of Foomph and Gurgle
2018-08-26 - 1:53 a.m.
activity::
07dec2012: fed the machines
13may2013: fed the machines
19aug2013: fed the machines
17sep2013: fed the machines
20nov2013: fed the machines
14mar2014: fed the machines
31mar2014: fed the machines
16jun2014: fed the machines
14aug2014: fed the machines
09dec2014: fed the machines
03apr2015: fed the machines
19may2015: fed the machines
06jul2015: fed the machines
27oct2015: fed the machines
07mar2016: fed the machines
11may2016: fed the machines
24jun2016: fed the machines
04aug2016: fed the machines
29jun2016: finding the path, no-trippin' golem
06jul2016: finding the path, purple goo
27jul2016: finding the path, green slime (2)
01aug2016: finding the path, flanking buddies
03aug2016: finding the path, all the piano keys
10aug2016: finding the path, flying ships
14aug2016: finding the path, gang symbols (2)
17aug2016: finding the path, sewer fragrance
22aug2016: finding the path, hallway ghoul
24aug2016: finding the path, lady in red
02dec2016: bought a house
24mar2016: dragon dice with dan and anne at a italian joint
08apr2017: death metal and sushi with mitch and mike
17jun2017: 38k car maintenance
24jun2017: killswitch engage with mitch
02jul2017: wonder woman with anne and sergeant clark
19oct2017: bar in the historical district with doris kearns goodwin, joy prime, william shatner with his buddy seth on guitar, and Dyani (posing as gail ann dorsey). It was a good group of people at a dark bar, not an entirely bad alternative to death, but it was a cowardly way to spend the time.
26feb2018: quit my software job and cashed out my 401K.
03mar2018: black panther with anne, and ticketed for doing 100 in a 55
14apr2017: Got stopped for running stop sign. No one else was on the road, but there is a partially camouflaged police station near that intersection. I only got a warning, but had I gotten a ticket, it would have ended me, financially. Due to my membership in SGLI, financial health is as important as physical health, because if I reach a low enough low, suicide starts looking like an appealing alternative; I’m worth more dead than alive, as they say. I avoided crying when I got home, but the stress of the impending dagaz was getting to me. Something needed to change, and soon. I combed my financial records for options, and made some phone calls to learn about the foreclosure process. Without any income, I could afford to pay my mortgage for one, maybe two more months. I switched payments for all of my accounts from automatic to manual, but fortifying a bank account isn’t exactly a thing that is possible. If I lose the house, I’ll have to get rid of the demons. Even in his infant stage, Foomph will sometimes destroy a bit more than he’s supposed to; he could easily get too big to control. You wouldn’t think getting rid of pet demons would be a hard thing to do, but Gurgle has been growing on me; he’s the closest thing I have to a puppy. He’s slimy and the noises he makes are slobbering, sloshing, gasping grossness… but after listening for a bit, it sounds more like a wet giggle and purr. Foomph only wakes up to eat. I can understand the combination of starving and sleeping, but it makes me wonder if demons dream; do they have nightmares of angels? I doubt Foomph is scared of much, except being drooled on by Gurgle. Somehow, in my discussion with them, I re-dedicated myself to saving the house, vowing to do whatever I could to keep them. At the time, I felt like I had tricked them into accepting a soul that was already under contract; in hindsight, Gurgle may have been much more powerful than I gave him credit for. Dear reader, if you should happen to have pet demons in the future, make sure that you don’t give them NAMES. In late april2017, I had a chance encounter with a group of people playing some role-playing games at my local hobby store, and one of them tipped me off about a job that he’d been offered but wasn’t able to accept because the job he had was much less effort, for not much less money. After some emails and a lengthy meeting about timecards, I was working as a supervisor of expendable employees, not all of whom were meth addicts, and I was getting paid almost enough to pay my expenses. I managed not to get shanked by my minions for a couple months, but I got too involved. I helped them deal with school loans, housing, and tried my best to keep them from getting injured or fired, and in doing so, put myself at risk. I was so exhausted at the end of a week of graveyard shifts, I’d sleep all weekend, and wake up in time to do it again. I didn’t pause to consider how much longer I could operate like this, but I didn’t have time to pursue interview for other positions. I got rid of Foomph in June, but I didn’t get rid of Gurgle until I had rented the house out to a family of five, and they were in the process of moving in.
25aug2018: date with ida (toro, the meg, and skyline boston)
26aug2018: Our beloved son Jason, 35, died instantly on Aug. 26, 2018 from a car accident in Townsend MA, when he fell asleep at the wheel en route to his home in New Ipswich, NH. He graduated from Mt Ida College with a degree in Funeral Service and the University at Albany with a degree in Computer Science. He also served in the Army National Guard, both as an enlisted soldier and an officer, reaching the rank of Captain. Those who knew Jason described him as inquisitive, creative, and considerate of others, with a bitter sense of honesty. With his strong work ethic and focus on efficiency, he strove to embody the famous words of Martin Luther King Jr. “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.” Jason loved driving, describing it as the only “true” form of freedom, and enjoyed playing tabletop and video games with friends. He is survived by his parents, a brother, three sisters, and several close friends.
if you don't take steps toward life, it will eventually creep away from you. -Anon
when you’re dead, you only have two options: come back, or come back stronger. –Anon
life is too short to argue about including or excluding the Oxford comma. just remove the Oxford and, be done with it. -Anon
you don't have to wait until someone dies to honor them. -Anon
dream: arcade city. In the gambling district, the games went on forever, as far as the eye could see. All of the buildings were continuous, so you would move from one arcade to the next, watch a couple games, and keep moving (the music was continuous too, like Dance Dance Revolution on random, with the vocals turned down). If you played, you needed to win. The payouts for winning the games were small, but enough to get something out of the vending machines, or a drink at the bar. If you didn't win, then you didn't eat, and you'd be sitting at an intersection asking for handouts, or trying to survive in the lower levels (sewer pipes and power grids) which was a game you really didn't want to lose. There were gambling tables in the city as well, but those games didn't interest me. They didn't have flashy art, and you were at the mercy of the dice, instead of your skill. I was chatting with one guy about which games we liked the most, some racing game called "Three Vaders" or something, and I said I liked that one too, then we both moved on (it was a good game but not efficient to play because there were other games with more reward for the same level of risk). I had tried to leave the gaming district several times, but was never successful, like it just turned back on itself. But it was too big, and modified just often enough, that it would be difficult to map, and figure out which walls were the outer boundaries. I was wandering in one of the abandoned areas (just a few bedrolls here and there, no real games, but definitely a step up from the sewers) when I met a girl. Tight orange shirt, small scrappy frame, and a dirty blonde pixy/shaggy cut. We talked a bit, she asked how many languages I knew. "Guten tak, guten brot, guten nocht... you know, everything is good" I smiled and listed the other languages that I knew bits a pieces of, but had mostly forgotten; just trying to impress. She giggled. We sort of folded in towards one another, embraced, and kissed. Then i noticed that my mouth had gone dry so I went to look for drinks. She giggled again. In the adjacent area I found an abandonded minifridge with some spoiled food; the power had gone off. The sodas were intact but warm, but I found a battery-operated coffee pot. The coffee machine made an "unhealthy machine" noise and sprayed coffee everywhere. It was really important that I get the coffee to work, and I didn't know why, but it was a large learning curve because up until this point I had never even seen the machine that made the coffee (you just put in the coins and pressed a button and it came out of the dispenser). I found the disconnected tube and made the repair, but it was only operating very slowly, just a few drops a second. I was proud of figuring it out but didn't have the time, so i went upstairs to the bar. The bars were always one level up from the games, and one level up from that was the clubs. This bar was really clean, with lots of "natural" light (something you don't normally see but when you look closer it's actually just a picture of harmonic landscapes on the wall with special light bulbs behind it to make it really bright) and the bar tender was away. There were only five people there, all sitting at the bar with some food bowls, and they all looked fairly alike. Complimentary food bowls were something that you would usually only seen in the clubs, which required strict dress codes to keep people from stealing the food. The big one said something to get my attention and I explained that I was waiting for a coffee. I didn't see any bartender summoning buttons or drink dispensers on the bar itself. One of the smaller ones made the comment "oh, you must be a first generation" and they laughed. I told them, matter-of-factly, that I was. Calling someone first generation was a way of making fun of them figuring out a puzzle or generally being intelligent, but it was a taunt that I'd grown used to, so that it felt more like a compliment. After a brief silence, one of the others said "it's only the second and third generations that -" The big one interrupted and said "yes, the first generations were ONLY intelligence". Something in the combination of tones suggested that the second and third generations were somehow defective, and dangerous. I had never heard of second or third generations, and my immediate inquiry got no response. The big one was definitely directing the conversation, with subtle gestures that indicated for the others to remain silent. Five people was considered large for a gang, and the bartender was clearly not coming back. The big one asked me if I played the “Lotto”, and I proudly told him "I only play the arcades… but I don't gamble, I win." After I spoke I realized that he was asking not just about gambling, but a specific game, which dealt with numbers and very large payouts, and if you didn't have money to play, they would "loan" you coins... this was obviously an all-around bad game to play. Slightly surprised, the man responded "you have no idea how lucky you have been". The others took this as a signal to ignore me and returned to their chatter. End Dream.
dream: the clocktower. The level of visual detail in this dream was amazing, it was as if everything was a fractal, but you couldn't always see enough of the pattern to make it out, and the zommed-in pattern didn't always match the larger pattern... it seemed as though the delta between the parent pattern and the child pattern was the actual thing that was repeated. the circular patterns on the floors looked like the faces of clocks but if you zoomed in there were all sorts of tiny mechanisms, and imagery of the gears and the hands of the clocks all moved in unison, but also on the child level and the child's child level, etc. clock faces were depicted everywhere, and the clocks didn't seem to be keeping track of the same things. try to imagine times square with al the ads and billboards replaced with displays of numbers, like the liquid crystal display on a watch, flashing different numbers and those numbers represent a ton of content (e.g. the matrix code visualization); then imagine that instead of going digital, this particular reality went analog, so instead of using digital displays for all that data, it was represented with a series of spinning wheels and arms. On all the billboards, there was this bad guy called the marquis that existed in the clocktower (which, once you entered it, was full of infinitely long horizontal hallways, so it was sort of weird to consider it a tower) and he wanted something (land? market share?) from an elderly couple (the professor and his wife) outside of the town. there was a flood and a large wave, and the old man's car went off the road, and the shadowy goons of the marquis show up to off him and make it look like an accident. but the old man, in reverse pinocchio fashion, places his life force into a clockwork doll in the back seat, before the goons can get to him. This is where the dream starts, from the perspective of the clockwork doll, in a world with steampunk technology where people are intertwined with their locations (no concept of work or home; people are defined by their spaces, and not just as a status symbol, but on a definitional level). the goons are shadowy figures that you don't get to see BECAUSE they are "spaceless" aka "mobile". Your task (after listening to them talk a bit) is to investigate why the marquis is trying to kill you, and prevent him from killing the elderly lady (without telling her that you are actually the life force of the old man). The only real tool that you have is a freakish needle filled with some sort of chloride-fluid. you can use a small amount to purify water, or a small amount will make a non-clockwork person tell the truth, and 1/3 of the vial will kill a non-clockwork person. assuming that there are no refills, you probably want to save one deadly dose for the marquis, and one for asking people questions and doing the investigation, which leaves you with pretty dangerously low on ammo for the only thing you have that could be considered a weapon. when talking to people, their faces were more or less grotesque, based on their relationship to the observer; so that people that you talked to previously might look different when you went to talk to them a second time (after learning some evil secret about them). you go back to the clock shop and talk to the elderly lady, who is fading because the old man's life force is "gone", so the clock shop itself is starting to dissolve into shadow. Compared to the other people in the setting, she looks the most human, like a low-definition object in a high-definition film, or the only muppet in a star wars scene with people; and i think this might be, not because that was how she looked in reality, but because of the perspective of the dream. like the old man's life force refused to believe that she, too, was a clockwork person, so you see her as a non-clockwork person. She leaves the clock shop, and by becoming mobile, sentences herself to eventually fade to shadow as well, and he life force is lost. once you get through the gates of the clock tower, you meet the marquis, who greets you and says some things. but at this point you are a little puppet filled with rage and running out of juice, so either you can make him tell the truth, or kill him without finding out the truth, but you don't have enough left to do both. End Dream. There was also someone that kept saying "that's not approved!" from somewhere off-screen, but I don't really remember why.
dream. house on a hill (part 2). this is a sequel to a dream i had 1-2 years ago, which takes place on the anniversary of the previous dream, whereupon two children (who didn’t have names but since they were a boy and a girl about the same age, i’ll refer to them as hansel and grettle) are invited to a house that is much larger and fancier than they are used to (they consider it a mansion) for a party hosted by their parent’s friend-of-a-friend in a relatively distant town. in part1, these two children were able to uncover a grand who-done-it mystery, but not before the majority of the guests (including the parents of the children) and several hosts of the party had been killed. as such, i felt it was in rather poor taste that the house owner would even entertain an idea of hosting a similar party on the anniversary of that date. the first bit of the dream was mostly the children admiring the fanciness of the house, taking in the smells and music and craftsmanship of the furniture (it was very clear that they were out of place, but they were greeted warmly by others, whose lives they saved the previous year). the children talked among themselves about how the carpets must have been enchanted with spells of silence, to improve the acoustics of each room. there were much less attendees this year, in part because of the low survival rate of the previous year, but also because some people probably just decided to remain at home; several people made comments that the attendance at this event seemed a little lacking (compared to the previous). amid their best attempts at good manners, the children seemed excited to see someone named “blairy”. there was only one vip, the rich old lady that owned the house, who showed up about halfway through the night. she disappeared shortly after her arrival, and hansel and grettle made an attempt to track her down for a proper greeting, but were unable to re-locate her, and thus took this as a signal that the game had begun; they split up to investigate the house. not present initially were the hosts of the party, who began to show up shortly after the vip, in what looked like full-body animal pajamas, combined with matching oversized animal mascot heads (they looked like a character one might see on an 80s children show). the senior host was dressed as a lion, and one of the other hosts was dressed as a ram, but i’m not sure how many hosts there were, or if the remainder were dressed as rams, of some variety of other animals. grettle checked out the ballroom (dance floor) while hansel checked the library. the ballroom, dining hall, and kitchen had other guests milling about, but there really wasn’t anything suspicious. what was interesting was that in each room, the vip wasn’t present, and this raised the tension slowly as additional rooms were investigated, as it became clear that she was hiding somewhere in the house. adding to this tension was the appearance of the hosts, who dressed in animal costumes resembling cartoon mascots (and they didn’t take the foolish heads off) who mostly stood about, while the guests seemed not to take notice of their presence. in the library were two people, one guest who was knowledgeable about the books, and one gristled “warden” who had some comments about the high quality of the artwork on the collection of stickers that were on full display; particularly the set of wavy rocket ships (they faded in color from red to black, with small stars included on the page, which would have created an interesting contrast against a light-colored background, which you could only marginally appreciate without removing the stickers from their original page). moving on, hansel opened the door to the basement and attempted to investigate, but fell through an illusionary (or false) stair step, that caused him to fall down to the top of a stairwell beneath the main stairwell. after his initial thump, and upon finding that he didn’t have any way to get back up, hansel kept his wits about him and kept very quiet. in doing so, he was able to identify three things shuffling slowly in the basement; they were drawn to a broken bit of wood that bounced noisily to the bottom of the stairs. In the dimly lit sub-basement, he watched as two of them clumsily located the bit of debris, scuffled over it briefly, then one of them carried it off out of view. they had the general form of humans, but their faces were featureless and overly smooth, like a tree without bark. these things seemed to respond aggressively to even the smallest sounds, so hansel was terrified to call for help. grettle searched for hansel, but couldn’t find him (in this process, she opened the door to the basement and, but didn’t investigate further because it looked to her that the light in the basement wasn’t on) and eventually she went home; not knowing if he had abandoned her or if he was truly missing. A few days later, she received a notice in the post that she had been accepted to the prodigious “sear academy” and she wondered if the party was staged as a competition between her and hansel somehow, because attendance to the academy was limited to a single seat. End Dream. I like to think that maybe Hansel escaped, by slowly crawling back up through the hole in the stairs, mimicking the slow shuffling sounds of the basement dwellers so as not to draw their attention. But I’m saving the reunion of hansel and grettle for another dream.
dream. you're so vane. This dream started with a rusty rooster-shaped weather vane creaking out the tune to the song by Carly Simon. From the perspective of a young child, asking grandpa to play a magical tune on his dulcimer. The grandfather takes his time assembling bananas, finely carved sticks, and sculpted rice balls on the floor. The grandson is deeply impatient and doesn’t understand why the grandfather doesn’t just playing. When the child calms down from boredom, and when the grandfather eventually does begin to play a tune, the child cannot hold back his excitement. The banana boats are fully animated, with sails and moving oars, riding across the living room, appearing from behind large pieces of furniture. To the child, this is pure magic. The boats were floating through the sky, telling the tale of the family’s travel from a far-off land; why they had to escape, and each step of the perilous journey that could have been the last, but wasn’t. Other boats capsized in the storms, or got lost, but grandfather’s boat steered true on the course, as he clutched his pet coconut tree, himself the same age then as the boy in front of him now. That coconut tree would one day have a dozen children of its own in the valley, providing food and crafting materials to many future generations in the valley. End Dream.
dream. VR younger crew video game with moonset and crescent attack animations and three playable characters: main younger brother, older brother/sister (2nd/3rd player drop-in). start in one room, reading notes and learning how to turn into a crow (no tutorial, just trial and error) then older sibling comes to get you, game is about to start, learn how to throw crescents from the ground to hit enemies (looks like RPS with little minions). the intro video is of a victorian-photo family taking train, going to take a picture of you now and 24 hours later, so you can see how fast you're growing (the more save points you create, the higher the game difficulty). family is refugees on the run, don't see parent’s faces (heads always out of frame). walk outside in the twilight, a rhinoceros is chasing you (learn to dodge tutorial) then minions come (learn to fight tutorial and upgrade: dodge notification). sister says "sorry about the rhino! but sometimes best way to learn something is to do it.” sister summons potions, poison the potions to use the minions against each other. in crow mode, you get tunnel vision until you spend more time as a crow (expands to 3rd person wide angle) while boy mode shrinks to 1st person tunnel vision if you spend too long in crow mode. reset = go back to last photo. reset game 5 times: cut to sister in clocktower (like inside a pocket watch with some gears spinning) minigame. cut to later in the game where you are spying on an orc stronghold in crow form. There’s a big bad orc that will kill you if he finds you, but a friendly goblin who works in the kitchens hides you in a pot with a false lid (goblins are masters of deception). Orc (showing some intelligence) tells goblin "every hour, i want you to give me a sketch of the moon" (task to keep goblin busy? Now the goblin can’t go with you, too much work in the kitchen) "little goblin would like to fly one day… like crow!" "young crow! it looks like you made a mistake! how about we put you back...try again!" investigate old house with older brother (raven), house makes shadows to convince player to go back to boss "would you like to put your weapon in your backpack?" "i think you missed some treasure down here" player chat limited to icons, universal language. boss uses pins from ground, dodge and turn into crow to avoid, change back to boy to damage boss.
dream. demons destroyed everything. in the aftermath of a civilization that had figured out how to summon demons, people tried to go about their daily lives. there were conversations in an industrial school cafeteria, and a fight broke out. one of the larger children (a bully?) left the safety of the building to get something out of his pick-up truck, a concealable blade, something between a button hook and a straight razor (i drew a picture of it but didn’t really do it justice). as he’s reaching into the glove box, he ducks down to avoid being seen by this mass of hanging undead bodies, held together by a metal frame into a macabre sort of blimp. "never happened, start quest for riches". cut to tank-girl (fulfilling the roles of scout and sniper) and her two armored paladin friends (one missing lower legs, replaced with advanced prosthetics; heavy weapons expert) and one possessed (bubbly, greasy skin; explosives expert), but of the agreeable sort. possession gives him pain resistance, some mind reading ability, and he can see glimpses of the future in flames (floating sparks taking shapes). they take shifts posting guard in an underground position, while they venture into the ruins in search of valuables, and answers. there is a rumor about a “silver fox” on top of a tower, and something of a treasure map that the tank-girl is following. "we need to move!" says paladin #1, and tank-girl snaps out of a daze. they are climbing a half-constructed rusty skyscraper and they’ve been spotted by two opulently fat half-naked green-skinned thugs from below. They are probably possessed, but more dangerous than that, they are tweaked up on some sort of PCP-like drug that causes full-body jaundice. they climb the scaffolding as easily as squirrels on a tree, without the use of ropes, and have chains wrapped around their hands and arms as weapons. paladin #1 splits off from the group to get a vantage point for firing, but both thugs follow the other two. tank-girl and paladin#2 get to the rooftop of the structure, and find some sort of sealed box in a maintenance closet. paladin #2 is still trying to get the “treasure” unlocked from the inside of the outbuilding while tank-girl scouts above and finds other people, swinging from ropes from even higher structures, with silver foxes emblazoned on their armor. she is captured by the silver foxes and they swing her over to safety, in an area where the greenskins can’t get to. meanwhile, the greenskins have ambushed paladin#2 and chained him to the door of the outbuilding. They take “turns” raping his asshole, whichever one is raping the paladin is being bit/clawed by the other, until the one gives up and the other starts in. possession, in this case, is a curse for paladin #2 because it results in him surviving this torture much longer than humanly possible. tank-girl goes back to save paladin #2, but somehow he’s managed to set a detonator, and the entire rooftop explodes, knocking her off her rope. as she falls, she wonders if paladin #2 was trying to kill her, or if he just didn’t care and wanted to die, or if he was trying to save her from the same fate. End Dream.
