Maybe I'm Getting Old...

I don't think I'll ever get used to looking back at my childhood. I mean, when did it end? I spent most of my early teenage years telling myself childhood was done and dusted; I was an adult, I was responsible, I was awesome. But now that I've hit the 18 milestone, I'm left feeling a little lost. I've got an earth-shakingly deep voice, messy facial hair and I'm legally able to buy booze (in Europe at least); But the thing is, I don't feel any different. I might aswell be sitting in a sandpit playing with plastic dinosaurs. Thankfully I've dropped the habit of spending 364 days a year waiting for Christmas though...

Anyway, the source of this Nostalgia was a song. A beautiful song.

Romulus by Sufjan Stevens. I happened accross this golden nugget on one of my epic Spotify journeys (article on Spotify will follow shortly - I love it). I put it on, and I was bowled over. Something about it just sent me straight into Philosophical mode. I wasn't sitting on an Ikea chair hunched over my 250$ laptop - I was laying with my head on the grass, staring up into the infinite vaccuum of space.

After the first 5 listens I wikipedia'd Mr. Sufjan Stevens, turns out he's an absolute legend. He plays something like 25 different instruments, and composes all of his own stuff. I'm yet to find a song written by him which I don't like. This particular song was from a concept album written by him and one of his buddies; an album entirely written about the state of Michigan, I find that stuff inspirational.

The point of all this is that I've been getting more and more into this style of music recently - Eddie Vedder, Ben Harper, Johnny Cash. I love it. I love how the lyrics can give such fascinating insights into life and emotion: I love how they can be familiar and mysterious at the same time... I won't go on, this kind of writing isn't my strong point. But this sudden onset of folk-music syndrome is threatening my youthfulness. I mean, I'm still wholly into much extreme dance beats, metal, indie... whatever - but whenever I hear a hip-hop beat about a sweaty club, or how some ego-centric man in a mercedes thinks that the club "can't handle him" (I always thought that clubs were designed to handle sunglass clad men in Mercedes...) I find myself thinking "What a racket!" And then struggling to hold back "Kids nowadays..." mutterings.

Having said that, I was never into that kind of music anyway. And I can still rock out to the angst ridden tracks of Linkin Park - Meteora - The first album I ever owned. So maybe I'm not becoming an old fogey. Maybe we never truly "grow up". I don't know, that's some hardcore philosophical shiz there.

Mario's "Party"...

Last night I happened to find myself at a party.

The use of the word "party" here in the context of an 18 year old's blog probably fills your mind with images of drunken youths dancing to the latest hip-hop beats and generally running amok. Unfortunately, this was far from the case.

This "party" took place in the imaginary world of Mario and his many gratingly annoying peers. Upon entering the world of Mario Party 8, I was surprised to find myself transported to the scene of some sort of Mario travelling circus. The first thing that struck me about the setting of this party was the hazardously over zealous distribution of confetti. It was sprinkled with such uncontrolled vigour it seemed as though it may be there to compensate for something; possibly as some sort of pathetic apology to players who were dragged into the game by the friendly familiar face of Mario, only to be confronted with a poorly designed rip off of monopoly. But I'll get round to that in a minute.

After taking in the Mario circus in all it's sprinkly detail, the next step was to choose a "game" to play. The only part of this decision process I am able to recollect 19 hours later, was seeing a game named with some ridiculous pirate pun, something along the lines of "Pete's Poppin' Pirate Party" which immediately caught my attention. I consequently begged my fellow Mario Party "mates" to play this game, naively dismissing the repeated warnings against this particular "game" from the more experienced players in the room. At this stage, warnings such as: "If you don't have enough gold you get sent back to the beginning." meant nothing to me. At any rate, after seeing the game contained this guy:

my determination to play this pirate themed game had become so great that I was immune to all reasoning.

My determination faded almost immediately as the "Party" had begun. The game kicks off with an air-borne camera swooping proudly accross the level in which the game is set, much as a toddler might proudly show you his picture of a lion.

The difference between said scenarios is that for a toddler you might pretend to be impressed by his efforts.

"Pete's Poppin' Pirate Party" in fact turned out to be a boringly straight path of large blue squares, sparsely scattered with coins and pieces of candy. The path led to a boringly small island on which this guy:

 

was standing, I presumed winning was a simple task of reaching him. How wrong I was.

The regret kicked in from the second my turn started. I was asked to flick my wii-mote to stop the roll of a dice numbered from 1 to 10 and thus decide how far my character (Princess Peach) would move along the trail of blue squares. My attempts at tactics were proved futile by the random nature of the dice, and I rolled a frustratingly average 3. I was then forced to watch with disdain as Princess Peach pranced along towards the third blue square, collected 3 gold coins with unrealistic excitement, and then stopped; bringing an end to my turn.

Before I could repeat this experience, I had to wait until both my peers, and the CPU character (whom we didn't even choose to invite to our Party) had taken their turns. Unsurprisingly the CPU character rolled a 10, landed on a secret square and was sent on a dolphin to a "bonus island". I am still undecided as to whether the most confusing part of all this was the undecipherable in-game dialogue relating to this trip:

Dolphin: "...Hold onto your grandmas"

Or the fact that all 3 real players were forced to sit and watch as this CPU imposter took his unfairly drawn out turn. 

To be continued...

Melvin Doo's Golden Hits

I'm just going to go right ahead and post 5 of my most bestest songs :)

1. Astronauts and All by Foals

Brief Description: Clean electronic indie, sounds like neatly dressed boys rocking out in a white room

2. Prelude/Kiara by Bonobo

Brief Description: Chilled electronic/world music, sounds like a beautiful waterfall in a forest or something

3. Icarus Lives by Periphery

Brief Description: Mathematical nu-metal, sounds like a spaceship

4. Disaster! Disaster! by Tellison

Brief Description: Emotional indie, sounds like a poem

5. Rondoparisiano by SomethingALaMode

Brief Description: A violin player and a cello player playing along with electronic dance music, sounds like that.

Riddle me this...

I love riddles :3

And I felt that this one deserved sharing, so I'm going to post it. Deal with it.
The answer will probably be on the internet somewhere if you want it.

So you're in a room with only 2 doors. 

One door leads to Heaven, and one door leads to Hell. 

Both doors are identical, and we're assuming that you'd prefer to go to Heaven.
Also in the room are 2 birds, sitting on pedestals... or whatever birds sit on. 

They are also identical. 

However, these birds can talk. And you can ask them for help.
One bird will always tell you the truth, and the other will always lie. There is no way of telling them apart.

You can ask 1 question to 1 bird to help you choose the right door.
Which question do you ask?