The Ramblings of my Disorganised Mind

Oooh, the end. Again.

But I'll only believe it when I have the cheque in my hot little hand. As opposed to my large cold hand, which... sheesh. Where do we get these sayings from anyhow? Like, I'm with Buffy (ie, Joss Whedon) on the "hand over fist" thing. I'm glad I ain't the only one who don't get it. Making money hand over fist. Put your hand over your fist. Does that make any sense to you? No? Nope, me neither.

Any other sayings/catchphrases? Can't think of any right now, but they can be a wee bit confusing. Comes from the oral tradition aspect, I guess. Like fairy tales. Grimm's were... grim. Disney has a lot to answer for.

Holy frijole, but I got off track there. (That saying makes sense, anyways). Er. Made another property/children agreement last week. Orally. It's now in writing and needs to be signed, then it gets lodged with the courts and it's all hunky dorey (hey. A good looking fish?????) But, I'll believe it when I see the signature.

I've been ripped off, and I know it, but I don't care. It's like, pay the man and he'll go away. My dad gets his money back, my mum gets hers and I can end cycle on this whole stupid episode. Clears the brain up a bit.

Busy social calendar this month, and not just for me. This is good. Number 1 son is grounded until mid August (go me!) but Nos 2 & 5 have birthday parties to attend and so do I. # 3 son has cricket sign ups this month; my daughter just had her choir audition. EnV lunch. A very good friend who shares his birthdate with #6 turns THIRTY this year. Good excuse for a party. Old man. Leo. Hair. Gotta love 'em. :-D

Number 1 & 2 sons have girlfriends. They're doing better than I am hehe. # 1 son's is a nice kid, although she does spend an awful lot of time on the phone with me. Which is fine, of course. Her mum's nice too (ironic coincidence there. She divorced an Aries and remarried to a Libra. I divorced a Libra and... er, never mind. Nothing to see here. Go away. I'm over that garbage now).

Had to laugh at my Aussie horoscope (news.com.au) today:

Right now, you are prone to feel vaguely dissatisfied with your personal life, especially the romantic side of it. NO. Really???? Mind you, it's difficult to be dissatisfied at a non-existent entity. Which is satisfactory, really. Too complicated. In social situations, there is an uneasiness or perhaps some sort of minor embarrassment on your part. Yeah, like I seem to have lost my ability to make any sort of conversation, let alone conversation that makes sense. If you do artistic or creative work, you may be more critical of it than usual, feel that it is not well received or appreciated, or simply feel a little dry and uninspired. HA!!! heheheeeee. Without realizing it, you are probably censoring yourself. Perhaps, but I haven't noticed. ;-)

I have noticed, lately, that it's more about what isn't said in the spaces between the noise that's bothering me. Small talk used to come easily to me (my dad was a highish-ranking public servant and I come from a family of intellectuals so I grew up knowing how to make "useless but important" conversation). Now, though, put me in a room full of strangers and I couldn't be bothered. And a room full of friends is worse. Not because I couldn't be bothered, but because I could be. Aquaintances and people I know only a wee bit--easy peasy.

I've been getting back into comp. games lately. Partly because I've been judging the "Writing For Games" competition run by Fantastic Queensland, but also because I realised I hadn't played in a while. A loooong while. And I need some fun in my life at the moment, I've gone all serious and mumsy irritable lately (see Go, me! up there). I pulled out Final Fantasy X and replayed it a few weeks back (That last scene still made me cry. Just a bit). And I went to see a film and noticed that EB was having a sale. And I had money in my purse. And made the mistake of walking into the bloody shop. Idiot. Sheesh.

Actually, not so bad. I picked up Civ III plus both expansions for a steal, and Morrowind for $9.95 (that debuted at $99.00+ when it came out). My comp (probably) won't play MW properly but that's OK, I'm due for a new one. This one's been in the family almost 8 years, with some decent upgrades, of course. It's still a decent machine. But it's getting borderline for new games (It'll do all the Sims with all expansions up to Unleashed, but hangs on Superstar and Sims 2 won't work. All the BG games with expansuions 1 & 2 work fine. No probs with MMs but MM9 has some video card issues. Handles Divine Divinity and Neverwinter Nights just fine, but MW is borderline. When the PC version of Fable comes out, I can fuggeduboudit).

Also picked up Arcanum for a very cheap price, which I'm finding much fun-ness. It's got an annoying interface but once you get used to it you can cope. (Planescape: Torment's was worse). The levelling up is a change for the better, though: it's fairly complex depending on what you want to do, and whether you're playing tech or magick or a class: a cut above the usual "fight beasties, do quests, get points and level up infinitum" crapola that is the norm. You get a maximum of 65 points to use all up, if you get to the maximum level (50), and you can easily botch up what you do with them if you're not careful. Of course, none of this makes sense out of context, but if you want some, just ask. ;-) It's good, a bit different: set in an equivalent of the mid 1800s, with people to meet such as, get this; Edward Teach the sea-captain. Duh. Or, should I say, "Arrrr." Shiver me timbers and get me Johnny Depp.

There's another one. Anyone who knows what that means "shiver me timbers" -- yeah, I get that it's probably a bastardised version of a sea terminology, but first causes, please -- feel free to point me in the right direction, please. In words of one syllable. I'm easily confused lately.

I decided to play this like I'm a D&D RPG computer geek with a problem discerning fantasy from reality (Um. Did I say "like"???). Usually, I play through a game and it's fun but I don't get over heavily into them.

This time, though, I've pointed Beth (yeah, that Beth. I always play Beth. She goes through your socks if you keep her bored for too long. Call her Mary Sue and have done with it, I say) at the game and let her go with it. And she's having fun. I must admit to a small crush on on of the NPC's, though, name o' Virgil. Yeah. I did say 1800s, right? Names like Virgil and Dr. Edmund Craig and Perrriman Smythe and Frederick T. Fitzgerald and Cynthia Wit are peppered throughout. So cool. Well, Virgil calls me Madam and apologises when he swears in front of me. Looks a little like Marcus Graham. There's also a hint of a dark past there, but he's obviously had an epiphany and turned his life around.... and he's there to protect me... er, I mean Beth, from harm's way. Not that I... er, Beth.... need...s protecting. Nice little melee ability happening there. Strong and charismatic is my Mary S..., I mean Beth. But Virgil brings the funny and the healing stuff.

I also have a nifty little dwarf fellow, Magnus, who's a tech specialist and a half Ogre, Sogg, who's perpetually drunk and very strong. And a dog. The dog is very important. His name is Dog. He used to be "Worthless Mutt" but once I stopped some half-arsed halfling kicking it to death (although given the melee skill of this dog I'm surprised the halfling was able to do that, but never let it be said that CRPGs were known for their realistic qualities), he changed it. Dog works.

Oh, and unlike some games I could mention *cough*neverwinternights*cough* you can't just nick people's stuff without being got for it. It sends your alignment through the floor, too, if you steal people's things or kill random villagers. And that is bad, if you're good. You can lose your followers, who tensd towards whatever alignment you are: and some will only join you if you're good, others if you're evil (Virgil starts out neutral: 0. He goes north or south of that depending on what you do). Magnus is good, and I accidentally cklicked on a villager during combat a while back. He throws out chiding comments (as he hacks away at the unfortunate) in a thick Scots brogue: "I don't understand why we're pickin' on such a good sort. I wonna be doin' this fer too much longer." And if we do do this fer too much longer, he gets jack of it and racks off. With whatever stuff he has on him. An' there's no a-gettin' it back, neither, missy.

There's some intelligence to the game, apart from the annoying interface and one of the quests which feature a bunch of supposedly good-aligned halflings indulging in rape, torture, and race-related enslavement, joking about it and NOT BEING ABLE TO KILL THEM FOR IT or in any way free or avenge their female victims without suffering the alignment penalty and screwing the quest. People, not funny. Really. The quest isn't the problem, but the positive alignment figure of the perpetrators is. Sheesh, even the guy in the Boil who just steals for a living and is involved in minor gang warfare gets a minus 10 to thirty-five. You'd think the miniature Ted Bundy impersonators with the genocidal tendancies would at the very least rate a chaotic neutral zero, but no. Good alignment, my Aunt Nellie. Pah.

Gave Beth the irrates too.

It can be amusing at times though. I was seriously considering setting up an Arcanum QOTD script here just for my own amusement but I couldn't be bothered.

I'm starting to get that hang of Civ III too (build cities early and often. Duh!).

I have another one on layby, for when the new comp arrives. But don't tell anyone.

Went to see Monster-in-law last night. Not that fond of Lopez, as a rule; as an actress she makes an excellent singer. Classy perfomance from Jane Fonda, as usual. The character lacked class, but that was the point. And, ohmigosh didn't that remind me a bit of my own MIL. And before anyone accuses me of unwarranted divorce-related ex's family bitchiness, without going into any detail, my MIL was a major reason why I excused the ex his behaviour for so long. She's a nightmare, in all honesty. I don't much blame her, either, but she is what she is and it affected the whole shebang, or, at least, provided a handy excuse.

The fiance feller, as written, annoyed me though. The man is supposed to be a sensitive, intelligent, very aware-of-what's-going-on-around-him doctor (he could describe Lopez's eyes down to the last jot and tittle) but he still didn't pick up on what his mother was doing icluding faking--or at least, exaggerating, her medical problems and hiring a waiter to pretend to be her therapist. Wouldn't want him as MY doctor). If he'd (the char, not the actor, who did a good job of what he was given) been written to be a little less sensitive or aware, then it would've worked, but as he was it didn't fly too well: he just came off as a wee bit doughy. Internal inconsistency, and all (even with the "I'm all she has left" lines thrown in). I kept wanting him to actually NOTICE the tension, but no. Wasn't the point of the film, I guess. They made a "mummy's boy" storyline out of a char who wasn't really a "mummy's boy" type. The character of Ruby was fabulous, best one in the film, imo.

Going to see another film sometime this week with a friend I haven't seen in years. He was in Brisbane, and somehow--I don't know--heard I had moved here and spent seventeen hours (all up, he says) on the phone trying to track me down, aware I was divorced (and therefore now "allowed" to see him) but unaware I was back to my maiden name (that he knew me as--I did say YEARS. I think the last time I saw him was my engagement dinner party I put on for the friends the ex wouldn't allow me to invite to the wedding. No, I'm not telling that one; let's just say it wasn't as obvious a pointer to his later behaviour as it now seems; there was, in fact, a very good reason at the time). Methinks he exaggerates. He could've phoned my father, for pity's sake. He's only here for the week for work so we'll see whatever's on when he can get away. The phone call was remarkably good for my ego though.

He's a Taurus. Another bloody horned animal (and in the bull's case I'm going to avoid the rude innuendo that seems to apply with them. Frequently. hehe). Caps, Arians and Taureans. The whole farmyard, right there. Get a Sagg and lets go hunting. Booyeah!

I wonder, briefly and uselessly, if there's any ancient significance to the fact that all the hoofs and horns are fire and earth signs. Probably has to do with the cooking and eating. From the earth we come and to the fire we eat. Ewk. Where the heck did THAT come from? Or, in seriousness, Orion or something. Who knows? (I'm sure someone does. Feel free to tell me if you do).

And why isn't there a chook sign? Hmm?

But enough. If you've gotten this far through my rambling.... WHY??? Surely there are better things to do. :-P

OH! Hope you had fun o/s, Liz. Email me to let me know when you're back. I got my passport application filled out today. STEP ONE. Step Two when I have a spare (haha!) $168-odd to actually pay for it. Soon. Ish. :-)

And the final word, from Arcanum:

"Who am I? WHO AM I? Lukan the Witless! Where I roam, the masses quabble in pertubisiveness and trepidunction!"

posted by Heather @ 8:28 pm