Pop Culture Watch

So, last night was a big night for TV. A main course of Elite Eight followed by the dessert of the Rome and Battlestar Galactica finales. Rome's was actually the series finale, and while I'm sad to see it go, I'm glad that it's one of the few shows that can end on a high note. Only HBO could produce a show like Rome (for numerous reasons; not just the content, but nobody else could justify spending $100M for a single season of TV), and despite Season 2 having a bit of a rushed feel to it (scuttlebutt is that the producers wanted this season to be split between two seasons, with S2 covering up to Brutus's defeat, and S3 being the Octavian/Antony smackdown). But the show has to end here, as they simply ran out of history; 40 years of peacetime wouldn't exactly make for compelling TV. This is one that's being bought the second it comes out on DVD.

Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica has shown, most agree, a dramatic dip in quality. After an incredible opening 4 episodes (Exodus: Part II was one of the best single episodes of TV that I've ever seen), insufficient planning, muddled direction, poor setups, and a few spectacularly weak episodes have caused Season 3 to drag. It hasn't quite entered "It's Dead To Me" status as Lost did, but it dipped dangerously close with that stupid Dr. Helo, Medicine Bitch episode. The finale was ... an interesting experiment, and, knowing that the choices they made were going to cause a substantial minority of viewers to accuse the show of having jumped the shark, did their best to pre-empt a lot of those concerns. The Kangaroo Kourt was a Kangaroo Kourt? That was Lee's whole point when he was pointing out that they didn't have a civilization, so much as a gang that was pretending to be one. The Final 4 revelation didn't make any sense? Tigh sure as hell seemed to agree. I'll still be watching when S4 comes back on, but it won't quite be with the same excitement that I approached previous seasons with.

Most exciting has been my discovery of The Lies of Locke Lamora, a debut fantasy book by Scott Lynch that is well on its way to being an instant classic. Not only is it an incredible first book, it's an incredible book, period. The fact that Lynch is only 28 (actually only a couple of weeks older than I am) is all the more impressive. This is a cat that will be delivering imminently readable books for a very long time.

Where to begin on Locke Lamora? It's not exactly like any book you've ever read; fantasy for the modern era, with a contemporary feel and a cracking pace. It tells the story of a thief named Locke Lamora in the city of Camorr, a low-magic fantasy metropolis, built and described so vividly and specifically as to leap out of the page into your imagination. With the thieves of Camorr organized into a loose-knit gang under the Capa Barsavi, a Secret Peace has been formed between the thieves and the nobility of the city, whereby they are allowed to continue their thieving while they remain outside of the targets chosen by Barsavi's thieves. Lamora's gang, the Gentlemen Bastards, including the twins Calo and Galdo, the irrepressible Bug, and the large-but-fierce Jean Tannen, exempts themselves from the secret peace, running audacious confidence scams that target the city's nobility exclusively, and that have built for him an enormous fortune. But with a mysterious assassin known as the Gray King taking down Barsavi's lieutenants, Locke finds himself caught in a dangerous game that puts every last one of his skills as a con artist to the test.

It's hard to say what's the most appealing aspect of the book; the elaborate and imaginative worldbuilding, the modern dialogue (it's a bit unnerving at first to have characters calling each other "cocksuckers" and "motherfuckers", but it fucking works), or the blistering pace that the novel sets. The fourth act is by far the strongest, in which Locke is set into a tailspin of, as the act title puts it, of desperate improvisation, perhaps the strongest sequence being one in which the acquisition of a set of expensive clothing runs into setback after setback with a ticking clock counting.

Highly recommended. Although The Lies of Locke Lamora functions adequately as a standalone, Lynch is promising several more books set in his elaborate world, with Red Sea under Red Skies due on July 31 of this year.

Ding! Ding! And then, oh yeah, ding!

So my last post exposited the inherent lethargy in high-level experience-point gathering as a high level BLM. Color me corrected.

Last night involved more ripping shit up than I ever thought was possible.

So, it begins when I get home from work at aroune 7:30 am on Tuesday. I've got to be in for an 8 hour shift at 6:30am on Thursday so that means a quick and dirty transition. The plan, as usual, is to stay awake as long as I can manage. I watch the latest BSG and 24 on my DVR (BSG was better than it has been these past few weeks, though nowhere near where it was at in its heyday, 24 finally appeared to be picking things up again), before finally getting an invite at around 11:00. Unfortunately there was a scheduled maintenance at noon, and so we had just really gotten started when we broke, where I was about 10k tnl 73.

The maintenance was scheduled for 3 hours; I decided to sleep for it and slept 5. When I got up, I saw that sky farming had been postponed, so I went LFG again. This time I almost immediately got an invite, at around 6pm. I joined up and we immediately started killing stuff at the Flan camp in Mount Zhayolm.

And we started killing stuff with a vengeance. There's a nice routine you can get into where 5-6 BLM parties can get chain 11 on the Flans without too much difficult, and we just fell into that routine. After about 2 hours we were on a steady 10k/hr pace and I dinged 73 without much fanfare, as I'd expected. 73 is a big level for BLM, with Fire IV, Thundaga III, and finally being able to wear an Igqira Weskit. I figured I'd certainly keep going, as the party was good, and xp invites are fairly rare, though less so at 73 than they are at 72 due to an increased ability to make a difference in a pt with 75's. Before long I was leader, and things were just clicking, a nice, relaxed, chatty party that was made up of members that knew the role well.

I decided I like manaburns more than any other xp party setup. 10k/hr is less than you can make in a well-oiled TPburn, which can pull in 15-16k/hr in optimal conditions, with a camp site to yourself and every member on the top of his game with infinite chain, but conditions are rarely if ever optimal these days, with the top xp spots crowded beyond belief and incredible competition for pulls, and that party is VERY stressful on the only job I have to bring to that party, the BRD, who is responsible for pulling, sleeping, and keeping, usually, 4 songs at a minimum up on the right pt members. So while TPburns are capable of maybe 50% more xp than a manaburn as far as pure rate is concerned, in practice, they never last as long. Additionally, because a TPburn is utterly dependent on a couple of job types being there (BRD, at least one NIN, WHM or RDM) and as such, harder to find replacements for. With a Manaburn, all you need are BLMs, though having a RDM or BRD is acceptable.

So, we just kept killing and killing, and before I knew it, I was halfway to 74, having gained another 20k xp in the next couple of hours. What the hell, I thought, if the party was lasting that long, I was up all night anyway, may as well keep killing. I had long since been passed party lead, and replacements were easy to find as people left. So we just kept killing.

I dinged 74 at about 1 in the morning, having to warp back and cause a brief break as I had to refresh my Sanction and pick up my Blizzard IV scroll. I pick up my Thunder IV scroll too, just in case.

And we just kept on killing, and killing, and killing.

Come sunrise, I realized to some amazement that I was almost to 75. Well, I couldn't quit now! I wasn't even particularly tired and there were always reps for when people left, so I just kept on xping.

About 8 in the morning, i was almost at level when a blm left before finding a replacement. I check the list of blm's lfg in our level range and see a name that looks familiar. He gets the invite, and it doesn't occur to me until after he mentions it that this was the BLM that actually invited me into the pt to begin with, as his replacement since he was getting sleepy! He'd had a full night's sleep, woken up, and gone lfg again. He couldn't believe that I'd been up all night, grinding away. It was quite the surreal moment.

Inevitably and somewhat anticlimacticly, the ding finally arrives. I get the requisite congratulations, use my scroll of Thunder IV, and we go right on with our experience.

When all was said and done and by noon I was too sleepy to continue, I had gained 3 levels (unheard of for one session at high levels), 1.5 merit points, and a 20k buffer, for over 120k in the same party.

Insanity.

FFXI

So, I've started playing FFXI more frequently again. I never really quit, but there were long stretches in the past four months or so where I never really logged on. My interest in the game has ebbed and flowed over the past few years, but for some reason I always seem to wind up coming back to it. I think it's an inevitable cycle. Not enough to do, and I don't feel like there's anything for the game to offer me; too much to do and it begins to feel like a second job. Right now I feel there's a nice balance; my linkshell is focusing largely on sky farming and god pops, largely to get its large base of new members a good focus of gear to start with, so that we might start taking on more and more of the harder fights. We have the numbers of quality people to take down some of the harder wyrms, but not necessarily the right job distribution. We're heavy on melee and light on BLMs and SMNs, making the fights like Tiamat, Jormungand, and Vrtra all but impossible. It's telling that of my three high-level jobs - DRK75, BRD75, and BLM72, I've been asked to come as BLM to essentially all events in the past month, but for our last god fights.

I have been trying to get my BLM up to 75, but experience comes slow at high levels for BLM, since most high-level support jobs and tanks only really seem to be interested in TPburns. Small wonder, since a good TPburn can crank out an excess of 10k/hr without too much difficulty, but it makes BLM seem like LFG with DRK at high levels all over again.

I do know that once I get BLM to 75 I'm going to focus on BRD and merit the shit out of my BLM. Full elemental magic merits, I think (maybe 1 or 2 in enfeebling), thunder potency level 4, all of the new AM2 meritable spells. That should be nice and easy, and the fact that I have BRD leveled will make my BLM much easier to crank into the uber range.

I've been trying to work on my COP missions to get sea access, but I'm so bloody lazy when it comes to level cap stuff. I'm currently on promy-vahzl, and getting a group set up for that is fairly difficult since it's the last of the 50 cap missions. After that, at 60 cap, more of my current BLM gear will apply and I should be able to get more pick-up parties as a result.

Also, I'm totally stoked with the additions to DRK in the most recent update. Drain 2 and Dread Spikes are both totally sex. I've already magic bursted a Drain 2 onto an EM mob for 400+, and the fact that it bumps up your max hp to whatever you drain for carries with it a ton of ancillary benefits, the most primary of which is an increased ability to pop Souleater without having to fear for your life quite so much. Combined with Dread Spikes, which absorbs an amount of damage equal to half your max hp in melee damage, and under the right circumstances, one should be able to pop souleater without any fear of dying whatsoever.

Hell, I'm considering the possibility of a DRK-burn party. Probably DRK/WAR x4, BRD/WHM x1, RDM/WHM x1. Just allow the dread spikes to tank and have people pop off Souleater whenever they can. Okay, so maybe it won't work, but it's still a fun thought.

Anyway, Prec (my linkshell) is getting stronger every day, and yesterday had one of our best experiences yet in our newest incarnation: a King Behemoth claim and kill, over most of the other top linkshells on the server. The fight went smoothly with only 1 or 2 deaths, and while we didn't get that great of drops (a shining cloth for the LS bank and a crimson mask that went to Conor, a well-deserving RDM), it was awesome. The fight ended at about 6:15pm, which left me barely enough time to haul ass to work and catch the shift change meeting as it was starting up; the rest of the LS did sky gods after, and went 12/12, including going 4/5 on getting Byakko's Haidate for our NINs and SAMs.

Now we should have something like 7-8 Kirin pops, which we should be able to spread out over the next month or so. That's a positive thought because I have to imagine that I'm near to the top of the list for a Hecatomb body. That's a piece of gear I've had my eye on for a very long time. I'm not sure if we would distribute out an Osode if it dropped, but if we did, my BRD has got to be high on the list for that as well (though I don't know how much I'd use it as I already have a Sha'ir Manteel).

Anyway, now it's time for work again. This time 24 hours ago I was nuking with my gimp BLM on KB. Now I'm writing about it, and again finding an excuse to make myself late.

Thoughts for the day

Developed for my "Personal comment" in IM, a traditional place to put an original witticism:

- I am the 1025th best "Geometry Wars: Evolved" player in the world.

- Testament to my fortitude: I made it 37 pages into Terry Goodkind's "Wizard's First Rule" before my eyes started to bleed.

- Prerequisite to winning at life: read "The Lies of Locke Lamora" by Scott Lynch. No punchline - it's just a cracking good book.

- There are literally dozens of people who have read the books of Terry Goodkind and have absolutely no idea how bad they are.

- This country's 9th biggest problem is that more people watch "American Idol" than "The Wire".

- There are more than half a dozen people in this country that think Bush is doing a good job as President. Just think about that.

- My not believing in an invisible man in the sky makes 3/4 of the world believe I am a dangerous extremist.

- There are those who believe that people who tell them that they cannot dictate to others how to live their lives are their oppressors.

- There are eleven teams in the Big Ten. And we wonder why our kids can't do math.

- There are actually people that pay Ann Coulter to speak.

- No genre or style of film, even anime, is universally good or universally bad.

- Bruce Springsteen, Ben Affleck, and Martin Scorcese have the same number of Oscars. The world is a strange place indeed.

- One of the world's biggest mysteries is the lasting popularity of "Gladiator".

- Zooey Deschanel, Clea DuVall, and Lauren Ambrose are hotter by far than Jessica Biel, Angelina Jolie, and Jessica Alba.

- Paul Giamatti has the dubious honor of being the best actor that is uglier than I am.

- Julia Stiles is the best American actress under 30. She is likely to win 5 or more Oscars in her lifetime. Heard it here first.