Machines! Hamsters! Polo! Mexico! Where will this end? Are we all going to die?

No, have no fear. Even if the hamsters have recently taken control over Mexico, they do according to my sources not plan to continue their march of conquest. Having gained a firm grip over almost all of Mesoamerica, the hamsters now concentrate on building machines that will allow them to teleport the Moon. Where and why they want to teleport the Moon is as of now unknown, but a possibility is that they are planning to bring it closer to the Earth to make it easier to get there and extract the Helium-3 there. This of course is a rather dangerous operation to indulge in, as changing the Moon’s orbit will have serious consequences for life on Earth. We will not only get lighter nights; wolves will howl more ferociously, bats will be bigger to cover the same percentage of the moon when they fly past it, and we will have to change the calendar as the Moon’s orbital period will be shorter unless they slow it down as well as move it. The only of these problems which might lead to the deaths of Humans though, is the calendar problem, as the chaos following a change of calendar will lead to riots in the streets, the burning of cars in France, and cults doing mass-suicides. Then again, mass-suicide cult members are perhaps not that much of a loss. 
Anyways, over to the machines. The Chinese are, as always, eager to gain new advantages in their ongoing war with New Zealand. Their newest weapon is a combined cricket- and rugby playing machine. This machine will single-handedly be able to defeat New Zealand’s cricket and rugby teams, lowering the morale of the New Zealanders enough for a naval assault and an invasion of the country to succeed. Let us all say a brief prayer for the kiwis.
The last thing I was going to write about was the issue of polo. I think it is wonderful that a sport is named after a great explorer. More sports should be named after explorers, I think Magellan would be a much better name than Ice Hockey, Eriksson is definitely a better name than Cricket, and few sports make as much confusion as American Football. Americans insist on calling it football despite it having only a remote connection to the sport with that name. I hereby change the official Dagestani name of it to Hudson, and hope other countries follow our example.

Bow before me, for I am the Mushroom Man

My carreer is about to take a giant leap forward! The head of the fruits & vegetables department of the store I work in (hence my closest superior) is going on a two weeks holiday, and he wants me to do hos job while he is gone. So for the next two weeks, starting Monday, I will be the head of the fruits & vegetables department of Ica Frogner. Hurray! 

Arrrrrcon

Another late June means another Arcon . One of the highlights of the year, this con brings opportunities for large amounts of gaming, nerding, seeing people one sees once a year or at least rarely, and also occationally meeting new people. This year's programme looked less promising than usual, but there's always something fun to do and most years I've been there I've found new fun games I'd never tried before.
This year the only thing I was really looking forward to besides seeing people I see at Arcon was a minilarpthingie called Salem 1906 which was about witchhunts in Salem in 1906 and looked rather interesting.

Anyways, for simplicity I'll put this chronologically.

Thursday:
Thursday I isn't really a day of the festival, it's just the day people rig stuff and get the place ready to take in 500ish nerds on Friday. Due to fixing stuff with our new flat I arrived later than planned and people were mostly done with stuff I was useful for, so my rigging consisted of carrying 2 plates for Warhammerplaying. The rest of Friday evening consisted of first playing Warhammer Fantasy RPG (which was lacking from the official programme his year, much to my annoyance), and later Talisman.

Friday:
First real day of Arcon, fixing more flatstuff made me miss the first group, 2nd group was the aforementioned minilarp. 
The setting was Salem, Massachusetts, 1906. 123 years after the famous witch trials, witches are again to be found in the town. A witch has created a plague, and the players play various characters in the town whose goal is to find the witch and burn her/him.
I played a wealthy landlord, was tried and found not guilty for witchery once, and had to see my wife sent off to be burned rightfully as a witch as the end of the larp. My "wife" was played by a guy 3 times my size :|
The larp was really fun, it is supposedly available online somewhere but I can't remember where and am too lazy to find it so go dig it up and play it. I think I played something after the larp was finished but I can't remember what, might be I didn't play anything more that day. Ended the day at the pub.

Saturday:
Saturday is usually the main day so to speak, at least for my part. I planned to play either D&D 3.4 or Agricola in the first group (starting at 10) but woke up at 10:10 and didn't bother stressing to the con (I live 2km from it so I slept at home) and missed the first group. Played Munchkin Quest in the 2nd group. I had never played it before but I'd played Munchkin which is pretty much the same except the dungeon map and the monster figures roaming it. After some confusion and people (including me) giving away their spots in the final I ended up with a spot in the Sunday morning final after finishing 3rd or 4th or something. (2 people went to the final). Munchkin Quest was fun, I need to get that eventually.
After Munchkin Quest I played RoboRally, which has been one of my favourite games (at least if it's with the right group) since I first played it some years ago. The group I played with on Saturday was great, and playing was really fun.Playing it with a guy I used to play stuff with 1-2 times a week a few years ago of course made it even better. Didn't make it to the final, would probably not have played it anyways. 
After RoboRally there wasn't more official programme but since I missed Agricola in the morning and it loked like a rather interesting game some of us tested that. It was reasonably fun and looks like it will be very fun once I learn to play it. Have to play that more. I think though that the highlight of Saturday was meeting a new person I hope I'll have some contact with between Arcons as well as on Arcons. People who not only enjoy playing games but who also are fun to be with is always a good thing. Appearently we'd been pretty much neighbours for a year too, which is a shame since I'm moving now and won't be able to exploit that neighbourship.

Sunday:
Sunday was the last day and I played my first ever final (I think, I have qualified for at least one before but don't think I participated in any), in Munchkin Quest. I won as long as you read the results list from the bottom and upwards, which of course is the only sensible way to read it. Saying goodbye to people I probably won't see for a year was as usual not fun but years go fast :p

Combining something good and something bad to make something very good.

So, this last weekend had one thing I'm rather indifferent to, tilting towards not liking, and one thing I don't usually like at all. Much to my surprise, I enjoyed both things very much.

To start with the first (and worst), on Saturday it was the annual Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) final. I remember seeing this as a kid and even back then I thought it was silly. Not the idea as such, I like the idea of having all the countries in Europe make a song and then compete to see who has the best.  It should however be songs which reflect the country they come from, not the generic cheesier-than-usual pop songs with no meaning whatsoever which most of the participants perform. There are a few exceptions, but as a general rule the quality of the songs in ESC is lower than on the average hit list, and, needless to say, I'm not usually a big fan of this. This, however, is where the "combining something good with something bad" comes in. Some friends of me decided do have a ESC pling-party. Pling-parties are generally connected to football matches on TV (where you drink everytime the TV goes "pling" as a result is updated), but it appears to work with ESC too. Instead of drinking whenever someone somewhere scores a goal, you here mainly drink during the part of the final where the points are awarded. You pick a nation in addition to your home nation, and drink 1 sip per point the countries get, and if they get a 12 (which is max) you empty your bottle.  (Un)fortunately for us we didn't have enough drink to follow the rules strictly. Norway got alot of points. I am fairly certain that the awesomeness of the people I did this with was a major contributor to it being as fun as it was, but I also believe that it would be fun to do with other, less entertaining people. Though it is, as most things, something you need the "right" people to get the most out of. Anyways, it was great fun and the following trip out on town was also quite fun.  Hurray for awesome Saturdays!

Here I wrote a semi-large piece about Sunday, but blogspot decdied to remove it. Hurray for awesome Sundays and boo for blogspot stealing my writing. I might bother rewriting it but I doubt it. Not now anyways.

New stuff

This blog now has lists. Lists of cool pages and lists of blogs. Hurray!

It might get blog entries too, eventually, but don't hold your breath waiting for that.

Rescue Party

After discussing books with a friend, and referring him to the story I think is the best I have ever read, I decided to read it anew. It was still as good as the first time even if it lacked the thrill of exploring a new story of that quality. The story in question is a short story by Sir Arthur C. Clarke, called Rescue Party. It is a science fiction story, but an untraditional one. The setting is around 150 years into the future from when Clarke wrote it (1946), and there are two main stories. 

The backstory is that the Sun is about to go nova (or more correctly, supernova), and a ship from the Galactic Survey is being sent to save what it can of the newly discovered civilisation which inhabits the planet. The civilisation was discovered by chance just in time for one spaceship to be able to reach the Earth in time to rescue some of its inhabitants. Appearently humans have evolved unusually fast, a survey ship passing through the Solar system 400,000 years ago had seen life on the planet but it had not yet evolved into intelligent life, and was not expected to do so by the next scheduled survey 600,000 years into the future. The fate of the human civilisation, and the extremely rapid evolution of the race are important background storylines. 

The main plot is the story if the ship which is being sent to the rescue. It is populated by various races, all of which are far older than humanity, one is as old as the universe itself. They arrive at Earth mere hours before the Sun explodes, leaving them little time to explore and search for survivors. We get glimpses of how human society has evolved, and as the story goes on, it becomes clear that humans are not to be underestimated, they have evolved rapidly and show remarkable pace in their technological progress. 

The story is unusual for Clarke in that it is not hard science fiction, strictly speaking. Sure, human technology is all within the limits of hard scifi, but the alien races have vastly superior technology, some of which defies the laws of nature as we know them, such as faster-than-light travel. This does however not take anything from the story, and considering that these races have had millions of years to evolve it's perfectly plausible that there are ways of acquiring such technology which humans simply haven't found yet.

Anyways, as mentioned above, this is simply the best story I have ever read, and you should all go find a book in your bookshelf with the story in it. If you should be unfortunate enough not to own such a book, go buy one at the bookstore.  This book for example is quite nice. Should you for some reason not be able to get a book, the story is also available online on this page.

Clarke died far too young, may he rest in peace.

Blog

So. After considering starting one for several years I've finally gotten around to actually making a blog. I have no idea what it will contain, most likely various stuff I feel like getting off my mind, stuff I've written which I bother putting onto the pc and random other things. To quote the er, wise man Maddox: "If minds had anuses, blogging would be what your mind would do when it had to take a dump."

Furthermore, I have no idea how often I will post or if I will remember that I have this thingie and post stuff. I also have no illusions about anyone actually being interested in what i post.

That will be all for now.