An odd question?

One of the new girls at work asked me a couple of days ago what my plans were for New Years' Eve, and I have to admit the question caught me a little off-guard.  It's been so long (2002/3, to be finicky) since I did anything for NYE that I almost forgot that other people tend to go out and celebrate at this time of year.  I still don't quite understand why they do, other than excuse for a good ol' piss up, in which case the whole event doesn't really interest me anyways.

From an entirely frugal point of view it saves me a few quid, which is all the more important this year seeing as I'm hoping to move out in a few weeks and will need every penny I can lay my hands on.

So how am I spending my final few hours of 2011?  Well alone, obviously, as has become the norm.  Does this make me sad?  Oddly no.  A few years back I found single NYEs to be a decidedly miserable affair, but this year I'm rather enjoying just pootling about and keeping myself amused.  So far I've watched the top 25 (I think - I tuned in half way through) magic tricks, which had history been different I might have been on!  No, I'm not a magician, but I was short-listed to load the gun for Derren Brown's 2003 russian roulette stunt, which featured on the show.

Now that's finished I'm playing a bit of Dead Island and then will probably round off the night by reading a bit of Cain's Last Stand before I crash out.

And what do I hope 2012 will bring?  Well, not the end of the world.  That would be a nice start.  A decent 30th birthday.  A long list of films (I've actually compiled a written list of things I plan to catch at the cinema next year).  And of course somewhere to live away from my parents' house.  I've got viewings lined up for a couple of places in Lichfield, so if all goes well I shall be living in peace and quiet by the end of February :)  And also with fish.  I've decided I'd like some fish to give the place a bit of life.

Anyways, pointless, unstructured ramble is over.  You may go about your business.

...I have zombies to kill.

Chilly?

Apparently the Bullring bull has a new winter jumper. This perplexes me greatly.

Sad dreams

I had a dream last night about someone I haven't thought about in quite some time, and it made me feel far more sad than I would have expected.

I don't know what else to say really.  Sorry, bit of a rubbish blog entry.

Cosplay progress?

A few days ago I posted about my dream cosplay - Colonel Commissar Ibram Gaunt, from Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series of novels.  Since then I've been on the hunt for that perfect Napoleonic war-style officer's tunic to get the constume started.  It hasn't been going too bad - fortunately The Black Parade made that kind of style very popular in goth/alternative clothing circles, so there are things like that out there, even if you have to wade through mountains of chaff to find something worthwhile.

However I was talking about it at work with my sister yesterday, and one of our clients overheard our conversation and told us that his brother's friend owns a shop in Wednesbury which sells replica old-style military uniforms for historical recreations and the like.  They're probably going to cost an arm and a leg, but for Ibram Gaunt I'm willing to spend the money and assemble the costume slowly over time :)
With regards to my more immediate cosplay plan - Ford Prefect - the search continues to go well.  Although I still haven't found the perfect Argyle sweater/boating jacket combo I've come incredibly close, and that's only after one week of searching.  So with that in mind I have every confidence that this costume is going to come together nicely for Spring Memorabilia :)

FNM Result 25th November

Get ready for a mini blogging splurge!  Rather than having one massive and convoluted post, I'm going to make 3 entries about different bits and pieces.  So here's Friday Night Magic to start with.

This week's FNM was pretty good, although a little bit messy to start with.  I took my adjusted vampire deck along with me this week, and I say 'adjusted' because it's no longer pure vampires.  It always had Grave Titan and Sheoldred in there anyway, but I added Skirsdag High Priest, Royal Assassin, and 2 Reaper of the Abyss just to see how they performed.  Sadly the Reapers never made an appearence, but the Royal Assassin did his job well.  The High Priest wasn't too bad, and I managed to activate his 5/5 Demon ability once, but he wasn't consistent enough to justify a future place in the deck.  Definitely a sideboard card though, but in the meantime he'll be dropping out in favour of another low-mana vampire.  It was also the first time I tried the deck with Witchbane Orbs and Norn's Annex, and both of those cards worked nicely.

The evening started messily seeing as I was given a Bye with the first round.  There were uneven numbers and it was just luck of the draw.  Then after I settled down someone else appeared and was told 'you might as well play Rob', so we had a couple of games.  What neither of us realised was that we'd been officially paired up, so we thought it was just a friendly game to pass the time.  As a result we weren't really keeping score, we were sitching decks, and basically not adhering to the rules of FNM at all.  We only found out what had happened when we were asked to record our score and we didn't have one, so it was chalked up as a draw for official purposes.

After that the evening went considerably downhill with a pair of straight 2-0 defeats.  The Vampires at least held their own, and managed to put up a good fight before being defeated.  Now it's been a long time since I left FNM with less than two victories, so having racked up two defeats and a draw from the first three games I was on the verge of my worst performance for months.  I needed two victories out of two, and my Vampires didn't disappoint.

Round 4 was a straight 2-0 win.  The vamps came out thick and fast, and the removal spells in the deck helped me to keep control until I'd got an unstoppable tide of creatures out.

Round 5 was a little more nervewracking, as I was playing against a specifically anti-vampire white deck.  The first game was a devastating loss, my poor little vamps being smashed mercilessly to bits.  But then in the second game they managed to pull together and just scrape a win.  And then in the third they well and truly got their revenge, with a clobbering victory over their human adversaries.

So all in all it was a decent evening.  The simple result breakdown being:

Game 1: Draw

Game 2: Lost 2-0 vs Blue Illusions

Game 3: Lost 2-0 vs Red/White Artifacts

Game 4: Won 2-0 vs Black Vampires

Game 5: Won 2-1 vs White Humans

Overall ranking 16th (out of 31)

I'll probably be taking Vampires again next Friday, but version 1.0 of my Zombie deck is now finished :) I need to playtest it a lot this week, but if it looks alright then I may give it a FNM baptism of fire next week instead.  I think it may be suffering a creature shortage though, so it may need some tweaking and some more low-mana zombies.

In the grim darkness of the far distant future, there is only... cosplay?

On stage at Memorabilia this weekend I was asked what my dream cosplay would be, and I have to admit my mind went completely blank.  In spite of the fact that I was expecting that question, I just suddenly couldn't think of a single thing I'd like to do.  But if my brain had been in gear and I'd been thinking straight there would have been one dream cosplay, and one alone, which would have come to mind...

From The Black Library, and the pen of Dan Abnett, Colonel Commissar Ibram Gaunt.  The commanding office of the Tanith First and Only from the Warhammer 40,000 universe.  I've always loved the commissars in 40k, and their uniforms are just fantastic, and Ibram Gaunt has that edge over the rest of them with the iconic Tanith camo cape and the sword of Heironymo Sondar.

So there it is, my dream costume.  And ye gods I promise to myself that one day I'm going to do this, and grace the stage at Memorabilia as one of the greatest military commanders the Imperium of Man has ever seen!

For Tanith.  For the Emperor.

No one would have believed...

...that in the early years of the 21st century, Richard Burton would be replaced by Liam Neeson.

But apparently that's exactly what has happened.  I just received a text off an old workmate saying that there was a new tour of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds next December, and that Liam Beeson was playing Richard Button (don't you just love predictive text?).  Now I have to say I'm feeling well and truly divided over this.

I absolutely love Jeff Wayne's WotW and have been desperately waiting for another tour so I can go and see it live again, but I'm a little hesitant about Liam Neeson's role in it.  I think Neeson's a fantastic actor and he's got an amazing voice, but Richard Burton as the voice of the journalist is one of the most iconic things about Jeff Wayne's production.  Whenever I watch the dvd or listen to the soundtrack I always get chills when I hear Burton's opening monologue, and I don't think there's anyone who could match that.

That said, I would be very happy to be proven wrong in this matter.  The addition of Neeson to the big screen background sounds like it should be pretty cool, and if this is the direction that the live tour's going to take then I have no other choice but to give it a fair chance.

So, just a quick entry in light of some exciting/interesting/forboding news about my favourite stage show.  Hopefully in 12 months time I'll be eagerly blogging about how excited I am about going to see it in a couple of weeks!