It is the last few weeks of class.  This is why I have not posted in like, forever.  Spring break was in March, there was no good reason to have waited so long to write something and post it, so I'm going to go ahead and post something that almost no one cares about for the sake of posting something and not letting my poor journal to starve and die in the proverbial wasteland that is the end of the semester, wherein all of my creative energies are being usurped by greedy school, silenced by dense and unpleasent revelations from friends, and drunkenly making phone calls at poor times.

I hope this gets read and that someone has not abandoned the internet for all its liars, me included.  That I miss her and I hope she is not so miserable and I am genuinely upset that I am not nearly godlike enough to know at all times when my friends are suffering.  Yes, thats  completely an unrealistic expectation.  Yes, I believe I should be, anyway.

So on to the part no one cares about!  By calling on Krom once more, promising him greater glory through my accomplishments, I managed to get it together enough over the weekend to read and condense into a poster a 15 page study in neurolinguistics.  I had a funny revelation about myself during this.  I opened the pdf and just started reading, i didn't question for a second what it was that I was doing.  The part of my brain that even knows what Krom is and holds all that other useless knowledge of fantasy and horror suddenly turned on, saw what the fantastic space brain was doing and said "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?  THAT WORD HAD 27 SYLLABLES AND IT WAS NOT A PLACE THAT ONLY EXISTS IN DREAMS.  WE ARE GOING TO GET A REPUTATION IF YOU KEEP DOING THIS."  I had had an epiphany that all of my scientific knowledge is segregated from my offbeat nerd brain, and probably segregated again from this pithy and brilliant authorative part that I'm using now, and that possibly as little as 5 years ago the absolute density and level of specific technical and medical knowledge that I *needed* to be using to decode what this research article was trying to tell me was simply non existant.

The study, finally, I gave a presentation on and stood next to my poster and told anyone that walked by, including no less then 4 really cute grad students involved a breakdown of a situation that arose to show a double dissicotiation between two patients that showed a slightly specific neurological process that governs the mental lexicon by categorey and not as one very large lump.  Two patients, one havign suffered a stroke, the second having suffered a blunt force trauma in an accident at work, both had an almost identical set of laisions around the Wernicke's area, immediately above the motor cortex.  Both patients had fluent speech and had become completly self sufficient again at 7 months post trauma, including the ability to drive, but testing showed that both suffered a similar semantic deficit.  The damage in that area of the brain showed a semantic impairment resulting in the loss of command for specific words.  Now, the rub; The older patient, J.J the stroke victim, lost his command over almost all words barring the general categorey of animals.  P.S., the patient that got pegged in the skull, retained command over everything BUT animals (also, vegetables).  Semantic models orginally show the ability to decode semantic information as beign related to input.  Wenicke's aphasia, for example, is found to be more of a phonological deficit then a complete impairment of the ability to produce words, similar effects governing othological stimulus and actual image association had dominated our ability to decode semantic information.  These patients clearly showed that the nature of their impairment was completely unrelated to that model of recognition, as they were tested on all three inputs and results were clearly unaffected.

What we do see, though, is that the brain is obviously doing something else in the stage after recognition of a stimulus that is related more directly to the storage and recall of words, that they are being stored in sub blocks by categories, and that clearly the locations of these sub blocks are not uniform, as both patients had nigh on identical physical deformities.  Later testing showed J.J. recovered some command over the category of transportation.  This is interesting, for on the surface, J.J. had claimed to be a motorsport enthusiast, maybe linking familiarity with his ability to recall words, but P.S. had proclaimed a preference for watching animal documentaries, for hunting, and for visiting reserves and zoos, clearly showing that this familiarity was not immediatly the factor influencing the regeneration of a categorey.  This implies that there is a set of sub categories.  Semantically we are aware of them, we can describe things in this manner (Dog <+domestice, +animate, +furry, +omniverous,...>) so we can make the jump to the concept that J.J. must have retained certain overlapping categories between vehicles and animals (surprisingly similar, +mobile, +quadrupedal, +fast, etc.)

(OMG MATT YOU ARE SO SMART AND FASCINATING AND THOUGH EVERYONE HERE LOVES IT, GET A REAL JOB AND STOP SHARING. KTHXBAI - the internet)

So this is like an awful time to point this out with something so dense and largely inaccessible, but I really wish people would leave comments on my live journal! XD

Side note, I downloaded a post client, but guess what, I still can't use a god damned tab to put in a tab. Is that so much to ask?

I was given six themes, so lets get back to it, shall we? Lets talk about stars.

One of the pretty consistent things about living here in Kansas is that it is a very simple matter to escape all major light pollution in about 25 minutes traveling at non relativistic speeds through the inky dark. Staying in town is still a very pleasant view of the sky, living as I do in a crater on the top the hill in the woods. Its not hard also to get distracted by the constellation stretching out below my feet, the city below me quiet and mostly unassuming. The good/awful thing about Kansas skies is that they tend to cloud over when the sun goes down, except in the height of the unpleasant summers. Get to far away from the cities under the naked sky and it does not take long before you start to feel the sky reel above you, the whole of it ticking away, moving in its beautiful and terrifying clockwork majesty. There is a very magical feeling depending on the substances you have taken on while listening to a band in a barn and then lying down just out of the light of a bonfire because that moonshine you were given was probably more then 90 percent alcohol.
Times like this, flat out on your back under the naked sky, is to feel like the first men felt, think like the first men thought. The sky reels around on its axis, you hear the lapping of water, the warmth of fire, listen to it crackle and spit. You feel the old gods asleep in the ground beneath you, old and malevolent, but long silent. You want to make up stories and sing them to the dark to keep them asleep, keep their dreams good ones.
The depths of the sky can simply erase the time spent looking at it. The depths of that cluttered field are dangerous. "All we see of the stars are their old photographs," is not a bad description, but to me, I don't think it captures quite enough of the inherent fear that you feel, should feel, at any rate, with the weight of all the time between you and those points of light, images back filtering to us from the start of the universe, as impossible to fathom as the distance.
Ever since reading "The Color out of Space," I have always had minor reservations about being alone under a naked sky. In all that time there is simply to high a probability that there is something out there that defies all of our simple expectations and perceptions, some black, luminous, incongruent thing, eternal but youthful, living in the dark between the stars, brother and sister to whatever dark that sleeps below the earth, waiting for the stars to come right again.
But all of this is of course why they are beautiful and almost intoxicating, like about 80 to 90% of things that can kill us (plants, drugs, fire, water, girls, etc.). So much brilliant chaos on display operating under such perfect order. The starry machine ticking away, impassive, omniscient and forever silent, impossible to decode, so we just get to watch the fireworks.

Do not hunt for monsters, less you become a monster as well, do not stare into the void, for the void peers back at you.

Oh yeah, optimistic cause school is about to start up and I have some fun projects coming up, and well, some other things, they know who they are :)

     Lately Jen gave a post on five of her favorite themes and then passed out five to her loyal readers that asked for them.  They left me with the odd feeling that she may have had a very skewed insight into my person, considering that one of the themes straight up, knock down (or back, as the case may be) was just "Alcohol."  This made me laugh.  There is something, some manner of high brow mystique to my consumption of alcohol.  Everyone is always glad when I break out the sauce, my delusions and inflated sense of importance translates directly into top shelf liquor and artisan beers.  I can honestly say that I have never paid money in a liquor store for Keystone Light or its ilk.  When I was young and foolish, I was lead astray on occasion by bottles of Southern Comfort, syrupy plum whiskey a cheap and attractive sin against my formative sensibilities.  I have since graduated on to Knob Creek and Maker's Mark, bourbon worth pouring and sipping on its own, the taste and gravity of its age and... well, i would say beauty, but i think handsomeness is more appropriate, springing from the glass.  Jameson's for Irish, sweet and layered, blending into hot chocolates and coffees.  Stolichnaya lives in the freezer, cold Russian comfort on hot sticky nights, and a burst of vitamin C when it's time for screwdrivers (prevents scurvy), beers typically brewed by hippies living in mountains (Fat Tire, Avery) to chase pizza or whatever odd concoction I have whipped up that day (my chili goes well with Belgian Whites, my pineapple tereyaki with ales).  This eppicurian attitude tells me what?  Note, though, that I have not bought myself a Blackberry, so I'm at least a little grounded still. 
     It really is not much of a secret, my level of chemical dependence, and the most important thing to note is how little reason I have for it.  I'm gainfully employed (even when the state threatens not to pay me, I still have the job), possessing a labyrinthine, prototype space-brain that I share with Meg, any number of hobbies and clever, witty exercises and distractions, but still I will not hesitate in libations.  Drinking has never in any instance interfered with my professional and academic life.  I have never had an occasion in which I was to drunk to go to class or go to work (barring the day Garrett went back to Milwaukee last summer, in which we stopped taking shots as the sun was coming up and I still worked with heavy machinery), it has on occasion caused uh... complications in my social life.  My brief stint with Kathleen, now looking back, was doomed to failure, as I do not remember going out with her when she was not drunk and I was on my way.  The scar on my lips is evidence of a of poor decision based on previous instances of my "drunken mastery," only that first night only ended in a falling out with Jen, emotional disfigurement, instead of this new and exciting physical one.  Again, what does this say?
     It says I fear other people and the other things I cannot control.  I fear the status quo.  I fear chains.  It says I never settle, and the law of identity translates that to I am never happy.  Everything can be better, go big or go home, and that smooth taste of those bourbon barrels, the taste of frost on a summer night, the bitter reminder of the poisonous alcohol behind each luxurious sip, is killing the fear that your exacting attitude is spiraling you into a dark, lonely, and yet a very successful place.  Looking back now, I know, I would never have talked to Kathleen if I had been sober.  In about 30 seconds, I knew the girl was not by any stretch a clever and cunning adversary, a courageous and inventive partner, but more on par with a loyal pet.  I let the buzz silence the protests of that high end, burning hatred for the simple life, and simple things, the high pitched scream of an obsessive compulsive mind quieted and relaxed for once.   Outside of that?  I know there is nothing that I cannot learn to do, and likely master.  This angst translates into creative, generative energies, those that which make us closest to God, in all honesty.  Outside the drink I am upwardly mobile and confident, alone and free.  Is it a fair trade, to sometimes spiral down on myself, to prey on those insecurities when inebriated to propel myself farther faster?
     We'll find out, won't we?

     Less dark and angsty!  Let's talk about grass.  And not the smoke it in a pipe and eat Doritos kind.  I worked for two years on a crew for the Lawrence Parks and Recreation's Park Maintenance division.  I think I know why she choose this one, I know for a fact that the smell of it never washed off of me.  It was mindless and hard work on occasion, and the time spent driving the garbage truck does not rank as one of my favorite moments.  The frequency with which I actually worked was probably what found me off the turf and on waste management duty most, but they never could quite convince me to quit or keep me there.  I am an ace driver, subsequently also an ace hauler, so when they needed their ball fields done, they would need a temp that could go out, and get things done on his own.  Enter Matt.  I would spend about 2 hours each day hauling a 19 foot trailer behind a diesel flat bed with a zero turn mower, a three wheeled planer, and 100 pounds of chalk and a line painter, going from place to place around the south side of the city.  Those were actually amazing days.  I'd be out on the diamond at seven in the morning, Kansas sun setting the entire, humid sky on fire, burning bright white.  It can be as hot as eighty-five at the darkest hours here, as soon as the sun comes up so does the mercury.  Everything clings to you.
     By the time I hit the turf, I'd have been at work for a full hour, and I had the acrid, heady scent of diesel fuel in my clothes from fueling up in the morning.  Mosquitoes can't stand the stuff, and its unlikely that you will catch fire in principle, so having spilt some on your shirt is not a bad thing.  You have no idea how quickly you learn to love the scent after a few days working near the swamps south of town.  Turf has a special scent of its own; fresh, and vigorous.  It gets matted into your skin by sweat and sunscreen, you slowly toast in spite of your best efforts and puny sun blocks.  The sun bakes it in, with the smell of earth and fresh dust, blown by the wind.  Yes, I am aware of tacky allusion to that band that has the name of the state I live in, but damn it all if it is not the most accurate description of the feel and smell of the place out of doors.  There is a certain serenity to working on and near the land, even if you are manicuring it and not cultivating it.  I'm sure that's why Jen asked about it.  I would finish fairly early in the afternoon, they would let us go home between two and three, before it got mindlessly and dangerously hot, and even though I would shower and change, no amount of scrubbing can get rid of that earthy, living scent of cut grass and dust, so when I would pick her up from her job some evenings, I'm sure it was omni-present.  I will always think of the time spent reflecting, driving that mower and smelling of grass is me gaining wisdom, and that everyone will remember the same the scant time I spent with them those summers.
    
     Radiohead has been one of my favorite bands for a very long time.  I will continue to say so, even though I have not spent nearly any of my time listening to them in a long, long while.  I believe its because they taught me something whilst I was being young, angsty, and nerdy.  As far as their lyrics and poetry go, the big thing you take away from any given Radiohead album is a deep and profound sense of alienation.  You hear it, very very clearly in the early albums, screaming through the words and the vocals Thom Yorke presents.  You want to hug him and let him know its ok.  Track 3 off of their third album doesn't even bandy about the bush, the entirety of Subteranean Homesick Alien is about being abducted from Earth and leaving all these people he can't understand here to rot.  They grew up as I grew up.  Listening to The Bends back from 1993 it easy to here in the subject matter how things had been different.  Over medication, loneliness, falling into ruts, and breaking back out of them were the themes to write home about.  They were not afraid of experimenting, I remember Kid A coming out in 2000, the time when I got in to them in Junior High, and listening and loving the combination of electronics and traditional rock.  I went back and listened to OK Computer, absolutely infatuated with Karma Police, and remember thinking how much they changed from one album to the next.  I loved it.  Each and every outing, they have offered the same feeling of emptiness, and each album is built around deconstructing that feeling, and finding the hope inside all of us.  In Rainbows, their latest outing, felt incomplete.  Radiohead-as-instigators-of-social-change released at a user set cost (including free) based on what they felt was fair over the internet, to prove that artists didn't need big companies to distribute their art.  They are older, and definately more wizened, and the tapestry pretty clearly shows now what happens when you come to terms with being alone, and the strength that comes along with it.  It's stunning, but not as well crafted as far as their other albums are concerned.
     What they taught me musically was that technical mastery and difficulty are only part of the battle.  No member of the band is classically trained in anything, had never been a pro musician before getting together in Oxford bars.  Now, Johnny Greenwood is writing symphonies, and the sound track to There Will be Blood.  The amazing, difficult part of Radioheads expertise is always been texture, and it's the thing I wanted most to carry away when I write music.(for those unawares, I started school not as a linguist, but as a composer and performer).  Each of the band members exists in their own sphere, that you can see if you watch videos of them live, and they all eventually blend together in spite of clearly doing what each believes is best.  It just gets layered on top of each other into you get brilliance, since each has a very polished, distinct mission at the start of each song.

Thats half, I'll work on the other half soon.

     Tuesday seems to be journal day.  Ah damn, I am sitting here at work and I had some sort of opinion but I've lost it.  We are entering dangerous territory now, as I am going to start ranting.

     Great stuff about dreaming.  I had apparently fallen asleep on both of my arms.  This translated immediately during REM sleep as I was in a creepy ass house (with a strange number of stairs, bathrooms, and kitchens) and I entered the kitchen and attempted to turn on the lights.  The switch promptly shocked me.  This was kind of cool, as I was suddenly aware that my arms were hurt or otherwise numb without waking up.  Didn't fix the problem, but I knew about it!  The microwave suddenly turning on and giving me and Riply (I don't know, she was just there all the sudden) orders from space.  I woke up and flailed because me arms were asleep.  I still don't trust my microwave.  It might be in league with the toaster, who is already proven itself maligned against me.

     It's probably a Cylon.

     Dreaming odd things seems to be catchy!  I suppose at the same time, Meg was dreaming I came through a strange and emotionally scarring tiny door in a bathroom so that I might cook delicious foods in a non kitchen!  I'm still trying to unpack that reality.  I latched on to the frightening door; it represents that I am traveling in unknown space at all given times.  It may have also just been a strange, tiny door in a bathroom.  Sometimes in dreams (and art) a tower is just a tower.  Not a penis.
     My Warhammer Fantasy Battles army is only a day or two from having its full range of models.  I'm waiting on a single box to come into the shop this week, containing the last 5 elves to complete my Glimmering Elven Host.  The David Bowie on Dragon project is on hold indefinitely.  I am going to have to take time out of my busy schedule to practice sculpting.  I need some clay and some actual creativity, both of which may actually fit in my apartment (as compared to my painting stuff).  Collection finished means its time to abandon it while incomplete and start working on a new collection!  Thinking about CHAOS, so I have an excuse to work in purple.  Shame Slaanesh armies suck.  I might have yet another green army on my hands as I think Nurgle is, for all intents and purposes, redonkulous, as the kids say nowadays, and will try something kind of non traditional in that.  Maybe do them in rust instead of green.  Someday, I might post pictures, but then again, no one reads this journal, so it would be purely mastubatory for my ego to say "hey, interenet, I paint little mans."
     Something more coherent later.

I think I got the story hook from somewhere else, but I cannot for the life of me remember where it is.  Tell me if you know what the idea was from, otherwise I have something new!

( And now, The Beach House. )

Topeka Cap. Journal and the Lawrence Journal World.

I hate both periodicals equally, and I'm to lazy to link to the Star.
Guess who works for the state at the university, and is posting from work.
*Mr. Squeamos waves*
Guess who's entire family works for the government.
*Mr. Squeamos waves*
Well, except my sister, she doesn't do much of anything except row.
This, uh, this is not good. I'll have to formulate a better opinion on this throughout the day.  I'm glad this is happening mid-month, so at least I will have internet for a while.

Hot damn, Rantza and Megwings are lucky, they get two posts in one day!  Ahem.

Its raining.  More appropriately, it's storming.  Here in starts another wondrous and tumultuous Spring in Kansas.  I've not seen an Ice-nado (what I imagine a tornado full of ice and snow would be called, other then 'you are royally boned.') and imagine that that's on the menu for this weekend.  Stormy weather, though, as long as it keeps its mits to itself, are actually really pleasant.  I miss rain, though I would not exchange snow for it, and its building up to be another rainy Spring.  Global warming for sure has changed the local weather patterns, even the short time I remember.  We have gone to having six week rainy seasons during the transition into and out of dry winters.  Totally logical explanation.

Let's talk about Left 4 Dead.

This is the best thing I have spent money on, year to date.  Its even beating out things I did not spend money on (though I guess technically I had that since November, but they moved all the buttons and its hard to use wawawawa, I know, I didn't even pay for it).  It is roughly everything that I really love in board and computer games.  I like cooperative games.  Arkham Horror is the trashiest, Amero game ever created and I love it.  Games like Agricola and their limited actions and competition to build the greatest farm that is about to get plowed under by a Renaissance German army can suck an egg.  I mean really.  You are deducting points for having not taken actions to get my bone on so that I can have more actions.  It needs to go another turn so that the Prussians raise your dumb little farm to the ground.  Arkham, however, gets everyone to work together, you and yours get a sense of accomplishment like no other when you work together and pull off a sweet last minute victory against some elder thing that defies reason and explanation.  Even when you get your ass handed to you, it asks you to smile, and oddly enough, you want to, because it was no one's fault, it still was a satisfying length of game, and it totally fits the theme.  By rights, you should not ever win that game.  That's the point of Cthulhu.  It's degrees of how badly off you are when you walk away.  But back to the point.

Left 4 Dead is a lot like that feeling.

On futuristic space cocaine.

With Christmas Lights.

...That cause orgasm.

Ok, so maybe its not that sweet, but its definately got the formula very close to making the perfect cooperative game.  You can get four friends (preferably ones that will get into it, turn out the lights in their apartment, etc.) and you start off locked up on a rooftop, praying that the zombies don't learn to pile up on top of eachother to reach up higher then 6 - to - 8 feet, depending.  While this would be amusing to watch the zombies puzzle out complex spacial stacking problems, their end goal is to beat the crap out of you, possibly gnaw you to death, and run off with your bits like happy dogs with trophies (not restricted to that order) so you'd rather them not.  The AI Director mechanic is wonderful.  If you are doing well, the computer will attempt to foil you by alerting a horde to your location or spawning some more special type zombies.  Possibly toss in a juggernaught of a Tank or that whiney Witch thing.  If you are operating with a handicap (like a gung-ho player thats not for creeping about) the Director will cut a break or two, offering up better equipment or health.  It's never stingy, even on harder difficulties, if you manage to keep your survivor party limping along long enough, the director will insure that you get the health pack you need or the bullets you wish you had gone back for, but never fast enough that you don't get worried inbetween.  It's very good at stringing out dramatic tension, and this Director method makes sure that even though you are playing the same four maps over and over, every go around will be a little different.  Me and the G-man played through the same leg of a trip almost 4 times, and each time we were given a different puzzle and set of circumstances to overcome.

It's not without flaws.  Limiting player choice to 4 set characters hurts it.  I would have liked to see some more models, so that your survivor group is not so cookie cutter (the campy movie theme is cute, but it illustrates the point.  It's the four same characters starring in four different movies, none of which are related to eachother).  I think even with 8 player character looks and personalities would have made the feel superb.  This was probably a consideration, however, to go with the scripting.  I have not played a game yet that had this immersive of an audible event script.  Programming for more characters to activate similar lines in game would probably be rediculous, as you would go from having one script to 1680 scripts in about the time it took me to punch the math into the calculator, so this operation is forgiveable.  Also, Louis and Francis make it forgiveable.  (Francis sounds almost exactly like I would during the zombie-pocalypse, but I would probably panic like Louis panics. "I hate stairs.")  The other thing is that their are only 4 events.  Each event only takes about an hour.  So you have roughly seen all that the game has to offer as far as different content in about 4 hours.  Thats really kind of disapointing for a full priced game.  Those were a very fun packed four hours, but I miss the era when you shelled out your 50 bucks and got 70+ hours of gameplay, back on N64 and PC.  Fallout 3, which didn't really recieve any competition until I convince the boys to pick up Left 4 Dead, is getting up on that point of in game time, but most of it was walking around, so I am not sure if I will count it.  I hear that there is already an expansion pack in the pipe for Left 4 Dead that adds a game mode and two new  stories coming in the next month, along with the SDK, so hopefully with this first company content pack will come a host of new user created content, something that I am always behind (and thankfully, so is Valve).  This may actually be the first real micro-content release system on Valve (*cough*episodic content for HL2?*cough*) that will actually be micro-content releases.  I'd like to see if it works out, even it will end up costing me money.  If they continue to pump out about 4 hours of new content every quarter for 10 - 15 bucks, I can get behind that, since I know that it will always be better polished and much better scripted then almost any user created content.  We shall see though.

Later: Serial Killers, WoD, Fallout 3, Writing blurbs.

Lets talk about games.

It is quarter after seven, ante meridian, and my space brain has already decided to leave my body behind and go somewhere more interesting.  I'm going to talk about 4th edition.  All two people that may actually read this, stick with it, I will post something of greater content later, but the creative juices are long since dried up in the desolate grey wasteland that is morning.

Just recently, the Monday Night Hate Crimes Unit has expanded, taken-over, and asked the government nicely to subsidize Sunday mornings at around 9 for a weekly game of Dungeons and Dragons(a noticeable downturn in hate crimes in the wee hours before church)(Sub-note for new readers - Yes, I play DnD.  Wanna fight about it?).  I have not seen that side of noon on Sunday for over 4 years.  Knob Creek made a good argument reminding me why precisely I had not seen that side of noon for over 4 years.  I had made my character well in advance and me and Dredd Eckhart sat around trying to get my eyes to focus after playing the Left 4 Dead Drinking Game (Take a shot everytime Josh's roomate causes us to get devoured by a mob of zombies).  This gave me time to reflect on the task at hand.

4th edition annoys me.  There are certain aspects to it that just seem... out of place in a pen and paper role-playing game.  To many elements of the powers and abilities as written in 4th edition force the feel of the game to be much more of a tactical exercise instead of a role playing activity.  I have, in Dredd, what equates to a tank.  Tank is most decidedly a term coined from online role playing.  I remember when we were acne ridden junior high-schoolers with to much time on our hands and decidedly to good in school to be well liked describing one of our characters as "like a tank," but always in reference to the fact that he was about to lay down fire like sort of Tiger I in Poland.  He was the pinnacle of bad-ass-itude, no one would stand up to his furious onslaught of blows, a true engine of destruction.  Not so anymore.  Now, this reference takes on the sense in that you are a holding tank.  A vessel for containing beatings.  The purpose of a fighter now is no longer to dole out pain at a rate that is at least thrice what he absorbs, but to take the brunt of damage off of the rest of the party.  I have never really ever seen this phenomenon in pen and pencil games, this idea of diverting damage onto one target in my experience has only ever been while playing World of Warcraft.

Now with a series of taunts and abilities to shunt damage, DnD plays a little closer to a video game.  With a host of abilities that allow for tactical advantages without any real world justification (when I hit that guy, I can teleport three spaces. Why?) it plays like a miniatures game. The powers are all pretty set from class to class, and truthfully you only take one path up the class and to continue the wow analogy you can pick a spec for tanking or for DPS.  Its hard to do both (well), and even the dps choice makes use of the taunts and splashing damage meaning you are still fulfilling your party roll while trying to pick up slack for a missing one, and thus end up being punished because you suck at both.

I don't think this is necessarily bad.  Its just not the DnD I remember.  They are catering to the young, ADD kids that don't know anything different from automated sytems from WoW or Morrowind, games where the mathematics and dramatic systems are discreet and their class defines their roll in the world society.  There is no multiclassing or customization through feats.  Theoretically, I guess it should not impact role playing, Dredd is still the optimistic nihilist road warden who doesn't much care for books that he always will be and has been, but the mood is different, the world not as dire when you can use an At-Will power to crush a kobold with your shield, but only if it doesn't shift away before you get "combat advantage" (which is not flanking, though flanking will grant "combat advantage.")  I do not know.  I don't have any real doubts that it will at some point stop being fun, I am just not sure yet if its what I'm looking for anymore.

I don't miss Vampire.  V:tM is clunky and the stereotype and subsequent stigma that is attached to it, normally, completely legitimate, but I miss Strasbourg.  Playing electronically I found I preferred as it gave me a few seconds to formulate better constructed character reactions then I typically can in person.  Party type games make that hard, especially with the players I have around me.

Other news, Slasher: The Slashening just came out!  Shame now that the serial-murder-mystery-call-of-cthulhu-silent-hill game is rather dead, or I would have taken great pleasure in having a source book to take some of the guess work out of running a serial killer.  Living in that persons head less is always a good thing.

Posts coming soon: Left 4 Dead/Eternal Silence, writing a serial killer, sample blurbs.

Now back to dealing with people asking me for things that I don't have to give them.  Edit later for being poorly written. (Oh wait...)

So I have had this dumb thing for almost 18 months and it contained a single shitty post that I have since deleted. So I'm going to go ahead and try again. I'm going to start blogging. I know, the like, two people that read this right now know that previously my stance on blogging is that its dumb. You are in no way important because you have a venue for your opinions. You are not a unique and beautiful internet snowflake. You are a hack with an opinion and relative anonymity to shield you from back lash.

To be contrary, unfortunately, is part of my nature.

I guess the eventuality is that keeping your thoughts and opinions to yourself is approximately as bad as acting like your contribution to the blogosphere or journal community is earth-shattering.  At least if you approach it like I promise I'm going to, just as a place for other people to read and agree with you or slap you around for a bit for being a opinionated tool-box, then I think it might be a good thing.  So here's the word:  I'm going to post more.  All two people that read this will see me reply more.  Maybe, if I actually say something interesting (and about half of what I say is interesting to at least someone) then encourage it and there will be more.  This will also likely be an outlet for some artwork and the writing projects I so foolishly have undertaken for review.

It's finals week at the University of Kansas.  It is also the first week of the Snowpocalypse.  We will see how that goes.