My Akoha History #5 – Chumbawamba’s Tubthumper

March 25, 2010, was the date I played the mission Angst Avenger, which required me to submit the album art from a favorite record during my teen years. My teens years in terms of music were rather bare. The only music I ever really listened to on my own were the random cassette tapes from my father’s large collection, which had a focus on country but you would still find an assortment of rock and rap within as well. Being a kid, I had no understanding of what was “good” music. That’s how it is as a kid: you assume whatever is playing at the time must be good because why would there ever be a recording of it, or you would hate it for some reason even if the reality of the situation shows that the music is of fine quality. There have been plenty of moments I thought older music sucked because it wasn’t being played on the radio.

Again, a kid who didn’t know better, though I know there’s a point when you’re just being blatantly ignorant instead of uninformed. These days, I continue to call myself eclectic, being that I grew up with a good dose of country and classical music, and dabbled in the music around me found through networking and the Internet. Even so, I find myself usually connecting with electronic dance/rock/pop/etc. than anything else, if only because I like the way synthesizers sound in my brain: a bunch of frying sparks clashing and exploding in an amazing symphony.  In other words, Chiptune tends to win me over the most, because it’s a combo of video game nostalgia and the same burning feeling I get from electronic music in general. Support PANDAstar and company bitches.

Early D&D Ideas From a N00b DM

I recently had to go through one my Dungeons & Dragons folders to make room for new papers. And yes, I said one, because I have a lot of papers to store and sort through, seeing as I not only have stuff for my game, but other people’s games, one shot adventures, and random D&D material in general. The folder I sorted was the “random material” folder, which is only one of eight folders at the time of this writing. I think.

The point is I had a lot of new stuff to put in, and in order to make room for everything I had to throw out old material, and I voted upon old notes and writings from my first D&D game (aka the one I was kicked out of). Seeing as it was a game I was given the boot from, I had no reason to keep any of it save for nostalgic purposes. However, I needed the room, and unlike the new material, this stuff could be digitized and made immortal in some text document, taking up no more space than whatever computer database I deemed it rest in.

My Akoha History #4 – Navy Shower

It turns out Akoha can be very educational along with being a social developmental tool. I didn’t even know what a navy shower was until I played the mission called “Navy Shower” (yes, very original). In a world of extreme consumption and over use, we tend to forget that water is one of the greatest resource we should be concerned about. The hell with oil, which runs our industry. In order to run our lives we need water, and should it dry up or get toxic we got one hell of a problem on our hands. So bless the navy for figuring out a means to conserve water and stay clean, which I tried for the first time on March 25, 2010…

Was actually a very enjoyable experience! Except shampoo was in my hair the whole time I washed with soap, and I couldn’t get it out of my eyes (soap as well) because I couldn’t use water. But hey! It’s better to keep the soap on a little longer than rinse it off in the comfort of the warm rushing water. And on that, I got to appreciate the warmth much better because I didn’t have much of it.

The d20 Door Prize

I recently hosted an all day Horror Movie Marathon at my now former apartment. It was a long day, but I saw a lot of good films. Except for House of the Devil, which just sucked due to the constant boredom you go through till the last 20 minutes of a 95 minute film. It’s like appreciating Gerry: it accurately shows and understands real life workings, giving the proper atmosphere…but it fails at anything compelling. Sure, House of the Devil is better than Gerry, in that it actually gets interesting at some point, but that isn’t saying much.

Not wanting my Movie Marathon be anything generic, I threw in a few curve balls to make it interesting. One was serving pancakes, which I tried at a previous gathering…though only two other people enjoyed. Due to the high praise it received that night, I felt right in trying it out again. I also had a bunch of vampire fangs handed out to every guest, which were appealing for the first few minutes then put away for being uncomfortable. At least we now know what a Pikachu with fangs looks like (no, you’re not seeing the photo). The third idea was something I cooked up in the late hours of cleanup I had before the day of party, which was the d20 Door Prize.