Bibles

Everyone's got their own personal Bible, "that one" book that defines them, encapsulates them, perfects them. Mine, I haven't found. It's probably a dusty old leatherbound thing, sitting in a forgotten corner of a struggling used bookstore, waiting. One day I'll go into that shop. I'll scoff at the selection but I'll browse anyway, because something wants me to. I'll leaf through a few books in the Fiction section before deciding they're worthless and turning on my heel to leave.

Then I see it. Sitting on a stool in the corner with a hundred years' worth of dust and dead bees on it. I'll brush off the corpses and pick up the book- it will have no title- and, breathlessly, I will open it. The first page I see will be somewhere in the middle: it will be blank. Confused, I'll flip through the rest of the pages and discover that, yes, all of them are blank.

I'll sigh, disappointed. After all, this is my Bible- I had expected something amazing. I'll buy it anyway, just for the hell of it, but I'll forget it at a coffee shop a few minutes later. After I leave, the barista will notice it, grab it, and run out into the street to give it to me (she thought I was cute, it was one more opportunity to get my number) but I'll be gone already. So she'll take it home, discover it's blank, and spot a pen on the table. "Oh, why not?" she'll mutter, and write a few stories that float in her head, stories of princes and dragons and all the wonderful and terrible things she's heard and thought and felt. The next day, she'll forget it at a restaurant, and a friendly waiter will notice it, grab it, and run out into the street to give it to her (he thought she was cute, it was one more opportunity to get her number) but she'll be gone already. So he'll take it home, discover it's blank...

...And so my Bible travels. It never seems to run out of pages, and it has a habit of getting forgotten (curiously, it also displays a kind of aphrodisiac effect among food-service workers) and finding a new owner. It's filled with stories of every kind, breathtaking and dull, thoughtful and pulpy, hilarious and heartbreaking. And one day, it will find its way back to me.

Or maybe not. I did say "probably" at the beginning of that, y'know.

Anyway, I finished two songs! One is an adorable love song with some fun finger-picking. The other is about Lovecraftian horror. I'm pretty sure I am the most confusingly versatile artist in the world. But mmm, songs.

August Challenge, Reborn

So back in sultry July, Noah promised that the month-long dry spell would be just that: A month, with a promise of miraculous reincarnation in August.

August is now upon us, as evidenced by the ice on my (currently out of commission) air conditioner, and 'tis the season of backwards equations with letters in them. So, with heavy heart, I resume my Quest to Not Fail Highschool. Along with it goes the New! Improved! Music vs Math challenge.

The Math: One math course, designed to take a year to complete. Total lessons: 35. Completing each lesson requires watching the lesson, doing one worksheet, and taking the test. Test scores must be 80% or higher to "pass".

The Challenge: The month is August. I'm completing Math lessons, Noah is writing songs. Person with the most completed on September first, wins.

The Stakes: Bragging rights! Also, yes, my highschool diploma. But hey, girl's gotta have priorities, right?

And so, tugging my books from between Girl Genius and an article on how all teens are hopelessly depressed (oh, the irony), I trudge into a dingy motor home for my date with Gus.

Echo Bazaar

So, I've been playing a lot of Echo Bazaar lately. (If you haven't, go check it out! You need a Twitter account to play, but chances are you're planning on getting one anyway.) I've come to the conclusion that it's well-written, fun, frequently hilarious, staggeringly huge, frighteningly addictive, and very, very poorly designed. I'll get into that in a moment, but first let's talk about the game in general.

The first thing you see when signing up for Echo Bazaar is the newspaper headline "London Kidnapped by Bats!" London has been changed. It's sunk into an abyss and now seated next to Hell, and you play a newcomer to this "Fallen London." After escaping from prison, you are given freedom to roam throughout the city, raising your four skills (Dangerous, Watchful, Persuasive and Shadowy) and gathering wealth. The writing is, and I do not say this lightly, fantastic. It's imaginative and witty and in nice little clumps. I found myself hoping I would fail a challenge just so I could see what they wrote about it.

The mechanics of the game are similar to Mafia Wars and all those other browser/Facebook-based games. You have a limit of ten actions; these actions recharge at a rate of about one every seven minutes. You spend actions by... well, doing stuff. Pick a challenge, click "Go!", and you'll either succeed or fail, but either way you spend an action. The harder the challenge, the higher-level skills you'll need to complete it.

Now, here's the bad part. If you fail the challenge, you get one experience point. If you succeed, you get two. This is completely independent of the challenge's difficulty level. If you succeed a "straightforward" challenge (you will never fail a straightforward challenge), you get the same two experience points you'd get if you succeeded on and "almost impossible" challenge. This is, and I don't say this lightly either, bad design. If you take a bigger risk, you should get a bigger reward if you succeed.

Frankly, that's my only problem with the game. It's a free with premium content, but it doesn't force you to pay to actually enjoy the full scope; the writing is fantastic; and it's a great way to take a two-minute break from working or reading or whatever you're doing. I've been checking it every now and then while typing this. Even if you're not into video games, you'll like it; it doesn't require any prior skill or knowledge of the medium. Plus, it's by a small startup company who clearly enjoys what they're doing.

So, in conclusion, if you like stuff that is nice you will like Echo Bazaar. Go play it.

Howdy there!

Yup, my lungs have been tryin' to make like bandits an crawl outta this here throat. Good ol' Sheriff Throat can hardly keep 'em!

We been talkin' about things ter do wit' 'em if they do 'scape the gullet, what'da think?

*cough* Sorry. Take pity and forgive the ill. I blame oxygen deprivation. :P

• Sell it on China's plastification (you try spelling that) black market.
• Donate it to charity! Earn Congressional Gold Medal.
• Blow it up with helium and see if I can float!
• Lung golf.
• Shove it back in and hope no one noticed. Enter Ripley's Believe It or Not.

I am still taking suggestions, as well as 20+ pills a day. Fortune favors the brave, however, so I am back here proving the state of my brain and reluctantly... pulling...out...the........math.

I have to thank Noah for covering my @ss and posting while I've been out of commission. :) Unfortunately, while the Music vs Math challenge has indeed been moved to August and dropped to 30 songs/lessons... I still have to complete my original personal goal. Of 66 lessons.

In what is now considerably less than 66 days.

If it kills me, I entrust my last wishes to you. I want a funeral with brilliant food (Italian), great music (drums, and a musical number) cherry blossoms, and a female preacher. My gravestone: She Tried.

Off to start the wheel rolling again with lesson 11.

One and a Half Amps Later

One could argue that technically, it is only one amp, but there is enough awesome in it for an extra half. So there.

Now, you might be thinking that "Music vs. Math" could only be a good title for a direct competition between composition and computation. However, this is not the case- "Music vs. Math" could serve as an interesting, even poetic title if need be. The constant internal warfare between art and intellectual pursuits; in other words, just because you're an incredible artist doesn't mean you're exceptionally smart. "Music vs. Math" defines this conflict, and is also mildly intriguing for advertising purposes.

On a completely unrelated note, the competition is on hiatus. My energy has been hijacked for the last three weeks, for a variety of reasons, and so has Maria's. We're planning to reboot in August, aiming for 30 lessons/songs instead of 66. Much more manageable, at least (okay, no, it's less manageable but STILL). The blog is not on hiatus. I still need a place to bleat like a goat, hoping to God that somebody somewhere is listening.

One and a Half Weeks Later

Hey, all! Sorry we've been dry. I don't think we've been getting much work done, either. Over the last week and a half, we both went to the Unitarian General Assembly, then she went to HOBY (a crazy-intense four-day youth leadership conference), then the last five days I've been taking an eight-hours-a-day programming class and she's been sick.

So, in reality, a lot of work has been being done. It's just that very little (none?) of it has been math, and none of it has been music. Most of it has been yelling, either for enthusiasm at HOBY or at GODDAMNED UNCOOPERATIVE LISTS.

But! Music will be done. Perhaps an acoustic song in a Southern accent called "Feelin' Blue and Fixin' Bugs." Meanwhile, I hear there are these "moving picture" things you could go see.

Anyone want to count remaining days for me?

Little math has been done in recent days. I'm up to 9/66, which, for those of you who are counting and don't know how to use widgets clever people invented so we don't have to count, is 13.64%. This was expected, though, so to my darling Gus: suck it. The rest of you, I'll be offline until Monday being leadership-y and hopefully finishing up my 100 hrs of volunteer service. (Which I have had a year to complete, surpassed and perhaps tripled... but then never logged.)

In the meantime, I leave you in Noah's oh-so-capable hands.

Bring a towel. *

Maria takes no responsibility for any ensuing autopsies.

9 / 66

The different branches of Arithmetic - Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. - Lewis Carroll from Alice in Wonderland

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*First person to name the reference gets a free hug.