2009-09-29

Dream Blog - Fuckin' Midna

Not much to describe; A lot of it was fuzzy, and some parts were pure fanservice to me; Of which I will not include. If they weren't obvious, too bad.

Apparently, John, Brien, and I were driving away from some upper eastern state; I guess something happened and we had to get out of there. So it's a roadtrip dream for a while, that is until we come across a bridge made out of pretty rickety stuff, something noone would ever drive a car over. Well, turned out we couldn't drive the car over it, so we hitched up and carried our stuff over to the other side; The area was extremely densely wooded, very large tall old trees, and we could see a motel not too far away. I kidded, and since I knew it was a dream, was like "Oh man, guess we can't get across." John pointed out that the floating logs in the mire below could be used as a bridge, but not seriously. Again, since I had control at this point, I just jumped down onto the logs, a good 30-50 ft fall into a alligator and log filled pit. Much to my surprise, the gator's had no intent of attacking anything, and I just walked across to the land while brien and john walked down a cliff calling me an idiot. I got bored, so I pissed off a gator intentionally just to see what it would do; It didn't do anything* except hiss. Oh well.
Anyways, we walked to the hotel through some foresty path, which was a little rundown, apparently everything had been abandoned like some sort of zombie apocalypse dream. Though, there were no other people around John did have a .45 like sidearm, which was nice, brien was just brien, and I didn't have any weapons. We went it, the place still had power, and set up camp on a higher floor, the water as a little murky so we'd have to move forward eventually; But with power we could survive a little bit. Somehow, Zach was able to join us, and we chatted it up, he seemed to know more about what was happening, but it was all cryptic and didn't make any sense.
Somehow there's a memory gap here, and we're entering this city which had been mostly abandoned, this odd side plot of this little Midna clone chick constantly thwarting our adventures came clear; It was like a little demon, exactly like Midna. Apparently it had the hots for John or something, but it was trying to kill us as we went through the city to the center or somewhere like that.
Well, since it's entirely fantasy at this point, I can't clearly remember how it ended up this way, but Midna became our friend, and it turned out that this other demon was following John, because he had a pure heart, and only once two pure hearts could combine could she attain "ultimate power". Well, Midna happened to have one, and at some point John and Midna realized this; Demon shows up, takes the pure heart (which, I liked this detail that the "pure heart" was purely glitter; It had no effect being added or removed to either person) and morphs into this giant cobra-shiva-rampage monster, and begins trying to kill John and Midna.
At this point it get's interesting, because we get a lives counter* and a equipment list, and start trying to fight off a rampaging beast. Of course it summons multiple other beasts to help it wreck up the place; all cool looking and somewhat reminiscent of "Inhumanoids". But my dad, dad's brother, and plenty of other familairs showed up, each with special abilities to help us construct traps to try and kill the beasts. Dad's bro (also named John) was a demolitions expert in a lab coat with welding goggles and gloves, and we used him the most because we could lure the monster to a building rigged to explode, and do some serious damage to it
So we continued running and crazy climbing things trying to stop or otherwise kill the monsters, John and Midna equipped ethereal weapons and constantly were moving and firing green glowing arrows at it like Hexen; I dunno what happened to everyone else.
At some point, we got cornered by all 4 monsters, and the large one declared victory, but somehow there was a blackout and explosion, and everything went black.
After awakening, the entire city was destroyed, it was very dark, the sky has a dark reddish tint and smelled of death, lights were barely glowing, and kelly, me and brien were the only ones nearby. I picked up a steel pipe and kelly had a crossbow and brien had a rock for bashing popo's with. Anyways, apparently, the world had ended and those monsters had completely destroyed civilization as we know it, which was great, given what's going on at the moment.
Ran into a stupid chain gang, rummaging through a car, I queried them for info, fought them, won easily (apparently, knowledge of martial arts went away too) and they told us the scoop and let us join their gang. Which included running around stealing things out of cars. So, then we began the quest rummaging through this destroyed world to find our friends.

Alarm goes off!

* Missing gross details only I care about

2009-09-28

Dream blog - New Mexico Bones?

Odd New Mexico Dream

WEll, not like my usual ones that are action oriented with a lot of violence, killing, and superpowerful weaponry. this one had a much stronger emotional feel, touching on some complex areas.

I don't remember how it really began, but a lot of familiar faces from the Palace showed up, and apparently we were somewhere in New Mexico for a festival of some kind. It seemed to be a wine deal, yet there were plenty of activities for the families to participate in, such as rail-carts, carnival games and the regular fair businesses. The palace guys all split up, and I remember messing around with skee ball and some other generic novelties before we met up for some authentic New Mexico chile in the food court. Times were pretty normal seeming, plenty of razzing and videogame discussions.
What was odd though, was that the camera and point of view would be switching from first to third person frequently, and there were two odd characters dressed in 1800 style pinstripe suits and black tophats, looking exactly like corporate fat villians, complete with monocle, white stache and that smug grimace associated with so much pork. Apparently these two kept having heated discussions on some topic, but only appeared in the background as whoever was filming was pretending to be a art student and making really nice framed shots of multiple things at once for a good composition in film.
Anyways, eventually we all got up to this little stadium deal for the rail karts, which was a short series of solid steel tubing and carts that sat on them, just like any old toy rail cars you have seen; Except these were ridable, and people were taking races on them (4 at once could compete) but generally the lightest person would win.
So, after watching them talk about this for a while, I went on the kart thing and so did amanda, we raced, but the jerk giving us the start cue made me lose a lot of time by declaring start before I was even in the cart. But I caught up, popping wheelies on the rails to gain speed coming down hills. But I slowed and let her win; Was pretty fun to have a lot of people cheering for a rigged event.
The camera was also noticing the two tophatters in the front row, constantly speaking to eachother about something that was getting noticeably more grim, people overhearing their conversation looking worried and confused at the pair. Cue montage; And as the camera goes to listen to their conversation and I was dismounting the kart, we see a zoom out of New Mexico and a small story unfolds.
Apparently, there were gold mines in new mexico at some point; And the man on the left (Chesterfield? I can;t remember his name) had been a descendant of the family that founded one of the mines; Now the mines lay in secrecy so that the US government could not track the gold incoming and would basically be a black market deal; The business was run successfully up until Chesters era; His father had always explained that one of the mines was never to be investigated or opened; and declared that any man found entering or exploring the area would be killed on sight. But he explained that he and a buddy snuck up there, assuming that it was to hide the largest gold deposit; And they snuck up there near dusk, and upon entering this small hole in the ground, they saw a extremely heavily boarded and partially caved in mine with no markings at all, and a large supposedly tool shed on the right, the roof was covered in dirt so as to be invisible to aerial spies. Though, the damn fools decided to open the shed in hopes of discovering more about the hidden gold stash.
Well, far be it from my dreams to exclude the paranormal, but inside was a fully assembled dragon skeleton. As stupid and generic as that sounds, it wasn't the fact that a perfectly assembled set of bleached bones was there, or that it looked very menacing, or even that it was a generically creepy setting; There was a completely different feeling, similar to the kind that you get when you know someone is watching you; When you feel a spiderweb drape across your neck even though you weren't moving; And especially that horrible sensation you immediately get when you know something is very very wrong and your life is in grave danger; both boys were not scared; This wasn't anything to be afraid of, yet they instantly whitened from fear. The camera did a nice pano-zoom behind them, and this eerie noise began to creep in as the two freaked out and slammed the shed shut, forgetting to place the lock back on the doors. The noise sounded like the whispers and moans of a thousand dying people, including children.
Snap back to present day times, the two continuing their conversation. However, as I was chatting it up and helping someone's kid get on the go-kart, you could overhear Chester say something to the effect of ìand I'd never seen so much gold in my life!î The other man nods, but immediately everyone in the crowd got that feeling again, looking up and around wondering what was happening and why everyone suddenly got chills.
Without any warning, this deep growly voice emanates from the ground as a large skeleton dragon claw emerges, and pulls up (you obviously guessed it) that same dragon skeleton; with a few aesthetic differences. Mainly, instead of bleached white bones, they were slightly yellow, some with reddish strips in them as if the creature was rebuilding it's body piece by pieces. If you are familiar with the concept of ìlichî think that. It screamed at the men, lifting and staring down the two yelling multiple things in multiple voices, something no living creature can do; ìThat is MY GOLDî ìYou traitors killed your father!î ìlying sleaze bags!î and other random pitched sounds, but the primary voice was well understood. The men got up and both pulled regular saturday specials and fired round after round in to the skull; to no effect.
I, meanwhile, was rapidly moving to scoot the kids away from the rails, but they kept screaming like everyone else. I managed to shuffle them to safety as everyone else seemed to run away. I looked at this monster and arrogantly figured I could take this; Wouldn't be the first dragon skeleton I killed. Well, ìkilledî meaning broken. Just before the beast was about to rend the two to ribbons via claw swipe, I grabbed a rock and baseball bat and hit the rock into it to get it's attention.
Whooops.
It turned to glare on me, full force of it's psychological pressure bearing down on me; But luckily, since I had meet the real ìsatanî face to face before, this was peanuts. I stood there and yelled some generics at it to make myself feel better. ìLeave us alone! Go away!î I felt pretty good about the situation, I had plenty of space to run around in, and a weapon, and this thing was made of brittle bones. If I could get a strike in I'd be okay.
But, the creature was a tad more powerful than your average physical entity; I guess the fact it was a living skeleton should have queued me in on that. IT looked at me, then looked at it's target getting away, then smiled, looking at me again and began to try and crush my spirit. ìYou would lose your own life to save such evil men? You truly are a fool...î It leaned down, and reached out for me. So I bashed one of it's complex wrist bones with the bat, jumping out of the way. It reacted like I had hurt it's wrist, and looked at me again as I retorted. ìIt doesn't matter who, as long as they're people I'll do my best!î
the dragon looked at me with a quizzical, yet mocking glance, smirking as it leaned down and folded it's arms, still mostly in the ground at this point; Stared directly at me, hollow eye sockets suddenly aglow with a dim orangy red light. ìDo your worst.î
I Ran in, and bashed it's skull as hard as I could. The shock rang through my wrist like hitting a concrete pillar, and I knew I was good as dead. The thing didn't even move, no flinch, no crack... and from personal experiments, I know that that hit is good enough to show damage on any material I had ever encountered. But this didn't show any at all... nothing moved. I backed up, and the dragon began pulling itself out of the ground slowly, showing that it was a complete skeleton. I lost it at this point, and began rapidly hitting it's head over and over, backing up, trying to do something to stop it; but it kept it's skull low, and continued glaring at me as I began to run out of ground, it's newly extracted tail whipping about like Ridley's, smashing up the bleachers and rail karts; which had surprisingly been untouched the whole time; I guess whoever made the movie set wasn't sure how long these scenes would take.
I didn't drop the bat, but the dragon finally stood on all fours and shook some dirt off, it had some pieces of flesh clinging to it's thighs and waist, but not much. Oddly, the flesh was complete, not rotting or in disrepair at all, as if it was a complete being that was simply ìnot all hereî. It looked at me with a neutral expression, declaring ìI want your spiritî before snatching a claw at me, which I expertly dodged via a low roll; though, I guess it had other powers because it's other hand came out of the ground and got me.
After being yanked under the ground and back to the surface, which hurt like hell, getting indian burns on your neck, legs, and scalp; it held me in front of it's face, I struggled to get out of it;s grip, but it held on correctly; Just enough to barely suffocate me, not enough to kill me. I wasn't sure at this point what it was trying to do, but I had a strange feeling it wasn't intending to flay me quite yet; Why I wasn't sure, I tried to hurt it, but with zero success. And those bastards that caused this ran away, the chickenshits. I could see police officers running out with shotguns to start blasting this thing, but I doubt they understood what the people were screaming about.
Anyways, without any real warning, the thing opened it's jaws and lowered me legs first into nothing; I mean, it's a goddamn skull, we've all seen the classic ìskeleton drinks wineî gag right? Well, turns out something like this isn't exactly the same, and to my own horror, it had a complete body internally, I could see it but only from certain angles, as if it's outwardly transparent body had disguised it's organs and real muscular tissue.

This part gets a little... squishy, so if you don't want to know, don't continue.

I'm not one to be unfamiliar with dragon gullets; and being swallowed alive and whole was at least thankful, minus the fact that in reality this would be one of the most horrible deaths conceivable; Asphyxiation with an acid bath + being rubbed with grinding stones. Sounds great, right? Fuck people who enjoy that. I hate em. But, lucky for me, as I tried my damndest to escape, but with obviously no success, everything kind of faded out, as if some sort of static field was creeping up my body, eliminating random pieces of existence one at a time. Luckily no pain was perceived, but being dissolved like that instantaneously is rather frightening. And not fun at all.

Well, maybe this part was not squishy. That's ìVore Liteî for ya.

The camera at this point looked as the police began to shoot at the skeleton, doing nothing of course; And the monster obliged them by spitting out my clothes onto the bleachers, which contained my ID and other information they could use to confirm who was lost. The monster then sank into the dirt again, slithering back to where it came, leaving the crowd with a odd event to sort out.
Fast forward to some time later, apparently my funeral was had at the edge of some lake somewhere, there were a lot of people cause my family loves to use family events as excuses to hang out; More power to em.
But, after doing a generic sad walk showing my folks and sister discussing my death, the two men with hats approached them and had a conversation. Skip forward to a large laboratory, in Area 51 style where some scientists were trying to summon that demon; Which is stupid, why would you need to summon it if you knew where it was? Obviously it wasn't going to rest until it's gold hoard was complete again. Jeese, what a stupid cast. Either way, I wasn't dead, I guess the creature could see through people just as good as it could totally destroy people. It's a little hard to explain, but it ìsharedî it's existence with me, basically absorbing the essence of what I was including my physical state and other attributes; Much like Raesir can do, only not as good. So, it and I had a lot of talks, and I grew to respect this demon; It had a lot of personality and stories to share; It led quite a sad life, something like Snake from MGS.
Anyways, we kinda ghosted up to the lab to watch and make fun of these losers trying to understand something they can't, simply because they didn't have enough materials to make a judgment call on what to do. Science always works because of the repeatability and applicability of tests; That's why you can trust it; You can prove a lot about gravity anywhere on the earth, just as you can basic newtonian physics. The more we know the more we are allowed to construct new hypothesis and test them. But anyways, being a part of another organism is kinda like being a satellite for a spaceship in a video game; You don't really get to leave ever, but you do get to hover around your owner. It also turned out that every single person that this dragon had eaten during it's lifetime was inside it, so there was a plentiful hoard of people there, that spoke some language I couldn't understand well at all, but eventually could figure out. Kinda 13th Warrior-ish.
So, we watched them try and built a primitive particle accelerator in order to create a channel for the thing to appear in. I suggested to the dragon that we should make it electrocute that fat guy, but he declined. He would get his dues, that tophat motherfucker. But it did let me go over and whisper at my folks this was bullshit and they should leave asap. Maybe Kelly is right, and ghost powers are awesome...

Alarm goes off. Groggily wake up, glad to be alive again.

Of curious note was the overlay of the map of new mexico; I need to draw it and figure out where it was located; If it does exist it would be a interesting trip to go there, although I must say that there are some seriously scary things out there in this world that do require lots of explaining. Dragon skeleton was really cool though.

2009-09-20

FAILURE ANALYSIS REPORT

EVENT:

On Saturday, September 19th, 2009
Multiple confirmed reports of flat and unappetizing beer piled in. Customers reported watery and flat tasting beer, as well as bottles that did not foam or pop when opened.

ANALYSIS:

On acquisition of the available samples, analysis confirmed that due to a manufacturing defect, the majority of the batch #3 was lost due to a sealing leak in the rubber o-ring of the bottle caps, similar to the challenger shuttle disaster.

In depth analysis shows that no step in the process was misaligned; All employees were intoxicated as preferred, and every procedure to the letter was followed. No single person or human error is at fault. However, the materials provided by a separate manufacturing firm were the cause, as the bottle caps provided were not compatible with the bottles, as was stated. This error could have been detected with a simple radius and sealing mechanism test; And this procedure has now been implemented into the brewing process to prevent further issues.

Exhibit #1:

The bottle on the right is correct; The bottle on the left is a defect.



As you can see, the evident leakage of gas has caused a net change in volume. This is directly indicative of a leak in the container. Also, the sediment ring proves that the fluid level has decreased over time. The cap is slightly ajar as well.

Exhibit #2:

The cap on the top with the synthetic white seal is the correct cap; The cap on the bottom is the defect.



Examination of the caps shows the first used caps, the superior, synthetic plastic white sealing ring correctly fits the mouth of the bottle we are using. The inferior, waxy gum cap below does not sufficiently seal the bottle, resulting in predictable cap popping and leaking. Both caps are identical in dimension, weight, size, save for the sealing gasket.

SOLUTION:

Beer brewing process now includes examination of bottle caps to inspect for matching radii and proper sealing rings.



I, Imaginary Z, as the owner of this brewing establishment owe a large and deeply felt public apology. Our customers should never have to face this kind of tragedy, as it not only leaves a bad taste in our mouths, but hurts all involved. You trust us to deliver a solid, consistent and refreshing product, and we have, through sheer accident, failed you. As our company motto stresses quality and consistency of delivered products, we have already corrected this error to prevent any future incidents. If you are a victim of this tragedy, please, visit or write and we will do all we can to make it right to you.

Sincerely,

Imaginary Zephran