Subject To Change

Before I begin, this isn’t a post about how immoral the RIAA and the ilk are, so don’t bother reading this if you think I’m pulling out a soapbox here.

It’s about my music and my money. Mainly about the amount I spend trying to hear the former better by throwing the latter at it.

I bought some new headphones. For anyone who knows their stuff, they’re Alessandro MS-1s. Imported from the US, no less. And they sound flippin’ lovely

But then I started thinking about how much I spend on music…there’s the mp3 players (ipod Classic 80GB, Creative 60GB, Creative 30GB, Creative 4GB flash, no-name 2GB flash); the headphone amps (no-name British made one and iBasso P2), the DAC (iBasso D1), the headphones (the aformentioned Alessandros, the Crossroads MylarOnes from Korea via Singapore, the Sonys)…

Now, I can justify all these purchases. To me they all seem worthwhile. But to a colleague, who likes music but isn’t into it like I am, these purchases were more than he could take. How could I justify spending that much on headphones?, he asked. To me, spending £75 on importing some great headphones from the US was more than reasonable. To him it was an extravagance that was beyond comprehension.

Dunno what exactly I’m getting at here, but am I spending too much on this stuff? Or is it worth it to hear great music sounding better than I thought possible whilst listening on my poor old speakers?

Whatever, I’m going to stick on some great tunes and be happy that they sound good

It’s like a little baby AT-AT!

I’ve definitely found something to ask Santa for come Christmas…

So, I find myself playing a couple of games these days. Guild Wars is one I’ve played for a long time, Team Fortress 2 is my new found timewaster.

In GW I started life as a warrior. I’d run around, hit stuff, mutilate my way across continents, the usual testosterone fuelled, Club 18-30 holiday scenario. But I got bored of the violence. So I played the more esoteric professions. I started an elementalist (wizard type), but quickly tired of nuking stuff. On to the ritualist, but that was even worse than the elementalist. The mesmer captivated me for a while, but nobody wanted me around as a mesmer, so that foray didn’t last too long.

Throughout this time I’d tried to play monk on a few occasions. I failed…miserably. But I gave it one more shot. The monk in question was called “Flossie The Sheep”. I never expected her to last, let alone become my main character. Had I thought she would I may not have named her quite so frivolously, but these things happen in life, hence the existence of Dweezil, Moon Unit and Diva Muffin Zappa. And at least my silly name is just a character in a game, not a real child. But names aside, I persevered. I found myself enjoying healing people. And people wanted me around. Not many people like being a monk it seems, yet everyone wants one to heal them. As time went by I started getting compliments on my monking. I started to take pride in it, read articles on how to get better at it. And I’m not bad at it

So along comes TF2. A game that seems very dissimilar to GW on the face of things. You run around, you shoot people, they try to shoot you. But TF2 has classes. I wanted to be a Spy. They’re cool, Spies get all the girls etc. But I kept ending up on teams without a Medic. Heavies need Medics, they have a wonderful synergy. So I ended up filling the spot on servers I joined, just because someone had to. And again I found myself getting good at it. People would remember me between games. If I didn’t play Medic and we were losing people would suggest I switched. Once again I fell into being the healer.

The funny thing is that in “RL” I’m not a team player. But in the strange world of teh interweb, I seem to have had it thrust upon me. I have discovered a side to my personality that I was unaware of.

There is no moral to this story. I haven’t taken what I found out online and applied it to my life and become a better person because of it. I don’t want to be a doctor. Helping people? Don’t wanna, just want them to leave me alone. If you thought there might be a heart-warming ending to this post, then you should try a fairy-tale or one of those “human interest” stories at the end of the news (which I don’t find interesting, obviously condemning me to the ranks of the inhuman).

Just as a post-script, when games force me to be a healer I generally take great pleasure in destroying those I am meant to shepherd. My “Theme Hospitals” were hideous places that made the Black Hole of Calcutta look like Butlins. I took great pleasure in the Sims (for about 10 minutes anyway before un-installing the annoying heap of crap) in building nice houses for my Sims, lulling them into a false sense of security then walling them up, Cask of Amontillado style, to die slow deaths. Doubtless this shows some serial-killer-esque tendencies, so at least when you see me on the news you can tell your family and friends that you’re not at all surprised that I was the one found to have killed 17 people and hung their dismembered bodies from lampposts.