The players depress me even more each day.

She replied with “r u being sarcastic?” and I told her that childhood malnutrition is not a joking matter. Horrid wench.

I made my first Star Trek-themed art and since Shane approves, I’ll post it here.

Yeah, the lighting on the left shoulder is a little messed up and one of the eyebrows is slightly larger than the other. Minor stuff considering I had a good time making it. I just love Vulcans.

Credits to:

ChonaStock
Moonchilde-Stock

Thank-you, Luthas.

Alright, let’s not

Lately, I’ve been in a bit of a bind, rut, hole, et cetera. I’ve read a lot of fantastic books that I want to review, I’ve seen a few films that have made me think a little bit on things, but my brain feels tired. I have so many things that I want to say, but when I write them down they just seem meaningless and empty. I’ve actually tried to write a few entries in this blog after writing that short bit about the Sandbox, but I’ve usually just gotten bored and X’ed out of the window.

On top of that, I feel like I’m sort of letting people who read this blog down. I suppose that this is because I read other people’s blogs for the interesting, thought-provoking, or even just amusing posts. Right now, I just feel all dried-up. There’s really no excuse like “Oh, I have coursework” or “Oh, I have work”, it’s mostly that I feel like I can’t completely materialise my thoughts into words. On top of that, I’ve had little inspiration for making art. One of the things that I worry about most is feeling “stuck in a rut” for a long time. For a whole year, I stopped making art once.  I don’t want a year to go by until something finally gives me the drive to create things, whether they’re just my silly blog posts or not.

Something will come along, I guess. (cue to prompt readers to respond) Do you guys ever get stuck? What do you do to get out of it?

So, there’s been some debate over here about the Sandbox. At one time (not too long ago), the same person complaining about it once praised it for having a rich culture. Either way, I’m not blaming anyone for changing their minds about the Sandbox. Sometimes, good things in excess can be a little too much for anyone.

I was joking around with Shane and I told him that the Sandbox should be hidden from public view for two weeks to see if overall post quality went up. This sort of got me thinking.. would post quality go up if that were the case? Users spend a lot of their time in the Sandbox and if it weren’t pruned, it’d no doubt be the largest subforum on RSBANDB.

What if we hid the Sandbox from view for a while? Would it make a difference, and if so, how? Should we consider it? I don’t know, honestly. I always like having a few laughs, but things in RSBANDB have lately been a little sluggish. I’d like to know what you all think.

Like..real-life ones. So, if you’re not into real-life issues, read my bit below about the blonde keyboard or something. Okay, so I’ve been friends with a friend of mine (let’s call her Paulina) for about three years. She’s always been a smart person who helped me out with my maths coursework in college..overall very bright. Her fatal flaw is that she’s a complete dimwit. Do you know the type? The type that is amazingly gifted in academics, but doesn’t know a damned thing about taking care of themselves?

So Paulina got married when she was 18 (she’s a few months younger than I am) and her parents were furious– rightfully so. Her father nearly disowns her over the whole matter and she moves away with this man. She moves very very far away and is dependent on her husband’s income. Her husband is away a lot on business, but is overall a good person who loves her a lot. He has a very demanding job where he’s actually risking bodily injury everyday. While he was away (he’s gone sometimes for 6+ months), she gloats about how she wants to have a baby with him and I tell her that she’s crazy. I mean, she’s crazy, is she not? Having a child one year after getting married and having the husband gone? A few weeks later…

The story gets more interesting. Paulina’s husband is away and all is well. She’s a little lonely, but has made friends in the neighbourhood. Paulina’s friends, unfortunately, are dumber than bread and they wag their tongues constantly as if they’d accidentally swallow them if they stopped. Paulina cheats on her husband. She kisses another guy who is the friend of one of these girls. A few weeks go by and Paulina realises that she’s very unhappy with her marriage, so she sleeps with said guy.

She rings up her husband and tells him that she wants a divorce without telling him what happened. He arranges to come home, and will be there within the month (has to finish up duties required of him). She phones me up telling me how “inconvenient” it is of him to come home and how he has “added to the drama” in her life. Now when you have a friend of  three years, it’s hard to tell them the truth. I did it though and I lost that friend to-day. What did I tell her that was so wrong? I told her that what she did was shameful, that the guy that she broke her marriage vows with doesn’t love her, and that her self-pity is frankly infuriating. I also told her that because I care about her, I decided to tell her what I thought. Since she did ask, after all.

So Paulina doesn’t want to be my friend after this and I’m writing this to you all for no reason other than the fact that since she’s told me that, I haven’t been able to be of much use for anything else.

So! The assist system came out today. I really like the idea of it and it completely came out of nowhere. It’s clear that Jagex sees that there is a disparity between lower-level and higher-level players and they’re finally doing something about it. Rewarding players for helping each other isn’t new to gaming, many MMO games have some sort of system or quest designed for players to rely on each other and it’s about time Runescape added something like this. The only way I can see this being misused is by people who are über-newbies who think that “assist” means they can ask normal players for FREE GP PLZ.

I hope they add info about the assist system to Tutorial Island as well, if they haven’t already. It’s something that can be great as long as people can work together.

Blond Keyboards

Yes, in Russia, a keyboard specifically made for blondes have emerged on store shelves.

Each function key has a little description on it about what to do and the ESC key simply says “No!” on it. It can be yours for only 16 EUR (about 25 USD). Is this thing pointless, or what? Read more about it here.

While doing a few quests in Canifis, I noticed a very peculiar set-up of the town. What I found there was HORRID and OFFENSIVE that I had to write this blog entry to tell you all how I’m on a mission to boycott Canifis forever. You shall see my reasons in a moment. As I walked through the town, I noticed that there was an NPC named “Svetlana”. I thought Oh, that’s awesome! A Russian NPC! How quickly my excitement faded. As it turns out, there are several NPCs with Russian names in Canifis, but when you examine them you get a rather unpleasant surprise:

“Seems a bit of a drama queen”.

A bit of a drama queen, eh? So all of us Russian women are just drama queens who secretly turn into werewolves when you attack us? We just sort of, I don’t know, have nothing better to do than to create drama and aimlessly walk around a swampy village according to Jagex. Here’s another:

“He keeps calling me comrade”.

Oh, right. Because all Russians are obviously commies who sit around drinking vodka all day saying, “AHH KOMRADE, ZIS IZ VEDDY GOOD VODKA. IZ BETTER ZAN ZAT CAPITALIST GARBAGE YOU AMERIKANS DRINK, DA?” That’s right, we’re all just a bunch of communist werewolf weirdos, don’t mind us!

“A travelling man. Are those fleas?”

Fleas? So now we don’t wash? We’re just a bunch of dirty gypsy communist werewolf drama queens? Well you know what, you’d stink too if you had to live in Canifis! Might I also add that ALL of these NPCs are hostile whenever you try to make conversation with them. You might say that “Oh, but MQ! It’s because they’re werewolves and they hate humans!” Wrong! It’s because Jagex thinks we’re all a bunch of anti-social overly-aggressive jerks. Let me introduce you to Irina, another participating citizen of the anti-Russian campaign that Jagex has founded.

“I bet she works out”.

Oh does she? We’re just a bunch of steroid-ridden women who are drama queens as a result of the influx of male hormones into our bodies? That probably explains why Jagex has made us all morph into WEREWOLVES when attacked. Oh, oh, oh, let me guess: we got the werewolf ability when Chernobyl happened.

In essence, Jagex has a rather peculiar view of Russians as being communists, masculine (the women), drama queens, poor, dirty, aggressive, and simple-minded. LET ME ASK YOU THIS, ANDREW GOWER: WHO WAS THE FIRST COUNTRY TO SEND SOMEONE OUT INTO SPACE? That’s what I thought.

More Russian NPC descriptions:
Vera: “She seems sure of herself”.
Yuri: “He’s staring at the moon”.
Georgy (which is actually more of a Bulgarian name): “A simple villager”.
Nikita: “The woman”. (Sorry, Nikita is actually a boy’s name.)
Zoja: “A healthy villager”. (You mean she escaped Chernobyl??)
Lev: “A tough looking villager”. (Yeah, you better watch out Andrew.)
Yadviga: “A well off villager”. (Her names means “wealthy”, that’s the only reason they say that!)
Sofiya: “A wise villager”. (They’re just saying that because it’s the meaning of her name.)

What the heck possesses people to submit news articles like this (I KNOW people don’t read the DailyMail, but still). A good portion of the world doesn’t believe in evolution and now we have some lone scientist saying that there will be de-evolution of the human species?

100,000 years into the future, sexual selection could mean that two distinct breeds of human will have developed.

100,000 years into the future? I somehow doubt that we’ll be on the earth in 100,000 years. I also am baffled why this “scientist” believes that there will be an “attractive intelligent ruling elite” that will govern the “underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures”. I can’t remember who said this, but it’s true: the more you know, the worse you look. I wasn’t aware that smart people are pretty and dumb people look like goblins.

The alarming prediction comes from evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry from the London School of Economics, who says that the human race will have reached its physical peak by the year 3000.

The London School of Economics? Wow, I hear that they have some ground-breaking evolutionary research going on there.

Men will have symmetrical facial features, deeper voices and bigger penises, according to Curry in a report commissioned for men’s satellite TV channel Bravo.

Women will all have glossy hair, smooth hairless skin, large eyes and pert breasts, according to Curry.

Rofl, sorry. I cannot believe that this guy is serious. I think he’s trying to pass off his daydream fantasies as science. Also, IN A REPORT COMMISSIONED BY A TV STATION? Bells should go off in the minds of the “attractive intelligent upper-class” that this “report” is grade-A rubbish.

Medicine will weaken our immune system and we will begin to appear more child-like.

Childlike = attractive = intelligent? Mr. Curry is obviously a paedophile who needs to put the HG Wells books down and step into the real world. This is the stupidest thing I have ever read.

I don’t have much to write about, so I’ll leave you all with this:

I am so glad that Jagex are game designers, not architects.