Dreaming In R'lyeh

1:41AM - Merry Christmas to everyone that I know!!!!

I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.

1:43AM

I, also, found this in melintur's LJ...

Rank the following bands in order, from COULDN'T LIVE WITHOUT to COULDN'T CARE LESS. To add value to this process, you must also add one band to the list, and remove one band from the list, before passing the meme on (including these instructions).

From the good to the bad:

White Zombie
The Beatles
Queens of the Stone Age
Peter Gabriel
David Bowie
The Clash
Eric Clapton
Portishead


I expunged The Cure, and added White Zombie.
I was gonna add a band that I really like, such as Burzum or Bolt Thrower, but I thought it would be more fun if my addition to the meme wasn't automatically the one that was dropped... :)

8:41AM - Damn... I can't even call this a monthly update...

It's been over a month since I posted last, typical of my slothful ways.

My aunt died last night, and I am strangely ambivalent about it... I was never close to any of my extended family (cousins, aunts & uncles, grandparents, etc), but I feel like I should be feeling something stronger than sympathy for my mom. My mom and I rented a car and drove down to San Diego yesterday to make a last visit (my aunt had a stroke in July, and she never really recuperated, and her kidneys shut down on Monday), and I saw my bevy of cousins for the first time in 30 years. It was very strange seeing people I last saw as teenagers with grey hair and expecting grandkids...

hmmm... I don't really have anything further to add to that.
Except that I am not looking forward to the funeral, I have to rent another car and drive to San Diego, and I suppose I will have to buy a suit of some sort for the services...
See what I mean? These don't seem like the thoughts you're supposed to have when someone dies.
I'm sure my aunt would love to be having to rent a car right now, and all I can do is gripe...{sigh}

1:55AM - This is fun!!!

I like this result better than that stupid mood ring thing.

What Is Your Battle Cry?

Who is that, rampaging out of the steppes! It is Richard_gazley, hands clutching a sharpened screwdriver! He roars gutterally: "I'm going to make tacos with your corpse!!"

Find out! Enter username: Are you a girl, or a guy ?

created by beatings : powered by monkeys

Tonight's gaming was a blast, qforlong ran his fantasy game (which is being resurrected after a 6 year hiatus) for me, tyma and Bat-Fat-Pat (BFP for short), and a good time was had by all. All of us managed to stay in character for most of the evening, which was a refreshing change from the goofing around of late. The best part of the game is the interaction between tyma's fire mage Penhaligan (I bet I misspelled that) who is necrophobic, and my necromancer, Hecate, who is afraid of fire... wackiness ensues!!!!

6:21AM - Well...

I'm not so sure this is me... though I guess you guys will have to chime in on whether it is accurate or not.

Livejournal Mood Ring

richard_gazley is emotionally distant.

I bet no one's surprised that you never post your current mood. In fact, I bet most of your friends are so sick of you locking them out of your life that they hate you behind your back. Shame.

brought to you by interim32. wanna know your livejournal's mood ring color? enter your username and hit the button.

1:25AM - Another post!!!

Yay... two posts in as many days!!

Not a whole hell of a lot that is new.

Hey tikimama, I asked my counselor about your comment that I hide behind humor, and she said that no, I am just a very smart and witty guy who has a way of making very insightful observations in an amusing way... so there! She also felt that you could make up for doubting me with... uh... therapeutic fellatio... yeah, that was it... [assumes hopeful look]

Went over to tyma's this evening to work on [Our Top Secret Game] and we got a fair amount done (we try and do at least one evenings worth of work together per week, so we are on the same page conceptually). Anyways, his significant other, (who we will call "M", though her real name is Satan), suggested that after we worked on our game that we whip out their Ouija board and give it a try. tyma wasn't too keen on the idea, but M and I pushed, so we gave it a whirl. The results were a combination of disconcerting and disappointing. Disconcerting because it felt as if the planchette was actually moving on it's own, and disappointing because we weren't getting any real answers... when asked what its name was it kept going to the name William in the trademark info at the top of the board... but that was all it could do except go to the number 6... so we posited that it was a six year old named William, who evidently didn't learn how to spell. Quite the bummer.

Had an argument with M over the correct pronunciation of the word "flaccid"... she claimed that it was pronounced "flak-sid", I was standing firm for "flassid"... her old looking dictionary corroborated her foolishness, much to my chagrin. I see now that the MW dictionary that I have on my PC lists *both* versions, with "flassid" being the first one listed... I reign supreme!!!!

You'll have to ask tyma why the discussion of flaccidity came up in the first place...

2:29AM - Damn... no posts in over two months...

Wow, you're thinking that nobody could have so little happening in their life and mind that they wouldn't post in over two months. Well, you're right. I've had stuff going on... I just suck at keeping a journal up to date.

I think that when last you all heard from me my mom was still kinda sick (recovering from a mild stroke in March), well, I am pleased to say that she is doing really well now and is practically back to normal (she doesn't even bother with her cane anymore). My father still continues to chip slowly away at my sanity... which is a story for another time.

About 5 weeks ago I started going to Overeaters Anonymous in an effort to find a way to get myself into a place where I'm not eating to make myself feel better. So far it is keeping me from eating a lot on the days I go to the meetings, but still bad on other days... so I am trying to get to more meetings. Wish me luck!

I started going to OA at the suggestion of my counselor, who I started seeing a few months ago. I'm seeing her because I have been really depressed for the last year and it's causing me to withdraw from life, so I'm trying to get back to normal with some counseling. So far it is doing me some good, she is helping me to see new ways to look at myself and my life that are very useful. (Even though she spends a lot of time cracking up at the amusing, self-deprecating way I describe my life and my problems). Once again, wish me luck.

Things are moving along nicely towards my and tyma's purchase of the intellectual property rights to an existing roleplaying game book and setting called [edited out, since we aren't supposed to say until we actually make the purchase...shhhh] (it's a fantasy and sci-fi mix that looks like with the right marketing and game system will sell well). This should be a lot of fun to try and rewrite and "fix-up" for a wider audience... and we will be real life game publishers!

I get to have Mongolian BBQ with reviresco tomorrow!!! Yay!!!! BBQ'd mongoloids is tasty....

I'll try and write more later... slumber beckons me... I must not shun its entreaties...

6:26AM - Just a quickie...

I just wanted to let everyone know that I was back from up Petaluma way. I left at 10:30 pm on Sunday and got back at 5:30 am Monday morning.

Thank you Craig & Heather for putting me up and being such fun hosts!!!

I will post more when I am fully awake, ther was much hilarity over the weekend, including making poor Craig suck down half a cup of hot coffee into his lungs when I mimed rimming a dog while we were at IHOP. That and other wacky hijinx will have to wait for a fully rested Richard, and Heather needs to post all the pics she took all weekend...

Later, all...zzzzzZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZ

11:13PM

Not too much going on today, however I feel better than I did yesterday. Thanks to everyone who replied to my last post, I appreciate it.

Had a pretty laid back day. Did a lot of reading and I'm gonna do some writing after I get offline.

Hmmm... I'm beginning to see why I don't post very often...

Oh wait...
I saw Bruce Almighty last night... it was actually pretty funny in parts, but the whole was kinda disappointing (sorry, harmnone).
Carrey's physical comedy is, as usual, very entertaining, but it couldn't carry the whole film unfortunately. The theology is purely of the daytime TV variety.
There was an extended trailer for the Hulk which looks really fun... he looks digital and stuff (no duh) but he is pretty well done and it looks like it will be a blast... I love watching him jump for miles at a time...

So there, I thought of something interesting to say...

11:11PM - Ok, I'll be assimilated, but where is 7of 9?

LJ Barcode LJ username:

12:21AM - Finally...

It's odd, you would think that with a lot going on in your life that you'd want to write about it, however, that has not been the case. For the past few weeks I just have not felt like updating my LJ.
My main concern up until last week was dealing with my mom and her constantly getting discharged from the hospital and then having to take her back to the ER the following day as all her symptoms returned, or she was too weak to have been sent home in the first place. Right now she is in a convalescent hospital nearby and is expected to be there for at least 3 more weeks, but she is getting a lot stronger and seems to be in good spirits.
Several weeks ago I started going to see a counselor so I could get a handle on why I never accomplish what I want to accomplish. I have noticed that this unfortunate trait has been really much worse during this period where I have so much free time. She seems to be helping a bit, at least she offers suggestions that make me mull things over and look at my life from a different angle. We'll see if anything good comes of this.

*Rant mode on*

The problem is my father... I don't feel right kicking him out and, to be honest, I need what he gives me to pay the mortgage each month. But he has driven me insane... note that I said "has", not "is"... I am massively depressed and everywhere I look is a big fucking mess staring me in the face... I paid a shitload of money a few months ago to have the backyard cleaned up and today I went back there and there are these strange baroque shelves made from scrap wood and nailed to the fucking garage and stacked with bags of softballs and empty coffee containers. Things piled on things and then covered by things to keep the elements away and then re-covered by yet other things to protect those first covering things... do other people have book shelves in the back yard? I mean, it is California, but it still fucking rains! My house is a sty... I studied the living room this afternoon and there are NO flat surfaces in sight...anywhere! I bet none of you knew that books make just dandy bookshelves! Every surface has something stacked on it, and those things, in turn, have things stacked upon them, forever and ever, life everlasting, Amen...

*Rant mode off*

In more happy news, tyma and I are going to purchase the intellectual property rights to an already printed RPG supplement called Gatecrasher. We intend to write up a conversion book to make it compatible with the d20 rules which are currently the source of most rpg sales.
My Sat'dee Night Gaming Group is going along well (except for a slight hiccup last time we played), we have decided to redo the characters with less points, so that they are not quite so over-the-top bloated. I think this will make for a more entertaining campaign.


When I snap my fingers you will all awake and assume you read something interesting and witty, you will also not remember where I put my hands...

SNAP!!!!

2:56AM - Another fun test I can substitute for a real LJ entry

Your Ultimate Purity Score Is...
Category	Your Score	Average
Self-Lovin'	46.7% When I think about you - or anyone - I touch myself	62.4%
Shamelessness	92.9% Has yet to see self in mirror	77.6%
Sex Drive	71.1% A fool for love, but not always	75.8%
Straightness	8.9% Knows the other body type like a map	41.6%
Gayness	89.3% Repressed, are we?	80.4%
Fucking Sick	91.2% Refreshingly normal	88.5%
You are 67.26% pure Average Score: 70.4%
Take The Ultimate Purity Test and see how you match up!

1:45AM - wheee... another quiz!!!!

I really should update my LJ more often than I do.

*sigh*

Here's my Dante's Inferno Quiz result... no big surprises

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Third Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Very High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Moderate
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

1:40PM - April's blatherings...

It's been almost a month since I posted anything here, not that life has been uneventful, eau contrair.

Late last month my mother had a small stroke which she seems to have recovered completely from, but the intervening month has been tough. She's been very depressed, feeling that she is useless and a burden and that sort of thing and I am the only person that she has to talk to or help her out with doing her shopping and getting books from the library. I don't really mind doing all this stuff, I mean, she's my mom... and living next door to her makes it a daily situation, so there is no "out of sight, out of mind". **I got off track there** Anyways, she has been sick a few times from what turned out to be a bladder infection and a reaction to one of the various drugs she's on and had to go back to the hospital a few times, which is really demoralizing. I start to feel that things are back to normal and then she's back in the hospital for a few days.
"But what about you're dad, Rich... he must help, right?" you are asking. Well, to be fair, I learned that he is capable of A) assisting mom into the car when I back it up to her back door, and B) feeding her cats for her. That is the extent of his capabilities.

On top of all that I feel bored, listless, devoid of energy and depressed.

Blah!

More later... joemorf wants to go grab Thai food for lunch and that sounds good to me...

11:17PM - Uh... OK I guess....

. You talk fast, you think fast, you act fast. Stop. Calm Down. Drink some decaf and go back to hitting up liquor stores. Take the What Pulp Fiction Character Are You? quiz.

2:17AM

Hung out up at tyma's place this evening and played our usual 4 player game of Dragon Dice. It was pretty fun, and for the life of me I can't remember who won... I'm obviously becoming senile... <sigh>

I get to go get my taxes done tomorrow, I should get everything back (for the 5 months that I worked last year) since I am now a home owner and get a tax break... that should help offset the ass-raping I suffered at the hands of my plumber last week...

For some freakish reason I am feeling the siren's call of FUDGE (Freeform Universal Do-it-yourself Game Engine) to use for Domibia... I like d20 but I'm starting to think that FUDGE might be easier to design the different magic systems for... why am I so fucking fickle??????

Saw "Tears of the Sun" again today with BFP (Bat Fat Pat, for those out of the loop), and kinda liked it better the second time around. I still think that the Hollywood-y ending wasn't neccessary, but hey, I'm not a movie producer, so what the fuck do I know?

Oddly, my recent skimming of harmnone's LJ reminded me that I really like old Iron Maiden, so I just ordered Number of the Beast and Piece of Mind from Amazon with my birthday gift certificates (I haven't decided what else to buy with the remaining credit).
I remember that "Number of the Beast" and "Run to the Hills" were really great driving songs... alas my current car doesn't play CD's and has had its wimpy speakers blown by my overly loud music... On a humorous note (at least for those that know my current musical tastes) when I first heard Iron Maiden I thought they were too hard. I was a big AC\DC fan and I thought that Maiden was just "noise", I felt the same way about Judas Priest. Kinda strange since these days I think of that stuff as "easy listening".

I think my downfall began when I first heard Apocalyptic Raids by Hellhammer... the heaviest album ever put on vinyl, I practically wore it out... after that came Venom and then all the other grunting Satanist bands from the mid to late 80's.

More, as events warrant

12:27AM

Well, since I've posted an entry on each of the past few days, I thought I'd try to continue.
I spent the evening over at Pat & Sara's place, mainly just loafing... we were gonna work on rule writing but I got caught up in playing "Firearms" on their computer until it was too late to get into game stuff.
Then we watched South Park. It was the episode where Cartman discovers that you can cram food up your ass and shit out your mouth... my favorite scene has to be that of Martha Stewart squatting over a cooked turkey and stuffing it up her ass while she grunts and snarls "Get up in there"...
PuppiesFlowersCloudsRainbowsTreesOceanStars la la la la la...

Poetry Time!!!!

I walked into the sea tonight
I don't know why
It just felt right
I filled up my pockets
With stones from the beach
And I started out wading
To escape the shore's reach
Soon it was me
And the sea and the air
In our sad communion
That no other could share
I looked back at the land
With its twinkling lights
And I pondered my life
Endless days, endless nights
Where nothing seemed worth it
Nothing seemed clear
But in the primal seas foam
I was cleansed of my fear
I turned to the land with purpose anew
And fought with the surf
My whole life to redo
But my body felt sluggish
The sea tugged at my clothes
And 'neath the star's silent gaze
I was, no more...



So, anyways, Pat and I are supposed to go catch "Tears of the Sun" tomorrow... I told him I'd see it again with him cuz he really wants to go and it would be mean to make him go alone.

Has anyone else noticed that Funyuns rip up the roof of your mouth the same way that Cap'n Crunch does?

That's all for now...

3:08AM - Crap...

I am a Light Cycle. I drive fast, I turn fast, I do everything fast. I even breakfast. I tend to confuse people with my sudden changes of heart. Sometimes I even confuse myself, which tends to cause problems. What Video Game Character Are You?

And I friggin hate Tron...*blech*

I was hoping I'd be Dig-Dug...

2:28AM - Started my new game tonight...

Well, I started my new game tonight and it went pretty well. I didn't have that post-first game let-down that sometimes rears its ugly head. This game seemed to gel fairly well and I think that all the players like their characters and they seem interested in what is going on.

All they know is that they all woke up on what they've been told is a space station in the asteroid belt, it is the year 2100 and that they died about a century ago. They've been told that they are now inhabiting their clones that their brains were transfered into the new bodies from cryogenic facilities that they were frozen in after dying all those years ago. They have been told that they are basically the property of the very wealthy guy that has had them cloned and that he has finally perfected time travel via quantum mechanics. They get to be sent through the time machines into the past to rescue art works that would otherwise be destroyed by either war or natural disasters.

They haven't been told just where they are to be sent first, and they are all confused and pissed off. Hee hee

More details as events warrant.

On a completely unrelated topic, I picked up a CD called "Visions, a tribute to Burzum", and fuck if I wouldn't be wearing this thing out if it were an old vinyl LP. I can't believe the amount of talent that church-burning murderer has... I'm really seeing the breadth of his abilities because the tribute album covers stuff from all the different facets of his career, from the early screaming black metal stuff to his later Norse folk music done with just a synth in his cell. The bands doing all the covers seem to be big fans and they do justice to his stuff. I don't think I've enjoyed a CD this much in quite a while.

2:50PM - An effort to actually post something

reviresco and I took our friend Cat out for her 25th birthday last night and had a very nice time. We ate at Chili's (since it is in the same parking lot as the theater we always go to) and then we saw "Tears of the Sun". I liked the first 75% of the film but the last half hour or so spiralled into a standard shoot-em-up. I know I am paraphrasing the Flick Filosopher (http://www.flickfilosopher.com/) when I say that the film seem a cut above the standard for this genre, but chickened out at the last minute and tacked a crappy Hollywood Happy Ending (tm). I still liked it, but the ending was too pat and formulaic for my refined sensibilities... :)

Cat and I saw "Dark Blue" last Friday. That was very good, Kurt Russell should get some sort of award for his role. It also reminded me of how scary the LA riots were (since they figure in the story)... I remember watching them on TV and wondering if they were going to drift south to where I live.

I discovered a gas leak outside my house on monday and had to have the gas guy come out and turn it off. Then I proceeded to get fist-fucked by the plumbing company I always use... $1480 to dig up 21' of pipe and replace it!!!! I bitched to the manager the next day (I had to wait a full day for them to come out and get it done... probably the coldest night this year and I have no fucking heat), and he dropped $200 off the final cost... whee! It only cost $1280!!! *sigh*

I have so many damned home repairs to do!!!
I've been trying to catalog them in my mind, so you guys all get to share them while I think out loud...
Paint the interior of my house (front house was painted last year)
Replace the stove and refridgerator in my house

Some goddam kid next door is playing Mary Had a Little Lamb over and over and fucking for chrissakes over on a recorder...is there a city ordinance about how many times your can play the same fucking little string of notes before infanticide is allowed??? Plus the little shit is playing it too fucking SLOW, so it's like Mary's Lamb's Funeral March... I'm going to lose my fucking mind in a minute

let's see... where was I?
Fix the busted kitchen overhead light
Repair the rotten floorboards in the back hall
Put up a fence (a real fence, not the pile of stray boards my father has now) in the back yard
Cut down a bunch of trees that are pressing against the houses or are fucking up sewer lines
Maybe get garage wired for electricity
Get a new garage door

well...that doesn't seem like too much *sigh*
Anyone who knows anyone that does any of these sorts of repairs, send them my way...

I discovered the worst part of having your father room with you and sleep on the living room sofa... not being loud enough when you come home late at night and opening the front door while he is masturbating... yup... I'm pretty sure that's the worst part...
(don't worry...the sofa will not be going in the living room when I swap houses... so it will be safe to sit over there)

I'm sure as soon as I post this I will remember all the exciting and wonderful things that happened recently that I'm not remembering right now.

Oh Jesus...he started with the recorder again...
"Be vewy, vewy qwiet... I'm hunting atonal childwen...heh heh heh"