Month: December 2001

Step right up and try the new Rave-o-matic toilet! Complete with variable speed strobe light!

* music not included.
* * * * *
I have recently become aware that going to the bathroom in my dorms has become a surreal experience. The fluorescent light seams to have developed turrette’s syndrome—it cannot stop flashing. Now when it was just a little bit of a dimming effect that was one thing, but as it has now lost it completely and blinks on and off with a disturbing irregularity it has become increasingly hard to aim. I experiance the classic club problem of depth-perception-gone-haywire and tripped out things-that-are-standing-still-look-like-they-are-moving-syndrome every time I go into the bathroom. This has made taking care of bodily needs numbers one and two a real chore as I have to go down to another floor to perform said acts! I don’t think I am asking much when I ask for a consistent source of light while I am in the bathroom, am I? Even at the worst raves I have been to the strobe lights where not in the bathrooms. I mean they could at least install some nice Bose 901 speakers and a couple of BIG amplifiers so I can blast the techno while I…. um yea… well… I have to go to bed now…

I went to see Beaner this weekend before he heads off, back to North American and places where color has no u in it. We just kinda chilled out for the day. We went on a quest to find the island where J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis took many a walk, and though we don’t know if we ever found it, we did find an absolutely amazing garden, filled with gigantic trees, and quiet glades. Then after a nice home made dinner we went out to explore the tavern history of Oxford. Our first stop was a place called the “Turf Tavern” build in the 15th century. This place has character—it oozes with it. The ceiling is lower than six feet and the tavern has a total of about 6 tables in three rooms each smaller than my dorm. But it also has two court yards, complete with ivy covered walls older than the US and pit fires to keep you warm when the beer just does not cut it. Then after deciding it was just too cold to sit outside we wandered into “the oldest tavern in Oxford”—the Bear, founded 1242! We decided that it was not in the original building, but the building it was in was significantly old enough to suffer from the same problems as the Turf, low ceilings and a sever lack of seating.

Anyway all this old buildings combined with walks through statue filled gardens and forest paths managed to bring out the DM in both J███████ and myself and we had decide to dive full force into map making and world building…