Saturday 2 October 1999
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Pic of the day: "Agrotat". A modified motif from the RPG
Daggerfall. ... It's been raining most of the day. Mild rain. The forest is still green mostly, though scattered leaves have fallen. I did not remember that it was so green for so long. September was almost a summer month. Then again, before anyone invoke the name of the Greenhouse Effect, I also remember that this summer started unusually late. So I guess the trees are allowed to stretch the season as best they can.My throat, which was pretty sore yesterday, feels quite fine now! I'm still hacking up great balls of slime, but hey. Perhaps it is not getting worse? That would be nice. Speaking of nice, I had a few calls from my best friend and her brother yesterday and today. He's been working on some homework (or whatever the equivalent is called at university level) and wanted to discuss the politics of deterrence with me. Also he did not trust Superwoman's translations of a rather technical English book on the subject. Smart boy. She does take some shortcuts now and then. :) Of course, living in Germany means she does not get to use English all that much. So it is not bad to be able to read technical stuff like that at all. ... You are correct to assume that I have spent the afternoon playing Daggerfall. I have not felt eager to play (in any way) these last days, but today I created a new Daggerfall character again, with a modified version of my Handyman class. I had to use a cheat program to make this class weak enough - the previous version was too easy in the long run. This one is pretty weak, using no weapons or armor. Fellow daggerfools can find more details at my dedicated site Daggerfall Crossroads. Apart from that, there's been a lot of interesting debate on the diary mailing list. It's strange to see these people so serious and thoughtful and polite. Now, these are not spring chickens, generally, but they can be quite wild sometimes. Just goes to show that people are not quite as shallow as one could think. Well, at least diarists are not. I can't vouch for the entire populace. :)And right now I'm sitting here listening to the simplest of dance music with the most banal of text, housewife pop or Swedish pop as it's called around here. Though there is quite a lot of it in Norwegian by now. I generally like it. It is melodic and agrees well with my brain. It is funny how some types of music just aligns with my brainwaves, if you see what I mean, while other types clash violently with my prevailing emotions and thought patterns. I find it downright hard to think or feel while some kinds of music are played, even briefly. Chief among those is rap in pretty near all its incarnations, it sets my nerves tingling like the thought of a burglar in the house. I don't consider myself a racist, but I find it slightly disturbing that my pet hates in music are mostly those associated with African-American subculture: Rap, jazz, blues and even much of gospel music. I don't know enough about reggae (?) to say if that too is color music or not. Now, remember that I live in Norway, which is an ocean away. I disliked this music before I became aware that it was associated with the black subculture. Is there after all some genetic gap?Or are these forms of music shaped by the anger, fear and repression these people have experienced in their lives? I find that for some of the genres there are a few pieces of the music that are palatable (the exception being rap, so far). And in all honesty, I abhor the hate music of my own "race" too: The black metal, death metal etc of my country's satanists and semi-nazists. So I guess yes, the music is somehow carrying over some of the most fundamental brain patterns of those who make it, and then try to impose the same pattern on the listener. Spirit in a box. A disturbing thought. Lightning and thunder outside. Midnight is approaching. |