Music: Mainframe

This shows up in one of the expansions for Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. It's... I don't even know how to explain the context for this. It plays incessantly during one particular mission, and every time you think you've finished the mission it starts again. Fortunately, it's the sort of mission that involves a lot of shooting, because having this song playing on a loop will make almost anyone extremely stabby. And the worst part is... it's really catchy.

Day Off

It isn't really -- a day off, I mean. I'm at work. But I have nothing for this morning, my brain cells are engaged elsewhere (when two pirates are about to get married, do they send announcements that say "We arrr engaged!"?) and I have only finally gotten a decent amount of sleep as of last night. So, instead of actual content, let me offer everyone a virtual beer -- in honor of what I'd rather be doing right now.

If all practical considerations were removed, what would you like to be doing right now?

Busy Season

It's here. I'm doomed.

Image Source

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMED!!!!!!

Because I'm a parent...

Because I'm a parent...

...My backpack, in addition to my own things, now contains a pencil, a stick, and three shiny rocks.

...My head has been subjected to a game of Whack-A-Mole involving an enthusiastic eight-year-old with a Nerf zombie-slaying hammer and me sticking my head up out of the top of my t-shirt.

...I am not allowed to remove the giant pile of blankets in the bedroom doorway. It's either a mountain where a Jedi battle is taking place, "a bed", or both.

...I am now single-handedly responsible for the ongoing financial health of the Eggo Waffle company.

...I must immediately drop whatever I am doing if the five-year-old needs help with Lego Star Wars.

...50% of all parental dinner selections are automatically and completely wrong.

...I know far, far more about gaming videos on YouTube than I ever imagined possible.

Not yet told

Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. Someday this will be a story. ...What should the story say?

Zombies Ate The Traffic

A conversation with Firstborn on the way to his school this morning...

Me: "Wow. The street is almost empty. Maybe the zombies really did eat everyone. I mean, that would be completely horrifying -- but it would help with the traffic."

Firstborn: "Fat zombies."

Me: "What?"

Firstborn: "Fat zombies."

Me: "Like they went into the houses and ate everyone and got really fat, and then couldn't get back out?"

Firstborn: (giggling) "Yes. Maybe it's the McDonalds Fat Zombies Mod. It takes the texture on their bellies and makes it thicker."

Me: "That'd do it."

We pull up to an intersection, where there are plenty of cars.

Me: "I guess the zombies didn't everyone. Oh, well."

Firstborn: "Or maybe they all came back to life."

Me: "Could be, could be."

Firstborn: (looking reproachfully at the sky) "Thanks, Jesus."

Real Work Conversations: Ex-Jedi

Co-worker: "What is that?"

Me: "It's Darth Vader's head. In a plastic bag."

Co-Worker: "Okay, then."

Presumably the rest of him is still in that cave on Dagobah.

Animal Magnetism

The Hail You Say

Salovar, who hailed from afar,
Was about to hail a cab
When the hail began to fall,
So he ducked back into the hall,
pleased at remaining hale.

This isn't so much some "hailish" attempt at poetry as it is just me playing with word meanings.

Another Trilogy!

1. Creative Works Inspired by your RPG Campaign Creative writing is the fine art of hiding your sources.

2. "Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there," we chant, and another agent appears in the pentagram. He screams. The Dark Lord feasts tonight. Creative Works inspired by insurance commercials...

3. “Captain! The enemy’s Vetch Cannon are proving more than a match for the shields generated by our Krump Vanes!” I'm not sure the problem here is the technique itself, so much as the way it often gets used as a tool for lazy writing, but still...

Birthdays Courtesy of Star Wars, Lego, and Minecraft

Secondborn turned five yesterday. For his birthday, he had a cupcake-cake at his school, with Anakin Skywalker facing off against General Grievous. This is basically a matter of his mother pulling things out, since we had nothing whatsoever planned or ready to go.

Then he got home, and found the present (again, left by his mother) on the kitchen table. I think it's safe to say he was pleased.

Sleep? Please define this strange foreign concept.

Came home tired last night, napped, and then tried to go to bed at a sensible hour. Well, actually, I did go to bed at a sensible hour, and I was deeply, deeply asleep... at three-thirty in the morning... when Captain Meowy-Pants Stupid-Alarm-Clock started meowing. Loudly.

Repeatedly.

Incessantly.

I honestly believe that if I could have managed it, we would own one less cat. Fortunately (or not), I was too paralytically exhausted to move, let alone get up and kill him. So the cat survived, but I look more than a little bit like a raccoon.

Also, the top of my head itches from the sunburn I acquired at the renaissance festival on Saturday, but the less said about that, the better.

Once I get done with this busy, busy day and get both boys down to sleep, I am putting Captain Meowy-Pants Stupid-Alarm-Clock in his cage, and I am putting his cage in some suitably soundproof corner of the house. And then I will settle down on the bed, and get myself a good night's coma. I hope.

Stock Photos

We're trying out a new set of punishments in our household. When the boys misbehave, they have to spend some time in the stocks, like this:

No, I'm kidding. We went to the local Renaissance Festival on Saturday, and they behaved beautifully. They even let me take their pictures.

Adding Drama to Everyday Life

Me, to Firstborn, on our way out the door this morning: "Today we'll be exploring Coreward, in search of Precursor artifacts."

Beautiful Wife: "That sounds exciting."

Me: "Well, we need to study as much Precursor technology as we can if we're going to fend off the Ur-Quan and their Hierarchy of Battle Thralls."

My Battle Sword

So I've gone outside, because Secondborn "needs someone to battle with". I was all ready for a good old nerf-weapons fight, but apparently that's not what he has in mind. "In this part of the game, we have to find our weapons. They have been hidden around." So I wander the back yard, thinking wistfully of the giant nerf battle axe in the living room.

Then he comes back with a pair of sticks. "These are swords," he says. "I have this one, so I don't need these two."

I reach down and pick one up. "I'll take this one."

"That one," he explains, "is called The Undead Sword That Can Kill Anyone. Also, it shoots lasers at people."

Well. All right, then. That -- THAT -- will be my weapon.

Filler

I need filler. I have no filler. Anybody have filler? What have you been reading, or watching, or listening to?

Fist of Jesus

So, this is one of the more bizarre, what-did-I-just-watch? things that I've seen in a while... Probably shouldn't watch it if you don't enjoy blasphemous humor, extreme gore, or non-sequiturs.

Not so inspirational...

Shoot for the moon. Even If you miss, you'll still land among the stars drift forever in the frozen, airless void.

Real Work Conversations: Success!

Boss: "How is it coming?"

Me: "The project...?"

Me: "Sucks cess."

Boss: (surprised) "Success?"

Me: "No. It sucks. Cess. Nasty, nasty cess."

Boss: "Cess."

Me: "Think cesspool."

Boss: "Oh."

Easter

Every year on this day, Jesus descends from Heaven to a small, obscure town that might be in Germany -- or someplace very like Germany, or some almost-place that sits balanced between Germany and somewhere else. From there, He follows a path (wide, but overgrown) to the house of Ostara. Now, some say that Ostara's home is a grand mansion built on a high hill to face the dawn; others say it's a small, comfortable place tucked back among the trees.

Nobody really knows much about the house of Ostara; so maybe Jesus sneaks in past the guards, the servants and the hounds; or maybe He comes openly, knocking on the door like an old friend, to be welcomed in with a nice cup of tea or a mug of good, dark German beer. What we do know is that Jesus finally goes around to the back of the house, where He wakes the Great Bunny from its nest. He puts the saddle on, mounts the Great Bunny, and gives the ritual cry in a loud voice: "Candy and Salvation for everyone!" (He says it in Aramaic, but that doesn't matter; if you were there, you would hear it in whatever language is most familiar and comfortable to you.)

Then Jesus and the Great Bunny hop out across the world to distribute eggs full of candy in their yearly act of triumphant celebration.

Weirder than mine...

So, Beautiful Wife woke up this morning and told me that she'd been dreaming that she had to find all the letters of the alphabet... in naturally-occurring water droplets... in the space of two hours. There was something about a big, creepy warehouse, and some children who would have something horrible happen if she failed.

Apparently I'm not the only one who's been having a hard week.

I cooked waffles.

That was my big achievement this morning: I put butter on the frozen waffles and stuck them in the toaster. Well, and I drove myself to work, but somehow that doesn't feel like much of an accomplishment.

It's been a long week. My sinuses have been completely nuts -- maybe just allergies, but I suspect a head cold of some sort -- and I've taken to coughing when I should be sleeping -- just as a hobby, mind you -- and I've been trying to keep All The Things going -- you know, getting the boys to school, getting the boys back from school, making sure they have lunches at school... Oh. And making breakfast. Because, you know, breakfast. All this, while the most horrible things imaginable are draining out of my sinuses and down the back of my throat, and in the process making me sound like something that's been freshly resurrected and isn't all that happy about it.

So this morning, I rolled over from where I'd been sleeping on the couch -- all part of the plan to keep my head propped up so the blasphemous, otherworldly things in my sinuses would continue to drain down the back of my throat and perish in the holy fires of my stomach acid, rather than piling up in that one little place just above the corner of my right eye, and pressing together in an unholy ritual that will summon the dreaded Sinus Infection -- where was I, again?

Oh, right. On the couch. "Sleeping." (I use the term in its loosest possible sense, the one that's actually a synonym for "coughing", with a strong connotation of "wishing helplessly for the sweet release of death".)

My alarm clock went off. (It does that.) I had no energy to move. It was all I could do to flail one arm up to the shelf, and drag the thing down onto the couch with me by its snooze button. It went off again. I snoozed it again. (My hand was still around it, so this wasn't so much an "action" as a "twitch".) It went off again. I snoozed it again. (Ditto.) It went off again. This time I raised my voice in a pathetic, mewling cry, and then snoozed it again.

Finally, I heaved myself off the couch and staggered to the kitchen. I needed to make up for lost time, which meant I needed to make breakfast for the boys. I opened the freezer, reached for the frozen waffles, and grabbed the chicken nuggets instead. (This is known as "not being at your best".) I briefly considered buttering the chicken nuggets, but a momentary vision of the toaster oven burning dissuaded me. I put the nuggets back, and this time I managed to get the frozen waffles. And the butter. And a knife. (The knife might have been a bad idea.)

Carefully, I sliced the butter and laid it out on the frozen waffles. I have no idea how long this took. The meticulous precision of the process required my utmost concentration. Then I put them in the toaster oven and set it for five minutes. I noted with pleasure that the little red light actually came on, which meant that nobody had unplugged the toaster to make popcorn the night before. (It only took three times of letting the toaster tick all the way down to its final ding! before discovering that the waffles inside were still completely frozen to make checking that stupid little light a bone-deep reflex.)

Then I staggered into the back room, climbed up to the loft bed, and slumped down in a sort of whole-body avalanche beside my wife. "There are waffles in the toaster oven," I said. My voice may have been slightly muffled by the pillow. (My breathing may have been slightly muffled by the pillow. Eh, who needs oxygen?)

That was all I had left. Beautiful Wife had to get the boys up, give them the waffles, and make their lunches. She even took them both to school. (Probably a good thing. In my current state, I might have driven all the way to work with Firstborn still in the back seat.) I did eventually pry myself back out of bed and make it to work, but I am tired. Exhausted. Drained.

But I did cook the waffles.

Ready for NaNoWriMo? Go!

National Novel Writing Month (which gets shortened to NaNoWriMo, for reasons I find utterly incomprehensible) has been moved to April this year. That means it's time to get started. Check the NaNoWriMo site for help, advice, and tools to track your progress -- or, if you're the sort of person who prefers to do things on their own, just started writing! Can you finish your novel in a month?

Ready... set... go!