Nuadha's Tale

Ignorance can be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it. -Thomas Jefferson

Tuesday, April 30, 2002

And for some reason, Blogger isn't publishing my most recent post. It always leave out the last one I wrote.

Haven't had much time for bloggin'. Sorry. I'll be back.

Saturday, April 27, 2002

My medieval vocational personality
According to Kingdomality:

Your distinct personality, The Dreamer-Minstrel might be found in most of the thriving kingdoms of the time. You can always see the "Silver Lining" to every dark and dreary cloud. Look at the bright side is your motto and understanding why everything happens for the best is your goal. You are the positive optimist of the world who provides the hope for all humankind. There is nothing so terrible that you can not find some good within it. On the positive side, you are spontaneous, charismatic, idealistic and empathic. On the negative side, you may be a sentimental dreamer who is emotionally impractical. Interestingly, your preference is just as applicable in today's corporate kingdoms.

Friday, April 26, 2002

Champions
Just got home. We had the big epic ending for the campaign. Chango died. He got better. Gearhead wasn't so lucky. It ran way late, but this was the last chance one of the players had to play. He's moving to Philadelphia, so we had to wrap it up tonight.

Thursday, April 25, 2002


Wednesday, April 24, 2002

Wisdom
Learned by watching Batman Beyond: When trying to break up with your super-strong cyborg girlfriend do not use the words "We can still be friends."

Work
I was going to complain about work today, but luckily Jenn gave me something else to blog about--

Dark beer or light?
The less light I can see through it the better.

Whiskey or mixed drinks?
These days: neither.

Tea or coffee?
I used to be a tea drinker. These days I'd go for coffee.

Econobox, SUV or something inbetween?
Econobox--It's better on the environment and I don't feel that I need anything more.

White collar, Blue collar or something else entirely?
something else entirely.

Spring, summer, fall or winter?
Spring or Fall. I like them both.

Play sports, watch sports, or hate sports?
None of the above. I don't have strong feelings about sports either way.

Boots, shoes, sneakers or sandals?
Boots

PC or Mac?
Mac. PCs are dirty, filthy machines that are tainted by the Wyrm...err...Microsoft.

Dial up, broadband or cable?
Cable. Comcast sucks, but there isn't any other Cable internet provider for Macs around here. Damn the Wyrm!

Favorite color? To wear? On a vehicle? on somebody else?
Overall- Dark Green
To wear- Black
on a vehicle- The same color as the firebird I used to own. It was a shade of green.
on someone else- Depends on the person.

Pick your three favorite music catagories, name one or two artists in each.
It's hard to narrow it down, but here:
Gothic Punk- Sisters of Mercy
Swing- Big Bad Voodoo Daddies
Classic Rock- The Doors

Do you read? What kind of books?
Yes. I read comic books, science fiction, fantasy, mythology, religion, history and whatever has currently caught my attention. My favorite authors are Michael Moorcock and Jeff Noon.

Last Movie seen?
The Adventures of Prince Achmed- an animated film from 1927 that was restored and played at the DIA on Monday. Before that: Das Boot.

Last TV show watched? (or fav. tv show - or list of favs.)
Faithful readers would be able to guess what show I watched last night. There aren't many shows I make a point of watching. I watch Smallville on Tuesdays and X-Men: Evolution on Saturdays. My all-time favorite TV show: The Prisoner.

Favorite animal?
I like ravens, crows, dogs, rats, spiders, wolves, elephants, squirrels and rabbits. I could keep going, but those were the first that popped in my head.

Favorite animal as a pet?
dogs, followed by rats

Favorite food?
Let me get back to you on that.

Favorite 'not found in nature' flavor (ie: pistachio pudding, licorice jellybeans, anything made by mentos...)
Cherry Cola. I'm a pop addict. I admit it.

Favorite writing implement?
Bic mechanical pencils

Favorite form of expression?
Good question.

Smallville
I wasn't trying for it, but I'm not going to argue.

I'm Smallville!
What WB drama are you?

You're the person that almost everyone likes because you're just so darn charming and friendly. You're basically a well-rounded person, because you're smart, you've got a good sense of humor, and you love action. You're always on the scene when something's going down, and you always do all you can to help others out. You're practically the person people look up to, but they don't know that you've got secrets and another side to you. For example, some people might not know that you're sensitive and that you've got a soft spot, like the one that Clark has for Lana.

Tuesday, April 23, 2002

Changeling
We played Changeling Sunday. The story is wrapping up rather quickly, but I fear I'm pushing the story a little too quickly towards resolution. When you do that you lose what could be some cool roleplaying scenes, but at least there was a climactic feeling to the game. I guess it's a tradeoff.

Saturday, April 20, 2002

If I had 300 million dollars....
Why think small?
I would:


  • Give a ton to charity. It's more money than I would ever need. Carla and I would see an accountant and find out how much we can give away with out shooting ourselves in the foot.
  • Buy a house, car, computer, etc.
  • Give a two week notice at work and actually work it. That's just the kind of guy I am. I can't leave the team high and dry, even though I know they'd quit in a second if they won.
  • Help my friends and family.
  • Take a trip.

If I only won one million dollars, I would do the exact same things, but on a smaller scale.

Work
*sigh* I'm at work...on a Saturday. It sucks. 'Nuff said.

Thursday, April 18, 2002

Work
The building was like a giant oven at work today. The air conditioning wasn't working and it mad it miserable. To make it worse, we were moving our department today. We spent most of the day packing and un-packing our stuff. It is amazing how many paperclips can gather at the bottom of a desk drawer.

Carla
Carla hurt her knee today and it was hurting pretty bad tonight. I think she's asleep now, but it was causing her a lot of pain earlier. She promised to go to the doctor tomorrow if it still hurts as bad.

Wednesday, April 17, 2002

I'm Louis!



I just put in the answers that I though the person making the test would want for Louis. I know I'm in the minority, but I liked Louis the best. He was the only Anne Rice character I identified with. I did not see him as too whiny. That was how Lestat described him but when he spoke it wasn't "whiny" to me. Of course, most of the books were told from Lestat's POV and Lestat is a self-centered bastard.

Television
Watched a lot of TV tonight, at least for me. Carla and I watched the season two finale of Sopranos while eating dinner. Now we have to wait for season 3 to come out on DVD. Carla wants to buy season one and re-watch it, but I'm not as interested. I loved them the first time through and I will probably catch some stuff I missed the second time through, but the best of the part of the show is how suprising it can be. I just don't think it's a show that I would re-watch.

I caught the Justice League cartoon for the second time tonight. I'm pretty disappointed. The animation and voice-acting is nowhere near the quality of the Batman and Superman cartoons. It's only saving grace was having the same voice for Batman.

Smallville was OK tonight. It could have been better. There was a few good parts regarding Clark and Chloe and a couple of good scenes with Lex and Lionel Luthor.

Sunday, April 14, 2002

Who am I?

I'm Dream!
Which Member of the Endless Are You?

This would be the second time that I have turned out to be Morpheus.

I also found out today that if I were a sappy movie balad I would be the theme from City of Angels. I would post the picture but the stupid description gives away the ending of the movie.

Saturday
Went to comic shop. Cleaned back room some more. Watched X-Men. Watched part two of "The Celts." Did some writing and a little reading.

Saturday, April 13, 2002

I'm Armand!

Which Anne Rice Vampire are you?

by Tera

Friday, April 12, 2002





which children's storybook character are you?

this quiz was made by colleen

Thursday, April 11, 2002

Blogs
Caught up on my blog reading. Everyone's alive, I think. There's only a few blogs I check on a daily basis, but there are a lot of people I know blogging these days, so I try to read there blogs whenever possible. (Yes Kristen, I'm reading your blog. Don't you feel loved?)

Champions
Well. After a crappy day at work, there is something strangely therapeutic about playing a character who manages to destroy something every adventure. We are starting to use the new 5th edition rules tonight and while reading them I noticed that Chango can now do damage on a city-wide scale. What fun! Too bad the other PCs may be a little upset about that. Damn goody-two-shoes.

I left a quotation mark out of the HTML the first two times I tried to post that last post and for some reason the link made blogger go screwy. It won't let me go back in and edit those first two time, so please ignore my repetitive posting.

Wednesday
Work was OK. When I got home Carla was at the gym, so I watched The Maltese Falcon while making dinner. (Chicken Voila, nothing fancy) The Maltese Falcon is one of my favorite movies. Where else can you here a line like, "I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk." (Gutman says it when Sam Spade meets him.) After The Maltese Falcon, I did some writing and went to the store to pick up a few things (ice cream and cat food). I talked to Cody for a little bit on the phone after I got home. It sounds like things are going well for him.

Well, its getting way to late, so I'd best get going. Nothing extremely exciting happened the rest of the night, so there's nothing that I absolutely have to post about. To be honest, I guess there was nothing extremely exciting in what I've already written. I was just posting to let you know I'm here. Isn't that the point of a blog?

Good night.

Wednesday
Work was OK. When I got home Carla was at the gym, so I watched The Maltese Falcon while making dinner. (Chicken Voila, nothing fancy) The Maltese Falcon is one of my favorite movies. Where else can you here a line like, "I'm a man who likes to talk to a man who likes to talk." (Gutman says it when Sam Spade meets him.) After The Maltese Falcon, I did some writing and went to the store to pick up a few things (ice cream and cat food). I talked to posted by James @ 1:35 AM 0 Comments

Wednesday
Work was OK. When I got home Carla was at the gym, so I watched The Maltese Falcon while making dinner. (Chicken Voila, nothing fancy) The Maltese Falcon is one of my favorite movies. Where else can you here a line like, "I'm a man who likes to talk to a man who likes to talk." (Gutman says it when Sam Spade meets him.) After The Maltese Falcon, I did some writing and went to the store to pick up a few things (ice cream and cat food). I talked to posted by James @ 1:34 AM 0 Comments

Wednesday, April 10, 2002

Dreams
Dreamt last night that I was trying to get an unruly horse in to it's stable. The horse was spinning and kicking, but eventually it went in to the barn. I think the horse was supposed to represent my thoughts.

Tuesday, April 09, 2002

Chainmail
Season three started last night. This season I am playing the elves again, but most of my warband is made up of drakes. My stategy with this warband is to swarm my opponents with the little drakes and then move the few elves in the warband where they need to be. This worked especially well in one of the scenarios. My opponent was playing Dwarves, which move very slow. The objective was to move around the battlefield picking up these magic shards. My drakes were attacking the dwarves by the second turn and kept them pinned down. Meanwhile, my Elves ran around picking up the shards. By the fourth turn I had won.

Monday, April 08, 2002

Music and Roleplaying
During the Saturday Amber game MK was playing some CDs; a symphony based off of Lord of the Rings and the soundtrack to Fellowship. I used to play themed music during games I GM'ed. It adds a feeling of mood to a game. If MK was trying to do that, he went about it all wrong. The music he was playing had a variety of styles and most of the time it did not fit the mood the game was in and was distracting.

If you play music in a game it should fit the mood being seen at the time. When I played music, I kept the CD player handy and started the proper music at certain scenes. For example, the first time I used music in a roleplaying game was in a fantasy game. The heroes were going in to battle against a horde of foes. I put in Orff's Carmina Burana and played "Oh fortuna!" The epic feeling of the song combined with the fact that it has been used in multiple movies during climactic battles got the players even more hyped about the fight and we had a great time. The next time I used music was in Bloodshadows, a pulp noir setting. As the first game of this new campaign started , the players were hanging out in a speak-easy after solving a case. I put on a song (saying that it was the song coming from the radio) that you'd expect to hear coming from sexy film-noir singer as she leans over the piano with a flirtatious look. It immediately set the mood.

These days I have been thinking of using my laptop and MP3s to play music in games. I can store hundreds of songs and pull the right song up in an instant without interrupting game play by changing CDs. We'll see.

Sunday, April 07, 2002

It is a painful thing to look at your own trouble and know that you yourself and no one else made it.
-Sophocles

Saturday
Got up early enough to watch X-Men:Evolution at 8:00. Then I went on the net and tried to clean up the computer room. The computer room is now a little less chaotic. I watched X-Men again at 10:30. It was one I hadn't seen, the episode where they introduced "Angel." It was pretty good. I think this X-Men cartoon is a lot better than the show they had on Fox. We played in MK's "Methuselah's Children" during the afternoon. Suprisingly, not much happened with my character this game. Most of the focus was the fixing of the pattern which the other characters, for some reason, did not invite Alex to. I think the campaign is finally nearing its end. After that, we went to KG's birthday party. We had a good time and ended up staying a lot later than we had intended.

Library
I had to go to Murray's to pick up a replacement turn signal bulb for my car today and while I was out I stopped at local library and picked up a library card. I've been meaning to go since Carla and I moved from Fort Wayne. I walked out with 4 books, a Video, 3CDs (I'm listening to The Chieftans right now) and a book-on-tape. Thanks Ben Franklin!

Myths and the Oral Tradition.
I have been thinking a bit about how the myths and folklore used to be told in the oral tradition. (Get your mind out of the gutter, you perv!) In MK's "Mercy and Forgiveness" my character Anoki is a leader for a group a lot like our world's native americans. In the game my character has started travelling the world and MK asked me what outside ideas I would bring to my people. Would I bring back the idea of a written language? I thought about it and said yes. There are many good practical reasons to have a written language. However, I wanted them to be taught not to write down our stories, that stories should be told and memorized as was the tradition. It seemed important.

Last night I had a dream. All sorts of wierdness was involved (as my dreams usually are) and at one point I was attacked by Morgana le Fey. I was able to turn back her spiritual attack by walking in a circle counter-clockwise. (An old Celtic belief was walking "counter sun-wise" could be used as a defense from supernatural attacks.) When I woke up I started thinking about how Morganna appeared as a threat in my dream and got me thinking about how I see the Arthurian Myths. I started learning about Arthur Malory's Le Mort D'Arthur and books based off of his works. In these versions Morganna is protrayed as the evil temptress and architect of the fall. Meanwhile the other major female character Guinevere is a woman who gives in to her lusts and in doing so causes Lancelot to leave Camelot and hastens Camelot's fall. Neither female character is cast in a positive light. However, I am sure we would find the original myths to have been far kinder to the women and we find the more recent tellings to be more kind. However, my vision of Camelot will always be tempered by my original view of it and so Morgana will probably always be villian in my dreams because I read a book written during a time when men were taught to fear women. The myths of that time reflect that attitude.

So, I started thinking about the oral tradition. If a story is told from generation to generation without being written down it can change. This allows it to evolve with the ethics of the people telling the story. However, once its written down the myth becomes set in stone. When future versions try to update the story, they are not being true to the original source. Personally I like the fact that stories were writen down, but if the stories are to be used as religion they become a religion that has a hard time evolving. This is, in my opinion, what happened to the Christian Church. The bible was written in a time when it was OK to own slaves and treat women with property. As society evolved, the book hasn't. It's kind of hard to base a religion off of a book that is completely out of touch with modern society. With Anoki's people, they will be able to continue their oral tradition and as the world grows, perhaps its myths can as well.

Christian Mythology
A Christian friend of mine once became upset when I referred to the story of the temptation of Jesus as "Christian Mythology." He felt I was attacking the religion. I had to explain to him that I was not saying that it was not a valid religion. I was only saying that, like my religious beliefs, it has certain stories that are told to teach moral lessons. In Buddhism there are many tales of the Buddha that, while being told again and again, they probably did not happen exactly like that. I wouldn't get offended if somebody referred to the story of Prince Siddartha's temptations under the Boddhi tree as myth . The point of these stories are to teach spiritual lessons, not to be taken as fact. I have been careful since then around my christian friends not to use the term Christian Mythology. However, if I use it here and upset anyone, please understand. I am not saying that Christ did not exist or that the religion is wrong. I am just saying that some stories that can not be proven fact are not history but myth. As a Buddhist and a Pagan, my religions are filled with mythology. This does not lessen the religious significance of the story. No, I don't believe that a demon tried to entice Prince Siddartha away from his meditations with naked women or any other vices. Symbolically, however, he might as well have been visited by a demon. He had no instruction towards enlightenment and I am sure that he did have to conquer his own demons of lust and self doubt.

Friday, April 05, 2002

Everybody loves Mark Twain

When the Lord finished the world, he pronounced it good. That is what I said about my first work, too. But Time, I tell you, Time takes the confidence out of these incautious opinions. It is more than likely that he thinks about the world, now, pretty much as I think about the Innocents Abroad. The fact is, there is a trifle too much water in both.
-Mark Twain

Real Life
Work sucks. One of my co-workers has been out and another has been re-assigned to another department. That has left just me and one other person in the department and the other person isn't doing her share of the work. I have been so tired all week from dealing with the crap at work. I am so glad the weekend is here. I don't have any big plans, but it's nice knowing I don't have to go to work tomorrow.

Champions
We played Champions last night. Well, actually we spent most of the night joking around and chewing the fat. I think some of my favorite roleplaying game sessions have been the ones where we don't end up getting much roleplaying done.

In other Champions news, Hero System 5th edition is out. Neil, generous guy that he is, gave me a copy. They've made a few changes to the rules, but it doesn't look like any of the rule changes are going to affect my current characters.

I like the design for the new book. They have just included the rules in the basic rulebook, making it more of a generic RPG like GURPS. During the next couple of years, they are planning on coming out with genre books that add rules specific to certain genres and setting books that describe worlds to base your games in. Champions is one of the first genre books they plan to release. Personally, I love this approach because when I used to run Champions, I never used any of the setting information or characters that they included. Now people can just buy the rules if they want.

Yuoo ere-a zee Svedeesh Cheff!
Yuoo ere-a a guud cuuk, thuoogh yuoo cun't speek Ingleesh fery vell. Bork Bork Bork!



Now my whole life makes sense.

Wednesday, April 03, 2002

Too much time at the computer...
I had a long day at work staring at a computer. What do I do today when I get home? I spend a long night at the computer catching up on e-mails, reading people's blogs and surfing the net. It's time to walk away, James.

I know famous people.
I updated the links to the left. More people have joined our local blogger cult.

Tuesday, April 02, 2002

Celtic Myth
I was thinking about why I have been enjoying the Celtic Myths so much lately. I think I like them because I keep finding completely different versions of the myths. In some the Tuatha de Danaan were gods who came down from the sky, while in others they were invaders from Europe (or other islands) who later became gods. In one version of Nuada's tale I read today it says that Nuada took back the throne of the Tuatha de Danaan after he received the silver arm, while in most versions I've read he didn't take the throne back from Bress until after his hand was completely healed. I'm having fun reading all the different versions.

Monday
Skipped playing Chainmail to see Jin-Roh:The Wolf Brigade at the DIA. It was an interesting anime. It tried to be more than it was. It was a good anime that tried a little too hard to be "artsy." It was the story of spies and counterspies in an alternate-history Japan. It was suspenseful and dramatic, but nothing amazing. It was, in my opinion, worth the price of admission. Just don't expect a masterpiece. It's no Studio Ghibli.

I don't think I should reveal too much about the plot. It's one of those movies that I think you shouldn't talk much about or you'll ruin it for other people. Going in to see it without and knowledge of the plot made it much more enjoyable, from my experience.

Tuesday
I spent most of the evening writing. I also did some miniature painting and watched Smallville. Nothing too exciting here.

Well, this was just a post to let people know I'm still alive. I'm afraid I don't have any witty observations for you. Beh.

Smallville
Clark Kent: What would you do if you could see anything?
Martha Kent: Learn to shut my eyes

-from tonight's episode