fantasy characters have never looked so cool!

Andrew Leonard claims that Diablo II is a runway show run amok. The developers may claim this is a role-playing game where a champion lays waste to legions of hell-spawn monsters, but with so many accessories to choose from such as “the emerald-chipped helm of light” , “the crimson sash of life”, “the heavy boots of the Jaguar” or “the silver ring of the leech” who cares about killing demons?

You can read the original article here , but beware! Andrews directs his scorn at players who could only think whether yielding a scepter of sacrifice provides a significant bonus to an attack rating  without ever considering if it looks good with all those artic furs your barbarian is wearing! And do the “bright gloves of dexterity” clash with the “hard burgundy leather armour of triumph”? I bet you didn’t consider that!

Monday evening. It reminds me of that song

“Music and passion were always in fashion
At the copa… Copacabana”

Subbing for Cicinato last thursday. He may have gone to Canada but I got to eat lots of chocolate!

Looking at these guys one cannot help but think that “Cultura is Fun”

(Taken with my newly-acquired digital SLR)

(left to right: Cris, Mari, Karla, Fabiano, Vanessinha e Ana Brito. Author is behind camera lenses)

Yes, it is merely a test.

Yes it is a podcast.

No, I am not the one singing.

click here to listen

Long time no see, eh? I’ve got news: I’ll shortly begin experimenting with podcasting either on this space or on some of my classes’ blog. I’ve already opened up an account at Gcast but while I don’t think of anything interesting to say I thought you might enjoy this video:

So many good bands are drawing inspiration from timeless classics of literature that gone are the days in which an angry parent might equate rock with lack of literacy. The song I selected is “Time Stands Still at the Iron Hill” by Blind Guardian. This song describes the clash between Morgoth, the evil God of Fire and Finglofin, lord of the Elves of Noldor, in single combat.

Fingolfin obviously dies at the end, for powerful and immortal as he was, he was no god, whereas Morgoth IS a god himself. An evil one, but a god nevertheless.

The song is part of the album “Nightfall in Middle Earth”, a concept album completely based on the work Simarillion, from JRR Tolkien. The entire span of the book is recounted in the tracks of this album, even if somewhat obliquely. Fans of the book will certainly understand the lyrics even if the lyrics taken alone do not lend themselves to understanding the book.

Enjoy.

One small bar of Toblerone chocolate to whomever is the first to tell me what is the exact work of literature (title and author) to which the Clarivoyant picture in the “on the author” section refers.

From the mere pairing up of the lyrics we can see that the Egyptian theme of the song is sandwiched within the opening and closing verses of the original English hymn. The first part is sung ipsis literis , whereas the closing verses are sung mirroring the general idea but paraphrasing the contentes (aflame with faith / ablaze with hope, etc).

We can easily estabilish that both the Hymn and the song’s theme is a call for a miracle to unite a people, but where does the Egyptian content come from? Acordingly to Wikipedia Bruce was partly inspired by the works of Aleister Crowley, a somewhat maverick writter.

I did some research on the topic and found out that the guy claims that when he was in Egypt in 1904, his wife (named Rose) was possessed by Horus (the eye of the Sun rose on her lips) during a ritual invocation (So whe lay in a black embrace and the seed is sown in a holy place) and that he, Aleister Crowley was then annointed both “prince and priest of the beast” and was heralding a new age, where Horus himself would come down and conquer the world (by brute force, I might add!).

Then he went of to create his own religion, with its own book of revelations and all. Which is something that seems to become increasingly more common these days. Maybe one day I’ll gather some friends and have a go at that, too.

Dear students, I’m almost gone to Curitiba. There’s no way I am going to miss Iron Maiden playing the songs I used to rock with, when I was a teen myself and couldn’t afford air tickets nor going to concert venues .

Maybe studying English isn’t as fun as Maiden concerts, but we can learn a lot from their symbols and lyrics. Bruce himself has an historian’s degree under his belt and this is reflected in most of his songs which talk about History and Literature, often mixing both.

Here Eddie dresses as an English Redcoat in the cell phone snapshot taken while the group played “the trooper”, this song is a direct reference to the poem The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson, and readers of the first with a working knowledge of British History will firmly place the song in the context of the War of Crimea. The song differs from the poem though, in that it is brutally focused on the sheer waste of British lives in the Battle of Balaclava, whereas the poem merely hints at that in far greater elegance.

The Redcoat became intimately associated with the British Empire to the point of being somewhat akin to a national symbol. Not to be liked by all, however. If Lord Tennyson praises the British soldiery with

“When can their glory fade? O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered. Honour the charge they made!”

The American colonials held the “King’s men” in much more contempt and defiance, as their folk lore attests:

“Why come ye hither, Redcoats, your mind what madness fills? In our valleys there is danger, and there’s danger on our hills (…) soon you’ll know the ringing of the rifle from the tree.”

See you next week!