Commons Approves Transgender Rights Bill

Yay Canada!  I think!  You are not entirely terrible!

Okay, yeah, it's pretty shitty that this bill was so massively opposed.  Why do people have a problem with the idea that trans people don't deserve to get the shit kicked out of them, literally and figuratively, just because of their gender?  Fuck you conservatives.  Normally I'm not very political, but when almost an entire party thinks that some people don't deserve equal treatment, that's a pretty big sign that your party is bad and you should feel bad.  Not to mention Prime Minister Stephen Harper (may his asshole fester) opposed this bill.  Seriously?  Why you gotta be a shit, Steve.  Nobody likes you.  Get outta here.

Canada's supposed to be this super-cool country where everybody is all "hey, do what you want!"  We've got gay marriage and unrestricted abortions and free healthcare and all that neat stuff that other countries are jealous of.  So why did we have to compromise to get this bill passed by removing the "gender expression" protection from this bill?  What, it's only okay to be trans if you stay in the closet and never express your true gender?  Not to mention the whole bathroom thing. I gotta say, I don't get why people have a problem with trans women using the ladies room and trans men using the men's room.  It can't really be because of pervert-fear.  For one thing, there are lots of unisex bathrooms out there that nobody is screeching about, so calm the fuck down.  Also, even in gender-segregated bathrooms, a cis women can be just as perverted as a trans women, and non-trans guys dressing as a girl just to get into the ladies' room instead of downloading porn or something is pretty far-fetched.  Besides, where's the danger anyway?  You don't get undressed right out there in the open (except in the men's room, where you unzip your fly to use the urinals, I guess), you're safely locked in a stall so you can take care of business with some privacy.  And it can't be physical safety -- in that case, why have public bathrooms in the first place?  Because I can get the shit kicked out of my by a random woman just as easily as by a trans woman, and I'm probably more likely to get beaten up or harassed by a cis chick.  I haven't got the stats on me, but I remember reading once that cis women attacking people in the restroom is more common than trans women attacking anybody.  And trans women are way more likely to get assaulted than cis women, so if you're trying to protect trans women with this, it seems like they'll be a lot safer using the ladies room than the men's room.  A lot of guys are culturally conditioned to be total shits to anybody who challenges male gender roles.  That's why being called a fag or a pussy or girly is an insult.  There's nothing wrong with being gay or being feminine, unless you are a guy who thinks that women are inferior and that being gay is as bad as being female.

Also, I can't believe I have to point this out, but trans does not mean pervert.  Trans women aren't dudes who get off on wearing a skirt and makeup.  And they aren't pedophiles.  What is it with assuming that anybody who is even slightly different from the "average" person is a pervert or a pedophile?  Like people who insist that gay people shouldn't be around kids because pedophilia  or trans people shouldn't use the bathroom because pedophilia   Nobody worries that a straight cis person is gonna touch your kid in the bathroom.  I get the feeling that all of this "for the children!" claptrap is just a cover for "I don't like people who are different from me, so I think there should be a law to make sure they all go away!"

But let's look on the bright side.  Despite the depressing opposition and compromises to this bill, it got passed!  Yay!  Canada is a better place today than it was yesterday!

AMAZON WOOOOO

Guess what!  My D&D Player's Handbook came in the mail the other day!  It is AWESOME.  Thanks, TK!  It's way easier to read than the pdf version I've got.  I much prefer reading physical books than pdfs, though I'll be the first to say that pdfs have a hell of a lot of perks to make up for their lack of physicality.  Still though, you gotta love a real book.  Check it out!

I was gonna get a Dungeon Master's Kit and another set of dice, too.  I was really excited, because the DM kit was only like twenty-five bucks instead of forty or fifty, like it would be in stores.  And the dice were so cute!  But then I found out that I was looking at the wrong site, and it would be a lot more expensive to ship from Amazon's US site than the Canadian site, so I couldn't actually afford it.  So I shrugged and was all, "Oh, no biggie, I'm sure it's on the Canadian site too, I'll find it there and get it!"  But it turns out that while you can get the DM kit on the American site for twenty-five dollars, the only one on the Canadian site is fifty bucks.  And while I had hoped the dice would be cheaper online, it turns out that with shipping a set of dice costs pretty much the same as it would in the shops around here.  The only perk would be that you get more selection with online shopping, and even then all the really pretty dice are either more expensive, or they're on the American site so it'd still be ridiculous shipping.  So there's no real point to getting them online anyway.  I'll just swing by one of the local game stores sometime and pick up another set.  Besides, the dice you can get here are just as pretty as the ones online, even if there aren't as many different sets.  Look at the first set I bought!  So pretty!

Yay!  My preciouses!

I might get the DM kit in town too, if I can find it.  My brother's into D&D as well and he's willing to chip in for it, so it'll still be pretty cheap in that case.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to get it before our first session next week, but when it does come in it'll be fun to use, and even if we start playing without it, we've got enough to go with as it is.  He's looking forward to practicing his DM skills, and I'm looking forward to getting a chance to play as a character before I have to DM.  Everybody wins!

Gun-related murders vs. Video game use

I'm just gonna leave this right here.  

hat tip lousycanuck

My Favourite Search Keywords

One of the neatest things about having a blog is being able to see the audience stats.  Not so much where the audience is located, more how they got here (though I am surprised so many Russians visit my blog -- I got more pageviews from Russia this week than from here in Canada.  How do you guys find my blog?  I can't even get people I know to find it!).  As in, what words they typed into Google to find my blog.  These are some of my favourites so far:

"And when you leave thine dorky realm"
I don't even know what the hell this is, but it sounds rad.  Welcome to my blog, awesome person!

"Jesus eating a penis"
How I wish I could deliver what you seek, my friend.

"Silly bitch i dont want your boyfriend"
I'm...glad?  I wish you wanted apostrophes.

"I can't ever be a nail"
Maybe it's just me, but this one sounds so sad.  Poor nail want-to-be.

"Memes about your mom calling y..."
I wonder how the rest of that sentence is supposed to go?  The stats page cuts off the sentence if it's too long.

"Why cant i slut shame"
Why indeed, anonymous wanna-be slut shamer.  Why indeed.  I hope you found your answer and stopped slut-shaming after all.

"3 ahahahahahahahahahahaha 2"
Numerically jovial!

"Women fuck and stuck with dog"
Um....all right then.  I....I hope you liked my blog?  I don't think I have much here that would hold your attention, though.

"Was watching it and had"
The weirdest thing about this one isn't just the complete lack of substance, but rather the fact that I've gotten eleven hits from this phrase.  All the others are just one or maybe two.  What is it with this sentence fragment that draws people here?  If anybody came here by searching this phrase, I'd really appreciate it if you'd drop me a line and let me know what you were searching for.  Half of these phrases just make me laugh, but the rest make me really really curious.

Go Me! 100 Posts!

Okay, so that might not actually seem like a lot at all.  Also, is it cheating to make my hundredth post a post about how I've hit a hundred posts?  Also also, is there anybody who actually cares about my blog?  All evidence points to no.  That's okay, nobody reads blogs.  I'm just proud of myself for sticking with it for this long.

I really didn't expect to keep up this blog at all past the first few days.  Certainly not past a week or two.  But I've managed to keep it up pretty well, with at least one post a week on a bad month.  I generally try to average a post every couple of days.  They may not be the most interesting posts, but nobody expects a blog to be interesting anyway so I think I'm okay there.  I should celebrate!  With gifs!  Yaaaaaaaaay!

Wireless Mouse: Logitech vs Microsoft

I don't like trackpads.  No, wait, let me rephrase.  I loathe trackpads.  They are a vile, hideous, oozing pus-filled plague-boil of fuckery infecting laptops everywhere.  Trackpads are the worst.  Trackpads cut NASA's funding.  Trackpads were the masterminds behind 9/11.  Trackpads invented New Coke.  Trackpads are the opposite of Batman.

So I bought a wireless mouse!

Actually, I have two wireless...mice?  Mouses?  Whatever, two of them.  One I've had for about a year, maybe a bit longer, which I bought when the wired mouse to my desktop computer stopped working.  But I didn't want to take that mouse from the desktop computer, so I got another one for my laptop a few months ago..  And now...I'm going to compare them!  WOOOOO!  I've never compared techy-stuff before, so I have no idea what I'm doing!  Wooooo?  Really, this is probably more TK's area of expertise, not mine.  This is going to be a train wreck, I can tell.  So let's get on with it!

gif unrelated

Well, the main thing I was looking for when I went to buy a new mouse was to find a small one, to fit my hand: I have kinda small hands, I guess, and pretty much every mouse I've ever used before buying my own was bigger than my hand.  Which I guess wasn't bad, but when I went to the mouse-store and found out "Holy shit, this one FITS IN MY HAND" it was pretty crazy!  Having a mouse that fits my palm is super-comfortable.  So both of the wireless mice/mouses/whatever I bought were like half the size of every previous mouse I've used.  After the size, I wanted a mouse-wheel.  It is so weird to use a mouse without a wheel after you've gotten used to using the wheel.  The third thing, it had to be adorable.  Or at least not-ugly.  Call me shallow all you want, but if I gotta look at it all the time it should be appealing.  Fourth thing is, I had to be able to afford it, so somewhere in the area of twenty or thirty dollars.  That's pretty much all I thought about when I went mouse-shopping.  I dunno if there's any other way to decide what you want in a mouse.  Again, I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing here.

My new mouse is Microsoft brand.  It takes one battery and has a colorful if somewhat abstract design.  I believe I bought it for around twenty dollars.  It fit my hand perfectly, measuring at three and a half inches long according to my sewing tape.

It's an okay mouse.  It's comfortable to use and has a mouse wheel and two mouse buttons, it was affordable and cute, it's, you know, a mouse.  I don't really know what else to say about it.  It doesn't have extra buttons or do anything fancy or flash or light up or anything, other than the on-light.

Congratulations on meeting the minimum standards of mousehood!

I stopped using that mouse a few months after getting it, though.  I liked it well enough, but it had a few flaws that made it a not-great mouse.  For example, the battery cap on the underside wasn't perfectly smooth, so it had a tendancy to snag on the fabric of the sofa where I was usually using it.  I adapted to that by getting a denim placemat and using it as an armchair mousepad.  The thing I didn't want to adapt to was the battery life -- I only used the mouse for a few months because I got tired of having to replace the battery every three or four weeks, even though I always turned it off when I wasn't using it.  So I plugged the Microsoft mouse into the desktop computer that I haven't used since we had to unplug and move it while we redid the floors, and I took my older Logitech mouse from there and started using that.

The Logitech mouse was I think about twenty-five or thirty dollars, but I might have gotten it on sale, I'm not sure.  But I bought it, so it must have been in my price range.  It's a good mouse.  It doesn't have any sort of design on it or anything, other than the logo, but it's a deep pretty red that doesn't really come through in the photos.  It's not as pale or orange-looking as my pictures make it seem.  It uses two batteries instead of the one that the Microsoft mouse uses, but other than that it's pretty similar.  The two mouse-buttons and the wheel, the on-light, you know, general mousy stuff.  It's slightly larger than the other mouse at four inches long, but it's still comfortable in my hand.  I think I prefer the size of the Microsoft mouse, but I like the Logitech mouse much better overall.

I've had this mouse for about a year, and I leave it on literally all the time.  I even left it on for the four months or so that the desktop computer was disconnected in the corner of my room, and it was only the other day that I had to change the batteries for the first time.  I could tell it was starting to die, because it was shutting off every now and then, but I am gonna think of that as a perk - it was letting me know that the batteries were getting low, but I could keep using the mouse by just switching it off and back on and it would work fine for another little while.  I put off replacing the batteries for as long as I could, until it was shutting off every ten minutes.  Still, it was doing that for like a month and it wasn't all that annoying, so I gotta say I am really fond of the battery life.  The only drawback to the Logitech mouse is the battery cover --  it's not on the bottom like on the Microsoft mouse, so it doesn't catch on anything, it's under my palm -- the part with the logo on it.  Like I said before, I usually use my laptop on the sofa in the living room, and use the mouse on the armrest.  The mouse gets knocked to the floor constantly, because that's a high-traffic area; I'm always shoving it with my elbow when I move the laptop, or brush it when I get up, or knock it when I reach over for a drink or something.  And every single time it falls down, the battery cover pops off.  Sometimes the cover gets lost under the sofa and I have to spend ten minutes moving furniture to reach it.  Yet despite opening so easily when I don't want it to, I could not for the life of me get it open when I had to change the batteries last week.  I had to put it on the armrest and then push it off to open it.  I'm pretty sure that's not how it was designed to work.

So overall, the Logitech mouse has a flaw or two but is the clear winner when compared to the Microsoft mouse.  I was really disappointed in the Microsoft mouse, actually.  I thought it would be way better than it was -- who puts a rough snaggy bottom on a mouse?  Not Logitech.  If you are in the market for an affordable wireless mouse and have to choose between Microsoft and Logitech, go with Logitech.  

Much less shitty than Microsoft's mouse.

I Am A Terrible Dream-Pet Owner

Once I dreamed that I had two pet hamsters that I kept in a standard-size (read, small) cage on top of the dresser in my room.  I dreamed this a year or two ago, and it was not a particularly exciting dream, with the exception of two cute hamsters.  I have always wanted a hamster.  I can't have one though, because I am not nearly responsible enough to keep a small pet.  I can handle a dog, but a hamster is beyond my capabilities.  I'll leave the cage door open and the hamster will run out and get caught in the sticky trap in the kitchen, and it'll be just like when mice get caught in it.  I'll hear my pet screaming in terror and biting at itself until it bleeds, immobilized in the glue until somebody finds it, and all you can do is put the entire trap with the screaming terrified rodent into a plastic bag and smash it with a wine bottle to put it out of its misery.  It's the most inhumane form of trap.  I wish it wasn't so effective.  Also, I wish people would keep hamsters in larger cages.  I've never seen a hamster really happy in one of those standard-size cages, that are like the size of a shoebox.  Hamsters get bored in those and just sleep in the corner all day and get fat because there's no room to run around so all they can do is spin on that little wheel.  I've seen hamsters get bored of that wheel.  Hamsters seem to be happiest in those huge two-story cages with the tubes and shit to run around in, and a little cubbyhole to hide and sleep in.  If I ever get a hamster, that's the cage I'm getting.  Fuck the tiny one, I want my hams to have all the space they need.  

But I digress, I was talking about my dream-hamsters, not my future-hamsters.  Once a year or two ago I dreamed I had two pet hamsters that I kept in a cage on top of my dresser.  And every so often I remember that dream, but I forget for a second that it was a dream.  So I remember owning hamsters, and then I go, holy shit I haven't thought about those hamsters in months the poor things have starved to death I'm such a terrible person!  And it's only after I have made myself feel miserably sad and guilty over being such a terrible person that I remember, wait, I've never owned a hamster, that was only a dream I had once.  I am not sure if this is an odd story or if it happens to a lot of people.  I'm just blogging about it in the hope that once it becomes a funny story I tell, I'll stop forgetting that the hamsters were only a dream.  I love my dead dream hamsters, I don't want to think that I killed them.  The poor little things.

GIRLS ONLY, NO BOYS ALLOWED

Saw this on Youtube today.  Disney's The Story Of Menstruation.  There were a few comments that said something along the lines of, "I remember seeing stuff like this in school, they had a special class for girls and they'd show us this video/a video like this, the boys would go somewhere else."

There are a few reasons this video annoyed me.  First, the description calling this a banned cartoon.  This was never a banned cartoon.  I hate watching old cartoons on Youtube and just about every one is "banned," or claimed to be.  People just spread misinformation about cartoons being banned, because calling it banned generates more hits (or they just assume that any given cartoon must have been banned, because OMG LADY PARTS IN AN EDUCATIONAL CARTOON?  NOOOOOO!!)  Another reason it annoyed me is that the way the lady narrating pronounces "maturing" is so weird.  Mahtooooring.  The hell.

But the main reason I am annoyed at it is because of those comments, about how girls would have to watch it and the boys would be sent out.  Which isn't directly annoyance at the cartoon, more annoyance at how stuff like that has been educated.  Why can't boys learn how menstruation works, too?  I know most of that sort of stuff happened in Ye Olden Days Of Sexism, but I've heard of it happening in Ye Modern "Post-Sexism" Days* too.  I've met so many guys who have absolutely no knowledge of what menstruation is or why/how it happens.  Once somebody expressed amazement that women get cramps during their period.  Or that menstrual cycles affect hormones and shit even when we aren't bleeding, or that periods may not always be predictable and regular, or that being on your period doesn't automatically make you a RAGING BITCH RAAAAAAAR.  Dudes.  You are thinking PMS.  It stands for premenstrual syndrome.  As in, it happens BEFORE your period, and ends when your period starts.  So if you claim that any lady who acts irritable when you're being a douche "must be on the rag!" then you sound like a complete idiot.  Also, PMS isn't just "ladies hulk out!"  There are a lot of symptoms (and it's not universal either, there are plenty of women who don't get PMS at all) and they can include breast tenderness, clumsiness, headache, and any of these other symptoms here.
*Post-sexism: not actually a thing.

So why can't guys sit in on this video too?  It's not some big secret that ladies sometimes bleed from the crotchal area.  Most women do.  Most guys realize that most women do.  It's pretty hard to get through life without learning this little fact.  So why don't people want to teach boys as well as girls how and why it happens, and what to expect?  There's nothing wrong with learning about stuff that doesn't directly affect you.  And it's a good thing to learn about stuff that directly affects half the people you interact with.  Also, it helps you not look like a fucking moron when I mention a basic fact of life and you are utterly confused because "Durr, what does your period have to do with stomach cramps?"

And for the record, when I give you a death glare and/or punch you for making a PMS joke, it's not proof that I've got PMS.  It's proof that you've successfully pissed me off, because PMS jokes are one of my pet peeves.  How come every time a woman is annoyed or angry it's proof that she's somehow suffering from PMS, even while she's menstruating or has just finished a period?  What, men can get pissed off for the sake of being pissed off but whenever a woman is pissed it's because of hormones?  Fuck you.

Rise of the Guardians

Yeah, I watched that tonight.  Rise of the Guardians was actually somewhat better than I was expecting.  I vaguely remember seeing the trailer in theatres.  I don't remember my exact reaction, but I remember being pretty unimpressed and convinced that it was a must-miss.  I gave in today after a few friends recommended it, and I was pleasantly surprised.  It wasn't mind-blowingly amazing, but it was okay.  And that's way better than I thought it would be.

I'm not gonna go into any detail explaining the plot here, by the way.  I can't be bothered, really.  It was a good plot, so there's no fun to be had in really mocking it, but it wasn't an incredible plot so there's not a lot of gushing I could do either.  So if you're curious, either watch the movie yourself, look it up on Wikipedia or resign yourself to a life of never knowing.  I really don't care.  This isn't a review, all I'm doing is rambling about a few of the reactions I had during the movie.

First off: the character designs.  Some of them were really cool.  Santa was awesome.  The Tooth Fairy was really neat as well.  I loved Santa's Naughty and Nice arm tattoos, and his very Russian-badass portrayal.  His outfits were way cooler than the traditional red-with-white-trim santa suit -- the red-with-black-trim coat was quite striking, actually -- and I liked how he wasn't really fat, just big.  It was an interesting portrayal of a very classic, iconic character.  The Tooth Fairy was adorable, really birdlike and enthusiastic, and she had just the prettiest eyes.  Her little fairy helpers were cute too!

I didn't realize until after the movie was over and I was discussing it with my sister exactly how offensive the Easter Bunny was.  During the movie all I thought was "Oh, he's....not very interesting.  Kind of boring, really."  And then later on I'm like, "Holy shit, was that racist?  Or something?  Is there a world like racist that refers to countries and cultures rather than race, or does it all fall under racism?"  But yeah, it was something, all right.  The Easter Bunny had an Australian accent, and tribal tattoos or something, and, you know, he's a rabbit.  That super-invasive species that ruined everything in Australia and is still causing hella problems.  Man, that was a bad choice, Dreamworks.  Shame on you.  Think better next time.

Jack Frost's design was...ehhhh?  Overall I guess I liked it -- I mean, I liked his face and his staff and mostly I liked his movements, even if they weren't always as creative as I would have liked.  But his outfit...ugh.  So boring.  He starts out with an interesting enough outfit, right in the beginning -- it's like a cloak that reflects light rather interestingly in the moonlight, and reminded me of frost.  Clever!  But then fast forward a few hundred years and he's running around in...a hoodie.  Okay, fine, a hoodie with frost on it, but still.  How dull can you get?  That's part of the reason I never liked the trailer, I think, the character just looked too bland to be interesting, and his outfit was too modern and casual to make any impression about his personality.

And the Boogeyman, or Pitch Black.  Wait that's a terrible name, I'll just stick with Boogeyman.  His character design was baaaaaaad.  Like, really bad.  Well, more like really boring, but for a villain that's baaaaaaad.  Come on! The guy is darkness itself, he moves through shadows and controls nightmares -- you could have had so much fun with that!  Like the evil lady in Sinbad, that was a kind of dull movie but she was just so cool, her movements and actions and everything, it was just wow, you know?  You could have channeled some of that for the boogeyman here.  His body could have shifted with the shadows, changing shape and size, slipping away one minute then towering above everyone the next.  Or he could have stayed perfectly still most of the time and the scenery would move around him, how neat would that look?  And even without the change in movements, he looks so dull.  Just a plain black robe, plain black hair, nothing distinctive about him.  Why not clad him in shadows, so his robe melts into the scenery around him, or make his facial features subtly change depending on who he's talking to and what he wants?  He could have been made so much more creepy than he turned out to be.  I find that usually it's the villain that makes a film for me, and the Boogeyman being such a let-down was really part of why I found Rise of the Guardians a little lacking.

Another thing that bugged me during the film was how the children's belief in the Guardians worked.  As a kid I never really believed in Santa or the Tooth Fairy or anything, and if I ever did it would have been when I was very young, too young to remember.  But it seems to me that a child who really believed wouldn't immediately dismiss those beliefs as soon as one little thing happened.  One night of teeth not being picked up led to the Tooth Fairy immediately losing her powers -- what?  Wouldn't the kids' initial reaction be more "What, why didn't she come, what happened, why?" rather than "Oh, no quarter, guess she was never real!"  Or no eggs in an egghunt, or no presents at Christmas.  Either the non-believing parents would have put out at least a few eggs or presents of their own, so the kids wouldn't immediately lose faith, or the parents would realize that eggs and presents and tooth money shows up without fail and thus the Guardians are kind of undeniably real.  Also, a single night of bad dreams led to children everywhere losing all their faith in the Guardians?  My god, what sort of idyllic fantasy world is this?  Oh no, I had a nightmare last night!  Time for an existential crisis.  IS THERE NO GOD?!?!?!

And finally, the barefoot thing.  Jack Frost is barefoot through the whole movie, even in the parts that show his life as a normal human.  At one point some kids run outside in the middle of the night, stopping to grab coats and hats but for some reason not shoes -- the one thing you really, really need when you're running out into the snow.  What is the deal?  Movie, why do you not understand cold?  Well, maybe not.  Early on it shows kids celebrating a "snow day" when there's maybe a light sprinkling of snow -- not even enough to cover the grass!  If a city thinks that less than an inch of snow is significant enough to shut down schools, why would the kids have sleds?  They clearly don't get enough snow to use them. You are weird, movie.  All of this?  This is why you are only pretty good instead of awesome.  Try better next time, okay?

Dungeons and Dragons

So I'm pumped! I've been wanting to get into D&D for ages, but I haven't had much luck finding people to start playing with, I lucked out and got to go to one game of Pathfinder in December, but the DM left shortly after that and the group hasn't gotten together since. I was sadface.

The saddest sadface!

But I lucked out again the other day! A friend of mine recently realized how totally awesome D&D sounds, so she called me up and we decided to give it a shot! She's got a few friends who are also interested in trying it out, and there's plenty of space at my house to get together for a session.

I admit I'm somewhat apprehensive, since I don't actually know any of the kids except for Sam, we're all completely new to the game with my one Pathfinder session months ago being the most experience any of us have, and there is the potential awkwardness of me being the oldest person at 23 in a group of junior high students, at least until May when a friend is planning to move here and join in. But Sam at least is pretty mature for her age, and I trust that her friends are cool, so I'm sure we'll get along well. After all, there are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them, right? D&D is a great experience for anyone, does it matter how old someone is when they stand loyally by your side through thick and thin, facing mighty foes and challenging the forces of evil in a glorious quest to save the world and bring honour to your family name?  

Let me rephrase: when they don't immediately stab you in the back during your quest for loot?

Anyway. DnD is gonna be lots of fun, I'm sure! I bought my first set of dice the other day and ordered a physical copy of the Player's Handbook off Amazon, and I'm making a badass dwarven fighter character now. The character sheet is a little complicated and looks pretty intimidating at first glance, but a bit of Googling helped me find some really useful guides on building characters and filling out the sheet (that first link is the one I found to be the best), as well as background information on dwarves to help me with the roleplaying aspect. Add in some pdf copies of the core books and an online dice roller for the players who haven't got their own dice yet, and we're set! I'm really looking forward to this game.  You know, as soon as we figure out how to play it.