You call them monsters?

Someone sent me a link to this page about using spiders in Dungeons & Dragons…as monsters. I am offended!

That’s right those creepy crawly bitey little buggers with all the legs and all the eyes. I hate them IRL [OFFENDED!], and will terminate any that cross over the agreed upon barrier into my home [<gasp> OFFENDED!]. Its a feeling alot of folks the world over share and that is easily exploited for your tabletop game. Which I suggest doing. Its amazing. So here we go – using spiders to torture your players in the best and most memorable ways.

First we have to establish a few things, the biggest of which are the types of spiders found in the game that can be used. Most people assume we mean either the tiny version or the giant version. There is however so~ many spiders that are all canon in 5e so don’t be afraid to mix and match them up to create more diverse encounters. For this blog we will just be talking about spiders not Drieders or spider demons, though I think those are also great things to add to the mix to spice it up. Below is just a quick list of those that can be found in the books. These are create starting points for an easy mix up to the normal spider.

  • Spider Swarm
  • Spider
  • Giant Spider
  • Giant Wolf Spider
  • Phase Spider

All right, if ever I were a Dungeon Master, first thing I’d do is replace all the player character races with that list. That’ll torture the players! Then I’d expand the list with more species of arachnids, and replace the Monster Manual with the Player’s Handbook.

And the test results are in!

No COVID-19 detected!

COVID-19/SARS-CoV, PCR
Undetected
SARS-CoV-2 RNA absent. This result does not rule out
COVID-19 in the patient, as the sensitivity of the test
depends on the timing of the specimen collection and
quality of the specimen. Result should be correlated with
patient’s history and clinical presentation.

I have been a very good boy about masking up and avoiding people, and I will continue to do so.

Meanwhile, at the Twin Cities branch campus of the University of Minnesota…

You would hope that the bright young minds attending an excellent university would be smarter than this, but apparently there was an opportunity to party in a courtyard at the university, so everyone shed their masks and abandoned all pretense of social distancing to mill about and swap viruses.

I guess the campus police broke up the party (FASCISTS!) shortly after the photo was taken, but still…

I wonder if this kind of thing has anything to do with the Fall Surge in coronavirus cases we’re seeing?

How awkward

I got into the doctor’s office today. I was hoping for strep throat (what a thing to hope for!), and they ruled that out fast. Out came the inevitable COVID-19 test, and I got the stick up the nose and my olfactory lobe scrambled, and that’s being sent off for testing, which will take a few days.

Then, surprise surprise, the doctor informs me that while my test results are pending, I’m quarantined! And I’m supposed to teach a lab tomorrow! Frantic backtracking and trying to figure out alternatives ensues.

I really, really wanted this to be strep. I could clear that up pretty quickly.

Getting worse!

This throat thing I’ve got made for an unpleasant weekend, and this morning I woke up with a mild headache and fatigue on top of a grisly meat tube that is oozing slime and sending rude signals to my brain. It better have cleared up by this weekend, and I’ve got enough of a challenge in having to give a one hour lecture this afternoon with a voice that wobbles in and out of the void.

I’m hoping to go in and get tested for the ‘rona this morning, just to get that possibility out of my mind. Also, Mary wants me to do a salt water gargle. This does not sound fun.

Another entry in the Carnival of Curiosity: Dr Myers’ Menagerie of Itty-Bitty Monsters

Next Sunday, our Carnival continues with a tour of the imaging side of my lab. I’ll just aim a camera at my microscopes and cameras and talk about how I put together a macrophotography and microscopy lab on a budget, and maybe put a few critters on the screen.

I might also remind you that this is a fundraiser, and you can optionally leave a tip at

Take a look at our fundraiser next Saturday

I finally got the schedule for our Carnival of Curiosity fundraiser completed. Well, for all the Saturday events anyway (I’ll work on the Sunday events tomorrow). So now you know what you’re going to do a week from today! You’re going to be trapped at home, as usual, and you’ll be glued to a computer screen, doomscrolling through Facebook…no, wait, not that. We’ll have something better for you. We have events scheduled all day long! Look at the schedule! It really is all day Saturday! Instead you’ll be enlightened and entertained by the various freethoughtbloggers, and be intermittently inspired to click a link and send us money!

Remember, this is a fundraiser.

Of course, it’s also a voluntary fundraiser. You don’t have to donate a penny if you don’t have one.

Anyway, the new stuff I added this morning for our Saturday schedule:

  • At 3pm PT-6pm ET, 11pm BST, William Brinkman will do a reading from his novel, The Rift.
  • At 6pm PT-9pm ET, 2 am BST, a selection of bloggers will participate in The Quiz, where their knowledge and wit will be tested. The winner will be crowned King/Queen of Freethoughtblogs! Very exciting.
  • At 8pm PT-11pm PT, 4am BST, we will have a Sophisticated Literature Reading, dramatic renditions of some stuff people wrote down. There is a reason it is scheduled for a relatively late hour.

See? You’ll almost be happy to be quarantined/on lockdown/bored to tears, because you’ll have us to turn to. And us to donate some of your shrinking funds to, if you can.

P.S. You managed to donate over a thousand dollars to us in the last week, which we appreciate very much, and which will significantly help reduce our legal debt. Thank you!

Oh no, there’s a chink in my armor!

I have been very good about avoiding all human beings. All my classes are taught over Zoom (although my first in-person lab is scheduled for next week), I don’t go anywhere, when we do have to go public, like our biweekly grocery shopping, we shun stores that fail to practice basic viral hygiene and we go early in the morning when there are few shoppers, and I always wear my mask outside the house.

So how did I wake up in the middle of the night with a fiery sore throat and inflammation bad enough that I can barely swallow? I am assuming I caught some bug somewhere somehow, and if one bug can find its way past my defenses, so can coronavirus. May have to dig a moat around the house. May have to install a laser point defense system. May have to seal all the doors and windows with sheets of plastic. May have to wear a biohazard suit at all times. May have to re-read The Masque of the Red Death.

It really sucks to have your vulnerabilities exposed during a pandemic.

Carnival of Curiosity: Science Fiction and Social Justice

On Saturday, 26 September, we’re going to have a stellar discussion with a stellar bunch of panelists on the collision of science fiction with social justice, and how it made the field better. You’ll want to tune in to this one!

Featuring the minds of:

Abe Drayton
PZ Myers
Steve Shives
Joe Stevenson
TD Walker

And remember, this is a fundraiser.