Lightning Does Strike Twice

Without doubt, the title of this post might seem very strange – which is somehow intended as well. Never the less, it is exactly what it’s going to be about. Also, I thought it would be good to go back to the really random inputs, after being M.I.A. for so long. Sorry about that.

Throughout the history, pirates have never really been regarded as joyful chaps, which is probably due to the fact that all we’ve heard about them is the (mindless?) raiding and razing of cities and ships alike, fighting, rum-drinking and stealing both persons and treasures – and more rum. In the modern times, the pirate regalia seems to have been toned down, the rum drinking has been toned down, and only big ships are being attacked. Disrespectful in regards to the pirate legacy, as far as history goes. It would seem that this would result in pirates being very unpopular in social terms, so there must be other factors to look at.

The modern times brought us other things than under-dressing pirates: movies, for instance. Here, in the case of a certain bunch of fine pirates from the Caribbean, a trend of good (or well, more correct would be to say “not as bad as the bad ones”) pirates surfaced. What’s even better, was that these pirates certainly weren’t under-dressed, but looked like proper pirates – even the bad ones! They also provided a high amount of entertainment and the coolness-factor, in the form of cutlass-battles, acrobatic fights across the decks of their impressive vessels.

Not only that, pirates have also managed to get an (more or less) official day of the year, where everyone is advised to talk like a pirate – fittingly named “International Talk Like A Pirate Day“, on September 19th. Few can argue against this humorous idea, and it certainly gives the pirates a good notch upwards the positive scale.

The new times furthermore provided us with pirates entering religion, for being the chosen people (and, on top of that, “absolute divine beings”) of The Flying Spaghetti Monster. Relevant to the now heated debate (pun intended), the amount pirates seem to have an influence on the global warming, which itself should be a good reason to like them even more.

So, what could a pirate waltzing around these days expect? I tested this around a week ago, as I was going to a Carnival-party further into Copenhagen dressed as a Pirate, and had to ride the Metro alone (my companions chose to battle the frozen winter on bicycles). Here, I was vocally greeted with “Arr!” and other greetings, which is highly unusual, as it’s rare to even get a vocal greeting from random people – at least in Denmark. Perhaps it was the dashing good looks, perhaps it was the climate-knowledge (COP 15 was, after all, taking place in Copenhagen) or the respect of their good free spirit (both referring to the soul and the rum here). Further backing up the theory on the dropping amounts of proper pirates, I only managed to find one other pirate at the party.

All in all; there are few classical pirates left, we aren’t such bad a bunch (except the modern wanna-be pirates), and by increasing the amount, you’ll help the climate. What’s not to like?

With the latest Arnold Drinking session 10 days ago, I promised to get the latest rule-set up and running. So, without further notice, here it is:

Drink whenever:

• Arnold is first seen, at the start of the movie (that means: not chronologically).
• The title of the movie is seen or said. In honor of “End of Days“
• Arnold says “HU-ARRRHHEEH”, or variations thereof.
• Arnold has violent (the definition of “violent” is up for discussion) PHYSICAL pain.
• Someone humanoid is killed. Large amounts is drunk continuously. In honor of “Total Recall“.
• Arnold makes breakfast (double, if it’s in a blender).
• There is a reference (has to be accepted amongst the crowd) to another movie (double, if it’s with Arnold). In honor of “Last Action Hero“.
• Arnold meets/sees/whatever himself in any possible way. In honor of “6th Day“.
• Someone (double, if it’s Arnold) says/yells “get down!” or a variation thereof.
• There’s an explosion (minimum-size is up for discussion).
• There’s a car chase.
• Arnold changes weapon (unarmed included). Weapons only counts if used, thus it doesn’t count as “unarmed” if it’s from one weapon to another.
• Arnold changes vehicle (same properties as the rule above).
• A fence or a variation thereof is mentioned/used/plowed down, in any way possible.
• A party is mentioned (double, if it has any connection to Richter).
• You call out a rule, and the crowd disagrees (You lack discipline! You can already drink when you want – don’t make people drink under false premises without getting away with it).

Empty the bottle/glass whenever:

• Arnold yells “GET TO DA CHOPPA!”
• The bad guy dies. Again, in honor of “6th Day“.
• Arnold dies, shuts or melts down, or anything else that renders him “un-functional”, for the rest of the movie.

As a special something, I had prepared a minor warm-up (with rules), since Arnold had been present at the Climate COP15 Meeting in Copenhagen (where I, as you might know, live). Naturally, it was originally in danish, but I took the effort and made a translation. Don’t worry, the links to the videos are fine, nothing is in Danish (however, if you want, you can see the original page in Danish here), so everything should be good.

<<< PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE GOVERNATOR! >>>

In the following video-clip below, use these rules, and refer to the original rules for reference.

DRINK WHENEVER:

• The word “climate” is heard.
• The word “Copenhagen” is heard.
• An applause is heard.
• 2 words, decided by the people, is heard. (I think these ended up being “global” and “green”)

EMPTY THE CLASS/BOTTLE WHENEVER:

• One of the normale rules would have effect (let’s not get into the latter ones…).

“I’M AT COP 15, YOU IDIOT!”

Enjoy – and cheers!

Eventhough I explained the origin of the Gnub-name some time ago (which is now basically 1,5 year ago), it gets to stick, and you occasionally stumble upon versions of the word you hardly knew existed.

The occasion of these that brought me out of my cave, and made me do this post, was from everyones stable source of the savior of strange vocabularies: Urban Dictionary (cheers for the laugh, Julian), which reads:

gnub
Same as nub, but, the G letter is actualy a 1337 typo wich originaly was: fucking nub, but the spacebar was pressed a bit too early and it ended up: fuckin gnub. Since “fuckin” is a legit 1337 way to spell fucking many people mistake gnub for a totaly new word.
So in short – gnub = fucking nub

And yes, I’m stronly considering getting the T-shirt. It’s simply too awesome, and a great case of self-irony, that already should be showing from the domain name.

Besides that, I went and looked up “Nub” on Wikipedia (something I havn’t done yet, strangely enough), and found more funky meanings of the word:

Nub or NUB may refer to:

1. A variation of newbie, noob and nubby.
2. King Nub, character from the Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine video game.
3. ISO 639-2 code for the Nobiin language of Nubia.
4. Northern University, Bangladesh.
5. Nub, third track off of Goat (album) by Jesus Lizard.
6. Nub City, nickname given to Vernon, Florida by film director Errol Morris.

#1 is obvious, as it was meant as the origin, so that one didn’t catch me by surprise.
#2 “Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi!”
#3 While the ISO 639-2 code is always useful, I found it more noticeable that there’s a whole language in “my” name, and seemingly a region of Egypt too. Pure awesome.
#4 Well, it was bound to happen. Some cleverness still lies behind the Nub.
#5 While it’s a piece of music, it’s a fact that a goat resembles a gnu somewhat. Slightly smaller, but never the less similar.
#6 Somewhat in the same category as #3, but still quite nice.

All in all, I’ll still wear my name as my badge, and code of honor.

Time flies, but perhaps it’s more correct to express it as: “it goes faster than I expected” (or “another speed than expected” – case in point: the copenhagen minute). Both good and bad sides to that, but that’s sidetracking the main subject. The thing is, I just realized that I havn’t written anything for the past month – the horror! Thus, it’s time for a totally random thought of the time that is called now.

TV series is one of those things I look forward too every week, with The Big Bang Theory being one of my “newly” found favorites. It can’t really be compared to the all-out awesome Scrubs, but it’s still all-out awesome in its own (slightly geeky) way.

The Big Bang Theory introduced a very nifty version of the classic “Rock, Paper, Scissors” (Season 2, episode 8), which is a game where most should be familiar with the rules. If not, here’s a short recap of the simple rules, which follows three easy-to-remember “c”-rules:

rock > scissors: crush!
scissors > paper: cut!
paper > rock: cover!

Instead of the 3 classic combatants, they introduce 2 new to the battle field: the lizard, and Spock, thus changing the rules to the following (keep in mind, this can’t be kept into neat “c”-rules):

rock > scissors: crush!
rock > lizard: crush!
paper > rock: cover!
paper > Spock: disprove!
scissors > paper: cut!
scissors > lizard: decapitate!
lizard > paper: eat!
lizard > Spock: poison!
Spock > rock: vaporize!
Spock > scissors: smash!

It might sound tricky at first, but it’s actually a really good expansion to a game which has – according to Sheldon – too big a chance to result in a draw. See for yourself (yes, it’s an old episode, I know – but it’s still awesome).

Pretty much since World of Warcraft’s third expansion – Cataclysm – was released, it’s not uncommon to come across a forum post or the like that includes people that has no clue about how a storyline works in a MMO-based game, and what the difference between adding and modifying content is. What makes people so confused, is the fact that the content of the first 60 levels (of the current 80 total) is going to be redone, as the world is torn apart, as Deathwing enters the show, once agan. During this post, I’ll attempt to explain what my view on all of it, which should be correct as well.

When did the Cataclysm happen?
The common misunderstanding is that new content is always happening after previous content. While this is indeed true for highlevel content, it’s certainly not true for all of it. We can use a good example from each of the existing expansions to support the claims I’m going to be doing.

Burning Crusade: Races was added, taking lore with them to explain how they joined their respective factions before or during the starting areas. As the levels progress, Emissaries are often spotted throughout the capitals, to represent that they had indeed “just” joined, and was seeking to aid their factions, in what way they can.

Wrath of the Lich King: Death Knights, the new class, was added – champions dying at the plaguelands, meant to be raised as The Lich King’s new order of Death Knights – and joins the respective factions at the time when the Dark Portal opens, and steps into Outlands. As the Draenei and Blood Elves were part of the factions, they could naturally die at that point in the timeline alongside the other races, and be raised. They could not be fallen of the Third War (Warcraft III), as Draenei wasn’t in Azeroth at that point, and Blood Elves weren’t aligned with the Horde yet.

Now, as said, the main point is to figure out when the actual Cataclysm takes place. Since it affects the world that the first part of the content happens, people will experience it already at level 1 (the two new races even seem to have a small time of their quests before, prior to “normal” WoW timeline). They can choose to be Death Knights as well, which meant some of them died and was raised before Arthas was defeated in Icecrown, and since they had already waded through the cataclysmed world, it must’ve happened before the whole of WoW’s storyline.

To back it up, the first few sentences of the Cataclysm Trailer, is as follows:

As the terrible war against the Lich King continues, the proud defenders of Azeroth fight to secure a lasting peace. But there can be no peace, when the world itself is devoured by rage.

First of all, the war against the Lich King has lasted pretty much since Warcraft III. Second of all, it’s not stated if the cataclysmic event actually happens at the time where we – the heroes – fight the Lich King. He’s merely the biggest immediate threat after the Legion had been pushed back in Outlands, and removed from there.

With the time aspect covered, the obvious question pops up fast: “But what about Deathwing?”. You see, Deathwing is smart. He didn’t strike at once, as he would otherwise had to deal with the Legion and the Lich King – so he plots his plans, while we do the dirty work. On the way, we have however already crushed some of his plans: The Twilight Dragonflight (a subject I’ve discussed not one or two, but three times), seen over 3 notable places. First, there’s the Netherwing-area of Shadowmoon Valley. Next, the events of Night of the Dragon. Third, the death of Sartharion in the Obsidian Sanctum. With these events spanning over the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, while Deathwing was “hiding” below Grim Batol… further supporting that the Cataclysm must’ve happened before the final parts of the battle against the Lich King.

While all of the above is pure speculation, I’m wondering how it could be any other way, and still be presented in a believable matter. I’m surely looking forward to every small tidbit of information about it all at least.