James Gillen

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...
 
This Wednesday our group started its first game of the BUFFY RPG. My character is a Chicago detective who retired to this sleepy town near Lake Tahoe, California (unknowing that it became the next Hellmouth after Sunnydale was destroyed).
 
He sees a monster hunter chasing somebody who turns out to be a vampire. He gets involved in the fight and finds out that his 44 Magnum doesn't do much good against vamps. He's saved by a couple of supernaturally-powered monster hunters (other PCs) who tell him to leave their hunting grounds. No fool, my character complies.
 
Except that the other two characters later on end up in a fight between two OTHER PCs (the town Slayer and an expatriate Troll) and the GM decides that they're brawling it out right outside my house. So having learned from experience, I take my gun, lean out the window, and yell:
"Anybody who's immune to bullets, raise your hand!"
 
JG

Re: A Thread for Random Musings
 
All you have to do is let the Survivor programs show some of the participants in suitably-edited-for-prime-time-TV sex scenes with each other, and you get a low-budget version of the same damned boring soap operas I've hated for over forty years, except that you spend less on costumes and more on mosquito repellent for the camera crew.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings
 
I think it is odd that I cannot remember the last time I gave rep, yet I still cannot not give James Gillen rep today....hmmm....

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...
 
This week's online Changeling game, one of the players said: "I may be immortal, but firearms would severely impair my golf game."
 
JG

Re: A Thread for Random Musings
 
What's really sad about these new Burger King 'Coq Roq' commercials is that they sound cooler than anything that's on MTV right now.
 
JG

Re: A Thread for Random Musings
 
This country was founded on the principle we should be free to screw each other individually. And that big guys can screw little guys, but not too much.
 
Now people are eager to do away with that, eager to hand over power to the government, either to prevent literal screwing or corporate screwing or what-not...out of a dangerously misguided belief that the government is there to help us "be happy", to "live better", to use "our" resources to help "each other". Regardless of conservative or liberal, the point is the same, that power corrupts and the more power we delegate to a central authority, the more it will selfishly and zealously guard that power, almost always regardless of the men or women who take on that power and their going-in intent. It astounds me how idealogues of either established end of the mainstream American political spectrum, with their mistrust of either big business or foreign enemies or moral ills, believe that the solution is to delegate yet more power to the central national authority. It further astounds me that most people see some stark contrast between the mainstream left and right when both have become nothing more than figureheads to demogagouery.
 
This is not a direct response to Mr. Gillen's post above but was inspired by the Reagan quote "I’m from the government and I’m here to help." and how so many of my liberal friends are so eager to naysay that and somehow believe that national government is the solution (yet they so quaintly and ineffectually take to the streets, seeing no irony...), and how many conservative friends are blind to the betrayal of a massive part of their core ideology in the hands of the fraud that is the primary power brokers among the conservative republicans.
 
This nation will surely rot in the hell it is building for itself.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...
 
Our first Champions game with Matt as GM- three of us investigating what seemed to be supervillain robberies of jewelry stores. We go to one high-class establishment after hours and notice the back door is ripped off, perhaps by superstrength. We check and see that two people have been frozen into statues. We go downstairs and slip on the ice patch that's there for no reason. It turns out this one ice-powered villainess and her brickette friend are robbing the vault with some help from their goons, who have fairly powerful (10d6+) iceray guns. We spent most of our time fighting the goons as the ice princess is too lazy to get in the fight herself, but when the guys call for reinforcements, the ice princess comes out- with her two pet POLAR BEARS.
 
And Gary, playing Black Eagle (the grim-avenger-of-the-night character) blurts out in character, "Polar bears? Who takes polar bears to rob a jewelry vault? This is crazy!"
 
 
Guess you had to be there.
 
JG

Re: A Thread for Random Musings
 
I took my Mom to CoCo's Restaraunt tonight and the PA system was playing the Ramones version of "California Sun."
 
I guess punk rock really IS dead.
 
JG

Re: Musings on Random Musings
 

 
Finally... the Tribble
HAS COME BACK!
...to the NGD!!

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER
 
You can never be sure how many beers you had last night. --The Heineken Uncertainty Principle

Re: A Thread for Random Musings
 
The local rock group down the street
Is trying hard to learn their song
Seranade the weekend squire,
Who just came out to mow his lawn
 
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
Charcoal burning everywhere
Rows of houses that are all the same
And no one seems to care
 
See Mrs. Gray she's proud today
Because her roses are in bloom
Mr. Green he's so serene,
He's got a t.v. in every room
 
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
Here in status symbol land
Mothers complain about how hard life is
And the kids just don't understand
 
Creature comfort goals
They only numb my soul and make it hard for me to see
My thoughts all seem to stray, to places far away
I need a change of scenery
 
Ta Ta Ta...
 
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
Charcoal burning everywhere
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
Here in status symbol land
 
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday...

Re: A Thread for Random Musings
 
Apparently in Las Vegas, "celebrate Cinco de Mayo" means "everyone get in their cars, cram together on the road at the same time, drive like morons, and cause accidents every other mile."
 
Well, that's every day in Las Vegas, but this day it seemed more so.
 
JG

Re: A Thread for Random Musings
 
Philosophy is incredibly important - it illuminates the "why" of life, and simply as formalized logical thinking it stimulates the intellect in a way which has bearing on all activities. It should be taught from early grade school on. Our failure to embrace it in early education is just plain wrong and bad - it would enable learning faster later in school and pay off in a better-adjusted citizenry. It's much more important than this absurd notion we should be taking our time to teach children about feeling good about themselves.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings
 
"I don't know about you, but nothing makes me want to hurl a chair through the window and punch someone's lights out like being told I need anger management lessons."
-Mark Steyn

Re: A Thread for Random Musings
 
Capsule Review of Crossroads of Twilight
by Robert Jordan
846 pages paperback
2003 Tor Fantasy
 
 
Crossroads of Twilight is Book 10 in Robert Jordan's series The Wheel of Time. For those of you who've given up by now, like I should have: Mat and his prophesied fiancee Tuon are on the run from the Seanchan invaders after escaping Ebou Dar. Jordan takes three chapters and 73 pages to convey this point. He spends at least two pages detailing the laundry chores Faile is forced to perform since getting enslaved by the Shaido. Elayne is in the morning-sickness phase of pregnancy; at this rate she'll give birth around Book 20. No, Egwene STILL hasn't seized Tar Valon, and is unlikely to do so in the next book (ok, I skipped to the end). In fact, the book doesn't get to Egwene until page 469 and doesn't get to Rand until the end.
Hey, Robert, wake me up when something happens, okay?
 
JG

Re: Musings on Random Musings
 

 

Re: Musings on Random Musings
 

 
It's okay if you make a norse sounding epic out of it...
 
Like Thor's Hammer upon the Jotun Bug
Did my heel strike fast!
Its shell was like an oaken shield
Defiance was in its heart
 
Yet evil armor cracked
Under Righteous blow
And like night leaking from the goldenboar
it oozed its last!

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER
 
These minstrels should soothe your jangled nerves:
 
"I n New York the people talk and try to make us rhyme
They really Hawk but we just walk because we have no time
 
And in the city it's a pity cos we just can't hide
Tinted windows don't mean nothin', they know who's inside
 
It's Tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that's right on time
It's Tricky...(How is it D?) Tricky (Tricky) Tricky (Tricky)"
 

Re: A Thread for Random Musings
 
Matt Hale, on being sentenced to 40 years for hiring someone to kill Judge Lefkow.
 
"They want to see me die in a hole."
 
No. I actually want to see you torn apart by the werewolves from the movie Dog Soldiers, or perhaps die like Tom Savini's character in Dawn of the Dead (original). However, since werewolves and flesh-eating zombies don't grow on trees, 40 years is long enough for me to get Mutant for Hire to make a bunch of them so I CAN enjoy watching you ripped to shreds and messily devoured.
 
Thank you, Mr. Hale. Have a nice prison term.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings
 
This song is called Alice's Restaurant, and it's about Alice, and the
restaurant, but Alice's Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant,
that's just the name of the song, and that's why I called the song Alice's
Restaurant.
 
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
 
Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on - two years ago on
Thanksgiving, when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the
restaurant, but Alice doesn't live in the restaurant, she lives in the
church nearby the restaurant, in the bell-tower, with her husband Ray and
Fasha the dog. And livin' in the bell tower like that, they got a lot of
room downstairs where the pews used to be in. Havin' all that room,
seein' as how they took out all the pews, they decided that they didn't
have to take out their garbage for a long time.
 
We got up there, we found all the garbage in there, and we decided it'd be
a friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump. So
we took the half a ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW
microbus, took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed
on toward the city dump.
 
Well we got there and there was a big sign and a chain across across the
dump saying, "Closed on Thanksgiving." And we had never heard of a dump
closed on Thanksgiving before, and with tears in our eyes we drove off
into the sunset looking for another place to put the garbage.
 
We didn't find one. Until we came to a side road, and off the side of the
side road there was another fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of the
cliff there was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile
is better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up we
decided to throw our's down.
 
That's what we did, and drove back to the church, had a thanksgiving
dinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep and didn't get up until the
next morning, when we got a phone call from officer Obie. He said, "Kid,
we found your name on an envelope at the bottom of a half a ton of
garbage, and just wanted to know if you had any information about it." And
I said, "Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelope
under that garbage."
 
After speaking to Obie for about fourty-five minutes on the telephone we
finally arrived at the truth of the matter and said that we had to go down
and pick up the garbage, and also had to go down and speak to him at the
police officer's station. So we got in the red VW microbus with the
shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the
police officer's station.
 
Now friends, there was only one or two things that Obie coulda done at
the police station, and the first was he could have given us a medal for
being so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn't very likely, and
we didn't expect it, and the other thing was he could have bawled us out
and told us never to be see driving garbage around the vicinity again,
which is what we expected, but when we got to the police officer's station
there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was
both immediately arrested. Handcuffed. And I said "Obie, I don't think I
can pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on." He said, "Shut up, kid.
Get in the back of the patrol car."
 
And that's what we did, sat in the back of the patrol car and drove to the
quote Scene of the Crime unquote. I want tell you about the town of
Stockbridge, Massachusets, where this happened here, they got three stop
signs, two police officers, and one police car, but when we got to the
Scene of the Crime there was five police officers and three police cars,
being the biggest crime of the last fifty years, and everybody wanted to
get in the newspaper story about it. And they was using up all kinds of
cop equipment that they had hanging around the police officer's station.
They was taking plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling prints, and
they took twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles
and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each
one was to be used as evidence against us. Took pictures of the approach,
the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that's not to
mention the aerial photography.
 
After the ordeal, we went back to the jail. Obie said he was going to put
us in the cell. Said, "Kid, I'm going to put you in the cell, I want your
wallet and your belt." And I said, "Obie, I can understand you wanting my
wallet so I don't have any money to spend in the cell, but what do you
want my belt for?" And he said, "Kid, we don't want any hangings." I
said, "Obie, did you think I was going to hang myself for littering?"
Obie said he was making sure, and friends Obie was, cause he took out the
toilet seat so I couldn't hit myself over the head and drown, and he took
out the toilet paper so I couldn't bend the bars roll out the - roll the
toilet paper out the window, slide down the roll and have an escape. Obie
was making sure, and it was about four or five hours later that Alice
(remember Alice? It's a song about Alice), Alice came by and with a few
nasty words to Obie on the side, bailed us out of jail, and we went back
to the church, had a another thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat,
and didn't get up until the next morning, when we all had to go to court.
 
We walked in, sat down, Obie came in with the twenty seven eight-by-ten
colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back
of each one, sat down. Man came in said, "All rise." We all stood up,
and Obie stood up with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy
pictures, and the judge walked in sat down with a seeing eye dog, and he
sat down, we sat down. Obie looked at the seeing eye dog, and then at the
twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows
and a paragraph on the back of each one, and looked at the seeing eye dog.
And then at twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles
and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one and began to cry,
'cause Obie came to the realization that it was a typical case of American
blind justice, and there wasn't nothing he could do about it, and the
judge wasn't going to look at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy
pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each
one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. And
we was fined $50 and had to pick up the garbage in the snow, but thats not
what I came to tell you about.
 
Came to talk about the draft.
 
They got a building down New York City, it's called Whitehall Street,
where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected,
neglected and selected. I went down to get my physical examination one
day, and I walked in, I sat down, got good and drunk the night before, so
I looked and felt my best when I went in that morning. `Cause I wanted to
look like the all-American kid from New York City, man I wanted, I wanted
to feel like the all-, I wanted to be the all American kid from New York,
and I walked in, sat down, I was hung down, brung down, hung up, and all
kinds o' mean nasty ugly things. And I waked in and sat down and they gave
me a piece of paper, said, "Kid, see the phsychiatrist, room 604."
 
And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I
wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and
guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill,
KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and
he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down
yelling, "KILL, KILL." And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me,
sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."
 
Didn't feel too good about it.
 
Proceeded on down the hall gettin more injections, inspections,
detections, neglections and all kinds of stuff that they was doin' to me
at the thing there, and I was there for two hours, three hours, four
hours, I was there for a long time going through all kinds of mean nasty
ugly things and I was just having a tough time there, and they was
inspecting, injecting every single part of me, and they was leaving no
part untouched. Proceeded through, and when I finally came to the see the
last man, I walked in, walked in sat down after a whole big thing there,
and I walked up and said, "What do you want?" He said, "Kid, we only got
one question. Have you ever been arrested?"
 
And I proceeded to tell him the story of the Alice's Restaurant Massacre,
with full orchestration and five part harmony and stuff like that and all
the phenome... - and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, did you ever
go to court?"
 
And I proceeded to tell him the story of the twenty seven eight-by-ten
colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and the paragraph on
the back of each one, and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, I want
you to go and sit down on that bench that says Group W .... NOW kid!!"
 
And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's
where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after
committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly
looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father
rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And
they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the
bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest
father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly
'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me
and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay
$50 and pick up the garbage." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?"
And I said, "Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench
there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I
said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand,
and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing,
father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the
bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of
things, until the Sargeant came over, had some paper in his hand, held it
up and said.
 
"Kids, this-piece-of-paper's-got-47-words-37-sentences-58-words-we-wanna-
know-details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-
you-gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-want-to-know-arresting-
officer's-name-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say", and talked for
forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had
fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there,
and I filled out the massacre with the four part harmony, and wrote it
down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I put down the
pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the
other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on
the other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the
following words:
 
("KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?")
 
I went over to the sargent, said, "Sargeant, you got a lot a damn gall to
ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm
sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the Group W bench
'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women,
kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug." He looked at me and
said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send you fingerprints
off to Washington."
 
And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a
study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I'm
singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar
situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a
situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into
the shrink wherever you are ,just walk in say "Shrink, You can get
anything you want, at Alice's restaurant.". And walk out. You know, if
one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and
they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony,
they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them.
And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in
singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an
organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said
fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and
walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.
 
And that's what it is , the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and
all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the
guitar.
 
With feeling. So we'll wait for it to come around on the guitar, here and
sing it when it does. Here it comes.
 
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
 
That was horrible. If you want to end war and stuff you got to sing loud.
I've been singing this song now for twenty five minutes. I could sing it
for another twenty five minutes. I'm not proud... or tired.
 
So we'll wait till it comes around again, and this time with four part
harmony and feeling.
 
We're just waitin' for it to come around is what we're doing.
 
All right now.
 
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Excepting Alice
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
 
Da da da da da da da dum
At Alice's Restaurant
 
©1966,1967 (Renewed) by Appleseed Music Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Re: Musings on Random Musings
 

 

 
"Bebebebebebeep-
Let's get 'em, Buck!"
 

Re: A Thread for Random Musings
 
"You don't like that we're invading Iraq? Well, then the UN should sanction us with its army. What's that? Oh that's right, you don't HAVE an army. Well then, you need to open a case of Shut the F@#& Up."
-Dave Chappelle, on why we don't have a black President

Re: A Thread for Random Musings
 
"During the Afghan campaign, an Internet wag, Glenn Crawford, deftly summed up the different cultural approaches to unpromising climate - in this instance between the bleak Afghan plain and Nevada. Third World solution: eke a living out of the desert. American solution: “Viva Las Vegas!†One wouldn’t commend a den of gambling and fornication to every spot on earth, but, driving through the Sunni Triangle, I couldn’t help feeling the history of the Middle East would have been a little different if smack in the middle of the Arabian desert you could have seen Wayne Newton with full supporting orchestra. It would be to Afghanistan’s benefit if someone opened a ski resort, and made the brutal Afghan winter pay its way."
 
-Mark Steyn
http://www.steynonline.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=25

Re: A Thread for Random Musings
 
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, pp. 46-47:
 
"The gambling action runs twenty-four hours a day on the main floor, and the circus never ends. Meanwhile, on the upstairs balconies, the customers are being hustled by every conceivable kind of bizarre shuck. All kinds of funhouse-type booths. Shoot the pasties off the nipples of a ten-foot bull-dyke and win a cotton-candy goat. Stand in front of this machine, my friend, and for just 99c your likeness will appear, two hundred feet tall, on a screen above downtown Las Vegas. Ninety-nine cents more for a voice message. "Say whatever you want, fella. They'll hear you, don't worry about that. Remember you'll be two hundred feet tall."
 
"Jesus Christ. I could see myself lying in bed in the Mint Hotel, half-asleep and staring idly out the window, when suddenly a vicious nazi drunkard appears two hundred feet tall in the midnight sky, screaming gibberish at the world: "Woodstock Uber Alles!!"
 
"We will close the drapes tonight. A thing like that could send a drug person careening around the room like a ping-pong ball. Hallucinations are bad enough. But after a while you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth. Most acid fanciers can handle this sort of thing.
"But nobody can handle that other trip- the possibility that any freak with $1.98 can walk into the Circus-Circus and suddenly appear in the sky over downtown Las Vegas twelve times the size of God, howling anything that comes into his head. No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted."

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER
 
Jessica is a much better singer than Ashlee, and IF it came down to it, I'd rather see her than Ashlee in a skin mag.
 
JG