The Last Word

Issue #470

November 2013

How cool people play D&D

Dungeons & Dragons isnt just for nerds. Cool people like me play it too, and we have our own special
way!
Last months Last Word clued you in on some of the nuts and bolts of D&D. If cool people play D&D,
just call me the Fonz! After largely forgetting about this game for 20 years, Ive recently started remembering
how much Dragons & Dungeons I played in my youth. Tender memories came rushing back!
They have D&D on the Internet now toosort of. After the 4 th edition of D&D sent Gary Gygax and
Dave Arneson birling in their graves, Pathfinder largely picked up where D&D left off. Best all, many of
Pathfinders goodies are offered online for free! So Ive dredged up my old blue plastic Dungeon Dice (that came
with a crayon) and spent the past couple weeks slaying goblins and collecting treasure!
How exactly does a cool person play D&D? By...bipping! Just joking. Heres some suggestions for how to
go Dungeoning & Dragoning if youre cool like me...
Whenever your party of characters is caught in a seemingly inescapable situation, put on your best
Shaggy from Scooby-Doo voice
and groan, Were doomed,
Scoob!
When the Dungeon
Master asks you what weapons
you want for your character, say
you want the bubble gun and the
Blistex missileboth of which are
made-up weapons.
Grumble about how a
dungeon that has only one exit is
violating the fire code.
Whenever
anybody
mentions the Keep On The
Borderlands
module,
dance
around and sing, The keep, the
keep...The biscuit keep, the coffee
keep, the Billy Joel keep!
Every time someone
mentions the stinking cloud
spell, make a fart noise.
Every time someone
mentions the stinking cloud spell and makes a fart noise, laugh uncontrollably.
Whenever somebody shoots a poison arrow, start singing the song by ABCjust to show youre hip to
todays music!
Talk nonstop about henchmen.
Make an audio recording of all the babyish arguments that always erupt whenever an undead monster
drains a character of a level or when someone demands that they get to roll again when they roll a 1 for their hit
point increase.
Tell the Dungeon Master that Obamacare should cover the 50 gold pieces it costs for a vial of antitoxin.
Now Im gonna use a phrase that I bet youd forgotten about. Itll send you back to the earliest D&D
days. Ready for it? Here it comes...
Electrum pieces.
I dont think Ive ever heard the world electrum anywhere except D&D. But because Im cool, I used to
call them Electric Company pieceslike the childrens show. Just for cool times sake, I include electrum

pieces in my current D&D campaign even though D&D officially abolished them decades ago. Its like D&Ds
answer to the $2 bill. Sort of like the 12-sided dice.
In my new D&D campaign, one of the fighter characters carries a 50-foot hemp rope, which has already
been used to rescue characters from pits. Our party was also sickened by toxic gas that filled the hallway of our
dungeonas if someone had ripped a silent-but-deadly bunker blast.
In my youth, we misused the Deities & Demigods book to slay godseven though the book specifically
warned against this. The warning was issued despite the fact that the book listed statistics for each god as if they
were monsters from Monster Manual. Wink wink, nod nod. Also, the D&D people were threatened with a lawsuit
for making this book, because some other publisher somewhere claimed they owned a copyright on gods.
As D&D grew, it added more labyrinthine rules that seemed to govern every conceivable situation. Im a
slow reader, and I cant possibly digest every single rule, but the Pathfinder website says the rules should be
changed to fit the needs of your gaming group. Surely, however, somebody will bellyache that not following each
rule to the letter makes the game unrealistic. This is a game that involves casting spells against mythical creatures,
and somebody is worried about it being unrealistic?
Take for instance the random dungeon generation tables that were buried in the back of one of the old
D&D books. I adored using these tables to create dungeons, but it was never clear how to implement some of the
items in them. Recently I found a copy of these tables on the Internet and began rewriting them for my own
campaign. Heres part of the map of the dungeon I started making...

The dungeon isnt complete, of course. This campaign had only started exploring it. A couple passages
have short streamsapproximately 10 feet widerunning down the middle that end at the wall at the end of the
passage. Its presumed that they form from moisture leaking from the surface, and they end as they pool against
the wall. Then again, Ive started my entire campaign over from (screech!) scratch, because the important combat
rules are explained so poorly on the website that Id applied them inconsistently. Ive also downloaded a free
honeycomb graph paper pattern to build a better dungeon, but instead I started a new dungeon without it.
In this revamped campaign, we encountered a monster called a mimic. Heres another thing cool people
do during D&D: When we coolsters run into a mimic, we start chanting, in a high-pitched voice,
Mimic...mimic...mimic...
But the text of the D&D books of the 80s used the Sesame Street font.

Changing your outlook on Outlook...for the worse!

For as much as The Media shouts about the supposed failure of the Obamacare websiteeven though I
didnt have a shred of trouble using itit would only be fair if they were just as harsh on Microsofts
Outlook.com e-mail service. But nope. The right-wing press does of course ignore all of Outlooks problems and
outright lies. They have a narrative to fulfill, dont ya know.
A few months ago, I switched my e-mail over to Outlook.com because my new ISP doesnt have e-mail
as part of its basic package. It didnt take long before it became clear that Outlook was losing important e-mails I
expected to receive.
I demanded a prompt explanation on Outlooks forum about this unacceptable state of affairs. Outlook

tried blaming me, saying it must have been because of filter settings I chose. They told me to check my junk mail
folder. But it was completely empty.
I had been receiving some spam, and it wasnt shunted to the junk mail folder. So why would legit e-mail
be blocked altogether?
Outlook also told me to go through my blocked senders list and add addresses from it to my safe senders
list if I wanted to get e-mail from them. But if I wanted to get e-mail from them, I wouldnt have put them on the
blocked list in the first place. The missing e-mails werent from anyone on the list.
It gets ridiculouser.
Outlook then told me to open my safe senders list and add addresses of everyone Id like to receive e-mail
from. In other words, I was supposed to add every conceivable address that I might ever receive a legitimate email fromeven ones I didnt know existed yet. The number of such addresses is infinity. It would be literally
impossible to add them all.
I replied to Outlook and told them there was nothing in the junk folder. Outlook then investigated and
told me they werent blocking any of my e-mail. One of Outlooks self-styled support geniuses said, Ive
rechecked your account and confirmed that theres no issues on it.
But there were. When the problem failed to go away, I scoured the Internets (sic) for a possible solution to
Outlooks idiocy.
Now Ive discovered something very interesting. Remember, I use Windows Live Mail. Windows Live
Mail and Outlook.com are designed to go together. I discovered that Windows Live Mail has a default setting that
says blocked e-mail doesnt go to the junk folder. Instead it gets deleted completelywithout a trace. Since that
was a default setting, it wasnt something I actually chose. So I changed the setting so it put blocked e-mail in the
junk folder instead of deleting it.
Then e-mails that I expectedwhich I otherwise wouldnt have received at allstarted filling the junk
folder. The junk folder was now half spam and half good stuff. From now on, I was going to have to wade through
it to sort out the useful stuffwhich defeats the whole purpose of having a spam filter or a junk folder. Worse,
months of important e-mails were gone
gone into thin air. Thats because this
didnt bring back the e-mails I missed.
Outlooks website has a feature that
supposedly resurrects deleted e-mailsbut
I tried it, and it didnt do a damn thing.
I hate people who lie to me.
Outlook had told me they werent blocking
any e-mail. They lied. This proves it. And
they never told me I could change the
settings so mail intended for the junk
folder wouldnt be completely erased.
Now heres the best part: While
some of the blocked e-mail now goes to the
junk folder where I can retrieve it, Im
continuing to miss some important e-mail
altogether. It never even makes it to the
junk folderwhich means Outlook is
losing or deleting it before it gets there.
Theres no setting that lets me remedy this.
(Among the items being labeled as spam by Outlook were important Google Alerts notices that Id signed
up for.)
Wheres The Media? If they expose the Obamacare websites supposed troubles, they should expose
Outlooks woes too. Then again, in the 2 years before the Affordable Care Act started kicking in, I had dealings
with 2 different private HMOs that Republicans in Kentucky had crammed down my throat, and the website for
each HMO was completely unusable. Each HMO changed my doctor without my permission, and I went to their
website to change it back. In both cases, the section of the website thats supposed to let you change your doctor
didnt work. So I had to make a toll call to change it by phone. With the second HMO, I had to make a second toll
call because they couldnt fix it the first timeafter they had put me on hold for a half-hour. Why wont the popup media expose the incompetence of the HMOs that the Republican statists have required us to use?
My previous ISPCincinnati Bells Zoomtownalso had a regal clusterfuck of a website and was an
inferior ISP to boot. I finally ditched them because they illegally blocked websites because of content. Health care
companies cant be expected to specialize in websites, but youd think telcoms like Cincinnati Bell and software
giants like Microsoft would. So that makes the bad websites sported by Zoomtown and Outlook much more

inexcusable than that of Obamacare.

At least the President isnt digging holes in peoples front yards without asking. Cincinnati Bell is digging
huge holes in yards in Fort Thomas without telling residents or getting their permission. They started on this just
before Halloween, no lessexposing trick-or-treaters to falling in the holes. The deep holes are covered only by
deceptively thin plywood.
Outlook.com is unreliable. For a service as popular as Outlook, its hard to believe that its
undependability can fly under the radar for any length of time. Its not like we can trust Googles Gmail either: I
tried getting a Gmail account, but Google wrongly claimed I had already set one up using an indecipherable string
of letters as my addressand they wouldnt let me change my address. Why? Just because. They said they cant
change addresses. No particular reason. Yahoo! is not an option, for Yahoo! is in cahoots with the government of
Red China, as it rats out journalists to the Bush-like regime there. What other choices are there, and how do we
know we can trust them?
For Outlook to lose e-mail like this is criminal. Think what the response to Outlooks criminal instability
would be in the Old West. Envision the Gum Fighter from the Hubba Bubba commercials confronting whoever is
behind the loss of my e-mails. Granted, the gallows would be reserved for much more serious offenses than this,
but I have no doubt that some punishment would nonetheless be in store. Most likely, the Gum Fighter would
have no words except to say to his white-haired sidekick, Do the honors. Upon this order, the Fighters
henchman would escort the offender to the town square as the townsfolk looked on. Then he would extend each of
his pinky fingers, thrust each digit into a corner of the offenders mouth, and lift each corner upward with all his
mightin full view of the local citizenry. This humiliation and dishonor to the offender would be a sufficient
penalty.
But this isnt the Old West. So Microsoft owes me not less than a gabillion zillion dollars for losing
countless important e-mails. We need to have stronger laws to hold them accountablebecause Im angrier than
shit!

Nightmare on Sesame Street (a blast from the past)

Now its time to dig deep into the recesses of your memory to recall one of the most uproarious things
ever to be reported in these pages.
The Last Word of June 23, 2001, regaled you with the Nightmare On Sesame Street. That was the
name of a JPEG image that had been uploaded to alt.config, of all places...

If you dont roll on the floor in a helpless convulsion of heehawing after seeing that, then your laughing
ears must be broken.
Oh, and there was no copyright notice anywhere on that picture. So if anyone tries to sue me for
reprinting it, tough toilets.

01 bike theft almost solved?

In the past couple weeks, a funny thing has happened. Not tee-hee funny but weird funny.
Remember back in 2001 when somebody stole a brand new bicycle from me? Id given up hope of ever
seeing it again. But recently, on a Campbell County-centered Facebook group, I posted a message asking if
anyone knew about the hulking velocipedes disappearmentjust on a whim.
I was stunned by one of the replies. A bloke replied with a detailed description of the missing bikey, along
with something like, Nope. Never seen it. I hadnt described the bike in significant detail on this group, so its
mighty fascinating that he can almost immediately come up with a perfect description of it12 years after it was
stolenwhile seemingly taunting the group about its misappearance.
Thats a guy whos about 65 years old, so Im thinking he might be a retired Bellevue cop who
remembers the old police report I made and just likes to play games with the group. But what I think is more
likely is that somebody else stole the bike from my building and ditched it along a street somewhere in town
because they were about to get caughtand the guy on Facebook found it and is psychotic enough to assume that
he has the right to claim it. Finders keepers, losers weepersbecause libertea, dont ya know.
What other explanations are there?
Even if my second hypothesis is correct, Im not saying he did anything illegalexcept mayhaps
receiving stolen property, which is itself a criminal offense. If he kept a bike that a thief had abandoned on the
street, he should have known it was stolen, because I sure as shit didnt ditch it myself.
I cant pursue charges for that, because Ive already forgotten what the mans name is. The group has
otherwise become full of right-wing hate speech against non-Christians and HUD residentswhich was so
vitriolic that I left the group and havent been back. Now I cant read whats posted there, because Im not in the
group. Not being able to read it is a mixed blessing, if you will: Now I wont have to read compilations of halfcentury-old Phyllis Schlafly propaganda, but this comes at a price of not getting my bike back. So its a bargain
for me.
My greatest fear is that the guy who replied to my post about the missing bike actually is the person who
stole it, and he knows authorities wont go after him for it, because local government is so corrupt that theyre
running a stolen goods ring, and the theft of my bike is part of it. The county is crooked enough to do such a
thing. Ive already seen plenty of arrogance on Facebook from local patronage appointees who brag about their
illegal activity because they know nobodys going to bust them.
When I left the Facebook group, I told them in some rather firm language what I thought. Hopefully they
took it hard. I promptly started a separate group with the exact same namein case anyone wants a group free of
hate speech.

Magna...Doodle!
Remember a toy called a Magna Doodle?
The life of a Magna Doodle is often beastly and short, and the Magna Doodle likes it fine that way. The
Magna Doodle is the secret love child of the Etch-a-Sketch and the Skedoodle andas a resulthas been forced
to grow up too fast. Early experimentation with alcohol and other adult themes is a norm in the life of a Magna
Doodle. Maladaptive behavior seems to come naturally to this strange being.
But seriously. I had this toy when I was about 7. Wikipedia says over 40 million Magna Doodles have
been sold around this big, mean world of ours, and the product still exists. This classic plaything is a magnetic
drawing board with a set of small magnetic shapes. The Magna Doodle is also used by divers who find that its
impossible to use a pen and paper underwater. However, the Magna Doodles parts can rust.
Anybip, I had my Magna Doodle for approximately a month. I was playing with it in the living room one

day when we hosted relatives. I set it on the floor as I skittered into the bedroom for some reason. Because of the
bright orange color of the Magna Doodles plastic parts, it should have been easily visible against the celery green
carpet, so theres no way anyone shouldnt have been able to see it approaching.
I guess I misoverestimated the cautiousness of our guests. While I was in the bedroom, crouching in a
northeasterly direction, I heard an earsplitting crunch coming from the living room. It sounded thoroughly
horrendous. Then I heard my mom call to me from the living room, You dont have a Magna Doodle anymore.
That was because one of my visiting relatives had unthinkingly stepped on itreducing it to a useless
chaff.
Was that my fault? I think not. If I had accidentally trampled somebody elses Magna Doodle, you can bet
your birdseed I wouldnt get an allowance for weeks. But since my Magna Doodle was on the receiving end of
somebody elses tomfoolery, it was somehow my fault for placing it on the floor.
Cant people watch where they walk? Magna Doodles are not invisible. And it wasnt even out in the
middle of the floor where people were likely to step. It was off to the side near the couch. People were constantly
piling items such as week-old newspapers and dog toys right in the middle of the floor. Imagine if you can the
outcry that would have resulted if I had stampeded into the living room and moonwalked all over my parents
precious Cincinnati Enquirer Sunday magazine supplement that was obstructing the right-of-way.
The destruction of my Magna Doodle reminds me of the Goop Tales story where one of the grownup
characters walks all over a childs dollhouse furniture and breaks it. The so-called adults blame the child for
leaving the toys on the flooreven though its clearly the fault of the man who didnt look where he was walking
and stepped on the toys. (I remember this narrative being accompanied by a hilarious drawing of the man
carelessly traipsing through the room with a scowl.) Nothings ever an adults fault, is it?
So that was the end of my Magna Doodle. It left our lives as quickly as it came.
About 15 years laterin 1995Magna Doodle was in the midst of a TV advertising campaign. The
commersh concluded with a child intoning, Magna...Doodle!...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFGCI4BFBLY
I saw the ad precisely twice. The first time, I was at my grandparents house, and the ad crept up on us
and brang back the bittersweet memories of the broken Magna Doodle. The second time was right before Cops
one Saturday evening.
But the commercial was actually a little bit frightening in light of the ruinment of my Magna Doodle. The
jingle had sort of a sad tone, as if the child was lamenting my Magna Doodles senseless loss.
Maaaaagna...Dooooooooooooooodle!
Sort of brings a tear to your eye, doesnt it?

Some kids out there will never have a Magna Doodle in their lives. We can ill afford to let another Magna
Doodle go to waste due to adult carelessness.

People cheated in college

As the Rand Paul plagiarism scandal progresses, its time for a shocking revelation about college life.
The embattled Tea Party senator has been caught plagiarizing passages for several of his speeches, books,
and editorials. He even stole some material from the Associated Press. What does this scandal say about Pauls
integrity?
Some of my college classmates sported a similar lack of honesty. Personally, however, Ive never cheated
on an important school examthe key word being important. I remember a couple times in grade school or
middle school when I cheated by having the book open in my lap or by using a calculator for math problems
but those tests werent actually important. Plus, I made no effort to avoid getting caught. Remembering the Little
House On The Prairie episode where several schoolchildren cheated on a test, I feel somewhat guilty having
cheated on any schoolworkeven though I was no older than 13but you really had to be there to appreciate
the situation. Walk a mile in my shoes, and youll understand.
College though was a less frivolous matter. In college, I studied like my life depended on it.
I saw somebody cheat on a psychology test in college. I couldnt do shit about it, of course, because I
didnt have proof. Besides, if the cheaters were athletes, NKU probably wouldnt have punished them anyway,
since jocks were usually above punishment there.
Sometime later, in a health class we were required to take, the professor relayed a story of a past student
who had cheated on a major exam. She warned the class that she photocopied each of our completed test papers
and kept them in her office. Apparently she never used to warn folksfor she said that one time, she gave graded
tests back to students, and one student then
erased one of his incorrect answers and replaced
it with the right answer, then complained to the
professor that she had mistakenly marked it
wrong. This student was busted because the
professor had the photocopies. Thus endeth that
students academic career.
Cheating in school shouldnt be a
criminal matter. The thuggish harassment
emanating from Brossart was never treated as a
criminal matter regardless of how far the
violence extended outside of school, so would it
really be fair to break out the flogging post for cheaters? Serial cheatersat least those who dont have money or
cloutinevitably crash and burn anyway. As they go through life, they gradually discover theyre not as smart as
they thought they were. Of course, those who do have money and clout become Tea Party members, but thats
another matter entirely.
For a politician to plagiarize a book may not be a criminal matter, but its surely a civil matter. We have
this little thing called copyright. So what Rand Paul did was worse than what I witnessed in college. And for a 50year-old senator to lift copyrighted material for his books and speeches is certainly worse than a 10-year-old
trying to make a point by cheating on his test on Spanky The Cowhorse by having the book open in his lap.
Heres a safe bet: If I was running for Senate, and it came out that I had cheated in 5 th grade, The Media
would never shut up about iteven though they havent been making much of Rand Pauls recent plagiarism.

The Tea Party blooper reel, 2006 style (a blast from the past)
On Usenet, the Tea Party was the Tea Party even before it was the Tea Partyand the now-defunct
Conservative Fool of the Day blog was on the case!
Heres an uproarious story of values voter stupidity that you may have forgotten aboutbut I didnt. I
store things like this in the deep recesses of my kaleidoscopic long-term memory. It has to do with the
Conservative Fool of the Day entry for June 29, 2006. The topic of that entry was someone who appeared to be a
man in the Atlanta area using an alias on Usenet. (I assume he was male because he used a mans name.)
That was the same week customs agents found Rush Limbaugh with Viagra, so there was lots of
humiliation going around in Far Right circles. You could tell that days ConservaFool entry was frustratedfor he
ranted and raved about anal sex instead of trying to argue intelligently.

He posted a tirade attacking the New York Times for daring to report on one of Bushs many spying
programs. This harangue was spammed to multiple newsgroups. Youre gonna gyrate with uncontrollable laughter
when you read it. This right-wing tirade (which has so many misspellings that Im not even going to bother to
correct them) declares...
I cant beleive that a pogrom than our President Bush devised to protect us from another
9-11 attack was exposed by the New York Times!
This tresonous rag has exposed a perfectley legal, perfectley sensible goverment
operation that has undoubetedly helped round up hundreds of members of muslims that want
to destroy the American way of life and saved the lives of count less Americans. Exposing such
a secret pogrom is not whistel blowing it is high treson.
When I say treson I dont mean it in a hyperboleic way. I mean in a literal way. we need
to find these Times reporters, these 21 st century Julius Rosenburgs, these reincernations of
Algor Hiss and Marta Hairy and hang them by the neck until they are dead, dead, dead.
No sympathy. No mercy.
Just in the same seething way I was angry on 9-11. These reporters have endangered
American lives and American security. They need to be outed, and executed.
Whoever posted that far-right screed sounds like the same person responsible for the misnamed Liberals
United for American Progress page on Facebookwhich is anything but liberal, for theyve demanded hanging
whistleblower Edward Snowden on Times Square. Dont worry though. The Facebook page is being called out as
we speaksince its probably run by a right-wing troll who was hired to make the liberal brand look bad.
Now, back to that Usenet haranguer from 2006. He also posted this...
The New York Times is controlled by Homosexual Socialists who hate America. It
appears it skews their vision of reality.
Cocaine and Butt fucking will
do that you know
Heres the funniest rant that he
vomited up...
Whats funny is DemoRATS
support and encourage Men fucking
each other in the asshole.
But
heaven
forbid
a
conservative fuck his wife with a hard
dick
DemoRATS are just little penis
envy losers
The conclusion was clear. For years,
the Republican National Committee had been
hiring people to go on Usenet and flood it
with right-wing talking pointsmuch as they
do with comment sections of newspaper
websites now. That time, one of their
operatives posted the above garbage and
replied to himself under a different name to
try to whip up support for his ideas. When he
did so, the RNC tumbled down with such a thud that all you could hear was us laughing.
Id actually forgotten that Id dredged up the last of the above rants at least twice on The Online
Lunchpail. Once, it was in an entry regarding a Republican commenter using anti-Jewish invective to denounce
Arlen Specter.
As long as the right-wing brain trust keeps it up, count on some rather lopsided election results in the
coming years.
Copyright 2013. All rights reserved.