"If a lady ever extends you a privilege — and it IS a privilege — you don't tell anyone. And don't ever think she owes it to you." — My father

Once in high school I was an asshole. OK, one time in particular. I was riding in my dad's car with my brother and a friend, and I recounted a rumor about the sexual activities of a female classmate.

My father pulled over, whipped his head around, and gave me the lecture of my life. Which ended with the paragraph above. I can still hear his voice as I think about it.

I usually think of my mother as the principal reason I have always been a feminist (aka "someone who considers women to be people"), but remembering this, I realize I haven't given my father enough credit.

He started out making a point about her privacy and her reputation, but also said something more important: it was hers to give. Hers alone. No one else's to take, or gossip about, or criticize.

We can go back to arguing about whether we "need feminism" when every father in the United States tees off on his son with this lecture. Well before it's too late. Just in fucking case.

Not "don't get caught." Not "we'll sweep it under the rug so you can keep swimming." Not "next time don't get so drunk, kiddo."

Hers to give. Not yours to take, or talk trash on. Ever.

For a few years now, I've wanted to submit Traveling Light to this theatre company: 

LOOK how CUTE it is! Don't you just want to hug it?

It even has a pub!

Here's their script criteria:

We encourage script submissions on all subjects and themes, but we are particularly interested in:
• New writing by writers of all ages.
• Plays that are politically and socially engaged.
• Works for music theatre.
• Plays about the Kensington and Chelsea area, local history and personalities.
• Adaptations of obscure books written after 1800.
• Plays that are artistically ambitious and thematically expansive.
• Plays with large casts.
• We welcome scripts from international writers, but can only accept plays written in English, Scots or Scots Gaelic.

They want me! They don't even know it! Okay, except for the "music theatre," "obscure books written after 1800," "large casts" and "Scots or Scots Gaelic" business. Brian Epstein lived (and died) two miles from their building! It's a perfect fit. 

And, finally, after years of dithering, I sat down in the back yard with my laptop, some bug spray, and a six-pack of Strongbow, and I re-formatted the script, made it look super purty, wrote them a nice cover letter and sent it. 

The last line of my cover letter, I hope, was not too purple. 

"The summer of 2017 would mark the 50th anniversary of the deaths of Joe Orton and Brian Epstein, as well as the day homosexuality was decriminalized in England. Let's use this play as a way to explore, celebrate and memorialize."

Oh, how my fingers hovered over the "send" button. I took a huge deep breath, looked up into the indigo sky, breathed into the Universe, and clicked. 

Here's hoping.

I did not get into a physical fight with the lady at the burger place who said that 

A) the problem with Wildwood is "the blacks, Mexicans and Chinese"

B) Trump is Great

C) ARGH I DON'T EVEN REMEMBER I'M SO PISSED OFF. 

I did tell her she was wrong, but I'm so angry that I can't remember what I said. 

Today my glasses fell off my face while I was turning around to flush the toilet. I saved them before they fell in. 

WINNING! 

So, here's Sausage Mahoney.

I just pitched Jarnsaxa Rising ("pitch"="you should listen") to Kathy O'Connell.

You'll get that awful pun in just a second...

I'm working on (yet another) new illustration project. Or rather, I'm picking up work on an idea I had a while back.

I've been looking at Patreon for a while. I would LOVE to do something that allowed me to make some decent money on illustration stuff.

Here are the problems with that concept:

• I'm not that good. That's not an attempt at some kind of false humility. It's not an attempt to seek praise. It's fact. If you're feeling like jumping to my defense, please don't. Trust that this is an area where I am likely better versed than you. You'll note that I don't tell musicians whether they're good or not. I tell them whether I enjoy what they did. I'm certainly not qualified to say whether or not they're good at what they do. Same concept applies here.
• I'm driven to distraction. I don't know if things would be different if there would be a bajillion dollars on the line. So far, no one has offered me that much. In fact, I've pretty much only ever made $4 per drawing with exceptionally rare exceptions to that rule. Anyway - it's hard for me to stay motivated for anything more than 'quick hit' projects. One or two single character illustrations for a small gaming manual? No problem. The dozens and dozens of drawings for my own card game? Well, how long have I been working on them and they're not done yet?
  
• I like simple illustration work. This is significantly tied to that last item, but it also deserves its own point. I don't have any great desire to do uber in depth, full colored, fully rendered illustrations with complete backgrounds. The amount of hours required versus the reward (up to this point, we're talking purely personal here - see aforemented low paying gigs) has just not been in my favor.
  

With all of this in mind, I had a recommendation from someone on Google Plus: Paper Minis.

For those who might not be familiar: Paper minis are kinda what they sound like. You've likely seen the small lead miniatures that some gamers painstakingly paint and use to lay out their table top gaming sessions (think Dungeons and Dragons). Well, you can now buy plastic covers which allow you to take a small drawing (printout) and use that as your character, or in the case of the game master - the NPCs / monsters.

You put the paper minis into a stand - something like this.

Anyway, I thought I might give it a shot. It seems like the kind of thing that works on Patreon: give even a small amount and you get access to all the paper minis that I create (they will come out in sheets (PDFs) that you can print at home). Give a little more, and you'll be entered into monthly(?) drawings to get a free custom drawing. Give a lot? You'll get a custom drawing from me each month.

Dunno. There are probably bugs to be worked out, but I need to start to find them.

Which brings me to the title of this post. I really am ridiculously verbose sometimes.

This guy Bruce Gulke created a program called Tablesmith a long time ago. It allows you to create your own tables (think 'recipe') and randomly generate results from that table.

I love the program and paid for the 'registration key'. Something I very rarely do in this world of exceedingly functional freeware. I think it has uses far outside gaming for folks like writers and concept artists.

I created one to give me some quick descriptions to use for a starting set of characters to be used as the initial set of minis to describe the project to potential Patrons.

Below is a quick screen grab of some of my initial results.

I whipped up a Thai pizza tonight.

Ingredients:

1 large pizza dough ball. (Walk into a pizzeria and ask for a "dough ball." They will sell you one for around $3. Offer void at major national chains.)

1 red bell pepper
1 large onion
4-5 leaves of broccoli rabe
Olive oil
1/8 cup coconut milk
1 clove garlic

Preheat oven to 550 degrees. Seriously. Don't mess around, this is pizza.

Meanwhile, sautee onions in 2 tablespoons olive oil and a little salt until starting to brown.

Coarsely chop bell pepper, broccoli rabe and garlic. Toss in food processor and add coconut milk. Process briefly; don't let it completely homogenize.

Roll out dough ball. Stretch out onto pizza pan dusted with cornmeal to prevent sticking. 

Pour contents of food processor onto dough and spread around well.

Top with the onions. Bake for around 14 minutes or until allllmost blackening at the edges. (If your oven can't get to 550 degrees you may need to bake a little longer.)

Don't drown the pizza. This is the most common mistake and the reason you have to go easy on the coconut milk.

"Hey, don't you add any spices to this?" I find it's quite flavorful as-is, but sure, knock yourself out.