Sunday, July 14, 2019

The Scumlord is dead, long live the Scumlord!

Scum,

Totally out of my own free will and not at all because I'm being tortured and hanging over the bottomless pits, the time has come to hand over the leash.

The Scumlord is dead, long live the Scumlord... Kraggori the Infiltrator, who snuffed out Ghettoforce the Terrible, who overthrew FlyingJoe the Disagreeable, who usurped Vertex the Inconvenient, who backstabbed Gob Bushsniper the Despicable. Long live the current guy...

All hail the Scumlord!

Grtz.
Ghetto
(!pleh dneS)

Saturday, June 01, 2019

Blatherings from the Bilge

As early morning light filters down through ancient, gnarled trees, it falls upon the detritus strewn confines of a small goblin village.  Dozens of small green skinned folk move about, slowly combing through rubbish and debris they have lugged from far settlements, through the winding pathways amongst the trees to their homes.  Emptying worn and mostly ruined wheelbarrows, they leave the remains to be scavenged and filtered into various stewpots, fry grills and heated pans clattering upon tiny smoky fires.

Amongst the moldy tents, ramshackle huts and hovels stands out a single larger structure.  Constructed of the bones of a fallen and gnawed upon hydra, decorated in bits of polished metal bits and bobs, glistening in discarded buttons and doorknobs, rests the tent of the village shaman.  From within the confines of the bony ediface arises a holy cacophony of blessed tones of gobbochildren torturing bone flutes to the tune of "Jesus Christ, Superstar" while the chanting of His Gross Immenseness of the Divine Lugubriousness, Shaman FukItAll, hits new heights within clouds of his pungent incense.

Mighty chants of incoherent and unrelated phrases and sayings echo throughout the village as FukItAll works determinedly to perform his holy duties.  Dancing drunkenly about a rough hewn altar and making mad passes of his arthritic hands over a still form, his words hit pitches previously only heard in the scratching of nails against blackboard until with a loud thump of his cane, the ancient goblin stops dead still.

All noise stops.
All movement stops.

Except for a single drop of spittle slowly making its way from FukItAll's lip to the ground.

The quiet seems to echo from the hut, through the village, into the woods and to the very walls of the cities of man.

And then ... the spittle hits the ground and FukItAll whips his cane up to smack the green pate of the patient upon his altar.  Twice more FukItAll strikes the patient prone upon his altar until he stirs and rises to look at FukItAll questioningly.

Swinging his feet off of the alter, the patient slowly and exhaustedly rises to don his garb while looking to FukItAll quietly.  Biting his lip to keep from saying anything, the patient waits, knowing that to say anything might break the concentration of FukItAll and thereby bring the malevolent attentions of the Great God Golf upon his village.

FukItAll smirks at this sad, lonely patient that he has been chanting over for years now.  Carefully the shaman stands as tall and as straight as he can until two loud pops can be heard as vertebra settle into new places.

Watching the nervousness of his patient, FukItAll draws a deep breath and begins his summation.

"Alyxyn, you have been very diligent in the attentions to the potions and tinctures that the Great God Golf has dictated that you must imbibe.  You have suffered great exhaustions and found your ways through massive turmoil and depths of fears and depressions.  For all of that, I have cast my latest round of divinations over you.  I have sought through your wretched form for the signs of the demons that have beset and infested you, whose grotesquenesses have tortured and wracked your body."

"Alyxyn, oh He of the MegaMouth, Torturer of the GBoss, Tiny Terror, the Miniscule Menace, Chewer of Boots, Sharer of Loots, the Great Gobbo Gobsmacker.  I can, at this time, proclaim that I can no longer detect a presence of any of the foul beasts within you.

"Keep in mind that this does not mean that they do not linger, but I can no longer detect them.  This is mighty news indeed.  You do still need to attend to your potions and tinctures regularly and submit for continued divinations, however I can state that Death no longer is whispering in your ear daily"

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Yes if you managed to make it through that and understood it right.. On Friday I received news from my oncologist that my Stage 4 Bladder Cancer is now in Complete Remission by Immunotherapy.  All of the detected nodes of cancer within my body, from lymph nodes to liver, are no longer able to be detected by CT scan. 

That said, the cancer is NOT considered cured and I will need to receive immunotherapy treatments every three weeks for the rest of my life, but.. as the story says ... Death appears to no longer be whispering in my ear daily.

I was able to break this news to my family Saturday during my parents' 60th anniversary party and a celebration of life grew to include a wave of tears through parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews.

It was an overwhelming outpouring of emotion far beyond anything I had expected and a delight to help sooth the torment of the last three years of knowing that Death had me targetted each day.