Steampunk fail dice

Anyone who knows me knows that I love to work with my hands and build things. I spend a good amount of my free time crafting various….things. More often than not the things I make are of a decorative nature. They also tend to be geeky in their origin.

For example, the latest things I’ve made have been a small companion cube, aperture science baking apron, glowing water tube lights, 2 dice trays, secret anniversary present for the lady, and now my steam punk failure dice.

You see, I had a lot of left over materials from the aforementioned anniversary present. Having finished that project, I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I picked up a new project.

I originally planned on making her a d20 die. After spending two hours relearning geometry I hadn’t used in years,  finally correctly scaling an equilateral triangle, and cutting out 5 pieces, I started to regret my choice of the d20.

Luckily she told me that a d8 was her favorite die so that saved me some work. After cutting all the pieces, I carefully glued them together to *try* and get the shape. I stained all the wood a cherry red, then lined the edges with brass. (This time I managed not to slit my finger open like I did last time working with brass). To top it all off, I found some aluminium in the recycling bin and cut out little Roman numerals for the numbers. I considered putting aluminium tips on all 6 corners, but that would require about another hour of figuring out a pattern, then cutting the metal, then trying to bend it into a 4 sided pyramid shape, and it’s already 4:30am…..

So without further ado, here is my d8 failure steam punk die.

The cement glue makes it look kinda crappy, but it’s better in real life. I also copied my actual d8 and put all the evens on the top row and all the odds on the bottom. The die itself is extremely light, since it is hollow. I’ve rolled it around a bit and I can’t tell if it’s bias to any particular numbers. I bet you could use i it in game if you wanted, but it’s mainly just for fun.

In the future I’d like to make light up dice lanterns….

What would you fight for?

Lately I’ve been getting the vibe that people feel having a strongly held opinion is uncool. The idea that you feel extremely passionately about something sorta scares them and turns them off. At least, I’ve noticed this within my religions class.

This really irks me. There is nothing wrong with feeling strongly about something. There is something wrong with not feeling strongly about anything. I can’t stand the people who are totally apathetic, the people who don’t really care about anything and what happens. These people deserve whatever outcome they get for their apathy.

I won’t say they don’t deserve their rights, because they are human beings and those rights are inalienable, but come on. I would fight and die for my rights, would you? The thing is, I’d fight and die for other people’s rights too.

The topic of abortion came up in my religion class the other day. This is a topic I feel extremely passionate about. For me, it’s an issue of a human being’s sovereignty over their own body. I’m not a woman, but I would fight and die to make sure women retained the right to control their own bodies.

I tried not to let my anger get out too much. I didn’t want to seem insane, but the other people in the class were like “meh, whatever.” The really religious people in the class who were anti-choice talked about their beliefs and the bible, and how they felt abortion was wrong, even in all cases. I tried to point out to them that believing that was fine, but nowhere do they have the right to take those beliefs and forcefully apply it to the population at large. They didn’t seem to understand this….

The professor asked if there was any way we could make the two sides happy, to which I replied “Yes, if you’re against abortion, then don’t have one. The religious can live their lives the way they wish, and the people who don’t necessarily believe the same thing can live their lives the way they wish. No matter what, the religious do NOT have the right to forcefully rob a woman of sovereignty over her own body.”

This kind of shocked people that I was being forceful. I wanted to tell them not to fuck with me, because this was an issue that I would fight tooth and nail over. I think that would have scared them. I can respect the people who feel just as passionate as me yet with the opposite view, but I have the utmost disdain for those who just don’t care. They’re just the blind, deaf, and dumb masses floating through life going with whichever way the current pulls them. They have no principles to stand by.