Art by MeddygonThere is a fine line \ Between genius and madness. \ It is called timing.

I am enjoying this point-n-click adventure with combat system reminiscent of Chrono Trigger with a hint of Wario Ware.

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One: great game or greatest game?
(hint: neither)

Good game. Certainly hilarious at times, and enjoyable to play, but I don’t see playing it again and again like I’d do with older adventure games of the sort. Maybe it’s just because I have more games now I don’t have to re-play old ones repeatedly for mild entertainment.

For a while I’ve been using two lcd displays. My first one, going on four years old or more now, has a crappy contrast ratio and really makes it difficult to deal with colors properly when making arts. Because of that, and because I’d just bought a computer that could hand dual display, I bought a second monitor under a year ago. That second monitor crapped out on me over he weekend. It doesn’t surprise me, though, it was $100 cheaper than most monitors at that time and came with no warranty. It did display dark colors better, tough, and now that it’s gone, I’m really missing being able to differentiate darker shades.

So I spent just under $500 on getting two new monitors for myself. This old one I’m using now I’ll be giving to my parents. They’re still using a viewsonic CRT I bought them eight or nine years ago.

(originally written 2004-2005)

Chapter 3
Dreams

The rest of the day went as usual and the evening just as well. I left the dock when the sun went behind the buildings and I could no longer paint with any natural light. My back was sore from sitting on the stool for eight hours after lunch, and I found myself wanting Nandin with me to carry my bags. I was fine without him, though. The short walk was one I made every day that it wasn’t raining. Oh how I wished for some rain right now, some excuse to not go out tomorrow. If I ever ran into Nandin again I would say, “Oh, I wasn’t at the dock because it was raining that day.” It would be something he could verify and understand and not in the least bit suspect that I was avoiding him. Oh, for some rain tomorrow.
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Jorenko’s in Germany on a business trip, attending a trade show. He spent today being a tourist and send me some pictures.

Behold the open-index goodness.

(originally written late 2004)

Chapter 2
Patience

The rest of the evening was uneventful. I was thankful for this, though to whom I do not know. Did I believe that the river was a god to worship? It seemed so primitive after all my education abroad to think that a river, a body of water, was sentient. Contractors rarely spoke to the river anymore. Some said this was because the distance of the new buildings from the water was so great that the river didn’t care. Optimists. It was clear that the land close to the river need better foundations and all new construction was done after the raining season, after the floodwaters cleared. The river wasn’t any sort of God, people just didn’t understand things.
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(Originally written in late 2004)

 Chapter 1
The Chase

The river was beautiful. It was as clear as filtered and processed water, but it was natural. The sky reflected perfectly making it the brightest blue. Not even the riverbed could dirty the water. The water flowed smoothly in some places, and had small rapids in others. Rafting the river was a common pastime.

It was the belief of the townspeople that they were the chosen ones because we were blessed with this perfect river. This city was the only one on the river. It was odd, so very odd. Others tried to start ports along the riverbanks, but the river would switch it’s course slightly to engulf their wharves, or it would rain and the runoff would flood the river and the town. The river seemed to refuse another city to be built on it.
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Base, two houses, one central raised platform. Two window seats near the ceiling to come.

Warning: crappy phone picture quality.

In 2000, a movie called “Pay It Forward” came about. In it, a social studies teacher gives his second-grade students a task for extra credt: come up with an idea to make the world a better place. The main character, a student, comes up with the idea he calls paying forward. Person A does three favors, for Persons B, C, and D. Then each of these people does three favors for three different people, so after just two tiers of this idea, twelve people have had their life made better in some way. The favors are to be done unasked and without any expectation or return: the person helped must simply pay it forward as well.

In the movie, the student starts his idea by taking a vagrant home and lets him clean up and get food. The child explains the PIF idea to him. The vagrant then learns that the child’s mother takes a taxi to work every day because her truck is broken down. The vagrant pays forward by repairing the truck. The vagrant noves on, and the idea spreads as he does his remaining favors. (Do watch the movie some time, the whole thing is wonderful, even if it is a bit long.)

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One must understand that in this profession there is a likelihood of hearing firsthand a man’s descent into madness. It is not often that this is heard, however, as most patients are brought to us already gripped by insanity’s claws, their conscious mind torn by their subconscious nightmares. A man submitted himself to our care today, fearing that the uneasiness he suffered mirrored that of his wife, whom he some months ago left in our care after she attempted her life. I will not give names as it is not in our practice to give away details without an estate’s consent, however, as no from their estate has seen or heard from this couple in some time, they will not know this story to be theirs.

Our first meeting with this man, for our purposes we shall call him Adam, was a half year or so ago. He brought to us his wife, whom we shall call Eve. She was a shy, quiet woman nearing her thirtieth birthday and looking not a day over twenty. She bore no outward appearance of being as mad as Adam described her to be, which he did so as if she wasn’t even in the room.

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duct tape, styrofoam, cardboard

I saw a How-To by Propmedic/Juego/Yoink/Wossname on how he made his bonesaw. First thought: AWESOME. Second thought: I want one. Third thought: I want mine a little thinner and a little longer.

So I made an outline.

20″ bonesaw from handle to tip. I cut one piece from some black mounting board using this pattern. Then I painted the blade part with some liquid silver I had leftover from another project.

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(originally written 13 April 2004)

As I walk down the darkened hall, my gun trembled in my hands. I had never been forced to use such a thing in all my days, but now I needed it more than ever. I glanced at the walls in the flickering light, trying to catch a glimpse of any movement in the projected shadows. In a brief flash ahead of me I saw one of the horrid things I was running from. Its pink, fleshy body leaned over the corpse of a man. The creature was easily a third the size of its prey, but I’ve seen them fight, and it frightened me more than anything in my life.

I stood in shock for a moment. I hoped to chance, I prayed to luck, that it did not see me. No thought of any higher power graced my mind as I searched for a place to hide. A God is only as real as the faith of his people, and his people were depleting rapidly. Centuries ago, one might assume these things to be demons summoned by occult rituals. But in this age of reason, Science replaced religion because it was more real. Rather than just tell of the horrible forces beyond our reach, it has now brought them to us.

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(Originally written 07 March 2005. Revised 15 March 2008)

I am legendary. That is to say, there are legends about me. I do not see why, as nothing I had done in life was worthy of legend. The stories about me happened after I died.

In life, I was a woman, and I did as women do. I served my husband faithfully; bore and raised his children. He defended our homeland, and I defended our home. I died as many women did in our time: a fatal blow to the head from an enraged husband. It matters not why he was angered, nor why he struck me. I was merely a housewife and this was my final reward for my years of servitude.
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Cream – Disraeli Gears

Heart – The Essential Heart

Black Sabbath – Greatest Hits 1970-1978

Culture Club – Greatest Hits

Primus – Sailing The Seas of Chees

Primus – Pork Soda

I have a headache. It started last night. It’s not a headache I normally have, and my medication doesn’t seem to affect it. It hasn’t gone away or diminished, no matter what I’ve taken.

So I watched it snow a bit in the middle of the night. Fuck. Snow. Means I have to shovel the drive in the morning, with a headache and little sleep. I got back in bed and put my earplugs in. I stared at the ceiling for a few hours, thought about tf2 strategies, social engineering at work, and other things.

I got up and looked at the clock. Two hours had passed. I pulled out my earplugs and heard rain. Fucking rain.

My driveway is two inches of ice.
Didn’t sleep.
Headache.
Coffee.

Some time last year, I got a spam email that has managed to live in my inbox for a long time simply because of the title above. The content is just as wonderful.

Do you like Jerky? Do you like money?

from Clint.

AMANDA,
Do you love JERKY? Would you like your JERKY to pay you money… I know it sounds silly, if not unrealistic, but let’s look at the facts:
1) It sells. It is literally sold in every convenience store, grocery store, and is in prime locations within these stores, all because it does sell!
2) It is consumable – people eat it (often within minutes of purchase).
3) It is naturally preserved (if it can last long enough to put into storage)
4) Is a great protein and low carb food source

While playing TF2 tonight, my Virtually Indestructible Keyboard decided to give out again. As it did, it caused TF2 to crash, right in the middle of a CTF_Well match. I had 55 uses of my teleporter, and since the map didn’t finish properly, my client didn’t record that for my stats. 55 uses! The teleporter use counter on the top left of the hud had rolled back to 0 several times! It was cool! And it didn’t count.

VIKs are soft keyboards made by GrandTec. I’d been using one for a while and I loved it. In the past few months, however, the outer silicone part had detached from the inner circuitry. There was a lot of shifting about and the keys would get stuck. I’ve switched to my cheap dell keyboard now. I really want another VIK, though, even though I know it’ll mess up all over again. I’d had it for a couple years, so I know it’ll last a while.

(You may have already read this. Originally written in October 2007.)

It made me uncomfortable when she looked at me. She was a stern woman, very strict. It was odd, and insulting, that she should save her softness for gazing on me. Sometimes, I’d look at her and see pity in her eyes. What sympathy did I need from her? The old hag never had children or a successful project. It should be her who receives pity, not me.

Whenever she’d review the work of her interns, she’d chuckle when she got to mine. It hurt to hear her laugh. She found no amusement in the work of anyone else. Why was she singling me out?
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doodlemash of silly

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Doodlemash

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(You may have already read this. I wrote it in October.)

A young woman walked along a street in the evening, surrounded by the open air and sunset. Her destination was far from any town, across a wide desert. She carried a backpack that, to the casual observer, might seem too empty for the length of her journey.

Scarcely a dozen cars made their way down the road in the three days she traveled. Several stopped to offer her a ride, though she never got in with them. She hated seeing cars. The cars ruined her view of the desert scenery.
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My husband and I wanted to start playing World of Warcraft again, starting tonight. Many people at my new place of employment play, and discussing it at work made me decide that it’s worth playing again. And, since we both have tomorrow off work, it would have been a great way to spend the day.

Did you catch that? Would. Have. Been.

We couldn’t log into our accounts to reactivate them, and we could reset our passwords because we didn’t know the phone numbers we signed up with. (For our protection.) James called Blizzard’s billing department. After much waiting (hold music is various songs from Blizzard games), he learned that his account had been canceled by a GM.  He was told that no information could be given over the phone (for his protection) and that he’d have to email the GMs about it. The gent helping him did forward the email regarding his account cancellation to the email address listed in his account (for his protection).
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CDs acquired:

Lynyrd Skynyrd collector’s edition, 3 albums (“What’s Your Name”, “Double Trouble”, “Forever Lynyrd Skynyrd”)

Iron Maiden, “The Number of the Beast”

Smashing Pumpkins, “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”

Primus, “Frizzle Fry”

Dragonforce, “Inhuman Rampage”

Dethklok, “The Dethalbum”

The skylark will be back, soon.

yay or gay?