Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Francis Black's LiveJournal:

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Thursday, March 2nd, 2006
11:07 am	Victor Woodbury Occultech Public Safety Advisory ( Victor Woodbury ) (Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 1st, 2006
10:11 am	Occultech Public Safety Advisory ( Arkham Beach ) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, January 20th, 2006
11:20 am	The Elder Sign Occultech Public Safety Advisory ( The Elder Sign ) (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 19th, 2006
10:50 pm	Marmite Occultech Public Safety Advisory ( Marmite ) (3 Comments |Comment on this)
6:09 pm	The Wolfsburg Files Occultech Public Safety Advisory ( The Wolfsburg Files ) (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 5th, 2001
6:36 pm	I've got everything moved in, but I have no phone service, so no internet. I'm typing this in a internet cafe downtown. I've been in Arkham for two weeks now and am starting to get a feel for this place. In many ways, it seems to be different world. I've already commented on everybody's superstitions. I think the presense of the univeristy is partially responsible, as it draws people here who believe in these things, and then reinforces those beliefs. The city also has more "haunted" places than anywhere else I've seen. They seem to have formed their own microcosm. Several special interest magazines cater almost exclusively to the Arkham crowd, and are quite successful. Arkham is far from alone here, though. Before I moved here, I'd never heard of Dunwich or Innsmouth. Now I'm living next door to people from those towns, and if anything, they seem even more superstitious than the average Arkhamer. Sometimes I wonder what I've walked into. (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 4th, 2001
11:27 am	This last week of work has been quite draining. I've had to make trips all over the county, none of them interesting. In my heart burns a hatred for Banzai Buddy and Gator, though. I'm just sending this message to let you know I'm still alive, before I pack up my computer and move into my new home. (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 29th, 2001
2:55 pm	I've filled out the paperwork now. I'll be moving in next weekend. (Comment on this)
10:27 am	Amazingly enough, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the condo I looked at yesterday. It was built only a few years ago, and there no reports of mysterious crimes anywhere in the area. I also checked to see if there were any ley lines passing through or any folk tales surrounding the area. Nothing. (Comment on this)
Saturday, July 28th, 2001
7:13 pm	I spent most of the day house hunting. I've managed to find a nice condo that I can afford, and it's not too far from work either. It's so convenient that I think I'm going to visit the library to see what kind of dark past it has, because Heaven forbid that there's some place in Arkham that wasn't the site of a grisly murder or mysterious disappearance or some other bizarre event. (Comment on this)
5:01 pm	[Wrote this last night, but forgot to post it.] Ah, weekends. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed them. While I was at work, the power went out for an hour or so. When I came back to my apartment here, I learned that the guy I mentioned in yesterday's post was dead. The landlord heard him yelling when the power went out and after he didn't answer his door, called the police. When the police arrived, they opened the door and looked inside. In his kitchen, all his food was stewn across the floor and they found his body inside the fridge. It seems that he did it himself, but nobody can figure out why. The strangest thing is that I heard that the medics who picked up the corpse were confused as to when the man died. Although he was alive just a few hours ago, there were signs that he'd been dead for considerably longer. Creepy. (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 26th, 2001
10:30 pm	An uneventful day at work, so instead I shall comment on the strange cool patch on my floor. I have discovered that a section of my floor along the north wall is surprisingly cold. Measurements with a thermometer indicate a temperature that's close to freezing. At this point, many superstitious people would jump to the conclusion that my room was haunted, perhaps by that Walter Gilman fellow who got brutally murdered back in the thirties. A bit of detective work turned up that the person in the apartment north of me on the floor underneath has an extremely powerful cooling system that he constantly has running. Who knows? Maybe he's just an extreme overclocker. In any case, a perfectly natural source of the cold, and no need to drag the occult and superstitions into the mess. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 25th, 2001
6:53 am	I'd hoped they were oevr, but the weird dreams are back again. This time I was in a strange stairwell. I started walking down it until I reached a weird cavern with a huge flame in the center of it. I wandered around a bit and found another exit, but a couple of old men were guarding it and wouldn't let me through. Eventually I got bored, walked back up the stairs and woke up. The whole thing seemed very real, though. I think I'll see if the library has any books on lucid dreaming. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 24th, 2001
10:21 pm	The Powers That Be (which, I was assured today, are both malevolent and lurking around every corner) must have caught wind of my post yesterday and decided to toss me a case from Hell, or maybe from that Ryleh place or something. The guy's house was in the middle of nowhere. His house was surrounded by two barbed wire fences. He had guard dogs inside the inner fence, and I think there were land mines on the outside. That should have been my first clue that things weren't going to be pleasant. I rang the doorbell, and it was answered by a rather unkempt man wielding a shotgun in one hand, a strange symbol in the other, and was yelling strange things at the top of his lungs. He wouldn't let me into his house before he'd finished administering a battery of tests on me. I think he sprayed me with Lysol at one point, but it was hard to tell with the 1000 watt light shining in my face. The sight of the computer defied description. The case was covered with every sort of occult symbol that I've seen, and many more that I hadn't. Some were drawn on with pen, others painted, and I think there were even a couple that had been welded into place. That alone wouldn't have been so bad, only the case wasn't actually on the computer, but instead was sitting discared to one side. I've heard tales of those who enjoy modifying the insides of their computers; adding lights, liquid cooling their CPU to get a bit of extra power out of it or using rounded cables to make their computers look nicer. They could have learned a lot from this guy. It seems like he'd carefully cut apart every cable in his computer so that all the wires were separate, and then somehow spun them into a complex symbol that sat in the middle. As though that wasn't enough, it seems like he'd decided to draw on every integrated circuit that he could get his pen on. It's fortunate that he missed the CPU behind the heatsink and fan, or his computer would probably be fried. As it was, none of the RAM had escaped his artwork. Noticing my reaction (my jaw picking up lint on the carpet), he casually explained that the Powers of Darkness try to spy on his computer, but the various sigils, glyphs and charms kept them at bay. He was concerned, however, since they still seemed to be able to affect his computer enough to make it run slow and crash randomly. What could I say? I had a feeling that if I told him that his 'protections' were causing his problems I'd end up dog food. I told him to dump Windows ME. He lauded me at length for the suggestion, and explained that he now realized that Microsoft was conspiring against him. He asked what his alternatives were. I told him about Linux. He turned it down when I mentioned Tux, mumbling something about being food. I told him about BSD. He asked what its mascot was. He wasn't too hot with the idea of a daemon running his computer. I told him about Apple. He didn't trust their hardware. I told him about Be, and he seemed happy. He thanked me for my assistance and paid me in cash. I was just glad to get out of there. Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Monday, July 23rd, 2001
6:13 pm	My first day of work. To its credit, it could have been worse. I've read the horror stories. Compared to what could have happened, I'm glad that the everything was boring. I want to kill that damned purple monkey, though. Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 22nd, 2001
9:33 pm	Mark your calendar or Palm V. You can expect to die on: September 21, 2029 at the age of 52 years old. On that date you will most likely die from: Great Cthulhu (57%) Cancer (10%) Eaten by a ghoul (9%) Suicide (9%) Alien Abduction (8%) Insanity (5%) Homicide (2%) Disclaimer: We, despite being proficient with the human anatomy, are not doctors. Keep that in mind before calling your lawyer as you're clutching your left arm moaning "Damn you, Spark, Damn YOU!" on September 21, 2029, as you slip silently into the night. Funny... I don't remember The Spark's Death Test having those means of death before... Work starts tomorrow! (Comment on this)
Saturday, July 21st, 2001
8:59 pm	I spent most of today hunting for a better place to live. My uncle gave a few suggestions, but some of them were pretty strange. There was also a place on Rue d'Auseil that I wanted to have a look at, but for whatever reason I couldn't find the street, nor could anybody give me directions. It wasn't like when I was trying to find that wax museum, where people just didn't want to tell me which way to go. They genuinely didn't know of the place. (Comment on this)
10:23 am	I was woken several times last night by a group of students having a party or something on the island in the middle of the river. They must have been LARPers or something, since from what I could see from my window, they were dressed up in strange clothing. For some strange reason, I thought I heard them calling for me. Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Friday, July 20th, 2001
4:52 pm	The interview went quite well. On Monday I'll be starting work at Soft Support Inc. as a field tech where I'll be able to Go New Places and Meet Interesting People who are Having Trouble With Their Computers. Well, it's a sight better than manning the phones. Now that I have a job, I should probably start looking for a proper place to live. (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 19th, 2001
10:25 am	More strange dreams last night. The strange man and bridges were in them again. I think he tried making me some kind of offer, but some of the angles were giving me a headache, so I wasn't paying much attention. When I mentioned the dream to some of the regulars, they crossed themselves and backed away from me. I'm kind of creeped out by how superstitious everybody here is. (Comment on this)