If there is anything that annoys me in role-playing games, simply by existing, it is the Bard.

A bard should never, ever, be a playable character. Ever. I'll explain why. A bard is an artist who uses his voice, language, and music, to send a message, tell a story, or simply to entertain. Shakespeare could be considered a bard. Wikipedia defines "bard" as :

In Celtic society, a bard was a professional poet, paid by a monarch to praise the sovereign's activities.

In other words, a bard is a human advertising system.

Now, I ask, how did the bard become a playable character class in a medieval RPGs? Who decided that it would be a great idea to slap a sword onto a violinist and turn him into a demon-slaying, dragon-riding hero? It's nonsense I say.

In Dungeons & Dragons, the bard is a versatile fighter, capable in both melee combat and certain kinds of magic. Now, what is the point of having him around? Does he even do anything bard-ish? No, no he doesn't. His attacks all have rather corny names, and they generally involve using music and dance to ail his enemies in some way.

That is just... uncool. If you command such magic, why channel it in such a roundabout way, when you could just be a frickin' mage and do things without looking completely retarded to other players? It's like telling an archer to shoot tennis balls from his bow, just because he can.

The bard is an unnecessary class. All of the archetypes have already been filled. The embodiments of strength, wit, agility, nature, darkness, and divinity. What is a bard? The embodiment of homeless people on the street busking for money.

I would never play a bard. The entire concept of the bard being a playable character seems like an idea squeezed from an exhausted team of designers with an urgent quota to meet.

"Hey, I got a great idea! How about, we take the wizard, hash it together together with a martial artist, and call it a new class?"
"Yeah, and let's make him use.... music or something, so that it doesn't look too much like an obvious copy."

I wonder how a bard would work in real life (well sort of like real life, except that there is magic). A warrior would simply overpower his opponents with sheer strength and fighting ability. A wizard would call upon the elements and rain ice and fire on his enemies. A bard would... Fake-Cough to get the demons' attention, then perform a tapdance, simultaneously reciting Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day, thus causing the demons to writhe in pain.

Not cool.

Hey diddle diddle,
the cat and the fiddle.
The cow jumped over the moon!
The little dog laughed to see such sport,
and the dish ran away with the spoon.

He ran from his conviction,
to feed his addiction,
as the dish heated the spoon.
The spoon begged to go,
but the dish shouted "No!"
"The heroin will be ready soon."*

-Joe

*Not my composition.

Hello again... Seems like I haven't been posting.

Wonder why.

Maybe it's because I feel that if I do post about something that's going on with me, it would look entirely like a rehash of the things I talked about several months ago. Certain teacher is an idiot. Frustrating to explain simple things to certain people. Not a lot of direction in life. Not feeling well. Sleep cycle screwed up. Horrible grammatical errrors in study material. Own grammar appears to be deteriorating. Pronunciation getting more slack than usual. Procrastinating even more. Frustration, anger, exhaustion, insomnia.

For some while I actually managed to get back into a good sleep/wake cycle. Sure, I was kinda drowsy in the mornings and I was too tired to practice my euphonium at night... But at least I could sleep when it was dark and wake up like a normal human being. Still don't really understand why humans don't just become nocturnal. The amount of DNA damage that we could avoid by reducing our exposure to harmful ultraviolet radiation. What good does sunlight do for us anyway? I mean, directly. It's not like we need sunlight to photosynthesise or anything.

Although I once had this idea where we would implant chloroplasts into our skin cells, and modify them to produce ethanol in the same way that certain bacteria do. That way, we could go stand in the sun and get drunk at the same time.

We'd also probably die, but hey, one problem at a time.


I have this nagging fear that I was never really intelligent, just lucky. I'm not as creative as I might appear at certain times. Most of my ideas are merely innovations of existing ideas. As Einstein once said, the secret the creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. I don't hide my sources. I just make sure that the people I'm with aren't aware of my sources. Oh you know, this part here was just some random bullshit that came to my mind. Ignore.


Anyway, I have recently acquired a new game, Red Alert 3. The Red Alert series has always been the lighter, funnier counterpart to the more serious Tiberium saga by the same creators, but RA3 is the trippiest, most laugh-out-loud RTS I have ever played. The units must've been dreamt up by someone on drugs. Boat that sprouts legs and shoots electricity? Check. Giant robot thing that was totally taken out from that Gundam anime? Check. Psychic schoolgirl that rips tanks apart? Check. Oh, and there's even this tank that fires people out of a cannon.

The main reason that I bought the game, however, was for the co-op campaign. It's not like Red Alert 3 is the first ever RTS with a co-op mode; the highly rated World in Conflict featured (according to reviews) an immersive and realistic co-op mode, where each player would command either the army, the navy, or the airforce. The thing is, that World in Conflict had fairly high PC requirements and so the plan made among my friends to buy the game never came to pass. I, however, am a fan of the Red Alert series, and so I was going to buy it whether or not my friends did. Unfortunately, Hongjie's computer seems to have contracted virtual HIV, so playing online with him is out of the question for some time.

And it's 12.20am. What am I doing? I said I would go to sleep two hours ago. But no, instead I had to mention how stupid one of my instructors was being to my parents, thus causing them to be concerned. And so, like and logical and level-headed person, I explained my story in great detail. That took some time. Then they asked questions. And gave advice. I also used several synonyms of "idiot", that I have become very accostomed to using ever since I came to the conclusion that most people were imbeciles. Unfortunately, far from helping the situation, I only got more upset and frustrated, and got into bed imagining how fun it would be to unleash a deadly biological weapon into the atmosphere.

Nah, I'm not serious. They don't let people who have psychotic tendencies into higher education.

Or maybe they do. How do you explain Virginia Tech?

The answer is not video games.


...

I love this keyboard. The keyboards on notebook computers are so soft and silent. They require so little effort to depress and they feel so good on the fingers. I've been looking for a keyboard for my desktop that has a similar texture to that of a notebook computer. Some time ago at an IT fair I purchased a $10 Logitech keyboard that had softer, nicer keys than my old keyboard. At the time, the diference was marvelous and it really felt great. Now, however, I'm beginning to feel the depth of each keystroke, beginning to cringe as I hear the loud clack of the keys. It's just not silent enough, not soft enough. I'm beginning to think that the only proper softkey types of keyboards are gaming keyboards. Those, unfortunately, are extremely pricey.

Seeing as that I am not using my desktop, where all my pictures are stored, I do not have anything for today. Instead, here's a recent comic from Cyanide & Happiness:

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

~Joe~

So... It's been quite a while.

I seem to have lost my need to write, to communicate with those beyond my immediate surroundings. I am writing now mainly because of the lengthy silence that has befallen this website. In the recent days, I simply have not chanced upon any blog-appropriate ideas or stories that I could share with you guys. Perhaps I have, but forgot them moments after.

I was almost ready to give in to despair when I came to the conclusion that there were a dozen or so unnamed people in my course who scored a better Grade Point Average than me for last semester's examinations. But then today I received new information, and realised that my earlier conclusion was based on insufficient evidence. As such, I revised my decision to become depressed and violent.

It's not exactly a long story, but it's a painful one. From my perspective, anyway. See, when Shaun told me that he wasn't in the top 15% of the cohort, I concluded that I would have been in the lower portion of the 15th percentile. His GPA was only 0.04 lower than mine. At the time, it appeared that I was one of the last people to get into this category. That was saddening. Then, I learned that he simply had not received the certificate yet, and it was not the case that he was ineligible for the award.

See, this is why I need psychic powers. Verbal communication is fuzzy and has the capacity for many errors.


Nevertheless, this episode has prompted me to do all in my power to prevent a failure such as this from happening in the future. The impact has been softened greatly by the correction of facts, but even so, there are more obstacles to overcome. Certain people.

I really do think that I have a superiority complex. I've always believed in greater people having bragging rights. I've also always hated it when other people had bragging rights. Whether or not they exercise this privilege, is irrelevant. You could say that I just hate to lose, in things that I feel are important.

Another thing. Things that I feel are important are usually the only things I am good at. I wonder whether I became good at them because I thought they were necessary, or that I came to understand their importance through sheer chance of being talented in those areas. Either way, the fact remains that if I am not good at something compared to the general population, then I am useless. I am not an all-rounder. I don't have very many talents to fall back on, should my current pursuits fail. It's like being an RPG character who has invested all his stat points into one aspect, leaving the others nearly useless at any level that counts.

So there, that's why I can't stand to lose. I don't have the luxury of saying "yeah well, I can do other things too." I need to work harder.

...

And so, Lando Calrissian wins the US presidential elections. I didn't follow the debates, the speeches, the rallies, or any of the elections. The only things I knew about Barack Obama was that people enjoyed likening him to Brock... You know, from Pokémon. Yeeaah.


In other news, JC students are breaking free from the entangling grasp of Project Work. This is good news, although it means I will also stop to whine about the discrepancy between polytechnic vacation time and JC vacation time.

/whine


Anyway, congratulations, guys. I don't know if I'd have been able to do PW without setting several buildings on fire.

-Joe