I’m really sorry for not posting as regularly as I’d like on the blog right now, and I probably won’t get better until the semester is over. There’s a lot of work on my end, so I’ll be keeping on the downlow.
Upside? More filler!
For starters, watch this and tell me Andy isn’t a little… messed. Somehow. In the head.
Take a look at what I drew! With colours and everything!
Cookies go to whoever says what it is in the comments!
-Phil
I’d write more, but I don’t have the time. Maybe over the weekend? This should keep you occupied.
-Phil
You start off all young, your journey begun
Your eyes are dashing to behold
The sights that you see, the smells from your feet
And your breath when it’s really too cold
And after a time, you’re told in a rhyme
That there’s gold at the end of the road
And you track and you toil, you break and you broil
For the gold at the end of the road
You’re not so young now, and your jaw is aground
From the amount of work on your load
But you’re still young yet, and you won’t regret
The gold at the end of the road.
And after a time, you’re told in a rhyme
That there’s gold at the end of the road
And you track and you toil, you break and you broil
For the gold at the end of the road
You scramble and scrape, you gamble and gape
And make every call and all folds
But you still can’t make the money you need
To have the gold at the end of the road.
And after a time, you’re told in a rhyme
That there’s gold at the end of the road
And you track and you toil, you break and you broil
For the gold at the end of the road
And then you grow old, and your shoulders turn mauve
And your bread becomes crusty and mold.
And yet you continue, on this path sans venue
For some gold at the end of the road.
And after a time, you’re told in a rhyme
That there’s gold at the end of the road
And you track and you toil, you break and you broil
For the gold at the end of the road
And now you’re all spent, your skeleton’s a dent
And your skin is a huggin’ your bones
And you feel a sensation, a queer revelation
About the gold at the end of the road.
And you cry to the sky, and you ask it “why why!”
“Why was I never told?”
“The Gold’s not a price, it’s nor a gold piece”
“But my life, which I wasted for ore.”
And after a time, you’re told in a rhyme
That there’s gold at the end of the road
And you track and you toil, you break and you broil
For the gold at the end of the road
... if I didn't have a 6 minute solo tomorrow.
Before I really begin, I’d like to tell a small story.
One night in September, when I was visiting home, I was walking home at around 4:00 am with a buddy of mine after having played video games at another friend’s house for well over 4 hours. We get to discussing Music as a discipline and a program, and my friend says something to the bastardized, paraphrased tune of “Music is one of those things I can’t respect the same way I respect lawyers et al. because Music kinda happens and other things need a ton of math, time, degrees and stuff to get to where they are.”
The next time I hear that bastardized, paraphrased tune, I will shove my roughly size 13 boot up their ass.
That would also happen to be the opening scene of RAGE: the musical. Someone would walk on stage, and say “Music is srz bzns, lolololol.” Then I would march from stage right, swing my right foot back dramatically, and then shove a steel toed boot up his behind, causing a very satisfying yelp to emanate from his now desecrated corpse.
I don’t know why, but at the same time that playing music makes me the happiest person on the planet, it’s also what causes me to be at my most angry. Obviously when I am playing well I’m happy and when I’m not I’m angry, but it’s a really, really big difference in mood. One minute I’m dancing to the music, the next I am literally jump kicking walls. It almost makes me wonder if I’d be better off majoring in something else, but then I realize what an untalented douchebag I am and I keep on trucking.
In all seriousness, I don’t think I want to change what I’m studying. The only course I could think of that’d be more fun than this is Game design, and I don’t meant that shit involving the computers and all: I’m talking cards and boardgames. Is there such a course? Actually, there is: but it’s in Oxford, and probably requires more than a talent for basic theory crafting and probability calculating. Which, by comparison to other people who build games, is like saying I want to run a circus with a small house cat and a bag full of peanuts so I can lure in a technicolour pachyderm from someone’s delusional, drunken world.
So for now, I have act 1 of my musical pretty much written in stone, featuring the main song of the entire piece: the surprised, never-ending screams of a person who has a boot suddenly shoved up his ass, mingled with the rage of the man with a boot. What’s next?
Act 2: The Man With A Boot performs a solo concert, only to have his fingers fail to move fast enough, causing him to jump kick his instrument into the audience, causing even the likes of Chuck Norris and Chuck Barry to go wide eyed and go “What the %$#@ is wrong with that kid?!”
Call me uncreative, but they should get a boot up their ass too.
-Phil
So yeah, I’m a messy person. I have a serious habit of not cleaning my room when I need to, and it’s something my parents would love to knock out of me.
Well, now I don’t live in their house, and my room is a mess.
The reason I am telling you all this is because there was a bit of discussion on twitter today about desktops, and how, as Rilgon put it, “Messy desktops make baby Rilgon rage :<”
Well, I hope he’s ready to weep from fury. I use a Mac, and this is how my Desktop looks.
My only saving grace is that the dock at the bottom hides.
-Phil
As a preface, this is the novel I was writing for NaNoWriMo. Since I’m not in the running anymore this year, I have decided to post what I do have over the course of the year until NaNoEMo, National Novel Editing Month. Hopefully I’ll have the whole story typed up by then so I can participate in it.
In any case, here’s part 1! In all of its shitty goodness.
———————
Rain. It’s always raining on days like these.
The millions of little drops flying across your face, slamming into your side like hundreds of little freight trains, each one soaking you to the bone. Your skin crawls from the cold, and each time the wind picks up feels like you’re getting slapped by a woman made of ice.
Happily, I was inside my office. The noise of the open office space outside my door mingled with the sound of the rain slamming against my window, creating a little symphony of the city.
The symphony was pierced by the phone on my desk, which rang loud and clear through everything else. I knew why it was ringing, and I knew who was calling. They were calling me to go somewhere I didn’t know, where I was not likely to come back from. I picked up the phone.
“This is Detective Black speaking.”
The voice that greeted me on the phone was distorted, masked. It sounded like someone had replaced their throat with a voice box.
“Ronald Black, meet us at Red’s Diner in 30 minutes.” Click. At the very least it was succinct.
I took the next few minutes to enjoy the music of the city before leaving. The cars rolling on by, the shouting going on in the open area outside my office. The rain slamming against my window.
I got out of my chair and took another look at my office. It’s not a big office, but it’s mine. The walls are covered in cheap brown wallpaper and it’s peeling in several places on the ceiling, which is painted taupe and has a ceiling fan. The grey, shoddily carpeted floor is covered in stains of all kinds: curry, pizza, noodles, anything and everything has been spilled on this carpet. Even blood, recently.
I walked around my desk in the middle of the room, knocking off a handful of playing cards. The light on the desk flickered a couple of times, struggling to stay on for as long as it could before it died out, like a man hanging on the edge of a cliff with a cold, watery grave at the bottom. I made my way to the coat hanger next to the door. The comforting weight of the trench coat hugs my shoulders as I put it on, causing me to relax and think that even now, things could be worse. I walked to the full body mirror on the other side of the room, and I took a good hard look at myself.
The bags under my eyes were big enough to carry groceries with and dark enough to look like eyeshadow. My short brown hair had a greasy look and feel to it from going so long without bathing. My black tie was halfway undone, my 5 o’clock looked scraggly, and my blue shirt wasn’t tucked in. I looked like shit.
I couldn’t be bothered with fixing myself up at the moment to look presentable, so I went to the desk to grab my badge and my gun. The gun is a 6 shooter revolver, but all I know otherwise is that it goes bang, and it kills people. I tend to dislike using guns, so I don’t know a lot about them.
I holstered the gun on my harness, and wrapped my coat around me like second skin. I walked to the door, turned around to take one last look at the office, and then walked out of the room. The door slammed behind me, and I couldn’t help but notice that the lightbulb finally died. The room went dark.
A number of weeks ago, I wrote a post about magic. On this post was a comment by a certain TJ, not the one from Temerity Jane. In any case, TJ and I have a conversation there about his deck, and what TJ could do about it. At the end of the conversation, I said I would eventually post about my decks on here in more detail.
Well, this one is for you TJ: Here is my big, most powerful deck, created and crafted over a period of several years to become the piece of shit it is.
Working Together For A Brighter Future Deck
WTFABF Deck for short. Some have called it the What the %$#@, you ass-o-holic bastard %$#@ deck as well. Drew, I’m looking at you.
History: I made this deck originally to play in tournaments, and it did reasonably well there. As my deck evolved though, it wanted to do other things than Type 2 touneys, and so I let it. As a result, I got 2nd place in a massive multiplayer free for all tournament, earning me $32 dollars store credit, a $20 card, and 2 large pretty art boxes. Since then, it has changed very little, and still remains a powerful deck in most situations: it just does really well in a multiplayer environment.
Here’s the deck:
Lands: 23 Total
12 Forests
5 Plains
1 Eiganjo Castle (Why? Because I CAN.)
2 Elfhame Palace
3 Vhitu-Ghazi, the City Tree
Creatures: 16
4 Selesnya Guildmage
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
3 Seedborn Muse
3 Scion of the Wild
2 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
Spells and Aritfacts: 21
4 Devouring Light
4 Glare of Subdual
3 Sensei’s Divining Top
3 Mirari’s Wake
3 Priviledged Position
2 Eladamri’s Call
2 Hour of Reckoning
Total: 60
Now there are some changes I would like to make to this deck when I look at it already, but this is the deck as it stands.
The basic strategy of the deck is to make a lot of Saproling tokens, and then kill my opponent with them. There is, however, more to it than that. As this deck is pretty good at getting a lot of numbers on the table, it doesn’t get them out quickly like some others do: so how do I make up for that? By buffing them.
See, when you have loads of little people, a little buff goes a long way. 2 large creatures get the same benefit from a global enchantment that 12 smaller creatures do, and for the same mana cost. The strength of this deck lies not in numbers solely, but in making those numbers count for more when I play one of my enchantments/buffs.
Mirari’s Wake, Kamahl, and Selesnya Guildmage all buff my saprolings to heights unseen by sentient fungi. Kamahl is an obvious game winner: After using his ability, I just gave a dozen saprolings +3/+3 and trample, which nearly always ends a game. Also, Mirari’s Wake gives a permanent +1/+1 boost to my attack and toughness stats for all of my creatures. With Mirari’s wake in play I can make greater use of Selesnya Guildmage’s abilities to create a ton of saprolings and/or buff them to deal damage or survive a Pyroclasm or something.
But Phil, you ask, the Guildmage’s abilities are EXPENSIVE. Even if you get a large amount of mana from Mirari’s Wake, how can you really make a big army of these guys? Easily answered: Seedborn Muse. With her ability (and it’s because of her that multiplayer is such a fantastic venue for this deck), I can create hordes of living plant-men at the end of my opponent’s turns, every turn.
Obviously, this makes her a target: and that’s where I have Priviledged Position to protect my synergistic community of mass murdering mushrooms. Having 2 of them out at once will allow my creatures to be completely safe beneath an umbrella of awesome, just so long as no one uses global abilities. Which happens often, but you can’t prepare for everything.
Now, one has to ask how I get all that shit to work when I want it. Well, that’s not too hard either. Granted, I don’t have any card drawing ability, but between having the cheapest, most effective creature getting card I know in game (Eladamri’s Call) and Sensei’s Divining top (went from being an Uncommon to being a Mythic Rare!), I can control how my game will go pretty consistently.
The other card that allows me to control how my game is gowing is Glare of Subdual. With all the freaking fungus at my disposal, you’d think I’d have found a good use for it: and I have. Apparently, they’re all so shiny that, with Glare of Subdual out, they can permanently lock an opponent’s creatures down. Without any blockers, I can kill an opponent very quickly and with little effort, or allow a teamate to do so in my stead.
Now, I know things go wrong. Someone out there might be playing elves, and has a huge amount of them ready to jump down my throat, or a Darksteel Colossus bent on breaking my bones. Well, there’s a card for that too: Hour of Reckoning wipes the field of all non-token creatures, which means my saprolings live another day, and Devouring Light gets rid of those larger, peskier creatures.
If I needed to change something at this point, I would be tempted to try replacing the Devouring Lights with Path to Exile, and I would replace the Elfhame Palace’s with Sunpetal Groves, but those cost money I don’t need to spend right now; so the deck is going to stay as is.
If you liked this, I could make another post on how my other 3 decks work, but I’m not sure if anyone cares.
-Phil
So, a few of you have thought that I’ve gipped you, and I promised rage and didn’t deliver. Well, I thought this might be a good replacement.
*ahem*
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
I am fed up with my house being cold! I mean, come the hell ON! It’s NOVEMBER! And they put on the AIR CONDITIONING! It’s like trying to build a house at the north pole with no heater! No wonder I have a frackin’ cold, and it figures that I have it right before I have a lot of concerts and shit to do.
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Speaking of that shit to do, why is there SO MUCH OF IT. I expected a reasonably large amount of crap to do, but this is OBSCENE! 10,000 word page papers are hard, and I’ve tried writing a novel.
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Speaking of which, ANNOYED at not being able to compete in NaNoWriMo this year (my first year!) past the 15,000 word mark. It makes me feel bad, and I loved the character I was writing too.
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
I want money, but jobs around this place are really hard to get. In addition, I can’t (for the life of me) budget anything. As a result, I feel like crap because every time I call my dad, I keep having to ask for money.
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
My vitamin C chewables taste really bad.
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
I’m running out of shit to RRRRAAA about!
RRRRRRRRRR- oh to hell with it, I think that’s enough rage for now.
-Phil
