The Lankhmar Times

Hi!

So, I have been reading Le Ton Beau de Marot, by Douglas Hofstatder. Excellent, excellent book, and it's obvious that he takes much delight in translation. As it turns out, I do too! One of the books he looks at in-depth in Marot is Eugene Onegin, by Alexander Pushkin (one of the seminal works of 19th century Russian literature). The work is broken up into what are now called Pushkin sonnets, of the form aBaBccDDeFFeGG, with lower-case letters being 'feminine rhymes' with the rhyme on the penultimate syllable, and upper-case being 'masculine rhymes' with the rhyme on the last syllable. Additionally, it's in iambic tetrameter, which I find to be a particularly lyrical and somehow chatty style. So I am writing my own, because I love structure. Here is my very, very first stab at one, so be gentle :)

Cowen Park

I walk the park amid sunshine
I feel the rays upon my head
So seldom days like this one, fine
But cooler now summer's a-bed
Playing amidst the grass, a breeze
Whispers to me, 'Enjoy this, please!'
In the distance dogs are barking
To them my puppy is a-harking
She jumps ahead now tail wagging
Impatient then to have her walk
She looks at me as if to talk
Suddenly to ground she's sagging,
"Let's lie down here", she seems to think,
"And watch the daylight shade to pink!"

If anyone still reads this, let me know what you think!

I am not much for memes, but I promised:

I want to know 28 things about you. I don't care if we've never talked, never liked each other, or if we already know everything about each other. I really don't. You are obviously on my list, so let me know with whom I am friends!

( Behind the cut )

Anub'rekhan down!

Happy birthday to me!

Why dave_littler is now my friend.

Why I know who he is at all.

Anub'rekhan is an incredible bitch.

That is all.

So, here's a couple of images for you. The main new design is the combined Leo/Virgo symbol surrounded by roses. The artist also did some work on the old one, adding some definition to the roses, highlighting the colors on the character, and adding some shadow to the ankh. Unfortunately, after 2 and a half hours we were both about done and so there's stuff left to do. Among them is making the shadow look more like a shadow and less like I've been sucker-punched in the back.

I got a new tattoo!

Details and pictures forthcoming.

A 3-line script that solves any 9x9 sudoku:

use integer;sub R{for$i(grep!$A[$_],@x=0..80){%t=map{$_/27-$i/27|$_%9/3-$i%9/3&&$_
/9-$i/9&&($_-$i)%9?0:$A[$_]=>1}@x;R($A[$i]=$_)for grep!$t{$_},1..9;return$A[$i]=0}
die@A}@A=split//,<>;R

Credit goes to these guys.

Nef went down again. Black and red drakonids this time, arguably the hardest combination. Woo us!

I also picked up a sick hammer, the Herald of Woe. I am somewhat of a collector of hammers at this point:

Simone's Cultivating Hammer (quest reward in Silithus)
Herald of Woe (off Flamegor in BWL)
Jeklik's Crusher (off Jeklik in ZG)
Empyrean Demolisher (off Kazzak)
Hammer of the Grand Crusader (off Balnazzar in Strat)
Aurastone Hammer (off Garr)

What can I say? I like hitting things :) Now I just need the +84 to healing hammer that Nef drops and the +184 to healing hammer that... uh... someone in AQ40 drops and I'll be set.

Nefarian is DOWN!

More details forthcoming.

So... Nefarian.

Yeah.

We got him to 98%! Phase 2, baby!

I have to say, the guild I'm in is a massive collection of raw talent. The guild formed 2/8. Two months ago. They took down Rag about 3 weeks later (which was around when I joined). Started on Razorgore one weekend, were up to Ebonroc the next weekend, killed Chromaggus the weekend after that. And here we are, getting Nef to phase 2.

I feel pretty crappy in comparison :D Though I did get the Judgement Hood (ooh, spooky eyes!). And an Aurastone Hammer. Anyway, work is nuts today, back to it.

So last night was the usual MC clear. Usual for everyone but me, that is. I ended up with THREE pieces of the LB set. It was INSANE. For those of you keeping score, I have everything but the legs (and I have Judgement) and the helm (I have the crappy Whitesoul helm). 6/8, baby!

As far as medication goes... well, I'm on it. Been on it for four days or so, and I haven't sprouted any extra appendages. I guess it's doing what it's supposed to :/

I did a quit-smoking hypnosis MP3 that Adam made for me on Thursday. Friday, Saturday and Sunday were HORRIBLE. I had every bad sideeffect of quitting smoking without actually wanting a cigarette. Better today. Amazingly better, actually.

Anyway, not much to report.

I propose a verbal form of catharsis.

To catharse:

I catharse
You catharse
He/She/It catharses

We catharse
You (plural) catharse
They catharse

It's simple. And cathartic. I feel better now.

EDIT: You can even gerund it! (Is 'gerund' a verb? It should be. Then you could gerund it... 'I was gerunding the other day...'. Er. Offtopic). I was sitting there with my friend and suddenly I was catharsing all over the place!

Well, I'm going to the doc tomorrow. To get medicated. After, of course, she bitches me out for smoking and the weight gain and whatever else comes to her mind (she's actually a totally cool woman, but I have been neglecting my health somewhat).

Medication... sigh. It scares me. My biggest fears all tie into my body - catching some sort of wasting disease and becoming schizophrenic. For some reason, anti-depressants are connected to mental damage in my mind. What if I went on them and something broke in my mind? Would I know it? Would I be able to fix it? Would anyone?

But on the other hand, I have a fantastic life and am consumed with self-loathing and self-destructive tendencies. As my Mistress said, it doesn't look like I can think my way out of it. Sure, quitting smoking would help. Getting exercise would help. Changing my diet would help. Hell, even cutting back on WoW would probably help (yeah, right). But none of that will help if I can't get the mental and physical energy together to do it. And that's the crux of the problem.

I'll probably...

Note: This post has been interrupted because I can't find a verbal form of 'catharsis'. I am seriously irked by this.

... be spamming LJ with updates as to my mental state. If I start to sound insane, please let me know.

OMFG I can't believe I got through Sokoban and the Gnomish mines and had a blessed bag of holding and a blessed unicorn horn and a luckstone and Mjolnir for fuck's sake and then I died because I was STUPID. ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!

That is all.

MC last night, went exceptionally well. We ended up with like 8 BoE epics dropping - we won the lottery! ;)

Good night for pallies too... 5 total drops, and I got two more pieces of the Lawbringer set... the gloves and the shoulders. So I too now have banana shoulders :)