For somewhat arbitrary reasons the theme of this particular party was H.P. Lovecraft and the horror mythos he created. Just as with the Shark Week party, my artistic friends provided theme-related food:

An interpretation of the King in Yellow

Cthulhu melon..

Front

and side

I would like to take a second to inform you that none of us actually ate any of the Cthulhu melon. Perhaps  we were restricted by some unearthly, ancient force; perhaps we were simply too frightened,or perhaps we were actually just frieghtened by the sheer size watermelon that originally came from (look at the diagnol picture and consider the scale given by the cup of straws and cake nearby). I can not say that the King in Yellow got off so easily.. leading to this terrible joke o_o:

Anyway, the primary reason for this party’s theme was because one of the main events was playing Arkham Horror. To those of you who don’t understand the horror of Arkham Horror, or mistakenly think it is simply due to the Lovecraftian elements.. there is also some horrible, as with the melon, in the sheer size of the undertaking (again, my phone doesn’t do a great job of capturing scale.. but consider the size of people, and my hat .. and the sheer number of pieces)

*nerd talk, feel free to skip*
If anyone is interested about the actual specifics of this game itself (assuming you are already familiar with the rules, which are much too complicated to go into here): We were playing with an Ancient One ( I believe Glaaki whose attack was simply to raise the terror track, defeating and devouring all if it reached 10. Due to a complete lack of Elder Signs and failure to get places quick enough, 6 gates opened with only 1 being closed. Thus with 8 players, we faced an awakened elder god (with a full doom track, though I’m still not sure that it should have automatically filled with the awakening) with a need for 8 hits per counter. At -5 bonus and a physical resistance (half off bonuses for physical weapons), this meant that we had 10 turns to roll 8 x 12, which is to say 96 positive fight checks (in layman’s terms, out of approximately 280-320 d6 rolls, 96 had to be a 5 or a 6 … before you throw in random factors caused by other game elements). Against (or right at, by my probably incorrect math) the odds, we successfully defeated the GOO (with the help of a sacrifice by one player giving us 3 extra turns), and Arkham, Dunwhich, and Kingsport were returned to safety. .. in other words, we somehow managed to win! ^_^
*end nerd talk*

Log story short, after a couple hours of playing, we all won… except for the game’s owner, who got devoured by an ancient god… meh, it happens.

Anyway, it was fun and I was glad to get to hang out with all my friends again. I really am going to miss them..

~Donald

EDIT:

Here is a picture of my friends.. also, another edition of the great game entitled “how many people can we fit on the couch?”:

Why is this? Well, it’s presumably because these things exist for another take on things, for adventures and the like, not the daily grind.

There have been games that did showcase the daily grind though, incredibly popular ones, in fact. The  Sims, for example, is the best selling video game in history¹. Why is it that when so much of gaming/movies/television was founded on providing distraction, providing colorful imagery and exciting adventure, that somehow the mundane became so popular?

And this trend does not stop with the Sims, it includes such movements as reality television and, I would say, blogs.

All of these present others’ lives within a semblance of our own, there is familiarity and yet an aloofness and excitement. In The Sims, the exciting element was that you got to micromanage a whole family in every aspect, time compression let you simulate events that are ever unsure in our own lives. Reality TV introduces various distortions, be it forcing people of unlike minds into closer proximity, introducing absurd challenges, or even simply the elements that the extra scrutiny add to people’s already odd lives.

And then there are blogs.. blogs offer us windows into people’s lives, but only what they wish to report. They provide a filter and give us access to part of a person’s life, but not that which they either don’t want others to see or simply think others won’t care about. And it is this limited portrait which produces intrigue, which produces excitement…

Well, if the limitedness correlates with the excitement, clearly this is one of the most exciting blogs ever! ^_^  So, other than a critique on the nature of the medium and a joke at my own expense, what shall I do with this entry? Originally, I intended to explain my lack of prolific blogging is the result of lack of interesting (and also freely admissible) happenings in my life, but I have talked (written) myself out of this because its a lame excuse AND I realized that one man’s tedium may be another mans enthralling subject matter. The Sims proved that everyday life CAN be interesting.

Therefore I have decided to use this entry to introduce a series of miniposts on the routine things of my life that have been busying me of recent. I hope that they give you a window into my routine life, familiar enough for the appeal of a reality show, but aloof enough to be intriguing. These miniposts should follow in (relatively) quick succession after this one. I hope you enjoy them! ^_^

~Donald Guy