Okay, that's enough
My penis's new name is Jellyfish the Nuclear Powered Monstrosity.
Take Name Your Penis by badasstronaut today!
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My penis's new name is Jellyfish the Nuclear Powered Monstrosity.
Take Name Your Penis by badasstronaut today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.
My crappy little elf name is Leafwind Cowrot.
What's yours?
Powered by Rum and Monkey.
After getting our asses kicked in AoM we headed off to north Plano to a little cemetery that Tracy knew of. She had been there before and knew it to be haunted. We took a digital camera, a digital camcorder and Tracy had a disposable camera. We got to the cemetery around 1ish without too much trouble finding the place. I felt the need to say a prayer before roaming around a cemetery at 1:00 in the morning, but everyone else pretty much just started roaming around.
I started up the video camera and switched it to "night shot", unfortunately for half the time I didn't turn the auto focus off and most of the film really isn't very good. Matt took the digital camera, but when he had trouble taking pictures and getting the flash going, I think the girls took it away from him…hehe. The cemetery is quite old, but unfortunately the urban sprawl of Plano has moved in rather close to it. There was a ton of lights from cars and buildings, which made trying to see anything rather difictult.
Tracy felt a lot of activity, being touched and seeing apparitions. She mentioned feeling children around her legs, something knocking the camera around when she tried to take pictures. Susan (my wife) didn't really report much and neither did Matt. I didn't see anything or experience anything. While I was there I felt really calm and peaceful, but around 2:40 or so I started to feel like it was time to go…this could have just been my nerves finally getting to me or it could have been the spirits saying "we appreciate your visit, but it's time to go now". Interestingly Susan felt like she wanted to stay. On the way out I though I heard an extra footstep in the grass for just a moment, but that's hard to substantiate.
The pictures and video came out poorly. We only got two or three good pictures with the digital camera and I fooked up the video. A few of the pictures show lots of orbs, but as it was pretty windy and we were in a big field, I'm pretty sure they were dust. One picture has a mist in it, but as there was a bit of smoking going on, well I'm afraid it's cigarette smoke. We're planning to do it again and hopefully we can go about it in a bit more scientific fashion and get some better pictures/footage.
Friday night we had our second round of Age of Mythology. We got started right after 7:00 and the drink of the evening was boxed wine mixed with Fresca & Sierra Nevada Pale Ale for me! Susan & Tracy were Greek again, Matt & I were Egyptians, so we had a new culture to try out. The game rolled along much better this time around, though I think the more experienced we get the faster it will go. We made a change to combat, using rolls of 5 & 6 on a d6 to resolve combat instead of just 6's. This made combat go a bit faster.
The game came down to who could get VP's off of Largest Army and that was a contest between me & Tracy. She got the good cards though and pulled out the win by being able to recruit more men. I made one last ditch effort to win by battling her down, but that failed and I knew my effort was lost. But still, we all had a good time and I look forward to another chance to play again.
We wrapped up around 12:30 AM, which was perfect for going out on our first Ghost Hunt.
In an attempt to appease my wife and view more movies that don't involve people's heads in vices or baseball bat beatings or general violent death I rented the Magdalene Sisters. I'm not sure what I expected when I rented this, only that the main characters were all women and there didn't seem to be any Mafia hitmen in it.
The story follows the lives of three (you could say four) young Catholic girls in 1960's Ireland and their banishment to a laundry after being deemed undesirable. The girls aren't related, except that they've all committed a mortal no-no and have very unsympathetic parents. They are whisked away, in each case without any real explanation, to a laundry ran by Catholic nuns who use their enforced labor to turn a tidy profit. The idea is that they atone for their sins and save their mortal souls. After watching this movie I would think that Hell would be a better place.
I thought the film was well shot and well acted by everyone involved. I felt sorry for the girls who were held prisoner and lamented the fact that the film shows old women in the background…this led me to believe that they all could expect to be there a long time. I hated the nuns who ran the place and felt disgust at their lack of sympathy and abuse of power. And I hoped throughout the whole movie that the girls would get their revenge!
The movie moved along well and didn't get bogged down by dwelling on any one abuse of the prisoners by going into too much detail. I like to think that the filmmaker respected my intellect and let me put the pieces together for myself. The movie is laced with tragedy, but it never became overwhelming. I would say they did a good job of keeping the gravity of the character's situation at the forefront, but not to a degree of hopelessness.
The movie ends without the great justice of revenge for all the wrongs perpetrated on these young women. While that was disappointing, the sobering reality of the story made the ending seem just right to me. You get a little blurb on the life of each girl after their experiences portrayed in the film and you can tell that there was no sugar coating. This was a pretty dark film from beginning to ending and it definitely didn't leave me with any sort of warm fuzzy feeling. It's a stark tale based on real events and not for the faint of heart, but worth the time it takes to view it.
i've lived too small
lived too little
ready to die too soon
found no time
to find my place
i left it all
and floated in space
i tried too hard
i lied too hard
i failed too much
flailed too much
so here i am now
keep goin' on somehow
just to find a place
i'll make my space
They Might Be Giants played at Trees in Deep Ellum Saturday Night. The wife and I along with most of the gaming group went. This was the first concert we'd been to in a long time, if you don't count the "Down From the Mountain" concert I took my dad to.
I'm not sure what my expectations were for this event. I'm not a terribly big TMBG fan, though I do like quite a few of their songs. Since several members of the group are big fans I figured I could feed off of their excitement. I was excited as we made our way into the club, but the requisite standing around for an hour wasn't much fun...beers helped.
The concert started with an opening band whose name I never caught, which is a disappointment. They we're probably one of the best opening acts I've ever seen and I've been to quite a few concerts in my time. Their songs were clever and quirky, the band played well and with exuberance...I felt that they were a great lead in to TMBG (from my limited understanding of them anyway). When they went off stage I was pumped and excited, ready to see the main show...everything seemed to be going great.
Then the second opening act came out. An accordian player. Named Corn Mo...I think. I wanted to like this guy...I really did. He ended up annoying me though, and pretty much killing the momentum of the show. He was funny during the spoken parts of his act, but the accordian music and songs, while occasionally funny in a sixth grade kind of way, lacked and real substance and it became repetitive after awhile. He came up and played during one of the songs for TMBG and displayed some fine accordian skills...why he didn't do this during his set is beyond me.
By the time TMBG came on I was kind of in a bad mood. Some short guy next to me had complained about me being too tall and in the way...in a nice way, but it still irked me. The crowd had, by this time, packed in nice & tight which meant it was virtually impossible to get to the bar for more beer and it was incredibly hot. Combine all that with having stood on my feet since 8:00 PM, my endurance was quickly wearing out.
TMBG opened up with "Experimental Film" and that lifted my spirits a lot. I really like this song and if you haven't seen the video done by The Cheat & Strongsad at www.homestarrunner.com you're really missing out. Unfortunately, one of the banes of going to see a band that I'm not really familiar with is I have a difficult time getting into the show. This was true of TMBG. While I enjoy a handful of their songs, I just have trouble getting really pumped up about some of the stuff they do; which just seems silly and pointless or outlandisly absurd. I'm sure I just don't get it.
Overall, I felt this could have been a better experience. I think had we been smart and sat in the balcony, where there was easy access both to the bathrooms and the ever important bar we would have endured better. I enjoyed TMBG's music, if not always the lyrics, there was a lot of energy from the band & crowd and the show blended humor with good musicianship and quirky cleverness...I wouldn't mind seeing them again some day.
We had a slightly shortened gaming session on Saturday, though it was the first one the wife & I have attended in quite sometime. The group as a rule hasn't been getting together as often as it was a few months ago. We're also loosing a member, Tim is moving to Portland, OR & we'll miss him...an accomplished gamer and not-so-bad guy to hang around with. Good luck on the job Tim...we'll miss you!
Due to the shortened gaming time I was involved in only one game. I believe it was Merchants of Amsterdam. A nifty little game and I'll do my best to describe it here:
The map has three main areas of play not including the time track. The world, which is divided up in to 4 sections where you build ports, the city of Amsterdam (also divded into 4's) where you build warehouses and the merchant ship track...you guessed it 4's. The 4 comodities you deal in are spice, jewels, sugar & silk.
On your turn you draw three cards from a stack, you choose one to keep, one to throw away and one to auction off. Each card lets you either place one of your tokens on the world section or the city section, the card will also determine whether you can select any 1 of the 4 comodities or just one. Inserted in the stack of cards are hourglasses which advance the time track. Most squares on the time track allow you to do something, like advance your token on the comodities track, place a port on the world or build a warehouse in the city. Some squares invoke scoring and some do nothing at all.
So each player gets one action for free, one gets thrown away and one gets auctioned off. The auction, I'm told, is a Dutch auction (yay theme) and is carried out by using a cool little count down timer thinggy. As the timer counts down the price drops, when the price gets to where you want it you hit the timer and it stops...you then pay the price indicated. This is a neat mechanic as you have to judge the value of the card being auctioned and you have to out reflex the other players.
You get more money when the marker advances to a scoring square and money is what determines the winner. So when you're shelling out bucks for those auctioned cards you're spending VP's. You get bonus cash the first time you have two ships in each comodity, a port in each section of the world and a warehouse in each section of the city...you also get a bonus for building warehouses on eitherside of a bridge (the city sections are connected by little bridges). You get money when the marker hits a scoring spot on the time track...each section of the board gets scored by itself...except at the end where everything scores at once.
I liked this game, though playing with two others who had already played it before made it hard for me to keep up. But even though I fell behind and knew I wouldn't win, I had a good time playing and learning the game. I at least felt like I knew what I had done wrong and could probably do better next time. All-in-all, definetly worth playing again...though I imagine that if I don't do better next time my opinion of it will drop.
We spent Friday evening with my wife's friend and her boyfriend playing Age of Mythology (board game) and drinking vodka.
We arrived at 7:00, but didn't really get started playing until almost 9:00. Most of that time was spent in rules explenation and just general disruption. Finally we got the game started. There were four of us, me, S (the wife), T (the friend) and M (the friend's b/f). M and I (me) ended up with the Nordic culture and the girls ended up with the Greeks...yay! boys vs. girls! This was the first time I've seen anyone play the Greeks, though I admit this is only the second time I've played the game with 4 people).
I started the game as 1st player and things were pretty calm that first round until M decided to liven things up with some early combat. He decided to go after S and her city. S retreated after some sharp dice rolling and let him destroy two of her buildings (he had the Siege Engine Workship)...she lost a house and something else. So that was the start of the game, and I forget the details as I was drinking.
S ended up getting beat up on early by both M and me, but by the later stages of the game had built up a fairly impressive army. Still I don't think she was in any position to try and win the game. This is one of my complaints about AoM, that if you get beat up on it's really hard to stay in the game and this makes a four + hour game a real beat down. However, S did manage to extract some revenge on M and while he put up a gutsy defense he lost and let his army get whittled down to 2 mortal units. I stayed strong militarily the whole time and got lucky on the die roll / unit match ups and managed to not loose a battle. All-in-all there wasn't a lot of building...i think this is a portion of the game we may have ignored too much.
We finally called the game off around 3:00 AM, though we were close to getting to the end it looked like the game could have gone another hour. Partly the length, I like to think, was that we had several distractions during the game and I think all of us lost focus of advancing in ages. There wasn't a lot of combat, and I didn't feel like it pulled the game down, though the luck factor seems out of context with the rest of the game.
I felt I was in a strong position to win the game, as I had the largest army and already had 3 VP from winning battles...but T thought she would have won, claiming strategy to build the wonder. We'll never know. Despite the game taking forever to play, everyone claimed to have a good time (I think the vodka helped a little) and we are planning on trying a second playing this Friday. Though I may try to push Puerto Rico on them instead...some similar concepts...and not as much direct confrontation...so no one gets their feelings hurt.
I want to like this game, but both times I've played it its taken far to long to play. The combat is ovelry luck based and for a game this long I'd rather have more control...though *I* felt I did, I don't think anyone else did. Right now my gut feeling is this game could get better if you have experienced players.
Testing...