Your Ultimate Roleplaying Purity Score
Category	Your Score	Average
Hacklust	8.49% Slew entire Asgardian Pantheon with one hand while blindfolded	53.6%
Sensitive Roleplaying	11.39% There is no player. There is only.... Zuul.	54.8%
GM Experience	11.59% Worldbuilder, storyteller... Master.	69.4%
Systems Knowledge	89.69% Played in a couple of campaigns	90.4%
Livin' La Vida Dorka	34.48% Carries dice in pocket 'just in case'	63.3%
You are 36.18% pure Average Score: 68.8%
Take The Ultimate Roleplaying Purity Test and see how you match up! (By The Ferrett)

Him who mountain crush him no
Him who sun him stop him no
Him who hammer him break him no
Him who fire him fear him no
Him who raise him head above him heart
Him diamond
- Translation of troll pictograms
Terry Pratchett, Thud!

The Gaming Situation

It's been forever since I posted here, so I don't remember exactly what I've said before. In case I didn't say it yet, I'm a serious gamer. Video games, card games, board games, pen-and-paper RPGs... I play pretty much everything.
And college has given me the opportunity to play. I'm currently participating in two campaigns. In one, I am the Dungeon Master of a Dungeons & Dragons v3.5 campaign, which has become very popular with the players. We play whenever all five of us have some free time. The other is a once-per-week session of HackMaster with some guys I know from the JREF forums. We play over Ventrilo and MapTool.
Since my players in the D&D game are new to the game, it's a very relaxed, fun-oriented atmosphere. We have a lot of situations where the players do something just because it's funny rather than it being helpful or something that the character would do. They're starting to get the hang of role-playing, though.
The HackMaster game is much more serious, with a higher standard for role-play. I play the party cleric, a lawful neutral priest of the god of justice. My main role is to give everyone blank stares when the need for social interaction surpasses my ability to process. Anyway...
So my D&D campaign, "Contagion Rising", is moving forward very well. The players seem to be enjoying themselves (though the party rogue is having difficulties rolling above a two). Hopefully it'll end as well as it has begun. And no, I'm not going to post any details here, because I'm not sure if anyone who knows me reads this, and if you do you might spill the beans about my evil Dungeon Master-ing plans.
And I've recently come into possession of the sourcebook for another game: Matt Forbeck's Brave New World, an alternate-history superhero RPG - not to be confused with the novel of the same name. As of yet, I haven't played any games of BNW, but I have high hopes. I've always wanted to try one of these superhero games. It looks like fun.
And now, I return to the realm of the Dungeon Master's Guide, to finish preparing the next session of Contagion Rising.

Him who mountain crush him no
Him who sun him stop him no
Him who hammer him break him no
Him who fire him fear him no
Him who raise him head above him heart
Him diamond
- Translation of troll pictograms
Terry Pratchett, Thud!

True Cures

So, it's been a while since I updated this blog. Some serious stuff has gone down... I'm seriously hating college, I've made plans to go skydiving, and I've stopped sucking so horribly at Modern Warfare 2.
So I've come here to post a little bit about David Flowers, creator of True Cures. Mister Flowers has recently taken it upon himself to join the JREF forums and start a thread about his ideas. I don't join in the conversation for a few pages (I'm Pure_Argent), but whatever.
Flowers is under the impression, like most alternative medicine peddlers, that Big Pharma is a lie. He goes a little further than most, though, and says that not only is Big Pharma a lie, but all treatments are lies - except his. Homeopathy and other "natural" medicines are just as much bunk as actual medicine. It's just that homeopathy and the like is slightly better than Big Pharma, because it uses True Cures.

True Cures' underlying principles are:
- there is no such thing as an incurable disease
- there are no genetic diseases, only pathogens passed on from parent to child
- the human immune system can defeat any disease by utilizing the 95% of the brain that is not used

Basically, True Cures consists of you saying certain words which subconsciously activate the "sleeping" parts of your immune system, thereby allowing it to destroy any invading pathogens and curing all disease. Besides the obvious fact that all of this is bullshit, Flowers himself is unable to explain how this is supposed to work.

So I've attempted to get Flowers to tell me how to cure myself of asthma, but nothing doing: he keeps dancing around the issue and focusing on tangential issues, like where the medicine farmers use comes from. If you're interested, go ahead and read the thread.

Him who mountain crush him no
Him who sun him stop him no
Him who hammer him break him no
Him who fire him fear him no
Him who raise him head above him heart
Him diamond
- Translation of troll pictograms
Terry Pratchett, Thud!

THAT WAFFLE I JUST ATE

WAS AS BIG AS MY HEAD

Him who mountain crush him no
Him who sun him stop him no
Him who hammer him break him no
Him who fire him fear him no
Him who raise him head above him heart
Him diamond
- Translation of troll pictograms
Terry Pratchett, Thud!

The Vatican

So there's a big debate going on right now about what should be done about the Pope. Apparently, he was involved in covering up the sexual abuse of children. The Roman Catholic church has been jumping through hoops of all kinds to try and throw blame at anyone but themselves.
Actually, their mental gymnastics are pretty entertaining to watch, especially this bit. Apparently, everyone who doesn't approve of the Vatican condoning child abuse is secretly a pro-abortion homosexual.
Anyway, there's a huge debate going on in one of the forums I frequent about whether or not the Pope should be arrested for being an accessory to/aiding and abetting child abuse. I, personally, think that he should. He's no different than any other head of state, and he blatantly covered up hundreds of cases of child sexual abuse.
And yet there are those who defend him. Why? No other head of state would have gotten away with this, short of iron-fisted dictators, and they would probably be attacked by various military personnel before long anyway. A city-state's government - at least, one which doesn't ascribe to the aforementioned dictatorial policies - is expected to hold itself responsible for its actions. The Vatican has done the exact opposite. And the head man himself was behind it all.
If this were, say, the United States, the President would be impeached within minutes. There wouldn't even be need for a formal vote. Everyone in the country would just scream "Yo! Obama! GTFO!" and he'd be like "Fo sho rly" and get gone. Pretty much the same thing would be expected in any other decent country.
But the Vatican expects special treatment. They expect the Pope to come out of this, if not pristine, then at least only bloodied - still alive, and definitely still in office.
They aren't even prosecuting him under Vatican law, which is the least that should be expected under the circumstances. He should be taken to trial and placed before a jury. But he won't be. The Vatican is a theocracy, and the Pope is its high priest. He is the law, as far as they are concerned.
But this is clear abuse of the law to further a political agenda. The Vatican's policy was never meant to defend child molesters, and the Pope is making a mockery of that intent. If he has any decency, he will allow himself to be removed from the office - or, at the very least, placed on trial.
Him who mountain crush him no
Him who sun him stop him no
Him who hammer him break him no
Him who fire him fear him no
Him who raise him head above him heart
Him diamond
- Translation of troll pictograms
Terry Pratchett, Thud!

David Mabus

He stalks me, I swear it. No matter where I go, it seems that he finds me and begins his spam campaign anew. First it was the JREF forums, then it moved to the Facebook group "Reason-Based Atheism", then to the Atheism fan page, then to NationStates Forums, then to DiscussTheParanormal, then to The Thinking Atheist forums... Seriously, after a while it just gets creepy. Is he monitoring my internet activity or something?
...If so, he'll probably start blackmailing me soon.

>_>

Then again, I'm probably just suffering from confirmation bias. Mabus is famous for spamming pretty much every site on the internet, and I visit a lot of different discussion forums. Odds are that I'll run into him a lot.
What's funny, though, is that he actually bothers to come up with different usernames for all these sites. On places like Facebook, it's understandable, as he gets banned fairly quickly and has to keep inventing sock puppets. But on sites like TTAF, he doesn't even start out as David Mabus. He's calling himself "lambyjones22". I mean, what's the point? He never makes an attempt to pretend that he's doing anything more than spamming his usual bull.
It might be understandable if he was actually talking - I myself use a lot of different usernames all around the internet - but he's not even varying his stuff a little bit. He copy-pastes the same thing, verbatim, all over the net. Why not keep your username the same, too? It must get confusing, trying to remember the names and passwords of all your socks.
Anyway, there's a link to this blog in my signature over on TTAF. If he ever bothers to look at anything, he might be reading this. So... HAI MABUS! WAZZUP?

Him who mountain crush him no
Him who sun him stop him no
Him who hammer him break him no
Him who fire him fear him no
Him who raise him head above him heart
Him diamond
- Translation of troll pictograms
Terry Pratchett, Thud!

Fear of Failure

I think that's my problem, honestly. I keep promising myself that I'll do better in my classes, that I'll get my work done on time and make sure it's quality stuff... and I do, for a while.
Then something goes wrong.
Whether it's my fault or not, something happens, and everything goes to hell. I miss a homework assignment, I get sick and miss a quiz, I realize that I slept through a class... whatever it is, it throws me off, and my grades tank. Not just in the class that I screwed up (or got unlucky) in, but all of them.
I hate it, but I don't know what to do about it. The only thing I can think of is to take a trip to the counselor's office here on campus and hope that they have some tips. At this point, though, this semester is probably unsalvageable.
Thanks to everyone at the JREF chat room for all your support. It's reached the point where I just can't talk to my parents about it any more, because I can't stand their reactions. Your combination of sympathy and tough love has helped a lot.
I'm going to try to raise my grades as much as possible in what little time there is left in the semester, but I don't think that there will be much change. All I can do is visit my counselor, try to get over this and hope that I'll be able to suppress it next semester.

Him who mountain crush him no
Him who sun him stop him no
Him who hammer him break him no
Him who fire him fear him no
Him who raise him head above him heart
Him diamond
- Translation of troll pictograms
Terry Pratchett, Thud!