The erratic adventures of shay & jax
It's been a while, as Stain'd once famously said (I considered linking you to the video, but I'm not that cruel...)
Annnnnnnnnnnnnyway, there's not much to report beyond what you can read in Shay's blogs. Vera is, at this point, a waste of good virtual oxygen. I'm going to have a go at the ode to Banjolina thing when I get a bit of time and inspiration. I already have the tone of the piece mapped out in my head, just need to put some flesh on the bones. Other than that, Shay could use some more people to talk to, so I shall try to put him about a bit more. Football season has started, and I'm already bored with it. I just cannot work up the energy to really care about Argyle at the moment, as another season of pootling along in mid-table of the bottom division looms. Maybe I'll start doing something more constructive with my weekends, like alphabetising my books by genre. I realise that this post is very dull, and really just filler, mixed with padding. I shall try to to do better in future - perhaps by posting lots of swivel-eyed rants? What's that? Rice already has that one covered*? Oh well, manface skanks with bolt-on tits it is then! :) * You know I love you really, you big moaner
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Afternoon everyone. I hope you're all having a fun weekend. Apologies for not updating regularly, but I have been crazily busy, professionally speaking. Too many evenings have been a case of come home, have dinner, then go up to the study and work until bedtime. You will all note, however, that unlike that lazy student Rice, I have managed to keep V ticking over and have seen some fairly significant developments with Shay. Butters is also a student, but she's managed to keep Madi moving forwards. As any fule kno, women are better at multitasking than men, thus proving beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am twice the woman that Rice is... This blog has languished in my drafts since just after the Easter weekend. The sun shone on Friday and Saturday, and me and the boss got the hiking boots out and got up on the moor to rack up a few miles - it was a wonderful reminder of why I love living where I live. I had an interesting chat with Cookie over the Easter weekend about alignments and 'evil' characters in Popmundo. It's pretty easy to be a dick in Popmundo (don't believe me? Go read the forums for an hour or two...) but a lot tougher to be evil, especially now the opt-in system for the crime game has removed another way of fucking over other people's characters. On top of that, there's the whole thing about bell-ends using 'oh, it's only RP' to try and cover up the fact that they are just griefers/trolls/children.
How then do you roleplay an evil character in an essentially 'good' universe? Cookie pointed out that the answer, as with most things, is mutual consent. You have to find a gang of like-minded nerds that don't mind exploring the darker side of human nature, and maybe impacting negatively on their own character in order to advance the story. And even then it's not easy; it's tough to find people who are willing to do that, the people who are willing tend to be friends and people that trust on another, and people are understandably loath to risk upsetting their friends. This is, I believe, why I can think of two 'evil' characters who haven't really turned out that way. Their puppet masters have struggled to find people to play them with, and they are too nice to just mindlessly grief unsuspecting players. Informed as I am by nerding it up in 2nd edition AD&D (I can't believe they've made Armour Class RISE as it gets better, and got rid of THAC0! Of THAC0, of all things! [/nerd]) I was thinking of adding alignments to the character bios (this was all my idea, and certainly not something I yoinked from anyone else. Oh no...) Then I realised that both V and Shay would be something fairly dull like Chaotic or Neutral Good, so I won't bother. :P Any other business? Post your requests below. I'm tired, but at least the sun is shining. This means that spring may have just about sprung. Popmundo is a bit 'meh', as I'm as busy as everyone else, and I have no inspiration re. new songs. After meeting up with an old friend last weekend, I'm also starting to play the older-than-god's-dog It's A Crime, which could cut into my titting about time. What am I busy with? Well work mostly; still helping to put right all the damage caused by the storms that the UK copped at the turn of the year. In fact, it's 10pm and I'm doing a bit of work now. Small mercies? I generally enjoy what I do. On top of that, I just out the other day that some houses I designed have won a county award for best social housing and best small development. This means they go forwards to the regional awards, and also means that I may have to hire a tux. :P On top of that, the fine weather is a good opportunity to get work done around the house. We cleared out a border in the sunniest spot in the garden and finally buried our old cat on the weekend. He died just before we moved a few years ago. He had a pretty tough life before we took him in, having been abandoned by three different families, We promised him that he was coming with us and, even though he died a few weeks before the move, we kept our promise. For the past few years his ashes have been in a cupboard while we cleared and planted the garden. It may seem strange, but even though it's been three years, taking the wooden box that contained his ashes out of the cardboard box that the vets had packaged it up in for the first time still produced floods of tears from Clair and I. I think what set me off was seeing how small the box was. Anyway, that's all over, and it was nice (in an odd way) to do and to write about. To give you some idea of what a fucking idiot he was, if you started to tickle him, he would roll over like dog so that you could tickle his belly. Occasionally, if he was near a wall or fence, he would forget to leave room for his bum, and this would happen: Other than that, though, I promised you some of the stuff that's been missing from this blog lately. I was going to start with music, but the local live music scene is being a bit crap at present so other than post random stuff I've been listening to on Spotify, nothing leaps to mind on that score. Instead, let's go with the heavily tattooed women, shall we? How good is that image? And I do mean as a piece of photography, not (just) because of Heidi Lavon's *ahem* ample charms. Big ups to Mr Travis Haight. Oh, and a a music link has just sprung to mind. I heard this while I was getting my hair cut, and I'm loving the riff (and I'm a sucker for bands that are just drums and a bass): I hope yours were as good as mine!
I'm not long back from a (not particularly) sunny jaunt to the seaside with a bunch of friends. Much fun was had, mostly eating and drinking too much as we avoided going out in the rain, but a few of us also too a trip to the Execon comic convention, where I pretty much stole sketches from the super talented Dom Reardon and Steve Sims (as we all know, this blog is followed by numerous celebrities*, so if you're reading, guys, £5 a pop is way too cheap!) I will be uploading them to the Book of Faces this evening, so I may well put them up here too. We also played Cards Against Humanity, which is brilliant as long as you play with a bunch of mates as despicable as you are. :) Anyway, I'm catching up again now. After a few weeks of being back, it seems like Alanna is going to take another dirt-nap, which is a shame. Hopefully her PM (aka Tapioca) will continue to lurk here. Apologies to Butters for not being about more for Madi's big day. Let me know if I'm behind on anything else. Pics of heavily tattooed women, cricket references and links to weird music you'll hate will return next blog - promise! *Okay, just one, but that's one more than you lot! :D PS - I've scanned the sketches, and here they are: So, in Hip Hop parlance, shit got hectic for a bit there, as work went (even) crazy(ier) and I had to get stuff done for my dad's 60th birthday party. Everything came together reasonably well though, and this week should be a bit easier. Not much to report on the Popmundo front. Shay is currently at his new gaff with Océ, gettin' snuggly. It looks like he'll be going to Madi's Hen party dressed as a bearded lady. And, most importantly, one of my all time favourite Popo-nutters - Δlanna - returned from her coma. Let's hope it lasts as she's a great character. :)
I was 'working' from home on Monday and Tuesday, and mostly catching up on news and tumblr, for a heady mix of informed comment and ranting loons. One thing that's got my goat is the recent kerfuffle about Belle Knox, the Duke student and pornstar who was outed by one of her wonderful classmates, leading to threats of physical and sexual violence. In fairness, there's every chance the guy who outed her didn't think it would come to that, because there's every chance that he never stopped to think at all. Now it's not difficult to argue that if you make pornography while you hang out with large groups of young, perpetually horny people, there's every chance that your secret is going to come out, but that's not really the point here, is it? Let's be optimistic and assume that he's some kind of moralising busy-body, or just another troll fucking with people for the lulz, because it's pretty easy to extrapolate much less pleasant reasons as to why he was moved to blow her cover. But what's really annoyed me is the way that the bickering between both paid an unpaid commentators seems to go down the lines of: "Well she was gonna get found out anyway." "Yeah, but now she's getting threatened." "But she'd just parlaying that into media coverage." "But the media are portraying her as a terrible person." "But how can she make porn and call herself a feminist?" "But she chose to make those scenes." "But they perpetuate the idea of women as accessible sexual objects for men!" "But she says they make her feel empowered!" Maybe I'm too engrained in the BBC culture of 'balance', but I don't understand why people can't grasp how all those things can be true at the same time! I do believe that she genuinely enjoys that kind of sex because I know men and women who feel empowered by being sexually submissive. I believe she made her own choice to make the scenes she made but, like all of us (especially you young people *coughButterscough*) she's a product of a patriarchal society which sends out messages, every day and through every form of media, that to be a woman is to be a sexually available object (and yeah, I'm well aware that men are under similar pressures too, but not to the same degree; if this had happened to a guy he'd probably be getting free drinks, not death threats!) The problem is that people seem to want to boil arguments down to the binary so that they can a) not have to think too hard about difficult issues and b) bully people into telling them that they are right. It's like the situation in Ukraine; we have a section of the population that, having realised that Western governments might not be the even-handed purveyors of liberty and justice for all they purport to be, now believe that anyone who opposes them must be the good guys. Y'know, like that nice Mr Putin... The idea that this might be two groups of shady motherfuckers playing power games to the ultimate detriment of a smaller independent country just doesn't seem to compute. I guess this is because that means they would have to do things like consider opposing opinions, fact check their sources, and think about things in depth. Far easier to just post glib shit on social media. *sigh* It seems I've got a little carried away and done a proper teal deer, so I will stop here. I was going to post some pictures of heavily tattooed women, as these pages have been woefully short lately, but given my little feminist rant earlier, it seems wildly inappropriate. As for cricket references, well it's just too depressing. :( It's raining again. You'd think, living in Southwest England, I'd be used to it, but the weather has been so shit for so long that it is genuinely getting me down. I would kick a small dog for some cold, dry weather. Work has been quiet for the last couple of weeks, meaning that Monday-Friday, 9-6 moves like treacle. Normally I like these brief quiet spells. I do deadline-driven work, so the odd quiet week here and there is a chance to catch up on the paperwork and CPD I habitually ignore, and to piss about on Popo and perhaps write a few songs. However, Popo isn't much of a diversion at the moment; I am struggling with character ideas, and a lot of the people I tend to bounce ideas and messages off are stuck in a busy/away cycle, or having their own motivational issues. Pretty soon the work that is looming for February will be upon me, and it'll be panic stations again. Sorry for being a moany fuck; just feeling a bit 'meh' today. Feel free to cheer me up by sending me links to 'research images' of attractive, heavily tattooed women who could become V's next faceclaim. By which I mean V's next faceclaim that Rice steals, obviously... ;) I'm going to start playing with a few DAWs and having a go at making some of my own music, including putting some of the better stuff I've written for V and Shay to music. Do any of my loyal readers (I may be down to just the one now!) have any recommendations? I'm not going to dive headlong into Pro Tools or Logic Pro. I want something easy to pick up and fairly low-cost to start off with, and I'm looking at FL Studio and Reaper. I also quite like the old-skool trackeriness of Renoise, which reminds me of the heady days of me and my cousin making terrible Techno on our Commodore Amigas. If and when I get up to speed, I may *ahem* download a trail copy of Ableton, or something similar. A friend recommended I listen to Elvis, and who am I to argue? Man, I love that film
Random draft blog entry lurking about. Oh well, may as well put it to good use.
Shay blogged for the first time since dinosaurs roamed the earth on bicycles today. A proper Teal Deal emo-moomin blog too. I'm very proud of him... I am still behind with PMs. Kick me if I missed you. I need to add sexual orientation to my character pages. That way, when Ellis friend-pwns Madison, it'll hurt less. ;) I had a bit of a thunk about what I have coming up, socially, in the next few months and, shit the bed, it's a fair old amount. :P In October and November I'm going to:
Also, I'm going to go with Teya Salat for V's new face claim. I think I'll change her bewbs over at the end of the last ever TFTB tour. Bewbs! (Kinda)
Just, y'know, cos I haven't written anything in forever. Anyhoo, what's up with the puppets? Shay continues to be young, free and easy. Very selfishly, Rice has decided to (finally) kill Joni, meaning that I have to get off my lazy arse and have Shay acknowledge that fact, or he will look like a total shitbag. Jeez, why don't people think about how their shit is going to affect other people (and by 'other people', I mean me :P)? Vera, well, who knows? I wrote another song for her, which was even worse than the one in her current blog, so that's progress at least. I am toying with giving her a permanent face claim, which would allow me to change her avavtar more often without having to photoshop on her tats. Bread in getting-less-anal-about-shit shocker. In the running at the moment are: Please feel free to let me know your thoughts, gentle reader, As Vera herself would say, all correspondence should be written on the back of a bikini model...
On a weebly tip, the person behind Heav/Lana/Anja/fuckloads of others has posted Twelve Too Many!!! which you should all go and check out. It must've taken her hours to fill in personal details for all her characters, which must be why the blog section of the site features lots of entries that mysteriously just s I think I broke Popmundo. The shock of Shay blogging, after about - what? A year and a half? Something like that. Anyway, that seems to have murdered the game engine to death.
TO DEAAAAAAATH!!!!11!eleven! I apologise sincerely. I'm getting back up to speed after a fun cross-country trip. The bride looked beautiful, the groom looked like a ringmaster, and pretty much everyone looked very, very warm indeed. The only downside was the trip home, which was traffic-tastic. Not much news on the Shay or V front - they are both about to embark on new tours. This will be the last ever FTB tour, after which V's bandmate Neil will take a dirt-nap. I think I may ask nicely if V can keep the band, and she can turn it into a cowpunk artist. She'll have to take a small break, and stock up on songs, but she should be ready to get back on the road sooner rather than later. Shay is, somewhat foolishly, perhaps, going to attend Joni's wedding. We shall see whether drama ensues. Apparently Madi wants to kick his head in. Other than that he's becoming very close to Océ, but they both seem to be fairly devout singles at this point in their lives. Still, we shall see. I mean, Joni's much cuter younger sister will be arriving soon, right? And Shay has form on that score... Oh, and the Foulquier weebly is well in the works, and looks as pretty as a picture. It might take a while to complete, mind you, as the lady behind them runs half the people you've ever met in the game. :P |
WTF?!This site contains out-of-character information for characters and events in the MMO Popmundo, as well as general navel-gazing and apologies for never updating. "If you are offended by words like: Shit! Bitch! Fuck! Dick! Ass! Whore! Cum!" Ice-T
Who the Hell?!
The author is a professional person in his mid-30s, old-school Hip Hop head, Punk Rock fan, Plymouth Argyle supporter, comic book reader, and general lo-fi nerd. He lives in the countryside with two cats and newly-wed wife, all of whom seem to be above him in the pecking order. He is a big fan of tea, fig rolls, H.P. Lovecraft, facial hair and quiffs. While MPB robbed him of his quiff-rocking dreams, he does sport a dope handlebar moustache. Categories
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