St Patrick's Day Festivities

Yesterday was St Patrick's Day. In honour of this festive occasion, and also due to opportune coincidence with a recording of an interview and song, the Bards of a Feather put on a show. A friend and I were interviewed for the podcast in the link above, and although I think we were both pretty nervous, some interesting stuff came out of it. It was very exciting to have 9 Bards turn up to perform for the recording, as it was the most we've had performing at any one time. With so many people to get coordinated, I think we did alright at smooth transitions between songs, although it gets increasingly challenging the more people there are. We tend to have wonderful audiences who partake in general revelry during and between our songs, and last night was certainly no exception! We started the party in the Shire, moving along to the Guardsmen of the Free Peoples' kin yard, then onward to a great secluded area near Trestlebridge, before winding up in Bree. It was kind of a small tour, but at the major town hubs (Michel Delving and Bree), we had some pretty cool audiences. We like to play the music for our own enjoyment, but it really enhances the experience to find that what you are doing is being enjoyed by others also.



UPDATE: The gentleman who interviewed us has turned our recording into a wonderful video:

Grammar? Srsly?

I try not to be nit-picky, so I often hold my tongue when I see people I like making the same kind of spelling mistakes over and over and over. Here are some minor corrections I wish would make it into collective consciousness:

Viola = a musical instrument or a flower.
Voilà! = Presto! (if you can't get the accent in, no worries, but at least get the letters in order)

Definitely is definitely spelled with the word 'definite' + 'ly', which is 'de' + 'finite' + 'ly'

A watchman is one man on watch.
Watchmen are several men on watch.

Socializing and the Internet

Lots of people say that your online friends aren't as important as your real life friends, but I wonder sometimes about that. For me, my real life friends are typically more important, by virtue of I have known them longer and so we share a greater history together. This doesn't mean my friends have a seniority order of importance, but it is generally the case. Many of my real life friends are people I've known since high school - I reached adulthood with these people. I've been to their weddings, and I'm watching their families grow together. It's not about the order of meeting people - it's about the bonds we make. It just happens that the longer people know each other, the more opportunities they get to create those bonds.

That said, I spend an awful lot of time with some people online, to the point where, if we knew each other in real life, it would be the equivalent of practically living together. I may never, say, sit on the same couch as them, but I still spend a large portion of my waking day with them, close to every day. There's a point to be made that not being able to share real life experiences with them doesn't make them less important, as friends go.

There are friends I've met in real life and now keep contact with them solely via the internet. There are friends I've met online only, as well. I consider each of these people to be my friends and barely register the difference between 'online' and 'offline' friends. It would be nice to see each of these people face to face, either again or for the first time, but realistically, in many cases, this just can't happen. I am grateful that I have the internet to help me keep in contact with them at all. Should I prioritize them less because of these limitations? Some people argue yes, but I am just not convinced.

Another poem

This one is one I wrote a while back, and there is actually a melody for it as well, which I obviously can't share on a blog. This one's a sonnet, so if I wanted, I could take the same tune and apply it to any sonnet, since they share a rhythmic template. I like this one better than the last one I posted because it has rhythm, rhyme, and structure, and yet still conveys a message.

The Sweetest Thing

The winter frost makes patterns on my soul
For three long moons I put my heart away
What’s left is but a hungry gaping hole
There’s nothing I can offer, do or say
And so I hibernate and wait for spring
I take myself and store me all away
I wait for all the warmth that March will bring
The winter took the sweetest thing away

Feel not for me the same angst filled sorrow
I feel, now sure of what’s to come for me
This is an opportunity to grow
I won’t call out for help a silent plea
I find my strength inside myself today
To live life while the sweetest thing’s away.

One Person

Quiet, serene, in a little corner of the world
Lies a pool of water so calm and clear
A mirror, displaying the splendors of the sky
A window to a paradise below

One wave, one simple little ripple
The calm can endure and overcome
Another and the mirror breaks
And the world below goes into hiding

O! The despair! Splendor destroyed, dashed!
The garbled ruination of golden promise
Patches of skylight, shreds of dreams
Reminders of what was had and lost

But lo, all it takes is one sure hand
A guide to lift chins, set sights high again
Or to take one below, beneath the waves
To see clearly that the treasure holds strong

One person to obscure
One person to reveal
Take the guiding hand
And leave the waves behind

Calais, Zetes and Chione

Last night, in LotRO, my Lore-master character earned her pet eagle. I am allowed to name these pets pretty much whatever I want, but naming pets can be difficult. I like short, easy to pronounce names, and my one attempt at naming a pet with Sindarin nomenclature (befitting Middle-Earth) fell flat, and I ended up renaming that pet. In LotRO, there are also special amulets that change the appearance of your pet, in effect giving you another pet (cosmetically). Each appearance of a pet can be named individually, and it turns out that I had access to two amulets that change my eagle's appearance, so I had to think of 3 names for my new pet(s). Traditionally, my pets that share a species also share the first letter of their names (because I'm dorky that way), but for my eagle, I wanted to do something a little different. I ended up naming them after figures from classical Greek mythology. My eagles' names are Calais, Zetes and Chione.

Calais and Zetes were twin brothers who travelled with Jason and the Argonauts. They rescued Phineas from the harpies and were rewarded with wings. When these brothers met an untimely death, they were transformed into birds. I thought these would be cool names to give my eagles. Then I found out I could make myself another amulet, so I had to think of a third eagle name. After some digging around, I found out Calais and Zetes had two sisters: Cleopatra and Chione. Cleopatra is a name that has been done to death, so I read up on Chione, and it turns out she has a bird-related story also. Chione was beautiful - so beautiful, in fact, that two gods came and, er, canoodled with her in the same night. She ended up giving birth to twins as a result. Anyways, she preferred her beauty to that of the goddess Artemis, and was summarily put to death, at which point she was transformed into a hawk, which, while not an eagle, is still a pretty cool bird.

These stories - especially Chione's story - really make me wonder about the ancient Greeks. On one hand, their civilization was a time of huge breakthroughs in rational thought, but on the other hand, people were making up stories like this and other people were believing them. I sometimes wonder if there were some secret society that had some kind of contest going with prizes for the most ludicrous story that people actually believed.

Democracy

This is how things should work.

(from xkcd.com)