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

The building … it was a mansion, a home …

I found it difficult to navigate. To get to certain floors you had to first go up, then down, then up a flight again. None of the stairwells were straight up or down. The walls of the place were mostly an off-white with wooden doors. The only floors with any real signifigance in this game were three and five. Five was my room, and it contained everything I, whoever I was, owned.

I was a mother – no, a step mother. There were two boys, not mine, but my husband’s. He was there, but I don’t think he was dead. I was constantly in fear when my husband wasn’t home. The boys were not my own, and I was the second wife, and younger than their mother.

I think they felt I was an embarassment to the family. The boys were 18 and 15, or somewhere around there. They never called me mother, except when their father was around or they were saying it sarcastically. They knew that they frightened me, and they’d tease and torment me when my husband was gone.

I was constantly searching the mansion. It was such an interesting piece of architecture, and that’s why I loved it. The boys thought I loved it because it had a secret. If it did, I didn’t care for it. All I wanted to see was every room at least once.

There was something preventing me from this, though. On the fifth floor, which contained my room, there was a locked door the size of a cupboard. I’d drawn up plans of the entire house from what I’d seen, and, if I were correct, this door should lead to the third floor, which I’d yet to see the main room of.

Perhaps it’s a ballroom, I’d think, and he’ll take me dancing . . . I would stand in front of the small brown door and think of all the things that could be behind it.

I closed my eyes and saw the stairs leading down, down to the third floor. Wait! What’s this? The stairs don’t reach the floor, there’s a five foot drop to the floor . . . if you can call it a floor, it’s not yet finished. But they’re working on it! Wonderful. I can see that it’s supposed to be a wooden floor, large, open ceiling – so it is a ballroom! Or a music hall, at least. The windows in front have just been installed . . . yes, there they are putting in the final touches to the beatiful stained glass . . .

I see my husband standing there, along with another woman. They’re admiring the new glass just as I am …

It all happened so fast. I didn’t know how to react. I shrieked as the pane fell from the workman’s hand and onto the woman. So that’s how his wife died . . .

Someone’s calling my name . . . I turn to see the younger of the two boys, the one who knew his mother less and me more. He didn’t love me, but he didn’t not care for me.

Yes, I’m alright, son, just having a bit of a daydream. As I said this, the elder son came, carrying a key. A bit of paper attatched to it was painted with the design of a setting sun.
He handed it to me, and he said, “This key is to the room that our father wished to give to our mother.” He said the final word with bitter hatred and shoved the key into my hand. He guided his younger sibling away, and left me there.

I turned over the key in my hand several times, and finally pressed it into the lock. The stairs were just as beautiful in the vision – the walls were painted in a panning view of a sunset. I looked at the signature on the paintings, and they were by my husband’s first wife. I continued down, and reached the unfinished bottom of the stairs. Everything was left as it was before . . . the floor unfinished, the glass covered . . . there was dim light coming in through one small hole in the window where a pane of coloured glass was missing. It also made the room quite chill. I jumped to the unfinished floor and walked across support beams toward the window.

Her blood was still there.

“This room was her design,” the elder son said, still on the stairs. “In fact, the entire house was. She always had grand designs in her head, and she married my father to be able to afford them. Ten years ago, and I still remember it as if it were yesterday . . .”

“I . . . know what happened,” I said. “I’m sorry you had to see it . . .” In the vision I’d had, there was a young boy next to me.

I shook my head, trying to clear my mind. I looked up again, at the outside of the building.

I walked inside, back to work again. The designs to the headquarts, they had told me, were based on that of a mansion design by the founder’s mother.

Well, that explains why the third floor isn’t finished.

amiZRAVEN (8:58:00 PM): this is the best 404 ever
amiZRAVEN (8:58:01 PM): http://www.homokaasu.org/errors/404.html
Schroe Dot Org (9:00:53 PM): indeed

I’ve never felt so off the norm in my life. I don’t know what it is.

It’s been seven months since I’ve moved to Chicago. I’ve been fine with the distance . . . maybe it’s the holidays, but the holidays never affected me before.

I find myself crying a lot. This isn’t something I normally do. I miss Jorenko, I miss my family, I miss my cat … I’ve never really cried about it until now.

I call Jorenko just to hear his voice. I don’t care what he talks about, just as long as he talks.

Love is the most amazing thing. It’s making me cry even though I’m still in it.

HOORAY! Spent the evening with Q.

We started out meeting downtown – she was supposed to be at the Virgin Megastore waiting for me, but she wasn’t. No biggie, we met up next to WGN and walked to the AMC theatre on Illinois.

We get in line, and they won’t take sodding credit cards. Bugger that, we went to the ABOs to get tickets. We wanted to see Harry Potter, but, unfortunately, the next showing was 1.75 hours away. Neither of us wanted to wait, so we went to the next showing of Die Another Day, which was in 10 minutes.

Whooosh! Prieviews. Whoosh! Movie! They should pay their dialogue writers a fuckload. Q is now addicted to James Bond.

The comes the Virgin Megastore. Q bought the DAD soundtrack, as well as Tomorrow Never Dies on DVD and some other stuff I wasn’t paying attention to :P

I snagged Daft Punk – Discovery.

We stopped at a starbucks and I filled out an application. The coffee upset my stomach, though.

Then we went to a Thai place and had some bubble tea and din din … and the best crab rangoon in existance.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH! We were so hyper and giddy after the movie.

She just keeps fucking talking and talking and talking and not saying anything …

She even attempts to mimic people and gets the meaning of a statement completely wrong…

I really hate it when people defend their stance in an argument with the idea that “I’m older therefore I know more.”

I plugged in the hand vac and the charger about 10 minutes ago. It’s spent very little of that time on the charger.

And maria wonders why it keeps dying on her.

She though she broke it at first, and started defending herself by insulting the product.

Q, we need to hang out more.

“I’ll leave you alone with your detachable penis.”

She was refering to my music. I laughed, then she said, “It sounds like a strap on or something.”

Hooray for Maria actually making me smile for once.

I was on the red team.

“The Red Team has lost,” the blue team leader called out to his crew. Bullshit, I’m still here, so we’ve certainly not lost. Besides, Sandra’s carrying out the other part of the plan. Just so long as she doesn’t get her arse caught – aw, Christ, there she is. She’s dressed in a blue and black uniform, trying to fit in with the blue team.

“Er, hey guys,” she says, waving. She puts her gun on the ground and then places her hands high in the air. The blue team takes her gun and sits her next to me. I give her the most hurtful look of dissapointment that I could muster. I want her to hate herself for her mistake.

“We still could have won,” I say to her, “He was bluffing. How many times have I told you to never give up?” I place my emphasis on the last three words. The simulation around us fades and the instructor’s voice is heard, stating that the simulation is over due to trainee simulated death, and the next capture the flag simulation will be starting shortly.

We take our positions as the holographic world forms around us. A bell rings to signify the start of the game, and I send Sandra off to capture the blue team’s flag. I stay and guard our flag. While she’s out collecting ammo instead of completing the object of the game, I’m swarmed by blue team sims and taken out.

Sandra returns to share some ammo and guns with me, speaking before looking in my direction. “I grabbed you a few… Oh dear,” she says, and the items she had in her hand cluttered to the floor. I don’t know if the color left her face because she’s staring at her dead partner, or because she knows it’s only simulated death, and she still has to face me when I come to. While she’s fretting over what to do next, a blue team member shoots her, and the simulation ends again.

I get up from the floor without a word. I say nothing to her as the simulation starts again.. The truth is, I’m embarassed about being taken by surprise, but Sandra thinks I’m pissed at her. Once the buzzer rings again, I say to her, “Stay and guard the flag.”

“There’s weapons right down there, can’t I go get some m-”

“No.”

“Will you at least go get them? You can get a pair o-”

“No.” I leave, exiting into the hall opposite the direction toward the enemy flag. I rush down some stairs, picking up various weapons on the way. I hear the blue team soldiers coming my way just as I pick up a RCP120. There was enough ammo back here to power its cloaking device and allow me to fire at them. The soldiers are modelled after real members of the armed forces to which I belonged, so one of the people I’m shooting at looks like Jorenko. This doesn’t stop me, because that would go against the code of conduct.

Sandra hears the shooting and panics. She calls out for me, partly to see if I’m alive, partly to see if I’ll come back and protect her.

The vision breaks. I look in my hands to see a water pistol, and the simulated area is now a subway station.

Sandra calls for me again, and I look. She bounds up next to me and asks, “Amanda, are you alright?” I look around me and see no threatening figures, other than the man with a rather wet face. He walks off, slightly peeved at having been shot with a water pistol.

A voice in my head speaks, “There are no wars, Amanda.”

I respond, “Then why was I trained?”

http://soap.schroe.org/cg/Amanda%20-%20Spectre%20Uniform.jpg WORK OF ART YAY

Just so I don’t forget to tell the joke when it’s appropriate:

My New Year’s Resolution is 1280×1024.

What the fuck is wrong with me? I never cried for anything like this before …

Well fuck that. Music recylery isn’t buying/trading right now.

http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html :o

#11 Rantt Ô_õ 11/19

I had this one planned for a while, but I never got around to drawing it. The content may or may not be humorous now, depending on your understanding of the situation.
Allow me to assist. The Sim in the red shirt represents my math teacher who looks surprisingly similar, both in face and dress. The female Sim he is speaking to is supposed to be me, even though I look nothing like that, and would never be caught dead in that color of sweater.

This is an actual conversation, wherein he was attempting to show the other students how easy it is to break down a number into its prime factors.

After Jorenko and I had finished watching some ReBoot episodes, I hit play on Winamp. The song was “Yoko Kanno – Adieu” from Cowboy Bebop.

Long distance relationships suck.

He never sees it, but I cry every time I have to say goodbye.

I don’t know what to hate myself more for: Falling in love and moving away, or making him fall in love with me and moving away.

It’s kinda hard to beleive that we’ve been together over a year already, and that most of that has been 250 miles apart.

Life both sucks and rules.

I had a dream that I lived in a three bedroom appartment with a bunch of people with “problems.”

The appartment was actually owned by a rather rude gay couple, who liked to rub it in people’s faces that they were only in this appartment because of their “kindness.” They stayed in the larger room, and had a kitchenette of their own.

One of the other rooms was occupied by a young man and his younger sister who had run away from an abusive home. The young man was around 18, while the girl was around 8.

I was granted the largest room in there because I needed the largest space. I had two children, twins.

Red is the gay couple’s room. Green is the young man’s room. Blue is my room. Yellow is the bathrooms. Cyan is the kitchens. Magenta is living room/loung areas.

My children, one male, one female, named Brendon and Melissa, dressed and blue and purple, went with me everywhere. (This is the only similarities with Home Movies that you’ll see.) Melissa had earned the nickname “Noah” from Dennis. I don’t know why, but whenever he saw her, he’d call her “Noah,” and make comments about Noah’s ark and such. Many people ignored Brendon, and often forgot his name, just calling him anything that started with a B.

I took very good care of my children. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I hated it when my family (not immediate family) came to visit, though. They would always bother me about the obvious, and offer advice on how to raise kids.

One day, the gay couple kidnaps Brendon to torture me. I’m looking all over for him – I check the young man’s room. I wake up his little sister, so I get her a glass of water when she asks for it. The water barely runs from the kitchen faucet, so it took a while. After I put her back to bed, I knock on the gay couple’s door.

They answer, both of them are bleach blonde, one with bishie-short hair, the other with a crew cut. The evade my questions, and giggle slightly. One had been on the computer at ebay.

I return to my room and start searching on ebay. I find a listing for a 3 month old child (Brendon). The seller name is one of the gay men. I storm in and grab my child back from them – they had him on a small matress in their lounge.

A few days or a few months, I couldn’t tell, later, I took the kids to watch the little league game of the little girl’s. Dennis was still calling Melissa “Noah” and he loved making my kids laugh. He was being like a grandpa to them. I asked him to watch my kids while I ran off to the port-a-loo, and when I returned, the kids were not there, not even their carriers, strollers, or bags. Dennis wasn’t there, either, and the others from the appartment had left.

I looked all over the park for them, and couldn’t find them, so I took a bus home.

Back at the appartment, it was silence. The young man and his sister were not home. I knocked on the door to the silent lounge beyond it, where the gay couple stayed. They didn’t answer, so I barged in. They were on the couch, making out, and my children were not in sight. I searched all over their room, their bathroom, everything. No sign of the twins.

I was more shocked and confused than worried.

[01:17] * Schroe laughs so hard from tickling Ettin that she falls over laughing.
[01:21] * Ettin raises the couch and climbs out
[01:21] * Schroe falls unconscious
[01:21] * Ettin sits on the couch and sleeps
[01:21] * Schroe vows to give Ettin a serious ass-pounding when she comes to.
[01:22] * Ettin is now wearing metal underpants

http://www.vectorpark.com/levers.html FUN!

[23:45] [Schroe> Wait a sec …
[23:46] [Schroe> is the @ …
[23:46] [Schroe> … and OPpendage?

I had never met anyone who truly spoke before thinking until I met Maria.

schroe is a dimensional traveler and owner/ leader of the corkie commune
schroe is reached
schroe is a big collection of
schroe is the new site maintainer mentioned in the latest what’s new
schroe is going have to delete one of these posts
schroe is my friend

amanda is
amanda is ready and waiting for
amanda is pretty or

amanda schroeder is glad to take advantage of the uhsc for many reasons

I had a dream about Dennis’ – I was playing a pinball game right by the door. I was doing so well on it that it was like, “Why am I even playing? I don’t even like the cheering.” Yes, people were watching and congratulating me on a game well played.

Dennis then came in with his brother. (hH doesn’t have a brother in real life, not that I know of at least.) I’m ushered over to the dancing games, because that’s what I’m supposed to be playing.

I passed up the PIU machine for the flashier display next to it – Technomotion. The deal with this setup was amazing. You selected songs by physically walking through a display of hanging banners, grabbing the banner you wanted, and taking it to the DJ.

Someone picked a song for me; It was something I’d never heard of. The song started, and I got a glimpse of the board on a huge screen – this game was so intricate that you not only had to hit the step, you had to hit it on the correct sensor.

After the kid who challenged me and I finish the song, both passing, I with a higher grade, I ask him what level that was. “Oh, six or seven.”

I leave to look for the next song, and, while browsing, I see Traci D. (Strangely, she did not say “I know!” through the entire thing.) She and I caught up on the details of life. I showed her my “replacement Squee” which was some guy I was hanging out with. RS and I walk TD to the back door, where little Dennis lets her out. The back room that leads out was also a lift, which kinda freaked me out.

Back to the game now, someone stole my song. I wait for the next one, and I ask someone to grab one for me. While someone was browsing through, they hit the sample button for a song. I heard it and looked at the vid screen, where it was showing parts of the video.

The song was Subsonic Digital Electronics by Bass 305 (Though it was called Digital Bass in the dream) and the video was … Reboot. I scream at them to start the song, I want to dance to this.

They grab something else, time expires, and someone else takes my dance. I boo her off the stage in the middle of the song, then walk off.

She goes to bed.

She sits silent for a bit.

She then starts talking about nothing.

She shuts up.

She sniffles.

She coughs.

She tosses.

She turns.

She does this all extra loud.