged. So I said as much.

I had never seen anyone in one of these discussions asked for references before, but I was. By more than one person. I provided them, then had the veracity of the references challenged, too (and not in a nice way), because one was a summary article from a feminist website.

Well, I took part in a couple more frivolous discussions, but my heart wasn't in it anymore. I just removed the guy from my friend list. I have to state that at no time did the person whose Lj it was take part in the controversy -- it was the readers discussing something he posted. He never offended me. The fun just went out of the discussion.

When people are so stuck in their beliefs that when presented with data that doesn't fit their tidy little world they have to attack the person presenting the data, you just can't carry on a decent discussion. I suppose I should have expected to get burned playing with such company. But for now, I'll retire.