The weekend that urrrrgh.

It was a weekend which started with taking our kittens to be boarded, and ended with taking our kittens to be boarded.  After the hallway was ripped up for an oversensitive neighbor, I got to have the fun of dealing with tons of concrete dust all over everything.  Saturday I was OK, but by Sunday, inspite of the heavy-duty decongestants and antihistamines, I had a nice sinus migraine going.

In spite of all that:

• Iron Man on Friday was a lot of fun.  The main characters were perfectly cast, the armor was incredible in its believability, and the main relationship proceeded about as far as one would expect when a smart businesswoman realizes her charismatic though annoying boss not only is an alcoholic that sleeps around, but also has a weird, potentially lethal armor fetish thing going on.
• On the other hand, I saw Rise of the Silver Surfer.  it's interesting, that the things that went wrong in this movie (aside from the miscasting, wooden acting, and excreble dialogue) could be linked to the people in charge saying "this concept is too comic-bookish for our viewers, let's change it".   A superhero movie requires a careful balance between movie realism and comic-book fantasy.  X-Men 1 and 2 and Iron Man managed that balance deftly; Spiderman 1 and 2 nearly tipped too far into comic book land, and Not-so Fantastic 4 went way far the other way, making it, well small.
• Rock Band was a success!  I seem to be really slow to warm up, and I need to have just the right guitar and hold it the proper way, or I start confusing keys.  Nevertheless, I not only didfairly well on bass, I even managed guitar.  Now it's time for me to start upping the difficulty.
• Migraine or no, Sunday had a plus in that I found the new location of Game Castle, in a cheap area next to San Jose airport, that was still much nicer than the old location.  It's a nice large store, had lots of gaming going on, and actually had a pretty decent sized RPG section...though the organization was bizarre. 

On the minus side: taking the kitties anywhere in the carrier is getting more and more traumatic for all involved.  We may need larger carriers.  And I'm going to send my neighbors downstairs a bill for kitty storage.

[Gaming] Something else about RPG Gender Differences that annoys me

There was a recent thread on rpg.net about games that enforce gender differences: what games have them, how they are handled, and what players think of them.  I've always been of the opinion that altering basic stats based on gender is a bad idea, and that if one HAS to enforce the idea of a gender-segregated society (which in turn I tend to dislike), that social occupations and roles is the best way to go about it.

I think that a more important thing to note is that when it comes to games that give gender-based limitations and bonuses, nearly always the default average is assumed to be male.  This basically implies that the default "Human" is assumed to be male, which I think is as damaging a notion as the actual limitations.   I wonder how many people have been turned off a game by the implication that women are as inhuman as say, elves?  

Fortunately, games that enforce gender disparity seem to be rare, and generally in a genre I'm not interested in (generally historical or semi-historical simulation, like Harn).  that being the case, I wonder why people bring up the idea as if it might be a good idea?