This is sort of a random mini-rant, but it was amusing (befuddling) enough to be worth sharing, so… on with the post!
I tried blue cream soda last week. And it was pretty good! But I have a few questions. Primarily, how can a soda have “natural and artificial flavors” when the flavor is “blue?”
I mean, at least now I understand what Percy Jackson meant about blue food now — this tastes like regular cream soda, just bluer. “What does ‘bluer’ taste like?” you wonder. I’m sorry to say I really have no idea how to explain that, or even how it’s tasteable, but apparently blue is both a color and a flavor, and I think that’s hilarious.
This year has been a lot. Pandemic, protests, election… and it’s not over. There’s still battles to be fought. There probably always will be, to be honest.
Just remember: you can’t fight if you don’t take care of yourself, first. So give yourself permission to breathe, to take a moment and rest so you can keep carrying the banner. Whether that fight is politics, finances, family or your job… breathe.
(Note: I definitely didn’t take this picture, but I have no clue who did. Credit to… Pinterest, I guess.)
Anyone who saw the title of this post and went “she’s posting more cat pictures, isn’t she?” go ahead and give yourselves a round of applause. It’s the beginning of NaNo and I have an essay I need to finish before starting on that, so, yeah. Cats. Relaxing a whole lot more than I am.
Sometimes getting up in the mornings is hard when there’s a cat leaning on me, but they’ll accept replacement pillows.
A couple weeks ago my best friend introduced me to Among Us. Yes, the game that it seems everyone is suddenly talking about. It’s got fan-made songs, animations, fanfic… but some of you are probably asking, “What actually is Among Us?” Allow me to explain.
Have you ever played Mafia? Or Are You A Werewolf? Among Us is like the digital, slightly more complicated sci-fi version of those. In those games you have the “night,” when the killers (be they mafia or werewolves) choose a victim, and then the “day” where you find out which one person has died, and vote someone out. Either the citizens vote out the killers and win, or the killers murder enough citizens that they can’t be voted out by majority, thereby winning.
Caption: Role: Crewmate
In Among Us the crewmates have another goal: complete your tasks. Each crewmate is given a random selection of assignments, like fixing wiring, downloading and uploading data, and entering their ID. Some of these, like the ones I just listed, can be found in any game of Among Us; some are specific to certain of the three maps. For instance, “Align Engine Output” wouldn’t be useful on Polus, which is a planet’s surface, but since the Skeld is a spaceship it makes sense. Neither of those maps have a greenhouse, but the airship by the name of Mira HQ does, so “Water Plants” is a perfectly reasonable task. A small handful of these are also “visual tasks,” meaning other players can see them, which, since imposters can’t do tasks, proves your innocence. Submitting a Medscan is the most well-known of these, but there’s a handful of others as well. Whatever your tasks are, if all the crewmates finish theirs they win the game. This simultaneously gives the imposters pressure to kill quickly and the crewmates an alternate objective, rather than solely focusing on the murder aspect of gameplay.
Caption: Medscan on Mira HQ
Though, admittedly, the murder aspect is important too. The imposters’ job is to kill all the crewmates (or, rather, enough that there’s the same amount of crewmates as imposters, just like in Mafia and Are You A Werewolf). They have a couple of tools to help them achieve this: a partner, depending on server settings (there can be 1-3 imposters in a max of 10 players), vents that allow them to move unseen between certain rooms, and sabotage. With this last functionality they can close doors to slow down their targets (on the Skeld and Polus, at least), sabotage communications, temporarily making the list of tasks inaccessible, turn off the lights (narrowing all the crewmates’ range of view), and cause a reactor overload or (on the Skeld and Mira HQ) an oxygen depletion, either of which left unchecked for long enough will automatically result in a victory for the imposters. Each of these has a different means of reversing them, but whatever the case they help to slow down the task progress and sometimes draw people away from a fresh corpse.
Caption: O2 depletion drew everyone else to the far side of the Skeld, enabling an easy kill.
That’s important because, unlike Mafia and Are You A Werewolf, it’s not a matter of one voting session per death. Rather, a meeting is only called when someone comes across and reports a dead body, or presses the Emergency Meeting button that’s in the Cafeteria on the two ships and in the Office on Polus. This button is primarily useful for when you saw someone going into/coming out of the vents, witnessed a murder on the security cams, or watched someone’s vital signs terminate (each map has multiple means of monitoring; the Skeld has security cameras and Admin, which gives a headcount for each room; Mira HQ has Admin and a Sensor Log for each of three sensors you can pass in the hall; and Polus has security cams, Admin and a vitals monitor). As an interesting aside, crewmate’s ghosts can still complete their tasks to contribute to victory, and imposter’s ghosts can still sabotage. This is a compelling reason to stick around even after being voted out or murdered.
Caption: The yellow highlighting the computer indicates that it’s one of my tasks; the computer next to it is the vitals monitor.
How many kills the imposters can manage without anyone noticing depends largely on location and how strategically they’re playing, but unless they’ve won, a body is eventually found and a meeting called. Then, of course, there’s the accusing phase. I won’t get into the strategies for that here, at least not this week (I don’t think I’ve ever done a follow-up on a game before but if y’all want one or I feel like it I may), just the process.
Caption: Getting my neck snapped in the Laboratory on Polus
I don’t recall ever playing a game of Mafia or Are You A Werewolf with a time limit on voting, but each Among Us server has a set discussion time before voting opens, and a set time from there before voting closes (both set by the server host). As you can imagine, it’s a lot of back-and-forth pointing of fingers and “Where was the body? Any sus [suspects] nearby? Where was everyone else?” It’s also a race to get your argument in before people vote, since voting doesn’t happen all at once in Among Us; rather, you can submit your vote anytime after voting opens, and when the time is up or everyone has voted all the votes are revealed.
Caption: As the imposter, I can see who the other imposters are (indicated by red name). The megaphone next to Red/M2lk indicates they called the meeting.
Once voting for a meeting has closed, there are a few things that can happen. If there’s a tie, nobody gets ejected. If skipping vote gets the most votes (yes, “skip” is an option, but no, not voting at all does not count as a vote to skip), then nobody gets ejected. If, however, any one player gets the most votes, they will be joining the ghosts. How depends on which map they’re playing: since the Skeld is a spaceship, ejections there occur by flinging them into the vacuum of space via airlock. Whoever’s voted out on Mira HQ goes skydiving without a parachute, and on Polus they take a quick stroll into a lava crater. Whether you get to see if they were an imposter or not at the point of ejection depends on the settings set by the host.
Caption: This isn’t an actual ejection screen, but it’s the lava crater.
If it’s not clear by how long this post is, I enjoy this game immensely. I think it’s a brilliant, engaging twist on a concept I was already fond of. I highly recommend trying it, whether for free on mobile, for a small fee on PC, or, like I’m playing, on PC for free through an app player called BlueStacks that enables Android applications to run on PC (for info on how to get Among Us that way, click here).
So we’ve Mom’s been sorting through the bookshelves in the guest bedroom, deciding on what we should get rid of (yes, gasp, I know, but we need shelf space for more books!), and for a period of time all those chosen had been relocated to the living room. This was the result. (Note: the cat is not going anywhere. Ever. He just likes getting in the way and being too cute to remove.)
No matter where you go in the world, there’s a local mythology, and in each of these mythologies, you’ll find a creation story. Why? Well, to put it succinctly, they’re an attempt to rationalize the world around us.
Humans have a natural curiosity — that’s why we have science and exploration. Of course, there was a time when those weren’t as advanced as they are today, but the yearning to understand was always there. These stories are so abundant because though mankind wasn’t there to witness when many parts of our world came to be, we knew they couldn’t always have been. To explain these, we speculated.
While tales of creation vary from culture to culture, there are certain constants: earth, water, and humans, as key parts of every civilization, as well as the frequent use of a higher power to explain how these were formed. In a time predating the science to formulate theories like the Big Bang, it’s unsurprising that the general consensus was, “Humans couldn’t possibly have done this, so there must be something bigger.”
There are other themes in common, as well. For example, take the Iroquois, Hebrew, and Norse creation myths (“The World On The Turtle’s Back,” “Yahweh,” and “Odin and Ymir,” respectively). All of these stories set up a dichotomy, not necessarily between good and evil, but between opposing entities. “The World on the Turtle’s Back” is a conflict between two brothers, Othagwenda and Djuskaha; the Hebrew tale is about the humans disobeying Yahweh’s command not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil; and “Odin and Ymir” is primarily centered on the gods defeating an evil frost giant. This is likely because mankind cannot conceive a world or time bereft of conflict, and therefore it features in our attempts at explaining the world around us.
There are many differences between the creation stories. According to Iroquois legend, a vast body of water existed before land, and a woman fell from heaven. In “Yahweh,” land came before sea, and humans were fashioned from earth. “Odin and Ymir,” in complete contrast to the other two, suggests that neither earth nor sea existed at first, but after the other realms came to be and Ymir was slain, his body was used to create the earth, his blood the sea, and his skull the sky, and the gods later formed humans from logs.
Despite this, there are, as I’ve suggested before, many common themes, due to the universal truths of our world and of human existence. It is, after all, because of curiosity, one of these human truths, that these stories were written in the first place, and continue to be told. For the people of the past, these stories were products of their yearning to understand the world. Now, they’re shared because of our yearning to understand those who came before.
I have to admit, Zuko is my first experience having a cat who actively enjoys being picked up and hugged, and furthermore will sometimes climb my shoulder and perch there. He’s also our only cat who will frequently, voluntarily assume the role of lap cat. As such, you can bet I took pictures!
As a bonus, I have photographic proof of the unexpected instance where June decided to do the same.
As it turns out, working with a cat in your lap, especially when the task of making sure they don’t slide off is left entirely to you, can be rather challenging. It is, however, well worth the complications. Especially when they’re purring. Loudly.
No, not the eating utensil. Chopsticks is a simple yet entertaining game I learned in elementary school to pass time while waiting in line. It’s convenient, as it doesn’t require much equipment — just two hands (at least four fingers each) and basic arithmetic.
I’ve usually played this as a two-player game, but you can really have as many people as you like, so long as you can fit them all facing each other (directly across for two, circle-ish for anything more) in whatever space you’re playing in.
Each player starts with both hands out in front of them, one finger on each raised. From there, whoever is going first will choose someone (anyone) and tap one of their hands with one of their own. The tapped hand raises a second finger, and play continues either clockwise or counter-clockwise (because it honestly doesn’t matter so long as it’s agreed upon).
It’s not always one that’s added to the hand. The principle of the game is that however many fingers are raised on the hand that taps, that’s the number added to the hand that’s tapped. Once a hand gets to five, that hand is fisted, put behind your back, or otherwise indicated as “dead.” If both your hands are dead, you’re out of the game.
Instead of tapping someone else’s hand, you can choose to tap your own together. This is an action of rearranging chopsticks; for instance, if you have four fingers raised on one hand and one on the other, you might adjust it to three and two. You’ll end up with the same amount of fingers raised, just redistributed, usually to lower the chance of a high-numbered one getting out. The rules vary by group (make sure you confirm them ahead of time!) so in some versions it’s acceptable to redistribute chopsticks to a dead hand, bringing it back into play, and in others once the hand is out, it stays out. It is not, however, a legal move to flip the values of your hands. (Think 2 and 3 to 3 and 2; nothing has actually changed, which prevents the game from properly progressing.)
The winner is, of course, the last person with at least one hand left in the game.
Given the fires on the West Coast of the US, I think this week I’ll just post some pretty nature photos from a recent walk and will water that way. To everyone near the fires — stay safe! (Edit: apologies on the delay; Mom had to pull the post down because the images weren’t loading and I wasn’t awake to fix it.)
