Review:SDF Strange Patterns

Summamabitch. Personally, I think this one's the best SDF eva. Let's review:

Oh wait, before I begin, you can purchase your very own copy of Strange Patterns from www.torcpress.com. Unfortunately it's snail mail, but I guaruntee you'll get your copy. This shit is legit.

The ish opens with a day in the life of Cactus Joe. Our man Joe Joe showers, grows his armor, gets dressed, and he and Pengy plan for some up and coming comic book action. A knock on the door reveals.... You'll have to finish the comic.

A Frimpy comic follows, then a "Primitive" comic. Chase that with the best Halloween Man/Doomharvest EVER, then wrap it all up with Cosmic Fool and King Smooth, and you got the makings of a damn good five bucks.

For me, the most impressive aspects of the comic are the detailed backgrounds and the expressiveness in the characters faces. There's never any question what emotion the characters are feeling at any point in the comic. I think the ultimate examples of this are Halloween Man throughout his entire story, and Pengy during a hallucination containing Cactus Joe's death. I almost cried. Seriously.

I'd like to review more, but my woman just stole the comic. Sorry.

he's a bad mama jama

Well, just to blog today, I'll ask a question. What do you get when a bored DM makes a 1/2 orc, 1/2 hill giant that's a level 13 fighter? A big bad ASS. Certainly a very dumb bad ass, but bad ass nonetheless. Now, sure, a player could put their high roles onto Int, Wis, and Cha to try to counter those penalties. I mean, with a +8 to strength, a fellow could put a measely 10 on it and still be as strong as the strongest human. But where's the fun in that. You don't play a barbarian because you like to think. You don't play a bard if you want to be the one that lands the killing blow on everything. And you don't play a half giant orc to compensate for bad social skills. Makes a good bodyguard fo shizzle. Maybe I'll name him Badonkadonk.

damn blogger

OK, it's busy as shit here, and blogger just ate the D&D reveiw I'd been working on for the last 2 fucking hours.

So here's the brief summary. Party strife resulted in the DM ruling that a Diplomacy/Will opposed roll was gonna equal our actions, so an adventure that could have been derailed was saved. Druidic magic came through and we swam around an army of ogres, not rescuing some penned in orcs and hobgoblins. Then we fought a tendriculus, Durbik got eaten, and we got roughed up, but came through. Then it was 4am.

G-leaf left the chuul shell behind, but only after spelling "jizz" in the dirt with it. The monk turned out to be a little too uptight in the eyes of Ollie and G-leaf, and nobody can remember his name. Somehow Durbik survived being eaten by the plant monster, and in retrospect, we missed a prime opportunity just to let him die. Granted, G-leaf was a bit touched by the poor guy's confusion, and doesn't hate him nearly as much as Ollie does.

Regardless, it was a fun night, but I'm pretty sure most of us are too damn tired today. Maybe sometime I'll blog it in full, but prolly night. Stupid blogger. Stupid patients that don't need to be here. Stupid coworker that always seem to be dealing with some other patient when it's time to do some real work...

Snagnasty

Man. Marathon night of D&D last night. No play. Twas all co-DMing action. Nick and I found our zone of no ego, and the damn DM creativity flowed in like the tide. If the players didn't read the blog, I'd go over that shit with ya, but we've got surprised in store, in many forms...social, geographical, fiendish, angelic, draconic, monstrous, deific, and most especially of the "Did Nick really fart in my freezer" variety. I just hope Wendy buys a new spatula on that front, cause I've grown partial to the half melted, been-on-all-my-camping-trips little spatula we have.

Regardless, it was a productive evening that ended about 4am. Unfortunately, that means I'm tired as shit. See, the cable man came and picked up our box today, cause I'm tired of the digital cable not working.

Here's a trick. Cancel your cable on a cold ass fucking day. Him no want to go put a 'trap' on the box outside when it's cold. Him take the lazy way out. Him leave early from the cancel job. Him give us free cable because of it. Him great guy in my book.

And that's all I have to offer. I'm gonna go make the mafia.

premature eblogulation

Just a quick blog to blog that I can't blog. Too much hellspital schtooof goin on. And uhhh....

Nihongoga skoshee wakarimas.

to better serve you,

Hmm. Where to begin.... I guess I'll just do a chronological recap of the weekend.

Friday we rolled out of town just as it started snowing, but pretty quickly outran that shit. A good MP3 mix jammin on the Rio, and we made it to A-town in no time. We hung with Wendy's mom Friday night and just kept things low.

Saturday started early, with a visit to one florist. A-town got like 8 inches of snow, and I was really surprised at the amount of shit that closed because of it. I mean, Wisconsin. It's snow. That's like some place in the state closing because there's cheese.

So, the florist that morning was a gay bomb. If he wasn't smokin a pole, gay men everywhere were missing a prime chance. Of course, he was old, crabby, and artistically high on himself, so may be he just couldn't find a lover. Regardless, this guy was a flop. He couldn't really give us too many straight answers (no pun intended), and seemed to be lowballing the price. Add in the fact that he "absolutely [couldn't] stand" the lady the runs our reception hall, and he's a no go.

Next we met with a potential DJ. Turned out the guy runs a stable of DJs. One of the most professional and well organized guys I've ever met. They employ a sound engineer that not only tests all the equipment, but creates rigs for em, so it takes like 1/2 hour to set up a full mix of shit, instead of the chaotic mix of wires and what not you get from a guy that's just got a ragtag of equipment (way better than what you get from yer friend managing yer band and not knowing how to run shit). After the meeting, we decided to go with this guy, and he should be booked now. Just got to pay him.

Then we hit the reception hall. The hall itself is nice, the menu looks great, nothing but good words about the quality of the staff/kitchen, and what not, but the lady running it is crazy levels of hardcore. Very forceful. Can't say I like her, but if the reception goes well, whatever. At the very least, I'm not too worried about the reception, because she strikes me as a woman that doesn't LET shit go wrong.

Saturday night we caught a party at Wendy's dad's. Damn fun. Great food, lots of booze, and I think maybe 4 people were uncomfortable that we were 1/2 their age. The rest just accepted it and laughed, cause I'm damn funny.

Sunday was brunch with Wendy's grandparents, dinner with Wendy's dad, and some crazy great sex Sunday night. Crazy great. Oh yeah, and I managed to wrap up most of the adventure I'm planning.

Monday morning we hit another florist, and this is the one we're going with. Easy to work with, professional, knowledgable, and most importantly honest. None of this "We can get anything" crap. Gave us solid numbers on cost, things like that.

Later, we revisted the gardens we're having the ceremony in, and got to chat up the planner lady. Not only is she hot, but she got Wendy excited about the ceremony again. Good stuff there.

Unfortunately, Monday night we returned to discover my car had been towed. Don't really feel like getting into the details of it, cause I'll just get unnaturally pissed again. Suffice it to say, it took 2 hours and $285 out of my life, and if not for our lease, I'd move right now.

And now, I'll try to post this rant.

Butt Chaos

Yep, Butt Chaos. It's very similar to Butt Anarchy, although not quite as bad as Poop Anarchy. Those are utilizing the power of the poop and the butt to overthrow law, whereas Butt Chaos is the complete absence of order because everything is Butt. That's what my ER is like at present, complete and total Butt. Order has pulled in on itself so much here, it looked like a sphincter, right before it imploded out of existence.

How am I blogging amidst the Butt Chaos? Simple, I live for Butt. I'm also just so dang fast at my job that it's an elite staff of nurses that can overrun me. That staff's not on tonight.

Besides that, the Butt Chaos started this morning at 5am, so I've been flowin with the Butt for almost 12 hours. 5am, cat's on my head. Not sure why, but it scared the shit out of me, and him. Almost back to sleep at 5:30, but then some snow plowing started out the window, and I woke back up. After bout 20 minutes of failing to go back to sleep, and the alarm set for 7 anyway, I just got up and wrote. That two hours was it on the peace today.

Turns out at B&N yesterday, either one of the super Lutherans or the pear-shaped Hades monster Lead that wants to be a Succubus complained about hard rockin in receiving. Rather then letting us know the music had to be toned down, turned down, or turned off, the manager that's not one of our managers (she's just with us til she gets a store of her own) simply took the radio out of receiving AFTER everyone left Tuesday night. So, yesterday saw a big explosion from the receiving team, which had one member crying (but that's a long story), and eventually netted everyone a huge apology from the real store manager for the non-store manager's bad handling of it all. Hoogala.

And now, the aforementioned Butt Chaos of the ER. Which hasn't stopped by the way. In fact, I've seen two more patients since I started. Butt. Oh, and a full grown woman just told me, "When I booboo, there's blood in it." HAAAA. That's funny poop forge stuff.

Oh yeah, before I forget, a message to all three of my regular readers, although I'm sure they all know it. Out of town for the weekend means no blog. It'll resume, complete with a full cost assessment of the wedding on Tuesday, I'm sure.

Shafe. rollin with the Butt Chaos.

BTW, bloggers spell checker has no entries for any variant of blog. Kinda funny.

another day older and no internet

Well, internet went down again on Monday. Quite the stupid situation, too. We could utilize programs like MSN Messenger and Wendy's damn Weatherbug. Hell, we could even access Yahoo and check email. However, we couldn't go outside of Yahoo for anything.

First time I called the cable company on Monday, the ass on the phone insisted it was spyware. No amount of arguing would convince him otherwise, despite the fact that it was unlikely BOTH of our computers would have the same spyware since they'd not been on at the same time that day. So, diligently, I ran all of our anti-virus and anti-spyware software, to no avail.

After much tinkering while on the phone this morning, we got the internet working with a direct link from my compy to the modem. Pretty much means my router's bad. Weird thing is, we can transfer files across the network, but the router won't let us use the internet. I thought it was especially nice the way the cable tech directed me to call my router company when I asked about IP settings and what not (that's sarcasm by the way). Granted, they can't be expected to know everything about every router or hub, but that's really something you want to tell the customer when they ask the FIRST fucking question. It's really ammo you want to save for assholes that don't give up.

Regardless, I'm on the verge of dropping our cable company all together and switching back to dial up, but knocking over to cell phones on the phone front. Maybe I'll just switch over to a data phone line and go with DSL or something.... The whole thing costs maybe $15 more a month than what we're running now, but that's nothing compared to the $45 we save dropping TV that way, I think. Catch there is the start-up cost on both the cell phones and the new phone lines, plus the fact that the woman wants a Motorola Razor phone if she gets anything at all. Which means Cingular if you want the phone on the cheap, and that's a bit more expensive.

Cingular's got the most coverage areas nationwide, but T-Mobile's cheaper in our area (plus they've got Catherine Zeta Jones). I'd personally rather have Nextel, just for the bad ass walkie-talkie feature, but I think Nextel was the most expensive. No wait, Verizon Wireless was, which made no sense, cause they had the least deals on phones, the least features, and the highest prices. I think they ahd the smallest coverage areas, too. *shrug*

Of course, I'm lazy, so I doubt any of that happens any time soon. Specially cause this weekend I'm blowin all my cash on flowers, cake, DJs and decorations.

If you need medical care and can't afford it, let us know.

Well, another day of the playoffs has come to an end. As expected the Eagles advanced, rather soundly. Unfortunately, so did the Patriots. I wasn't able to watch as much of either game today.

From what I saw, though, the Vikes forgot how to play football. Take the botched field goal fake for example. You can bet money the media's gonna eat up Moss for that one, specially considering the 2 second error and moon shot from previous games. Sometimes I feel bad for the guy. Sometimes.

As for the Colts/Pats game, looked like the Colts just got outplayed. Unlike the Rams and Vikes this weekend, the Colts came to play. Unfortunately, the patty cakes came to play harder.

And more unfortunately, now that that game is over, everyone and their mom is sick and in need of emergency medical treatment. See a previous rant on that one.

Default 6684

Well, with one day down in this weekend's playoff games, the Steelers and the Falcons are advancing. Yay Steelers, boo Falcons. The Steeler/Jets games was one of the best I've watched in awhile. Both teams played their hearts out, and the Jets woulda won except for not one, but two missed field goals. Can anyone say unemployed kicker?

As for the Rams, they deserved to lose. They could have won, but didn't come to play. The Falcons ran over em like a midgit speed bump. Games like this one shame me to be a fan. Makes me feel like a Vikings fan, really. Ug.

Tomorrow is Colts vs. Patriots and Vikes vs. Eagles. Now, John the Jewish Baptiste will tell ya that the Vikes are gonna own. He'd be wrong. Even if the Eagles bring their B game I think they could russle up some Viking grub. Why? It's cold as shit here.

Hopefully the Colts'll run away with the patties, too. I just don't like em.

And that's my lame ass football picks for the night. Wish i had something else to rap about. Got 40 minutes til the end of me little ole shift, and I'm tired of sick people going out in the frigid ass cold when they don't need to, and I'm bored. poop.

The Caves of Greeves (yes, I know that's not the name, but what I don't know is, What is the name?)

Finally, an adventure!

Our hero's were left at the entrance to the cave system we're utilizing to sneak into the Big Evil's stronghold, allowing us to destroy his bad weather generator and ability to eaves drop on the Holy Councils telepathic utilities. G-leaf had left his army at home, figering they'd be a little upset by a high seas voyage followed by some serious spelunking. Last night, we entered that system. Pretty damn fun night, really.

Durbik, our guide let us know that these caves were constantly shifting ownership, being a sort of stronghold for whatever evil humanoid could hold them at present. There was much evidence, initially, that we'd be fighting hobgoblins. Further into the cave system, in fact, we discovered a completely dessimated patrol of hoblin body parts.

Thinking on a bit of distraction, G-leaf nabbed a foream and leg, which unfortunately turned out to be dinner for a monstrous Chuul lurking in the depths of the underground river near by. When the Chuul popped outta the water, G-leaf tried to be nice and give the arm back, but the thing kept coming. Burning hands? Steamed crab? No good. Kept coming.

The Chuul grabbed G-leaf before anyone could much other than fire a few ineffective arrows. Fortunately, a crazy random gnome covered in downish leapord fur is slippery when wet, and G-leaf slipped away. Unfortunately, that meant Durbik, who stood behind the gnome to avoid being Frizzle Fried, got paralyzed next round. Then Durbik got tossed into the singing Tren, further limiting our ability to hack up some Chuul.

In the meantime, Ollie switched from bow to longsword and hopped in, hacking some crab to bits. Still not enough, and knowing full well his scimitar wasn't gonna cut the mustard, G-leaf fell back to the old "Oh Crap, the CR rating for this monster is compeletely incorrect" spell - Harrier, a little known spell in Defenders of the Faith. Bringing in a virtually incorporal 4HD Dire Bat is always bad ass.

Shortly thereafter, Tren extricated himself from the now paralyzed Durbik and beset the beast with electric arrows. In short order, we had the Chuul diving back into its river hidey hole. Nice thing about Harrier is that it doesn't give up til it's dead, the enemy is dead, or the spell wears out. The Chuul died first.

With that threat eliminated, and Durbik still recovering for the great lake voyage, we tie a rope to him and head in for the Chuul. Shortly therafter, we begin to break through its chitonous hide in quest of crab meat. A little foliage in the river, called butter kelp by our guide of infinite wisdom, would go great with this funky flesh.

Unfortunately, a few javelins plink off the rocks next to us. Thinking we're gonna face a few little hobgobins, G-leaf pops a Produce Flame onto his fists, and Tren and Ollie look over the Chuul to discover a war party of 8 pissed Ogres coming at us. In fact, one goes so far as to kamikaze over the Chuul onto a flaming sphere and ranger sword, but still lives...

Nearly flanked and definitely outnumbered, three peel off for the dwarf, three leap over the Chuul heading up the middle, and two cross over to G-leaf's side, only to be met by flaming fists of fury, rocking out to Professor Nutbutter.

Durbik quikly dispatches one of the middle bastards, and Ollie rips into the wounded fuck. The third Chuul leaper joins in on the two on the gnome action. Ollie takes a club or two, but keeps trucking, and surprisingly, Gleaf shrugs off a couple of giant club bashes.

In the meantime, Gleaf invents a new tactic for Produce Flame.....Flaming Nut Punch. After about 4 rounds of gonadular fury, one Ogre goes down.

Tren attacks one of the ogre-a-tres on Gleaf, connects, then realizes he's a lover not a fighter, when said Ogre decides 1/2 elf looks tasty. He immediately changes tactics to the "run away" variety, but only to get a bit of working room. A little illusory magic to get some attention from the audience, a beautiful accapello performance, and two of the ogres are dumfounded. Following that up with some more bardic magic, and those same two ogres think Tren is their best friend and needs rescuing. Those three rounds there single handedly saved the party.

Unbeknownst to us, the human prisoner we'd only barely spotted at the beginning of the battle, managed to slip his bonds and dispatch his single guard in this time. A nearly magical, monk sprint later, combining a massive super kick to the back of the head with a last desperate flaming fist nut shot from the gnome, and a 2nd of the ogre/G-leaf orgy goes down.

On the other side of the field, Durbik is now only faced with one opponent, the other two having jumped in to help Tren. On top of that, said opponent is facing down a former comrade. That's easy potatoes for a dwarf of Durbik's stature.

Likewise, Ollie's dispatched the greviously wounded Kamikaze Orge, and turns to find a new ally, or rather a friend of a friend jumping on the next in line. Unfortunately, said next in line opened a serious can of whoop ass on the only other Ogre ever to have a bigger cack than he. Tren's buddy goes down hard and quick, and not in the way that makes baby Ogres. Ollie follows up with some more whoop ass, and all goes quiet.

While we discuss the fate of our new found friend, and sole surviving Ogre raiding party memeber, Durbik goes Iraqi and dispatches the poor guy before we can even think to butt rape him for information.

Much hacking up of chuul, eating for raw seaweed and crab, some underwater digging, and a bit of small talk later, and we're considerably more wealthy, a little better armored in the ranger front, and tromping along on a secret mission with a monk with no name that we just met. When we do set up camp, Gleaf eventually falls asleep to the sultry sounds of Durbik, threatening severe bodily harm to our new traveling companion if he's in anyway not what he seems. Sleep well, little gnome, sleep well.

Tune in next time for A Little Gnome and a Lot of Chitin or Seriously G-leaf, If You Want to Armor Your "Knights", There's Probably Someone in the Army That Can Do That...Please Leave the Chuul. It Reaks!

Tiger Bomb

I love the Presidents. I also love MP3s. What I love more is the fact that I can rip all of my CDs into MP3s, then dump the CDs I no longer listen to into eBay. Glorious eBay.

Yeah, for some reason, my mind's been on making spare cash, lately. It's not like I'm hurting for cash. In fact, if I clamp the wallet shut the next few works, except for wedding stuff I need to buy, I should be able to snag-a-lag on the sweet digital camera I've had my eye on lately. Of course, that's tough considering Ron, King Arthur's spear, and one of our cats all need to see the vet. And Wendy needs a transmission flush, of which I volunteered to pay for half to most of it...

Still, the cash front isn't doing too bad, and the savings, despite big expenditures on the wedding coming up, is growing steadily (thanks to a solid B&N check every week). Despite that, my list of potential eBay auctions is growing. On top of eBay, I've cracked a scheme to make a few hunnerd in the D&D realm here and there, too. Publishing adventures apparently pays purty damn good. *shrug* Greed...I'd like to say that's what sets man apart from beast, but considering the number of predators that kill and hide or bury food for harsh winter needs, it's not....greed is just our reaction to limited resources and a desperate need to be on top. It's a form of security to our insecure minds.

And to rant a bit, even those that claim no greed have it in a sense. Unless your home is a small apartment, stocked with kitchen supplies of minimal quantity and quality, a couch, a bed, and a library card, your hordeing something, be it simply leisure. Unless you toss ALL of your extra income into homeless shelters, charities, and helping really smart poor kids pay for college, you've prolly got a bit of savings in some form or another. Everyone's got a bit of greed in em somewhere.

But that's all I'm gonna touch on there. Maybe again later I can hit up Nick's egotistical Americans rant. Glad I waited the other night, I've got some more points to bring out. *Ding*

You and me, we're words without a rhyme

Man, Dio is wise.

Anywho, July 16th is the release of the next Harry Potter. Slugs know this. It's also my wedding day, so maybe I'll pre-order a copy and drag the wedding crew to a B&N in our tuxes/dresses to get a copy of the book. Yeah. But that's neither here nor there.

Today, I'm announcing the publication of another book. A better book. June 1st. "Make Love The Bruce Campbell Way" sounds like a book we all should read. Tis Mr. Campbell's fictional advice on fictional romance. Rock.

I'd like to take a moment to touch on Nick's earlier rant about egotistical Americans, but alas, I don't have that moment available right now. :(

2-250 Triage

Scored New Avengers #2 today, but couldn't snag the new Batman. Apparently that one's hot, and I'm either gonna have to ask John to swag every upcoming issue in that arc for me, or get a lot better at hitting the Source when shit I wanna read comes out. It'd help if I could scope diamond comics' web site from work, but it's blocked to me. Anyone know of another site that lists what comics come out each week? Other than checking each company directly...

As for NA, I'm still undecided on it. Sure, it's cool that some of my favorite Marvel characters are coming together. Sure it's cool that in this issue Spidey got trounced and it's nothin but a chaotic melee. However, as things stand right now, Captain America and Iron Man are gonna have to some glib tongue action to get this crew together. I'm in this title up until I see that and decide whether it's likely or not...

Also, today I found "Hanging Out With the Dream King" which is a collection of interveiws of Neil Gaiman, given to him by his friends and close associates. Flipped through it a bit today, and it looked purty interesting.

Here's the catch. I found it in a local comic store on the shelf, and contemplated buying it. Since I get a 30% discount at B&N, though, I figered I'd wait. After some research, cause it wasn't at my store, I discovered it's not released til January 31st. Same with Complete Adventurer, a D&D title they got on their shelves now.

Now, that really pisses me off. Not because of any sense of justice concerning release dates and what have you. No, it angers me, because when Web of Lies came out for L5R, I went the day of it's release to buy some. The clerk at the register wasn't sure about the release date, and busted my chops about selling it before they were supposed to. I ended up not buying any then, just cause the bastard pissed me off.

If I weren't so lazy, I'd just find a different store to buy my comics and figs at. In fact, I'd only buy L5R there, as it's a 15-20 mile drive to the nearest other L5R dealer. But, alas, I'm lazy, and it's conveniantly located. Prolly a good thing I loathe the employees so much. I'd spend more time, and more money, there if I didn't I guess. Such is life.

Da wever biznas

Wow, bad English sometimes looks like German.

So, according to the Weather Channel, Flagstaff, AZ, yes Arizona, has got 7 feet of snow since September 1st. Reno, NV, since sometime after Thanksgiving, has got 10 to 12 feet.

Guess how much we've got in the twin cities, MN. Less than 3 inches.

If that shit doesn't say we need to cut down on green house gases, I don't know what does. Blame it on the tsunami all you want. Weather experts aren't. I'm saying it's either A) The Apocolypse or B) Mother Earth putting a big slap in our face. Since I'm more of a homemade, unorganized religious type, I'm leaning toward B. That's some bad kharma we're working off.

Oh yeah, and the new webcomics are up at TORC Press.

OK, time to put on a shirt

When it's 16 degrees, your outfit should not be cute little velour/felt running pants, matching jacket (unzipped) and a belly bearing low cut top, showing off your sunburst belly button tatoo and little belly ring.

When your face looks more like Skaggly Spice than any of the fuckable ones, you should not wear the same. Despite how how your tight little muscular bod might be.

With said face, in 16 degrees, you really should put some clothes on.

And most definitely, when it's cold as fuck, you hit a few branches of the ugly tree AND YOU HAVE A FUCKING COLOSTOMY BAG, YOU ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NEVER EVER WEAR CUTE LITTLE SWEAT PANTS, LIGHT JACKET AND A FUCKING BELLY BEARING TANK TOP!!!! NEVER!

The fun never stops at the hellspital, I tell ya.

No matter how many we kill, they just keep coming...someone's gotta shut that door

Normally, in an 8 hour evening shift at my hospital, I'll see just over 20 patients. Tonight, I saw 20 in the first 3 hours, and they just keep coming. Ouch.

By the way, there are new character bios at www.torcpress.com. Halloween Man, DoomHarvest, and Wugpie are all veteran TORC Press characters with new brief bios up. Halloween Man's even goes so far as to explain a bit of his life since Pulp Horror Show #1.

Here come's the next wave of zombies seeking health.

Scotch and cats

Well, my apologies for two days sans post, after promising to post daily... Friday is excusable, as the day started early am and ended early am Saturday....

After a long day rockin at B&N, John, Wendy and I headed over to Nick's for a spot of D&D. We got sucked in to TV waiting on John, though, then Wendy, Nick and Luke hit B&N for Luke and Nick to get their machiato fixes. Addicts.....

By the time John arrived, Nick had been sucked into Serendipity, which caused him to lose interest in gaming. Well, it blended well with the general hanging out atmosphere of the evening to cause it.

Regardless, we did play a bit. A three day sea journey, wherin we met Scotchy the Captain and listened to him ramble, almost mindlessly, about his horrible wife. Fortunately, the voyage was uneventful, and we finally arrived at the meat of our journey before calling it quits for the night as I was sick.

Yesterday I spent recovering and did a full round of Jack And Shit. Well, actually, I worked on compiling spell lists from all of the D&D volumes I have, plus Complete Arcane from John. I think that just leaves borrowing Libris Mortis, Draconomicon, Races of Stone, and the Epic Level Handbook, and we're set. All I have left, active class wise, is Ranger. Fuckin wizard took me almost 5 hours, but part of that was because of the Rams game.

Rams Won! Shit yeah.

And then there was a night of no sleep. Between bad dreams, Wendy's discomfort, and the cats, I slept little. Surprised I didn't get sick all over again, but I think I've bout licked the cold. Regardless, here it is 7:30am and I'm awake. Tis either that or get up every 15 to 20 minutes to chase the cats away from something else they're not supposed to be into. Now they're pissed cause I'm up and every door is shut. There's a symphony of cat complaints coming from the hallway. I should record the shit and make an album...."Ron & Arthur Sing the Blues".

Ahh, scabies

Man, it may be reaching the end of an era. Normally, when I come in to my hellspital, I log on, check work email, check personal email, read any updated blogs I frequent, and then head over to AEG to hit up any L5R related news there might be. After that, I hit www.nezumiwarrens.net for my daily dose of ratling strategy. Well, today I skipped AEG and went straight to the Nezumi Warrens. Only I decided there was just too much to read today. So I didn't. Lately I've just been deleting the emails from the rules thread that AEG supports, too.

Granted, we haven't played since before Christmas. Granted, the last time we played I hit Nick with a barrage of rules changes and what have you. Still, with D&D being the thing we do every Friday night, and Friday being almost the only night we get together consistantly, there isn't much room for L5R. It is a sad day indeed.

Speaking of D&D, here's a mild complaint. With the massive influx of sourcebooks into my possession, I decided to type up complete spell lists by level for each class, containing all of the spells from each book, along with the book it was in. I started with Druid, cause that was the first character sheet I pulled... So, I list the spells from the PHB, then grab Complete Divine and list all of those spells. Well, I noticed that 'Harrier' wasn't in CD, even though it's in the Defenders of Faith minor sourcebook for clerics/paladins. There were a few spells from Masters of the Wild not in there, too. Now, Druids use divine magic, so I'd expect all of their previously published spells to be in a tome entitled 'Complete'. Wizards angers me.

By the way, I know Wizards has D&D specific and DM specific forums, but I can't access wizards.com at work because of a stupid web blocker. Anybody know of any other D&D related forums? I found some at www.paizo.com with a "/dragon" and a "/dungeon", but that's it.

Anyway, duty calls. All Hail the Sick People.

some reveiws

You'd think after vowing to post every day, I'd keep some reviews in my pocket for a rainy day. Not me. I'm gonna review some of the Christmas gifts right now. Good thing about that is I just remembered I need to do a bit of gun research.

Chobits

Joe Joe scored big with the first four episodes. The basics of the series is that a farm boy moves to Tokyo to attend college prep school in hopes of going to University there next year. He's totally blown away by the persocoms he finds there. Persocoms are computers that look and act like people, but serve as robots and general PCs much like those we keep in our desks and pockets now. He wishes for a great one, then finds one in the trash. She's cute and loyal, but doesn't work and has no identifying marks of any sort... The series is a mix of teaching his persocom to work, trying to solve her mysteries, and dealing with his own country boy issues in the big city (like being too embarrased to buy underthreads for his persocom).

I gotta say, this show cracks me up. Sure, the little portable persocom gets annoying at times, but still. I dig the show bigtime. Enough to prolly go buy the whole series when I have spare anime scratch again.

D&D Books

Complete Divine
Boolah popped this one in my gift box not knowing anything about D&D, but knowing I dug magic. It covers all of the holy/unholy "godstuff". Pretty useful, although not specifically in our present campaign. Still, the relics are cool and adventure worthy, and the plethora of spells it accumulates rocks. Combining this with Savage Species, Races of Destiny, the erotic manual, and all of those little paperback supplements means I need to borrow Complete Arcana from John and type up new spell lists for each class. OOff.

Races of Destiny
This guide covers humans, half-elves, and half-orcs in a lot of detail. There's also a brief touch on half-ogres, dopplegangers and the like, as well as a new race...the Illumians. I haven't finished reading it yet, but it's already sparked one adventure idea. Gotta love any rules supplement that gives you a fresh idea every 50 pages or so.

Well, the biznatch is picking up, and the missing finger is in, so I better go. Incidentally, the finger WAS NOT cut off. A small piece of skin about half the size of her fingernail was taken out. The older sister wants it sewed back on. Looks to me like this girl needs to get a will of her own.

A brief rant, then a vow of small measure

Man. So, some chic just called me because her sister just cut off her finger, but she needed to verify the insurance benefits. I told her, first, if she cut off her finger, to heck with the insurance, get to the ER and get it stiched on...but the nurse line said to call here and verify the benefits first. What? The "nurse line", of which I think there are four in our area ALWAYS tells every patient to go the doctor for anything, because of liability issues.... I can't bring myself to believe they'd tell someone to worry about insurance for a missing finger, first of all, but most importantly, WHY CALL TO ASK IF YOU NEED TO SEE A DOCTOR WHEN YOU JUST CUT YOUR FINGER OFF!!!??? Of course you need to see a doctor for that. Unless you've a family memeber that's a med student and just wants the practice.

Now, after informing her of the near immediate need to get her sister in here, I told her she had to call the insurance company itself to check benefits, as we could only verify whether the insurance was active or not... She promptly wanted my name and my supervisor's name/number, which I gladly gave her. Why not? If she's dumb enough to make all of these phone calls while her sister is bleeding to death from a missing finger, it should be a great conversation I have with the boss when that phone calls over....

So, being armed with self-righteous fury, she asked me to transfer her to someone that would know about benefits. I said, "Sure, just give me the number off of the insurance card." What insurance card? She had no card. Had no information about her sister's insurance whatsoever. She wanted me to know about her sister's benefits based solely on her sister's name and the fact that she was a college student.

Now, I realize that in cases of emergency, many people panic and get El Stupido Supreme. But come on. Let's just point to my original point and reiterate "In case of emergency, go the the emergency room, do not pass go, do not worry about insurance, just seek immediate medical treatment. Death is not preferable to medical debt."

Now, a vow. I was trying not to post to the blog if I only had complaints. Instead, I think I'm gonna just try to post daily. *shrug* We'll see.

A brief rant, again related to the hellspital

If you can sit through your ills for the duration of a football game, you DO NOT need to go the Emergency Room on a Sunday afternoon when the game is over! Seriously. Regardless of how important a game is to your team, if it's not the Superbowl, go the doctor if you're sick, go to the ER if you need to. They will not win based on you AND EVERY OTHER FAN postponing their health care til the end of the game.

I seriously hate having no patients on a Sunday from noon to 3:30ish, then getting 9 immediately at 4 o'clock, or even at 5 or 6 when the post game shows are over. Grr.

New Year's poopin

And I mean poopin'. Cause I'm a lazy bastard. Got off work on New Year's, made a few calls. Wendy was sick and no one had any clue what they wanted to do. The census was to make some calls again when Wendy woke up and we had a plan. Then I fell asleep on the couch. Woke up again when Nick called about 9:30ish. Crashed his evening by laming out and returned to resting.

So first, a big public apology to Nick. Sorry dude.

Later I woke up, played a bit of Neverwinter and watched the first four episodes of Chobits. Chobits rocks. Purty damn funny in my book.

Really, right now, I got nothing more than that. Forgot all the buy 2 get 1 free books I nabbed yesterday, and I'm at a loss for D&D chatting. Haven't done any gaming other than video since my last gaming post. It's been ages.
Hastas.