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Category: Entertainment

Why, oh Vy?

Published on December 24, 2019

A tale of disappointment, frustration and lessons learned the hard way.

GET HYPE!

Devin Townsend is touring in Europe, and he’ll be playing Oslo!

– Naíve Ranyhyn, 2019

I immediately purchased a couple of tickets for Devins ‘Empath’ tour, with all the tail-wagging excitement of a labrador thinking he’s headed for walkies in the park.

Prepping

The concert was to be held on the 24th of November, a Sunday night, in Oslo. So to ensure I had enough time to get to the venue and enjoy my gig. How best to do that, one wonders?

Where I work, I’m lucky enough to enjoy a flexible schedule, which means in cases like this, I can usually arrange to have a day off, and work the hours back some other way. As long as I give sufficient notice, it’s hardly ever a problem, which I’m thankful for. So I gave ample notice to my boss that I would like to take Monday 25th of November off work, and that was OKed without any fuss. Excellent! Now for transport.

Rental?

I have this old diesel car, a 2001 VW Passat, that has seen a fair amount of mileage. For the past year I’ve noticed some issues with acceleration and have been unable to pinpoint and fix it completely. We found a hole in an EGR valve, which was replaced by a mechanic friend of mine, and we flushed the engine and turbo system as well, but still it struggles to even reach the speed limit in some cases. So I decided I didn’t want to take my car to Oslo, where diesel cars are banned at least some of the time.

Instead of using my car, My roommate and I decided to rent one. We found a rental agency, and found a suitable car. We decided the cost was acceptable, even factoring in the higher level insurance we wanted to get to cover any and all possible damages that might occur, just to be safe.

Shortly before the concert was set to happen, my roommates cousin offers to lend us his car. Being at least somewhat frugal and seeing no sense in giving good money to a rental agency when we can get it for next to nothing, we agree, and decide not to book the car instead. We thought we were clever. Alas, the innocence of youth..

Murphy’s Law

The evening before the concert, the guy whose kind offer of borrowing his car suddenly remembered that he’d forgotten to put the centric rings on when he changed to winter tires.

So. Not that car, then. It was too late to get a hold of a rental too. What do we do? Let’s check buses then!

No buses going quite so late. Maybe a train would work? Let’s look up train schedules.

Oh god, vy?

With the concert starting at 19:00 we saw an opportunity to arrive in Oslo at 18:30, and leave again with the last train out. That gave us several hours for the concert, which should be done by then. Gigs usually last around two hours so we thought we were good. Even including the sound check and encores.

To avoid having to wait for 4 hours and 45 minutes at Nelaug train station – conveniently located in the middle of absolutely fucking nowhere – before getting on the connecting train home, we decided to arrange transport to and from Nelaug by car.

Being a seasoned concert-goer you noticed our mistake right away. We didn’t account for the warm-up act.

Being a seasoned train commuter however, you noticed yet another mistake we made: Thinking that 30 minutes extra would provide sufficient temporal slack for us. But no, Vy had other plans.

Delays

While waiting for the train at Nelaug station, we were informed that the train would be running about 20 minutes late, because they’d decided to pick up more cargo than they had originally planned. This took extra time in and of itself, but there’s an additional delay from the added weight not accounted for. This caused us to arrive in Oslo an hour after schedule.

Vy arrives on time – an event which grabs national headlines:
“Official spokesperson assures public it’ll never happen again.”

Haken

We may have arrived an hour late, but it turns out this was just in time for the warm-up act. The one we hadn’t factored into the concert duration when we booked our return tickets. Yeah.. We got an hour of whatever the fuck this is first.

To be fair, it’s our own damn fault. I know there’s always a warm-up act, and the Empath tour poster on the Devin Townsend website even mentions Haken being part of the tour.

So, with the warmup act and the main act sound check concluded, it was time for some of what we came for.

Ain’t never gonna win.

We had to leave after the track ‘Never Gonna Win’ in order to have enough time for the train ride home.

My favorite tracks of this tour being Deadhead, Why?, Kingdom and Spirits will Collide – I was pretty disappointed I didn’t get to hear any of them. But that was nothing compared to the disappointment of hearing the intro to Deadhead just as I was heading out.

Every fiber of my being told me to dig my nails into the wall, refusing to leave until the song was over. Sadly, my voice of reason won out, and I begrudgingly left the concert hall, heading for the train home. God damn, those were some of the hardest steps I ever took..

My face when I’d found my seat on the train home.

Lessons learned

Next time, I’ll book a hotel for the night, and I’ll be taking an early bus.

Seven Inches of Satanic Panic

Published on September 30, 2019

The Swedish metal band Ghost has released a new single, featuring two new songs – Kiss the Goat, and Mary on a Cross.

True to form, they’re marketing their new single with a generous helping of tongue-in-cheek, although whose tongue is in whose cheek is up for debate, knowing Papa Nihil – the fictional character who released these songs during the summer of love back in 1969, and who now tries to stay relevant by re-releasing the Seven Inches of Satanic Panic single at it’s 50th anniversary.

Of course, Ghost never existed back then and the songs are brand new, but they’ve got that late ’60s sound, and so this was a natural marketing gimmick, for a band where the front figure is routinely killed off and replaced with a successor for every new record.

Papa Emeritus I-III

Each front-figure has it’s own distinct style, both visually and vocally, and the albums are all very different from one another, while still being tied together by this fictional satanic cult hell-bent (get it? heh..) on bringing forth the antichrist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CULRete_Hok

After the album Meliora, the band members had a falling out, over what essentially amounts to a contract dispute. It’s my understanding that the lead singer – Tobias Forge – was managing the finances for the band, and the other members wanted a larger cut, but Tobias saw Ghost as a solo project, where they were hired musicians, and since he won out in court, I believe this to be reflected in their contracts. It’s a shame it went down the way it did, but due to the way the brand is set up, Ghost could survive such a monumental change to it’s lineup with relative ease.

One hitch in all of this is that – if the sources I’ve read are to be believed – guitarist Martin Persner was the one who had brought the character of Papa Emeritus to the table, as it had been created by a friend of his. So with Martins departure, Ghost itself had to depart from the Papa Emeritus line of characters – by killing them off, of course.

Enter Cardinal Copia

Ghost frontman solved this problem by assuming the persona of Cardinal Copia, a clumsy and somewhat incompetent cardinal of the satanic church. Seemingly the sole reason for his rise to frontman status is that he’s the lovechild of Papa Nihil and Sister Imperator, whose origin stories are depicted in the music video for the song Dance Macabre of the Prequelle album.

So, fast forwarding a few years after the events of Dance Macabre, we find ourselves in 1969 – time doesn’t seem entirely linear here but alright – where a young Papa Nihil is fronting the band, and releasing the original Seven Inches of Satanic Panic single, which we’re seeing re-released for it’s 50th anniversary now.

…is it any wonder I love this band?

Yeet or be yoten

Published on September 21, 2019

Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.

– Terry Pratchett

Three days ago I chose to reinstall a video game called Divinity: Original Sin 2 (DOS2 for short), this was on the two-year anniversary of it’s launch. This post is going to be about that game, and why it’s worth playing.

DOS2 is a role-playing game set in a richly developed fantasy realm. If this seems exceedingly childish and uncool, then this post probably isn’t for you, but you’re welcome to read regardless.

https://i.imgur.com/nLxZDWB.jpg
The ever charming Lord Withermoore

Larian Studios – the development team responsible for creating DOS2 – have an almost unique attitude to the relationship between product and consumer: They understand that games are meant to be fun. A revolutionary concept in a market so dominated by easy cash grabs.

https://i.imgur.com/F4FfrMn.jpg
Sir Lora, a very serious squirrel.

DOS2 is a lot like playing D&D with a fun GM that sets clearly defined sensible rules, and then lets you abuse those rules until it just about breaks the game, and they don’t mind at all – in fact, they encourage it.

First and foremost, DOS2 is a campaign with pre-defined quests. There are milestones you need to get past, but you’ve got a lot of freedom in terms of how you want to reach those milestones.

Yeet or be yoten

Currently, I’m making my way through the game for the second time. My current strategy is to stuff my backpack with heavy items, and lobbing this suspiciously spacious and above all indestructible backpack at enemies. Focusing on Wits and Scoundrel for my stats, I get an increase to critical strike chance, critical strike damage, initiative which is high enough to always get the first move in combat – and some points in Telekinesis to allow me to fling this backpack around like it’s nothing, despite the fact that it’s about as dense as a neutron star.

A quick intro of the telekinesis bag build, by me.

Other ways to break the game

So it turns out that this is far from the only way to make clever use of game mechanics. You could make infinite money with herb gardening, and use that infinite money to buy high quality items. You can also use your herbs to brew tea, which has the interesting effect of reducing the cost of your abilities to 0 if you drink enough of it, making you an unstoppable force.

Tea farming is a legitimate way to master DOS2 as demonstrated by The Spiffing Brit

You can also combine a series of spells in such a way that when the enemy takes damage, you are healed, and when you are healed, your ally is healed – except your ally is undead or afflicted with decaying touch which means he takes damage instead, and then you can make it so that your ally cannot die for two turns, and also make it so any damage taken by your ally is also mirrored to your enemy. I’m sure you can see where this is going.

And then.. Then there’s whatever completely insane gamebreaking black magic fuckery this is:

BruceWillakers demonstrating DOS2 Barrelmancy.

So say we all!

Published on September 10, 2019

A quick recommendation to those who haven’t seen Battlestar Galactica (2004 reboot version) – Go watch it. You don’t like sci-fi? That’s mostly a backdrop for a story that at it’s core is quite down to earth. This saga has been described as a space opera, and if neither of those words sound remotely interesting to you, please keep reading; because if I can’t convince you you’re wrong, at least you can round off this read with a warm self-satisfied feeling that you were right all along.

BSG has an overarching storyline about the last remnants of humanity fleeing for their lives, for reasons you’ll want to find out for yourself. This is a story of survival, of tough decisions, of holding on to existence by the skin of your teeth, with the black veil of uncertainty about what the next moment might bring, creating a tension you could cut with a knife.

There’s also smaller storylines, all about interpersonal tensions, the interesting dynamics between people, some who shared a past before the events of the first episode, others who meet for the first time somewhere in the show, and it’s in these interpersonal storylines we see a lot of raw humanity in BSG. People brought together, people driven apart, alliances, rivalries, conflicts and resolution.

The many stories of Battlestar Galactica are expertly woven together by phenomenal acting, with names like Edward James Olmos, Katee Sackhoff, Mary McDonnell, Michael Hogan, and many many others. There’s a fantastic and I daresay highly integral musical score by Bear McCreary, there’s detailed set designs, great camera work, the lighting is excellent, and all in all there’s almost nothing to dislike about this show, at least in my opinion. There’s a few things, but they only apply to the last season, and is entirely a matter of personal opinion.

Looking up trailers for it on youtube is not recommended, as they’re all terrible and often full of spoilers. Instead you can enjoy this highly misleading BSG in the style of Friends intro.

Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

I know many people don’t like sci-fi, some of these people claim it’s simply childish, and all nonsense adventures with no grounding in reality, and apparently therefore not worthwhile for an adult to engage with.

To them I say that actually, fiction is an excellent way to learn more about what it means to be human, and it’s through the genres of sci-fi, fantasy, mythology and suchlike that we can easily pose questions you’d have a very hard time conceiving of without the altered reality you are presented with in these genres.

Battlestar touches upon central questions of politics and philosophy such as what does it mean to be human? Is being a person the same as being a human? It deals with questions of the rights of prisoners, of workers, of citizens of all kinds. It deals with the freedom of the press, power structures, civilian vs military, it deals with xenophobia, and greed and a number of the darker sides to humanity that some people refuse to face, because it’s too disturbing. But it also deals with loyalty, friendship, love, hope, faith, kindness, altruism, warmth, democracy, truth and justice too.

If you liked Game of Thrones, I think you’d enjoy Battlestar Galactica, and even if you didn’t, you might still enjoy it, and I suggest you at least give it a chance. There’s not been anything quite like it, to my knowledge.