Between the good and bad, that's where you'll find me, Reaching for Heaven

Indian givers...

I didn't sleep good last night because of this dumb cough, so I had to drag myself everywhere.

And getting called in on the day off that I specifically asked to have off, for that massively busy day they were expecting? What a bloody joke. The store was no busier than it usually is. And I have to call in tomorrow to see if they need me or not. I'm tempted just to have my mother call in and tell them that I've got that annoying cough and I need to rest. Because I do.

Next time they call me to come in on a day off, I'll just tell them, "No." I need my mental health days off, s'il vous plait.

Jerks.

The only upside: Siegey had a good night; her crew was taking a "family portrait" of sorts.

( Paradigm shift: Watching TV with headspace dwellers )

Wierd. Windows just tapped me about some update patches required for the OS on this comp, so I downloaded those a couple of minutes ago. And now the MxO client has an update going through, though I was aware that this was going to show up sometime soon.

( Paradigm Shift: Wracked Nerves and Neural Pathways )

And this I bring you more howlers from the Update Notes (Some of these are from the previous update, but I somehow neglected to post them):

"Bug causing Bells gang members to spawn in the ground has been fixed." Waah. That's gonna remove one of the funny sights that I've seen while running around Richland. I have a bunch of funny screenshots of gang spawn doing wierd things which I should post to the faction forum...

"Devs stopped using bleach on Plain Black Slacks" -- This has been one of the running jokes on the MxO forum.

"Devs hidden stash of bleach has been found and destroyed (More black clothing fixes)" -- Sounds like something I'd write to spice that up.

"The Merovingian has become more possessive (Grammar error at the beginning of the "Meet the Merovingian" mission has been corrected)" -- Gad, what does he want now? The real world as well as the Matrix?! (Yes, this caused hilarity among the Houseparty).

"Short jackets now maintain the correct texture when worn by medium-build females." -- This made me snerk, but I'm not sure why.

Just took down the Christmas tree in my room and started draping red and white Christmas lights over my windows; I'm cool with Valentine's Day this year... doesn't stop me from having that mischievous "anti-Valentine" icon here... Now I just have to take down the decorations around the rest of the house.

( Paradigm shift: the depressed Redpill )

This just in: In-game!Flood is off the hook. I just did the last critical mission, and unless the wretched devs decide to pull something out of their ears between now and when the next update patch goes through, which will probably be in a month or so, we're probably safe from more headspace-dweller headaches.

So... it was Thursday night when the rumors started to fly that in-game!Flood was the next casualty for the Canon Cannon; I first found out about it when I had "jacked in" for a meeting on roleplaying in the MxO. It wasn't a bad meeting, until one of the other players in the faction I'm part of came in and announced to the rest of the faction that Flood was going down for bungling (accidently or on purpose, it's hard to tell, since Flood -- either version, theirs or mine -- plays his cards so close to his dove-grey silk vest that you never know if he's got any) a meeting with some of the Merv's contacts. As soon as I heard that, I and my player character, Sieges [which I think is pronounced something like "See-gezz",], were both nearly sick. Of course, Siggie blurted out that she's crushing on Flood, even though she's never actually met him yet. (She's somehow never met him in my headspace either, even though the Snarky Exile is in there almost *constantly*, which is really strange: I seem to have some sort of firewall in there, or maybe in-game stuff actually has some bearing on the dynamics of my headspace dwellers, and this firewall will be unlocked once she does meet him, but I digress...) This nearly torched off a catfight between Siggie and another female player-friend of hers -- nice to know that I'm/we're not the only Flood fan(s) out there -- since this other gal was also crushing on him. I could barely focus on the meeting after that.

I unhooked from the damn game and tuned into Radio Zero-One (I've made it a habit to unhook from the MxO before midnight, my time. I even tried to port it into the game, since there's several ingame radio stations out there... but no such luck. I was planning to share the word with everyone I could get ahold of...), and as the night progressed, our Flood, who as I mentioned elsewhere tends to drink more when he's nervous (I recently found out that in-game!Flood is a bit of a drinker as well... Not the first time that's happened with this fellow: I figured out that he's a bit of a ladykiller long before that I found out that's true of his in-game shadow self. Looks like there may be something going on for real in my noggin). Not just his usual several mimosas over the course of an evening. This guy was clearly trying to get himself smashed out of his head... code... whatever. His reasoning, "Well, if my shadow is ending up dead by virtue of the Canon Cannon, I've every right to have one last gaudy night and end up dead drunk." And yes, he started fronting. It was all I could do to keep myself coherent, thus the drunk typing when I was trying to IM people. I shared some of this with he_dreams_awake, who managed to help me keep my head up... He even devoted a rant on Radio Zero-One, about the way that Paul "Canon Casualities" Chadwick has annoyed him and annoyed us. And he reminded us all that the Marketing Brothers' stuff has less bearing on what really happened in their/our world than it really seems. That helped us (I and Flood) pull our wits together a little... or at least, it did for Flood, until the bourbon he'd been chugging all evening took full effect and he passed out on the floor of the Houseparty's space in my head.

Next morning, when I awoke, I was still trembling with apprehension, and then, around noon when Flood finally woke up and I felt him moving around in my brain, I realized I was getting ghosts of his collossal hangover. Not fun. If anyone thinks I'm doing this for fun, they've got another thought coming. I didn't sign up to have a drunk or hungover Exile in there. I didn't even sign up to have Flood in there to begin with: he just showed up a day or two after I first discovered him, when I read his character sheet over on the MxO website (I thought he sounded interesting, but since I'm really not keen on sarcastic people, I wasn't really fond of him, just from the character sheet alone. Then I started hearing this snarky, dry-witted Exile with a BBC-esque British accent yarking in my headspace... the rest is history).

I have to admit, we started to resign ourselves to the inevitable: considering Morpheus's assassination back in May, we were bracing ourselves for the worst. And the worst seemed inevitable, since people on the messageboard and ingame have been doing nothing but bad-mouth the Monochromatic Metrosexual. I'd even gotten the wacky idea that if in-game!Flood got offed, I was going to create an alternate character, a male redpill this time, model him after Flood (bleached-blond hair, lightly tanned complexion, lean physique and all... even costume him in similar shades of grey and black, with a replica of The Gloves, which our boy wears all the time), and write up a sheet that suggested the new fellow was Flood's illegitimate son by some human. Not sure if the MxO-verse is ready for Exile-human hybrids, but we've got one in DegSep...

Things hit bottom last night, when one of the mission communiques from in-game!Flood ended with this cryptic line: "This is it. I'm finished. [...] I'm taking you down with me if it's the last thing I do!" People on the message board figured this meant the Snarky Exile was about to be deleted by the Machines or castigated by the Merovingian. I was hoping for the latter, but considering that in-game!Merv deleted the leader of a palace uprising among his Lupine and Vampiric guards, I knew what that could mean... I was even considering cancelling my game membership and sending an annoyed message to the game devs, telling them why I quit.

Tonight, I jacked in with a certain amount of trepidation... The details would take way too long to describe, but suffice it to say, he's off the hook. I was rejoicing as I jacked out and logged onto Live365 to listen to Radio Zero-One...

About that same moment, the snarky fellow came into my forebrain, asking me "What kind of preposterous designs do they have levelled against my esteemed self now?"

Said I, "Well, they're letting your shadow-self off the hook."

At first he let out a deep-throated sigh of relief. Then, probably completely embarassed with himself for his lousy conduct the other night, he promptly face-palmed, or face-gloved -- rather -- and left my forebrain fuming.

I'm getting a little tired of being jerked around, and that's why... Interesting plot developments, but someone remind the devs that the Exiles need their peace. There's an obvious Zionite slant in the devs, and it's really starting to bug me. Anyone who knows me, knows that I completely empathize with the Exiles: the Matrix is their home, and if it is taken down, it will be catastrophic for all parties involved. If anything, the humans should be siding with the Exiles in trying to overthrow the Machines; the Matrix would be better off with the Exiles running it. But the problem is there's distrust on both sides: the humans distrust the Exiles since they're, y'know, OMG TEH EV0L AIs!!111111, and the Exiles distrust the humans, since they haven't always fared well at their hands. Our Flood could tell you some horror stories about getting kicked around by some less-than-open-hearted Redpills. But the Exiles, as I know them, are willing to take the necessary risk and try to get the humans to see their point of view.

Sometimes I think I understand my headspace-dwellers' world better than the canon creators do.

And in the spirit of self-parody, since Flood himself is practically a walking parody, I couldn't resist a short headspace-dweller filk:

What do we do with the drunken Exile?
What do we do with the drunken Exile?
What do we do with the drunken Exile?
Living in my headspace?

Throw 'im to the game devs, let them have 'im.
Throw 'im to the game devs, let them have 'im.
Throw 'im to the game devs, let them have 'im.
Get him outta my headspace!"

Kidding, just kidding....

Well, if there was anything to convince me I probably made the right decision when I took the Pledge when I turned 21, besides the much more important reason that there's bad alcoholism on both sides of my thankfully estranged extended family, it would be having a hungover Exile in my headspace. This isn't fun. Neither was having him trying to front all last night when I was trying to IM people. Sorry about the occasional drunk typing last night, people! I barely managed to get him back under control, but thankfully, he passed out. Then the headspace crazies, including Adrien his brother, and Feronus the werewolf, decided to have some fun with him. They wanted to strip Flood naked and chain him to a street sign smack in the middle of Downtown in the Mega-City, but I told them that might make him an easy mark for whoever's trying to bump him off. Then they almost took he_dreams_awake's suggestion to "Cover him with mustard and tell him you have no idea what happened to him." I put in a comprimise: strip Flood and put some of his brother's cheap, off-the-rack clothes on him.

Needless to say, he didn't stir till noon, aside from waking up when I woke up at 9.30 and in a weakened voice begging me to "Please shut the blinds before [he] went blind". I replied, "I can't, there's a balsam fir with red and white Christmas lights on it in the way. And you can't be too bad off if you can still do word play." but he'd gone back under before I got all that out.

So... I've had to put up with a ghost of a headache and ghost nausea all day. If he ever does this again, I just might throw him to the mercy of the Tinkertoy devs and tell them "Have at it!" No, really, I'm managing to keep my sense of humor. Thank heavens that "Psychology Today" magazine ran a cover article on dealing with narcissists... one of the cardinal rules: If you keep a narcissist in the right perspective, they're actually very funny.

I had a heck of a time trying to get out of work today: first, the kid who was supposed to be my relief didn't show up, since the Tewksbury schools had today off since the teachers had a seminar or something (That is something completely foreign to me, since I was hometaught: my mom was my teacher.). Then, when I finally got some relief and I was trying to get my bag from the courtesy booth, this strange personage got ahead of me and was bickering with "Edna" the courtesy booth manager about trying to use a coupon on something she'd bought two months ago. I kid you not. Nothing Edna could say would get the coupon weirdo to back down, and I'm standing there waiting patiently... Finally, I just went to the lunchroom to get my trenchcoat, figuring Coupon Weirdo would be gone by the time I got back.

No such luck.

And no sign of the MxO game patch yet: I just checked to see if it was availible for download. We're awaiting the new cinematic with bated breath, particularly since today has some significance in the historical Merovingian dynasty, or it might have been le Prieurie de Sion, but I can't recall exactly what it was (anyone know??). Hence, I might be online later tonight, and then again, I might not show up in AIM till around 12.30 or 1 am. Eastern, like last night (depending on how many missions Sieges decides to run: she was red-hot last night, and I think she might be trying to keep her streak of luck going as long as she can).

Which reminds me to keep an eye open in the library tonight (I have a DVD to return), for a new book on the Prieurie: of course it's little more than a non-fiction paralell to the Damned Book by Dan Brown, but there might be some tidbits of useful information.

( Current chatter in my head, mostly MxO-related )

Never thought that going to a crowded shopping mall would be weirdly therapeutic: I did a little last minute shopping today (for my dad and Mark, who unfortunately just emailled me that he won't be coming home for Christmas, but I'll hang onto his present anyway) at the Burlington Mall. You'd think that would be major sensory overload for me, especially after the extremely quiet four days I've just had, but I think it was wierdly good for me: It helped me brace myself for the UTTER AND TOTAL MADNESS that I'll have to deal with at work starting tomorrow.

And my dad found a little Frasier fir for my room. I might have explained this little custom of ours before, but I'll share the story with you new folks: A few years back, I was supposed to sing in a mini-concert of selections from Handel's "Messiah", but I came down with a dreadful, horrible case of laryngitis at the very last minute. I could barely talk, let alone sing, without sounding like Tom Waits's sister, so I had to bow out. I got very depressed after that, and my dad, to cheer me up one night as I was lying in bed, came up with a small (about three foot tall) balsam fir tree to put in my room. Even helped me put the lights on it. Since then, I've had a little tree in my room, though we always have the big one for everyone to enjoy, down in the living room, in a doorway between that and the dining room.

I've got the lights on it, I just have to dig out my ornaments and put them on. And we'll be putting the lights and ornaments on the tree downstairs tomorrow night (My folks had to go shopping tonight, plus I had dishes to wash, so that kinda cut into our time to start decorating downstairs).

( Houseparty Christmas parties )

EDITED HOUSEPARTY NOTES...