Curiouser and Curiouser

My subconscious drove me to buy pencil lead and an eraser the other day. And my hand has been sketching out details on scrap paper for hours now.

Apparently, I'm drawing again.

I killed a mouse tonight.

For the last few months, we've had a mouse problem in the building. We tried to get rid of them peacefully - getting rid of garbage, putting everything in plastic containers, have-a-heart traps, you name it - but they were still here, just not eating anything.

uDon installed the noise-emitting repellers on the first two floors, but hasn't gotten around to ours yet. So they've fled to our floor, and become more and more obnoxious. Not eating anything now - there's nothing for them to eat - but just leaving evidence that they've been on the counters and skittering through the walls loudly. I'm tired of scrubbing the counters every day. I'm tired of trying to scare them off and discourage them from nesting in the walls. I was pretty sure I'd overcome my compunction about not killing them.

I bought a pack of the classic kill traps today, just to see if they'd work. I was dubious, after seeing too many cartoons and never actually using them myself, but they were cheap enough to be worth a shot. The mechanics were simple enough, and they had enough power to snap a neck instantaneously. I set them when it was completely dark, and headed to bed.

After an hour of reading, I got up to use the bathroom and heard a tiny shriek. Sure enough, one of the mice had successfully eaten the bait from two traps, but been caught on the third. A big male, too. elenuial let me cry a little, then I gathered myself up, grabbed a plastic baggie, apologized to the mouse, and picked up the body, trap and all. My first instinct was to bury him, but I know all too well that that would humanize it and make it far too difficult for me to continue doing this. Throwing them in the garbage distances what happened and makes it easier to deal with.

The knowledge that this is how serial killers often process their kills is not comforting.

I feel bad, but this needs to happen. And I need to be behind this 100% until that third emitter is installed, otherwise we'll all go crazy.

It just sucks.

And what makes it worse? A tiny scientist part of me is impressed that the damn things even work and that I was able to load them correctly. I feel like a little less of the person I thought I was now.

EDIT: Make that two mice. One of the ones in a drawer near a suspected nest was successful. A smaller female.

So, with me, a large percentage of how a player gets cast is how they respond to the questionnaire.

As in, how much of an answer they give and the tone.

I am entirely serious.

I was thinking it over today as I sent out one-week reminder emails and looking over the ones I'd already gotten, as well as putting another one or two into my spreadsheet.

Actually, that's something I should mention. They way I store most of the base information I get from players is slapped into a spreadsheet with their answers in the corresponding columns. It's easier to answer big questions that way, like "Have they responded to me yet?" or "Do they want to play an E-pho?" or "Do they like romance plots?" Those are things that are simple and easy to look up. They tend to be straightforward yes/no or number value answers. Anything further than that, and we can refer back to the e-mail they sent for more details. (More details! I'll come to that later.)

( This is starting to resemble the OkTrends Blog, so I'm going to cut it. )

That was longer than I expected. But at least I'm understanding my casting MO a little better now.

I'll leave it up to elenuial to keep me from casting the... less than informational... players as Eeyore.

I have a hatred of those facebook memes where you take an image and tag it with your friends to suit, like a series of smiley faces with "The grumpy one" and "The silly one," etc. They had one for Disney. They had one for the casts of movies. They had one for everything.

Every other day, I get tagged in one of those obnoxious things. Normally, I wouldn't care, except that when you click to see more photos of a certain person, their photo collection is flooded with these 50-person memes.

As a rule, I untag myself from these things. I even wrote a note explicitly saying not to put me in them.

When I got a notification today that I'd been tagged in a photo, I clicked to see what it was. Upon seeing my name under the newest incarnation of the tagging meme, I sighed and let the mouse hover over my name to see what it was this time. Tag a new friend? Tag the person with the best smile? Tag someone who likes good music?

Nope. My name created a box over the very last square, with the words "Tag the prettiest person you know."

...

Damn you, vanity. Damn you.

I didn't sleep well last night at all. But I did manage to remember some spectacularly bizarre dreams.

One, David Bowie was helping me pick out clothes in an artsy marketplace. He dressed me like a gypsy.

Two, Tyra Banks started talking like Tia Dalma from Pirates of the Caribbean.

There was a third one that trumped all, involving a fight in Macy's between two girls in a fountain that turned into a spontaneous makeout session, and then the battle between good and evil. And there was a flying carpet ride and base jumping and a mustard-themed picnic.

Wow. I don't know if this encourages or discourages more sleep.

-Haz