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[valley_parade]

They wouldn't let you poop by yourself? Last time I was on suicide watch I had a toilet in my room, but some of the guards wouldn't let me have toilet paper. Hands.

B.....bidet?

[Welu]

Hi Neko. Welcome back and hope things keep getting better for you.

~~

Blogging:

Party last night was great fun. Got a small but nice haul, more than I expected. Managed to get people to go into town in costume. Some photos in the Photos thread.

[schimmy]

If you asked me when I was a kid, what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have told you I wanted to be a scientist. If you asked a couple years after that, I would have said video game designer.

When I was a teenager, it became apparent that I wasn't good enough at either of those things for me to be able to make a living out of it. As a result, I became apathetic about my future job prospects and resigned myself to becoming a teacher.

The last few days, though, has taught me some important life lessons; I have thrown off the chains of apathy discovered what I want to be when I grow up. Capable of pissing or farting without following through.

If the future holds at least this for me, I sincerely believe I will be able to take whatever else life throws at me. I know I will be happy no matter what.

tl;dr food poisoning.

[Lines]

Jace your shield is super cool!

[Carl-E]

Jace, nice work!  @snalin, IIRC, the sheild is held with the arm nearly vertical, the lower point covering the forward (left) leg.  I recall a move where you drop the hand, rotating the sield, to cover the knee, but I think that was for viking style rounds.  The right arm's held back until attacking, so the shoulder's usually out of reach, and you need to punch upward to cover the head, so the vertical arm's an advantage. 

I'll shut up, though.  It's been 25 years since I did SCA combat, and I was a lefty. 

[Jace]

That's really well done!

I'm wondering about the grip though - from where the bolts are, I presume that you are holding your left arm at a very sharp angle. Which means that if you want to protect your left foot, you'll have to bend your left arm downwards, exposing your right shoulder. Which means that you'll have to use your sword or axe to protect your right side, which makes counterattacking hard. I'm used to a horizontal grip, where you hold your left  arm at at right angle. Is that grip standard where you fight?

Its held at about a 45 degree angle to the corner of the shield. This way, I can hold my arm at a 90 degree angle to my body (straight up and down), but the top leaning slightly inward toward me and it covers my shoulder, head (mostly, small movements to protect it) and legs (also with small movement). Anywhere below the top of the knee is not a legal target zone, so there's no worrying about protecting my foot. And I have been working on using the A-frame stance, which would use my sword to protect most of my right side, but it is close to/behind my head. The shield is 24" across the arc, so a slight hip shift will block my right side as well as my left.

[Zingoleb]

I met other crazy people there, and feel slightly less crazy for it. I even hang out with one of those crazies now, and she's one of my best friends.

have you ever read Girl, Interrupted? because this sentence reminded me of it so hard

If you asked me when I was a kid, what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have told you I wanted to be a scientist. If you asked a couple years after that, I would have said video game designer.

Depending on when you asked me, it would have been 'tap dancer,' 'geologist,' or 'architect'. I still lean towards that last one a lot of times.

Sorry that your bodies in full evacuation mode. Shit sucks, dude.

Blog thread:

I've been seeing this girl for a couple months now, and she randomly announced her engagement, only to ask me to be her bridesmaid.

[schimmy]

Success! My bowels seem to be behaving today! This might only be because I didn't really eat yesterday, though.

How do you feel about that Zingo? Were you / are you non-monogamous? Does it change your relationship much? Are you going to be the bitchingest bridesmaid ever?

[Barmymoo]

Obviously the answer to the last question is yes.

My stomach is rejecting most of what I eat at the moment, I think it's a stress response to the looming exams but dude stomach they're a month away, what the heck? I think it would be more stressful if I became malnutritioned in the next four weeks!

[Zingoleb]

How do you feel about that Zingo? Were you / are you non-monogamous? Does it change your relationship much? Are you going to be the bitchingest bridesmaid ever?

I've never been monogamous; and it really oughtn't change the relationship, but it certainly did take me by surprise, since she mostly talks about how much she dislikes her boyfriend - only to have proposed to him!

And of course I'm going to be the bitchingest bridesmaid ever. I mean, seriously. You have to ask?

[LTK]

If you wouldn't mind to explain, it seems to me that getting married is a pretty unambiguous statement in favour of monogamy. How does that not change the relationship? Unless non-monogamous people also get married, is that the case?

[schimmy]

Obviously I don't know the specifics of this particular relationships, but it's often the case that when people are non-monogamous, they have varying degrees of commitment with their partners. For example, you might marry someone because you intend to be life partners with them, but that doesn't mean that you don't intend to have other partners. After all, it's not exactly unusual for people who claim to be in a monogamous marriage to have partners on the side yet still be committed to their spouse.

Personally, though I do find non-monogamous people getting married a little strange. I tend to take it for a given that the same reasons you might think monogamy is bad are the ones that make marriage seem weird. But I guess every marriage is different, so a non-monogamous marriage doesn't need to bear any similarities to a monogamous one.

-

Oh, on the topic of poly relationships, my ex and I had a big talk about emotions, and we decided that we're going to give being together another go. We've had lots of talks about what went wrong in our relationship, talks that we should have had when we were together, and we think we can fix them. So yay for that!

[Barmymoo]

Paging Stephen and/or Kat to this thread, Stephen and Kat to this thread!

[snalin]

Its held at about a 45 degree angle to the corner of the shield. This way, I can hold my arm at a 90 degree angle to my body (straight up and down), but the top leaning slightly inward toward me and it covers my shoulder, head (mostly, small movements to protect it) and legs (also with small movement). Anywhere below the top of the knee is not a legal target zone, so there's no worrying about protecting my foot.

You guys don't do the cheap shot where you lay the flat of the blade against the opponents shin, and then slide it up into their gut? My worries about the foot is all about preventing it from being an entryway to my thighs and midsection for glaives or daneaxes and those kinds of things.

I can see the difference, though - we usually don't fight with headshots allowed, so protecting the face and head isn't a worry. That makes the considerations for what you have to defend completely different. Whenever we do pop on masks, it's very hard to protect out heads, and I can really see having that grip helping with that.

[Carl-E]

No cheap shots in the SCA! 

Well, not in combat, at least...

I think the ban against below-the-knee strikes came from two places; first, the weapons are rattan, and though light weight, it's easy to get the momentum to knock a leg out from under an opponent.  The damage from this can be serious, from twisted legs and a hard fall. 

In addition,  it was considered bad form and unchivalrous, and SCA is all about the chivalry.  It's definitely more chivalrous to take out your opponent with a solid blow to the head or body than by hitting them when they're down, especially if you knocked them down to begin with! 

And there are very strict armor/weapon requirements for safety.  "SCA combat's safer than high school football" was a tag line for years...

[ackblom12]

If you wouldn't mind to explain, it seems to me that getting married is a pretty unambiguous statement in favour of monogamy. How does that not change the relationship? Unless non-monogamous people also get married, is that the case?

To be fair, Kat and I were monogamous for a large chunk of our relationship and didn't end up going poly up until we were already married, but here's some ramblings from myself. Also keep in mind this is all US perspective. I imagine a lot of it would be shared outside the US, but not all of it clearly. I also want to clarify that the term Polyamory has kind of changed to be a much more vague term than it used to be, kind of turning into a umbrella term (at least online and especially on FetLife and Reddit) for all forms of consensual non-monogamy while still being used for it's more specific relationship type when necesarry. It can be confusing when reading about the lifestyle, but it's a lot less of a mouth full than non-monogamous.

The easiest way to describe why marriage is still done in the non-monogamous world is pretty much what Snalin Schimmy said about it, but I am always up for rambling and over explaining. Part of it is just that the concept of marriage has been making another large change over the last 20 years or so. Marriage is quickly becoming, for many, nothing but a secular social/government contract rather than the religious ceremony that it has previously been seen as. A public government contract, declaration and celebration between two people that get to define what it is to them and are allowed to rewrite the vows of said contract when they choose to do so. This happens to be the mindset that we went into marriage with.

Also you get a shit load of legal, financial and social benefits from it. Children are a bit more legally complicated when you're not married, adoption is likely not possible and certain attorney privileges and lots of other things. While there are certainly a lot of poly folk who have philisophical problems with monogamy and/or marriage, there is actually a good sized movement in the poly community wanting Polygamy (multiple spouses with Polyandry being multiple husbands and Polygny being multiple wives) to be made legal. I can't really say I'd be opposed to it, but the nightmare of restructuring our marriage systems, culturally and legally, makes me say that's unlikely.

There are also a lot of different types of relationship within the non-monogamy realm. Open relationships with Don't Ask, Don't Tell policies (I have issues with the concept behind this), One Penis Policy (also is a bit of a shit deal to me), Swinging (which actually seems to be dominated by married couples), Poly-fidelity circles (sex only within the group of 3+ people), Poly-Mono couples (one person being monogamous while the other is not, consensually) and many other variations. Some of the relationships will be more serious and some will be nothing but one night stands. It just all depends on the structure that the people involved have agreed to. While it's kind of an unwritten rule in most poly circles to not shame anyone for a "bad" form of poly relationship, as long as it's not actually abusive, as you can clearly tell from my list and how some of them in the chart I'm linking are worded, there are still strong opinions about certain forms of it.

http://i.imgur.com/WBN0O.gif

tl;dr: Every poly relationship is different and is structured according to whatever the people involved are comfortable with.

[Akima]

No cheap shots in the SCA!

Jace's shield gave me an atavistic desire to gallop past on horseback showering him with arrows. I bet that's against the rules too.

[Papersatan]

So Stephen gave a nice overview of poly.  So I'm gonna be more personal.

I was resistant when Stephen first brought up the idea of being non-monogamous.  Like he said we had been monogamous for a long time (almost 9 years) and successively so.  It felt like taking a big gamble with our relationship to me, and I was insecure about a lot of things, but I wasn't all out against it.  We talked honestly and openly about it from every angle we could think of and I think those conversations made our relationship stronger.  The time from our first discussion to the first time either of us even kissed another person was at least 6 months, and it was over a year before my first outside relationship.

We are married because we love each other and have made a commitment to live as one person.  That is, my fate is tied to his.  We make our life decisions as a couple.  When I want to take a job, I talk about it with Stephen and we decide what is best for us.  We have promised that when things get tough we will stick it out and work on it even when it is difficult or painful, because we believe that the reward in the end will be worth it and because we want to spend our lives together.

So that is what marriage means for Stephen and I, but why bother complicating it with other people?  The biggest benefit for me is that different partners offer different things. One very basic thing being that I am bi, and so being poly means I can sleep with women but  limiting our outside encounters to me seeing women (what Steve called the One Penis Policy) was ever an option for us because we both have problems with what that implies about gender roles. Other differences are varied personalities and sexual preferences. 

Right now I have two main partners outside the marriage and they are both quite different from Stephen and from each other.  One likes to be dominated sexually, which is not a thing Stephen is into, so it is nice to have a partner to explore that with.  One is much more extroverted and energetic it is fun to have someone to get worked up with.  Both offer me unique conversations, view points on life or my problems.  They complement me for different aspects of my personality and body.  The things that I enjoy about each of them are different.  I love spending time with each of them, whether that is watching a movie or having sex.  Both relationships are pretty new, but I am starting to care about them both quite a bit. 

In addition to these two people I have more casual sexual partners that I don't consider myself in a relationship with. I think the next logical question is where are these relationships going, and the answer is I am not sure.  Both of my boyfriends have wives and I don't date either of the wives and am not likely to, nor do they have more than a friendly relationship with Stephen.  They also have not met each other, though they know about each other.  I think part of why it is hard to talk about is that the assumption that a serious relationship will end in a marriage, or a marriage like state.  That is a possibility I suppose.  Neither Stephen nor I object to adding another lifetime partnership to our lives, but that seems like a far off thing to even think about at this point.  Also, should that ever be a possibility for either of us, making the decision to do so will be subject to the "make life altering decisions together" rule of our marriage, as described above. For now I am having fun with a variety of people and enjoying myself.
 

[Jace]

Its held at about a 45 degree angle to the corner of the shield. This way, I can hold my arm at a 90 degree angle to my body (straight up and down), but the top leaning slightly inward toward me and it covers my shoulder, head (mostly, small movements to protect it) and legs (also with small movement). Anywhere below the top of the knee is not a legal target zone, so there's no worrying about protecting my foot.

You guys don't do the cheap shot where you lay the flat of the blade against the opponents shin, and then slide it up into their gut? My worries about the foot is all about preventing it from being an entryway to my thighs and midsection for glaives or daneaxes and those kinds of things.

The thing about it is that any contact to below the knee of the opponent, even if very light, will throw you off, because you'll know when you hit their knee armor, and it might not throw them off, but you'll notice you hit their knee and should be like "oh sorry for the low shot."
Also if you are fighting unchivalrously (as Carl has covered, chivalry is important in SCA combat), there are other guys who will chivalrously show you that you are not being chivalrous.

[snalin]

The easiest way to describe why marriage is still done in the non-monogamous world is pretty much what Snalin said about it,

Wait what? I think you are talking about schimmy.

[ackblom12]

You people with your names that start with S, you all look alike!

Fixed

[Welu]

I'm really enjoying the two very different discussions going on in this thread.

[Barmymoo]

I was going to say almost exactly that!

Dear blog thread,

I was baptised last night. We sang Amazing Grace and I nearly cried. I was given a candle and a christening spoon (partly as a joke), amongst many other thoughtful gifts. Now I just have to guide myself down the path of righteousness without the benefit of godparents until Sunday when I'll be confirmed. We decided godparents were unnecessary in the circumstances.

[pwhodges]

Congratulations; may it bring you joy and help you to follow the path of your convictions.

We decided godparents were unnecessary in the circumstances.

That's appropriate, as the purpose of godparents is to stand proxy for a child in baptism with an added commitment to help bring the child to the level of understanding that would have made them unnecessary.

[Barmymoo]

Thank you The irony is that I did have "godparents" as a child, although they were secular ones - they were the people who would have taken us in if anything happened to our parents. My godmother died nine years ago, and my godfather subsequently became my stepfather. He actually has been part of the level-of-understanding thing.

[Patrick]

Dear blag,

I went camping this weekend! It was at this annual event called Two Day Town which is basically Livermore's version of Woodstock. A bunch of hippies, old and young, go to the campground at nearby Lake Del Valle. There's a main stage where bands play sets of 30min each, and I got to go for free (it's normally $50-60) because I'm friends with one of the bands. Yay!

Wound up drunkenly making out with a girl I know. Not sure how I feel about that having happened. It was nice, sure, but I'm just not in the mindset. Haven't been for a while. I don't have the time or energy for any of that stuff. Sucks, because I've thought highly of this girl for a while. It's fine though, I'm enjoying being in a band a lot more than I ever enjoyed any romantic relationship. I care about the people a lot more because there's a reason for them to matter to me.

[LTK]

http://i.imgur.com/WBN0O.gif

[Zingoleb]

Oh damn that image is impressive

(Unicorn-based polyamory is SUPER AWKWARD, because I am perceived as a bisexual female named Unicorn and involved in the local poly/kink scenes and it can be all kinds of hilarious mix-ups only instead of laugh tracks I get awkward silence and trying to explain the reasoning for everything)

[nekowafer]

I'm actually in a poly/mono don't ask/don't tell type situation. The boy is mostly happy with it. It has its problems, but for the most part, I am enjoying it. I do wish I could share details with him, though. He knows basically what goes on, of course, and he even knows a couple of my friends-with-benefits, but he doesn't want to know any more than that. I've asked him if he'd rather we both be monogamous, but he understands my want for other partners without losing him. He also has some play partners, though he treats them more like one night stands, so I wouldn't say he's poly. If any of that makes any sense at all.

Unfortunately, our relationship seems to be falling apart for completely unrelated reasons. Not the least of which is that he gets so angry at me that he screams and this scares the shit out of me. This is part of what put me in the mental hospital, actually. But I feel like I'm stuck with him until the lease runs out, whether I want to leave him or not, so that sucks.

Yay I'm depressing!

[Carl-E]

I was baptised last night.

Mazel tov! 


There are times I wish I could be baptised and become a member of the church I attend.  There's just this one little niggling detail;

I'm not a believer.  My wife was raised Episcopalian (the American Anglicans), so when first daughter was on the way, we agreed to raise our kids in the church.  I saw the effects of being raised in a strong church/family environment (I was raised Unitarian), and the effect of not being so on my younger brothers (we moved away and never found a good group to join).  I wanted that support, that faith in something, for my daughters.  I also knew that it didn't really matter where the faith lay, so I deferred to my wife's church.  With a strong foundation, crises of faith can be weathered and resolved better than without one. 

But I can't bring myself to that leap of faith.  I always back away.  I just can't accept it for myself.  And that's OK, but it gets a little weird.  I love the church we go to, the people, the ceremonies, the liturgy, the music.  I just can't accept the basic tenets.  What's stranger is that, after nearly 20 years, most of them don't know I'm not a member.  I can't tell you how many times I've had to turn down the offer to be on vestry, 'cause I'm not a member. 

It gets stranger, though.  My older daughter drifted away from the church - claims to be an atheist now.  My younger daughter's too ill to go, and my wife doesn't like to leave her alone for an extended period of time.  So, as a member of the choir, I'm the only one in the family who still attends. 

I wonder some Sundays what teh fuck I'm doing there.  Right now, it's an anthropological exercise for me - the parish is falling apart after an incident with a particularly bad priest.  It's fascinating to watch, but very sad.  Some days I think I'm just staying on because there's going to have to be someone there to turn out the lights and shut off the organ when the whole thing ends...

...and I'm sorry for hijacking the thread in this direction, but this is more blog than the religion threads in DISCUSS! were, which is probably why I never got around to posting there. 

[Patrick]

From the "things I don't understand" file: why making out with a girl I like did not make me feel good, but instead has served as a catalyst for making me more depressed

[dr. nervioso]

See I looked into Christianity when I moved back to the midwest. I now understand what and why Christians believe what they do, but I just can't accept it. My main goal right now is to stop the reflex prejudice I get when I see a super-religious person.

i would like to say that I am spiritual, just not religious. I just don't see the pint in church for me, I am strictly someone who thinks that your spiritual side should be strictly personal. But I do understand the idea of communal religion.
I don't know, I feel like I just went into a circle.
In any case, I do like churches for giving back to the community, that's the main reason why I still stay in contact with those peple

[valley_parade]

pint in church

I could maybe get into religion if this was a thing.

[dr. nervioso]

Curse you O key. I would murder you if you were not an important part of the English language

[Omega Entity]

pint in church

I could maybe get into religion if this was a thing.

There's always the yearly beer tent that some groups put on. I think around here it's either the Catholic church or the Episcopalians.

[Patrick]

What, is communion not enough for you, you alchy fuxx?

[Lines]

Grape juice isn't THAT much fun. The only church I've ever been to that actually served wine was a Catholic church and it was the kind where everyone came up and drank out of the same glass (my old church passes around thimble sized cups) and I was not about to drink germ riddled wine. Stuff is nasty enough. Eurgh.

i would like to say that I am spiritual, just not religious. I just don't see the point in church for me, I am strictly someone who thinks that your spiritual side should be strictly personal. But I do understand the idea of communal religion.

This is how I feel. I have my own beliefs, but I just can't bring myself to go to church anymore (for various reasons that I won't discuss because this isn't DISCUSS! [hurr]), though I do still find getting together with some (keyword: some) people I used to go to church with, including the youth minister and worship leader.

[Patrick]

Make sure you know how to buck the system by going as close to first as possible, then drain that fucker and split

[Zingoleb]

Make sure you know how to buck the system by going as close to first as possible, then drain that fucker and spit

see, for some reason I thought you said first base and I somehow misread this post as about oral sex

not that you'd ever talk about blowjobs

[Lupercal]

Grape juice isn't THAT much fun. The only church I've ever been to that actually served wine was a Catholic church and it was the kind where everyone came up and drank out of the same glass (my old church passes around thimble sized cups) and I was not about to drink germ riddled wine. Stuff is nasty enough. Eurgh.

We do that at our Protestant Church (its "High Church", Church of England, similar in the service I suppose) - if the communion is shared, it should come out of a pewter chalice, so that when you're drinking out of the same vessel as the rest of the congregation you're not going to get sick (it has never happened to me). If it was just a normal cup, then  yeah I'd see your point.

Carl-E:

A similar thing happened in my town. A local priest was caught with a load of child pornography (way to beat the cliche, Father) so we sort of inherited parts of his congregation. Trouble is, the only way that congregations either increase in size or stay in a state of stagnancy in terms of numbers is by getting younger people in every Sunday. The only "young" (20s, 30s) people that turn up are people that want to get married there, and they pretty much stop going after they become married. Not always, but most often. And that's fine, it just means that the congregation shrinks around autumn and winter when there are very few weddings planned.

And my brother has been through a state of depression and doesn't go to church anymore - while it was fine that he didn't go to normal Sunday services, he didn't go last Easter, which was a huge shock to me because we always go to the "big" services. I guess I think that if he's put 20 odd years into the church he'll keep going, but I need to understand that everyone has their own developing thoughts about God and the basic tenants of Christianity. I also think he hates that if he doesn't turn up for ages, people then start doing the rounds: "What are you doing with yourself? How are you? Still studying?" - he failed his degree and was out of work for 18 months, it was a period of embarrassment for him I guess.

[Barmymoo]

I was worried about the sharing the cup thing too, I am prone to throat infections which isn't very useful for a singer, but then the chaplain explained the pewter thing to me and I feel a bit better about it. Patrick, you can't drain the communion wine, the server keeps a hold on the cup and would stop you from tilting it that far.

My first Communion will be on Sunday! I went to Mass this morning just on a whim, and then there's another tonight, and then that'll be it for my non-partaking

I was having a chat with a friend who feels similar to you, Carl, and I was saying that I felt exactly the same at one point. I was going to church out of interest and because I had friends there who were nice. Then something just clicked, and I don't believe it's a change you can make for yourself. Either you believe or you don't, and the process from one to the other involves being open-minded and inviting the experience, and then waiting for God to change your heart. If that never happens, then you haven't really lost anything.

[Lupercal]

To be fair, most people's innate moral codes align with the basic doctrines of most religions - be nice to others, don't be greedy and selfish, etc. If you're not a "believer", it is most likely you know the difference between right and wrong anyway.

I can't imagine what a confirmation is like when you're in your 20s - I had mine when I was 9, so it was just kind of another thing that I did (at that point I was a sever and in the choir too). Its really great that  you've had such an enveloping experience at Mass. As you have friends there, are you going to try and stay there after you graduate, or will you be confident moving to another parish?

[Redball]

I guess it is possible to imbibe too much wine at Communion. I was a chaplain's assistant in the Army in the late 50s. The chaplain held Protestant services at each of three anti-aircraft missile battalions, and Communion at them once a month. I served the wine and wafers, and the chaplain must have wondered about my driving after the last service; he told one Communion was enough.

[Barmymoo]

Unfortunately I will have to move to another parish because even if I didn't want to move, I would have to sell my internal organs to afford rent round here without student finance. As a matter of fact, as much as I love it here, I miss living in the north and I want to move back to Yorkshire. I've attended quite a lot of different churches in the last few years because of being ill and moving to Paris and so forth, I think five? Or actually six now. So I will probably be fine joining a new church, and now I know what to look for in terms of my personal comfort level. I've discovered I'm a high Anglican, but not quite anglo-Catholic.

[Lines]

I don't want no mouth herpes. That's mostly what bothers me, not the spit. Keep your ugly mouth problems away, got enough problems of my own, kthxbai.

[Barmymoo]

You can dunk the wafer into the water. It's called intincting the host, and some people do it for exactly that reason.

[Patrick]

Patrick, you can't drain the communion wine, the server keeps a hold on the cup and would stop you from tilting it that far.

My dear May, with enough determination...

Also, happy May Day! Today is your day

Dear blag,

I guess I am over my depressive BS from yesterday, this may or may not have everything to do with the fact that I have a Pokemon Sapphire ROM for my GBA emulator.

[nekowafer]

Dear blog:

I'm thinking. If I can't tell if something on my piercing is a scab (maybe not good) or crusties (normal, dried lymph), I should probably not pick at it. And yet, here I am with blood all over my fingers and a very painful ear. I has the dumb. Who knows how bad I'll be when I finally get my first tattoo.

On a related note, I'm finding myself more attractive in the face area with my new metal. It seems a little silly to me, but hey, whatever works.

On a dubiously related note, I take too many pictures of myself, and most of them are never seen by anyone but myself.

[nobo]

You mean you only post some of them on the facebook?

[nekowafer]

...maybe

I send some to friends, too! Like when I make a silly face.

I'm boring