today on My Blog: sniper rifles, deer, sniper rifles and dice (yes, those go together), and tests…

first, tests… tests suck. I took three and got one back so far. 42… I made a 42… the class average was a 56… you’d think that would send off warning whistles to the prof, but no… to him it’s just a test. lowest grade since the days of Miss White (maybe I should have added ugly bats to my topics list) I won’t rant about the test itself because I would cause myself to have a stroke… I’m following Andy’s theory, “if you ignore it long enough, it’ll go away”.. since this isn’t a door, that should apply, right?

deer… I had a deer in my backyard. (there should be 4 pictures there). He apparently hurt his back leg when he jumped into our yard. Richard opened the gate and let him out for a while, but he came back. I didn’t know all of that, so when I got up, I walked out back and enjoyed the sunlight and read my taco box for about 3 minutes before richard came out and calmly informed me that there was an 8-point buck against the fence… and sure enough there was! He was huge. He was watching me pace around the yard, and I never noticed him. I called the humane soc. who told me to call the police, but the police said he had just as much right to be there as I did, and if they had to come out, they were required to shoot the deer, so we just let him wonder around our backyard. He just munched on grass and our neighbor’s trees until he decided to leave that night. Kinda interesting having a buck in your backyard.

now, I have two sniper rifles on there… one with dice and one without… so let’s cover the one without first… The Washington Sniper. I think a lot of people misunderstand this guy. So here’s my personal opinion. Mike Read once told me that for every bit of good in a person, they were capable of doing something equally as evil. Thus, the really good guys like me and him were capable of the worst evils, but we chose to keep that evil in check. Now, don’t get me wrong, but if I decided to snap and be evil for a while, there’s two directions I would go. One would be the mastermind of some great plot, like the one I thought the terrorists should have done using 4 people and C4 to take out 50,000 people at a football game… the other would be if it was just me.. and that would probably be something like this sniper. Except this guy made two fatal mistakes, which I’ll discuss in a second. But I see this guy as a very smart guy who just knowingly decided to go evil. I initially believed he had military training, and I still do, but I wonder why he hasn’t killed each of his marks… he’s either incredibly far away, or his aim is off… so he’s not sniper trained. anyone in memphis who wants to see what a military sniper can do, just take a rifle down to shelby farms and ask the range master to sight it in for you… He’s a vietnam sniper (I think) and can put 3 bullets through the same hole at 100 yards, no problem. anyways, back to the sniper. like I was saying, this is the way I would go… random victims, one shot, no evidence… Now we see the two errors he made… one, he left evidence… a tarot card… stupid move… this is where I think that when evil takes over, you don’t think as clearly… you want to leave your mark, and you want people to know you… it’s a power thing… so he screwed up and left a calling card. I don’t think he thinks he’s Jesus (a theory put forth by someone here… “I am God” with Virginia and Maryland (Virgin Mary)), no I don’t think so. The second screw up, and a bit more than the first, is that he killed an FBI agent working his case. takes away the random victim aspect, and it lets them know that at some point he was close enough to the FBI to know who was working his case, and lots of stuff… That narrows the search… stupid move… anyways, to make a long story short, he’s a smart guy who consciously decided to go bad… he’s playing a game, and if he plays smart, he could play until he gets tired of playing…

now, for anyone who’s made it this far, sniper rifles and dice… in other words, d20 modern. 3rd edition has come to the 21st century. It comes out next month and I’m fairly excited about it. talk about flexible.. you can do pretty much anything with this system. It’s modern times… no magic or psionics unless you want them. anything you can think of you can get… do you want to be Neo? How about Jackie Chan? or my next character, The Professional. Of course, you can be a politician, a doctor, lawyer, and all that other boring stuff engineers are an option, too. The new wealth system will be really cool… no more counting gp (or dollars as the case may be). You want to buy something? Roll yer d20 Every item is a DC. If you make the DC, you get the item. What changes is your wealth bonus. If you try to buy something beyond your normal means (your wealth bonus), you lose a point from your wealth bonus. If you try to buy something way beyond your wealth bonus, you lose a d6 of wealth. you can buy things below your wealth bonus all day long. It’s pretty cool if you read about it… you can buy a sports car, but then it makes it much harder for you to buy anything but food for a while anyway, I’m definately excited about this system… comes out next month… everyone buy a copy and start thinking about what you want to play next summer

ok, I think that’s about it for now, isn’t it? ok, well… goodnight…