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

Schroe Dot Org: As with any game creator, a pattern can be seen in their actions. Rare and Collecting things, for example. However, in crosswords and word searches, the patterns are more evident. In a crossword book, usually each puzzle within is written by the same person. This one person has only their own vocabulary from witch to draw words and clues. Once the answer pattern is detected, it would be much simpler to recall past clues to be able to fill in the words without other letter hints. In theory, one should eventually be able to fill in a crossword with using only the “Across” clues. Or “Down,” if they so choose. I was only on puzzle eight :-(
EcoFireKitten: I know exactly what that’s like. I had a book of crosswords (Easy ones) for the Maine trip
Schroe Dot Org: On puzzle eight just now, I finished without looking at the down.

English class tonight lasted 5 minutes.

All five minutes, the teacher praised me.

Out of 8 essays due over the course, I turned in 3.

And they were just that good.

The fucking bitch did it again.

Christ, she’s fucking stupid. She wakes up a full three hours before me, and doesn’t take a shower until the moment I get up.

Fuck it, I’m going to class late.

Update: The bitch gets out of the shower fifty minutes after she gets in.

I get in the shower 7 minutes after that, because she’s decided that she NEEDS to apply her makeup in the bathroom. (there’s 3 mirrors elsewhere in the apartment, yet she needs that one.)

I get in the shower, spent fifteen minutes in the bathroom altogether, including changing clothes.

I walk out of the bathroom, and the bitch LOCKED THE FUCKING BEDROOM DOOR.

So I wait another ten minutes for her to get out of there, so I can get my stuff for class.

Dammit, bitch, have some fucking consideration.

I don’t recall any of before this portion, other than that I was with my mother.

My mother left me with a cart at what I think was a Walgreen’s. The Walgreen’s was very large, and very busy. The hall I was in, which was near the doors and checkout, was crowded, and people were constantly moving.

I was watching the cart while my mother was off doing something. I leaned on it, bored, and watched people go buy.

Someone caught my eye. He was in an army uniform, and quite clearly had “Born to Kill” scrawled on his helmet. The peace symbol pins clashed with that, and I watched him walk. Then I noticed he was staring directly at me. He kept walking as he shouted at me, “Are you sane?” I blinked, and he was still there. I turned my head as he continued, “Are you like me?” I did a double take. He was still there, and he shouted one last time, “Don’t you want to be like me?” He began to laugh hysterically as he walked out of my sight. No one else noticed him.

I panicked. Thoughts raced through my head all at once – Why was Private Joker from Full Metal Jacket in Walgreen’s yelling at me? Why was he saying I wanted to be like him? How was I like him? I looked at the cart, and the cameras were missing. I never noticed there were cameras in there before, but now they’re gone. I assumed my mother took them to be developed, but I didn’t see her. They must be stolen.

I leaned on the cart and cried.

I’m going insane.

For the Research paper:

Candice fails to realize that we are not friends with her, we merely live with her.

Today, she decided to bitch to Jessica about me.

“I bet she just told Jake flat out that the bottles were mine, she probably didn’t even try to cover for me!” She says.

Why the fuck would I risk anything for that bitch? She seems to think that she’s done nothing wrong.

One of her excuses that she thought of telling Jake to get her off the hook for having 10 partially empty Corona bottles sitting on the counter was that she had a “bottle cap collection.”

…

One more thing.

Candace walked in while Jessie and I were reading my LJ, and Jessie asked, “Is there anything in there about me?” before we noticed she was there. I said, “Nothing bad.” Then Can chimed in, “What about me?”

ARG. “I’ve got stuff about everyone in there.”

“Can I read?” She asks.

“No, it’s my diary. I’m only showing Jessie the funny stuff.”

“Yeah, she won’t even let me read most of it,” Jessie pipes in. Thank you, Jess.

Can tries to read over my shoulder, but I keep the screen pinned to the Ninja Missions.

After a while, she gives up, sprays on a bunch of awful smelling perfume, and walks off.

Three people. One male, two females. RPG! Rapidly forgetting …

I find myself walking with two others through a market. The man seems nothing more than a fighter, and the woman appears to be an archer using crossbows. Well, poo, she’s out of bolts. “Don’t worry,” I say, “I’ll get you some.” The bolts are large wooden ones, about a foot long and an inch diameter.

We leave the marketplace, as I instruct. While walking, I find two bags of bolts on the backs of bikes. Great, I snag them and give them to the girl, and return to the market to get more.

Well look at that, a bike SHOP. I make my way in, ready to get some more. Walking out with a new crossbow and some bolts, I hear a whistle blowing.

Poo, I’m caught.

I start running, and more people start chasing. Some old woman tries to stop me, and, judging by the feeling I got when I saw her, she was an important character in the story.

She attacked me, and I stabbed at her with a loose bolt, and thwocked her on the head with the crossbow.

“What does a thief need with that,” she said after she saw what I stole, “You probably haven’t even got the intelligence to use it.”

“We’ll see,” I said, and pulled the sleek black weapon from the green cloth bag it had been packaged in.

I folded down the long black barrel, and stuck a bolt in. Snapping it back into place, I pulled back the hammer. There was one more thing on the side that I had to press. The woman was expecting me to not know of it, and she dropped her jaw in shock when I reached for it.

Fire one! Into her shoulder.

She screamed, and whined, and went on some villain rant that no one actually reads in a game, and I didn’t pay attention to in the dream. I walked up to her and yanked the bolt out of her, put it back into the bow/gun, and fired again, then ran off.

Dream out.

Hello, shitty day.

I had a job interview at 6pm today.

Six in the evening.

SIX.

I leave my appartment at 4:30, and get on a bus out to the blue line.

I get on the blue line to go to Cumberland.

Great, 30 minutes to get there, and it’s only 10 blocks away.

I get out of the blue line station to see the 5:40 bus I needed leave five minutes early.

I had to wait until the 6 bus.

I got to the interview five minutes late.

Five minutes after six.

Five minutes …

“Maybe you should have put the effort into getting here on time,” the bitch said.

…

MOTHER OF FUCK. I’m five minutes late, and suddenly, she’s speaking to me as if I’m some fucking slacker. She’s never met me, she’s never seen me before.

But you see, just because I’m five minutes late, I didn’t put any effort into this job interview.

So I walk to the next bus stop to get back into town. I’m way out in the suburbs right now.

Fuck, I hate the suburbs.

I walk to Irving Park, which is about halfway between Belmont and the Cumberland blue line station. I catch the IP bus there.

“Oh, sorry, I’m only going to Central.”

“Whatever, I’ll catch something else there.”

Put the card in, whoops, invalid.
Put the card in, whoops, invalid.
Put the card in, whoops, invalid.

“The thing’s good ’till October, man, just check the back.”

Driver checks back, nods, gives me card.

I get to Central, which is about 1/4 of the way in. Meh. Central bus to Belmont, Belmont bus to home.

Pull up to Central just as Central bus leaves. Next bus, 15 minutes.

Well, bugger.

While another guy and I are waiting, I go into the nearby convenience store and buy a bottle of water. I walk out, guy’s gone. I missed the early Central bus.

SOD.

I see another IP bus coming. I cross the street, this one’s going all the way to Lake Shore.
Whee.

Put the card in, whoops, invalid.

Driver looks at card, “As long as the date’s still good, don’t let anyone kick you off.” Nice drivers exist. Hooray!

IP bus to Brown Line station.

Put the card in the till, whoops, invalid.
“Code 13: See attendant”

“The reader says my card’s invalid. It says it’s a code 13. The card is good until October.”

Hold up card.

“Izit deant?”

“What?”

“Izit deant?”

“Pardon?”

“Yo card, iz it deant?”

“Dent? Hell no, the thing’s flat.”

Show the flat card.

Attendant rolls eyes, and slowly opens gate to let me through, behaving as if it’s some sort of horrid task to do her job.

I get up the stairs in time to see the brown line train leave. Next train, 15 minutes.

8 pm, I walk into Dennis’s Place for Games, and rip the hell out of any song thrown at me.

In a dress.

Okay, more dreams.

I dreamed that I had an apartment in the alley behind my grandmother’s house, and I could see her yard from my window. (In reality, there is a warehouse there, not apartments.) I was sipping coffee next to the window when I heard sirens. A police cruiser and an ambulance came into the alley, and pulled into my grandmother’s drive. I panicked. I ran outside and grabbed the police officer (female, blonde) and demanded to know what was going on. She looked at me as if it weren’t my business, and then I told her that that is my grandmother. She told me everything that she knew, and asked me if I’d seen anything. I show her a sketch from my sketchbook of someone who went to visit my grandmother earlier that day. (I was the blue-haired Schroe in this. In the next part, I’m myself.)
Next thing I know, I’m at my Aunt E’s house. Apparently, we’re house sitting. My brother orders me to …. Rake the lake. There’s leaves and twigs in the lake, and I’m supposed to clean them up. “Hell no,” I say, “I just got in from Chicago.”
Then my grandmother comes in, bandaged. The police told her she should stay with family until everything’s cleared up.
Later that night, an Asian woman in black leather comes into the house, and she resembles the woman that I had in my sketchbook.
Oh, poo. This time she comes after me. Then I woke up. Yay.

I’m not sure which came first, the sorority, the diablo, or the shopping, but the shopping came before the sorority.

The diablo portion of the dream … I was in a bus, travelling down an open country road. Eventually, we got out of the bus, though I don’t recall how or when. Something caused us to begin running back, and that is when it switched to the Diablo2 view of the game. I was an assassin (2nd time appearing as an assassin in a D2 dream, other times I’ve been a sorceress (2)). Another unidentified class is running up ahead of me. As we run, the ground starts to fall behind us. At times, I’m running up an incline to get to the next section of land. I’m the first to fall into the darkness when I couldn’t make it to the next plot of land in time. At this point, I began contemplating what it would look like of the viewpoint could be changed in Diablo, how it would work, graphically, and how they could program it to work well. (Jorenko had mentioned when we were playing d2 last night that he wished that view could be changed). After a moment, I found myself watching TV, and the local (Toledo) news was on. They were doing a special report on the event that had just happened. I was proud to see that they used my character on their screen.

The next part of the dream would have to be the shopping, then. I was in a small store, like Walgreens, purchasing items. A group of us were there, actually, and we were throwing items into the cart. We went to the checkout, which was not a counter, but a window in the wall. The cashier rung up our purchases, and pushed aside items that had been damaged. (Apparently, we’d just run through a gauntlet to get to there). The others in the group grabbed their goods, and I stole a large pack of toilet paper that was pushed aside for being damaged.
We’re walking home now, wherever it may be. The others with me are a male and a female, both ages 18-23. The female has short red hair, pale skin, and is wearing tight black pants, and a black 3/4 length sleeved shirt. She’s also rather thin, and looks like a young, goth Joanna Dark. The male remains unidentifiable, other than that he is in a black coat, and he ends up splitting with us.
Joanna (for lack of a better name) and I are then walking down the city streets to get home. We’re roommates, apparently.

The sorority is where we end up heading. We live in a sorority house, and are apparently the mock of the campus. The richer sororities come by and pester us, particularly one girl, who is constantly picking on Amanda (refering to me. I was someone else in this dream, but I was still myself. Amanda was a brown haired me, and I was blue/black haired, like I am now.).
Amanda was constantly picked on by one particular girl. This girl was tall, busty, big haired, and rich. She was constantly in the latest fashions and the spikiest heels. This girl never bothered me, but she constantly harassed Amanda. One day (as in now, in the dream) she really pissed me off, and I went outside of the house. I told this woman to back off, and I pushed her.
She was appalled that I’d do such a thing. She kicked me with her heel/spike. It connected with my shoulder, and it hurt. She swung for a second kick, and I grabbed her shoe.
She lost her balance, and fell over onto the lawn. She started bitching about dry-cleaning costs, and I told her she had far more to worry about.
I took her other shoe, and stabbed her in each arm with a shoe-heel.
At this time, an authority figure (a black man with glasses and school garb, possibly a professor). He surveyed the scene for half a second and was frightened.
It skips slightly here. Now we’re all on the porch, the bitch and the prof are both sitting on the floor, and I’m on a bench. Amanda’s sitting next to me.
Amanda doesn’t like what I did, but she feels powerless to stop me. I happen to have a claymore, sheathed, sitting next to me. I know that it’s flimsy (because it’s Jorenko’s) but they don’t. I dramatically unsheath it, and point it at the woman.
“You’re paying for dinner, tomorrow. It will be just you, your boyfriend, my boyfriend, and myself.”
She nodded in agreement to my demand, and ran off.
The dream skips again. Now I’m lazily watching TV, flipping through the channels. The woman has arrived to take me out to dinner. She’s also brough an extra couple.
“Sorry, my boyfriend won’t be here until Friday. Come back then, at nine.”
She walked off, and the dream ended.

I’m going back to bed. I’ll analyze this for my research paper later.

I had a dream about elevators.

I fucking hate elevators, but I have to deal with them every day. It’s a stupid irrational fear that they’ll malfunction. I’ve never truly had an elevator malfuntion with me in it, but the one at Carter East came damned close every time I stepped into it. I started insisting that we take the stairs after a while …

Anyway, the dream. I was in an appartment complex, much nicer than the one I’m in now. I was cleaning my room, which was for whatever reason the exact same as my room in the trailer I lived in seven years ago.

Recently my dreams have included the sense of touch more vividly. I never “felt” things before in my dream, but now I am. Can be a good thing, like in this dream, with the kitties and the soft rats and such. Wasn’t good two days ago. Read the rest of this entry »

What would I have done, if she stepped on the bird? Would I have yelled at her for not paying attention? Would I have sobbed at the loss of an innocent bird? Would I have commented on the tragedy as a prophet, claiming it to be an omen or representation of human nature – we’re all far too busy to appreciate the beauty in the world …

A traffic cop, a city street cleaner, and I stared at a small bird sitting on the curb. IT wasn’t running from us, it wouldn’t take flight at the noises. It just sat there, staring back. Cute, fluffy, a symbol of natural beauty in the middle of the modern city.

A woman ran by, trying to catch the bus. Read the rest of this entry »

The kitchen smells like three week rotted food because Candice never does her dishes. She’s too busy dirtying more dishes to notice. She uses up her clean ones, then uses up our clean ones, and then lets them sit in their own mildewy filth.

I washed them all. I said to her, “That is the last time I’m doing other people’s dishes.” She’ll probably retort with something alluding to my dirty room.

I should remind you that my “dirty room” is nothing more than books and clothes strewn about, not old food and dishes left to fester.
Read the rest of this entry »

I had a dream about a game.

I looked over the edge of the boat. Trees were barely visable over the floodwaters. Some of the water was standing water, other parts had currents. I remember thanking our leader for the currents. Ms. Milly Prower, our savior, had devised machines to create currents and stop currents. This way, even in our flooded world, we could build in the shallow waters and not fear for the supports being wiped out from under us.

An alarm chimed, not a loud or aggresive one, just a polite warning that the boat/car we were in would soon be submerging. I went below deck and took my seat. They were serving dinner then. I looked out the window into the waters, and watched the fish swim by. Then I watched the fish get caught in a huge net, along with hundreds of other fish.
Read the rest of this entry »

Update 1: Family friendly dream:

Some company was testing some radioactive shite, and somehow, this related to planet of the apes. There was also a game in which one must escape without being seen by the guards. Tough game, I say! They made it damned near impossible. The guards were WW2 gestapo types.

The dream started with Jorenko and I sitting on my bed. He was watching me play Diablo II, trying to distract me. I kept yelling at him, because he wasn’t supposed to be there, he was supposed to be somewhere else. I was getting really pissed off at him, but I couldn’t remember what it was he was supposed to be doing.

Then an IM window popped up on my screen from Ettin. Ettin was asking where Jorenko was. Why on earth would Ettin be asking where Jorenko is?

Apparently they’d planned a surprise visit, and Jorenko had forgotten to pick Ettin up from the airport. Ettin managed to get on AIM somewhere. We were both rather pissed off at Jorenko then.

So Jorenko goes off to get Ettin. (We’re all humans in this dream, mind. Our normal, real life selves.) I run off to my closet to change. While I’m picking out the best outfit to wear, Jorenko returns with Ettin. I slam the closet door shut, and yell, “I’m changing!” Ettin opens up the closet door while I’m half-naked and says, “HI SCHROE!”

I smacked him good.

The dream started with me finding a snake in my room. My room was not this apartment nor my home in Ohio, but another apartment of my own. The snake was a red and yellow one, with black spots. He never tried to bite me, ever, but I still held him by the neck ‘n’ stuff. The snake would slither all over my room; I wouldn’t lock him up unless people were over.

One day, he went missing. I cried when I couldn’t find him, so I left my room too look elsewhere in the building for him.

Oh my, it’s the commune. Everything’s done up in a retro-futuristic style. I walk to a room with red, oddly designed chairs. They looked modern-artish. I hate modern art :\ Read the rest of this entry »

Inside a giant melon, scraping fruity syrup form the walls, eating melon. yum.

The dream started with Jason Alexander and myself walking along a beach, talking about sand. We discussed how it looks a lot redder today. As we’re walking, we come to a cliff. Vines grow down the side of it, all the way to the shallow water at the bottom. Pieces of manikins are floating there, and Jason decides that he’s going to go get them. The lifeguard that’s there says that he shouldn’t go, but Jason doesn’t listen. I stay behind as Jason lowers himself on a wooden platform. I ask the lifeguard why he shouldn’t have gone, and the lifeguard says to look in the water. A shark’s dorsal fin pokes out the top. OH NOS!

I go down on the platform to distract the shark, and it comes at me. It pokes it’s head up out of the water, and it’s not a shark at all, it’s a dolphin! We all laugh heartily, and the dolphin pummels the hell out of Jason Alexander.

Schroe Dot Org (1:41:34 PM): Um, yeah, so I saw a death sequence dream.
J Jorenko (1:41:54 PM): Do tell
Schroe Dot Org (1:43:37 PM): Rapist dude came back again, but this time was very very violent, so I kinda died.
J Jorenko (1:43:51 PM): :o
Schroe Dot Org (1:44:02 PM): Before I died, though, you came in and found me
J Jorenko (1:44:09 PM): This is a disturbing series of dreams
Schroe Dot Org (1:44:20 PM): I was one the ground all bloody and stuff, saying, “Kill me,” but you didn’t wanna :-(
J Jorenko (1:45:23 PM): :-( Read the rest of this entry »

An Invader Zim dream. I should draw the characters some time. They are strange.

As it starts, we have a view of a large crowd viewing a stage. It looks like a concert of some sort, and there is a single female human on the stage, over which every boy is drooling except two. Zim, who is nowhere to be seen, and Dib, who is too busy ranting at his disinterested sister to even notice.

The girl is apparently some pop star, and she had just finished a concert. She grabs the mic one last time and begins some sort of scripted speech. As she speaks, the camera flits from the speaking girl to the ranting Dib. Dib and his sister are positioned in the back row of the concert, standing on top of a robotic lift that their father made.
Read the rest of this entry »

Last Night’s Dreams:

The dream started at some awards show. I was the lighting/stage crew, so I began tearing everything down after it had finished. People had forgotten things behind the stage, such as t-shirts and music stands. People had returned their shirts, too, because they were too small. I gave them new ones.

I walked home from the event with Jorenko. A man steps up to us and asks us for money. I keep walking, but Jorenko slows down. I turn around, grab Jorenko, and say, “Let’s go.” The man follows us, and I grab Jorenko’s Leatherman, and threaten the man to back off, or I’ll cut him. He goes.
Read the rest of this entry »

I remember waking at 7AM thinking how it was odd that I could have such a detailed, intense dream in such a short time.

It was winter in a city, and my mother and I were walking on the streets. We had just left an ice show, so it was in the evening. She and I were both well dressed, with fur-lined coats and gloves. My mother carried, in addition to her purse, a plastic bag and a camera bag. I walked slightly behind her with no bags, but my Leatherman multi-tool attached to my belt, and the camera in my pocket.

A homeless man approached my mother, asking her for change. “Let me check,” she said, and glanced into her plastic bag. “Sorry, sir, I have no spare change.” Read the rest of this entry »

Candice really
REALLY
REALLY
needs to start thinking before speaking.

I: “My friend Josh is coming over tomorrow. We’re prolly going to hang out around here playing games.”
Candice: “Hee hee, I’ll be sure to leave! *wink wink*”
I: . . . “I have a boyfriend. I am loyal to my boyfriend.”

Luckily, she interrupted, as she always does. If she hadn’t, I’d have said something really insulting to her.

I should remind you she broke up with her boyfriend of two years after one week of living here. She’s already fucking the guy she just met. :\

In one of the many dreams last night, I was playing an RTS. The warriors were little Scissors looking people. They had red robes on, with little blue markings to indicate they were on the blue team. They carried maces as their main weapon.

After looking at my warriors for a bit, I rotated the map – The map was 3d and spherical. I directed my warriors to the mountains north of my base camp, and had them populate it. As I dealt with the northern encampment, I left my southern city to develop on it’s own, which it did. It prospered fairly, the generators making more and more people. The only thing I had to do was instruct them to build different generators. After a while, I had a generator that made large floating jelly-fish that would explode on contact, making them pretty darn cool for preliminary attacks.

So I did so. And they attacked my southern city. I started building walls around the only entrance to the Northern encampment

Then I woke up.

[Continuing from the previous list]

6. Grif. He walked me home tonight because of recent events. Not really events, just annoying little things – someone grabbing my arm and me kicking him off on my way home from work once. Someone followed me home once. Stuff like that. I haven’t been hurt at all.

Grif walked up to me while I was walking home, and grabbed my arm. I didn’t recognize him right away, so he got a swift kick from me. He didn’t get upset, because he realized that he did startle me. He offered to walk me home, which is fine by me. Joshua had said he was trustworthy before, and, as I now realize, Josh had also asked Grif to watch out for me.

While walking, we ran into people Grif knows . . . I should mention that Grif knows everyone. Grif has a lot of people, and they’re the kind of people I like. Loyal. Honest. Realistic. Gang mentality isn’t all bad.

7. Cork Board. I’m not feeling the love here, people. I put effort into this, and when the amount of effort returned isn’t high enough, I lose interest.

[To be continued]