Category: Games

service plus party

Paul and I were very moved by the service for David Hamilton, who in death seems even more quietly mythic than he was in life.  A genuine, humble, intelligent, thoughtful, listening kind of man, with music in his very soul, the eulogies were funny and moving and real and the comments by his daughters-in-law particularly stood out as coming from two very different women, but uttering the same grateful praise.

We spent a lot of time catching up (I refused to look at my watch.)

So we were late to the restaurant, but it all came out okay.

Then back here.  We played Cards Against Humanity and had so much fun.  I haven’t heard Jeff laugh that hard in company since high school.  Both of us laughed until we were leaking, and at the point when we thought our ribs couldn’t take it any more we’d start laughing again.  Keith played games master. Also in attendance Cassidy, Mike (birthday lad), Joe and his gf, whom I’ve probably been introduced to four times but whose name I cannot remember, Brian and Chari, Paul of course.  Paul had the advantage, with Keith, Mike and Cassidy, of having played it before, and he came up with some combos that were hilariously unprintable.  I won a round with the best and simplest two card combo.

“For my next trick I will try to pull HOPE out of MY SEX LIFE.” Keith was the judge that round, ya shoulda seen his face.

I also won a round with “Dick Fingers”.  Since there was also “Five Dollar Foot Longs” coming up as a card in that round the group immediately came up with a  band name of Dick Fingers and his Five Dollar Foot Longs.

Yes, we had fun.

Jeff wore his Stargate “No Place Like Home” hoodie, squee.

I don’t even know who won and I don’t care.  It wasn’t the point.

Keith noted that you aren’t supposed to play it with family members but we managed all that quite nicely.  It’s an extremely rude game, and you may learn, as Jeff remarked, things you really didn’t want to.

Thank you to Jeff for getting the pinballs going – Joe and gf, who is apparently a pinball enthusiast from way back, went downstairs and made pinging noises for at least an hour and then dropped into the middle of the CaH game.

Around 9:30 I realized I could no longer stay upright so I went to bed.  Also, darkness equals bugs.

Thank you to all the beautiful people, friends and Beaconites, who made it such a perfect, and perfectly exhausting day.  Now I can’t sleep.

 

Falling and dying (in Dark Souls II) 4 of 50

Falling and dying x 3
In Dark Souls II

I've only ever kibitzed
when my brother played this game
The NPCs pee on his leg
and call it gentle rain
And soon enough the gravity
will trigger this refrain

Falling and dying x 3
In Dark Souls II

He stepped into a box one day
and he emerged a girl
He thought he'd give the mincing walk
they gave her a short whirl
But really he would rather be
an armoured flying squirrel!

Falling and dying x 3
In Dark Souls II

bridge:
Typos in the weapons descriptions
No way to pause it to pee
Boss fights that come out of nowhere
You'd better be ready to be...

Falling and dying x 3
In Dark Souls II

As fickle as the weather 
in Vancouver and as nice
Merchants you need badly who
will only show up twice
They overseason everything 
but only use one spice

Falling and dying x 3
In Dark Souls II

Spoken... Man I'm sure glad I'm not the one who has to keep the torches lit in that place...

Ah, me

Some dudebro posting under a social justice moniker on twitter just told me that douchebag is not a gendered slur.  Do you know what it feels like, protecting Stephen Harper from gendered slurs?  I feel…. fucking weirded out, 0 humans!

Of course douchebag is a gendered slur.  Men don’t douche.  (Women shouldn’t either, but that is a bottle of cultural worms I’m not prepared to uncork at the moment cause then we get into the whole stinky hoo-ha thing… just, no.)

Anyway, Stephen Harper is a REAL man.  Where REAL stands for Reliably Evangelistic Authoritarian Leader.

So after he (obliviously he) tells me that douchebag is not a gendered slur, I answered thusly,

Are you implying (along with coconuts migrating) that men douche?  Cause, damn, dog, that’s some scary shit.

I think it’s time to turn off the social justice firehose for today.

Manuel Noriega – Ol’ Pineapple Face himself  – is suing a gaming company for unauthorized use of his image.

In the words of John Caspell:

bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha aaaa!

Why I think Jeff is a genius

Jeff’s tenancy with me has consisted in part of him going away and thinking for a spell when I say things like “Why can’t we have the internet on the big screen?” and “We have to many fucking remotes; when you go out of town I can’t even reliably turn the TV on; can you fix that?” mostly to prevent himself from saying something mean to me about how I’m too dumb to understand the two page instruction set he laboriously wrote, AND updated at least twice.  Jeff produces good documentation and I am dumb as a brick; these two facts are incontrovertable.  With respect to the “Why can’t we have the internet on the big screen?” question he had to do a ton of stuff and set up another computer to make it happen.  SO I get to go skipping through life asking why things don’t happen to my liking and he gets to spend hours of challenging labour AND money making it happen.  I don’t know which is worse, that I keep thinking I can get away with it, or that he just quietly goes away and does it without presenting me with an itemized bill.  On the other hand, I do cook around here.

His latest act of genius has been to bow to the inevitable.  I am indeed TOO STUPID to handle more than one remote, but universal remotes almost universally suck.  After lengthy study of the problem, he purchased a universal remote and then spent a goodly number of hours programming it to withstand the depredations not only of myself but of my son, who can be a complete ass when borrowing media.  Sorry son, it’s true.  Of course if you get hit by a car I’m going to regret this, just like I regretted my daily description of cleaning John’s apartment when he moved out immediately after he got killed in an accident, but I don’t go back and oubliette that shit because that’s just lame.  I would rather be complicated, messy and inconsistent, because, er, that’s how I am….  But the truth keeps on being the truth even when you could have picked a better moment for the reveal.

Jeff has not only programmed the remote so I can do whatever I want to do with the tv and the Xbox and the monitor, he’s SET THE AVERAGE AUDIO LEVELS.  So if you’re going back and forth between media you don’t get blown out of your seat if you land in the middle of a tv commercial.  That, friends, is true genius.  And he’s always finding new ways to tweak the remote.  Go tech!

Today is Mother’s Day.  I’m opening at church (and if I’m not, I’ll help….) and then assisting with a Mother’s Day tea.  I decided I couldn’t deal with making soup so I baked a whole salmon and made cinnamon buns.  Jeff doesn’t know I plan on making more, but I do; it’s mean to fill the house with the supercharged smell of home baking and then say oops, you can’t have any.  (Actually I let him eat a couple: “I have good news and bad news.  These are the best cinnamon buns I ever made, and the rest are going to church.”)

Yesterday I did laundry and played Buzz ALL DAY.  I do not play Buzz every day, but I had four separate guitar playing sessions yesterday and I LOVE HOW THAT GUITAR SOUNDS OMG OMNOMNOM.  Also yesterday watched chunks of Canucks game and laughed at Margot for watching Nascar again.  She really likes Darlington, and why not.  My shopping trip yesterday consisted of propane and guitar strings, because the g string ALWAYS breaks on a 12 string; I bought two whole sets and spares.  I talked to Neil Douglas about effects pedals and he laughed and asked me why I’d bother.  I s’pose.

I managed to cut the grass last weekend but I have no fucking clue when I’ll get to do it again because the sky continues to dump precip at an unholy and quite soggy-making rate.

After church, the Horde will descend and I am hoping to barbecue some MORE salmon.

Did I mention that I think my brother is a genius?

Yeah, that about covers it for me.

Gold vs. Gold.

Equality is a chimera, but it must be encouraged to be real.

Bawled my eyes out this morning. I read of an encounter between a little autistic girl and a little Down’s syndrome girl in a restaurant.  The two girls ended up hugging and sitting together to eat their meal while their moms got kinda teary.  Honestly, if I didn’t personally know the woman who wrote it and could attest to her complete veracity, I would have sworn it was one of those darned feelgood stories that veer around the internet from time to time.  As it is I feel marginally better about human beings.

Jeff’s going to write a post about Gizmo.  It’s not much fun; Gizmo is not well.

ScaryClown went downtown with a buddy after the hockey game and he said that insane was the kindest way of putting it.  He’s also never seen so many drunken hot women.

I was 45 minutes late getting home last night because some ffffing idiots had a fender bender and didn’t move the cars down a side street to swap info.  Iggerunt putzes.

The weather is mild, mild, mild; I see forsythia everywhere, and there are already rhododendrons in bloom on the SFU hill.

I just gave more money to BCCLU, and they repaid me by defending the pro life group on the UBC campus.  Oh how hard it is to have higher moral standards than the people we disagree with.  In fact, I’m not sure it’s permanent.  I’ll go back to being a jerk now.

How???? by mentioning the Correction, yet again.

But then again, we need all kinds of brains to make a world.

Holy ^%$! Batman

Debbie forwards this gem from the nation’s capital.  There’s more than enough **** to go around in this story.  Calling something a blowback makes it sound like a rough breeze, not feces at high pressure.

I had an amazing morning with Katie here, doing tech support and getting out of her way so she could work on her song. The tech support was trying to find cabling and making sure the inputs were set to record properly in Garageband.  Later in the day, my date, alas, was overcome by weariness from his exertions feasting a friend the previous night at a birthday bash, and cried off… this after texting me at 8:10 this morning that he was just going to sleep.   People nowadays have no idea how to pace themselves (this of course will cause Patricia to burst out laughing when she sees it, since she knows what an utter lightweight I am when it comes to weekend excesses.)  I sang “The Weekend’s Over” to myself, which cheered me immensely, and then worked my way through “Freedom”, “Wish it was Mine” (how I love that song, and the mad crush that prompted it), and about half a dozen other songs.  Seeing Katie with my guitar in her hands this morning nearly made me hyperventilate with excitement and glee.   I got her to visit this site for strummable guitar chords (which makes songwriting so much easier)  After she left (her dad walked her home), I sat down with the piles of sound equipment I got out for her this morning (the USB midi input cable for the Casio keyboard, the mucho expensivo mic which Katie found since I had no clue where the damned thing was, the second best set of headphones, the Kaossilator and associated cables, the laptop of course) and made gamenoise1, and that’s only a fraction of the extremely cool music I composed today. Getting more callouses on my fingers, seeing both my kids and writing tunes have put me in a very happy mood… and I didn’t cook dinner, I ordered pizza and then made Jeff pay for it.  Tra la la.  Oh, and I watched the boys kill zombies, because of course, Elferd Ito is in the house.  (L4D2, Left for dead 2, bad pun.)

It being Sunday morning, here, have some curse words

Stephen Fry on swearing. SPECIAL BONUS, Hugh Laurie in drag.

Attended a Jim Scott house concert at Tom and Peggy’s last night.  I am going to be in a minority here, but I think it’s possible to write songs about peace love light cooperation and the rain forest and still keep some edge in the lyrics. Let me recast that.  His choice of words irritated me a lot, also, too much repetition, please please please have more respect for the audience than that.  Oh, really it was an indoctrination session?  Why didn’t somebody tell me?  He has a lovely voice and a lot of Brazilian nylon string guitar style but I enjoyed the a capella song about peace the most.  There was lots of singing along and I couldn’t open my mouth or I just would have coughed through the entire concert.  Also a church member and his squeeze talked ALL the way through, and when everybody else is quiet and you’re the one sitting next to the rude people it doesn’t add to the joy. Since this person behaved rudely at the last event we both attended, I’ll let him know when he’s had his third strike. It would be polite… no sense bottling it up and when I can firmly and respectfully tell him he’s rude.

However, Al Sather’s mini mousse tarts put some life back into me.  MAN they were good.

Had a migraine by the time it ended, walked home in the rain and collapsed next to Keith on the downstairs sofa (I walked 6.4k last night, pouring rain both ways), while he groused his way through the new Assassin’s Creed II.  Bastards dicked with the UI AND the game play, so you spend a lot of time falling off things you didn’t intend to.  Also, Ezio walks as if he tucked a carrot into his ass crack and his jumps look… well I’ll let you see it, because I fell over the first time I saw it.  Someone’s going to do a mashup of all his moves to techno, and it will be funny.

I am still feeling odd. Part of it is irritation with myself over something I can’t speak of in public, but I think I’m genuinely sick, too.  I’ll see if church is still an option after I have my vitamins and some coffee.  I kinda want to boycott church until they fix the sound system, but really that’s not a sufficient reason.

Tomorrow I interview Denis, and I am so looking forward to it.

Watched these two movies over the last couple of days.  Flags of our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima.  HIGHLY recommended.

How do YOU set boundaries with loved ones?  Just asking.

Productive day

Jeff and I emptied out the last storage locker (saving $1200 a year) and did a bit of a shop.  The Commercial Drive Can Car truck rattled and squeaked like what it is, the highest mileage car in the fleet, and when I got to our place the s.o.b. wouldn’t start again; sounds like the starter motor is going.  The third time I fired up I got lucky and while it was running I called the office and gave them my sad tale.  Then I scooted back to drop it off and then Jeff got me and we went to Main St, where both of us realized that we’d forgotten John’s Jukes is closed on Mondays so no rubber bumpers for us.  As a consolation prize I went to Kam’s and got egg tarts and red bean pastries (best I have ever eaten).  Managed to get within eyeshot of Pulp Fiction without buying anything.

So now of course, after finding a home for all our furniture, books, etc we have to squeeze down again.  I’m considering buying shelving to put in the guest room, it being the last place I can think of in the house that has anything resembling room.

Keith came over yesterday and we had another Homicide fest.  I LOVE that show, there has been one lame episode in five seasons so far and even the lamest episode has something to recommend it.  Also, it’s funny seeing Michelle Forbes (who plays the massively loathesome Marianne in True Blood) before she got her teeth redone and playing an intelligent and likeable (albeit buggo) character.  She has one of the best voices in TV.

I also worked away on “Wish it was Mine” which is one of my fave songs of mine, just because it’s so passionate about the ways in which men and women are always misunderstanding each other, and yet is so very short.  Brevity is one of the things I like best in my own work; even if you hate it, it will be over soon.

Katie is coming over or I’m going down to New West at some point today.

Watched the Ellison doc last night

Dreams with Sharp Teeth is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.  Mike, Paul, Keith, Jeff and I had a glorious evening of pizza, beer, G&Ts, wasps drowning themselves in our drinks (this being August in Vancouver and virtually impossible to avoid), me printing out songs of mine for Paul to put in his songbook, me and Paul hanging the Japanese door hanging in the R. John Caspell Memorial Pinball Parlour, pinball (Great Finagle, but how much better that thing works when it’s level), bodywork, cheesecake and fellowship.

Dreams with Sharp Teeth is a must see if you’re into Neil Gaiman, BSG, or the English language.  The initial ‘interview’ sequence between Robin Williams and Harlan Ellison is PURE COMEDY GOLD. Also Richard Thompson does the soundtrack.  Once again, how much do I miss sharing stuff like this with John.

Now I am trying to wheedle Jeff into getting milk so I can make waffles.  I haven’t made waffles in ages.

Paul and I said to each other last night how much we missed small group ministry.  You think it’s Newage Nonsense, but it’s not – it’s major amounts of stress relief for your poor ol’ brain.  I remember the group meditations as being just about the only thing that kept me sane during a very trying period of my life.  Earlier in the day Paul came by and remonstrated with me about my lack of a rear view mirror on my bike (as well as to pick up the sewing kit, which is going back and forth between our houses like a sorry assed ping pong ball) and then he went out and not only bought one for me and installed it free gratis he got me a couple of really good bungie cords too.   All demonstrations of interest in my safety and comfort gratefully accepted, thanks.  As soon as the weather cleared in the midafternoon I went to get beer on the bike, and what an awesome ride that was, the temp being perfect, and the only hitch was when I tried to clear the intersection at Mary and Edmonds and nearly got crushed between two cars, and pulled a muscle in my calf.  It still stings – it’s a consequence of my ongoing L5S1 nonsense in my back, with the sciatic nerve pinging like a gas station bell – but I am taking painkillers PRN and otherwise ignoring it.

Also, I watched a DVD about church growth from a U*U perspective (man, it was interesting!) and had a long, interesting conversation with the minister.  Also, I practiced guitar for two hours and worked out the chords for Catnip on My Shoes, which I had never done before, so I can actually perform it in public now.

And here I was thinking I didn’t DO anything yesterday.

And the real world keeps getting more like a video game

Bruce Sterling pointed to this article.

Yesterday the pinball games came home from Victoria.  They are Xenon and Star Trek.  Xenon needs a lot of work a diode, Star Trek needs a diode is functional.  We’re going to get a brass plaque that says, R John Caspell Memorial Pinball Palace, seeing as how the pinballs will be in his old room.  More furniture came into the house, including my room, so I now am overstuffed with solid wood furniture, just the way I like it.

Chipper, you will remember that Xenon was a game you and Steve B useta play on downstairs from your place on King St.  Colin and Catherine, you will remember the Star Trek game as the game that went to Rhino – the same con where Jeff was Robert Bloch’s gofer.  Ah, the good old days.

Margot keeps trying to be trodden on.

I am contemplating the pile of work I’ve undertaken this year with some sadness. It is, after all, work.  But at least I don’t have to commute.

Watched the 25th Hour. Really, really great film; Spike Lee did an awesome job, and the cast is brilliant.  Lee is SUCH an actor’s director.  If you’re in a Spike Lee movie, you may not like him, but he WILL get a good performance outta you or die trying.  I am considering reviewing it.  My review is up on imdb.com

Hotter than the hubs of Hades.

Yesterday I brought 20 beers home on a bicycle.  Mike, you will be amused to learn that I bought 12 Bud Light Lime, having become addicted to them at your place.  (Mike, knowing that I’m a beer weenie, didn’t expect me to like them.  But Jeff and I both do, as it is lime flavoured beer water, and a damned fine thing on a hot day.)  I only had one bungee cord, so getting it all home was a challenge, but the house is downhill from the beer store, at least.

Song for today is All the Con Men I have Known.  A brilliant tune; it’s the one that gets me the most “That sounds like Joni Mitchell” comments (which frankly I find irritating while understandable) and I personally think the lyrics are among my best.  It’s just not an easy tune, and OF COURSE every goddamned verse has a different tune, because that’s just the way I crawl moaning across the floor.

watched the last half of the Super Bowl

That was really good football.  It was exciting, it was close, and there some aMAZing plays.  That Holmes touchdown catch was simply stunning, as was Harrison’s 100 yard run.

I didn’t see the first half because I was driving back from Renton (and yes, I was driving, and yes, I enjoyed driving that Prius with big happiness) with the Tom and Peggy travelling stringed extravaganza.  Conflikt II was great and I’ve already pre-reg’d for next year.

Today, more singing and playing. But first, unpacking, grr.