As an Aside…

• I picked up Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow used this weekend. Man, I love this game. Castlevania has been sort of reinvigorated on the GBA but I never got around to trying any of the Aria of Sorrow/Harmony of Dissonance/Orchestra of Discomfort whatever they are. Now I kinda wish I had because Dawn of Sorrow is awesome with a capital Sweet.
• My Hori screen filters also came in. They are very nice but I put them on wrong because I figured they would be either perfectly sized for the screens (they aren’t) or run slightly large (they don’t) so in both cases the filter comes up a couple of milimeters short on the right side. It’s not a big deal and I should be able to reapply them if necessary but I don’t want to risk messing them all up just now since I just got them put on and for the time being they’re doing the trick.
• We totally cleaned out our computer/game room this weekend. I think Nik was less than thrilled with the project since it took up most of Saturday and a big chunk of Sunday afternoon, but the end result is that all the piles of paper and other assorted junk are gone from the floor (Mobility: It’s gonna be huge!), my gaming area is actually useable, we have two pretty organized closets, we threw out a slew of random stuff that I have no idea why we were keeping (broken computer parts, non-functioning hair styling products and—I’m not making this up—silverware and cooking utensils that had been packed unwashed two moves ago) and we have a table covered in stuff to trade in/sell/donate. Once all that is gone, we’re about 94% clutter-free.
• Except for the books. We have a stupid amount of books. I guess in the grand scheme of things there are worse things to have too much of than books. But it’s getting out of control because we have no place to put them so they stack up like modern architectural experiments designed to give engineering students word problems to solve such as “If Nikki has 463 books which weigh between 1 and 3 kilograms, how many can she stack on her nightstand made from particleboard whose maximum load capacity is 100 kilograms before they crash through the floor and kill her downstairs neighbor?” Hopefully we’ll rectify the situation in the next couple of weeks as we’ve picked out an Ikea bookshelf that is 72″ square which is like 18 feet of book-storin’ area that will probably still not hold everything. But it will be better than being convicted of negligent homicide on our neighbors. I mean, I’m guessing.
• So we’re running through The World’s Largest Dungeon every other week with Lister, Strahd, Fwaaa, Skorn and a few others. Of course, by every other week I mean “We did it one week and said we’d pick it up again in two weeks but then half the party flaked so we just played Magic all night instead.” But whatever.
• We tried a new Magic tournament type since we were unable to continue the D&D adventure where each person opens a booster pack, chooses one card and then passes the rest to the next player. They do this until all the cards are gone and then go again, switching directions for the pass. At the end you flesh out the decks with some loose land cards and play a best-of-three tournament. It was kind of fun although we were using Mirrodin block boosters for the most part which meant we all had a crazy number of Artifacts and, as usual, I picked Blue as one of my colors so of course my deck was dog slow and I got trounced, eventually being the Ultimate Loser. Still it was fun.
• Next session (two more weeks… sigh) I’m bringing my new Shadowrun adventure, On the Run so if people flake again (I hope they won’t and that it was a one-time thing due to lots of people being out of town for Father’s Day) we’ll have some kind of cool adventure to try.
• I must be getting lazy. I used to spend hours and hours working up my own homebrew adventures for all sorts of games. I made adventures that I didn’t even ever plan to run because I knew no one else wanted to play the game. Now it’s so much effort that I’d almost rather run a pre-made adventure and pay the few bucks for it as a trade-off.
• Want to know why I was nearly crushed by the weight of pretentious poo spewing from Metal Gear Solid 2’s postmodern dialog diharrea and why I couldn’t get more than a few minutes into MGS3 and why I’m wary of MGS4 like a recently-bitten child entering a yard with a sleeping doberman? Because Hideo Kojima is flat out nuts, that’s why. Seriously, does anyone understand what he’s talking about? Ever?
• I know admitting this marks me as a terrible son, but my dad wrote several books and while I read most of them I didn’t get around to reading one of them (maybe because it was billed as sort of a romance and… well, you know… romance. Gah). Anyway I actually did finally finish it and it was good. One thing that struck me was that in the book there are a couple of scenes where a rapist attacks a college co-ed. In both scenes the narrative voice delivers powerful judgement on the perpetrator by referring to him as both a “coward” and a “fiend.” It struck me mostly because, stylistically, it isn’t something I see very often. I think that usually judgement is left to the reader based on character actions or dialogue but in this case it was specifically necessary that the attacks be described briefly (this is a Christian book after all—detailed descriptions of brutal rapes would fall outside the comfort zone for the audience) and that there not be a lot of dialogue since it comes up later as a plot point. I just thought it was interesting.
• I went to the doctor on Friday for my stomach issues. He basically gave me some high-strength Pepcid and told me to take it before dinner and to pretty much go on a diet (no fatty foods, no spicy foods, etc.) since he suspected that I might be creating too much stomach acid which was why I felt like junk most evenings. They also took a blood sample to test for ulcers. But what was really amazing was that the lady took two vials of blood in roughly 27 seconds, didn’t hurt me a bit (even when she swapped the vials) and left no discernable bruising. I felt like asking for her autograph.
• I went for a run on Saturday since my doctor was griping about me slipping off the health wagon. I may have overdone it a bit, as evidenced by the fact that I’ve been walking like I have some sort of mild palsy ever since due to the severe soreness in my legs. Stupid exercise.
• I finally got Mayfair Games on the phone Friday. We picked up a copy of Settlers of Catan around Christmas time and unfortunately we found that the game was missing all the red road pieces. I sent Mayfair a couple of emails and got form replies back saying they would “contact me shortly.” They must live in some sort of temporal vortex because six months qualifies as “shortly” to no one on this planet. But they have weird office hours so it’s always been a pain to get them on the phone. Having the day off Friday as I did, I finally caught up with them. They promised they would ship the bits out to me today. Forgive me if I don’t hold my breath.

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