Apocalypse in the Mists

So, since the world didn't end today, I thought I'd give you a bit of a "welcome back to reality, idiots" gift* in the form of a cool entry today.

Yeaaaaaaaah, we're not exploring there today. *flees*

What are you waiting for: me to explode on you guys? Frak that; dig in on the entry already!





CURRENT MUSIC:
London Philharmonic Orchestra - "Tetris: Theme"
The Greatest Video Game Music

Back in 2011, the famed London Philharmonic Orchestra created an album that was comprised of twenty-one orchestrated tracks. Each of these tracks took a well-known theme from a popular video game and breathed a new kind of life into the piece. The eleventh track from this album happened to be a popular one: the "Type A" theme from Tetris.

Now, there is no way anyone reading this blog would not know about this piece. Ever since Hirokazu Tanaka composed the piece back in 1989 for the popular Game Boy version of Tetris, it's been an earworm for all kinds of gamers - and no matter if one likes it or hates it adores it, it brings a sense of nostalgia to those who had the game as a kid (I most certainly did).

What caught my eye about this particular rendition of the "Type A" theme is the rather peculiar twist the London Philharmonic pulled. The "Tetris theme" is already known for being a Westernized variant of the Russian folk song "Korobeiniki" (or for those of you who prefer Russian Cyrillic: "Коробейники"). However, the orchestra decided to give "Type A" a Russian-esque twist - the instruments were tuned and playing as if it were a Russian orchestra giving the tune their own local flavor. Piano sections asides, it almost feels as if I was in Russia every time I listen to this.





Good evening, everybody! Welcome to a special edition of The White Knight Chronicles! I say it's special because look - it's December 21! A good number of folks believed the world was going to end today, and guess what?

They were wrong~!
A lot of people are contributing this sensationalism to how stupid people are (especially en masse). Personally, my belief was that the popular Mayan calendar interpretation (which, according to a good portion of the 2012 public, meant apocalypse now) was a sham. I thought that the calendar was just metaphorical in nature and that these apocalypse-heralders had misread the circular artifact. Hell - I was even hoping that the Mayans made the thing to troll us! They probably got everything dead-accurate on purpose so that we would be freaking out now (which is what a decent portion of the world did).

Randy Marsh: calming people down with simple (if not flawed) logic.

Digressing. We're not dead.

Anyway, I figured I'd start typing some things up, which included today's entry! This is a first - it's been a good while since I've taken the time to write anything. Sure, I've had a few entries that lasted a few paragraphs, but the majority weren't that impressive. (Well, they weren't impressive to me, at least.)

So, what's been eating my attention this whole time, you ask? A lot of things, everyone. A lot.





The New Representative of the Twilight Empire
(Or: What I've been doing in WoW lately.)

A week ago I did something I set myself to do before the year was out: hit level 90.

Ding!

As Gefallen is my first main, I always had a soft spot for the human rogue. With Mists of Pandaria, I knew that I wanted to do him proud and get him to endgame-status so that he could do fun things.

"Give in to your anger."

For instance, I participated in taking down one of the world bosses: the Sha of Anger. I died once, but I was expecting that - between my low gear, the fact that I was getting 5 frames per second at best, and the 20 or so Horde players wanting to pick us off, I was rather shocked to find that we defeated him. (There's proof - I have the achievement, and my current gloves dropped from him.)

Calvington Fallbrooke shows off a blinding device he created to General Katelle Larmont in a mock duel.

Apart from that, I haven't done much - I've been looking for fun things to play around with in-game, and I'm basically at the point where I want to do nothing but farm. Especially for new armor to transmogrify - as much as I love my Defias set, Calvington is no longer part of the Brotherhood...





Building and Playing
(Or should I say "mining and crafting?")

Of course, the famed MMORPG wasn't the only thing to suck me away from paying attention to my blog here.

Zombie attack! Quick; slay the mindless!

I mentioned a few days ago that some of my friends got me a copy of Minecraft. After receiving the card and spending an hour of my life dealing with installation problems (my graphics card for some reason wasn't supporting OpenGL, so I had to reinstall the drivers - yaaaaay), I logged on...

...and I'll be honest with you: I've kinda been making things like crazy ever since.

To be even more honest with you: I was originally against getting this game. To those of you who know me well enough, this is probably a bit of a shock. Considering how my friends kept referring to Minecraft as "Legos - Except Better," I had guessed that they were just over-hyping the sandbox game like crazy. However, they were right, and as such, I feel it's only right that I be punished for my ridiculousness.

I used to not play Minecraft, but then I took an arrow to the knee.

No, not that kind of punishment!





Cards From Nowhere
(Admit it - you thought I was done with these, didn't you?)

That's right - after not talking about them for nearly seven months, I'm talking about 'em! In case you're wondering what I'm talking about, it's one of my favorite games of all time: 1000 Blank White Cards!

I suddenly got inspired to make a few more cards a week ago, and after scribbling and doodling like crazy, I came up with a few nice ones. Here's a select few from that batch.

Bow Tie
Classy!
+40
You now have a bow tie.

Don't knock on the simplicity of this card. It's still worth 40 points. That, and you never know when that bow tie may come in handy. Hold on to that, mm'kay?

Creeper
Lose 1000 points, your pickaxe, all positive card(s) (effects) in your control, and that super-cool train station / underwater observatory you built.

Created while I was installing Minecraft, I made this card in honor of two things:

1. the fact that I was officially playing Minecraft now, and
2. how (in)famous these frakkers are.

While I knew they were devastating (they're the bane of virtually every player out there), I took this raw, explosive monster for granted until I experienced a Creeper explosion first-hand. I nearly died from it, and the path I had just made for my base had become a giant hole in the ground.

As such, prepare to lose more than just 1000 points when you're dealt this bad boy. Now I'm just scared I'm gonna hear hissing all over...

Gender-Confused
At the start of your next five turns, flip a coin.
HEADS: You're a man.
TAILS: You're a woman.

To be honest: I have no idea as to where I got this card's idea from. I just thought it'd be funny to have something as ridiculous as this amongst the deck.

The Princess Daisy (SECRET)
For the next ten turns, any time you draw/play a card, you must say "HI, I'M DAISY!"
-100 for being an annoying tomboy

Ooh, a secret card. I haven't made one of these in a while. Anyway, I felt like jokingly annoying my girlfriend while I made a card, and thus, "The Princess Daisy was born. (She hates Daisy with a passion - shame for her that Daisy's my Mario Kart main. =P)

The fact that you'll be saying that whenever you play a card will probably make the other players want to strangle your throats. If that happens, then good - I've successfully emulated the feeling most other people get whenever one of their friends (or a complete stranger on the Internet) picks Daisy.

Oh, and that drawing of Daisy I put on the card there was a tracing. I have the source photo, but I found that one day as I was doing random Google searches. As such, I don't know who the original artist is, but if I did, you know full well I'd give proper credit. Thanks to whoever did that source photo!

Team Rocket!
Recite the Team Rocket motto from the Pokémon anime. If successful, you may steal the effects of Pokémon-based cards for the rest of the game.
+30 points & a speaking Meowth

Anyone around my age (with a deviation of... oh, let's say four years) grew up somewhere and watched at least one episode of Pokémon. And since Jessie, James, and Meowth showed up in almost every episode (barring the first one and a few noteworthy eppies), there was a high probability that you'd hear the motto get Meowthed off. (Yes, I made a punny.)

Of course, if your childhood sucked, then I guess you don't know this motto. Please proceed to use this image's alt text and try your best to memorize it. (In the event that you're using a browser that doesn't support alt text: sucks to be you, don't it? =P)





Well, that's it for the rest of the world tonight! I'll see y'all tomorrow!