iBanjo

So after months of work, we’ve finished building a new character. It took a lot of effort and late nights of snacking, but we think the result is well worth it. We see great potential for future development.

At the moment, though, the abilities are a bit lacking, much what you’d expect for a level 0 figure. Strength and Constitution are quite low, barely strong enough to lift his own head. Dexterity, however, is quite high — able to touch his feet to his groin with no problems whatsoever. Intelligence is lacking, though we feel this will grow over time with more XP. Wisdom is fair — he knows when not to sweat the small stuff, and stays tightly focused on the things going on inside him. Charisma, however, is through the roof. He charms everyone he sees. We need to be careful about allowing him to recklessly wield such power!

As one would expect with a low-level, the skill set is also still severely lacking. Almost all of his skill points seem to be invested in sleeping, eating, and digesting… though I was suprised by his subtle Escape Artist skills when dressing him this morning, and his Bluff skills when trying to read his varied facial expressions. He’s also apparently invested many ranks in Diplomacy: he’s able to make scads of minions fall over backwards to serve his every whim. We’ve initially equipped him with nothing but a simple wrapped robe and boots of warming. This should be all he needs for his initial encounters.

Emmett Laith, wee commoner: Human Cmnr 0; CR 0; Tiny humanoid (human); HD 1/2; hp 2; Init -2; Speed 0; AC 10, touch 10, flat-footed 10; Base Attack -3; Attack -3 melee (1d4-3, unclipped fingernails); Attack +2 ranged (1d4, scream); SA heightened smell 30′; SQ charm 15/day; AL NG; SV Fort -2, Ref +1, Will 0; Str 3, Dex 18, Con 5, Int 4, Wis 12, Cha 20. Skills: Concentration +4, Diplomacy +8, Bluff +6, Sense Motive +4, Survival +10.

So I’m finally getting frustrated with my cheap “beginner” banjo. The The pegs are super-cheap; whenever I try to tighten the drum head, they slip off. The action above the 5th fret is terrible, probably due to cheap-neck curvature. The tone is weak, and I’m insanely jealous when I listen to my teacher play his banjo. One day I asked my teacher: “why does your banjo sound so GOOD?”. He said that it was “all about the rim” — it turns out he’s playing a Stelling Bellflower with a Tony Pass rim. What an incredible, punchy tone. It just cuts right through you.

Oh Yes, It Will Be Mine.

It’s funny, I used to think that it was wrong to buy expensive instruments unless you were a truly great player and “worthy” of such hardware. But now I realize that even if you’re still an intermediate player, having a really nice instrument is just an incentive to practice more often… it makes everything more enjoyable! My teacher was right: if having a nice instrument makes you pick it up more often, then it’s worth every penny.

In any case, I posted some of my questions about rims to the discussion board on www.banjohangout.org, and it generated a number of interesting responses. Even more interesting is that a couple of days later, I got a private email from Tony Pass himself! He offered to answer any questions I had about building or buying a banjo, a really sincere email. Tony said I’d be “surprised at how cheap I can put together a professional quality banjo.”

Moral of story:

• It’s a really small banjo world. Every banjo player knows every other one, and the folks who build banjos are even more famous (and just as accessible) in the community.
• I don’t know squat about banjo construction. I’ve got a lot of reading to do, and a lot of research to do. Maybe I’ll take a drive up to Elderly Instruments in East Lansing, MI, or maybe I’ll head down to visit the Squeaky Animal Studio in Nashville. I’m sure Mark and Marg are surrounded by banjo-crafters and dealers.

Until I try a whole bunch of different banjos, I have no idea what “sound” I want, much less how to ask an expert to build one for me. Ah well, all in good time. I’ll keep saving my pennies and doing my research.

This week’s tuna is what I refer to as “old reliable” — Genova brand tuna. It may not be the finest out there, but like a good friend, it’s always available and satisfying. It’s still a step above the common mass-produced tuna of Starkist and Chicken of the Sea, though not by much. Genova is really a sub-brand of Chicken of the Sea, packaged fancily to appear that it just arrived off the boat from Italy, rather than a fish-farm:

To the untrained buyer of tuna, the two distinguishing features of this can (beyond the foreign-language marketing) are (1) it’s packed in olive oil, and (2) it’s yellowfin tuna. And no matter how you beat around the bush, it’s hard to put down yellowfin. It just tastes better than the more common bluefin or pale-bland albacore species that fill most of the supermarket shelf. It’s got a richer flavor and all-around meatier texture.

The olive oil is cheap and mixes entirely with the tuna. The result is a cloudy, mucky solution that my cat won’t come near. But does it matter? Not really. One could argue that the total exchange of olive and fish oils is precisely what makes the tuna’s flesh taste so good. It’s not a “pure” tuna taste, but some sort of rich hybrid of animal and vegetable fats.

Let’s me honest here. There’s a time for snobiness, and a time to just get down-and-dirty with the common folk. You can go around ordering eight dollar beers at yuppie bars, but when you’ve been out sweating in the sun all day doing garden-work, nothing tastes better than a cheap Corona. Likewise, when I just need to kick back after a long day of changing 1’s into 0’s and 0’s into 1’s, nothing satisfies my primal fish urge better than a can of Genova. It’s not a tuna for the ages, but it’s still my basic pantry staple. I couldn’t go without it.

This is a working-man’s tuna. I salute it heartily.