Concert, Gaming, Carl Jung is Evil, MySQL/PHP

[tcpip]

A quiet week as much of my productivity was hampered by the annoyance of hay/spring fever. It's exhausting, but you're not actually sick per se, so you end up annoyed. At least I don't suffer from it as bad as I did in Western Australia.

Pleased to hear that the love_diversity picnic and response to Sydney's race conflicts went OK on Sunday; I was at the end-of-year Unitarian concert which was just across the road. This "service" is invariably my least favourite gathering, as I both loathe Chrismas carols and jazz (which unfortunately a number of the congregation seem to play - and well too). Nevertheless, the cause was good - raising money for the victims of the earthquake in India/Pakistan. Some estimations of that quake put the number of dead now at 79,000.

After the typically elaborate Unitarian feast (with my carrot cake and caseopaya's almond shortbread well received) the gaming group conducted another episode of "Outbreak of Heresy", set in the town of Huedin and the commune of Beliş. Encounters included a primitive Khazar demons from several hundred years prior, renegade gypsies and werewolves. I think I know too much about Transylvania.

This week also witnessed the arrival of several books from the U.S. on game design (primarily C++, Java, Python, MUDs and artwork), I'm all prepared for 2006 ;-). Whilst on topic...

"Dungeons & Dragons, instead of a game is a teaching on demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex perversion, homosexuality, prostitution, Satan-worship, gambling, jungian psychology, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration, demon summoning, necromantics, divination, and many more teachings, brought to you in living color direct from the pit of hell."

Thanks to Baptist Pillar for this fine piece of work. Huzzah for living colour from the pit of hell!

In other news I've been working my way through getting the MySQL library and PHP interface going for the Borderlands library. So far so good, although we are somewhat restricted by several years of bad design from Primasoft (this said their customer support has always been quite good).

Comments

[livelurker.livejournal.com]

The Jungian Psychology reference makes me think that it's what The Sunday Slimes grabbed for their reference when they published their D&D is evil article many years ago (and probably still do on a regular basis, but I don't read the Sunday Times any more). This had the accompanying photo of the Demon from the front of the Players Handbook (or the DMG?), carefully cropped to not show the PC's fighting the Demon :)

While we're at it:

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20Religions/Wicca%20&%20Witchcraft/harry_potter_is_of_the_devil.htm

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The Sunday Times had one reason for existence; the Reader's Mart. Now that there's the Internet it has no reason for existence.

According to the article buying a Harry Potter book makes you a member of the Church of Satan...

"In 1995, it was estimated that some 100,000 Americans, mostly adults, were involved in devil-worship of some sort. Today, more than 14 million children alone belong to the Church of Satan, thanks largely to the unassuming boy wizard from 4 Privet Drive. Yes, the numbers ARE horrific, but the total sales of Harry Potter books, plus the natural hand-me-down factor where many people read a book that has already been purchased, easily equals or exceeds this staggering figure of 14 million."