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| | ...Tis a remorseless eating machine. To further explain: we all know Rob is the ineffable god of crab consumption. However, I discovered Friday that Kristyn may rule by his side as goddess of the crustacean devouring pantheon. We went to Red Lobster for a belated birthday dinner and she got the all you can eat crab legs deal. Twas a sight to behold. By our best accounting, at least 8 or 10 crabs died trying to quell her ravenous hunger. I just stared, aghast, during the interludes between cleaning stray crab bits off me and my food. After the ordeal, I carried Kristyn off to the car Rudy-style, on my shoulder, in celebration of her show of abject glutony. There was much rejoicing.
So, anyway, I did finally see the complete house redecoration. It looked really good. Kristyn and her mom did a fantastic job. The brick fireplace got a new tile facade and looks fabulous. The upholstered wall in the bedroom looks great (yes, I said upholstered). Our retro-kitsch kitchen is awesome. The overall decor is very nice. There was a bit more yellow paint than I would have liked, but I ll get used to it. Overall... very nice. I tried to add my own personal touch... some trophies, a decorative Steelers helmet, etc but alas was quickly vetoed. Obtaining a civil majority against me in any decorating votes was pretty easy for Kristyn with her mom there... but she went home yesterday, so I can foresee more legislative success in my future [insert Jyhad antediluvian voting deck reference here... Praxis Seizure: Ridley Park, maybe?].
Another booster draft tonight at the Guild. The popularity of the events keeps growing in leaps and bounds. I am pleased. Evan, Todd, and Wil should all be there tonight, so it should be a real good time. We have a lot of fun with it. Trash talking shall abound. We ve talked about the possibility of having the drafts sanctioned, so they d be "official" tournies with results counting towards people s national ranking (for the uninitiated, yes, there is a national Magic the Gathering ranking system) but have repeatedly eschewed the idea, due the seriousness that label implies... we intend to keep it light and fun!
Well, enough for now. More tales of my zany hijinks later this week.
-bampf | | 7/26/2002 12:22:42 PM Speaking of humanity s downfall | Comments (4) |
| So did everyone hear the news? Fat people are suing the fast food companies. What the hell is this country coming to? This is ridiculous. I can t even begin to express my dismay. Note to fatties: it s not McDonald s fault that your a lard ass and you can t change the channel without getting winded. Put down the cheeseburger and go for a walk! It s no big secret! I was very much against the recent settlements against the tabacco companies. I have no sympathies for smokers dying a nasty death of emphyzema at an early age. They asked for it and stupidity should be rewarded with an early exit of this mortal coil. However I did see their point after being reminded of the vintage cigarette comercials showing supposed physicians espousing the health benefits of X brand cigarettes. But anyone who thinks a well balanced diet of Big Macs and buckets of Extra Crispy won t kill you in no time flat needs to be executed immediately for monumental stupidity. Waiting five years for their heart to burst is way too good for em!
What has happened to personal accountability. Every woe, every mistake, every transgression is some one else s fault. Blame the restaurants, blame your upbringing, blame music, blame the media, blame violent games, blame everyone but yourself. It s sad. Disheartening even. If people started taking responsibility for their own actions and worked to mend their problems I have a feeling things would get a whole lot better in this country.
All right. I m gonna try to curb my anger for a bit and change subjects. We started a new D&D campaign last night run by Darkan. So now Thursday D&D night will alternate between Josh, Darkan and myself as DMs. Anyway, in the new campaign, as I mentioned in a previous post, I m running a half-orc monk. The absurdity of the character is great. I rolled excellently for his abilities... a couple really high stats, and a couple ridiculously low stats. Better than I hoped for. As a result, the character, named Gort, has stupendous Strength and Constitution but horrendous Intelligence and Charisma scores. Which is great to play! I d draw parallels to Sloth from The Goonies, or Billy Bob s character from Slingblade. Good natured, quirky, giant, man-child. Love it. To give some frame of reference... the mage Josh is playing has a pet mantis-like insect for a familiar... the bug is considerably smarter than Gort!
I m gaining quite a repertoire of odd ball characters from the last couple campaigns I ve been in... Kaleb the dim-witted holy Paladin (he loved to read prayers and scriptures from whatever reading material was handy... the source material being irrelevant, as he was completely illiterate... he just didn t realize it); Kirwan the crazed warrior who speaks with (and is both inspired and berated by) his dead ancestors; and now Gort, the huge imbecile reject from the bare fisted pit fighting arenas (D&D s version of the UFC). Good I love role playing. All right. Enough gamer dork talk for a while. Yes, I know I m lame, so don t even bring it up.
-bampf | | | OK... just watched maybe the most disturbing peice of video imaginable. Bum Fights, by Indecline Productions. These guys came into the lime light after a Howard Stern plug a couple months ago. I d heard about it but never imagined just how crude this thing is. Truly the most degenerate and debased thing one can possibly watch... and maybe the funniest video EVER! Absolutely hysterical. Bum fighting, random street fights, bum stunts... and a Steve Irwin impersonator wrestling and tagging bums. So sick. So funny. Glorious. Nothing like reveling in the misery of others.
Kent was able to get a copy on VCD from a co-worker who downloaded it. I highly recomend it to anyone who can get their hands on it. The depths of humanity at it s gory best!
-b | | | The Johns are coming to Harrisburg! How cool is that? That s right. They Might Be Giants will be playing at the Whitaker Center. I m ecstatic. I ve already got seats... Row 2. Nice. I was super excited when they played the Chameleon in Lancaster... now they re in our own backyard! Awesome. Maybe Harrisburg really is asserting itself as a semi-cultured city. Just as Harrisburg is getting good and I m getting ready to leave. Typical.
I just don t make it to enough concerts anymore. Used to go very regularly. The drop off started about two years ago when I started saving for Italy. I haven t been in a mosh pit since HMSfest 2000. Depressing. Of course things won t stabilize financially for a while (house buying has that effect) so even with a place in Philly I won t be able to enjoy the tons of available shows for a while. TMBG, is of course the exception. They re a must regardless of finances. I mean, c mon. It s TMBG.
I head down to Philly this weekend after a month long hiatus from the house. I m getting more and more anxious to see all the work Kristyn and Kathy have done to the place. God willing, I won t have to thrash either of them. I ll get to see the kitties, too. I m sure they ve doubled in size since I saw em last. I feel like the dad in the "Cats in the Cradle" song... missing them grow up and all. What a deadbeat I am.
-b | | | Another birthday, come and gone. OK, so I don t feel that much older. Less than two years now til thirty... now that is scary. But I m not gonna waste too much breath lamenting the passage of time. If I wanna feel old I just need consider Kristyn s date of birth. Mmmm... pedophilia. Birthday itself was somewhat uneventful. Birthday Lunch with mom, grandma and April. Birthday Dinner with Rich and the Doyles. Excellent meals, both. Free food is always a welcome birthday staple! It was a cool dinner. Hanging with old school Guilders. It s odd that there are different chronological classifications of Guilders. A sign we ve been around for a while, huh?
Saturday I got to play a little Warhammer for the first time in seemingly ages. I played against Powell s dwarfs. A match we ve been talking about and putting off forever. I ended up winning narrowly after a vicious bloodbath of slaughter. I had to adjust to the new Chaos Army book rules. Which, seem pretty good overall. Made some units weaker, others stronger. Some balance is maintained. Although I must say, Chosen Khorne Knights of Blood? Re-God Damned-diculous.
Kristyn returned to me from Canuck land on Saturday and we had a lovely evening of KFC and Royal Tannenbaums (thanks to Kent for getting it for me). What a fantastic film. It s very encouraging to see some wholy original come out of Hollywood. Every now and then a Tannenbaums or Momento will come along and makes you temporarily forget about all the Pearl Harbors and Jurassic Park sequels that Hollywood assails us with.
In other news, we re starting a new D&D campaign Thursday. Darkan is DMing this one. My campaign is slowly winding down. My players have gradually attained god-like status... making it harder and harder to give them suitable opposition in a campaign setting devoid of magical creatures or beasts. In the new campaign I m playing a Half-Orc Monk. The very idea makes me laugh. Should be a very unique character. Love it.
-Bampf
PS. on an unrelated side note- Scalles Restaurant sucks. Don t go there. Ever.
| | | Alright, I ve heard the outcry of my loyal readers. I ve let the BampfBlog(tm) fall by the wayside a bit so I m gonna try to make up for that. Gonna make a concerted effort to be more regular [insert favourite bran joke here]. Things have been a bit frenetic as of late. Work has been killing me. I mentioned my immutable deadline last week... it arrived Monday in the form of a couple guys from our Houston office. Had to get my COM component to play nicely with their COM components, so obviously I needed to make sure my stuff was ready for the fusion. Ended up staying late Friday and coming in Saturday. So much for my opportunity to carouse with the guys while Kristyn frolicks in the frozen northern tundra. Of course once they got here my peice worked great and theirs barely worked at all, so much of my work was for naught. Talk about frustrating. To unwind I ve been soothing my frayed nerves with some Neverwinter Nights. I m very impressed with the game. They did an incredible job replicating the D&D (combat) experience. Got to do a little multi-player with Kent. That s great fun. As long as I can keep him off that damnable EQ I can foresee us playing a good bit more. Anyway, my deadline has come and passed, Kristyn returns in a couple days... things are heading back to near normalcy. Stress limited to house/job/moving/wedding woes. Thank God.
Made my first mortgage payment mere minutes ago. Harrowing. One down only 359 to go. Ug. Oh well. As long as things don t get any worse financially we should be able to pay off pretty early and have a nice solid hunk of equity for a dream house (once Kristyn starts raking in the dough). I dare to dream.
Tomorrow is my birthday. Drawing ever nearer to thirty. Won t that be ghastly? Thirty. That s old. No solid birthday plans as of yet. We ll see.
Well, I must be going. Look for more posts soon... like I said- gonna try to be regular. No promises, though.
-bampf | | 7/9/2002 12:23:55 PM Power Puff Girls and Burning Canucks | Comments (1) |
| Kristyn and I enjoyed a nice lazy weekend. We started things off right with a trip to the movies. Turns out I was mistaken about the Power Puff Girls release date, it opened mid last week. So as true Cartoon Network devotees we made a revered pilgrimage to see the film. It was great. Really well done. Writing and story were super (PPG and MoJo JoJo origins revealed!) and the animation was excellent. They really utilized the big screen format to make it look like more than just a TV episode super-sized. The only down side was an abominable Dexter s Lab short that preceded the film. One of the best films I ve seen this year. Overall, I d put it behind We Were Soldiers, and slightly better than Spiderman. I m continually blown away by the creative genious in the Cartoon Network stables. Pretty sad when the smartest programming available today is mostly animated shows.
After the movie we were able to indulge in our Angies Coffee, Crossword and Cringo ritual followed up with some Jyhad back at the store. We taught Kristyn to play, although she spent a sizable portion of the game in a confused haze she managed to outlast Rob and I. Saturday was consumed with sleeping and Stan and Deb s anniversary party. It was a fun time. Lots of good food. As I said in my previous post, I don t get to see that side of the family nearly enough. Everyone there seemed relieved to hear that the wedding cruise got canceled (save April who lamented her missing out on a free vacation)... more and more I m kinda glad that things happened the way they did as more and more family members reveal how opposed they were to the idea of getting on a ship. Simple country people I suppose...
Sunday Kristyn returned to Philly amongst the smoky haze of burning Canadians. Pretty bizarre. You could smell the roasted healthcare socialist, wannabe Frenchie, hockey lovin freaks! Don t see (or smell) that everyday, huh? I spent the majority of the remainder of the day painting and assembling my Void army. I m anxious to play a game. I think it s a pretty cool system. We ll see how my Junkers do.
Kristyn keeps giving me updates on the progress her and her mom keep making on the house. I fear I won t recognize the place when I see it next. They ve done some major reconstructive surgery. I m sure it ll look good... in a scary Trading Spaces kinda way. Kristyn keeps reassuring me I ll like it... she almost has me convinced. Almost. I won t find out for a while though as I ll probably be in the mid state the next two weekends. The Turnpike toll booth guy might start to worry about my well-being.
Well enough for now, I have much work to attend to... and a rapidly aproaching (immutable) deadline.
-bampf | | | Just got the news. Ted Williams passed away today. I pretty much gave up on baseball after the '94 strike but used to follow it pretty religously. I always had the opinion that Ted was the greatest hitter of all time. No questions asked. That was despite missing several seasons to serve in both WWII and Korea. He was an icon from a time when baseball meant something.
When I look at the bygone sports eras I only get more and more disenfranchised with sports today. Nothing but drug addled, wife beating, ego-maniacs. Sad. Chad has argued with me that sports have always been that way, it was just less publicized in the past. I tend to disagree, a few Ty Cobbs not withstanding, athletes weren t always posturing, trash-talking, criminals. Having rap sheets more impressive that their on the field stats was the exception then, not the norm as it is now.
I better stop before I really get going. Don t want this to turn into a rant... save that for another day. Just wanted to pay due respect to a great ballplayer and man.
-b | | | As promised, I began my weekend s sleep recovery attempts in earnest. There were only a couple hours all of yesterday where Kristyn and/or I weren t sleeping. I slept in til noon, then took a couple naps in the afternoon whilst we enjoyed the Cohen bros comedic genious that is The Big Lebowski. Then Kristyn slept most of the evening away. It was glorious. It was way too damn hot to do anything else anyway. Friggin heat.
Despite the slothful waste of most of the day, the night was quite eventful with Evan and Kyle bringing a nice cache of illegal fireworks over. There was much pyrotechnic joy to be had by all. Fun fun fun. Followed up with a game of Jyhad, where I smacked down all comers. Bow before the powers of my Ravnos Minion Suck and Restore deck! A fine day all in all.
Hopefully there ll be more of the same for the rest of the weekend. We re looking for maybe an Angie s run tonight. You can never go wrong with the Zingo. Hopefully we ll be able to round up a crowd for the trip. It s been a while since I ve been to Angies with a group of more than 2 or 3 (and usually just Kristyn and I). Used to be 6 or 7 of us would go several times a week. We d Quake til 11:30, then hit Angies right after... get to bed before 2:00... became a regular ritual... and this was on weeknights. Twas madness.
Saturday is Stan and Birch s (my uncle and aunt... Birch being short for Birchfield which is my aunt s maiden name that we used to avoid confusion over having multiple Deb Smiths in the family) wedding anniversary party. So I ll get to hang out with my dad s side of the family. They re always good for a fun time. Don t get to see them as much as I d like. Proximity being a major factor. Have to bring them all up to speed on house and wedding news. I just hope the heat recedes a bit, otherwise it ll be miserable picnic weather. Either way, food should be good. Many good cooks on that side of the family.
Well enough for now. Look for more soon... I m trying to do my best at keeping these updates as regular as possible.
-bampf | | | Wow, for the first time since settlement, I ll be in the area for a weekend. I can rest my weary car for a bit I suppose. This weekend should entail some serious sleeping in... haven t been able to do that for about a month. I need those weekly sleep-in-til-1pm sessions to make up for the sleep I typically deprive myself of during the week! Hopefully Kristyn and I can have a nice relaxing couple of days. The combined stress of the house, wedding frustrations, fruitless job searching and pretty much every aspect of our lives being in total flux has taken its toll. Some rest and relaxation is definately needed.
Maybe we can take in a movie. All the good ones don t come out til next week (Power Puff Girls, Reign of Fire) but apparently there s a small Indy theatre in Harrisburg (Midtown Cinema)-- maybe we ll be able to check it out. They re showing The Importance of Being Earnest. I m a sucker for Oscar Wilde. Of course we could go see Windtalkers (which I was dying to see until I read the reviews) or Minority Report (which I was dying to avoid until I read the reviews... intersting dichotomy there). We ll see.
If anyone is interested, Ben and I found the coolest free download tool... a program that creates 360 degree panoramic pictures. Also included was a java applet to view them. I usually try to avoid putting links in the Blog due to the inevitability of dead links but this is too cool not to share. Go to www.bampf.com/360 to see my living room. I ll warn you, it s a big picture... loading times may be long.
-bampf | | | Been a while since I made an entry so I ll try to fill in some gaps. Been an eventful couple of days. Started the weekend out with some serious high drama. Our lofty wedding-at-sea plans were unceremoniously dashed against the coral reefs of cruise line incompetence. As it turns out the Princess Cruises wedding ships (the ones with onboard chapels) will be in the Mediterranean next summer rather than the Carribean as promised! So no cruise, no wedding, no nothin. Bastards. I employ all my readers who ever plan to take a cruise... fuck Princess. Bastards. So in a frenzy we scrambled for alternatives. Options were severely limited since we already had a reception booked (based on the dates given to us by Princess... fuckers). In the end we decided to do a wedding/reception combo at the Holiday Inn. I think it ll turn out fine. Not exactly what we wanted, but in the grand scheme, what we really wanted was to be married, and we re certainly getting that.
It was Games Day weekend, so I made my annual sojourn to Baltimore for the premier GW event. I ve been there every year now since '96 save one. GW had us take our store Lord of the Rings table down but we had to man the thing. So a bunch of us went down and ran games and demos all weekend. It was very cool. Got a lot of compliments. Had a ton of fun. It was exhausting though. Friday night we made our traditional trip to Phillips for consumation of crabs. It was a great time. Rob, as always, displayed his god-like crab devouring powers. There were three of us fat guys at the table and Rob had about 4 or 5 plates AFTER we stopped! It was insane. The only reason he stopped was because we had to take Tommy (one of the kids from the Guild) back to his hotel before his mom went into hysterics. Otherwise I swear he would have been there all night. 'Tis no man. Tis a remorseless eating machine.'
It s been interesting to see how the GD crowd had evolved over the years. We ve been going down with a store group for four years... each year adding a few new faces, and losing a couple old. Rich and I being the only constants. We ve had some great times over the years though, that is for sure... the epic ice battle being foremost in my mind (and the minds of all involved I m sure). The event itself has become sort of dull and redundant to us veterans, the trip is much more about the experience than Games Day itself.
After GD I headed off for Philly and more house stuff. We added trim and attached the door to our newly constructed closet... just about wrapping up all the building stuff. The rest will mostly be painting and decorating, which largely falls in Kristyn s hands. Getting into the home owner groove, I bought a lawn mower. Not a normal mower- one of those manual, motorless, push the blades round and round types. For our tiny yard getting a real mower seemed a waste. In any case I got to mow our lawn for the first time. Exciting huh? I m all home-owner-y. Just need my white picket fence now...
-bampf |
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