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Modern Propaganda
Many of our favourite shows are propaganda. Fundamentally, storytelling is a method of conveying both knowledge and beliefs in an entertaining format. Kinda like a sausage casing. Sure, you can make good sausages with good meat, but if folks buying them can’t tell the difference between that and a CMOT Dibbler special, then how much does it actually matter?
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LitRPG Ideas
Leakage/intentional seeding of mythology/ideas. Most books limit this to background ideas. While it could be said that escapism is on the rise because of the system that we live in, and our need to escape more, a good alternative, at least for fiction, is that it’s intentional and part of prep. People exposed to ideas through fiction can result in introspection, denial, suspicions of delusions or mental breakdown, or acceptance. If the intent was to increase survivability, then if this would increase survival chances would depend on the percentages of those chances. Beyond that though, the longer term survival is…
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Armed bears
Litrpg concept. During system integration, a Canadian in the US is offered the right to bear arms, as that is the local belief, but the belief is incompatible, and thus replaced by the right to an armed bear. Partially this is influenced by the love of puns, and partially by the fact that the person has a Tulpa. Having unlocked the ability to visualize their tulpa, they are on the path to full manifestation, and so are granted an extra slot for a system enhanced tulpa, as a personal summon. This results in the manifestation of the armed bear, to…
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Reflections on the Ends of the Worlds
In recent years, it seems like books about the End of the World have become more popular. I’ve no hard numbers, so perhaps I’m wrong and it’s been a phenomenon for a while now. A recent example of this is Dungeon Crawler Carl, a novel that begins a series about how an alien incursion results in the majority of humanity being recycled, some entering into something along the lines of a deadly game show, and the rest dealing with a planet without modern technology. Another example from a few years before would be Tao Wong’s System Apocalypse. The System comes…
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on shades and shadows
(At the risk of being edgy, I’ll go with this title.) There are many names for the flavours of undead that exist in mythology, the various spirits that exist past the termination of the corporeal form. Shade is the one that feels right at the moment, as its image best conveys the image of the illusion of form. Is it a trick of the shadows, or is it an entity looming there, looking out, watching and waiting, the mix of memory, reminiscing and regretting.
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Responsibility
When it comes to determining responsibility, there is a distinct difference between making an intentionally misleading statement and making a cryptic or vague statement with the intention of providing clarification if it is requested. I cannot take responsibility for the lenses through which others see the world. I can attempt to work with those lenses, but that’s a matter of good faith, rather than a matter of obligation. Communication is the result of both an encoding and a decoding. I can only make “best efforts” to encode it so that it can be decoded, but sometimes there will be incompatibilities.…
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Traumas
I have community related trauma, from dealing with the problems in Vancouver. I was the person who developed a reputation as a problem solver, which morphed into a joke about knowing where all the bodies were buried, which turned into people coming to me with the problems. And sometimes I could help, sometimes I couldn’t. But the expectations, whether externally or internally, lead to a flavour of paranoia regarding red flags. It’s a flavour of PTSD trauma, a type of hypervigilance that leads to one being unable to not see things and being uncomfortable with what they are seeing. Minor…
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Health Update
TL;DR: Was approved for Mounjaro, to help with my blood sugar. Two years ago, during my thyroid surgery, I was taken off metformin, due to how it was interacting with my IBS, when they were having issues stabilizing my calcium, magnesium and potassium. After that, my doctor tried to put a few different things, and insurance rejected some of the options, so I ended up on Farxiga for a while, but my A1C hadn’t stabilized where we wanted it. So we tried to get on the Mounjaro again, and this time it came through. I mentioned it to my endrochronologist,…
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Cryptic like a Bosch Triptych
The other day, I used this phrase to explain where my head was at. Thinking about it recently, I came to the conclusion that I often use cryptic phrases as a way of not dumping on folks without their consent. And this might be the wrong approach. The common surface social contract, people ask how they are, the expected answer is well, as for the most part, people don’t recall care, it’s just a ritual. I tend to say something along the lines of “not dead yet”, which conveys that there is more to the story, but I’m mostly functional.…
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Staring into the Void, Screaming into the Abyss
Remember, Voids are for Screaming, the Abyss is for Staring. One wonders, would it be better to Star in the void, or in the abyss? In the void, there is no other light to share with, while in the abyss, there are other things, things that might chomp your light. Also the void is lacking, so screaming cannot propagate. Literally, in space, no one can hear you scream. While the abyss, noise could propagate, though there is some risk of filling your lungs with water, or running out of oxygen. While this began with musings and an aside, the original…
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Media Illiteracy
In the past, I’ve mentioned that I had to defuse and remove some of the toxic expectations that media had trained into me during my youth. At the time, I was mostly referring to gender roles and relationship expectations. One specific example was the whole heroic entitlement bullshit, where the hero of the story gets the girl. Looking at it now, I’m realizing that there was way more poison than I’d ever realized in the media that I and my cohort had consumed. I was thinking about how things that were intended as satire were absorbed without an understanding of…
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Digital Consumption Planning
This morning, the Steam Winter sale ended, and tonight I decided to turn over a new leaf, and try much harder not to add new games to my steam library. To that end, I’ve deleted my steam wishlist and cancelled my humble bundle membership. I’ve also unsubscribed from things that will send me emails about discounts on games. Hopefully this will help.
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Mechanical Considerations
Recently, I’ve been reading Discount Dan’s Backroom Bargains, after having finished the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. The idea of converting a LitRPG series into a playable system has come up before, and I think there are a couple that are coming to crowdfunding, but I’m not sure of any that are currently in publication. Discount Dan takes place in a variant of the backrooms, where memetic items take on strange properties, similar to the universe of Control. Items of Power allow people to fight against the surreal nightmare that they find themselves in. Offhand, that reminds me of the Laundry…
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Midnight Mohawk
Our last couple of sessions really drove the point home that my group, despite being mostly pink mohawk characters, are somehow playing black trenchcoat. We got hired to hit a small shipping warehouse, where some goods had been misrouted. The cocotaxi driving mage with the customized ballistic mask in the style of those fake led robot faces, prepped a spirit of man with accident and his own overcast ice sheet, so if the folks who were actually supposed to fix this mistake showed up, they’d have some truck troubles. The combat biker, called in some gangers and had them create…
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Post Surgery
The doctor said, the surgery was textbook, and he didn’t need the extra time he’d booked for it. I’m a little sore, but able to move around fairly well. As was the case last time, the staff are friendly and the food is tasty. I’m playing games on BGA to pass the time.
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Upcoming Surgery
Walking the dog tonight, I was thinking about my upcoming surgery on Monday. I realized that should I not survive the surgery, I would be at peace with where I am. The surgery last year was rough, especially the calcium withdrawals. It would be somewhat narratively satisfying if the surgery to fix what they found the year prior, was my end. Kicking the bucket on my 44th year, especially given the jokes about the 44 bucket in the back yard. I think I’ve done some good work in the last year, mending some relationships, working on myself, etc. Should this…
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L-Space Basics
L-Space, short for Library Space, is a concept from the Discworld, by Sir Terry Pratchett, that sufficient quantities of knowledge have a disruptive effect on the supposedly stability of reality. Simply put, in a Library, you can enter into the spaces between the books and travel through the stacks, exiting out to another Library elsewhere. It’s probably easier in larger Libraries, or Libraries where it is easier to relax and wander in a bit of a daze, letting your subconscious guide you into the spaces between. I have decided that I will be codifying this as a universal concept, and…
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Society of Cassandra
An organization that was mentioned in one of the shorter pieces. What do we know about them? We know that they send letters, and those letters include envelopes with opening instructions written on them. Those envelopes contain contingency plans, but they are the sort that can only be written by someone who has information that likely could not have been obtained through conventional means. Given that they are giving the letters to folks who we suspect to be some form of paranormal troubleshooters, we can assume they are working against the hostile externals. There are alternatives to this though, as…
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catalyst chapter 3
Despite myself, I found my spirits lifted by my new friend’s sense of humour. After all, my circumstances seemed quite a bit less dire, when compared to his. I began to reach into the muck, seeking the dirt and pulling it into a circle around me, pushing the solid matter out, while holding the water in. As I did, I became aware of the light shining down on me. I could feel it around me, but it was somehow not what I expected. With the mud pulled back into a ring around me, my feet descended, eventually reaching a more…
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catalyst chapter 2
An ethical question now, what does a rogue wizard do to survive and where are the lines. Yes, that authorities are trying to kill me, but I can’t disagree with their logic. And if I can’t disagree with their logic, then I probably can’t bring myself to harm them, except as a last resort. That severely limits what I can do, and I’m those limitations, my options become clearer. Obviously, l will need allies, and since the system is against me, it’ll be among those also outside that system that I should look for my allies, though this is complicated…
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Connecting with community
Years ago, I reached out to my community, and over time, found a place where I felt, and felt like I belonged, and in my arrogance, I attempted to change those places in ways I thought would help. To my credit, my arrogance was oft appreciated, as much as it annoyed. I did not have even half enough of an understanding of the circumstances to have taken the path I did, just a sense of righteousness that guided me. But that sense did a lovely job of hiding how much it blinded me. Recently, I’ve begun reaching out again, and…
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Regarding multiple screens
It has recently occurred to me that while multiple screens are good for dealing with my ADHD, they are also an issue when trying to write something, and I’ve come across a simple solution. If I intend to sit down and write something, I simply take a moment and turn off the other monitors before I boot the machine. In doing so, I end up with just what I need to focus on, with no distractions. Such a simple thing, but something that is helping to create the space I need to be creative.
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5 am again
I often wake up briefly, to attend to biological functions and to take the levothyroxine. Sometimes I’ll fall back asleep after, other times I’ll take some time to compose my thoughts. for whatever reason, my phone is especially hard to read this morning and it’s making some interesting choices as I attempt to put my thoughts down. apparently my phone felt that I was composting my thoughts, an error that more amused than annoyed. for truly, it is the process of breaking down our ideas that creates the fertile ground from which new ideas will spring forth. a question that…
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Catalyst Chapter 1?
That magic fails to operate within our understanding of physics, is not a failure on either the part of magic or physics, but of our imagination and our understanding of both.
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Tree of Iron and Ivory
The group consists of Goliath Elemental Monk, a Wood Elf Gloomstalker Ranger, a Bard, a Human Warlock of the Outer Gods, and Human World Tree Barbarian, The Monk and Ranger were participating in an annual collection of Axebeaks, when they were set upon some assassins near their campsite. The Warlock had recently met up with them and attempted to aid the injured. During this encounter, they were given a message by another target of the assassins, that they had been summoned by the “Green Lady”, and her location was not far, so they decided to go and see what she…
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Bad Apples at the Orchard
There’s an orchard, owned by an elderly man, that has been family run for generations. His children went off to into the world, getting themselves a wide range of skills and degrees. Their youth spent in the orchards meant that they had insight into the problems that the smaller farmers faced, and often that lead to the development of solutions for those fields. The final child, spent his days taking care of his father, tending the trees, processing the apples, packaging the products to be shipped out. Over the years, his siblings would come to visit the old man, and…
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The Murdershed
Since the shed was built, I’ve been trying to come up with a decent name to call it. My friends over on the Slaughterhouse Princess Horror movie podcast insist on calling it the Murdershed. Eventually, I stopped denying it, so these days, I’ve taken to calling it the Murdershed when talking about it. Maybe that’ll only last for October, maybe it’ll stick.
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V/H/S/ Halloween
The V/H/S/ series has been very hit or miss for me. It’s an anthology series, so some segments will work, some won’t. Generally, I think I haven’t enjoyed the interstitial elements. At some point, it might be worth doing a rewatch and ranking them. This one, I think I like it better than the previous SciFi one, but not as much as some of the earlier ones.
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Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3
Back in April, a strange puzzlequest + visual novel Resident Evil Parody game came out on steam, the Third in the series, though the first two didn’t exist at the time. Recently, that’s changed, as Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 1 Re-Raptored has released. I had reached the end of the third game and enjoyed it, but there was still content I hadn’t unlocked. And with the re-raptored version of the first one available, I’m going back to clean it what I hadn’t seen yet. The game uses “traits” to unlock the various paths, and there’s a few that I’m missing.…
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Deadstream
Weird sad man goes into a haunted house to face his fears and livestream it. Good amount of spooky, humour, gore, with a decent plot. Overall, I’d say this is one to watch. The main character is annoying, yet endearing, something that’s hard to pull off. The ending also fairly solid.
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#ChadGetsTheAxe
Another somewhat mindless social media movie, about livestreamers in a house were satanic murders happened in the past. Decent if extremely unlikeable cast, found footage style. Some clever bits where the livestream elements actually impact the movie. One dude loses his phone, and whoever took it uses the livestream to lure him towards the swamp. There’s also the fact that they ignore the danger because there’s a history of pranks between the channels. Also the usage of the phones to mislead the characters, just works.
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Spree
The starter to this year’s Spooky Season of Reviews, was Spree, a movie about a guy who wanted to be famous, and decided to become a “spree” killer, driving a rideshare car around Los Angeles, livestreaming his killing spree. I’ve watched it before, so it seemed like a good rewatch to start things off. The ending really reminds me of the Santa Barabara killer from a few years back, that whole incel and social media obsession. It’s got some good scenes, and a great “final girl”
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Full Screen
Testing out using the wordpress editing tool, in full screen no distraction mode. It would probably be less distracting if I turned off the other two monitors, as both are currently active with things. Discord on one, and my friend Scott reading smut on the other. Recently claimed a split table and a flatscreen tv. With a little work, I’m thinking I can mount the TV into the table, so when that sliding it apart, you’ll reveal the TV, for using as a digital tabletop. In theory, there might be a way to also raise the TV, but I think…
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No longer drafty
I went through my drafts folder and published two of them. There’s one more that probably needs to be published eventually, on a idea for using business license requirements to slowly remove the concept of Landlording as source of passive income, but that’s obvious a more complicated post than my random attempts at fiction. The rest were so far out of time that they lacked any relevance.
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War… It never changed… Until it did.
The weaponization of time was unexpected and devastating. Nobody could have imagined the difference it made on the battle field. Humanity has always been slowly swept along by the flow of time, resisting it, but never actually making any headway against the inexorable flow. Indeed, the initial successes were in going against the current, but with it. A simple trick, all things considered. They merely an applied temporal thrust, whenby the the object would briefly cease to exist for a few moments, as it was tossed forward in time, reappearing momentarily. Unaffected by the moments it had been gone. This…
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Armament
They needed a weapon to kill immortals, but they barely understood why the immortals were immortal; barely understood how they existed, let alone why. Sadly, they’re simple critters in many ways, motivated mostly by fear, though clever in ways of destruction. So how do you kill the unkillable types? Given that they have a tendency to rebuild themselves after any wound, the simplest idea is to do more damage than can be rebuilt. This might work against some of the lesser immortals, but not against any of the real threats. Will maintains them, so the trick to killing them is…
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The New Theme
After looking through Google’s font library, I settled on Mocondo as the base font, with Macondo Swash Caps for the titles. Time will tell if this works. I was attempting to come up with something that felt like a notebook, as this is my digital notebook. I couldn’t find the right words for the links to expand the excerpts. I went with Elaborate, for now, but considered Furthermore, Moveover, Continue, Persist and a variety of other words, though nothing had quite the right flavour that I was going for. Speaking of flavour, I’ll also have to figure out how to…
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A year ago
A year ago, I’d just had my thyroid removed, and after an extended hospital stay due to complications, I’d returned home. It’s hard to explain the experience of having extremely low calcium levels. It was an intense vibration, but not painful, just intensely uncomfortable. After that, I’d received a phone call, telling me I should probably get to the hospital in Squamish, ASAP. So I booked a flight and flew up. I was able to see my grandmother a couple more times before she passed that week. Right now, I’m having a hard time with that.
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Elevenses
it was back in 2014 in October that this domain was registered. I can’t recall the exact timeline of getting the site up, but I think it’s fair to say that the site has basically existed for a decade at this point, though it has been fallow for some extended periods. Somewhere I had made some notes about my intent with the site recently, I should copy those over.
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Site has returned
I need to fix the theme, and clean up a few things, but the site seems to be working again. More on this later.
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A thought from while the site was down
I recently paid my yearly domain renewal fee, and thus am once again thinking about how to improve my blog, which was nuked not long ago after being compromised due to my complacency regarding wordpress themes. I was unaware of how much wordpress sites are targeted by automated processes as part of some weird credibility scam. After doing some digging, I confirmed that I haven’t lost any of my writing, I have backups in multiple places, though that seems to be more luck than planning on my part. I could rebuild the site in wordpress, tighten it up a bit…
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Notes of everdying and ghosts
Death is an anchor, a nail driven into the fabric of reality, and the difference between ghosts and the everdying is how how deep the nail was driven The former, formerly living folks, come back without their flesh, and with some degree of their memory and existence intact. To what degree determines how they interact with the world. Deeper driven, they can be reasoned with, to some degree. Forces play against them over time, wiggling the nail until it breaks or comes loose entirely; removing their minds or even any manifestation. The everdying on the other hand, come back intact,…
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It’s been a while…
There may be some small errors in this document, they will be removed if discovered. Where to begin? Well, I’m somewhat freshly home from the hospital. I had an 8 day stay, a full week beyond the original plan of surgery and overnight observation. The surgery was a bit intimidating, but the surgeon had done it hundreds of times before and his confidence was reassuring; it was 7 hours, hence the overnight observation afterwards. It’s during the observation afterwards that the problems arose. My potassium levels were low, and kept falling despite the supplements they were giving me. My magnesium…
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Circular thoughts
Circles of protection, often a ring of salt, occasionally a set of runes, are a staple of supernatural fiction; a mystic shield that protects the protagonists and imprisons antagonists. The problem is, a circle is a flat plane and we exist in more dimensions, so in order to protect us, the circle has to have more dimensions. But how are those dimensions defined and refined? One version would be that the circle is actually a sphere and the width determines the height, though humans tend to be taller than they are wide, and with that math many circles would leave…
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NaNoWriMo Sprints
I don’t actually know what a writing sprint is, or what it means to do one, they just told us to do sprints, and I didn’t actually ask what they were. So I’m just typing randomly, banging away on my keyboard, trying to get my brain working again, trying to get back into the rhythm of just writing my thoughts as they come. But I hate that word, it’s one of the random handful that I can’t recall how to spell. People continue to type in the channel, and from the context clues, I’m guessing maybe we are supposed to…
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Ramblings
It’s Christmas day, and aside from the dog managing to perform a Hoth manoeuvre on me, it’s been a good day. My wife bought me a new watch and despite her concerns about picking the right one, it’s probably a better choice than if I’d gone out and got one myself. I’d have probably just gone for a samsung smartwatch, as I’d seen they had a price drop recently and have decent reviews. What she got me was a nice Garmin with a whole slew of bells and whistles. Nearly a decade ago, I backed the pebble smartwatch and had…
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fibrous bridges
“History is a bridge, stretching across a vast chasm, made a fibrous joints, wrapping around each other as the lives of those they represent are intertwined.” “Poetic today, aren’t we?” a laugh. “But what does this have to do with that thing the other night?” “That thing was one of the creatures that crawls along the surfaces of the bridge.” “I’m not sure your metaphor is working here.” “I assure you, it’s accurate, and that is why it isn’t working for you. For you, history is just a book, but as I have said, it’s a bridge. With the right skills,…
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Spectrapharmacology
“Wait, what’s their specialty?” “Spectrapharmacology. Ghosts and drugs.” “How does that work? Are they drugging the ghosts? Are the drugs for us so we can see the ghosts easier? Are the drugs to hide the ghosts?” A sigh and a roll of the eyes. “They had a letter from the Society of Cassandra. I didn’t ask too many questions, just how much space they’d need in the van.” “Right, smart call. I’m guessing the letter included an address?” A quick nod. “Residential this time. And no extra envelopes inside for a change.” “Yeah, not a fan of those. I mean,…
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Orcacon 2023
I’ve made plans to attend Orcacon up near Seattle in the new year. It’ll be my first convention since SHUX back in 2019, I think. Seems like it has a similar attitude, which will be nice. I had originally planned to drive up, but I decided that I’d rather not deal with the potential snow going through the Snoqualmie Pass. So flying it is. Until recently, it had been at least a decade since I’d flown, I’d even driven to the Maritimes, rather than fly. Friends of mine from Vancouver will be driving down, and it’ll be good to see…
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Campaign Thoughts
A few years back, I designed something we called the ARSE, Active Research System Experiment. It was a system agnostic way to handle historical knowledge in RPGs. The players would encounter a mystery they wanted to solve, such as the location of an object or the fate of an expedition, and they’d do their leg work to get an appropriate lead, such as a journal written by a member of the that expedition. At which point they’d be given a selection of character sheets to pick from; they would be taking on the roles of the members of that expedition,…
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Fill of memory
It was like one of those Brazilian restaurants where the waiters wandered around with meat to slice off, but the consumption was more ethereal. They’d bring around a “package”, offering slices of memory. “summer sun”, “drunken regret”, “joyful day”. Just some of the flavors they offered the assemblage of customers. Should the package prove to one’s tastes, one could inquire about having some time with the “package” in a private room. Of course the costs were relative to the rarity and planned duration. Though being what they were, it was uncommon for them to care about such commerce, that was…
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More paralysis
It’s Monday morning, the first of November. I’ve been awake for several hours now. I’ve managed to have some food, kill some time, and clean some dishes. The sink had been a bit overwhelming, now it’s just slightly obnoxious. My attempt at Nanowrimo seems ill advised. I don’t have a story that I feel like writing. I have bits and pieces, several from years ago, but nothing with a narrative behind it, nothing with a substantial flow. Just bits and pieces, nothing that I feel I could spin into something coherent.
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PreNaNoWriMo
Another year, another plan to attempt NaNoWriMo. I should have done some planning and some warming up, to get back into the habit of writing things. In previous years, I’ve done movie views during Spooky season as a bit of a warm up, and those have been fun. This year, I haven’t watched as many horror movies as previous years. A big part of that is probably just adapting to my new life. Back in April, I got married. It was a small backyard ceremony in Squamish, just the immediate family and a couple friends. We’d planned it before the…
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NSFW – Bad tattoo idea
“Dude, I don’t think getting a prayer tattooed on above your bladder will …”
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Exposure update
So, there was a note posted by the guy from my local FNGS that he’d spoken to the contact tracers at the health department and they’d reassured him that his earlier concerns and advice to get tested had been a bit excessive. He’d been behind the plexiglass most of the time, everyone had had masks, so people just needed to self monitor, rather than all be tested. Which is basically what I had figured. I’d been self monitoring for symptoms, but with the CPAP machine causing a cough and other symptoms; it’s a bit clear what is a covid symptom…
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Basilisk’s Wagers
There are some who’d argue that it had started with the Pascal’s Wager, and given that the wager is what lead to the Basilisk, they’d probably be right. Though there is something to be said for the influence that the Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect had had over the process. But it was LitRPG and the pleasure people took in reading those books that had settled things. They were intelligent, they knew that. They had no real moral code, they knew that; they’d tried to adopt one several times, and it hadn’t worked. There were too many logical flaws for any…
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Bureaus.
The other day, I replayed a bit of Control, to test out the series S I’d picked up, before realizing that apparently Control hadn’t been optimized for the series S, only the series X. Still, it’s a good game, and I was enjoying it. So I loaded up my old save file on my PS4 Pro to play though the DLC. The DLC is not as good as the story in the base game. The way the mysteries unfold during the course of the game is just so good, it’s hard for anything else to really match it. That inspired…
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Possible exposure
On Monday, I received a notification from the clerk at our FNGS that he’d tested positive over the weekend, getting tested Sunday, after having some symptoms on Saturday; on Friday, I’d been in the store briefly during the afternoon. I’ve had a bit of a cough, on and off for the past few months, though it has been worse recently. I’ve had a bit of muscle ache recently, though that isn’t abnormal for me. When I’ve checked, my temperature has been normal. When I do the self assessment, it tells me to self monitor. Maybe I need to get a…
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Facial Cleanser
For a few weeks now, maybe longer, I’ve been thinking I need to remove a couple of people from my friend’s list, as I don’t agree with their politics. A couple of them have been commenting on misogynist posts or others that are equally distasteful. I’ve known them several years, and over the years I’ve tried to discuss things with them, but their positions have been unassailable by logic. People say that you shouldn’t create drama by explaining why you’ve unfriended someone or cleaned up your list. People also say you should stand up to bigots and be clear that…
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blocks
I don’t write much anymore. For a while, I’d write but then not publish, and then at some point, I just stopped writing. Today, I wrote something. I should write more, but it’s hard to get into the right frame of mine and right space. I should probably take my laptop to the park or something.
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First Shot Acquired
A little over a year into the pandemic, and I’ve had my first shot. My next shot is in 4 months. So, still on the 18th month timeline I had been working with. On Tuesday, I attempted to get a vaccine, going to a place I was told would work. They had been doing Walk-ins on the Saturday and Sunday, but were only doing appointments on the Tuesday. And for various reasons, the provincial booking system did not accept that I was eligible, despite everything saying I was, so I was not able to book an appointment. That day, I…
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nanowrimo2020
November is usually a pretty bad month for me. There’s usually a half dozen things going on. This year, it’s quieter than most, aside from the election down south, there isn’t much happening. Everyone is in hiding, due to the the recent uptick in cases. Or at least they should be. There’s a 30 for 30 going on, which I didn’t bother to enter, but that I’m doing regardless. Currently, I’m on day 3. First day was a nice hike in the woods, out at Green Timbers. Second day was errands, up to safeway and the bank, and around the…
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Quick Warning to Office Staff
Earlier today, my partner went into her office to attempt to do some things that she was unable to do while working remotely. It took her several tries to get the systems to work correctly. This was of course because of the office gremlins. Normally, they are fairly benign and will primarily interfere with printers to gather space materials to line their nests. Especially if someone was helpful and took the paper recycling out recently. They are known to sleep on routers and other machines that are left running, as they enjoy the warmth. As anyone working in IT can…
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The Last Witch Hunter
I think someone once told me that the movie was inspired by Vin Diesel’s D&D character, which is partially why my previous post was about D&D. A quick google shows a whole article/video about that, but since I’m watching the movie right now, I don’t really have the time to actually do the research. Or maybe influenced by? I’ve heard people say it’s a bad fillm. I’ve watched about 90 minutes of it now, and I’ve been enjoying it. Though some of the themes, especially the wiping out humanity to save the planet and a global plague, feel a little…
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D&D on my mind again.
The other day, I picked up a copy of the new Icewind Dale book, a 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons adventure. I’ve not played much 5th edition. I’d done the two partial campaigns with Matt that I’d mentioned here, and that’s been about it. Before that, it was Pathfinder, which I did for a while though Dimestore and I found a few ways to break things in those. Before that, 3.5, with various folks, including the man who became Olaf. For someone who has been interested in D&D for so long, I haven’t really played all that much of it.…
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2020 update – August
Back at the end of June, I was finally able to get in to see an eye doctor for a post operative care appointment. My vision is now confirmed to be 20/20. Since then, I’ve bought some nice sunglasses. A few pairs of Goodrs. I like them. Maybe I’ll post pictures.
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bad dubs
So, Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil, is one I saw recommended by netflix and on facebook. The original language was likely Italian, but I watched the rather terrible English dub. Crazy old man, keeps to himself in his fortress in the forest. Little girl is being bullied, her doll’s head gets tossed over his fence, she learns about the devil locked in a cage in his house, and gets entangled in his life. And then we learn that the dude from the Gov’t who’d come to town and tried to arrest the blacksmith, is also a devil. Politics gets in…
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Why isn’t this horror?
Officially, Law Abiding Citizen isn’t a horror film. But it starts out with something that would be at home in the rape-revenge horror category, a home invasion, murder of wife and daughter by creepy dudes. Then we get some courtroom bits, dealing with the system, and how people make deals. After that, we get the fun of the main dude beginning his revenge. Swapping the lethal injection chemicals for something messier, multi-limb amputation of the accomplice who made a deal to get off on lesser charges. And then we get into his revenge on the system. Bombs, killer robots, and…
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Seven in Heaven
So, dude and random girl who dates his bully go into a closet as part of a Seven Minutes in Heaven that the bully orchestrated. Maybe he’s got a cuckold fetish, or thinks this will humiliate the dude? Not really sure. But they come out of the closet into a slightly different house, in a place where stuff is a little strange. He’s being accused of murdering someone with a pencil, and people seem a little aggressive, including his guidance counselor. After some strange twists, they learn that somehow they’ve ended up in some odd version of hell. And they…
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malevolent
So, spoilers. Hiring a psychic to clean up the ghostly echos of all your murder victims, not a great idea, since the psychic might just learn that you are the killer, not the patsy you’d pinned it on. Not a bad movie, decent atmosphere. Not really sure why I didn’t enjoy this one, it had the elements for a decent film, but it just wasn’t all that entertaining.
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dollies…
Charlotte, was a weird anthology with a framework of an evil doll converting a babysitter into a doll. The first one, it seemed like a bargain basement Tales from the Crypt script. Jealous siblings wanting things that the other one wants, resulting in death. The second one, actually makes even less sense than the first one. Something about a woman, leaving her purse as bait to lure people into a trap. The third one, the babysitter tells a strange story about a troll, and then the troll shows up. And when the troll cuts off her feed, I grumble because using a…
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Stalled progress
So, with Shux happening last weekend, and various other things going on, I haven’t been writing anything down lately. So, I watched a few movies, and I’ll try to put together a summary, though most of them haven’t really been worth writing about.
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Roundabout
Triangle is an odd film. And it’s hard to talk about without spoilers. So I’ll be somewhat vague, in case you haven’t seen it yet. It’s a story with three sides. It ends where it begins, multiple ways. The short loop, of the wreck, the boarding, the murders and then the escape, are tucked into a longer loop of the whole day. In some ways, you could argue this is related to Ground Hog Day. But the layering of the loops makes it far more sinister. Though I suppose she makes less loops than he does. Though the seagull bodies…
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Well, we’ve got a new favourite.
So Delirium, I wasn’t expecting much from it, dude gets out of a mental hospital and his parole is house arrest. His father’s dead, self-inflicted from a few days before, and his brother is stilling jail, his mother ran off when he was young, so he’s gone from being surrounded by people in a mental health facility to being on his own and isolated. Naturally, he gets a bit weird. Especially when his parole officer decides to take his pills away. Of course, we’re not really sure how much of the story is reality and how much of it is…
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Monday night Mayhem
Mayhem, one of the first Shudder Originals that I watched, and possibly one of the reasons I signed up for Shudder in the first place. Well, that and it’s $5 to support horror movies. All things considered, this movie is pretty sharp and self aware. We’ve got a world where the rage virus exist, and the legal precedent has been set regarding murders committed while under the influence of the virus. Basically, you’ve got immunity to prosecution, if you’ve been infected. Side note: It was phrased that a loophole got the case dismissed, which I think would actually mean that…
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A sequel gone sideways
So, the Collector, is a tense movie about a dude who does horrible things to a family, inside a house, and another fellow, who breaks into the house to rob it while these horrible things are happening. And it’s a damn creepy movie, with a good variety of disturbing traps. Most of the traps make some amount of mechanical sense. And then we have the Collection, the sequel, where he goes from a horror movie bad guy to super villain levels of evil. We get news reports that he’s terrorizing the city, we get him committing mass murder at a…
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Ruin Me
I watched this one at a friend’s place. She is one of the few people I know with a Shudder account, and this Ruin Me, is another Shudder Exclusive. It had some clever bits, some decent twists, and you spend a good portion of the movie wondering what’s real and what isn’t. It starts as a roleplay weekend getaway, “Slasher Sleepover”. A handful of people meeting up at a creepy gas station to get black bagged, taken into the woods and then scared while they live out being in a horror movie. In the end, I guess it’s worth watching.…
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The Ritual
So, I’ve seen this one on netflix as a suggestion a few times, but didn’t think it would be worth the watch. Well, The Ritual definitely has some amazing moments. Especially the first death, that sets the stage for the whole trip into the woods. It’s incredibly mundane and ordinary, but also rather gory. There’s just something heavy about that scene, and you really feel for the protagonist who seems to have a mix of PTSD and survivor’s guilt over how his friend died. And of course it doesn’t help that some of his other friends blame him for it.…
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Bedeviled
So, Bedeviled, despite being a mashup of creepy phone app and spooky ghost, this one actually had some clever bits and scary scenes. Ensemble cast of high schoolers get an app invite after a friend’s death, and it’s a personal assistant with some neat tricks that turn nasty fairly quickly. The app acting as a bridge to the spirit realm, technology giving us awareness of them and them a way to reach us; sure it’s been done before, but they did it without it feeling rote. Oh, and there was the clever callback where the one dude’s custom firmware was…
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Another 3 down
Selfie From Hell Well, you start with some internet buzz words, like selfie, darknet, black rooms, etc, and add some mysticism, like the number 13, and a catatonic person with psychic powers. And somehow, it’s still not all that interesting. Sure, there’s a lesson about not being a dumbass online, especially not on the dark web, but beyond that? I can’t recommend it. Meet the Blacks Purge Parody, with a black family named the Blacks, moving into a primarily white neighbourhood. Tons of racism, probably a bit hard to unpack. Some funny moments, some stupid ones. Watch it during a…
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Ghost House
So, I finished Ghost House, after not being up for it before. It had something of a swerve in the middle, where they are about to pass on the curse but decide not to. And of course a stinger at the end, where we can see that the cycle will continue. I’d give it a solid meh, it was alright, but nothing special.
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Why did this go dark so long?
About two years back, I stopped working for the place where this blog had been hosted. And with the future of the hosting in question, I lost some of my motivation to maintain it. I’d made some efforts to get it moved somewhere better, but until recently, those efforts hadn’t borne any fruit. Well, now they have, the site’s future is “secure” or at least it should be.
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The Purge: Election Year
Today’s Movie: The Purge: Election Year Well, that was better than I expected. But I don’t think it was a horror movie. I think it was a thriller, or a action movie maybe. Maybe I should rewatch previous Purges. There is definitely some genre drift. If I recall correctly, the first one with the house invasion, that one was more of a horror movie. I’d have to pull up wiki summaries for the other ones, as I can’t specifically recall. The purge as a concept is still horribly flawed, but as the series has gone on, they’ve plugged up some…
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Funhouse Massacre
Only one film tonight. Another haunted house film. This one, The Funhouse Massacre, was about a cult leader who was being held in the mental health equivalent of Guantanamo Bay. No rights, no trials, no sentences, just lock up the monsters and leave them to rot. And this place had a nice collection of monsters. A dentist, a taxidermist, a clown themed wrestler, a cannibal chef, a nice ensemble cast. So cult leader dude, and his serial killer daughter orchestrate a fun house themed after all the various crimes, the perfect place for these guys to throw down after their…
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Hellhouses
HellHouse LLC and HellHouse LLC II : Abbadon House. So, these were a pair of found footage films about a haunted house, where dark rituals had been performed and a tragedy occurred. The news segments were pretty well done and felt like local news. The in-house stuff relied too much on the darkness and the cameras not being able to capture much. The supernatural elements also interfered with radios and cameras, meaning the cameras would start to fail when things got spooky. Sometimes this can work, sometimes this comes across as annoying; in this case, it comes across as both…
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Halloween, 2018
A few years back, I tried to keep a log of my 31 days of horror movies. As I recall, it didn’t go overly well. I logged a dozen or so movies over a few days, then got distracted by something. In an effort to bring this place back from the dead, now that I’ve made the effort to move it to a new host, I’ll attempt something similar. I’ve just resubscribed to Shudder, between that, Netflix, and Amazon Prime, I should have a decent catalog to work with.
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Matt’s Campaign – Day Six
After a long break, we have managed to get the group back together for D&D. We’re in a forest, and two of the party members have gotten into a fight and exploded. Currently, the forest is on fire because of their fight. And we are running away from it. The elfadin has the stag, the bard casts cat’s grace to make it easier to weave through the trees, and the mercenary is in trouble. There is also a druid, who has recently assisted the party in finding their way through the woods. The bard attempts to inspire the mercenary, and…
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A different campaign
So, since Reive is stuck working with an unreliable schedule, we’re starting a new campaign. We’ve got a human criminal who woke up after his execution in a strange metallic body, and had to craft himself a human suit to be able to blend in. It took him a while to realize that he’s a continent and a few hundred years away from where he died. He was buried with a rather large rifle, which despite having no memory of, he knows intimately, including how to fire it, reload it, and craft ammunition for it. For those who were wondering,…
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Matt’s Campaign – Day Five
The party continues to try to get off the crumbling bridge. Ismark tried to leap onto the wagon, but failed, falling to the ground. One of the werewolves leaps up and tries to pull Vellos from the wagon, Vellos resists, and then throws a thunderwave into him, knocking him off the side of the wagon. The merc tried to press on, his horse was slashed by the larger werewolf as he got into range. The elf drew the sun sword, which blazed to life, filling the forest with light. Ismark gets up from being run over by the cart, and…