There Are No Good Songs About A Dodge Caravan, So I Got Nothin'

To quote Strong Bad, however passé it may be to do so in this day and age, "Oh crap!"

My van is Skeksis-free. It is also forward-motion free, and engine-turning-over free, and sitting in the parking lot at my work, more than likely becoming home to the gang of hooligan feral cats who live in the scrub woods behind the building. When the car started making the horrible machine-gun noise that my father says is the sound of the starter not getting a spark (but as he picked out special the van that has now eaten 2 radiators, a transmission, and a heater core in a year, I'm continuing to call that sound the "Alternator Fart", a sound I became uncomfortably familiar with the day the Artists' van shit the bed on the other side of NashVegas from home), I was convinced for one tremendously bowel-loosening moment that one of the cats had crawled up inside the P.O.S. van and been mauled by the fan, which is something that might be an urban legend, but still is enough to make me shudder.

There is currently a virtual prayer circle going on trying to force the Universe to make the problem be only in the battery, and not also the alternator or the starter.

I love my van. I love it. I just want it to run right.

***

I went to sleep at six p.m. due to car breakdown blues and I-stayed-up-waaayyy-too-late-playing-D&D sleepy vibes. As usual when I sleep in the early evening, I had dreams I know were really cool and can't remember a bit of them. I have to go sleep for real shortly, as tomorrow is group day, Imbolc, and probably another marathon session. We didn't finish CDHSarah's dungeon last night, but in our defense the power went out twice and (as you do) we ended up playing by candlelight.

Let me repeat this portion of the show. We played...a pencil, paper, dice role-playing game...by candlelight. Like Abe Lincoln if he were a modern geek instead of a dead one. So things took for-EVAH because we couldn't really see where the doors were on the map due to the darkness and the drunkenness (theirs).

Usual fanwank disclosure, blah.

I don't think anyone took advantage of the candlelight to buffer their rolls (which is called CHEATING unless you're a DM trying not to kill your characters), but I did get a witness called on me last night for the first time in five years, after I successfully rolled to detect hidden doors (1 or 2 on a 1d6) about ten times in a row. The Artist witnesses my rolls for me. And we pissed CDHSarah off really bad at least once last night by picking on her DMing, but I think she had forgiven us by end of session.

I got a Ring of Wishes, which I've always wanted, and got kudos for not using it first to raise my ability scores (I need +1INT to take the kit I want to take, but I'm going to move it up to racial max so I can take all the Druid special languages, and then splitclass to Ranger at level 10 -- a Ranger who already speaks centaur, pixie, nixie, treant, dragon, and so on? Booyeah. I'm using the Druid's Handbook rules for Natural Philosopher with this character.) I got a Staff of the Woodlands for freeing a sphinx. I got a lot of shit last night. And because even my D&D characters are hippies, I used the first wish to bless the harvest of a fishing village whose priest was being a fuckaround about making with the Resurrect on an NPC. (He was all bitchin', because Resurrect takes 3 years off the caster's life expectancy, and since he was old and had no acolyte he talked about payment before making with the spell, which is a priestly no-no.) And if things keep up the way they're going, I may have my own Druid Local (Druids have a worldwide network according to the PH and DH, which we express in our campaigns anachronistically in union terms) -- I'm answerable to Druid Local 517, in a subtle glarkware.com shout out. I already made friends with a wood giant in a blighted region with no Druid of its own.

Oh my god. I am never going to get laid again after writing that last. Of course, StarFucks God is married to CDHSarah, gets laid with reasonable frequency, and knows what page of the Priest's Handbook lists that issue, so maybe hope is not lost for the po-po-mo Dungeon Freak.

***

There are hibernating kitties all over the house, curled up in fuzzballs of various sizes. None of them, however, want to sit on my lap. If this were the summer and the last thing I wanted was a furry rug on my stomach or side, I would be so popular among the feline set as to deny reason. I'm a Leo, I shouldn't be surprised.

OK, OK, the media.

What I'm Reading

The Virgin In the Garden, which as I suspected is proving too nuanced and lit'ry for my current state of mind. I'm missing the allusions because my brain is too tired for cross-referencing, which with A.S. Byatt means I need to put that book aside. This morning I re-read Cause Celeb (again with the comfort Fielding) which is about my intellectual level right now.

What I'm Hearing

Bill Hicks, live in Chicago 1989.

"The door is a jar." Now leave me a comment.