Hello, Marc Simonetti.

Soul Music

Art posts are usually Chance's thing but more Discworld fans need to know about him if I'm not somehow the last fan on the train. In the last 2 years I have discovered and devoured Terry Pratchett's Discworld. I've come across the original covers of his books and they're... well... interesting. Its really busy and gives off a manic vibe that doesn't fit the author's voice at all. Pratchett is a lot of things but he's no more manic than a stiff cuppa'. I'd say I'm a big enough fan to want to hang a cover or two of his books on a wall but nothing seemed worth it.

Then I stumbled across Marc and his portfolio gushing with what is now the definitive visualization of Pratchett's work in my head. Compare small god's cover above with Marc's:

He says he's freelance and that's a tragedy. There's a city watch series in development and he's not making them concept art. A tragedy I say. I mean, they're calling it a "punk rock thriller." Its a show about high fantasy medieval cops so I don't know what the hell that means. I'd feel much better about it if they gave Mr. Simonetti here a call.

A free conundrum.

Destiny 2 is free on pc today. A game I've played to death that has finally, after a year, finally gotten rid of it's second job equivalent of a level grind. It's never been better and I've never seen it run in 60 fps. Or seen it load a menu in under 7 seconds. Those 7 seconds add up when you've been playing a game every 2 months for a year.

If only everything was for free... I paid $40 for it's last expansion in September, why would I do that again? Because the other dlc is bundled with it for a limited time? Oh, Bungie. This is evil and you know it. Evil.

Update: So seeing it in 1080 instead of 720 for the first time was like putting on a perfect pair of glasses. I knew I liked it before, but now? Now with twice the frame rate so aiming is twice as easy? Now I'm punching 20 levels above my weight screaming through the campaign in about 4 1/2 hours.

There's no going back.

XCOM 2's legacy pack will be up for sale after Dec. 3. and it deserves to be.

Well... damn.

Polygon really buried the lede when they told me about XCOM2's surprise dlc. I see that you get a couple one off missions where you fight the early stages of Advent's Orwellian state. I get that there's 20 new maps. I understand there's new weapon skins and other cosmetic clap trap. But what the people really need to know is that a re mixed homage to the 1994 original soundtrack has popped into the audio menu.

So synthy it hurts. Its cheesy, but like a fancy cheese. Cheese you ultimately respect because you can't stop eating. I would pay $8 for it alone.

The world is magic and I have proof:

When we were kids we never actually believed animals could talk but I never imagined them to have inner lives rich enough for a seal to hate a kayaker so much it hits him in the face with an octopus. Thanks to everyone on the planet having recording devices on them at all times we now know how petty seals really are.

Well that sure is neat.

So I finally checked out remote play. Now I can have podcasts in the background of destiny in my headphones instead of my cell phone. In a cup. The streaming is a little hitchy, but there's a lot to be said for being able to get blogging done while waiting for a match to queue up.

It works. Doesn't blow me away but its free and it works. Wouldn't play a new game this way. It'll keep me from getting the pc version, though. Possibly forever.

UPDATE: So plugging my ps4 directly into my router has had pretty drastic results. The hiss and pop are gone and everything's a lot smoother. I'm not gonna jerry rig this up all the time but it's nice to know it works.

Goddamn, Destiny 2. That's good stuff.

Say hi to Michael Salvatori!

Maybe it's just because I've been putting up with mediocre synth for the last 56 hours of my off time but I heard a piece of music in Destiny last night that is just so good. Share with my cello playing dad good. I had to tell him it was from an Israeli indie film or he wouldn't have bothered but he liked it. 

Here's Our New Beginning from Curse of Osiris:

Zen and the art of Diablo.

Thanks, Breath-Art!

I've been dieting. When I say I've been dieting I mean I changed everything about what I eat and drink for 3 1/2 years. It's been a long road to it's current incarnation but family members have hesitated to recognize me so I'd call that progress. My diet is as incredibly simple as it is agonizingly painful. 4 days a week I eat what I want. But the other 3 I stay under 800 calories.

Bad days where I'm at work I've found I can keep busy and thus I can keep my mind off things like bread. Sweet, precious, crumbly, toasted, bread. But bad days where I'm off? It's a more delicate operation. Sometimes I have stuff to do, friends to see movies with, furniture to rearrange, trails to run, but that only takes up so much time in a day. There will come a moment where my stomach cries for 12 lbs. of pesto sausage penne and I must drive the demon out.

I've been a fan of "loot grinder" games since the first torchlight; Obama's second year seems like a lifetime ago dosn't it? The best of them challenged me till I broke. They all had an end game that would always smoke my ass. It wasn't as discouraging as that sounds. I wouldn't give up on a Borderlands character until at least two full runs. I was ready to try something else by then but I could have kept going for twice as long and not run out of game. I'm always impressed by that. It proves you've made a loop so successful some people would choose to play it for the rest of their lives. Millions of people played Diablo II last year. That's from W's first term.

My point is these loot grinders whether they be an action RPG like Diablo or 1st person shooter in Borderlands transition to a zen experience if you play them enough. Something that's fun but only requires 40% of your attention so that you can listen to music and make a plan to get a better job. I sh*t thee not I got over serious emotional baggage by finally rolling the perfect critical chance stat for a necklace all my characters could share.

Maybe that sounds sad. But to me that was tangible progress in an indifferent and occasionally cruel world. It was a little project I worked on while mining a vein of John Le Carre audio books on youtube. Somewhere in the middle of our kind of traitor I looked up and noticed I'd maxed 6 characters in Diablo 3. I had cracked the end game while gaining 3 lbs. of lean muscle. The culprit of my pudge all these years ended up being sheer boredom.

In the time under my digital bodhi tree I've listened to nearly 80% of the works of Sir Terry Pratchett, everything by Umberto Eco, an embarrassing amount of Miss Marple and I bought a suit 4 sizes smaller that the last. I have meditated on myself, my writing, and my treatment of others; becoming a better person with a firmer grip on my dignity. I owe much to my mantra:

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