Mind Altered Roleplay

If you've ever seen a month's-worth of blog hits, you'll understand my next statement.

For all of you who actually Googled for "mind altered roleplay" or maybe just "mind altered" or possibly just "roleplay" I am sorry but this is probably not the site you're looking for. I have yet to include any kind of drug-addled shenanigans to my bedroom life. Nor have I ever purchased/worn burlap underwear. I apologize also to all those who came here looking for "proper suicide emo" and "scenes with mice digging holes." For the life of me I don't get it, but I will endeavor to include these topics in my subsequent musings.

Ugh, I've been stuck on that last paragraph for hours now. You'll understand when I say I've eaten a very big sandwich all on my lonesome. And now I have a weird craving for The Money Pit. But I must endure for there will be a torrent of pictures and videos ahead that are sure to boggle the socks and blow the mind off all of you, my dear minions friends.

Each Friday or Saturday night, like most of you I'm sure, my bored housewife existence turns to game night. We hook up with our neighbours (the better half of which I have known for some 10 years) and indulge in a requiem of depravity. Jk. The title might hint to that but, no. As many of us new-age geeks (uh, can I coin that one, I rather fancy it) we play boardgames or roleplay (the pen and paper version, geez). As do most of you. Surely.

What confounds me is why we would ever consider in venturing on with these subjects after opening the second bottle of wine or on our way through our second sandwich. Let me explain.

Setting (in cWoD's V:TM): after millennia of seamless integration in human society, man has seen one too many Twilight movies and is beginning to catch on. Hmm, that Madonna sure isn't getting any older. And didn't I just read in the paper that Nicholas Cage is actually part of the hosts of the undead?

Insert a scrawny Polish vampire whose biggest dream is to quit all this Vampire nonsense all together, a scrawny little girl who's pretty unsure if being undead is what's happening right now and a scrawny rich opera singer who's pretty sure being a Vampire is what's happening and she's quite enjoying it.

Obviously, as I am known to row against any plot, I immediately set myself out as defiant and constructed my penitent Vampire Alex. Because Vampires with common names is all the rage nowadays. Look at Vampire Bill or Vampire Eric. None of those french Anne-Rice-ish names. No. I have a vampire called Alex and by God he will find a cure this this nefarious ailment! Verily, thus and so!

I started out as noble as could be but I got turned around somewhere and ended up performing blood transfusion between two ghoulified cows in a barn and smearing vampire remains on a deserted road in backwater Russia with a stake. I proceeded to then swallow the most critical peace of information we had, have a cat-fight with a human three times stronger than me during daytime and spent a good twenty minutes riding up and down in an elevator for no good reason in a luxury apartment building in NYC. These were the things I did voluntarily, using whatever wits I yet had.

Unconsciously, however, our collective minds drifted in very similar if bizarre directions when analyzing what props we had encountered.

Here is what remained after my attempt at salvaging three important parts of an important document. The first I swallowed, as alluded earlier, the second I triggered burnt but the third one isn't my fault. 

After little under an hour (or maybe it was three) I managed to put the middle one back together. Now, it seems like a perfectly reasonable piece of roleplaying prop, doesn't it? Now let's check the back reversed against the light.

A bit weird yes, but... wait. Wait, what's that there with the burnt patches and... and the outline, is that...

is that... Mr. Stay Puft Marshmallow Man?

Oh my God, now I can't unsee it! And is that... is that a giant missile on his head?

No, now I'm just over-thinking it. But, although...

There's a little duck flying up there! I can see it, it's like a Warner Bros. type thing!

Needless to say that was the end of our adventures for the night. We probably retreated back to RockBand as we are known to do. If only the walls were thicker we'd have more fun with it. But, like many console accessories, RockBand's weren't thought for small apartments. They should though, I mean at least the 360 is clearly marketed for frat boys.

Sometimes we play Scrabble. But that never ends well for me.

And "glee" was not a valid word.

I tell you: That Money Pit sure is a funny movie. Best Spielberg movie, hands down. What else can I be but what I am... Carpenter? Plumber? No bells?

Philistines...

I Love Star Wars And It Should Die

When I was but a babe in pigtails (wow, that came out wrong with some seriously gruesome mental pictures) I liked Star Wars. I liked it so much that I even got one of those Star Wars encyclopedias with all the characters and races and people and I was overjoyed.

If there is one thing I've had enough these days is Star Wars. It's everywhere, they're constantly rubbing it in my face and it's close to making me start a mini-WTT for pet peeves. Hmmm....

I like stuffed peppers. But if every day I had stuffed peppers for lunch and dinner pretty soon I wouldn't like stuffed peppers anymore. And if on top of that I was being bombarded with Stuffed Peppers: The MMO and Stuffed Peppers: The Prequel, It would pretty much turn me off stuffed peppers entirely. Hell, I'm getting nauseous just writing about it.

I may have mentioned before but this is another prime example of why hype trains have ruined so many things for me. Not only does my mind get saturated with it but it actively tries to look for something wrong with a notion, be it a new anime (yeah, I just wrote my new WTT), a franchise, any kind of IP, really. When someone tries to oversell you something, there's probably a big BUT coming.

I'm all for advertisement of a good product. I mean, there are few other ways of getting the public to know of its existence but it comes to a point when you do no more than annoy the very people whose attention you're trying to get and pretty soon they're willing to spend money on anything but what you're trying to shove down their throats. Because people don't like being told what to do, not on the few things they feel in control about. I wouldn't like someone telling me when I should go take a dump any more then I like being told 50 times a day that I should go check out yet another post mortem Michael Jackson show because this one is The Best Show in the World About Michael Jackson. Well I'm the best Me in Metown, doesn't mean all that now, does it?

There are new things out there, new ideas that could be explored and promoted for a good penny. Imagination and good story-telling didn't end with George Lucas. There has got to be other fascinating worlds and universes brewing in someone's head just ripe for the exploiting and mass franchising that we don't have to keep recycling the same ideas over and over for 50 years. I dare call it an insult to the ingenuity of man.

So there you have it: Star Wars has become a killer of ingenuity. If I never say anything else, I say now this. 

Which is not to say I won't ever give SW:TOR a try. What am I, a homeless ranting on a street corner?

The Game

You just lost it.

Totally trollish of me, no?