Category: General

I worked like a monkey today (yesterday, technically) to get the drawing I was working on done, so that I could go swimming with Y and A. (I’m not using those acronyms to anonymize Yvonne and Anghold. I’ve seen that on other blogs and it’s stupid. I’m doing it here because I was too lazy to type out their full names and if you keep reading you would see exactly who I went swimming with. Anyway that is all Pepsi under the bridge now.) While I worked I watched the first 10 or so episodes of the Dungeons and Dragons cartoons. I thought it might be really fun to run a campaign where the characters recreate the series. I wouldn’t make the players be Hank and Eric and Sheila and all the rest – I’d let them be any modern day characters of any age, gender, etc. They could even play themselves. It doesn’t matter who they are – the commonality is that they go through the D&D ride at the carnival in “our world” and end up trapped in the D&D realm. I would assign them their character classes (after a short discussion with the players about what classes they definitely did not want to play) and give them their fantastic weapons. They would go up against Venger and Tiamat but there would be no Uni. There probably would be some other NPC (and maybe it would be a pet – but not Uni). I wouldn’t necessarily strictly follow each episode’s story exactly, but the gist of it would be intact, and the best part is, after you’ve played the scenario we could all watch the episode it was based on and compare!

The pitfalls include a few notable shortcomings in the writing of the series. For example – if Sheila has the cloak that makes her invisible, why would she ever take it off during combat? She does that all the time in the cartoon. Truth is – I wouldn’t use the same weapons. I think I would keep Presto’s magic hat and throw out the rest. That’s where the Artifacts of the Ages book from Green Ronin would come in handy. And I would probably use Monte Cook’s Arcana Unearthed rules as well (nerds).

I think that would be a lot of fun. Too bad there’s no room to fit it into my schedule. I’m already being badgered to pick up the Freeport campaign that has been put on hold in favour of the World Wildlife Federation of Justice game.

Well – sun’s coming up. Time to go to bed. Janet’s probably just getting up about now. Pray for her and lost computer files.

Posting photos…

What’s not Ok
———
Extreme closeups of any kind
Pets & Cars (for fuck’s sake)
Baby / Childhood photos
ANY PHOTO that doesn’t include you.
Cartoons, even ones that look like you.
Nudity
Penises
Vaginae
Drawings and Paintings (even of yourself)
Famous people
Copyrighted images
People other than yourself
Closeups of tattoos or piercings
Funny internet photos

I only violated two of those rules.

Ursula, I don’t hate you – I just forgot to add you to one of my many email lists. That has been remedied.

Anghold, Yvonne and I played poker tonight after a session of swimming. They told me that bluffing wasn’t my forte but I will retort with the following statement – I could do that but I don’t want to.

Now here are the rules for Are You A Werewolf? There are many different variants. The one I played had no seers but had a couple of ‘hunters.’

Materials: Use plain playing cards. You’ll need two cards that say “Werewolf” (Aces) plus one that says “Seer” (Jack) and up to twelve that say “Villager” (numbered cards)

Instructions: Assemble a village of 8-15 people. Most players will be ordinary villagers, but two will secretly be hungry werewolves. A third player will also be a mystic seer who learns secrets during the night. Lastly, a moderator is needed.

Setup: Shuffle together both werewolf cards, the seer card, and enough villager cards so that there is one card for everybody. If no one takes the moderator card voluntarily, shuffle it in as well (Joker). Deal a card to each player, face down. Everyone secretly looks at their card, and may not reveal it until they are killed.

Night: During the night, the werewolves will kill someone, and the Seer will learn the truth about one player. The moderator must lead the villagers through the events of the night. It happens this way: everyone closes their eyes. The moderator tells the werewolves to open their eyes. The werewolves see eachother and decide who to eat (by pointing to one of the others). Then the werewolves close their eyes and in some way the seer or the hunter finds out the nature of just one of the villagers (I forget how this works exactly).

Day: The moderator says morning has come and everyone opens their eyes. He announces who doesn’t wake up because he’s been killed. Then the villagers all have to decide who they think is a werewolf and their villager of choice is lynched. Once a majority agrees to lynch someone, the lynched player shows his or her card and says nothing for the rest of the game.

Game Over: Repeat night and day until the werewolves are dead, or the number of werewolves and villagers is equal, in which case the werewolves overrun the villagers, killing them off openly. All players still alive at the end of the game are the winners.

So sometimes, the two werewolves will be lynched and the villagers will win. Rarer, I believe, is that one or both of the werewolves survive mob justice and they win. The werewolves are also villagers of course, so they get a say in who gets lynched, but they don’t want to say anything that would make them suspect! It’s a delicate game of bluff and bait.

Anyway, my point is that the second and last time I played the game (at Theo’s) I was a werewolf and the only surviving player of the game. I bluffed ’em all out!

Marlo cut my hair last night and we watched Ocean’s Eleven (the remake). Yvonne and I went out for a walk in the afternoon and watched the game of cricket that happens out in uh…Douglas? Park every Sunday. We couldn’t figure out the rules just by watching, but we came to the conclusion that the players were all Indian/South Asian. We longed for a frisbee.

That I forgot about Father’s Day and Mother’s Day this year. If it weren’t for Yvonne’s blog I still wouldn’t have remembered. Sorry Ma & Pa!

This morning I dreamt that I was visiting my old work place – The Book Man in Chilliwack – and after saying hi to everyone I noticed that there was a group of people there who were looking through various books. They were from a sanitarium from which an inmate recently escaped, and were doing research in order to figure out how he could have done it. When the store closed, they all left and they asked me if I’d come with them to help. So I went back to the sanitarium and on the way in I looked at all the crazy people and noticed one guy who was wrapped up in bandages. The staff and I all sat around a table and looked at plans of the grounds and discussed how he could have got out (tunneling, being shot out of a cannon, etc). Then I had an epiphany and asked if there were any inmates who had undergone surgery or had other kinds of medical attention. He directed me to the guy with all the bandages and we took the bandages off to find that he was the supposed fugitive. Then I dreamt I went back to Amber’s place to visit her and her parents (Amber’s dad Dave owns The Book Man) and I had to go pee really badly – but I couldn’t find the bathroom so I went in a linen closet. Of course then I woke up finding I really had to go to the terlet.

I also dreamt that I was moving out and I found a use for the two little cases that Anghold brought over last night – I packed CDs in them. Which in reality would be stupid.

Okay – I was excited about The Incredibles when I saw the teaser. Now I’ve seen the trailer, and I’m 10x as excited.

The bad news is, as many of you know, Keanu Reeves is playing John Constantine. This film is based on the comic series Hellblazer – about a guy who is tangled up in the occult. The comic is supposed to be good and I have never got around to reading it (I don’t think I know anybody who has any issues), and it is depressing to think that first exposure to many people is going to be this abomination. I can’t think of worse casting choices. Seriously – they could have cast Carrot Top and I would be more interested in seeing the film.

Enjoy Spring 2004 while you can, because it’s about to be gone forever.

Also – what’s the deal with the intolerable hotness these past 2 days? And I don’t mean me with my shirt off. Yvonne promised me a thunderstorm tonight and I feel cheated.

Please god, let it be cooler tomorrow. I give you so much and ask so little in return, you can do this one little favour for me, ok? I promise when I arrive in Heaven I won’t embarrass you by showing everyone your baby photos. Remember when I was 10 and I gave you that ultimatum – that if I didn’t have superpowers by the time I was 11 I would stop believing in you? I realize now that you gave me the power to RAWK and also I am a super-kisser, but at the time I didn’t know (and thanks a lot for not letting me find out until 8 years later, you prick), so I apologize for being an atheist for 22 years. No hard feelings, right? I’ll make it up to you by converting Marlo. But after that we’re even and I’m going back to waiting out death on the couch in front of the tube. Is “Wings” still on?

Kodos has been sick the past few days, but I think he’s getting better. Maybe he was just sick about Stewie being gone for so long (Toronto). He threw up quite a bit and I caught him trying to pee on things that aren’t supposed to be peed on (least of all by him), and sometimes succeeding. Well – I was going to throw that jacket out anyway. I was suspecting at first that it was the dry cat food I’ve been feeding him – you’re not supposed to feed male cats dry cat food because crystals build up in his urinary tract – it’s all very complicated and sciencey- any vet will tell you. But, I think he just had kitty flu. But – I won’t be feeding him any more of that dry cat food for a while, I’ll tell you that. So there is constant vigilance over here, but luckily I know Kodos well enough that I almost have a sixth sense when something is going wrong. For example if you’re in the living room and eating a burrito and he’s not by the couch pawing at your leg, shenanigans are afoot. There’s a trick I learned on my very own to make sure Kodos is getting enough liquids – dip him in the sink. It’s probably a bit on the traumatic side for him but then he slinks off and spends the next hour licking himself so its win-win. Uh, both of those wins are for me, by the way. Sometimes when I’m in the can he’ll wander in and start meowing, so I turn on the bathtub faucet just a tiny bit, and he’ll drink from the stream, constantly sneezing as water gets in his nose (he’s a bit of an idiot). It’s a well-documented factoid that cats prefer to drink water when it’s running. Who can blame the little cuties? I’m sure you feel the same way. I used to keep a bowl of water by his food bowl but instead of drinking it he’d just knock it over from time to time (see idiot note above), and that’s in everyone’s worst interests.