Deliberate Mischief

I Am A: Neutral Good Human Bard (6th Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength-8

Dexterity-10

Constitution-9

Intelligence-16

Wisdom-15

Charisma-13

Alignment:
Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment when it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Bards often serve as negotiators, messengers, scouts, and spies. They love to accompany heroes (and villains) to witness heroic (or villainous) deeds firsthand, since a bard who can tell a story from personal experience earns renown among his fellows. A bard casts arcane spells without any advance preparation, much like a sorcerer. Bards also share some specialized skills with rogues, and their knowledge of item lore is nearly unmatched. A high Charisma score allows a bard to cast high-level spells.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

I rarely get up before midday, but those times that I do these moments are spent staring at a TV (which I haven’t yet switched on) while gathering my thoughts and contemplating my Navel.

From Midday (or whenever I get out of bed) until the quiz shows start (about 4:30) I study whatever Open University degree course I am currently on.

Quiz shows (how else is a stay-at-home to broaden his horizons?) until 5:15 when I start cooking.

6PM the wonderful Annette gets home from work and I serve dinner. After which we vegitate in front of her bloody awful TV shows.

End of the night the wife goes off to bed and I watch the sky+ recorded versions of my TV shows (which I cannot watch live because we are watching her mind numbing rot) or I play a PC game.

2AM – bed, an hour or three staring at the ceiling and possibily, sleep.

Not been active lately and the last post was all wrong. I am doing A219 exploring the clasical world instead now.

Right, to update the last post, next courses will be Heritage, whose heritage? (A180) for 15 points and World archaeology (A251) for 30 points both starting in October. Then next year I will do the 60 pointer Exploring the classical world (A219) and maybe Darwin and evolution (S170) for 10 points in the summer.

The following years will be – Understanding global heritage (AD281), Myth in the Greek and Roman worlds (A330) and Religion in history: conflict, conversion and coexistence (AA307) all for 60 points each – hopefully finishing in 2016 (ish).

60 points down, only another 300 to go!

Overall continuous assessment score (7 small essays): 75

Overall examinable Score: 58

A pass!

Well I am in a good mood as I just passed the first module in my Open University degree course. However not as good as perhaps I ought to be. I only scraped through the final exam and I know exactly why that is. It’s annoying that the thing that holds me back is my own inflexibility; I refuse to write badly just to get extra marks.

I appreciate the OU’s habit of dumbing everything down so they can reach a wider audience (and make a lot more money) but my problem is that I ain’t dumb. These level 1 courses are a tad frustrating because they are so basic, but I need a certain amount of them to pass the degree. I am hoping that when I move up to level 2 courses they will be both more challenging and more receptive to a style of writing above Janet and John books.

So, anyway, AA100 (the Arts past and Present) is done and passed. SA188 (the Science of Archaeology) is halfway there, now to decide which level 2 courses to do. I was planning on doing the level 2 Archaeology course but that is only worth 30 points and seems like taking a step backwards. That is assuming that the credit each module earns is commensurate with the amount of work required to pass it.

I could add A180 (Heritage, whose heritage?) for 15 points which would mean (adding the two courses together in one year) I would be paying £655 for 45 credits or I could change my plan and do a 60 pointer A219 (Exploring the classical world) for £700.

The difference between £655 and £700 is negligible so do I really want to work harder (2 modules at once) for less credits (45 instead of 60)?

Tough call, at least I am finding it so!

“There is no essential difference between sticking pins into a wax image of an enemy and burning candles in front of a wax image of the Virgin. You may think that both these practices are gross superstition, but you can hardly think that one is real and potent and deny reality and potency to the other.” — Dion Fortune, Psychic Self-Defense

For anybody who believes that Christians don’t practice very black magic … check out http://www.dc40.net/

Wow, almost two months since the last post! Two months that saw me reach the grand old age of forty-one. Although for the last fortnight of that I have had no internet connection (bloody Sky, Rupert Murdoch’s even getting in the way of my gaming and porn).

Being sans internet did lead to some other work being caught up on however and I managed to add several pages from the old website to the new. I also made some headway on an idea that has been kicking around in my notes for years now, an Idea for African Changlings for Changeling: the Dreaming.

So this afternoon the wife and I are off to Bristol for the wedding of some friends. Should be both fun and fascinating as the blushing Bride comes from a Hindu family and they will be having a traditional wedding on the Friday followed by a civil ceremony on the Saturday. All very cool, especially to a pagan like me.

As we will be passing very near to Avebury and the wife has never been I am really hoping that we can stop off there on the way home (could do it on the way there but the weather looks crappy). Weirdly enough the essay i had to finish this week for the OU (due in tomorrow) was about sacred spaces and among the examples I chose to focus on was Avebury stone circle. Amazing well that nearly worked out.

In fact the very week the course required us to watch a film (Bhaji on the Beach) which I bought along with the required reading books, Film bloody four showed the damn thing on TV. There have been a couple of documentaries shown on TV the week after I had to write an essay on the very subject they explored. I think I must have pissed off the God of schedules and Serendipity!

But, anyway, the return to Avebury is worthy of comment. It’s been more than a decade since I was there last but before then I was a fairly regular visitor/worshipper/drunken reveller at the “Biggest and most important Temple in Britain” (as a source I just quoted in said essay called it).

Reading the course work for my next course on Archaeology (see previous post) in Wiltshire, where so many important sites can be found, is surely a good omen is it not? It’s a safe bet that the next post on here will be very spiritual and introspective.

So, AA100(i) finished, SA188(ii) begun. That is technically one year of University under my belt and fresherdom behind me. Not sure if such labels count when you are distance studying with the Open University but who cares.

The act of taking the four course books and the four boxes of CD and DVD’s down from the shelf above my computer and taking them upstairs to the library (read: spare room full of book cases) was somewhat odd. There was relief that I had completed the final essay on Sacred Spaces and jubilation that I hadn’t buckled under the pressure, even anticipation for the new course. But there is also that sad mourning for something which has been the forefront of my attention since October.

So, just in case you googled the AA100 and found this blog, a quick review of the course. If you’ve never studied before, especially if you have never studied with the OU, it does have its uses. It’s a gentle introduction to how things are done by them and it counts towards all Humanities courses. Unfortunately if you are reasonably well read, it can be dull and frustrating in its simplicity. It may have been another issue peculiar to my tutor (see below) but answering questions on a topic based only on the (badly written) chapter in the course book can have you tearing out your hair. Basically, I failed to do this and just accepted the tutor lowering my score because I used other sources to back up my arguments. Sod ‘em!

As I said, some of the chapters are bloody awful and even wildly incorrect (the chapter on Cleopatra for a start). Writing an essay and having to deliberately write it based on the erroneous opinions of the course works author went against every single fibre of my being and my Tutors ignorance only added to that feeling. Having to answer questions which the chapter didn’t actually address without looking for other sources could have cost me my sanity if I had followed the rules more closely. For example the final essay asked me to talk about how and why society maintains sacred spaces, which is great except the chapter it is based on says not one word concerning the how. I can only assume that the question setters don’t reread the chapter in question.

The tutor himself, while friendly and quite affable in lectures, was close to illiterate and seemed to come up with some very bloody odd interpretations of what other people have written. The lectures seemed to consist of a lot of people looking at each other with raised eyebrows after he gave his impression of what was meant by something written in the book. This became a bigger problem when he was marking the essays as his grasp of English is very basic and rather than look up a word in a dictionary if he didn’t understand it, he would simply mark the essay down and highlight the word as wrong. Worse still was his skim reading of the essays he was marking, a flaw which caused him to write great swathes of feedback based on something which didn’t appear in that essay. Missing words like not or isn’t so that he read the statement as saying the exact opposite of what was written. The worst of his crimes however was his desperation to comment which led him to read the opening sentence of a paragraph and then criticise the lack of expansion or explanation of the point made. expansion or explanation which was in the very next sentence and which made up the remainder of the paragraph. Of the 8 essays marked, I stopped reading his feedback after essay 5.

So, is it a good course? Yes, but with flaws if the subject isn’t entirely new to you. Is it a good course if you live in the Southend, Basildon, Thurrock catchment area? Well, no, it really isn’t.

(i) AA100 the Arts: past and present
(ii) SA188 Archaeology – The Science of Investigation

AA100: the Arts past and presence nearly over. I have 11 days left to write the final 2000 word essay for which I have almost no enthusiasm even though it is finally based on a subject in which I have an interest. Or perhaps because it is on a subject in which I have an interest and the narrow focus and weird expectations for these essays is what is killing my motivation. My second course, SA188 Archaeology: the science of Investigation has begun and I haven’t even had a chance to read the study guide.

The problem is, the last week or two has been proper shit, I’m in a low phase of the old mood pendulum and we got some pretty fecking devastating news this week. I know I need to knuckle down and hit the books but am struggling to focus. That leaves me stressing about each day that goes by without some serious time devoted to the study and … you see where this is going.

So, because I am, feeling a bit crap, it was kind of nice to get the blog sorted today (cheers Dav) and to get a place to pour a little self pity in the hope of some cathartic outlet.