Mindcrack

MINDCRACK: another term for Minecraft; a game addictive to the brain; the hyper-real lego game where the blocks come with their own reliable chemistry and physical properties so that you can combine them into new blocks. For instance, you mine stone and build a furnace. Mine coal and iron ore and produce iron ingots in the furnace. With iron and other materials you can build armor, weapons and tools... You can build practically anything. Someone built a working computer in Minecraft although in game scale it was probably the size of Belgium.

What makes the game work so well is that this basic model of Earth, equipped with minerals, plants and life forms is so logistically generous you can build large complex things in no time. Most flora grows from seed to maturity in a (ten-minute) day. You can move any object instantly and effortlessly and carry enormous miniaturized inventories, and most transformations (recipes) are instant just by adding the right components to your workbench (called a crafting table) or loom, anvil or other such facility.

Teens tend to play the game for the community factor. They can be a sentient adult, easily form a profitable business (or two or more) and start buying, selling and pursuing the largest bank account.

I play because it's a wonderland of creativity and in terms of community its an opportunity to more easily live out your dreams than in the (ultra-fake) real world!

Question M: If MARS were inhabitable would you accept a one-way ticket?

Quite possibly. It would depend on more criteria then we want to get into today.

Dr. Pi: parrot therapy

M is for Middling

In the last 36 hours I have:

• Lost my wallet and $190.
• Negotiated with burdened outdoor renovation workers to access my own driveway.
• Attended the 8th or 9th annual Wafflepalooza of which I was a founding father.
• Hugged friends.
• Reminisced with my dear writer pals concerning the inspiring ascent of The Liaison, who departed oh so young on the verge of a writing career breakthrough.
• Hugged more friends.
• Tinkered with yet another indulgent mindcrack lair.
• Found the wallet!
• Barely -- barely -- endured the 45-minute torture of an ultrasound session in which the tech sweated buckets trying to push holes through me (drawing blood even but not much).
• Butted heads politely with a senior bank associate trying to smother Gramps and I in a blanket of red tape and liability paranoia leaving me exhausted and almost hopeless before a wonderful junior associate, a young black man with brilliant instincts, wisdom and kindness gave us everything we needed as soon as the former departed.
• Parked strategically so Gramps could piss in a parking lot.
• Talked about life and literature with Earth Writer and remembered how we used to be closer (I think).
• Attended Scooterville NaNo Thank God Its Over celebration.
• Won nice little prizes.
• Hugged friends I’m very glad to find are still friends.
• Sat in the car hoping that a young person I will always care for will come to understand I would never ever want to hurt his feelings and that I only want his life to be better and him to be happy. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

I’m in the middle of things.

Peace.

Mindcrack Diaries

I barely made it home to Castle Minerva with my tail between my legs, having depended on the compass and failing to mark a sufficient trail. At least on this return my two unforseen castle companions - I shall call them Thing One and Thing Two though they are undecipherable by sight alone - had not left the front door wide open on this occasion. I have resigned that the day will come they leave my doors open and some monster will wander in and kill them or turn them back into zombies or blow up a room or two. Oh well. All things can be replaced.

I regrouped, restocked and headed back out, with no potions or valuables, intending to track a proper trail between Castle Minerva and Fortress Mountain, but was too impatient. I travelled at night and wandered too far from established landmarks and got terribly lost again. Eventually I used the compass and marched all the way back home.

Mindcrack Diaries

Recreating the necessary equipmemt here at Fortress Mountain is too daunting. I have not enough obsidian to build a portal to the Nether; the Hell dimension to fetch the necessary blazing substance. Fetching the brewing stand and supplies for transport here would put the potentially-unique brewing stand at too much risk. I'm faced with the third option: return to Castle Minerva and prepare the potions and golden fruit there, and deliver them all here. That too runs huge risks. It is a valuable cargo to cart through the wilderness, but not as hard to replace as the brewing stand, and so this is what I must do. 

And so I depart soon, intending to follow the compass and mark the route with landmarks to such degree I can, and building hideaways and bunkies to revisit for nightly refuge during my return. And I must play it safe and  stay out of the dark and travel only by day. As for my newest treasures: Are these artifacts safer left here in the village or off shore in the Sea Hut?

Or on my person for the trek home? I've fenced the village off and lit it well. Logically they should be left here I think, though I have already packed them to go.

Mindcrack Diaries

I now have seven zombies trapped; imprisoned; all of the formerly-human variety (if human is the right word for the civilians who inhabit this earth-like planet). I have prepared a tiny village for them. There are no established villages nearby; neither to accommodate them nor to seed the city I envision: Hulk City. Perhaps the first city this planet will see?

I cannot cure them without the appropriate potions etcetera, which I am equipped to manufacturer at Castle Minerva; my home-in-progress which is so far away that I got lost trying to find it when returning from this region after my recent, inaugural visit, and lost again trying to find my way back here. Mind you on this occasion, I expect to retain my compass. It always guides me to Castle Minerva, or rather to Genustown specifically, which is just down the road from my ambitious castle project, via Toad's Corners, Sandtrap Pool and Steve's Lagoon.