Wednesday, December 30, 2009

2009 year in review

I have only made 48 posts to Slashboing this year, half as many as I did in 2008. My reduction in blogging can probably be traced to my use of Twitter. Where I used to develop an idea until I could justify a whole blog post, now I reduce the idea to 140 characters and tweet it. When I see a cool youtube video or link it is much easier to click a "tweet this" button than it is to compose a new post.

So what things made me cross the twitter/blogger threshold and actually compose a Slashboing post? Let us summarize, as is the custom of the season.

January: Steampunk, Death of Richardo Montalban.

February: Absolutely nothing. February must've sucked.

March: Watchmen, Kutiman, Lost, Science Fiction, Cocktails, Rachel Maddow, Doctor Who.

April: Star Wars, Joyful Public Dancing, Science Fiction Conventions

May: Bacon Vodka, Pegwarmers

June: My video making hobby starts, Steampunk, John Hodgman, Longevity of SF television shows

July: 52 weeks of video, Twitter, Dungeons and Dragons, Nipples of Fry and Laurie.

August: Steampunk, Star Trek, Dragoncon, GI-Joe, Complementary comedic sketches

September: Steampunk, Dungeons and Dragons

October: I attempt to memeify the moon bombing, Lost Skeleton

November: Three loves of Pho, Community and 3-2-1 Contact

December: Christmas comments and this review.

This was the year that I started playing D&D for the first time, and decided to blog about it. I started Noob in the Dungeon so I could document the game, and not OVERLOAD Slashboing. I post a record low for yearly posts, and I start a second blog so as not to have too many posts on one topic.

Here's to 2010.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Light over Darkness

AGAIN we celebrate the victory of Light over Darkness, of the God of day over the hosts of night. Again Samson is victorious over Delilah, and Hercules triumphs once more over Omphale. In the embrace of Isis, Osiris rises from the dead, and the scowling Typhon is defeated once more. Again Apollo, with unerring aim, with his arrow from the quiver of light, destroys the serpent of shadow. This is the festival of Thor, of Baldur and of Prometheus. Again Buddha by a miracle escapes from the tyrant of Madura, Zoroaster foils the King, Bacchus laughs at the rage of Cadmus, and Chrishna eludes the tyrant.

This is the festival of the sun-god, and as such let its observance be universal.

This is the great day of the first religion, the mother of all religions — the worship of the sun.

Sun worship is not only the first, but the most natural and most reasonable of all. And not only the most natural and the most reasonable, but by far the most poetic, the most beautiful.

The sun is the god of benefits, of growth, of life, of warmth, of happiness, of joy. The sun is the all-seeing, the all-pitying, the all-loving.

This bright God knew no hatred, no malice, never sought for revenge.

All evil qualities were in the breast of the God of darkness, of shadow, of night. And so I say again, this is the festival of Light. This is the anniversary of the triumph of the Sun over the hosts of Darkness.

Let us all hope for the triumph of Light — of Right and Reason — for the victory of Fact over Falsehood, of Science over Superstition.

And so hoping, let us celebrate the venerable festival of the Sun.

Robert Green Ingersoll – “The Agnostic Christmas” (1892)

Reminder from Cynical-C