Johnny and the Dread Pseudonatural Bison

Huh. This just popped into my head a few minutes ago and I just had to go track it down. It’s a post I submitted to a gaming forum lo and many ages ago (about six months, I think?)

It’s the single most hilarious gaming moment I could think of, which is what the thread was all about. And thinking of it just a moment ago I laughed out loud, even after all this time. Which is why I had to track it down again. And why my muse insists it must be presented here, in our new home.

The real punchline you probably won’t get unless you’re a gamer, though. If you’re really, really interested then go ahead and Google “Eric and the Gazebo”.

So here’s the post. Mostly because it popped into my head and insisted on being resurrected in some form or other somewhere. And since my muse ain’t bringin’ nuttin’ these days, I’m humoring her. Maybe she’ll get off her butt and produce something.

I feel a little dead inside when I go all day without writing something.

So. Here we go:

“This one is very recent but already my favorite D&D moment so far:

Okay so we’re all playing Kobolds in the Age of Worms campaign. Our sorceress just took her first level of Alienist (Complete Arcane) which was something me and Johnny never even heard of. We knew enough that she would be able to summon mutated monsters or something but never bothered to look into it further.
So we get a little crazy and attack this small army of lizard people who are attacking a keep (Encounter at Blackwall Keep). We meant to attack, do some damage and then run off and hide but when it looked like we were going to be swamped with lizard people we ran back to the stockade corral there for cover.
Rue uses her first ever summon monster spell since she took Alienist and summons a bison. The DM described the wierd looking bison too with all the pustules and tentacles and stuff because he knew Ally’s whole thing with the Alienist is to make the freakiest character she can, right?
Now it’s become kind of a joke with us that we call all her monsters by their full name like “pseudonatural giant fire beetle”. So after a minute or two of mentioning this and that about what Rue’s “pseudonatural bison” is doing…

Ally: Okay, I dismiss the pseudonatural bison. It’s just going to freak out the humans in the keep and I think we’re going to have a hard time with them anyways.
Johnny: What the hell’s a bison?
Ally: Huh?
Johnny: What the hell’s a pseudonatural bison?
Ally: That’s the monster I summoned. I’m an alienist now so when I use summon monster spells I use a different template. Like Celestial and Fiendish.
Me: He means the “bison” part. (to Johnny) It’s like a big bull thing.
Johnny: Oh.
Ally: So, anyways…
Johnny: I just never heard of a bison before. I mean, what the hell?
Ally: It’s just this big bull thing, like Mary said.
Johnny: Yeah but what is it?
Me: I said already. It’s like a bull or one of those big beast of burden kind of animals you see on the Discovery channel. Jeez it’s just a big cow, alright?
Johnny: Yeah but I never heard of that. Are you sure that’s what it is?
Ally: (grabs the Monster Manual) Hold on…
….
Ally: (points to something in the Monster Manual, moves her lips like she’s reading) Ah…here it is. “Bison. A type of gazebo.”
Johnny: Oh.
Me: (just staring at Ally with my jaw dropped)
…
Johnny: Okay, what the hell is a gazebo?

Now the thing that makes this just absolutely priceless is that Johnny isn’t just some moron. He’s a damn smart guy. I mean really smart. So smart that I can’t tell you what he does for a living because I could get in trouble.
And he not only got so thrown off by the “pseudonatural” thing that he didn’t recognize “bison” but he didn’t get the “gazebo” thing either.
Seriously. We didn’t even laugh at first. We were too overwhelmed.”

Get a room!

We’ve got I think the coolest GM ever. And really, to be perfectly accurate, I’d have to say my whole gaming group is probably the best ever, too. Can’t really have one without the other.

No pseudo-insightful post today. No ranting. No political, social or ideological position to champion. Just had a great day yesterday and I’m yammering about it. 

So, check it out. We’re playing Serenity RPG, which is set in the Firefly ‘verse (as in, Joss Whedon’s t.v. show “Firefly”, which you might know better from the movie “Serenity”). Essentially it’s a space western.

Now we’re coming to the tail end of the campaign and it’s looking like we’ll wrap it up next Saturday. All we had to do yesterday was fly our little spaceship back to the moon all the action originated on, set down, find out what the heck has been going on in our absence and prepare for the last session next week (in which we Big Damn Heroes put everything right and ride off/fly off into the sunset).

The thing that makes our GM the bestest (and our players too, I suppose I have to concede) is that we spent about a third of the entire gaming session finding a room for the night. Yeah, just finding a room in town to sleep for the night. And we had fun doing it. Absolutely had a blast!

Our first bit of trouble came when we tried to rent one room at one of two local hotels. They had more than one room available of course, but we wanted to horde all our cash. The whole motivation for our characters that had driven this entire campaign was saving up money to pay off…well, never you mind. We were trying to pay off something.

So we were dead set on getting one room, crashing and kicking off the last session of the campaign the next morning.

Then the hotel manager catches on that three guys and two gals were all trying to rent the same room for the night. Five minutes later he’s running us out of his place with a shotgun. Seriously, we tried to reason with the guy but when it came right down to a five-member mixed-gender party all sharing one hotel room…he just wasn’t having any of it.

Well, no problem. We’ll just head on over to the other hotel.

But, same problem. This was a rim moon (meaning one of those sparsely settled moons out on the rim of the star system) where folks don’t take kindly to that sort of behavior. Again, no dice. At least this time the manager refrained from actually running us off, even offering a discount on a second room just to get our business. So we took him up on the offer.

But the second room had only one bed. And the female characters, who’d become rather irritated with one another over the last couple of sessions, ended up fighting over who’d have the bed and who’d make themselves comfy on the rug. So the guys came over and broke it up before we (yeah, “we”, I was one of the girls tussling over who gets the bed) woke up the manager. It was pretty late after all.

So we decided at last that we’d just crash on the ship. We do have our own rooms there. Why we didn’t think of that from the beginning, I can’t say. I suppose we just got focused.

We head back to the ship but the guys decide they’ve had enough running around. It’s past midnight by now, you know. “Sheesh, we’ve already paid for the rooms!”, they say. Well, fine. We’re crashing on the ship.

Except the guys have the little electronic keys to the ship. It just so happens neither of us have one just then. So we hike back to the hotel. And we can’t get in. The manager has apparently woken up in the middle of the night and locked the place down because, well gee golly, there’s all this commotion outside. So since we already had our gear with us we figured, okay screw this. This is getting just stupid.

We yank out some warm clothes, bundle up our packs for a nice pillow and crash right there on the sidewalk outside the hotel. Done and done.

Except of course that the hotel manager was still up and around trying to see what was all that noise outside. And he finds the two girls apparently sleeping on the steps. Then he finds one of the boys has crashed in the second hotel room so he wouldn’t have to sleep on the rug in the first room (two beds per room, you see.)

We all get tossed out of the hotel. Don’t get our money back either. The manager isn’t having any part of men that make their lady-folk sleep out of doors so they can have a comfy bed. He ain’t hearing none of it neither. While he finds it all manner of noble that the women-folk are willing to take up for their fellers after being treated that way, he ain’t havin’ no part of it.

Now it’s around two or three in the morning. Late enough that it’s almost not worth worrying about anymore. Almost to the point where we might as well start a campfire, toast marshmallows and just wait for the sun to come up. But we’re stubborn. We’re gonna get a darned room in town tonight.

Again, we quickly forgot all about crashing for the rest of the night in our rooms on the ship!

We wake up a friend of ours in town (having made a bad name for ourselves at both hotels) and he puts us up for the night. No problem.

Except that guy’s thirteen year old daughter has an insane crush on the only unattached male member of our group. So she gets up in the middle of the night to go spy on him. And drops her lantern. Setting fire to the hallway.

We end up having to find a way out of the second story window (because the whole hallway outside is on fire before we realize it) without breaking our necks. Then, once outside, we find out the young girl is caught upstairs. So we have to find a way right back up there to rescue her. Again, without any mortal injuries.

Naturally, being Big Damn Heroes, we accomplish this. And find out in the meantime that it was she spying on the player character and dropping her lantern (distracted, I suppose?) that caused our friend’s house to burn to the ground at four in the morning.

So while we’re Big Damn Heroes, we’re not Especially Bright Heroes. We tell him about this.

The young lady denies it. (Denies sneaking about at night to spy on on grown men changing clothes and setting fire to the whole house? Who’d have thunk?) And her father believes her. Of course. Which means we must have caused the fire and are trying to divert blame to, of all people, a poor thirteen year old girl. What other explanation could there be for us telling such an awful lie?

Now bear in mind during all this that there is no Sheriff in town. Or rather there is but he’s off doing the thing we’re supposed to stop him from doing tomorrow (today?) And all of the folks in town are absolutely terrified of this guy. Even getting the hotel managers and the local friend to answer the door was difficult.

This whole commotion is what it takes to get a few people out of their barricaded homes and businesses and out into the street. To yell at us and tell us how awful we are. And how we’d all be charged with terrible crimes if the Sheriff weren’t a completely psycho.

At which point we remember what we came to town for in the first place, having figured out the Big Bad Guy (Gal, actually) was making her move in our absence. So now we find out there’s a psycho Sheriff to deal with as well.

We have a hard time getting any details about all this from the mob that’s come out to lynch us. But we manage it in the end. One of our characters is (thankfully!) the very diplomatic sort.

So now it’s sunup. And we’re very, very tired. Enough that our characters are all sporting two free Stun points of damage from fatigue (that’s not good) and a -1 Attribute step penalty (which is very not good). And today (next Saturday, really) is our showdown with the Big Bad Guy (Gal). And, apparently, the psycho Sheriff. And probably two or three other folks.

Our GM played us. Played us like a fiddle. Led us right down the road to a fatigue penalty. We’re such idiots.

We. Have. Rooms. On. Our. Ship.

Our own rooms. On our ship.

And here we are in the middle of the street at sunup, sporting fatigue penalties. Trying not to get lynched by townfolk who are already on edge from all the goings-on of the past week. And about to tango with the Big Damn Villains.

Man, I love my gaming group.

No, not being sarcastic. I really do love gaming with these folks. This is fun stuff!

A crap sammich is a crap sammich.

Whenever I mention my past and the things I suffered (and let’s be honest, as much of it as not of my own doing) people are always sympathetic and quick to be sure they’re noted as being sympathetic. And that’s all fine and good. I honestly do think that, though it may be a little sneer-worthy, it actually is rather important that it be expected behavior when some tragedy is mention that sympathy be shown. Even if it has to be somewhat false or insincere. I think it’s important for a healthy society to show intolerance for a lack of empathy.

But it always puts me in a peculiar position. Just as it’s considered appropriate to express empathy and sympathy for someone else’s tragedy it’s also rather expected that, once it’s shown, there will be reassurances that all is well, or at least will be well, in the end by whomever has suffered. That little reassurance all around that tragedy is a passing thing and all will be well in the end.

Jane Doe: I was attacked by ninjas the other day. One of them poked my eyeball out with a throwing star.
Jenny Row: Oh, that’s terrible! I’m so sorry that happened to you!
Jane Doe: Oh, well. I still have one good eye. And the eye patch is kinda sexy, don’tcha think?
Jenny Row: Well, every cloud has a silver lining!

The thing is…I don’t typically want to do that. I really do feel like I’m lucky, as odd as that may sound. As bad as my life has been, from what I’ve seen everyone else has had it just as bad. Certainly not the same troubles and tragedies exactly. And I can’t really say what the heck happened to everyone else in their individual lives. Haven’t a clue. But I know I’m just about as happy and content with my life as anyone else is. Maybe even more so. And I know that all the wounds I have and all the peculiarities about me that make my life so very interesting…well, maybe only a few people, if any, suffer those same things but they all seem to have other things just as bad to contend with in themselves.

For example, I may suffer from bouts of anxiety and even panic attacks at times. But I don’t have a husband who cheats on me habitually or whom I even doubt in that regard. I have nightmares more often than not that wake me literally screaming in the night. But I don’t come home after a long day of work and cry because I’m alone and no one loves me (okay, sometimes I do but I at least get to know that it’s not true). I can’t have children of my own and never will, barring some miraculous breakthrough in medical science. But I don’t have a problem with alcohol or, God forbid, something worse.

In all honesty, I think if I were to trade lives with any random person out there it would probably be absolutely awesome for about a week. It’d really be great. I would be so filled with joy at all the things that I suffer now being swept away and so many things that others take for granted being readily open to me. But I’m also sure that after that first week, once the novelty had worn off and I’d had my little vacation, I’d become aware of all the things that other person, who’s life I’d hijacked, had to contend with. And then about a month later I’d feel no better or worse about “my” life than I do right now.

So you’d think I’d have no problem saying, “Ah, well. I still have one good eye. And the eye patch is kinda sexy.”

But it’s hard for me. It feels false, insincere. Because there really are people out there who actually have it bad. And I mean bad in the sense that they really are more miserable than you and I are. They really are hurting worse than we are. They really, truly do have more to contend with. Enough that sometimes, perhaps all of the time, it’s more than they can take and still function. And so I always get just a little angry and ashamed. Angry that the sympathy being expressed towards me isn’t directed to people like them, who might actually find some strength from that kind of encouragement. Ashamed that it’s being wasted on me instead.

Seriously, folks. I’m fine. Sure I’ve got some troubles and some of them monumentally overwhelming at times. But no more than you. Different problems, sure, but no worse over all.

Why hasn’t this made national news?

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) - “A Buffalo-area man who runs an
American-Islamic television station is accused of beheading his
wife.
Orchard Park police say 44-year-old Muzzammil Hassan told police
Thursday evening that his wife was dead at his office. That’s where
police found the body of 37-year-old Aasiya Hassan.
Hassan is now charged with second-degree murder and police
believe the killing occurred sometime late Thursday afternoon.
Authorities say his wife had recently filed for divorce and had an
order of protection that had him out of the home as of February
6th.
Hassan is the founder and chief executive of Bridges TV, which
he launched in 2004 in hopes of portraying Muslims in a better
light.
Police didn’t know Friday if Hassan had an attorney.”

(source)

Yes, it was a rhetorical question. I already know why it hasn’t made national news.

Jellybeans

Okay, whenever I’m away from the interwebz for a while (specifically from my blog) I always return and post some crap. I never have anything particular entertaining or inspirational…or even extraordinarily interesting…to post right off. And being neurotic and slightly obsessive-compulsive I feel compelled both to post something and to apologize for it being crap.
The wise thing to do would be to wait until I have some not-crap to post. I’ve been away since, what, October? Would it really matter in the great scheme of things to wait a few days until the muse perks up a bit? But, no. Can’t wait. Gotta post something.
And come to think of it…I’ve found that posting some crap generally shames my muse into getting off her butt and posting something interesting. So maybe it’s not all bad.

So, yeah. There’s that.

But anywayz. To the crap.

I’ve been on a jellybean kick since I got home. I’m not going to go into where I’ve been just yet. I’m fairly sure I hear my muse getting to work on how to present that. (See? It’s working already.) But just before I left there to come here I’d been toying with the practice of rewarding myself with jellybeans.

It’s just a simple, silly little trick you use when you’re trying to retrain your behavior or how you respond to things. Very useful stuff for folks like me. You do something right, give yourself a treat. Positive reinforcement is dah bomb. It really makes developing healthy habits a lot easier, especially when you’ve spent your whole life doggedly pursuing extremely unhealthy ones.

So I discovered jellybeans. Okay, so not so much discovered. I was aware of their existence for quite some time. What I mean is that I discovered jelly bean apparently come in flavors other than “spoonful o’ sugar”. Like, for instance, peanut butter. Root beer. Cinnamon.

Buttered popcorn.

OMG, buttered popcorn flavored jelly beans.

I love you Jelly Belly. You purveyor of fine confectionery delights, you.

But back on topic.
See, I’d taken to carrying around a bag of Jelly Belly treats during a long period of very intense personal behavior modification while I was away. And when I returned home I brought some with me, espousing to my spouse the wonderful discovery I’d made. We went out right away and purchased three big two pound bags of assorted Jelly Belly jelly beans.

I am so gonna be fat by age forty.

But here’s the thing. Yesterday morning I made breakfast for hubby for the first time since I got home. Had really kinda been looking forward to it. Though I’m rather peculiar about just which particular domestic duties I take a shine to and which I shun, this one I’ve always really enjoyed. Making hubby breakfast.
So I get up and put out some clothes for him (my way of saying, “I’m very pleased with you. Continue doing what you did last night.”) Went off and made breakfast. Chatted him up while he staggered in and batted around blindly until his hands found a mug of coffee. Served it up, ate it up, kissed him goodbye.

Then I was startled to find that somewhere in there, having not the slightest clue how he’d managed it without my noticing, he’d picked out something like thirty or forty popcorn flavored jelly beans and arranged them all on the counter to form the words, “I missd u.”

Now never mind for a moment that it was completely impossible for him to have done this without my noticing. There was simply no way I would have failed to immediately spot him rummaging around in my jelly beans. Nor failed to notice him arranging them in such an intricate pattern as to form words.
The thing that really startled me was what a complete kick in the ass that was. I literally gasped and didn’t breath for, I think, maybe 10 seconds.

I was completely shocked, totally surprised and so deeply moved by this that I nearly cried.

I stood looking at this little “I missed you” of jelly beans and just marvelled at it for a while. The meaning of it was pretty clear. He missed me. And more than that he apparently wanting to do something that would take my breath away for a while. He’d thought of me and had considered how I would react to this, somehow pulling off the Houdini-level magic trick of doing it right in front of me without me noticing. Still mystified by that one.
And he did all that just because he enjoys pleasing me.

That’s the thing, see. Anyone else, any lover in the past, I would immediately have responded first with a grudging internal, “Crap. What do they want now?” Only after that would I have enjoyed the gesture, having first realized the intent to get something from me. It never occurred to me to question why he’d done this. I knew intuitively.
Even looking back on it with a cynical eye I can’t think of any benefit he could have gotten out of it beyond the simple joy of doing something nice for someone.

He loved me. He missed. So he wrote it with jelly beans.

Makes perfect sense to me.

Now, what’s the point of this long, rambling account? Why am I telling you this?

Is it to illustrate my love of jelly beans with a bemusing anecdote?
No.

Is it an attempt to be inspirational about marriage? Love? Relationships? Breakfast?
No, not especially.

Is it a sadistic attempt to make you nauseous and cause you to roll your eyes a little at the disgustingly sweet “I wuv my hubby! He shwo shweet!”
Well, maybe a little.

No, mainly it’s to thumb my nose at Jenny C.

Jenny, you see, was the one that completely devastated me when she broke it off. You know, the one that not only broke my heart but had all manner of horribly hurtful (but totally true) things to say about me to explain why she wasn’t going to be around anymore.

Everyone’s got one of those, I think. The one that abandoned you in the throes of debilitating unrequited love but stopped long enough in the getaway to eviscerate you before they left. The one that left you convinced for months after that you’d never love again. That you were worthless, not good enough for anyone, a terrible lover in every sense. The one who’s memory haunted every following relationship with questions like, “Am I too clingy? Too emotionally distant? What if they leave me like Jenny?!”

My hubby wrote “I missd u” in jelly beans on the counter while I cooked him breakfast. Because he loved me.

Take that Jenny!

She had really fat thighs, too.

Sweeping the steps…

Okay, so I’m back after a long stretch gone and I naturally find there are a few hot-headed comments scattered around. Normally I’d go and respond to all of them individually but…honestly folks, I just don’t see the worth in bothering. I didn’t see anything there but some folks who are under the impression they’re intellectuals, patting themselves on the back. So I just went through and edited my responses in.

All that to say the comments won’t show up in the little “Recent Comments” section. If you’re really interested you can slog through and find them, though.