Hurricane Sandy destroys a part of my childhood



I never needed a drink that badly

How is it possible that this slipped under my radar for so long?

UT Student and Phi-Kappa-Alpha brother Alexander “Zander” Broughton denies butt-chugging. Apparently, at some point “Zander” was hospitalized for extreme alcohol poisoning and the whole PKA frat was placed under suspension for this (and possibly other) alcohol related incident(s). Somehow the rumor started that “Zander” had been ‘butt-chugging.’ ‘Butt-chugging’ is when you take alcohol and, instead of drinking it, you put it up your butt… I’m guessing butt chuggers use an enema bag or something. It apparently gets you really fucked up really quickly… maybe butt-chugging is for busy multi-taskers who don’t have time to stand around drinking through your mouth anymore like they did in Grandpa’s day.

The best part of the video is where all the dudes are standing around looking serious as ‘Zander’ and the Fraternity’s lawyer sternly deny butt-chugging several times. ‘Zander’ wants to make it clear that he is NOT GAY… because, I guess, that’s the first question that he thinks should come to mind… and wants to clear his good name — he is not a butt-chugger and he wants those who have called him a butt-chugger to pay the legal consequences for damage to his reputation and the reputation of his fraternity. He wants us to know that the alcohol poisoning that landed him in the hospital was the result of him drinking a whole box of Franzia box wine through his mouth… not by using a hose to put it up his butt. Franzia? Nice choice of beverage, by the way. How the whole topic of butt-chugging came up when ‘Zander’ (or is it ‘Xander?’) landed in the ER is discussed at length in the video.

“Butt-chugging” has a long history.  The pre-Columbian Mayans were notorious butt-chuggers, as this ancient statue proves:


Look at that Mayan; he is so happy to be butt-chugging!

Brave Dungeoneers


Not heroic, but running seems like a solid plan.

Unhappy Camper

Life is full of disappointments.  This morning I was running late and just grabbed something from the freezer for lunch.  Trader Joe’s Filet of Sole. Compare the picture on the box to what I got.  After I cooked it, it looked even worse.

Son of a bitch, Joe! You really let me down!

A Confederacy of Douchebags

I work for The Levy Pants Co.

Today, the phone company turned off the DSL service at one of the facilities that the company I work for owns because of non-payment of the bill. The phone company never sent a bill to our office and I can’t find out where the bills have been going until I get access to the account. We have never seen a bill and I didn’t even know that there was DSL service at this facility until they turned it off and all these devices in the warehouse suddenly do not work. In order to get the service turned back on, I need to get someone to pay the bill. The woman in the accounts payable department of my company can’t pay a bill she does not have (which makes sense to me). The phone company will not let me request a copy of the bill unless I know the account number and the super-secret PIN number which is printed on the bill. In other words, in order to get a copy of the bill I need to know information which is printed on the bill.


only 2 more weeks

In less than 2 weeks, Americans will cast their ballots, and, after lots of drama over the count of both the electoral college AND the popular vote, the man who serves as US president for the next 4 years will have been decided. Like the Christmas fatigue that strikes me late in the year every year when I have been “BUY MORE NOWed” to near death, I can’t wait for the election thing to be over.

I’ve already written (on this very blog!) that I think it will be Obama (and I think that’s still true). There’s been a lot of drama in the past couple weeks, especially over Romney’s performance in the debates, but I think the vast number of voters don’t pay attention to debates or issues[1]or parties or platforms[2]. I suspect the vast majority just vote for the person they like most who happens to be in the party they aspire to identify with, with some vague idea that voting for a rich man will make everyone richer or voting for a black man will make other people less racist. These seem like naive reasons to choose a president, but I think people have the right to choose presidents the way they make any other choice in their lives — I might think it is short sighted to choose Geico over another insurance company because you like the gecko with the Australian accent on their commercials, but I can’t deny that it is the consumer’s right to pick Geico because of the gecko. Similarly, if Romney’s Mormonism or his helmet-hair or his wife’s horses makes him seem like a better candidate than Obama’s Christianity or his close-cut hair or Bo the dog, then go for it. It is your right as an American to make a decision for stupid reasons.

I think the main reason for all the media drama is that reporting that we already think that Romney won’t win makes very unexciting television. By continuing to indulge in the shared fantasy that it really will be down to the wire up until election day is in the best interest of pundits, experts and peddlars of infotainment.  Speaking of exciting television, did you hear that Donald Trump has ‘very big’ news about President Obama? Even Mitt Romney (who will presumably benefit from whatever bullshit Trump reveals) can’t pretend to be interested. It’s Geraldo Rivera excavating Al Capone’s vault all over again. (edit: the “very big news” was revealed… and it was not big news after all. Surprised?).

The one issue that doesn’t seem to get any press is environmental stewardship. Yes, I think climate change is real. Even if I didn’t care about the other issues[3] that have already made me think that 4 more years of Obama would be preferable to 4 years of Romney, I’d have to vote for whomever was the ‘greener’ candidate simply because I believe we are destroying the planet faster than it can heal itself… and I think that is an extraordinarily stupid thing to do. Why that isn’t an ‘issue’ in the campaign and abortion is makes me think of Churchill:


[1]”Issues” seems to mean so many things to so many people that I don’t even know where to begin.  Earlier in this election cycle, gay marriage and the ironically named ‘Defense of Marriage Act’ seemed to be “issues” for some people, although, if you are a God-fearing Christian heterosexual, how your marriage needs to be defended against other people getting married is beyond me.  I mean, if you believe in a vengeful, mean spirited God who will make people want to “be gay” (or “act gay” or “live the gay lifestyle” or however the conservative minds currently phrase the gay ‘condition’) and then send them to hell for that, then why would you want to attempt to interfere with his will by making laws that will presumably prevent sinners from doing the sin that God will want to punish them for?

[2] I remember reading a poll from a few years ago where they discovered that almost a third of Americans polled apparently don’t know who the Vice President is or that Washington DC is not in Washington state — and the Republicans are worried about illegal aliens voting in the election? Could a Nicaraguan nanny without a green card who speaks English as a second language really be a greater threat to democracy than the people who were born here and still don’t understand basic geography or what job Al Gore had before he became the bête noir of Fox News and the American Petroleum Institute?
[3] See ‘DOMA,’ athlete doping scandals, prayer in schools, etc. In short, the softball topics that politicians and the press concentrate on when they really should be concentrating on other things.

Twilight of the Grogs

Teenage boys and grognards want this…




Teenage girls and cougars want this…


Baedeker’s Guide to The Northlands: Oom Ambar and Thule

One of the Lords of Oom









Dungeon Crawl Classics: reflections after 10 sessions

Last Wednesday (10.17.2012), we had out 10th session in my friend Jon C.’s ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics’ campaign*. Although I am not a  rules meister, I really like this game.  We are having fun with it despite players having some different play styles at the table.

The DM, Jon C. is running this as a fairly ‘let us play this straight up to figure out this game‘ type of a campaign. He introduced us to the game using ‘the funnel’ (a word about the funnel in a moment) and, since then, we have been agents of ‘The Adventurer’s Guild.’ Not a lot of time is spent on the how and why of the guild or why we would want to be members — they just organize adventurers and send us out on missions which consist of, “Please go to location X and do this and try not to get killed…” When someone’s character gets killed, the replacement shows up as soon as possible, with a “Hello, I am X and the guild sent me…” Some of the more method-actor roleplaying people might find this unsatisfying — but I like it simply because most of my fellow players have families with young children or jobs which entail all kinds of schedule conflicts… if there was some deeply interwoven plot between all of the characters like an episode of “Dallas,” then having major characters simply be missing one week and back the next would be jarring (plus, and I’m confessing my bias here, I don’t find the ‘what’s my motivation?’ type role playing games enjoyable — no judgement, just not my thing).

We are playing our way through a series of the DCC adventures published by Goodman that are not linked together (at least not as far as I can see — maybe Jon C. has something in mind — again, not a dealbreaker in my opinion).  We started off in a 0 level ‘funnel’ adventure that I don’t remember the name of (I think it’s the one in the back of the DCC book), then went to “Doom of the Savage Kings” (1st level) and now we are playing “Sailors on the Starless Sea.”

I actually like the campaign that is just a series of short term missions rather than proceeding along some massive story arc.  Perhaps because we spend about 1/2 of the time bullshitting, joking around, etc., I think it would be hard to keep up the momentum and enthusiasm for a “long game” story.  We seem to finish the published adventures that Jon C. is running every 3-4 sessions, which is neither too long nor too short. Then Jon just fastforwards through the downtime (“OK, you rest up a couple weeks, then you get a request from the guild to go to X…”) and we launch into the next adventure.

The Funnel: As an option, you can start off the DCC game using 0 level characters and ‘The Funnel.’  When you play ‘The Funnel,’ each player gets 3 or 4 randomly generated ordinary medieval people (blacksmith’s apprentice, grave digger, turnip farmer, etc) armed only with a few randomly determined possessions (pitchfork, hammer, rolling pin, apron, etc). You toss these unfortunates into the meatgrinder of their first adventure and the few who don’t become sausage graduate to 1st level.  Some people apparently find it irritating and stupid; I thought it was a hoot.

Tables: There are lots of random tables in this game.  Every time you cast a spell, you roll on a random table and modify your roll with various things (like you level, your inteligence, etc.).  If you roll badly, the spell might just misfire OR it might cause magical ‘corruption’ (which are usually bad side effects).  If you roll well, the spell might work better than expected. This adds a little bit of time to the game, but spells are less formulaic.  As an example, in the last game both my character and Kevin’s character cast the exact same spell (color spray) with radically different results.  My elf barely got the spell off and the target made his save so it had no effect. Kevin’s wizard rolled really well and his version of color spray blinded, paralyzed and knocked out all of the enemies in it’s path.
There are also tables for combat (fumbles and critical hits). Fumbles mean you can fall down, trip, drop your weapon, etc.  Critical hits mean you can blind, decapitate, knock over, etc., your opponent. Although critical hits and fumbles were never ‘official’ rules in old school D&D (Gygax hated them), I remember that we always used them because it was just cool to sometimes have that low level fighter decapitate an ogre with a single sword stroke. Of course, players were usually less enthusiastic when the ogre scored a critical and pounded their player character into jelly with one stroke, but I’ve always believed that if players get an advantage, monsters and NPCs should be allowed to use that same advantage.

Funny Dice: In addition to the ‘funny dice we already use (d20, d12, d10, d8, d6 and d4, most of which seemed pretty strange when we started playing back in the day), DCC also uses d16, d24, d5, etc. These ‘new dice’ seem to make some gamers on the forums really mad (but what doesn’t make someone on a forum somewhere really mad?). I bought a set of ‘Zocchi’ dice needed for the DCC game through the mail for less than $10.00 including shipping. Unfortunately, the numbers on them are not painted and they are nearly impossible to read in the dim light of my friend’s basement, so I usually just roll other dice and adjust (i.e.: for a d24, I roll a d12 and a d6; if the d6 comes up odd I add 0 to the d12 and if it comes up even I add 12 to the d12 for a range of 1-24).
Sometimes, if you gain an advantage or disadvantage, you can go up or down the dice chain (i.e.: if you normally roll 1d20, under some advantageous circumstances you may roll 1d24). Since the ‘criticals’  occur when you roll maximum on the dice, using a d24 may actually be disadvantageous since rolling a 20 on a d20 is a 1 in 20 chance, whereas rolling a 24 on a d24 is a 1 in 24 chance. The statistician in our group doesn’t like the funky dice; I have to confess that I seem to roll critical hits so rarely, I don’t really care (I have a d20 that seems to usually roll a 4 or less).

Luck: This is one of the parts of the game I don’t find myself that enthusiastic about.  Every character has a ‘luck’ score and a ‘lucky attribute.’ If your luck score is good, you get a bonus to your lucky attribute; if your luck score is bad you take a penalty. You can  ‘burn’ points of luck to affect dice rolls… so if I have a luck of 10 and I rolled a 12 on the dice, I can take 2 points from my luck (reducing it to 8) and add it to my roll for a total of 14. Some characters (like hobbits) can give luck away (so if you needed to roll a certain number to make your save and a friendly halfling is nearby, he can ‘give’ you luck points if the player wants to). Thieves and hobbits regenerate their luck every session; everyone else only gains it very slowly (if at all -I’m not clear on that).
The reason I don’t like luck that much is that it seems simply transactional. You roll a dice, you don’t like the result and then you just say, “Give me 5 points, Mister Hobbit.” Somehow, it feels like cheating to me. Maybe it would be better if the player had to add his luck bonus before he rolled the dice.

Spellburn and Spellduels: Spellcasters can temporarily sacrifice attribute points (like strength or fortitude) to improve their spellcasting rolls.  This can increase the power of your spell when you cast it, but potentially leaves you weaker afterwards.  It’s a nice touch because it allows you to increase the chance of having your opponent harmed by an attack spell but it’s not free — reducing your stamina will make you weaker, for example.
Spellduels haven’t come up much (yet).  When two spellcasters on opposite sides are casting spells, they have the option of entering a spellduel where they seek to overpower the other spellcaster.  We only did it once and I didn’t understand how it worked; if we did it correctly, one of the spellcasters in our party managed to force an enemy spellcaster to use up more magical resources than he wanted to.

*Full disclosure: I have done (and continue to do) artwork for Goodman Games, including the DCC line. I get paid a one time fee for each drawing I produce, so whether Goodman sells 1 or 100,000 of a given publication, I get the same pay, so I am not incentivized by money to see that Goodman sells more product.

Session 10 (Jon’s DCC Game)

Session 10  10.17.12

 (P)tarth: wizard and portal master(Kevin), accompanied by his french Familiar (Imp named Ganbon)
Abattoir: hobbit and luck-providing bobble head(mike C.) (Ok, abattoir is not really his name – It’s ‘Abathon’ or something like that).
Kreglar: Priest of Cthulhu (or something like that) (Dave M.)
Soltar the Evangelist: Priest of Arestimus (Dave P.)
Marlowe: Elf (stef)
Almuric: thief and masked avenger (Reuben)

We had gathered in Kevin’s cellar for the usual dice and bullshitting. Beers were opened and Reuben ate what looked like a pot pie of some kind. Mike D. was absent so there were no peanut M&Ms or Twizzlers. Dave P., however, had returned, no longer a bachelor.  Unfortunately, Jon. C. left half his notes at home (including Dave P.’s “Zordinar” character sheet, so Dave P. rolled up a new guy). Jon C. left to return home and retrieve his missing items, but the traffic was unrelenting and the weather was bad so he soon came back.
At the end of last session we had managed to open the portcullis, chased away a beastial figure of some sort, dropped another into the moat with a sleep spell and Kreglar had obtained a black banner with a skull. Pablo Von Ott (Mike D.s PC) felt ill and returned to the village for some Immodium while Sotar (Dave P.’s new PC) wandered in through the gate and announced that he was here to help.  “You look like a trustworthy fellow,” we replied.  “Take your place in the ranks!”

We reviewed our rumors as (P)tarth climbed up onto the roof of the gatehouse via a ladder to inspect the portcullis. We recalled that there were rumors telling us that a fantastic treasure could be found under the tower, stay away from the well, the keep was originally built by a pair of brothers who were chaos lords, etc.  As we did this, (P)tarth lowered the portcullis and cast ‘ward portal’ on it.  He was upset with us for having retreated ‘too early’ last time when we were sprayed with pumpkin seeds and plant zombie spoo.

Having had our egress cut off, we advanced a bit into the soggy courtyard.  The west wall of the castle had collapsed and the gatehouse was somewhat ruined.  There appeared to be some ruined buildings on the north side of the castle and a large building to the east that was decorated with toad-like gargoyles.  There was a pit in the northeast corner that appeared to be filled with mist, a well in the center of the courtyard and a tower in the southeast corner. Last session one of the monstrous sentries had run into the tower in the southeast corner via a small door that gave access to the parapet on the walls.

Almuric and Kreglar decided to look at the well even though they had specifically been warned to stay away from it.  As they walked towards it, it appeared to be further and further away — WTF? Crediting this problem to someone having fucked with evil bad chaos magic at some point in the past, we decided not to mess with it for now.

We decided to start with the southeast tower, instead.  Kreglar and Marlowe approached the door, as the rest hung back and (P)tarth remained on the roof of the gatehouse. Marlowe tried the door, couldn’t open it so he and Kreglar decided to return to the gatehouse, climb the ladder and attempt to open the door that led from the parapet on the wall into the upper story of the tower. As we were walking back to the gatehouse, the hobbit tried the door again and this time it opened!  Putting it down to his luck, the hobbit and Sotar the cleric fired up a couple of torches and began to enter… Sotar reported hearing a moaning, whimpering sound.

Suddenly, an axe hacked down from above and clanged off Sotar’s shield which he raised just in the nick of time — clang!  Some of the hobbit’s luck must be rubbing off.  There were several bestial creatures with bloody spears and bits of ragged armor marked with chaos runes gamboling around inside the tower’s darkness.  The hobbit and the cleric tried to form up a shield wall to keep the monsters in the tower where they could not use their greater number to advantage as Almuric hunkered down by the keep, loading his crossbow, Marlowe and Kreglar raced back to support their companions and (P)tarth strolled casually along the battlements, chatting to his French imp. “Zere zeems to be a battle over zere, no?” said the imp, adjusting his beret and twirling his wee mostache while puffing away on a cigarette.

The beast men appeared to be a mix of birds, beasts, etc., and were all disgusting and stinky.  Each had one big bloodshot eye and bad hygiene. The door on the battlements flew open and a cow headed man stomped out, followed by an owl headed man.  Down below, vulture and salamander headed-men were forcing their way past the cleric and the Halfling.  Almuric fired his crossbow, critically wounding one, then fumbled in a comical manner (that’s what the table said).  Kreglar cast a ‘bless spell’ and power oozed through his body — suddenly even Marlowe (who was standing next to him) got a +5 on all of his rolls.  Surging with confidence, Marlowe tried to blast the bull-headed beast man on the parapet with ‘Color Spray,’ but rolled so badly that only a few colorful sparks dribbled out of his fingers and bounced off the beastman without effect.

Over at the door we began to fight in earnest, killing and maiming beastmen and getting only a few wounds in turn.  Although scary looking, they were not very good at combat.  (P)tarth cast the ultimate color spray where surging rainbows of power whooshed out of his hands and enveloped the two beastmen who were advancing upon him on the parapet.  Meanwhile, down in the courtyard, despite some comical fumbles and underwhelming criticals, we managed to kill the rest of these stink beast-creatures.

The inside of the tower was a foul charnel house — blood, guts and skins scattered everywhere.  The floor of the place was covered in rotting flesh, guts and bones.  A stairway led down underground, a spiral staircase would up to the battlements and there were three peasants suspended by chains, beaten, bloodied and barely alive.

Up on the battlements, Almuric and (P)tarth slit the throats of the incapacitated beastmen. (P)tarth found a fancy torc decorated with skull medallions and chaos runes; after a whispered conference with Almuric, (P)tarth allowed Almuric to try it on despite the objections of his French Imp.  “But mon Frere, ze Torc she is obviously magical, no?  Must keep it for yourself, eh?” Meanwhile, Padre Sotar was tending to the peasants, who were mostly unconscious, trying to heal them, as Marlowe searched the bodies of the beast men, looking for a key to the manacles. Kreglar was digging through the offal on the floor.  A squealing, disgusting leech-like worm tried to attach itself to his skin and Kreglar batted it across the room with his spear.  It hit the wall and the hobbit burned it with a torch, killing it.

Up on the battlements, Almuric tried to put on the torc and, like trying to force two magnets together, it flew out of his hands and landed in the ditch.  Gondan retrieved it from the ditch, shouting, “Zoot alors!” and gave it back to (P)tarth ,

After being unlocked from their chains, given sips of water, a bite to eat and some healing, the prisoners were basically ambulatory and wanted to leave immediately.  Since the gate was sealed by a portal spell (!), we lowered the peasants from the battlements with ropes and they made their way back to town on their own power.  Sotar went with them when he saw (P)tarth commanding his imp to follow them and caught up just in time to see Gondan swoop down at the heads of the peasants as they cowered, screaming.  Sotar chased the imp off and escorted the poor unfortunates as far as the main road, where a passing trader promised to help them get back to Hamlet (…or maybe the trader clapped them into irons as soon as the cleric’s back was turned and sold them as slaves; we shall probably never know). Having balmed his conscience with providing for the less fortunate, Sotar returned to the keep to rejoin the group where a nasty surprise awaited him later…

Kreglar had been paying attention when the rumors were being presented in the village of Hamlet and continued to sweep aside the offal and guts that covered the floor because he had heard that there was a ‘great treasure’ hidden under the tower.  Under the rotting mess, he found a wooden trap door which he pried up with his spear, revealing a small hole filled with treasure.  There was a quantity of coins, a fine elven cloak (probably ‘elven’ with a small ‘e’ since Kreglar did not disappear when he put it on) and a jeweled shortsword.  “Mine!” screamed the hobbit and he grabbed the sword. Since he had been fighting with a dagger up until this point, we were glad to see him better armed. (P)tarththen gave the skull torc to Kreglar in exchange for the fine elven cloak.  Rather than wearing it, Kreglar stowed it in his pouch.

We then argued over whether or not we were going to press on or wait for Sotar the cleric. The vote was 6 to 1 against waiting (Marlowe wanted to wait because Sotar appeared to actually be able to heal people, a feat that the other cleric, Kreglar, had only accomplished once). We then proceeded down the steps to the north that led to deep under the castle, Marlowe the elf and the hobbit going ahead (with infravision) and the rest a distance behind with torches. (P)tarth declared that if anyone surprised him, he would, without hesitation, blast them with a color spray.
“Did you miss me?” shouted Sator the cleric, as he came clumping down the steps.

“TRIGGER EVENT!” shouted (P)Tarth, as he blasted the helpless cleric of law with color spray.  The cleric rolled down the steps, blind, paralyzed and regretful.

“Shhhhhh!” said the hobbit. He and the elf had seen some gold coins on the steps below and suspected a trap.  Who leaves gold coins on the stairs?  Almuric used his thiefly skills to investigate.  The coins were real and normal, but there was a rough passage to the left and a secret door to the right.  The steps continued down into darkness.  Almuric opened the door and found a small chamber with three obviously looted chests in it and a sprinkling of coins on the floor among some beast-man like tracks.  One of the chests had a false bottom that contained a silk tabard adorned with a symbol of chaos (which Almuric put on), a steel vial of some sort of liquid …”and two, no, excuse me, one silver ring…” said the wily thief. We split up the coin on the spot.  Overcome by curiosity, Marlowe tried the potion and felt stronger and more powerful (a potion of cocaine!).

When Sotar was sufficiently recovered, he told Almuric, “Take that thing off,” pointing at the chaos tabard.  The thief refused.  We then followed the winding passage, which led upwards and was obviously natural.  Suddenly it led to a small room with a sarcophagus in the center and an exit at the far end.

Session ended here.