February 2002
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2/1/02

Stupid fucking Olympic flame coming through Colorado Springs. THUD THUD THUD. I was wondering if the army was practicing but it was just the big gay Olympics. Wrestling was alright. Work is boring and I have another ten hours before the weekend much to my chagrin. Also there won't be any undertime by request anytime soon which is annoying but I'll live.

Damn, it's cold.

My sister called me and said that my mother had a dream about me going to Nordstrom for her and coming home with lots of purses. Ok.

Glutton for Punishment

Note to self: Stop looking at goddamned websites about New Jersey and strange slash fun stuff there because you're never going to get the fuck around to seeing the strange and fun stuff out here in Colorado. Sure, you can't drive across the state in three hours and get back home in time for dinner but god damn it already give the place a chance. Who cares if you know of the places listed at the payphone listing site and you've visited them? Fucking shit, man.

It's late, I'm tired and I want to sleep.

Good night.

2/3/02

Wrath of Khan was on yesterday and it's still very good. Why the hell can't they make Star Trek movies like this anymore? Why can't they do anything this good with the franchises? Please, let them die rather than dragging this shit out and making stuff that's so weak in entertainment.

Message 29:
Date:    Sat Feb 2 09:08:27 2002 MST
From:    Jaybird (#105276)
To:      spivak (#105570)

Last night I dreamed that I logged on as a guest and went to the LR and yelled "feet feet feet" and everyone in the LR yelled "oh no it's feet guest" and I laughed myself awake
--------------------------

Makonan's pretty darned keen because despite the fact she was sick she decided to try and cheer up her room mate by dancing around in a red thong OVER HER PANTS pretending to be Britney Spears. Despite all the griping about him she does and stuff she went past being sick and tried to lift his spirits. That's keen.

I hope I wake up early enough this morning so I can go out and gorge myself on french toast because I want to gorge myself on french toast. I don't want to go over to the Utopia because they can be overpriced and their hash browns aren't that good. Wooglin's has better hash browns.

Nothing else is going on that's terribly interesting in my life.

2/4/02

I lived in a house that I never saw before in my life. In the basement, which was unaccessible except for the basement windows, lived giant salmon which had a single antenna growing out of their head which ended in a light ball. Every night I had to go outside and make sure that I let them out of the basement and I collected the lone glowing egg that they laid each evening. The daylight cycle was becoming unbalanced with the sun being high in the sky at 4 a.m. and setting around 8 a.m. followed by interminable night until 2 a.m. in the morning. Each night it was the same until my sister came over which heralded the fact that there was more sunlight in a time where there shouldn't have been any sunlight.

I told my sister that I was leaving and to take care of the place. I brought her outside and showed her the basement window explaining the salmon (the salmon didn't look like salmon. the fish looked like broad flat catfish with black skin) and how the little salmon eggs would bounce out gently floating on the breeze like fireflies. I can't remember the importance of this activity with my waking mind. She went back inside the house which was starting to look like the inside of my father's business and night suddenly fell.

There were errands to be run and all I had was my beat up black car which I drove around carrying a large black box. Up and down the streets of Millburn I drove searching for someplace that sold food when the sun wasn't out to no avail. One place was open but I was unsure about what they had and the prices and stupidly decided to see what the competition had available. A few times I pulled over with the left turn blinker clicking loudly and got out of the car with the door slightly resting without clicking shut in the doorjamb to see if a store or restaurant was open. The last time I did this it was by the only place which was open but now it was closed and put on the appearance of never being open giving me the impression I should've taken what I was offered the first time around. When I left the car this time the door clicked shut. I fumbled with the door and tried to rape the lock with the copy of the key until it finally gave way. Back in the car I saw the battery had cut out for a minute and the car clock was blinking. I hit the horn out of frustration and the horn worked for the first time in quite some time. Next I tried the dome light and it turned on briefly, only briefly because I didn't want to hurt my night vision.

I sped around the icy streets of Millburn looking for familiar turn-offs so I could get back to my father's business but got stuck at a red light which refused to turn green. Eventually I returned to the house which turned into my father's business and my sister was still seated in the back doing whatever she was doing when I left in the first place.

"Did you get the eggs?"
"What?"
"Did you get the eggs?"
"What eggs?"

Damn it. I went outside and bellowed for her when I got to the basement window. There was only one salmon swimming around inside and he was itching to go for a swim because once I opened the window he swam out and up into the air to meet with the rest who were silhouetted by the moonlight. Inside there were only three glowing eggs which I tried to scoop up but in the end only got two in my hand. I watched the furthest egg slowly dim and fade in the back of the basement.

So. I am content but I am no longer happy but I was happy for most of the weekend. There's a decent chance that Makonan will be coming out to Colorado Springs to visit with me and go up to visit the Birds once or twice. Yeah, that would be cool because hhsb's visit was so brief which made me wonder why she drove out all that way just to spend a few hours with us. Of course we were happy to have her!

Tuesday I have to buy two things, one of which I was unable to find on Sunday at the Book Broker and Poor Richards, and then get something made followed by a trip to the post office and everything should be hunky dory. On Sunday I bought Childhood's End which I'll be reading during my break. Also I have to budget myself a bit tighter because I have to renew the hosting for heptapod.org in late March as well as save up to take Makonan out to Hooters (which she is insistent on visiting in Colorado Springs) and get her vodka.

At least I have Tuesday off and I won't be doing much of anything. This will only take about two hours at the very most.

P.S. Moon pies suck. Scooter pies are superior.

2/5/02

I'm giving up:

• smoking
• chasing married women
• gambling

for Lent.

Wow, it looks like Makonan will be coming out to visit Colorado Springs sometime in March. Goodness gracious. Unfortunately I think I bored her this evening so I'm hoping that doesn't bode ill for her impending visit.

Nothing else is interesting around here except my apartment is a mess.

Going Down

Look, it's another god damned dream. Hurry up and skip to the green text! It was a dream about living in a church which had a pool in the center. I wasn't living in the church at the outset but I was arriving somewhere in Delaware or southern New Jersey after a long trip northwards from South Carolina. In the dream money was tight but I saw that there was this church and in my dream it was Monday. Monday meant no one would be using the church until next Sunday so I could live there for as long as possible. The building resembled what I would consider is a traditional church built out of natural stones, shaped like a house up front with a steeple on top of the roof. The entrance I used was along the side which entered a corridor that wrapped the main auditorium like a letter L with the baseline of the L being at the front of the building. The rest of the church's exterior was a fenced in yard for kids to play in. This makes me think that somehow this piece of real estate is based upon the hoity toity church over on Tejon or to a lesser extent the little church in Millburn which has the Open Door Nursery School that I attended so very long ago.

Inside the church it was whitewashed boards, dark wooden folding chairs and not much else. Once I had unpacked the necessities from my car I sat down and waited until nightfall. During the wait paranoia was making me get up every so often to look out the door in case there might be some casual worshipper coming along hoping to commune with the holy of holies and find me sitting in my underwear at the back of the main room. Mostly I found a strange looking black chicken which was flapping up and down in place. My attention was turned to the sidewalk where I saw three animals walking along in a line like baby ducks. At the head of the line was a small wolf pup with short brown fur and it was built like a dart. Out of the three, this beast seemed to be the most dangerous of all the beasts. Behind the pup was something that resembled a toothy version of a Tex Avery wolf which was oblivious to its surroundings because it was following the cub so intently. Bringing up the rear of this canine parade was something that resembled Goofy with fangs.

The second time I went back into the church Devo had arrived and the inside of the church had acquired a dark swimming pool with a lawnchair she immediately appropriated for her bed. We ended up keeping at opposite ends of the room. Most times she'd walk around wearing only a t-shirt which didn't cover much down below. Whenever I would try and start a conversation with her she would go on about how she wanted to live at Twenty Stories in South Africa and just get away from everything and everyone in her life. I muttered some chick-shit like "Great, glad to know you'd want to get away from me too" because I would've figured she would've wanted to stay with me. Devo sighed, wrapped herself in a blanket and put up her little wall around herself.

Night fell and I left the building walking to the parking lot of an abandoned supermarket where Brian and someone else I didn't recognize from waking life were waiting for me. The whole purpose of us getting together in the parking lot was simply walking back home from there whispering things to each other. By the time the church was in the sight the sun was rising. This one activity seemed to be the main thread of the dream because I would wake up just a wee bit then go back to sleep which would herald a new day in the dream. Eventually it was Saturday night and I didn't have a roof over my head anymore. It seemed like Devo was long gone and I ended up getting back in the car leaving most of my stuff in the church and driving to points unknown.

On Thursday I have an interview in Denver at 2:00 which means that I'm going to have to call in sick which is quite a gamble since I don't need to draw unnecessary attention to me at MCI but if I do end up getting the job then it really won't matter, will it? For now I'm going to quash my optimism and not expect anything good to happen lest I get my hopes up one more time.

Here's some interesting stuff from the birthday horoscope I received from AstroAdvice back in December.

February 7^th 2002: Venus-Uranus conjunction forms a sextile with your Sun in Sagittarius A sudden event in your romantic life could change your feelings in an instant! Don't fight it - accept it!

February 11^th 2002: Mars-Pluto trine forms a trine with your Sun in Sagittarius Now you could make significant changes in your life, because you suddenly understand your own motivations, and have the power to confidently head in the right direction.

Reckon I'll know when this shit comes around in my life. Thursday or next Monday will be something big or it'll just be another day and these prognostications will fade from memory.

My mood is going down right now.

For quite a while I was feeling alright and I felt emotionally stable but now the old shit is coming back from feeling like stuff I do for others is completely without merit and beneath notice or there's more important things out in the great big world than just saying hello to me.

Not to mention coming across self righteous and smug polyamorous people.

Big Day

Morning

Okay, I got up at 6:20 and remembered I'd need my social security card for today. I tore apart my bedroom (hence the four big bags soon to be five big bags of garbage) to no avail.

So I got to thinking if I went to the Social Security office then I'd be able to get one there so I called the 800 number and learned I'd still have to wait two weeks. TWO WEEKS? Oh shit, if this does go through I can't wait two weeks to give them my social security card. Look at the confidence they'd have in me if I had to replace my social security card.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

At the last minute, okay not the last minute, I looked under my bed and there was my wallet with the green-yellow printout of a picture Devo sent me quite some time ago and right behind that picture was my social security card. There won't be a happier sight today than when I saw that little government blue corner peeking out with Haakon Studebaker written beneath the nine numbers which the government has assigned to me like a borg.

I found my nail clipper too!

Original Entry

Okay, Wednesday went well enough that I'm sure my supervisor will understand and maybe get me undertime because I did hit sales and then some along with keeping my average handling time under 300 seconds. At the end of the day I took at least 130 calls, fucking hell.

130 people.

So I'll be calling in sick with a stomach virus, getting myself cleaned up and prepared for my drive to Denver and hope for the very best in the very end and the very best would be keeping my shit job at MCI or getting new work in Colorado Springs. Sure it'll mean doing the graveyard shift but the money will be substantially better. At the very worst if I get fired from the new job, if I get it, in the next 60 days then I can sign back up with MCI and go through training again which can be done in my sleep.

Also I won a little black and white TV at work on Wednesday which is pretty keen. It has an adaptor so I can use the TV in my car.

Outside of that I'm nervous about the interview, after going over some of the documents I'm worried that I'll crash and burn if they ask me about Maestro which I've never used along with other stuff which I laid it on thick in my resume. Jaybird helped me get this foot in the door and I don't want to ruin whatever strings he pulled making him look like a schmuck by bringing someone who has half a clue into the job.

Funny thing, if it ends up being Unix instead of Tools I'm going to feel a bit more confident but if it ends up being Tools then I think I'm going to choke. Jaybird told me that Tools is a bit more laid back and the procedures are much easier according to him but he says if I get Unix then I have to hit the ground running without hesitation.

My sister called me as soon as I returned home from work saying that when she graduates from her skin care school in two weeks that she might fly out to Colorado Springs with her friend for a visit. Sadly my place is a fucking mess with no room for her to stay. I did tell her that the places up the road in walking distance are relatively cheap (thirty bucks) so maybe that'll work and be cheap since she's going to have a friend going halfsies.

Mind you I am going to have my place cleaned up by the end of February.

Honest.

This is beyond "I'll see you in church" or "I won't cum in your mouth" or "The check is in the mail".

Later

Fucking hell. I watch Enterprise twice with the Birds and pester Jaybird about stuff and come downstairs a little after nine my time and I check my voicemail and a message that's just one minute old is waiting for me from Devo.

Augh.

What else? I get online and Makonan suddenly vanishes.

Huff huff huff huff.

Where's my silver bowl when I need it?

The Day After

The interview went well and I'm waiting to hear back and if I don't hear back by Monday then I'm going to email them and see what's the dilly-o. According to Jaybird they are willing to spend 75 bucks on me for the drug test so that's definitely a Good Thing ^(tm).

Right now I'm all stressed about keeping my MCI job because I did call in sick and I have been doing well but I have already been written up and I signed some paper about not being at work and how it could lead to corrective action. Corrective action plus that written warning (which expires in April) could lead to something more because I keep hearing about how MCI is fire-happy when it comes to their employees. Last sales cycle I didn't do well but this cycle I'm kicking ass with sales thank goodness.

So I did what any man of the Age of Reason would do, I did a tarot reading.

Before I relate the cards it seems that I've discovered a new way to lay out cards for my own style rather than doing the pull three, choose which one and pull three more and ad infinitum but instead pull three, choose one, draw two for that one and then to finish up pull three for one of the two cards.

It makes sense to me, doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense to you.

• Past: Eight of Wands

• Present: Justice
  • Magician
  • Ace of Wands
    • Knight of Swords
    • Queen of Coins
    • Page of Cups

• Queen of Swords
  • Five of Cups
  • Six of Coins

Yes, this entry is all rushed because I want to be getting into sleep mode by 10:00 p.m. so I can get up and be refreshed and all that happy horseshit.

I love you, Dad.

I love you, Laura.

I love you, Jaybird and maribou.

I love you, Brian.

I love you, Makonan.

I love you, Devo.

I love you, Kylie.

I love you Ben, Kate and Rocco.

2/9/02

Whew, ends up that I did have sick time and I am gonna get paid and my job at MCI is not in jeopardy much to my unabashed joy. Yes, it's only the money. I could care less about the countless ingrates who call in because they can't read their bill. Earlier today I had a customer call in and I saw how I could help him out getting him cash and making it so he never gets charged again. He vented at me, I tried to interrupt and get things over and done with but the moron hung up so I deleted the credit and noted the account thoroughly that I couldn't credit because he hung up and I was unable to educate or inform him of what I was going to do for him. The other day I had a customer call in who needed credit but the Rockwell went dead kicking her off the phone. I ended up crediting her anyway because she was nice and understood what was going on.

Still haven't heard back about the new job but I'll be contacting the people on Monday via email for the latest word.

So on Friday I was sent home early because I wasn't making sales, only had one by lunch, and to keep the center's percentage up they sent me home so I didn't skew things. Great! So I came home and napped and woke up around six in the evening after the following dream.

House of Dreams

I was down at the old library where I used to live in New Jersey. My father was there and Jaybird was there along with a few other people. We were discussing the Rockies and wanted to show my father what it's like to climb up Pike's Peak. There was some joke between Jaybird and myself which didn't carry into waking life. The thing is that we tried climbing up the face of white rock which ended up turning into a garage.

The garage was always closed and the big black pickup truck was parked in front of it. Each time we threw up a chain of three pitons to the top of the face of the rock formation the formation would push forward against us. Very strange. After a few times it seemed that my sister was going to get crushed between the face and the truck. My wild guess was that the ground was pushing us in like a hungry tongue to crush us against the cliff face. Some said that the cliff face was pushing against us. Someone mentioned it wasn't a cliff face but a garage door.

I looked again and it was a garage door all segmented like a Hershey bar.

That's when the garage door leapt forward hungrily to crush everyone underneath it.

"RUN!"

Everyone ran forward and off to the left or right. To the left and right were stairways down to safety. My father carried the black pickup on his back down the left side and Jaybird and others went down the right side. When they were in the free and clear the garage door stopped.

Below me, since I hadn't gone to the stairs, was the hollow outline of a house made with two by fours with a brick structure in the middle. It was very old as if the carpenter stopped building it nearly a century ago because it looked done in his eyes. There were more stairs that lead down to two levels below the level I was standing upon and the level that everyone had escaped to was in darkness.

Soon people came back up wondering about my status and if the garage was behaving itself. It was just for a moment but immediately started surging forward against people. My father ran back down with the pickup truck on his back, the size of a remote control toy, slowly growing back to its original size as if it were some Sisyphyian task. Eventually calm was the norm.

I looked into the garage door window and saw clutter which was kinda mirrored down below the cliff's face. Inside I could see black dogs with red markings prowling around hungrily waiting to make a kill. I went down a level to see what was going on and the dogs were loose but seemingly ignoring my loved ones. Angered at their presence I lifted one and hurled it hard against the ground until I knew it was dead then went around looking for the others. At the third level down from the cliff was a wide abyss and across which was another garage door, this one was far more menacing than the other two levels.

Every so often I saw a black guy who was a zombie in a suit fit for Curly from the Three Stooges peering from beind the garage door. The top of his head had been removed and replaced with a ceramic bowl where zombie flesh had grown around it. He gazed with closed eyes out of the garage door window but didn't see anyone and went back "upstairs" is the best way I could describe it. I think there was a stairwell behind the garage door. Also this guy was behind everything going on in my little world.

Black dogs with red triangular markings kept coming, some had subtitles that said what they represented like "White Power", "Coffee" or "Dog". Each one I killed cleanly, there were other things going around which had the same color scheme of black with red triangles on it. Soon my rage came to a head and I ran upstairs to the place where the dream had started. I smiled because I had my Herman Munster boots on which meant I'd be able to do some serious destruction.

I beat down each section of the top garage door with my boots howling bloody murder making doorways into the garage door demanding whatever was behind this come out and show its face to me. The garage door crumbled like tissue paper, some dogs came after me and I stomped them into whiffs of dream. Soon the dream logic became "Keep killing whatever comes down, eventually the old nigger will have to come down as well." And he did and he had the most evil smile I have ever seen in my life, waking or otherwise.

Something in my head told me to get this converted dust bin (you know, you hold it flat on the floor against the broom to catch what you were sweeping) which was converted into a skull vice made exlusively for the black guy by the black guy so he could remove the top of his head. Eventually I got the idea that I could catch him with it by grabbing his head. He stumbled towards me trying to stab me but I caught him holding him at arms length.

The dream shifted to me being my sister. She had spoken with a jeweller who said that somewhere in the house was a chest of drawers with a small hope chest. Inisde the hope chest was a class ring with the top etched in black on gold and the jeweller said that way back when the ring was supposed to be brought to him so it could be redesigned for the old black man who was now the terror and ruling zombie of this strange place.

The jeweller continued off camera like one of Charlie Brown's teachers but without sounding like someone being raped with a bugle. "I need to redo the face and put a pi on it in script then everything will be done". As my sister I went through the dresser complaining that men were so dirty and disorganized but eventually found the ring, brought it to the jeweller and he pressed the top of the ring against a hot, flat surface. Minutes later there was a pi engraved on the flat, now cool, surface.

The old black zombie vanished from the grip of the head tongs and realization came over me. The old black guy died in this strange structure but Death didn't come to him in the right way to take him to his true dream. Not knowing what to do he made the garage into his own afterlife, his dream, and did the best he could for himself.

He's gone and good riddance. Evil old fuck.

I awoke abruptly around 6:07 p.m., started this up, logged in and told Makonan to hold on a few minutes while I transcribed this dream to her.

I got online and caught up with Makonan who gave me the good news that her plans are now set in stone and she will arrive in Colorado Springs on March 20^th at night. I'm happy. Much later Devo came online and we played a game of chess, the first of which was aborted since she had lots of stuff going on and accidentally closed the window, then she went to bed.

Lately I haven't been feeling hungry but boredom has been making me eat even though in tiny bits. Maybe tomorrow I'll eat a meal. Just glad that the chess game kept me from going to McDonalds or some such shit which would've just made me feel disgusting. I finished Childhood's End and found it to be boring. Clarke is good at building suspense at what might happen next and the story was paced very well but at the end I was disappointed by the fact that humans were going to evolve into some gestalt being which could travel to the stars mentally and forsake their material bodies. Maybe he was trying to convey an alien strangeness towards the end with the Overlords and what humanity had become but it really came across as something to marvel at while someone else marvelled at rather than making the experience something for the reader. This was particularly unsatisfying because the protagonists were not fully realized as three dimensional creatures.

At least it wasn't some superficial travelogue like Niven's Ringworld.

2/10/02

Bleh.

I'm unimpressed with life.

Guess I'll gorge myself with french toast.

Okay this idea is stupid but I'm writing it down since there might be some sort of potential if I'm able to integrate it into a story. People with super powers can trace their lineage back from one person. Super powered folks aren't born, they're made. When a super powered human kills a normal human being directly with their super powers then that normal person is resurrected as someone with super powers who is driven by revenge. Mind you when the resurrected person kills the person who killed them, they die because everything's even. If a normal person is killed because of super powers but not directly then people are just dead. Lazarites? Revenants? I have no idea. Anyway the idea is pretty shallow but it's my idea.

One more gaming related item in regards to another campaign I'm mulling over in my head. Just wondering how likely it would be for an earthlike planet to have a single large moon (like earth's moon) except the satellite is also earthlike. Something that's always bothered me about Dungeons & Dragons is the fact that there are a score of sentient races which populate a planet and they all came about through magic or whatever. The D&D campaign world I'm working on is not going to be heavy on other races nor will it feature subraces. Humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, kobolds (dwarven slave race made from dragon stock), halfbreeds (orc and elf) and halflings. I could easily see something where elves were the primary race but some decided to forsake magic and longevity for physical strength and resilience to become humans. Halflings would be indigenous elves from one of the other continents where the campaign begins. I'd be thinking that dwarves originally came from this planet's satellite through some portal (no spelljammers or high tech), half were adversely affected by the mother world's nature becoming orcs representing the foulest part of dwarven nature and the dwarves simply remained dwarves. Other than that kind of explanation, the only other one I could really take seriously about a world featuring various sentient species is that one world was the galactic United Nations, some catastrophe ended technology or space travel stranding the races on this single world for millennia.

Sure it'd be cool to have an all-elf campaign with all the elven subraces featured, humans being a novel minority and half-elves being shunned by both for their bastard parentage. Maybe humans could be considered the orcs of this world. I just can't get the past the nature of elves being so magical and how I generally dislike magic in roleplaying games especially Dungeons & Dragons.

Fuck. It seems that I am comfortable creating large worlds but when it comes down to creating smaller campaigns along with the details which would make the campaigns believable I am definintely at a loss because I seem to miss out on simple shit like "Oh they had an inside guy" or "They had backup from this group".

Huff.

Yes, this is the other shit that really bothers me in life. Sometimes I believe having the big picture will help me define the details but it turns out that I get so involved in creating a large picture that I realize the details are completely lacking due to the fact that I'm hoping people will infer the details that I have in mind rather than having them written out verbatim for people.

The other shit that bothers me is women. I don't think I can trust them and the only ones who I can trust are living in Raisin Acres or have four legs.

2/11/02

Yeah, I didn't upload last night because I was so fucking tired and I felt better keeping this damned device turned off. I heard back from Brian in regards to a campaign in a world where there are only two races and he seemed to infer a lot from his RPG scars he acquired gaming with Sue.

Sue is the elderly bitch he dated for a while and eventually left for his current girlfriend. Sue ran some masturbatory game where a ruling elite treated everyone else like shit and there was never any advancement among the characters who participated in the game. Reprinted without permission is Brian's reply after I forwarded him my little idea and what I wrote in the previous entry.

Interesting questions. However, I think it could be summed up to "Yes, it's too restrictive." Think of it like how I view the Southlands (IT's game). If you are not a native, you have MANY cards stacked against you. You could be a King on your world, but the moment you set foot on the Southlands, you're just another Barbarian. Even if you hold the same (or a similar) belief structure as the natives you're still stigmatized.

In what you've set up if you're not an elf, you have little or no social standing. Why haven't the elves wiped out most of their competition (in the standard D&D world)? It's one of the major personality differences between humans and elves. They don't actively seek war, conquest or dominion like (some) humans do. They seem to have a "live and let live" attitude just as long as you don't meddle with their lands or affairs except when it comes to orcs. Their hatred of orcs is far-reaching and they will actively campaign against them, but the orcs breed so quickly that it comes to a stalemate. Sure the elves are highly skilled and can be quite lethal, but 1000 highly-trained elves won't stand much chance against the 10,000 orcs they stand against in battle.

It's an interesting concept, casting the elves in your world in the light of the Roman Empire (I never said this, in fact the only thing I wrote earlier about the Roman Empire was that the Dwarves would be like the Romans. Completely different game/concept). The first time I've heard of it, to tell the truth. But I usually prefer to play humans or half-elves for the role-playing aspect and this is a world I probably have to opt for an elf, partially because of my experiences in the Southlands. That is, of course, unless something jumps out and screams "PLAY ME!!" which happens from time to time.

I know one game D&D game is VERY open to the ideas of the players. One guy plays a fuckin' half-stone giant with a 19 strenght and just the other day the DM asked me if I wanted to act on a concept I mentioned to him a few months ago. I was flipping through the Fiend Folio and came across the Githzerai (not to be confused with their mortal enemies, the Githiyanki) and spotted that they have a monk class within their ranks. I said something like "That would be tres cool!". Now I have the opportunity to do this, something I doubt I'd be able to do in any other game. Beyond the fact that I've wanted to stretch my legs in his world for some time, this is a very tempting offer.

Anyway, I've tangented long enough. If you really like your world-concept, then run with it. Give it a try. You can always revise it later. It is, after all, your first D&D world.

I see this happening, people who really like the concept or who want social status will play elves. Just keep an eye our for anyone constantly lording this fact over the non-elf characters. People who like playing characters with a little mud on their face will probably play humans or some other demi-human race. Watch out for the "Dark Loner" characters who do little else than fight anything, up to and including the other PC's, and brood about their oppression. In other words, people who play the oppressed just so they have a reason to carry a bad attitude.

I hope this has helped a little. Write me back and tell me what you think, 'kay?

My reply was "You're too deeply scarred by Sue's game". He has good reason because Sue once made me go psycho on her because of her particular roleplaying style which is extraordinarily contrary and stalls a fucking game.

Well hot fuck, I never wrote about that particular incident here.

This was a game which was a long time ago where I was playing someone who was descended from the Togashi family of the Dragon clan. This woman, Lady Sarah, appears out of nowhere and we decide to take her onto our team because of her extreme xenophobia towards everything not from her particular realm. The game ended up being this really slow bullshit of her talking about the gods and stalemating anything which might constitute action or fun in the game. Now keep in mind I love roleplaying and I know gaming is not all about rolling dice to beat shit up but god damn this woman turned each session into some morass of steaming horseshit.

Well our team decided to choose a team leader and for once I was the best choice for being team leader out of everyone who was available. The roleplay was going well but Sue, not Lady Sarah, started going off on how I wasn't and her comments were getting more personal than in-character.

I snapped, pushed the chair back and let out a stream of hate that I don't think I ever mustered up around Tim Lenox who always got on my fucking nerves. I swiftly apologized to Ronni and left the game.

I didn't return to the game until a new game began and Sue had left. Apparently her husband was quite pissed at me to which I could only say, "Son, you already have serious medical problems. Don't make them worse for your own sake." Apparently my blowup was her clue stick because she asked after the stunned silence of "I'm not that bad, am I?" which garnered the untruthful replies of "Oh no no no"

The game died about two months later and Sue never returned to the game.

After seeing Sue's roleplay style I'm sure that her game is fifteen million times worse especially after the players in her game had a good idea to save the day. Turns out that suddenly her favorite NPCs got the same idea taking all the glory turning her Southlands game into another "Watch what Sue can do" game.

Funny note, she was a virgin until she was forty or so by choice. Right, by choice. Honey you have hips that put most black women to shame and a face that can stop a truck.

I wish I could think of some disclaimer to put there since I know someone who is very dear to me who is sensitive about having callipygeia as well as fearing a particular scent is one of my least favorite scents.

 Year of the Horse 

It's the year of the horse! Good thing I'm hung like one.

So while I was driving home from work tonight I had a dialog with myself over last night's entry where I was writing about how I don't trust women. It's really something irrational because its foundation is thinking I'm important enough to fuck over emotionally. I don't think I'm that important to anyone at the moment. I mean, why would someone put up some ruse of liking me only to drag me down and watch me in pain? Either they'd have to be some sick motherfuckers or there's something greater at work with the goal of crushing my spirit.

So it's laughable.

Still it's something I can't get past.

I reckon it'll be some shit where people snap "Get over yourself" at me.

Anyway I'll insinuate myself into someone's life really quick but at a moment's notice, usually under the auspices of keeping myself on an even keel, I'll withdraw and put up a wall.

My teeth hurt, I'm tired, I'm waiting to hear from the possible job, I made hhsb laugh today with my post about black people seeing in a different spectrum like animals, a package arrived from Oklahoma but I promised not to open it until 2/14/2, work was bearable and I reckon my best day of sales has something to do with taking three aspirin at the beginning of the day along with sitting in my chair that I had since training. People usually borrow it and stuff despite the fact it says "Haakon's Chair. Do Not Touch." I had a 7.2% close rate today which is pretty good. What bothers me about this job is the fact I figured I would be helping people but it really boils down to sales in the end. Meh, it's a paycheck. A meager paycheck but a paycheck nonetheless.

Thirty six more days.

2/13/02

Doesn't seeing this color at the beginning of an entry thrill your heart?

The dream began with me flying down from on high towards this building. The building was a house somewhere in abandoned suburbia which was being consumed by the surrounding desert which drove away all the civilians. One house in particular stood out among the rest and for some reason was associated with Abraham Lincoln.

The house was like a house which would be drawn by a kid but brought to life in wood and stone, rounded edges like a medieval building and on the right hand side was a tall bell tower without a bell. Once the focus came on the ground of the dream I went inside the building. Within I saw a long corridor going down deep into the earth, nine steps then a long flat landing about twelve feet long followed by nine more steps. On the side of each landing were bookcases filled with old musty volumes that were numbered using the M*A*S*H font. The only books I saw were in the eight hundreds but I knew that the filing system was not the dewey decimal. When I stopped looking over the old books I started back downstairs again and something strange happened with the lighting and the looks of the place.

The long corridor into the earth was brightly lit but suddenly a darkness fell over it and went downstairs, where the darkness touched everything became like an old black and white photograph that was yellowing at the edges but once the darkness passed everything became real again instead of a photograph. The deeper I went the more people I came across, mostly old ladies in Victorian gowns doing librarian things and generally unaware of my presence.

At the very bottom of the corridor was an artificial body of water and a few people were there, the only person I did recognize was Makonan who was playing on the waterslide. The pool was divided up by these aqueducts that served as waterslides, beneath and to the side of them was a pool where you could swim under the aqueducts. I swam a lot in the pool but eventually got bored of that and started trying to walk on the waterslides which had a swift current.

Going back upstairs to the surface was much easier and quicker but along the way I was sidetracked into a morgue area. The people were talking about how animals are thrown out and sent to various locations at garbage dumps and no one really cared about them. I felt bad and wondered and hoped that Sunny wasn't there and really buried somewhere in northern New Jersey in a pet cemetery. The people said they were going to the dump to recover the bodies of homeless people who were trashed there. The middens at the garbage dump were huge, black and featureless but the people were able to find corpses which they slung over their shoulders and made their way back to the morgue. At the morgue they were cutting off the heads, which were pre-shrunk for some reason, and using them as puppets in a most grotesque way before sewing up the eyes and mouth. Soon I was outside near a Revolutionary era cannon which was being stuffed with chopped up homeless people to be fired because that was supposed to be one of the respectful ways to deal with those who have no home or anyone to remember them. They can be their own twenty one gun salute (minus twenty guns).

Will Smith fired the guns sending out gouts of red gore into the white snow and smearing the woods all around us. I looked down onto the icy road below and saw two cars screeching to a halt while frozen torsos were rolling over the cars smashing the windshields. We went down to take care of the mess and found the various frozen bodyparts had been encased in makeshift turtle shells. Will said that we had to get the pizza ready which was for the final part of this dead ceremony. The pizza was in the trunk of one of the cars which got hit by the bodyparts and the pizza was inside pizza shaped folders that were army green. The rest of the dream was basically about juggling those strange pizza holders and getting them to some location because it was Very Important to do that particular task.

What's funny to me lately is the fact I've been having dreams with Makonan. Part of me thinks I've been dreaming about her because she doesn't read the purple stuff and says "How do you like them apples! You're in the dreams!" The other part of me thinks it's cool that she's been in one or two of my dreams.

Let the excitement continue because now the text is yellow for gaming stuff!

A long while ago while I was making up different Hero system characters but got sidetracked into trying to create a MOO game in the spirit of Ghostwheel but set in New Jersey's Pine Barrens.

The basic system is based on four attributes, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and Luck. These range from 1 to 10. There are five skills which range from 0 to 100 basing it on a percentile.

• Weapons - STR + DEX
• Medic - INT
• Repair - INT + DEX
• Dodge - DEX + LUCK
• Lockpick - DEX

Of course I'd probably think of extra skills which would be coded and usable but I'd want to keep the system as simple as possible since I've seen on other online games that there are skills offered which are nice to have if the game is played in real life (like diplomacy) but really have nothing to do with interacting with the coded gameworld. Skills like diplomacy and attributes like beauty are simply up to the player and come through roleplay without any in-game embellishment. I honestly don't see how something like persuasion can be used in a coded game unless you are given various options of what to say like in Fallout.

I did a breakdown on what the skills represent:

• Brawl
  • empty handed combat, damage increases as skill does so weaker characters can do a lot of damage
• Melee
  • knives, crowbars, chains, chainsaws
• Ranged
  • bb guns, blow darts, pistols, shotguns
• * Medic
  • 1d6 of healing per 10% in skill
• * Repair
  • each 10% allows repair of class of armor/weapon. if repair is less than the class of weapon then it can't be repaired. fixed or broken are absolutes, weapons won't have hitpoints but items can be destroyed. It can also be used to create stuff like bug armor.
• Dodge
  • reduces the chance to hit someone or something, characters have 1/2 their dodge all the time
• * Lockpicking
  • if not bought at creation base chance is equal to strength and luck. when bought or learned then it's dexterity plus luck and modifiers for lockpicks

Skills marked with an asterisk have to be learned in-game.

There are different places where attributes can be increased expensively.

• School - INT
• Gym - STR or DEX
• Casino - LUCK or $$$

Among places of interest are a trading post where most stuff can be acquired and the other stuff can be ordered through a survivalist catalog. There's an underground living area which anyone can call home.

The background of the whole area is a lost town in the Pine Barrens is acquired by a survivalist group for training and an above ground base of operations. They're enforcing their laws in the area and keeping things safe for themselves and the inhabitants. There are three reasons why they would come into power, either there was some apocalypse where people were killed off in droves, people left the planet for greener pastures out in space or the entire area was carved out of the earth and encased in a bubble to be towed back to some planet where it'll be part of an Earth exhibit.

Monsters

• Tough Monsters
  • Jersey Devil
  • Sewer Gator
  • Mantid
• Weak Monsters
  • Possum
  • Deer
• Regular Monsters
  • Piney with shotgun
  • Swampworm
  • Zombie

Zombies won't be some necromantic construct but when bodies are buried they are infested by a flesh eating fungus which animates the corpses and makes them walk around seeking more flesh to consume. The zombies are the most dangerous when they're just fungus and bones. Swampworms vomit digestive fluid on things, they're about six feet long with dark purple skin and green markings. Reckon they'd look like the sandworms in Dune. A mantid is a giant manlike insect with scythes for forearms. Its chitin can be made into armor.

Weapons

• Brawl
  • Fists
  • Kicks
  • Headbutts
• Melee
  • Knife
  • Crowbar
  • Sledgehammer **
  • Axe **
  • Chainsaw **
• Ranged
  • Pistol **
  • Shotgun **
  • Rifle **
  • Submachine Gun **
  • Rocket Launcher **

Armor

• Leather Jacket **
• Bulletproof Vest **
• Bug Armor **

Items marked with two asterisks are breakable and fixable. Ammunition is made up of Acme Generic Ammunition which can be used for any ranged, black powder weapon. If someone has a bow and arrow then arrows would have to be made or purchased each time. Maybe have something like Acme Generic Explosive which is created by putting a bunch of ammunition together and the AGE can be used for grenades or ammo for rocket launchers. Now on Ghostwheel there's a really cool idea that Quinn implemented where there are boomsticks that use boomshells. Boomshells are made by throwing various stones into a strange pit where boomshells are pooped out. I don't rightly know what the mixture is or what stones to use because I haven't been there in quite a while and I got frustrated losing all the rare stones I found in the wastes and various other places available on Ghostwheel.

The skill system is simple, when someone has a critical then they increase their skill by a set amount (1d6). They can critical five times to increase a single skill but after that they have to use character points. Character points are earned by being online, in character and not idle. If characters are idling in rooms which are marked as places where people can set their home they will not gain any character points or if they are in a public area but speaking out of character (OOC) or speaking on a channel then they will not gain character points. Killing things does not garner someone experience points, just money or tradeable goods. 2d10 are rolled which gets a percentile result that defines the success or failure of the skill use. Various items can affect the outcome of a skill check, a lock can be considered easy and gives someone a bonus when trying to pick (or force) the lock or a weapon can be well balanced and give the wielder a better chance at striking something. The opposite is true where a chainsaw will bring someone's melee down by 20% or if someone is grievously injured it's much harder to fix them back up. There's also items that boost skills, medkits, toolboxes and lockpicks which increase their respective skills by 10% to 30% depending on quality.

The trading post is where stuff is bought and sold, each thing you kill gives you something that can be traded for goods or into money. Possum, gator and deer skins for leather, glands from swampworms, chitin from mantids, money or ammo from killing Pineys and other stuff. Swampworm glands can be turned into various drugs that increase STR or DEX. People who player kill get a 15% increase in buying stuff and are offered 15% less for stuff and this is cumulative for every 10 PKs. The trading post also has gasoline which can be used to fuel the chainsaw or make molotov cocktails.

In other news Makonan told me that she's been wearing the subway token I mailed her in her sleep which I think is pretty cool but it's giving her a rash which bugs me.

My computer's been acting up for some reason and keeps accessing my hard drive when I'm doing absolutely nothing. Fucking hell I don't feel like reinstalling the operating system and I don't know why it's doing this all the time. Even when I'm playing StarCraft.

I spent Tuesday in my underwear doing nothing which is a Bad Thing ^(tm) because I meant to go to the post office to mail something but I never got around to it. Huff. That pisses me off and I only have myself to blame. I'm also irritated at the presentation of the RPG MOO thing right above the green text but I really don't feel like reformatting it so its presented in a coherent fashion.

About my job, it seems that this one guy who works in my bay at MCI can also be seen on TV doing little promos for the local stations. That's pretty fucking hilarious. I mean it's cool that someone is on TV but I'm used to people being on TV back east and not really having to keep a day job. TV sucks anyway because it's elitist shit where one can't participate like the internet.

Valentine's Day

Another day, another one hundred calls. Surprising, isn't it? I speak to over one hundred people a day about their bills. To them they are the most important thing in the world and to me they're just another sales prospect who I have to treat courteously and sometimes help out.

1. I get jarred awake at 6:15 a.m.
2. Out the door by 6:30 a.m.
3. I'm at work around five to seven in the morning.
4. First break is 9:15 a.m.. If I didn't get a chance earlier I will check the internet and guest on LambdaMOO
5. 11:45 a.m. Lunch at Carl's Jr. The lady at the counter knows what I want and I just have to exchange pleasantries and money.
6. Second break at 3:30 p.m., time to blow off steam on LambdaMOO.
7. 5:55 to 6:00 p.m., pack the fucking bags and get the hell out of work.
8. In bed by 9:30 p.m..
9. Asleep by 11:00 p.m. if I'm lucky and not distracted by MOO.
10. Repeat.

On Wednesday and Thursday I watch TV with those wonderful Birds, Enterprise and Smackdown. Friday I decide if I want to go out or if I can afford to go out drinking but lately I haven't thought about going out drinking by myself. Monday I am too happy to know I have Tuesday off and on Tuesday I waste the hours doing absolutely nothing productive even though I could be doing productive things.

The weekends are even duller to the point that if I'm not online I'll actually plug my phone in and take calls. Mind you I'm an optimist thinking that I would get calls in the first place.

I will be spending Valentine's Night with the Birds watching Smackdown and eating stuff that isn't particularly nutritious.

My weekly schedule is like this:

• Monday, work 7:00 a.m. to 6 p.m.. Stay up late.
• Tuesday, day off. Early to bed.
• Wednesday, work 7:00 a.m. to 6 p.m.. Enterprise at 8 p.m..
• Thursday, work 7:00 a.m. to 6 p.m.. Smackdown at 7 p.m..
• Friday, work 7:00 a.m. to 6 p.m.. Up late.
• Saturday, wake up late and go to bed late.
• Sunday, wake up late and go to bed early.

I really can't think of anything interesting or in the vein of this particular holiday to post here.

Suffer bitch.

Ooh! Ooh! I just thought of something to put in here. I think this is a good thing (was re: familiarity and such) where the Birds can be cranky in front of me though I'm sure there'll be some response of "Oh, we'd be cranky around anyone" to take away from the cool feeling I had when I realized this during Enterprise.

2/15/02

I have news.

I'm calling the people back tomorrow. They called me today around ten in the morning.

Oh my fucking god.

If and when this goes through I'll be making twice what I am making at MCI.

Sorry sup but it looks like I'll be leaving and you've already lost three people in the past month. Number four may be coming up and I've actually proven myself to be valuable.

That doesn't change the fact that talking to more than a hundred people a day fucking sucks cock.

Finally that little story about Jerri_Blank and Jaybird is brilliant. Reckon that I can see it being acted out by the real life Jaybird and maribou.

P.S. Quinn, move to Colorado Springs!!!!!!!11111

Good News and Bad News

You'll have to excuse me because it seems that I have forgotten most of my dream. What I do recall is quite brief so you dream not-readers can breathe a sigh of relief. I was back in Millburn walking around in the early morning when old people were having their constitutional because it's quiet and they're used to getting up early. I come across a scene in front of a fenced in park where a police officer is beating the ever living shit out of an old man. Once the old man's dead the police officer moves on to the other old people and he's got a serious axe to grind with the seniors populating my dream. I stop him and ask him his name and he says it's Mario Anamos, I take the information and go to tell my father to see if he can put a stop to this cop but I end up running down alleyway after alleyway until I get to my father's parking lot.

Around then I wake up for the day.

Bad news:

I phoned the agency back and they told me that they decided to go with another person. I told Jaybird and he was flabbergasted since he knows they're short eight people and doesn't know why they would refrain from hiring me considering the people who were asking for my particular skills. When I heard the bad news I sulked for a bit then I dented a bathroom stall door in the men's room when I kicked it with my Herman Munster boots.

I spoke with Devo on the phone after work and something regarding a fight with her friend and this guy that her friend is obsessed with kind of hit me wrong on top of an incident she had at work with some temp guy at her place of employment. Like an idiot, I was hoping to hear that certain decisions were made because of me.

Good news:

I am still employed and I'm doing alright at that job as much as I fucking hate working at MCI. No, I hate taking over one hundred calls a day listening to people complain and bitch like it's my fucking fault they don't keep on top of things. I will be able to take off a few days in March with floating holidays and maybe soon I might get another position at MCI where I'll be handling fewer calls and making more money. Maybe a position where I don't take any calls.

I spoke with Devo today and she said I lifted her spirits calling her up and talking with her because it's rare that I do get to talk with her due to her schedule.

Oh yeah, State of Emergency isn't that good of a game especially after seeing what was done with Grand Theft Auto III. The designers definitely got the feel of a mall along with how people act in a mall but so far the game seems like a mix between a platformer with Street Fighter and a shadow of GTA3. The gameplay is repetitive and the missions aren't that engaging since they're mostly about killing something and getting to the next point of the game rather than exploring the world and doing everything possible in the game world.

Still I'm overwhelmingly grateful to Jaybird and maribou inviting me upstairs to see State of Emergency and have dinner with them because it would've spared me from walking downtown to drink and have a hamburger. I just hope I didn't come across as too sleepy when I was up there because that would've been rude.

Now it's bedtime.

2/17/02

Woke up with a headache and not feeling too good but at least my apartment is cold which is always a good thing. Last night's dreaming began with me pissing normally until I noticed that there were black things coming out of my dick in the stream of piss then darkening the toilet water. I was pissing blood.

The nice thing that kept this from being a nightmare is the fact that I realized "I have health insurance now! I can bleed from anything anywhere and it doesn't matter because I can get it all fixed up really quick."

Later in the dream I was somewhere in Cali^H^H^H^H Colorado Springs reading the Independent when I checked out the personals section which was full of porno and 900 phone sex ads. At the bottom was something like a coupon except it had two questions. "Why is Jaybird like Richie Rich and how much did he get paid so the Richie Rich comic could be created?" and another question that's lost in the dream. I got up and walked around town looking for Jaybird because I wanted to tell him that I didn't do this and I thought it was pretty damned cool he got mentioned by his nickname in the paper by someone out in Colorado Springs. When I came across him he was with maribou who was being cranky and wasn't that thrilled but Jaybird, as always, was gracious and he gave me a walkie talkie saying he'd be in touch.

After a while I ended up in the park from last night's dream where the cop was beating up the elderly. I kept talking into the walkie talkie but got no response but eventually I started to get some static so I made my way towards main street thinking up a lie about why I was incommunicado. Eventually I got the story that I just came out of the woods because I was walking up to these snowcapped mountains which I visited a long time ago in my dreams but I only visited the mountains and didn't dare traverse the treacherous trails. By the time I was back on the main street and walking into a building to meet up with the Birds I had gotten a phone call from the boss in NYC. He wanted to know why I hadn't been in contact and how he wants to get confirmation that I want nothing to do with him or his company anymore. I simply said, "No, I can't do anything anymore. Leave me alone, please. Is there anything else? Good. Goodbye." While I spoke into the telephone my voice kept cutting out like a bad cellphone.

Turns out that my sister had come to visit and everyone was waiting on me so we could take her to the supermarket since the supermarket is huge and she wanted to see. I sat in the back seat while she drove telling her that she was going to miss a turn while I was dicking around with the automatic window. My sister drove past a bunch of cripple spots and every other parking space was filled up then found herself in an alleyway made up of orange crates.

"You're going the wrong way. You can't turn around here because it's a dead end and too tight" I told her while she spent a lot of time trying to get herself turned around in the tight spot. I was annoyed and got out of the car which only served to increase my sister's rage so I started running away.

Whens he finally caught up with me at my hiding place somewhere off the side of the road in someone's yard she was wearing all purple and was snarling something about how she ruined her nails dragging them on the asphalt because she was so enraged at me. Each of her nails looked deadly sharp but ragged and I knew she was going to try to kill me right then and there. That wraps everything up.

My head hurts, I'm tired and I got up around eight in the morning for some god damned reason though I think I went to sleep somewhere around midnight on Friday.

Only thing on my mind is getting my taxes done and I'm paranoid and worried about this thinking whatever I may get back from the government will end up being eaten up by what I owe from working for myself at the NYC job. Also I wish there was a way I could make the screen in wordpad into white text on green or at least black text on blue since seeing all this white light this early in the morning is really painful to my eyes.

Later on Saturday I downloaded WinMOO and Quinn's Ghostcore which I am playing around with online and offline. I want to see if I can get my idea off the ground even if it's just something really unrefined. At the very least I'd like to set up a MOO where my friends from New Jersey can log in and we can all hang out and do shit or idle the time away. Most likely it'll eventually get set up on heptapod.org. Right now people can get on my MOO if I give them my current IP address and port number. So far Malyss and Makonan have visited. I've told Jaybird about it and he responded with "One step closer to Seattle." Hee hee.

2/18/02

Possible game on the weekend. Heard back via voicemail. Optimism is saying that things are balancing out where I can game but I'll still have a shitty job instead of having a better job (better job == more money, who cares what i do) and not being able to game.

I'm fucking tired and cranky and melancholy.

Maybe I'll go beat my head against a wall (metaphorically) and try to call Devo.

P.S. The Goldust match on PPV Sunday night was brilliant. I'd put a picture here except I can't seem to find any good phoots on google's image search.

boring

I spent the last half of work doing voices on the phone when I took customer's issues in hand and dealt with them responsibly.

One thing I would like to share with people who may call into customer service with a chip on their shoulder and lack the kind of perspective where you can't understand the person on the other hand is not the company but just an employee. We have your addresses, we have all your phone numbers, we have your birthdays and social security numbers along with the names of people important enough to make decisions on your long distance account. If you make the call personal there's a good chance the person on the other end will make it personal. No, I'm not talking about cross country murder sprees but little things like suddenly you're receiving calls from people who cruise deviant personal ads or something of that caliber. You made your call to get help and the person on the other end of the phone has the capacity to help but there are certain limits to what one can do regardless of one's position.

I was tired and self-centered last night when I didn't update because I was so tired and just wanted to sleep and I couldn't think of anything to write. I did have something written here from late Sunday night but it's irrelevant now.

Sunday night I dreamt but I don't recall much of it. In fact lately I know I have been dreaming along with small insights regarding those dreams but they burn away in the light of day. Tuesday morning the dreams were vivid but they're fading so I will do my best to immortalize them here.

First part took place on a beach with a wide vista overlooking the ocean. In the distance were tall thunderheads looming over the tropical ocean which barely contrasted with the night sky. Soon a maelstrom began and golden flashes of lightning were flashing against and through the middle of those clouds like they were going to be a substitute sunrise. When I walked down to the shore the ocean wasn't that strong and the waves were weak but once the maelstrom's strength had affected the ocean the waves became as strong as I remember them down in southern New Jersey. Long time ago I used to have nightmares about the ocean devouring me and chasing after me, sometimes tsunamis would come and destroy everything leaving me only with depression about being the only one who wasn't killed in the surge. I reckon this dream means I might've overcome whatever the ocean represented in my dreams.

The next part of the dream was back home. Up the road from me is a formerly abandoned school that was turned into a YMCA. In the dream it was still an abandoned school that waited for a school year that never came because it was happy being a school. I had left a voicemail message on Devo's cellphone saying to meet me there by the payphones and I walked on over to the school. By the payphones were some kids who had blackened their faces with charcoal so they could stalk the night without being readily seen by cops or whomever their quarry was. My pockets were empty and there was no way I could make any calls from the payphones to see what was keeping Devo.

Turns out that the kids were going to beat someone up for calling them virgins but I stopped them from pursuing their violent actions.

"Haven't you guys heard of Photoshop? Just grab a few pictures from VoyeurWeb, stuff yourself in there with a few appropriate things and bingo you have 'proof' that you're not virgins."

They grumbled at me saying it was the principle of the thing and rode off. When I turned around it seems that the phone company installed two payphones in front of the payphones I was going to use effectively trapping me. After much crouching and crawling I made my way out but it took so long that the sun had risen. Devo still hadn't shown up. Out on the front lawn of the abandoned school were two people, one was a balloon breasted brunette completely naked and posing for the guy taking phoots. Something about them made me immediately think this was some Nude in Public contri in progress which was pretty cool and I thought "I wonder if Devo will be here soon because she'd think this was fun too."

Eventually the guy got naked and sat at the computer to upload the pics while the woman walked back to her chair in the shade. Earlier she was walking barefoot on the cement without any discomfort but once she put on her shoes she was hopping and cursing at how hot the ground was to her feet. By now the sun was high in the sky and Devo still hadn't arrived so I asked the VoyeurWeb people if I could borrow some change and they gave me a folded up piece of carpet filled with dimes and nickels and a crumpled up, fingerless motorcycle glove. When I got back to the payphones Devo had arrived but was in the process of leaving because she didn't find me where she thought she would find me.

I stopped her, related my little adventures from before and we sat on the grass waiting to see if there was going to be another shoot. I had to pee something fierce and nothing was going on so I went inside the school to use the facilities but not before telling Devo to come get me if anything interesting happened during my absence.

Inside I found my father and sister who I spoke with but the conversation was very strained. My sister and I were sniping at each other with my sister saying something to the effect that I did nothing but demonize my mother without looking at how evil and unforgivable I am. That's about when my mother decided to walk through saying something over and over again about how I've done nothing but lie to her for twenty three weeks. By the time she left I was hollering "Fuck you, god damned cunt. Go to hell!" hoping that would incite her to violence so I could end everything once and for all but it only served to incite my sister who leapt on my back and started scratching and biting my neck and shoulders. I backed up into a wall and crushed her against my weight then threw her against a wall. My sister immediately went stiff and I laughed at her, "Idiot. You don't get rigor mortis as soon as you are dead." My sister opened her eyes and started chasing after me howling about it's all my fault aliens had come down from space and stole all the eggs from her ovaries.

By the time I was back in the room with my father, who had stepped outside and watched another photo shoot and actually took part (the woman put one breast on each of his shoulders like he had two extra heads with him smiling at the camera in the middle), who was oblivious to our conflict. I just sat down and watched TV.

Here's some more stuff about MOO and everything. I was advised to not run the MOO server off my domain since it could get me thrown off for opening up other ports as well as using processor power so I will have to run this thing from my laptop. I looked at other servers that exclusively host MUDs and they're more expensive than web hosting. Damn.

On the good side of things about my MOO and MOO related stuff, someone told me that UNM is back online and running despite the fact that I thought UNM would never be seen again from what the current archwizard told me many years ago. I logged in for the first time in four years on Monday night and saw everything exactly the way it was when I left with Dionysius Epsilon intact along with other stuff I coded long ago which I thought was lost to the ages since I didn't have the forethought to copy everything in text files. One thing that I do wish I did very long ago but didn't do was dump all the code from the HVECs at Sprawl because those were the best items on Sprawl. When I returned from my two year hiatus away from MOO I discovered that everything regarding HVECs were recycled and destroyed.

Bleh.

Now I want to relearn how to code stuff on MOO so I can tweak my moon room on Lambda so the room can represent any celestial object, like a gas giant with several moons, or the martian system.

You don't see it but I see it on this page, when I scroll up and look at the logo in wordpad it looks like heptagod instead of heptapod because of how the text is formatted currently.

2/20/02

So I went to the post office on Tuesday in the afternoon and that place was packed wall to wall for some reason and that pissed me off something fierce. I thought, "Don't you people have fucking jobs?"

Right now I'm going through my voicemail messages because I need to get a phone number from a recent message and the system doesn't allow me to go from most recent to the oldest so I have to go through all the old messages left on my voicemail that I don't dare erase until I save them somehow.

Most of them are from Devo, second in line are messages from my sister then Makonan and finally one from Jaybird which is a Puzur joke and the other is from the boss in NYC that I have in case he pulls any shit on me.

Devo sent the Birds what they bought from her via auction and Devo said there was a letter mailed out to me on the same day but it hasn't arrived.

Okay I got the number and stopped going through the voicemails on my phone and I'm going to go gaming on Saturday or at least sit around and talk about gaming on Saturday. Seems that the guy who was in my training class at MCI got back in touch with me and is looking to do a Dark Ages campaign so this ought to be interesting.

Today has just been one of ups and downs for me. When I've been up I've been productive reading and learning shit online but when I've been down I've been thinking about how I figure that I'm always going to be alone and it really doesn't matter to anyone except me. Fucking thirty one years old just do something already or kill yourself. If you think the rest of humanity has given up on you, and this means you believe they gave a shit in the first place, just end it all right here and now.

So I get down and depressed about shit.

I'm going to post the text from Dionysius Epsilon here. I think I'm going to create that area as a MOO rather than do my New Jersey thing.

2/21/02

I'm tired, too tired to go wash but I definitely have to do something about my nails tomorrow either before work or during break because they're bugging me right now. At least my hair is passable at the moment.

Just another day of the same old boring shit which means that tomorrow will be another day of the same old boring shit followed by the fact that I get to dress down on Friday and then go out to do something after cashing my check. If I'm lucky I may get sent home early or I may not be sent home early and get a full day in edgewise.

2/22/2

Too many twos!

I'm looking forward to tomorrow night and spending it out or doing something to blow off steam after this week at work because this week at work seriously sucked cock in a most serious fashion. What buoyed me through the day was the fact that my sup said the people who call into customer service are no better than the people who appear on the Jerry Springer show.

Still I had a good day where I kept my average handling time low, 225 seconds, handled more than 110 calls, only did six sales of long distance but the entire time I had to deal with people who were seriously fucked up in the head because they didn't understand they have to pay taxes.

I tell them as nicely as possible, at first, that one can not avoid taxes and I advise them if they don't want to pay taxes to vote Libertarian or begin a revolution that overthrows the gub'mint.

Plus I got at least 20 calls today that were misrouted to me that should've gone to MCI local rather than long distance. Damn those people get pissy when I have to tranfer them. It's not my fault MCI can't get their shit together and route calls correctly in the first place so keep it to yourself.

I'm done.

Not Done

I forgot to add this, for the whole week I've been getting calls from people who have birthdays on December 12th which is a pretty keen coincidence.

2/23/02

I'm going gaming on Saturday night, I need to cash my check, buy a nail clipper and other boring bullshit things which make up the mediocrity of life.

What I do remember from last night's dreaming is spotty at best but I shall endeavor to convey the dream here. I was somewhere and I came back to my car and found that someone had cut off the rear of my car and stole it for whatever reason. Depressed at feeling trapped I went over to this one place where I sat and Winona Ryder sat in my lap. I ended up nuzzling her neck for most of the dream until I realized that if I didn't get up soon that I'd never get my car running again ever ever ever. When I returned to my car I saw the front end was the only part left much to my dismay. I was trapped.

One thing that pleases me about Colorado is the springtime feeling I felt this evening when I got home from work. The humidity, the right balance between warm and cool combined with the early evening just gave me a sensory memory of being a little kid in summertime which is certainly a good thing.

That reminds me of one time where I was out late and walking home from someplace when I ran into some big kids who lived across the street from me. We talked for quite some time and I told them an outlandish, and particularly ribald for a six year old, story about how I was on the toilet taking a poop when a telephone pole crashed through the bathroom and how the firemen and police had to rescue me and everyone else in the house.

2/24/02

Interesting that last night I dreamt that I had a nine millimeter pistol. I was shooting at various trees with good grouping of my shots. When I tried to get the gun ready for shooting more rounds there was this stretchy thing on the back like the device in a stapler which pushes the staples up to the business end. When I yanked on it to ready the pistol something snapped and I felt so bad for ruining the gun.

Friday night I took this test to see which card of the major arcana I am which produced the results of being the emperor. The adjectives that I chose were masculinity, order, fantasy, fate, reserved, optimism, law & justice and decadence.

Tonight I went gaming but it ended up being me and the gamemaster while his friend tried to figure out what kind of character he wanted to play and his wife handled his kids. It was very surreal being around people younger than me but already have three kids including a six month old baby. I ended up making a nosferatu who is a stonecutter, he wanted to be a priest when he grew up but he soon realized that studying religion was making for idle hands and idle hands do the devil's work so he decided to become a stonecutter in order to build houses for God. I got him the merit of manse so he has an underground location which is like a cathedral. Twenty five rooms, so sayeth the merit in the Dark Ages book.

A local baron sitting in for a king in absentia has captured someone's ghoul who has been spilling the beans about vampires in order to save his skin. I was asked to take care of the situation and my plan is to break into the ghoul's dungeon cell to offer him two alternatives. 1. I break your skull. 2. I yank out your teeth and tongue from the root but I let you live. In the meantime I have replaced the baron's wine with vampire blood and left a note in his underwear drawer that says "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Hopefully he'll find the message long after he guzzles down my nosferatu blood.

Anyway I know that I haven't been very good at keeping in touch with people lately like Dad, my sister, Kylie, Makonan, Devo, Brian, Tim, Buddha and others. Hee, I feel like I'm doing the closing bit from Romper Room. My only explanation is that I am out of the house for twelve hours a day listening to people bitch, whine and moan. Once I get back home there's not much I want to do. Considering the time of year, that's a good thing because it prevents me from spending money I don't have since I have to save up to pay for another year of hosting along with another domain name (maybe), save up to pay taxes which I fear will be exorbitant since I worked for myself at the NYC job, put money aside for Makonan's visit and a little extra money aside so I can get my car in order.

P.S. I got the name dragonmonkey while listening to NPR after work when I got home and fired up the laptop. The story was about someplace in Africa (Angola? Liberia?) where a bunch of guys were celebrating something that wasn't particularly nice and the commentator said one of them called himself dragonmonkey. Damn, that's a pretty fucking cool name. Sure it's four syllables but it's still damned cool. If I try to explain what it evokes in my head the words really do fail me. The best description I could give is a small rhesus monkey which has flame red hair and breathes fire.

2/25/02

Time goes by so fast. I'm sure the fact that it's February isn't helping things considering the fact that February is the shortest month of the year.

Today Quinn made me a builder over at Ghostwheel which was a huge surprise and made happy that now I can see how shit is implemented and do it myself on my little ghostcore database. This will certainly help me and when I have some extra time to myself I can go about trying to implement some docs for the ghostcore game system with tutorials. Part of my way of giving back. I've already done a lot, contributed an entire quest area for Ghostwheel (which wasn't implemented and i declined a builder bit long ago because i wouldn't be around much to do anything on a regular basis so i don't want to waste their time) along with rounding out Dexter with stuff to make him bionic even though bionics were never truly implemented as a class.

Also Malyss stated she was disappointed with me deciding not to do a New Jersey based MOO and that carried some weight with me. The first thing I was thinking about before I mentioned the change on my site was that a big area of the Barrens was carved out of New Jersey, capped with a dome and brought to another planet (Dionysius Epsilon) to be a game preserve of a terran environment. Right now I'm not feeling that creative and I just want to do stuff in my head instead of actually putting anything on paper or implementing it.

While looking around for stuff I contributed to Ghostwheel I found a small bit about my father's ghost story and discovered that I had repeated myself in my diary. On two separate occasions I mentioned the story. October of 2000 and January of 2001. Oh well.

I can't complain, I have some money put aside and I am socially content along with happy about being able to play with ghostcore.

I'm definitely going to shower tonight. Honest.

quick update

Sunday morning I dreamt that I was fired soon after this woman was fired from my bay. She was fired in real life for always asking for undertime (go home early, unpaid and it doesn't affect sales you had to get), sick time and vacation time. The sick time was legitimate according to her since the doctor screwed up her gall bladder surgery but she went over the amount allotted to her as an employee.

In the dream after she was fired they tapped me on the shoulder and said that I was fired. Hot fuck, I can't take this shit. I tried defending myself saying that I was rarely late and I always made sure that I had a good reason if I wasn't there (like the time my battery died even though it was unexcusable) but they just told me to go home. As I was leaving the building I walked past my bay and sickgirl was sitting there to my astonishment.

"Why are you back here?"
"They remembered what I did for them in Peru."
"Huh?"
"I did something for them in Peru."

Her words carried a lot of weight like she did something great but I still couldn't comprehend how this slacker could do one thing and get a reprieve while I'd be stuck on the dole waiting for another shitty job to come along so I can pay the rent and bills. When I tried to argue in my favor again it was like talking to a brick wall.

One of the few times that I've awakened from a relatively lame dream and been thankful it really wasn't a dream in the first place.

2/26/02

Monday was bitterly cold. Even at noon with the sun shining brightly everything was fucking cold. The nice bit was going back into the building and hearing the wind howl all around me.

Damn, I love that.

Not much else is going on right now, just dicking around on Ghostwheel and thinking of creating one beast except it really won't be anything that original and it'd probably end up being something superfluous.

There are mini-raptors and mini-rexes but no mini-triceratopses.

2/27/02

I created a generic mini-triceratops on Ghostwheel and I attempted to create a little game preserve where I could have them wander around without being preyed upon by mini-raptors and mini-rexes but I had trouble making a megaroom so I gave up for the night.

I did nothing on Tuesday but I did feel down as the sun set thinking about another day of people calling in and bitching from the git go because somehow I'm their enemy. You wouldn't believe how many people are out there who want to get something for nothing just because of their tenure with a company or service. Sure the sampling I'm viewing is highly skewed since my job puts me in the line of fire and if I was going to use this criteria to make a model of America's population then most people would be men with chips on their shoulders, the elderly, old black women and shrill twentysomethings who are realizing for the first time that the world isn't fair.

What's really funny are the people who just realize that they're not saving money and they let it go on for at least eight months. Who are these people who are customers for over a year then realize they are a customer and cry foul because they never signed up nor did they want to have the service. They're imbeciles. Nothing blows off my steam while I make the international jerkoff motion with my right hand while listening to someone go on and on about "I'm going to my TV station!" or "I'm getting my lawyer!" or "I'm calling the FCC". Sure, go there. I'm sure they'll have a ball telling you that you're the one who truly is an idiot for not reading the material sent out upon signing up or paying attention to notices when rates go up. What's truly priceless are the people who exclaim, "I never paid this much in taxes before!"

Right, the taxes on this bill are much higher for you than taxes on the bill from another company. Of course when the customer remarks upon the taxes I tell them that if they don't want to pay that much in taxes they could go ahead and overthrow the government.

Hgaughalughuhg

2/28/02

Aquarium discovers two 'gay' penguins

SUMMARY: Officials at the New York Aquarium finally realize that the most dedicated couple in the penguin enclosure is a pair of males.

Wendell and Cass would be more comfortable in a Greenwich Village one bedroom apartment than their current home at the New York Aquarium.
The male penguins, each about 14 years old, can't get enough of each other. The couple has been together for the past eight years, and the two have sex with each other whenever they can, which is often. Presumably penguins can tell the guys from the gals, but aquarium officials apparently can't. For years they thought the pair was one of each. The truth didn't come out until aquarium staff carried out a blood test. Angie Pelekedis, a spokeswoman for the aquarium on Coney Island, said: "They're one of the most dedicated couples in the penguin enclosure."
Penguin keeper Stephanie Mitchell added: "I was only seeing one mate with the other, but then one of the other keepers saw it happen the other way round so we did a blood test that proved they were both male.
"Cass tends to be a rather aggressive bird. Wendell is very nervous; always has been. He's on edge all the time. They're currently in a dispute with another couple over their nest. It seems to be one of the most desirable places in the penguin enclosure."

slashdot.org rejected the times I tried submitting that story.

Hurr, funny. My little sister sent me that.

So I'm reading The Book of the Dun Cow, I will be reading another book (i left it upstairs when i came in and i don't recall the title) and taking all of 2/28 off because I was offered undertime without me asking for it. At the end of Wednesday I was asked if I wanted undertime and I accepted, also there was a little contest going on where whomever got the most international sales would get to go home a half hour early, paid, and have the supervisor take the calls. I ended up getting tied with one of the guys in my bay with five international sales but when they used the second criteria I beat him soundly. The second criteria being AHT, aka average handling time, which is 300 seconds for all customer service representatives. I was at 235 with 120 calls and I was just taking it easy and letting people drone on and on about their situation.

Instead of going home I ended up talking with my sister on MCI's dime with the phones in the breakroom. She told me how my mother was going cuckoo thinking people were wandering through the yard and using the hot tub when nobody was home. Her evidence was the fact that part of the hot tub's cover was blown off when it got very windy. My sister also mentioned the fact that my mother's been calling everyone gay for any reason which irritated my sister who blurted out, "I'm gay!" to which my mother replied, "Well, that's okay honey." This gave me the bright idea of getting Brian to phone my house when my mother's there and say, "Hi, I'm Haakon's lover of six months. He moved out here to be with me forever and ever. Just that he's too afraid to tell you himself so I guess I have to be the man in this relationship and take matters into my own hands." My sister said that was stupid which nipped the idea in the bud so I went off on how her would-be boyfriend is a weiner for how he's going to be a cop and doesn't have a license because of a DWI.

I've been dreaming lately but the memories have been vanishing quicker and quicker as consciousness overtakes me which saddens me because the dreams are fairly serious but also fairly normal dealing with important conversations.

I spent Wednesday evening upstairs playing with the Birds and watching Jaybird play his games which is cool and I mooched a soda off them and I reckon that tomorrow I'll be getting them pizza. Turns out that Jaybird has tomorrow off too but that's because he's working on Saturday. Maybe I'll do something productive on my MOO rather than doing stuff on Ghostwheel which probably won't be accepted since it won't be themely or end up stepping on someone's toes who hasn't been around for ages.

I really oughtn't bitch since Quinn was oh so very kind and generous enough to make me a builder which pleases me to no end and I'm still tickled pink at the idea of being a builder there even if it is for research purposes. From what I've seen all the stuff I've been interested in has been implemented on Ghostwheel except that it's just really rare shit like powered armor and special weapons. I played a bit of State of Emergency as Spanky (fat mexican with tattoos and gang colors) and felt such joy when I got the minigun and started mowing people down. A minigun would definitely be something I'd want to have on my MOO as a weapon whether for arena combat or hunting.

Jaybird's been saying that if I get a MOO up and running that means Colorado Springs will be a step closer to being just like Seattle. Just need more people to move out here.

I'm tired, I'm going to round out the night talking with Makonan (3 weeks) but she says she's bushed.