Inadvertent Slaughterhouse

I got a bit fed up with Minecraft for a few days. Endless, unceasing intimations of mortality plus headaches from too much screen time, not to mention the carpal tunnel, will do that to you. I couldn’t stay away too long though – I suppose it’s a good thing that I crave Minecraft and not heroin but I’m beginning to think the end effect is essentially the same – and I’ve been back in World 5 for a while now. While I was away I ventured to a bar I hadn’t been before and found myself, while there, in a long Minecraft conversation with two other addicts. My gods, it is just like a drug addiction. All we need are some gang signs and we’ll be set.

Back in Minecraft world, instead of going on home with my tail between my legs to ride the trains for a while, I took advantage of the extremely well stocked spawning hut on World 5 to get myself all armored up and equipped with tools and took off in a sort of southwesterly direction. Mostly, it was snow, snow and more snow. Mountains. Snow. This is, as I have mentioned, a pretty well explored and developed planet that used to be all snow and I was beginning to think that I would have to sail away again to find virgin territory when I happened on an abandoned boat. I love finding abandoned boats. It’s so sort of creepy cool – I mean, I know I built the damn boat and left it there but still, finding random boats gives me that sudden frisson of wondering just who the hell has been sailing around there.

I didn’t get very far in the boat – yet another ice sheet, what you gonna do? – but I got somewhere I was pretty sure I had never been before. There was a massive and amazing lava flow with the requisite burning trees scattered in front of it. I holed up for the evening right there and listened all night to the screams of dying farm animals. It was quite cheery; suited my mood. In the morning I ran around picking up pork chops and leather and I thought, okay, this is the place for me, this inadvertent slaughterhouse. The light from all the fires keeps the monsters away and, just like Scarlett, as pig is my witness, I will never go hungry again. So I set forth to build a wooden house of incredible fabulousity, a thing of beauty and a joy forever with three wooden floors, a deck and a glass pyramid of sorts on top. I like it but the nightly screams of anguish were beginning to get to me, not to mention the problem of where to store all my pork.

Therefore, I built a pond under the burning trees – this rescuing of farm animals seems to be kind of a theme - and now I have not just a lavafall but waterfalls galore. I like it here. Now, of course, it is time to build a trail to spawn, the inevitable marker of a finished home.