L4D2 NPC's and Infected Rejected Out Of Hand

Oil Derrick Worker:
You never see them, because, well, they're kinda isolated, but you hear reports about them, and they sound terrifying.

Tai Chi Master
If you ever swing that ax faster than an heavily sedated sea sponge, he goes down immediately. But should you go slower, HOO EEEEE!.

Hipsters
You only ever encounter their corpses, they go first.

Vegan
He can be found dumpster diving, looking smug and eating rats.Organic rats.

Flautist
A jazz flautist.

Driver
Sits in his car, a well-notated map of Toledo in his lap, a cold cup of coffee on the dash, and him, crying softly.

Concierge
He stands, looking from the door to his front desk, torn behind a hunger for human flesh and a sense of duty.

Gymnast
Stands below the double rings, arms still on the rings, him looking up, moaning.

Foodie
Fusses and pats you down, emits a low 'humming' noise as he considers, invariably leaves you alone.

Wipeout

In a fit of what only can be described as a radically unfounded enthusiasm for the outdoors we decided to take the kids tobagganing. Living in BC means ridiculous cost of living,  receiving way below the national median salary, but also that mountains are about 30 minutes away, turning the 1000 mm of rain we get at sea level into wonderful, if soggy, snow.

Capitalism dictates that where there are parents desperate to create 'memories' for their children there are cramped ticket booths at the end of interminable lines ready to charge money for it. And they do. For bringing your own sled to go down the mountain. Gravity is apparently a premium resource.

We borrow tobaggans from the neighbours, who have kids who are quite a bit older. This should have sent off alarms for me, cautious dad that I am. But on the other hand, I want my kids to be more or less fearless, and adventurous about things, so I don't really give it a second thought. It's a board, that you sit on, to take you down a very long sheet of ice. If that doesn't say safety I don't know... it does sound suspiciously like the sport that poor Georgian died doing in our Olympics.

We get there, pay the fees, and stand behind the impromptu lines. The hill looks kinda steepish, kinda longish. I do have all the coordination of a inebriated stork in a hurricane, but I figure I can keep things under control. I'm the Dad, for crying out loud. Evolved over the millions of years to, if nothing else, protect the young. From sabre-toothed tigers and rampaging bison and the odd rampaging tribe.

Nothing to it.

But somewhere in the profoundly careful part of me, there are doubts. Serious doubts. I'm the sort of geek who can sprain his ankle if the sidewalk he's strolling on hasn't been professionalliy resurfaced in more than say, eight days.

Owl Jr. and Mrs. Owl go down on a narrow bottomed contrivance, it cuts into the snow and doesn't go terribly fast. I think, oh, this isn't so bad. 

A younger teenager takes his turn, he kneels on his tobaggan, and it just screams down the hill. I suppose being on his knees increases the speed and possibility of quadrapelegia should he hit a large tree. Whee. There's something familiar about his trip down, and I can't quite put my finger on it.

We go down, and geez, it certainly feels faster when you're on the sled. I brake with my feet, sending snow spray everywhere, we do a little 360 at a very slow speed and spill out. The worst thing is that snow gets into Owlet's jacket. She doesn't exactly enjoy the snow down her neck but wants to go again.

We go down a second time. I slow down again. Except I guess not enough, or we hit a bump. In any case we spill, but don't necessarily get untangled from the tobaggan, Owlet's hand gets dragged across the aforementioned sheet of ice that masquerades as snow and she's screaming.

We get up.  Somehow through crushing guilt and impenetrable sense of failure as a dad and a person, I keep my wits, much to my surprise. I find the injured wrist, but I don't know what's happened yet, just that Owlet is really giving her lungs a proper workout. There's echoes off the mountain, I believe.

First thing's first, I go through basic range of motion, nothing broken, whew. Then I pull back her coat sleeve and really look at it. There's a patch about the size of a dollar bill that's completely white, and I know that a nice swath of skin has been left on the hill.  In about 2 minutes there's going to some serious blood. Gotta get her to the medic tent. We trudge up the mountain to the saddest excuse for a cafeteria I've ever seen and I spot some offical looking teenagers standing around. I ask politely where the medic is, they call one in.

During this waiting time her wrist starts bleeding and it looks ugly. The teenagers are terrible at hiding their shock or their welling pity but I'm keeping things cool yet concerned. At some point they realize that hey, I'm the dad, and maybe they shouldn't overreact. One can really amp up the suffering of a kid's injury by overreacting.

She's actually much more concerned with what the medic is going to do. At this point her body is throwing so much stuff at the injury I don't think she's feeling anything. I spend all my time comforting her that the medic won't give her a shot or something equally horriifying.  Never mind that her entire wrist is eclipse in a pool of red, the medic might put on a BAND-AID. Her chief concern is a Band-Aid that's removed too quickly, something she did herself and still remembers. The things that cause anxiety in kids are weird, funny, and familiar.

At some point another dad comes in with his son, who has some blood in his mouth, he biffed it good as well. He's about the same age. Owlet is then used as a pacifier for that kid, "Oh, look at her, she's much worse", well, at least something good came out of it.

The medic finally arrives, patches her up, and we go for ice-cream, because that's the only rational response to mild childhood trauma, in my book. While watching Owlet wolf down her vegetable oil frozen ice cream synthetic it suddenly dawns on me that the tobaggan that the hotdogging teenager was using was the same model  as the one we used: stiff, flat bottomed, built for maximum speed.

We'll have to go up again, if nothing else than to stave off a phobia of hills, lineups, and tobaggans that I'm sure has taken root in Owlet. But at least I know that my enthusiasm for the outdoors is indeed, unfounded.

General Qualities Required for Yacht Captains Employed by Third World Drug Kingpins

• ability to keep eye contact when addressing employer on the "hottub deck".
• past experience with caring for a ficus.
• general disinterest in female anatomy, especially on aforementioned deck.
• experience with pH balance and chlorination of 1/4 Olympic sized pool.
• enjoys 'Miami Vice'.
• supportive, but not too supportive of recreational drug use.
• able to remove tricky stains from snow-white uniform (mud, grass, human brain and skull fragments).
• refrains from 'punching it' at the first sign of law enforcement.
• comfortable with frequent small arms fire.
• knows how to start and operate a Vecoplan K-Model RG70K Industrial Shredder unassisted.
• can do light cleanup (mainly of bent spoons, dusty mirrors, various lengths of rubber hose).
• fond of Billy Ocean.
• equally comfortable talking out of a search and seizure from the Coast Guard as he is having light banter at the dinner table.
• doesn't press the need to wear 'short shorts'.
• competent enough to serve as a spare 4th for bridge, should the need arise

Goodbye, Old Friend

I got a snazzy LCD flat screen whatever computer screen. Quite recently. Approximately fifty hojillion years after the whole CRT monitor technology had become obsolete. That meant I had to dispose of my current monitor, a behemoth, 19" Samsung Syncmaster 900NF. Weighs about 40 pounds and has the dimensions of a early CAT scan machine.

A google here and a clicky there and apparently there's a depot nearby that will take it. Situated in a byzantine maze of twisty turvy streets that have never heard of a 90 degree junction. A place where entire businesses and thrive or die or live a kind of half-life that crushes the dreams of anyone who tries to work there. Marble counter top re-installation? Got that. Double Decker bus storage? Yup. One gets  a sense of how many different sorts of things there are that people do to get food on the table. An entire life worrying about 'Industrial Outdoor Deck Design and Repair'.

I'm not usually a sentimental guy about stuff. I don't think I am, anyways. I'm cheap, which is why I hold onto stuff until mere molecules are left of it, past thread-bare, past donation. My Steam games library is made up of mostly $5 and cheaper games (made by Czech developers who are most famous for doing the conversion module for Quicken 2005) that seem like a good bang for my buck even though 99% of my gaming time is spent on games I've spent more than $20 on.

What I'm getting at is that I'm frugal, shop for clothes at Costco, books at Value Village and usually avoid spending money. So I guess i don't have alot of opportunity to get rid of stuff, as I have very little of it to get rid of.


I'm also not sentimental about technology, either. I watched that almost good movie, AI, and never once got hooked into the OH POOR ROBOT BOY sentiment that Spielberg was swinging for with all the subtleness of a $100 million budget under the aegis of the guy who used a robotic fricking shark in 1975.

But it could be this new kick I'm in, listening to Folk Rock, which is apparently a music genre.
And, foolishly, I was listening to this song.

 I grew up listening to John Denver and Simon and Garfunkel and this sorta of music is kinda ingrained in my DNA, for good or for bad. And after I heft the  behemoth of monitory goodness on the plastic dolly, I fire up this song. The man starts to dissemble it as I'm driving away, removing the stand. There was something about the way he kinda pushed it onto its side. Brusquely. Something inside me whimpered.

All around are palettes filled with other monitors, TVs, CRTs, massive projection TVs that might have featured in a Connery Bond film. All going to the grave. And there I'm thinking. There she goes. I'm driving out, and I'm watching my poor monitor being given up to the dead. To be sucked of it's component parts and rendered in such a way that will damage the earth the least.

I'd had that monitor for about 10 years. My not unconsiderable computer leisure time has been spent in front of that thing. Ill-thought out novels and laughable short stories and hours and hours of gaming.

I almost tear up, leaving there, but am struck by a nearby business, as I pull out of the parking lot,  'Hot Tub Reweathering', that's a thing?

You Can't Afford To Lose Me, I'm The 37th Best Pilot In The Fleet

You can't ground me. I know you want to, I know in that hardened heart of a five star space admiral with oak clusters that you want to bust me down to private first class, have me bustling K-Rations across the fleet in the crappiest rust-bucket you can get out of mothballs.

Well, guess what, you can't. You can't afford to lose me. I'm your 37th best pilot.

Sure, after Stryker and Killion and Raybird, I mean, their kills together dwarf the next 150 pilots down the roster combined. Everybody knows that. And yeah, okay, number 34th on the list, Lieutenant Caberron, from the Xarglaac Nebula isn't exactly a fighter pilot but can fly a really mean intra-fleet transport, isn't exactly a slouch.

Okay, I get it. You got me. But how many pilots do you have like me?

Not counting number 36th and 38th and the fact that pilots 38-179 are separated by the thinnest scintilla of statistics which would hardly hold up to closer scrutiny.

So how many? That's right, one.

Well, sure, there are plenty of rookies that supposedly could replace me. Whose test scores and simulator results make me wake up in a cold sweat every night. But who would have my imp-- my physical fitness regimen? Not quality, sure. But quantity! Twenty years, Admiral. They can hardly accumulate that many mandatory physical checkups in that time. That many ANNUAL checkups. That's right, they can't. Physically impossible.

And what about that time I saved Stryker and Touchdown from that nasty brushup with the Anptwerk Empire? I think pointing out that I was piloting a battle cruiser at the time and I had warped in to save them with three Starreach frigates, a galaxy class IV Techrion Warlord, and a small sortie of Hyperion star-fighters is being nitpicky, don't you? The fact of the matter was that i was first on the. Yes, by 2 seconds. But 2 seconds, 2 weeks, what does it matter. 2 seconds can get you killed in space.

Which brings me to my ne-- oh, KP duty for a week? That sounds reasonable.

Questionable Bios

Bios, as in the tiny biographies that magazines give contributors or blogs give their bloggers when you click 'About ...'

• When not completing his collection of WWII hand grenade pins, Steve can be found volunteering his time with 'Explode This!', an interactive, hands on pyrotechnics demonstration for kids 1-4.
• Fran takes her obsession with size-exclusion chromatography to pretty daring extremes, but not so much as to interfere with her career, a receptionist at Duluth's 16th highest grossing Century 21 office.
• Travis enjoys his school marching band, being co-sub-captain of the Junior co-ed cheer squad, and taking all comers in his travelling full-contact "Octagon of Terror" (touring most of Norther Florida's retirement communities),
• Marilyn's other hobby is sharpening steak knives, often not her own, and usually without anyone knowing.
• Stamford says his most prized isolated pure virus is a variant of E. Bola he has secured with  patent-pending isolation  methodologies. He also breeds ficuses.
• Besides being North America's foremost amateur expert in corn-husk and maize-silk based rope knotting, Kathleen is also Kansas's main importer of betel-nut and betel-nut accessories.
• "Trendsetters!" 1987 annual issue named Jain the "One To Watch In Stand Alone Vending Machine Supply and Service", he hasn't looked back since.
• Roger is the senior editor and owner of "Sticklers for Stickers", North America's premier magazine for sticker misprint enthusiasts since 1998.
• Fazz also teaches jazzerskating at her local home studio. Still accepting students for the 2011 term.
• You can buy Dr. Bioplanack's self-published book, "Taxonomy Ain't Just For Animals!' at Amazon.
• Janet also is an avid horse jumper, horse groomer, horsefeed custom mixologist, horse tack adjuster, and horse shoer. She loves to keep her work varied and cites Leonardo as a kindred spirit.

Christmas Family Letter 2010

Another year has passed and that means another torrid and spicy family drama wrapped in the infamous Owl Family Christmas Letter. Maybe not torrid, and perhaps not entirely spicy, but certainly without the more earthy odours familiar to any parent who's kid has switched to solid food.

Owl Jr. is now almost two. TWO! His soberness and infinite sadness continue unabated. I do so hope he doesn't reserve that look just for me (however well-founded it may be). He's starting to speak. Not in any way or form that might be recognizable as such, and not in any way that might be measured in relation to others of his age, unless others of his age call everything 'Ma-Ma', 'Da-Da', or “CHOO CHOO”; especially “Choo Choo”. He's very much into locomotives and rail centered conveyances. I suspect it's because we're not allowed to expose them to more interesting and edifying things, like ninjas, robots, ninja robots, and perhaps vikings. He's a happy camper, more or less, going from Eeyore to Tigger in about the space it takes you to go for his armpits. He looks somewhat like I did when I was his age: morose, serious, and entirely Japanese.

He's not a picky eater. He'll eat anything that has fallen from the tree or bush (veggies or fruits), or, paradoxically, lunchmeats (that unholy alliance of stomach lining, advanced food preservation chemistry, and cow lips). He's an enigma, a mystery.

He's very mobile now, going up and down stairs like handrails are a luxury (in our case, non-existent) and gravity not quite the enemy. But generally he's to be found under some table or chair, quiet, playing with one of his many trains, or pretending whatever he has in hand is a train (books, teddy-bears, day-old macaroni).

There's not much more to say about him, except that he's developed this nearly Woody The Woodpecker type laugh, except quieter, and perhaps slightly less maniacal.

Owlet is a whole four years and change now. Her favourite punctuation is the question mark, her favourite things in life being TV or bargaining. Usually the bargaining to get more TV, so perhaps we should just say her favourite thing is TV but then we might appear even more remiss as parents. She has a bright future as a SWAT negotiator or TV critic, perhaps some sort of amalgam of the two.

She's still firey, perhaps more so. She has an expressiveness that easily matches Owl Jr.' lack thereof, and several pretty hilarious misconceptions about pretty much anything. As a pre-schooler, that's her right. As her parents, it's our right to listen to her and not correct her. Mind you, it might be because some of these misconceptions were planted in there by us (chocolate makes you shrink) and are useful to keeping her healthy; if it happens to be entertaining as well, so be it.

When not asking questions and being just generally very firey, she'll attempt to start talking about something. She's incredibly adept at starting to talk about something. “Dadda, when I was a.. when I was... Dadda, when I was a... when... I.. a little gi... Dadda, dadda, I have to tell you something, when I was a little girl”. It's funny, written down like this. But at the end of a long day, it's like Chinese water torture if the water was replaced with mercury and the torture was forever.

She's discovered the joys of drawing sea monsters, robots, and aliens, curious how she got to drawing those. I certainly had nothing to do with it.

Knock-knock jokes are a huge favourite for her. And for us, because rarely does she actually understand how the first bit and the second bit come together and you end up with a masterpiece of absurdist humour, “Knock knock,.Who's there? Banana. Banana who? Aren't you glad I didn't say orange?” I choose to believe she's doing this on purpose. She does, however, know how to do the 'interrupting cow' knock knock joke to perfection, and well, her parents are cheap laughs.

She's noticing Molly a lot more now, trying to give her commands, making note that she's the “cutest dog in the whole wide world”. Molly continues to base her affection in direct proportion to how much meat Owlet has on her plate at the moment.

This is her last year of pre-school. Next term (2011 September) she starts 5 days a week kindergarten. I assume they need more time to get into the trickery fingerpainting, the lesser used crayons, and perhaps some neon Play-Doh™, I'm not sure.

Owl Jr. and Owlet continue to get along famously. When not ignoring each other or making each other laugh they are making each other scream (sometimes out of fun (I'm not sure how screaming has been associated with fun, for them, but there it is), mostly out of frustration). They do seem to care about each other a whole lot. Most disagreements arise because Owl Jr. can't see why he has to wait to play with something just because Owlet happens to be holding it. Owlet is invariably the put-upon party, since she's learned such things as 'sharing' and 'mine', while Owl Jr., noble savage that he is, is blissfully unfettered by such ideas.

They like making forts together, and sometimes just taking turns screaming and laughing at each other which is something that goes quickly from adorable to 'how can I cover my ears inconspicuously'.

Molly is still going to work. She's far too friendly to new people who come into our office but that keeps me from having to do small talk, which is a relief to all parties, let me tell you.

I'm still where I was last year. My rut is extraordinarily homey, thanks for asking.

At some point during the summer I took a weekend and went to NYC to see some friends. It was hot, it was fun, and I wasn't mugged above seven times. I'm told it's because I kept to all the touristy areas. The Chrysler Center, Central Park, and other land marks are just as you imagined them, as long as you add about thirty times more tourists and ensure it's hotter than a malfunctioning bathhouse in the third circle of Hell.

Mrs. Owl is still working part time at a long term care facility. The old people are still old, I'm told, the pleasantly confused are still both, as well. During the summer she took a weekend to go to Vegas with her friends. She's since asked me what a 'lien' is, and I don't know, and I assume it's not related to the Vegas trip. Or choose to believe.

And that's all the news that's fit to cram into a Christmas letter, in all its torrid, spicy glory.

Best wishes for you and yours, and may the new year find you as this year has hopefully found you: healthy and wealthy and wise.

Owl Family (Mrs. Owllle, Niteowl, Owlet, Owl Jr. & Molly) Christmas 2010