The Mundanity Continues

  The polar vortex that plagued the area from Tuesday through Thursday has finally passed. The temperature has gone from -50 degrees to a much more tolerable 45 degrees. Let's hope that the super cold weather is done for the rest of the season.

  The Towers of Holding are being manufactured and the books, GM screens and plug and play tokens for the Judge Dredd RPG have been printed. Hopefully I'll be getting those soon. I've contributed to a Dice Coins Kickstarter in order to get a 10 coin set. Here's a YouTube video showing couple of d20 dice coins someone else ordered.

The set I want will consist of the following dice coins; d3 Cerberus, d4 Wizard, d5 Castle, d6 Cleric, d8 Ranger, d10 Skeleton Dragon, Percentile Phoenix, d12 Barbarian, d20 Lich and a Weather vane coin. As the video shows, each coin has a bump on the bottom that allows you to spin it like a top. You then stop the coin spinning by placing your finger on the edge. The first fully visible number to the left of your finger is the result. The Weather vane coin has words on it describing different weather conditions.
  I filed my taxes yesterday. I'll be getting back about $883.00 which will be split into my Simple and Serve accounts for Gen Con. Speaking of Gen Con, my hotel reservation has been made. I lucked out this year in that my hotel is only two blocks from the convention center. It's funny, the years when I made it a point to have the hotel reservation day off, I'd get a time when I could log into the housing portal that was 5 to 7 hours after reservations went live. This year I didn't request the day off and my log in time was 12:27 pm. It should be noted that the housing portal goes live at 11:00 am CST. I set up my hotel reservation while I was on lunch at work.
  I've been trying to lower my a1c but I'm not sure I'm making any headway. I have a fasting blood draw coming up on Thursday. I'm not sure if my a1c is one of the things they'll be determining at that time. I've got to stop the late night eating. It's not helping matters.

The Mundanity that is My Life

  My life, for the most part, as been dull normal with the emphasis on dull. On the plus side, dull normality means that nothing massively bad has happened. On the negative side, nothing really great has happened either.

  The avascular necrosis of my hips is bilateral and worse on the right. The orthopedic surgeon says that I'm going to need hip replacement surgery. The problem is my a1c is too high. I need to get it down from 8.5 to 7.0.

  I've backed several Kickstarter projects; the Tower of Holding, the Judge Dredd RPG, a set of zinc alloy gaming dice and a set of Randice random character creator dice. All the projects are fully funded and the first three have received their money and have started production. The Randice project still has 7 days to go. I'm hoping that they make their $13,641 goal so they'll throw in two extra dice. If nothing else, I hope the make their $7,105 goal so the dice will be engraved.

Yet Another Mass Shooting

  Ian David Long: 13 dead, 10 to 12 injured.

  More people dead. More bullshit from the GOP and the NRA. What more is there to say? Nothing changes. Nothing's ever going to change. The death toll will just keep rising.

The Body Count Rises and Pipe Bomb Mailing Trump Fan

  Robert Bowers: 11 dead, 6 injured.
  Gregory Alan Bush: 2 dead.
  More people dead and just like the Las Vegas massacre, nothing will be done. The NRA and the Fox Propaganda Network will do everything in their power to make these shootings go away. I'm getting real tired of these motherfuckers.
  On a different note, Cesar Sayoc, a rabid Trump supporter, has been accused of sending pipe bombs to prominent Democrats, liberals and the news media. The targets have been those regarded by Trump as his enemies. Trump's response and the response of other right wing shit mongers has been par for the course. With the exception of Vice President Pence, no one on the right has expressed concern for those targeted by the bombs. They're claiming the bombs are false flag attacks designed to swing the midterm elections in the Democrats favor. While Trump has done a generalized, perfunctory condemnation of the attacks, his tweets reveal his real thoughts. He's in favor of the violence so long as it serves his purpose and targets his enemies. We have to remember that this prick praised a congressman for assaulting a reporter as well as encouraging violence against protesters both while running for president and after he was elected. The only way Trump would denounce violence and mean it is if it were targeting him or his family. Even then he'd find some way to blame the Democrats for it. Trump and the right wing media call for unity while simultaneously riling up their bases with hate filled rhetoric then they wonder why the country is so divided. The Alt-Right is full of shit mongering fucktards and the GOP has nothing more than power mad maggots running it. The only voice of reason the GOP had among them, Sen. John McCain, has sadly passed away.

Sanctimonious Child Rapists

  Once again, the Catholic Church is embroiled in a sex abuse scandal. This time it's happening in Pennsylvania. It seems these sanctimonious pedophiles have been at it for quite some time. The events in Pennsylvania have led to New York and New Jersey investigating their dioceses for possible sex abuse. Add to this the sexual abuse scandals in Ireland and other countries and the scandal is pretty much worldwide. And to rub more salt into the wound, the Church has made it their business to cover up the crimes of their child raping brethren rather than protect the children. They're even fighting a bill that would extend the Statute of Limitations in regards to child abuse cases.
  I'm so tired of these pious motherfuckers and their two faced bullshit. These pricks rail against consensual homosexual relationships as being sinful and against God's will while they're molesting and raping children and covering it up. They look down their collective noses at the rest of us and have the temerity to think they have the right to judge us. They can't take the moral high ground anymore. It seems to me that the Church is in need of a serious beat-down.
  First and foremost, there should be no statute of limitations in regards to crimes like pedophilia, child molestation and rape. The fact that some of the accused priests can no longer be prosecuted because of it pisses me off to no end. Second, any priests convicted of these crimes or of covering them up, need to thrown out of the Church and into prison. Third, Church property needs to be seized and sold at auction with the proceeds going to SNAP. And fourth, people need to stop donating to the Church. Who knows how much of their donations have gone into protecting the child molesters in their ranks? There are plenty of worthy charities to give your money. Don't give it to these malignant perverts.
  Personally, I'd like to see these fuckers get what they really deserve, a massive ass raping. Here's how it would work. You lock up those individuals convicted of these crimes or of covering them up. A timer that they can't see randomly determines a time from 10 minutes to 24 hours. When said timer goes off, the prisoner is locked into a machine that fucks him in the ass for a random period of time. Once the machine is finished, they will be taken back to their cells and the timer reset. The fact that they'll never know how long it will be between ass rapings will add nice bit of psychological torment to the proceedings. I had considered having them get ass raped by a Coke bottle like the Khmer Rouge did to prisoners. It would have added the additional psychological effect that once their sentence was over and they were free, they would be reminded of what they went through every time they saw a Coke display. But I like Coke and wouldn't want them associated with ass raping.
  I'm going to end this post with a couple of YouTube videos regarding these events. The first one details what is currently know about the case and the other is of right wing homophobe and Church defender, Bill Donohue, blaming gays for the sex abuse scandal.

End of Summer Musings

  Gen Con 2018 is now a pleasant memory. I enjoyed some great roleplaying sessions and made a TARDIS dice tower and Dalek canvas bag. I would have posted some pics of Gen Con here for you to view but my new Galaxy s8 went schizo two days after I got home. Prior to Gen Con, the keyboard on the phone had kind of a dead zone in its center. Certain letters, like, the t, would be very unresponsive. It would take multiple attempts to get it to respond. I thought it had something to do with the screen protector I had installed. It was an inconvenience, but I could work around it. On Tuesday, things got much worse. I tried to open my Nagbot diabetes app other apps would open. Suddenly, my phones dialing numbers on my contacts list, trying to play music and opening YouTube. When I tried to enter text on the keyboard, 5 keys other than the one I pressed, would activate. It was a mess.

  Several things combined to cause the loss of my pics. First, I couldn't get my phone connected to the hotel's wifi. Second, the Flickr app on my phone wasn't set up to upload my pics automatically. Third, I didn't back up my phone to the computer using Smart Switch. And fourth, I failed to decrypt my SD card before letting the rep at AT&T do a factory reset on it. I thought that since the SD card was still in the device that encrypted it, things would be fine. Turns out I was wrong about that. A memory card expert at Samsung informed me that when the phone was reset, the passcode that could decrypt my SD card was erased and there was no way to retrieve it. Since my phone was still under warranty, they sent me a new phone. I had to mail the defective phone back to them within 10 days in order to avoid being charged for it. The box my new phone came in could also be used to return my old phone post paid which made returning it convenient. They sent word that the phone has been received.

  I'm still waiting for my mahogany Hex Chest and aged mithril dice set to arrive. I haven't received any emails from Elderwood Academy updating the status of my order. The only other order I'm waiting for are the two minis I ordered from Minuteman Miniatures. They make miniatures that have your face by scanning your head to create a 3D computer image. This image can then be attached to a body of your choice and the whole thing is then created using a 3D printer. I ordered a wizard and Dark Ages Viking version of myself. If they add more body types, like Victorian Age or Doctor Who, to their roster, I might order more minis from them. Their website states that they keep the scans so I can order new minis if I want.

Trump: Malignant Barely Literate Tyrant

  We all know that Trump is a xenophobic, misogynistic, sociopathic, narcissistic bully with a paper thin ego but it might also be true that he's practically illiterate as well. Take a look at this video and decide for yourself.



  As to his mental state, here's another YouTube video detailing what a psychiatrist thinks of Donald J. Trump.