Russell & Kimmy

Have you ever read that book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie?  It is a cute little kids story that starts off with giving a mouse a cookie and then it evolves following the further reasonable demands of the mouse.  With that thought in mind I am reflecting on Christmas and how awesome I am that I can give my wife an appliance and further down the road that will translate into cookies for me. Of course there are conditions attached to said cookies, but they are pleasant conditions; well maybe. So like I said, Christmas has come and gone and I received the 3 best possible gifts; a broken computer, Fallout 3, and Fry’s Gift Cards. Unfortunately tonight and tomorrow we have more familial obligations so the gutting, re-building and sleep-griefing will have to wait till Sunday.

Kimmy also gave me the Adventurer’s Vault for D&D 4th Edition.  The back of the book promised more magic items than you can stuff into a bag of holding; and I have yet to verify that claim …. in hindsight I could have figured that out if I brought it with me to work today; well at least I have something to do Monday. After paging through the book at 2:00 AM Christmas morning I can say I am impressed. Somehow Wizards of the Coast remembered that magic items are part of what make D&D fun. After all the only reason we adventure is to kill stuff, take said stuff’s stuff, sell said stuff’s stuff and buy better stuff with the proceeds. Brilliance, now if we can get a campaign or two under our belts I could then compare/contrast 3.5 to 4.0 and decide which I like better … lousy friends having a life outside of mine.

And while I am at it, I feel I should put a rave in for Avlis. You remember Never Winter Nights, the precursor to Never Winter Nights 2? Well it turns out that Never Winter Nights is still around, still kicking, and there are still quite a few persistent worlds out there for you to play on. After a few donations and a year of play time I can say that if you liked NWN and you like RPG come join Avlis …. and remember Chaotic Neutral translates into Chaotic Awesome!

Okay so I admit it, I am a dirty role-player, and no not one of those BSDM freaks.  MasterN and LegalCounsel got me hooked on the old Star Wars RPG by West End Games.  I was never sure what my parents thought of all this RPG, but I figure they didn’t mine since I was cooped up in someone’s kitchen instead of boozin and whorin my way around town.  Strangely enough all the people I role-played with don’t have kids, while the party animals I knew in high school do …. life is funny that way.  Oh well, there were countless hours we spent rolling dice, cheatin the system and some how managing not to die despite the fact that statistics (never quote me the odds) demanded our painful and bloody end.  We took on Star Destroyers with impunity, cheated the system some more, and even shot them down all while riding around in a “piece of junk“.  And if the PCs got too rowdy, the answer was more Storm Troopers and more Star Destroyers.  When I got to college I graduated to D&D 3rd Edition.

Having never actually played AD&D, I had no expectations for D&D 3rd Editon.  And I had a blast, the rules were great, there were some loop holes, I played a lot of wizards, slung a lot of spells, and wasted countless hours that could have been better spent studying.   When 3.5 came out I was a little sad that some of the loop holes got slammed shut but the game was still fun.  This brings me to 4th Edition.

Like a good consumer whore, I bought 4th Edition and then carefully set it on my bookshelf.  It sat there for six months until TehJournalist got the urge to “throw down some bones”.  We got together, made some characters, skimmed the rules and in about a week are going to actually play.  I am a little nervous, sure the rulse are cleaner, faster, and a lot easier but I think as they loose some of their obfuscation they loose a bit of their fun, after all less obfuscation means it is a lot harder too pull crap out of your ass and befuddle your GM.

But as grandma always told me, you don’t know what it will taste like till you take a bite.

I bad mouth my cat a lot; mostly because I can call it all sorts of horrible names and at the end of the day it still loves me.  But occasionally there are times when I wonder if that cat has to be the smartest thing in my apartment; especially since it was curled up under the Christmas tree this morning when I went out to defrost my car’s windows. Sure 29°F may not be that cold, but when it was 78°F two days ago it sure as hell seems cold; really makes me miss Hawaii.

Well other than suffering through another morning of work in the cube of despair; I really don’t have a whole lot to talk about (mostly because my brain is still a bit frozen). Plus at some point I have been told that I really should do work so I guess I’ll take my leave; but in my absence enjoy some baby animals courtesy of neatorama.

Wow!

So MasterN, CD, Kimmy and I went out too the movie theaters to see the new James Bond movie.  I am going to go out on a crazy limb and say for some reason I liked Speed Racer better but it wasn’t bad.  I was entertained so it is worth the theater ticket, but I would like to state for the record that movie nachos suck.  That is it I am done, they suck.

[spoiler] I was also a bit sad that red head British chick died, I liked her [/ spoiler]

And oddly this movie felt a little two bond-sy while not being bond-sy enough.  An odd dichotomy but, good action and lots of stuff exploding.  Plus all the bad guys die which makes me happy.  But to make the evening more entertaining I found out that there is a new Ice Age movie coming out; Ice Age, Dawn of the Dinosaurs.  Thanks to the power of CGI (and the belief of fundamentalist Christians) you too can see mammoths and dinosaurs fighting … we are going to ignore the 60.7 million (what is 60 million years among friends) years separating the K-T extinction event and the rise of mammoths. You know it is this kind of crap that pisses me off. I mean sure Ice Age is supposed to be entertainment but I can see little Johnny arguing with teacher one day that People, Mammoths and Dinosaurs existed together …. the bible and Hollywood told me so. Maybe I am just getting old, or maybe America is just full of idiots looking for the next entertaining thing; but damn it People, Mammoths, and Dinosaurs didn’t exist together!

Cat’s just do the funniest damn thing and this is really no exception …. I present Cat on a Roomba.  I don’t know why this is so funny …. but it really just is.