PSA

This is a Public Service Announcement brought to you, in part, by Calz.

I will not sub Ninja on Dark Knight to a merit party at birds.
I will not sub Ninja on Samurai to a merit party at birds.
I will not sub Ninja on Warrior to a merit party on birds.
They are birds.
They will not one-shot me.
Pecking Flurry is a 4-Hit TP move. Even if I have fresh shadows, it will still hit me.
The best form of damage mitigation in this game in any situation without heavy AoEs or moves that can one-shot you no matter what, is not /ninja. It is not shadows. It is killing the goddamned thing before it can cause too much damage to anyone.
Do you know how /ninja improves the damage done by any job not Dual Wielding?
It doesn't.
It is a dead sub any time you are not getting hit in the face.
If your healer is so lazy that they can't cure people who occasionally get injured, guess what?
I don't want to be in your party.
I will go /sam and ride Seigan til the fucking wheels come off. Its how I tend to play as it is. But I will not sub Ninja to your goddamned bird party.

Thank you,
-Calz.

Labyrinth. Only, without Bowie. Or those terrible 80s Haircuts.

Playoffs? You kiddin' me? Playoffs?

So, MMM(bop.)

For a while, I hated the idea of going in and doing a bunch of stupid shit in some underground maze run by goblins. Those fuckers don't make anything of quality, as evidenced by how shit starts collapsing 15 minutes in, and the whole fucking place caves in after 30 minutes. Half an hour. They can't make something that stands the test of half an hour? This isn't like, Stonehenge, here. Hundreds of years of standing in the rain, sleet and hail, and shit. No. This is the time it takes for a shitty VH1 show to come on and be (Not Just) Knee Deep in fuckery.






I started off doing it on DRG with a group that invited me along. I started at 44, and pretty quickly hit 45. Admittedly, by this point, my hatred of the mazes were starting to fade.








When we ended at 49, the hatred was gone for the most part, though I kept thinking I'd turn a corner to see a bunch of Colibri-typed Maze Lurkers flying around with platinum-blond hair and weird earrings. Senseless fear, but dammit, I had it!





Anyways, that lead to some LS runs once I knew what I was doing. Was pretty fun, leveled my RNG from 27 on up. I'm 38 at the moment and we've done 3 runs today and 6 from yesterday. So that's 11 levels in 9 runs. Pretty good production, especially since I got to skip:

-The Jungles
-Crawler's Nest
-Garliage Citadel
-People leveling subs and doing it in the worst possible way with 4 mages and 2 melee, one of which is a ninja who hasn't purchased Utsusemi yet, and the other is me, trying not to die.

All in all, I give MMM two thumbs up.

---

iCalz -- Songs Played While Writing
Grandmaster Flash - White Lines
Gym Class Heroes - Viva La White Girl
Bun B - Get Throwed (ft. Pimp C, Young Jeezy & Jay-Z)
Jadakiss - Pain and Torture

---

I can't sleep

There's a lot on my mind right now, and I don't much know what those things are. I do know that I've been blasting a lot of music, and am not in the long process of procuring like... the whole Stevie Wonder discography. No idea why. Just feeling that right now.

Yeah. The last few 24 hours have been interesting. Got 75 on MNK. Made some money. We low-manned Genbu for epic lulz tonight. I got, basically, one-shotted. Fucking DA+enwater damage while I was resting without stoneskin on. Hot. And now I'm laying in my bed at nearly 4am, unable to sleep, unable to write, and shuffling through music.

Shuffle's being weird, a sign I need to go to sleep, since I have to report everything that I listen to as a self-imposed rule when I'm updating this.

iCalz -- Songs Played While Writing
Black Sabbath - Iron Man
J. Cole - Can I Live (listen to this)
Lloyd Banks - Help (ft. Keri Hilson) (wtf, shuffle)

.Music.

"But Darling, it's so sweet/You think you know how crazy/how crazy I am.
You say you don't spook easy, you won't go/but I know/And I pray that you will."
-Fiona Apple - Fast As You Can

You know, I love music. There are songs I love more than some people I know. There are genres I love more than some family members. So on and so forth. I get in moods where I would rather listen to music than do anything else.

Today was one of those days.

That's not to say I can't do anything besides listen to music. I'm perfectly capable of walking and chewing gum as well, thank you very much. Alas, its more that... sometimes I just want to put on my headphones, lay back, stare at the ceiling, and lose myself in percussion, strings and brass.

But so yeah, I can hear it now. "None of this is FFXI related, Calzy, wtf man!"

Incorrect.

I... play differently depending on the mood I'm in. I'm sure everyone does. But my mood and the music I'm listening to are intrinsically linked. Now, to ask which controls the other is a chicken-egg situation, and I try not to wonder too much beyond noticing times where one obviously causes the other. For the most part, though, unless I need to hear something specific, I put my iTunes on shuffle and just let it play. I'll skip songs til I get something that I'd like to hear, but usually I just let randomness decide what I hear. However, I've been flipping through my nearly two thousand song library of music since I woke up, trying to find something to speak to my mood.

Today was just one of them days.

I'm... sick. Very sick. I'm not as sure why as I would like to be, but I'm not doing great. And I would like to be doing great. But... most everyone would.

This last week has been... interesting. I suppose it started last Thursday. Normal enough day, I watched some SVU, listened to some music, stared blankly at my latest story and watched as the words refused to write themselves, as they tend to do. Then I went to sleep. I woke up at around two in the morning. I knew that without checking my clock, because years of not wearing a watch tends to force your body to notice this shit. So, I started playing around, put in a video game to pass the time until the rest of the world woke up.

My stomach growled.

Considering I remembered eating before I went to sleep, I was a bit confused, but I checked the clock on my computer to see what time it was. It was 4.11am.

On Saturday.

I lost last Friday. Just, lost it. Rewind to the last few days, and my current state of fuckedupedness, lol. I was up for two days straight. I saw Monday become Tuesday, and Tuesday become Wednesday. Was up trying to finish this story I've been working on, since I'm showing it to some people to see what they think so I can get it cleaned up and polished before I submit it. I went to sleep pretty early on Wednesday, as my body started shutting down. I hadn't eaten anything Monday night, all of Tuesday, and the time on Wednesday that I was awake.

Sixteen hours and twenty-three minutes later, I'm awake.

Know what I love about good music? It's timeless.

You can sleep away a whole day, or several years. Good music will always been good music.

So, back to FFXI.

After sleeping most of the day, I woke up and decided I needed to do... something. Went and helped Jaci with Nyzul, and the damned Denali body dropped, which was great. Was listening to Parliament Funkadelic - Flashlight when Hydra died, which was nice and upbeat. Glad FFXI doesn't have voice support, don't think the Nyzul party needed to hear me singing "Everybody's got a little light/UNDER THE SUN!/UNDER THE SUN!/UNDER THE SUUUUN!" ...yeah.

I like to help people get stuff they have difficulty getting. Dunno. Suppose its just feeling a part of someone's joy. I suppose I miss the feeling of striving for something the just keeps slipping out of reach, and that overwhelming feeling of accomplishment when its finally obtained. At least as far as the game goes. I know damned well I'll be busting out my old Adidas Shelltoes and tracksuit and tossing on Afrika Baambataa - Planet Rock and going back to break-dancing once I finish this story of mine and get it published.

Meh.

I woke up and sneezed while I was getting out of bed and fell on the floor. I blame too much sleep.

People came in the house while I was asleep and came in my room. People I didn't know. They were talking and standing near me again. Weird feeling, to know someone is near you even when you're asleep. Its something I've always had though. I don't like people being near me while I'm sleeping, I'm even wary of friends of mine. Sleep isn't restful when your body is tensed up, aware of shit around you.

To the people who decided to come in my room: Fuck you very much.
Assholes.

I planned to show my gear and introduce myself to people who might not know me, but... meh. Apparently I had something on my mind to get out, so... I've done that! Gear and pictures and shit later.

tl;dr: Love your music. Whatever it is. You never know how much it affects your life until everything's silent.

---

iCalz -- Songs Played While Writing
Fiona Apple - Fast As You Can
J. Cole - Dreams (ft. Brandon Hines)
Luther Vandross - A House is Not A Home
Jadakiss - Things I've Been Through
Doobie Brothers - What A Fool Believes

---

lol.

I'm Sick :(

That is all.

Um. Wednesday.

Just woke up.
Go me.

Did Odin last night.
lol.
I think we went in seriously overestimating the difficulty of the fight.

Clear time ended up being 2 minutes and 11 seconds, a minute and a half of which we spent doing last-minute buffs and... me staring blankly at the dude on the horse.

He was kinda tall.

And then, you know...

He was kinda dead.

More later, sorta have a headache, but I'll also give more information about me, I suppose.

Moving

Cerberus.

I am now... a denizen of Cerberus.

Just saying that tastes a bit weird.

In the grand scheme of things, its not by any means bad, and its not that I'm complaining, it's just a bit of a culture shock, I suppose. But the again, I have the tendency to be amazingly able to adapt to changes, big or small. I've been like that ever since I was younger and realized that I wasn't actually ever going to be six-foot-seven, and therefore, my dreams of being a Small Forward wouldn't work that well. So, I shrugged it off, got better at other things, and shifted my goals.

Other people aren't taking the change nearly as well, unfortunately.

Quite a few of my friends have had name changes pushed onto them. My stupid sympathy cropped up and I went into the merge hoping that someone would have my name, so I would have to change it too. Alas, I didn't have to do such a thing, and I am still... me. Well, on a plus note, its always great to still have one's name in auto-translate.

What else...

Oh.

Yeah.

So... I have a 75 mage job now.

Anyone who knows me is "WTF"ing to themselves right now. Everyone else, let me fill you in.

I might possibly be the least mage-inclined person most people will ever meet. I have been deemed too easily bored to play BLM. My inventory space is far too low for me to play RDM, given my tendency to get somewhat... obsessive with gear for most situations. And I have, repeatedly, been told I am far too spiteful to be a WHM. When I started this game, I started it wanting to be a DRK, and years later, I was sitting around quite happy with my contingent of a pretty damned good 75 DRK and SAM, a functional NIN and a retired WAR. And then, I got bored.

So what did I do, knowing that I have basically been told by people that I would make a terrible BLM, WHM and RDM?

I leveled SCH.

And god-fucking-dammit, I am good at it. :D

I go out, I use JAs, I blow shit up. If someone else is nearby while I blow shit up, I might toss them an AoE buff. If you want to nuke more effectively, I'll give you a Storm spell. If you want to take less damage, I'll hit you with Stoneskin or Phalanx. If you're meleeing, I'll toss you an En- spell for extra damage done. Occasionally, I even throw out a Helix. And if you get hurt and are in need of assistance,

Fuck you.

I don't cure.

So... that's me! Hello everyone, and um... More from me whenever I can between my more... professional writing.

-Calz