So the thing about David Letterman is that he's the best late show host.
He isn't the funniest (Conan), the most entertaining (Ferguson), the best band-having (Fallon you know how lucky you are, you fuck) or the BLANK BLANK I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT LENO. I sincerely hope Jay Leno just spontaneously turns into a big bag of hot sand and is dispersed by the wind, never to return.
He's just the best, because he understands exactly what his job entails. He's on, late at night, and he's basically a vehicle for people to come on and shill their movie/music/anything. His job is to be enough of a draw that people will sit through commercials for an hour longer after TV stops airing any shows worth anything at all.
He doesn't have to be original, or even funny. Shit will happen in the world, and all SEVEN or so real late night hosts will pounce on the same stale shit and they'll maybe make a lukewarm joke about the latest politics or sports or scandal. It isn't even NEWS, it's just the sort of stuff that's been replaced by chain emails from your aunt for the past five years.
And Letterman UNDERSTANDS this, and just goes "Fuck it". He's 64 and he's been doing this shit for thirty years now.
He's been doing the same shit for longer than our entire lives.
Now, maybe earlier the Late Show was a breath of fresh air in the fetid talk show universe (it was). Maybe it was innovative and genuinely funny at some point...like Garfield.
Maybe the comic strip Garfield was at some point in its existence genuinely funny.
Isn't that a terrifying thought.
But now it just exists because it always has existed, even though you go "this isn't funny. this is not performing the singular job it was made for. why is this a thing that is a thing."
I watched Letterman last night. I watched this exact bit, and I just softly applauded an obvious zen master of television.
Watch him. Watch him just straight up not give a single fuck about his guest, this segment, the old people who came to see his show during their touristy travels in New York, or any other aspect of his entire fucking job.
It's pure poetry. It's just multiple layers of irony. This is Bro Strider level piano-master-class.
Watching David Letterman chuck these stupid toys around, daring his nationwide audience to do anything, giving absolutely zero fucks or shits about not a single god damned thing....it just gives me hope for the future, you know?
And. AND. That last toy bit? Listen to the band. Dave starts launching UFO's into the crowd, no fucks attached, and Paul "I'm Like Gilbert Gottfried Behind An Organ" Shaffer immediately launches into Billy Preston's "Outta Space"
Mother.
Fuckers.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Thanks, Blake
Friend of mine sent me his compendium of mods he uses, full of reviews and recommendations.
I figure it was a far better list than TEN BEST SKYRIM MODS LOL BEARSPIDERS and since everyone who reads this plays Skyrim (EVERYONE WHO READS THIS PLAYS SKYRIM RIGHT) they could stand to benefit.
You do play Skyrim on your rig, right? Not on a console? Because you're a goddamn adult?
Behold:
Skyrim HD - 2K Textures - http://www.skyrimnexus.com/
this
one pushes my rig while in the cities, but you could pick and choose
some textures out of it. its good in that subtle way, eliminating a
large amount of the console-tastic graphics
downloads/file.php?id=1386
i was weary of this because opinions vary on "epic" but it really is good. mostly just making the tracks longer while splicing in some more famous stuff. Again subtle good.
downloads/file.php?id=1690
you like smithing yea?
downloads/file.php?id=120
a good texture mod is priceless IMO
downloads/file.php?id=849
for as much time as we have to spend looking at rocks, the might as well look awesome. This mods rocks are better than the Skyrim 2k rocks
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=225
this guy handpainted a lot of these, and if you use the spiked shield then you should grab this one, since it uses the same backing as one of the others (i forget) and thus makes it look sweet in 1st person.
downloads/file.php?id=1345
this one is fucking awesome, espically with higher res and the shifting letters. Go this guy god damn
downloads/file.php?id=1292
he even retextured the pelts!
downloads/file.php?id=26
you should have this and the other stuff buy this guy except better bodies, which makes shit crash. But how much time to spend staring at naked toons anyway? The hands one is great too.
downloads/file.php?id=1020
one simple ESP
downloads/file.php?id=912
I fucking love this thing. I hate the compass holding my hand and leading me places, especially telling me where enemies are. Get this, it will make the game so much more fun the explore when you run into shit on accident. Keep it so it shows quest and custom markers and you'll have all you need.
downloads/file.php?id=859
This one has a video so thats rad. it makes two handed swords much more interesting to use and fight against.
downloads/file.php?id=471
because we are not playing fucking Call of Duty
downloads/file.php?id=603
simple and clean (clean)
downloads/file.php?id=273
mostly I got this to make silent sneak attack go away but you can play with it and get some good stuff.
downloads/file.php?id=171
If your Lady toon is a Mage, dont get this one. If she is anything else then do get it. I fucking hate the way women run and walk in Bethseda games, always have, so I always look for someone to make this mod. really it cuts down on clipping but like I said if your lady's a mage it just makes her look like shes got something to prove.
downloads/file.php?id=389
The video speaks for itself.
downloads/file.php?id=60
One of the top mods on nexus, I'd be surprised if you dont already have it. if not you should.
No More Blocky Faces
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=30
I added this one separate because it makes such an impact. Get this one.
Ive got others, but mostly color change stuff for amors and weapons, which is more preference than anything. If you have an armor you wear a lot though type it in the search and see what comes up, you might be surprised.
I also want to tag on the HD Skymap one because it integrates the actual lore constellations perfectly into HD real star pictures, and the fix to let the game access more than its set 2gb of RAM (Consoooooles).
GO FORTH AND SCREENSHOT. Screen....screenshoot. Present tense.
I figure it was a far better list than TEN BEST SKYRIM MODS LOL BEARSPIDERS and since everyone who reads this plays Skyrim (EVERYONE WHO READS THIS PLAYS SKYRIM RIGHT) they could stand to benefit.
You do play Skyrim on your rig, right? Not on a console? Because you're a goddamn adult?
Behold:
Skyrim HD - 2K Textures - http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=607
this
one pushes my rig while in the cities, but you could pick and choose
some textures out of it. its good in that subtle way, eliminating a
large amount of the console-tastic graphicsEpic Enhanced Skyrim Soundtrack
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/i was weary of this because opinions vary on "epic" but it really is good. mostly just making the tracks longer while splicing in some more famous stuff. Again subtle good.
Legendary Smithing Upgrades
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/you like smithing yea?
Beautiful Skyrim - HD Clutter and Furniture
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/a good texture mod is priceless IMO
Improved rock and mountain textures - 4096x4096
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/for as much time as we have to spend looking at rocks, the might as well look awesome. This mods rocks are better than the Skyrim 2k rocks
A higher quality of shields - New textures
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/
this guy handpainted a lot of these, and if you use the spiked shield then you should grab this one, since it uses the same backing as one of the others (i forget) and thus makes it look sweet in 1st person.
Enchantment Effect Replacer
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/this one is fucking awesome, espically with higher res and the shifting letters. Go this guy god damn
Retextured Wolves and Pelts by Bellyache
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/he even retextured the pelts!
Detailed Faces v2
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/you should have this and the other stuff buy this guy except better bodies, which makes shit crash. But how much time to spend staring at naked toons anyway? The hands one is great too.
Lost Art of the Blacksmith
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/one simple ESP
Skyrim Compass Tuner
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/I fucking love this thing. I hate the compass holding my hand and leading me places, especially telling me where enemies are. Get this, it will make the game so much more fun the explore when you run into shit on accident. Keep it so it shows quest and custom markers and you'll have all you need.
Two Handed animations redone
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/This one has a video so thats rad. it makes two handed swords much more interesting to use and fight against.
Bloody screen removal
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/because we are not playing fucking Call of Duty
Realistic Rain Ripples
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/simple and clean (clean)
silentSounds
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/mostly I got this to make silent sneak attack go away but you can play with it and get some good stuff.
Female Idle Animation Swap
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/If your Lady toon is a Mage, dont get this one. If she is anything else then do get it. I fucking hate the way women run and walk in Bethseda games, always have, so I always look for someone to make this mod. really it cuts down on clipping but like I said if your lady's a mage it just makes her look like shes got something to prove.
Third Person Animation Tweak - Run Forward with Bow
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/The video speaks for itself.
Enhanced Blood Textures
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/One of the top mods on nexus, I'd be surprised if you dont already have it. if not you should.
No More Blocky Faces
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/I added this one separate because it makes such an impact. Get this one.
Ive got others, but mostly color change stuff for amors and weapons, which is more preference than anything. If you have an armor you wear a lot though type it in the search and see what comes up, you might be surprised.
I also want to tag on the HD Skymap one because it integrates the actual lore constellations perfectly into HD real star pictures, and the fix to let the game access more than its set 2gb of RAM (Consoooooles).
GO FORTH AND SCREENSHOT. Screen....screenshoot. Present tense.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Obligatory, Obligatory Skyrim Post
Edit:YOU GAIS. YOU GAIS I HAVE A PLAN.
Should you not have the good fortune to be playing Skyrim right now, preferably with several people watching you for the first few hours, this video provides a similar experience.
Heres what you need to watch: Watch the intro dragon fight if you must, but the magic happens at 27:15, and when that scene finishes, go to 34:45. You're welcome.
Oh, also, NOTHING BUT LINKS TODAY
How old is Madeon now? Is he at least 18 yet? You glorious baby bastard you. You French child prodigy. Go play in front of the president.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Look all you need to know is there's a bunch of dancing bears in this post
Right so here's, well.
Here's a commercial for Weetabix, the winner of the Saddest Fucking Cereal Name Known To Man.
It's English, of course.
Astute eared followers may recognize the dulcet tones of Mord Fu(ckYeah)stang's "A New World" being used as the basal track to this.
This is fantastic. I hope he gets a million dollars for this. I hope he gets more than that, actually, since a million dollars is a pretty pisspoor amount of dollary-doos in this worlds economhahahah I have no idea what the state of the economy is. I think it's still bad.
Look the problem was, I got here from people going "Take a look at this shitty commercial, teddy bears dancing to dubstep, zomg, dubstep is officially mainstream".
So I did the normal next step and settled down to read some Youtube comments.
NOBODY said a fucking word about Mord Fustang.
EVERYONE just used the generic phrase "dubstep", and bemoaned the fate of it (or lambasted it) now that it's being appropriated by the mainstream or hipsters or whatever the fuck these ignorant people think people need to read.
(Just, as an aside, if anyone of you ever comes across a youtube comment written by me, or catches me in the act of writing a youtube comment, please throw me off a bridge. I'm already dead. Treat me like you would my zombified corpse.)
Yes, it was mentioned in the videos description. As an aside. But EIGHT PAGES of comments just referred to "dubstep" as some grand schema.
I have a problem with this, mostly because I still have no idea what the fuck constitutes dubstep.
This is a common problem within the music community - most of all the electronic music community, which is one of the most convoluted and technical genre-webs I've ever seen.
Mostly this is due to the fact that it's a very open-ended genre that's comparatively young (to say, "Jazz") that is being rapidly innovated upon almost monthly.
Example: This is Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music.
I'll give you a few hours.
So what the fuck is dubstep?
Well, it's a fad. It's a phenomenon. It's a pervasive audio meme that's infected just about every popular musical genre in the last ten(?) years.
And nobody knows what it is.
Okay, so, that's an extreme.
Everyone has a different view of what it is. Much more so than if, say, someone said "I like country" or "I like rap music".
(Yes, yes, I know, I'm a huge douchebag for using the phrase rap music but "hip hop" was too broad an example and somehow just using the word "rap" didn't seem right. Lets chalk it up to split-second Bill Cosby-spirit possession and move on.)
Everyone loves dubstep. People always ask me what I'm listening to as like, an opener, because I'm Headphones Guy, and the instant I indicate anything electronic they go "oh man yeah I'm really into dubstep right now" and I have to fight the urge to grab them by their shoulders and just shake and shout "BUT WHAT KIND, WHAT DO YOU MEAN, WHAT WHAT WHAT."
Because the problem is, people say "dubstep" but what they mean is "wobble bass put on top of anything else".
Wikipedia informs me that this pop-music infused with wobbly LFO's has been dubbed "brostep". That's fantastic.
Liking "dubstep" is about two steps up from "I listen to everything except rap and country", and only barely one step up from "I listen to Pandora!".
The people who are worried about it becoming "mainstream" are the same people who were worried about whatever the fuck they were listening to before they listened to dubstep becoming mainstream.
That is to say, they weren't worried about the music aspect of it.
What matters is, the more mainstream anything becomes, the better. It allows people with a lot of money to pour said money into distillation, "research" projects where we find out what the actual elemental units of a musical genre are.
Pull dubstep apart. Find out what makes it appealing. Focus on those parts. Sell those parts.
If it's terrible, well, darn. But doesn't that say something? Doesn't that make the good stuff that was always there all the better? And if it's fantastic, well, then let it be. Let it benefit from everyone getting their dirty hands on it and ruining it into different, new things.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
That's 65% more bullet, per bullet!
Lets get all that old shit out of the way. Erase the whiteboard. Look. Just look.
David Guetta, right? Right? Remember when I was all "man, I sure hate Superproducers of trite dancehall crap that somehow everyone shits their pants over"? And then I followed it up with "except, for some reason, David Guetta"?
This is that reason.
Heres the deal. New album, right. Nothing But The Beat.
Guetta is a smart fucking cookie. He knows that errrrbody wants to make a shitty, shitty song with him. Errbody. Chris Brown. Flo-Rida. Akon. Timbaland. Nicki Minaj. Lil Wayne. Ludacris. Will.I.Am. Snoop Dogg. Usher. Jennifer Hudson.
Class? What is wrong with that above list of "artists who want to work on an electro-house dance record"?
The correct answer is, THEY'RE ALL SUPER BALLS.
What the fuck are any of them doing in this arena? Making millions of dollars. WHY? Because people in Ibiza willdrink listen dance to anything. Aaaaannnyyythiiiing. And it spreads outwards from there.
So what does he do? He makes a fucking album with every single one of those people on it, ensuring that he gets literally millions upon millions of dollars. And it is terrible. It staaaaaanks. People love it.
But. BUT. Here is the but. Here is the all important vindication: It's a double album! First half is full of all of the above. BUT. Second half?
Listen to this as you read on.
David Guetta is secretly a fantastic electro-house producer.
A whole different album, no stupid vocals just tacked on because somebody wanted to sing about Having A Good Night or Pumping It Up.
The first half of the album is revealed to be a complete and utter joke. We have been pranked by a master pranker. The prank is, he makes terrible music and gets paid millions of hookers and owns a record label called Fuck Me I'm Famous while secretly he can make solid electro tracks whenever he wants.
Electro enthusiasts everywhere are confused as hell. Reviews on blogs are going "I, uh, I never really thought I'd do a Guetta album, but, uh, fuck it just look at this shit I quit".
For example:
Fuck it. What? This is fantastic. This is what I hope the future will sound like. This is what I imagine we will dance to in 2100, while wearing our white or metallic silver jumpsuits with the solid diagonal stripe. On our space stations.
This is what people in Mass Effect 3 should be dancing to. That is what this song evokes.
Everything is lit with diffused, glowing blue underlights.
Everyone has that weird fashion-show makeup where its like a fluorescent stripe of color across both eyes, like in Bladerunner.
In closing, fuck you, David Guetta, Fuck you for proving me right.
David Guetta, right? Right? Remember when I was all "man, I sure hate Superproducers of trite dancehall crap that somehow everyone shits their pants over"? And then I followed it up with "except, for some reason, David Guetta"?
This is that reason.
Heres the deal. New album, right. Nothing But The Beat.
Guetta is a smart fucking cookie. He knows that errrrbody wants to make a shitty, shitty song with him. Errbody. Chris Brown. Flo-Rida. Akon. Timbaland. Nicki Minaj. Lil Wayne. Ludacris. Will.I.Am. Snoop Dogg. Usher. Jennifer Hudson.
Class? What is wrong with that above list of "artists who want to work on an electro-house dance record"?
The correct answer is, THEY'RE ALL SUPER BALLS.
What the fuck are any of them doing in this arena? Making millions of dollars. WHY? Because people in Ibiza will
So what does he do? He makes a fucking album with every single one of those people on it, ensuring that he gets literally millions upon millions of dollars. And it is terrible. It staaaaaanks. People love it.
But. BUT. Here is the but. Here is the all important vindication: It's a double album! First half is full of all of the above. BUT. Second half?
Listen to this as you read on.
David Guetta is secretly a fantastic electro-house producer.
A whole different album, no stupid vocals just tacked on because somebody wanted to sing about Having A Good Night or Pumping It Up.
The first half of the album is revealed to be a complete and utter joke. We have been pranked by a master pranker. The prank is, he makes terrible music and gets paid millions of hookers and owns a record label called Fuck Me I'm Famous while secretly he can make solid electro tracks whenever he wants.
Electro enthusiasts everywhere are confused as hell. Reviews on blogs are going "I, uh, I never really thought I'd do a Guetta album, but, uh, fuck it just look at this shit I quit".
For example:
Fuck it. What? This is fantastic. This is what I hope the future will sound like. This is what I imagine we will dance to in 2100, while wearing our white or metallic silver jumpsuits with the solid diagonal stripe. On our space stations.
This is what people in Mass Effect 3 should be dancing to. That is what this song evokes.
Everything is lit with diffused, glowing blue underlights.
Everyone has that weird fashion-show makeup where its like a fluorescent stripe of color across both eyes, like in Bladerunner.
In closing, fuck you, David Guetta, Fuck you for proving me right.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Super Saiyan Zimmerman's Valley
Editohyeahyoufuckersprobablywantsomemusic:
Usually I would say like, ignore whatever crappy video this is but this is actually just some guys vacation footage of Switzerland I think? Anyway it's just perfect. Everything is fine.
Doubledit: THAT WAS FAST
I'm so bored I can't sleep.
I want the full implications of that to sink in.
I'm too. bored. to sleep.
It's summer, you see.
This used to be a good thing. When I was a kid summer meant going to my dads and sitting on my ass playing videogames and watching movies and eating barbecues like a real American.
I had no desire for summer this year. I think I wrote about this last summer too. Fuck. Who needs a break. School was just getting interesting. Sure, finals sucked but they don't actually take long and then hey, you get to get drunker than any man has ever been and shout about molecular orbitals.
If there was an available class I could take right now, I would be all over that shit. Let me teach that shit. I will show up in a tie.
But...instead, I'm stuck sitting on my ass playing videogames and watching movies and eating barbecues and it has begun to LOSE ITS CHARM.
Maybe I didn't really register how much of my life revolves around education. Apparently the answer is "most of it, dunkass". Now that I've lost that, the framework of my very existence, my life has begun to fall apart.
I wish that phrase didn't have so many connotations attached. I meant it figuratively, but in a better way than the way it is usually used. What I'm trying to say is imagine my life as a scaffold, and this salt shaker here is my university, which is a startlingly appropriate term when you really break it down, and when you knock it away the scaffold begins to LOOK lady if you didn't want the lecture you shouldn't have picked an open-air table at this cafe
I am temporarily personal-responsibility free, and it is hideous for reasons I do not fully understand.
I mean, I have videogames! I'm sitting on Dragon Age - just staring at it and for some reason I can't bring myself to put it in the Bawks.
The days of the week suddenly blur together into a meaningless jumble. Oh, it's Tuesday? Who gives a fuck. What significance is that to me. Today will be just like tomorrow.
My sleep schedule is the most fucked of all. I try to set my alarm but it goes off and I just stare at it. This thing is beeping at me, and I know that that beeping is supposed to signal that it is time to get up but...without external impetus the signal loses meaning. I have literally no reason to get up that I wouldn't be creating solely for the sake of having a reason, and that thought wearies me.
Shit! When you type late night expostulation down it suddenly sounds incredibly depressing! I'm aiming more for philosophical musing than depressing murmurs.
Now, prisoners and depressed people and hibernating animals use this to their advantage. Turns out if you really try, the human body can sleep for way, way longer than you probably should be able to. You can while away a solid two thirds of a day in a drowsy stupor if you want to - and I certainly have - but while that's okay in truly desperate times when I try it now a tiny voice tells me that I'm wasting a perfectly good summer that I really ought to be grateful for.
So, guilted out of intentionally wasting summer, I just sort of putter around thehouse internet all goddamn day.
(Turns out that this consumes approximately shitall calories, so I don't...actually...need to eat that much, either.
Which fucking SUCKS! I love food! Cooking is a huge time sink! So lately I've been making my one real meal fuckin' worth it.)
Without any sort of linear guidelines, my schedule....isn't one. What schedule. What needs doing.
This is what an old persons life is like.
Oh my god. What an absolutely horrifying thought. Hopefully it's more exciting in a haze of dementia, or at least a stultifying fog of old age.
Right now, of course, I have to get my brain-obscuring fog through some other means.
My current drug of choice is staring blankly at Firefox and just slapping my F5 key like a lab rat who just figured out how to make the pellets show up.
Oh, and sleep deprivation.
Like I said, typical rhythmic life has gone out the window. It doesn't help that the days have gotten freakishly long, either. The sun doesn't truly set until 9pm.
Today I went to bed at ten in the morning and got up at six in the afternoon. Breakfast was last nights dinner (again), and I spent the majority of my "day" reading about pre-charged pneumatic air rifles and their many uses. Also, learning the history of IKEA.
So...I get up whenever, and I go to sleep whenever, and I eat one big meal a day, and I spend my days in either a bemused idle haze or suddenly fierce furrowed concentration.
I'm either turning into a monk, or a monk seal.
The most interesting part of my day is interacting with other people still on the alpha timeline.
For example, my roommate will say goodnight at 11 and sleep until her alarm goes off at 5 so she can do something retarded like exercise in the mornings. To her, it's the next day. To me, it's just been a busy day of looking at the internet. She hates it.
You really feel disconnected when everyone else has already had their Tuesday and you're only half done.
I've decided to just start my clock at whatever time I get up at every day. Whenever I get up, my internal day declares it to be roughly 10am, an appropriate time to start a day. People really love it when you greet them with a Good Morning! at four in the afternoon. Breakfast is whatever thing I first eat. Dinner is whatever thing I eat last before I go to bed.
The weird thing is when people start drinking. To them, it's a party after a long day of work or study or whatever the fuck regular people do. You know, a casual evening cocktail, and then later they go to bed.
Except for me, it's roughly "noon", give or take an hour.
So that's an interesting start to my day!
"We're getting drunk!" "What? Are you crazy? It's not even twelve o'clock!" "....It's six thirty."
Now typically, I like to end my nights of debauchery by flinging myself head first into the nearest My Own Bed available, sleeping through the potential hangover period and waking up fine late the next morning. But now, I'm not actually tired. So I have the unpleasant experience of sobering up throughout the "afternoon" period of what real people would call the early hours of the morning.
Getting drunk in reverse is not as fun as you'd think.
Then, it's back to the internet for...many things.
Having the house to myself throughout the night/morning (my evening/night waitwhat) is fun though, and this whole "sunrise" thing people have been telling me about for so long has turned out to be actually pretty neat. Birds wake up along a two hour period from four to six, and cars start driving past by five.
Which is my 11pm.
By around 7am to 9am alpha I'm fairly tired and the internet has run out entirely.
(My bandwidth during this time, by the way, is usually fucking stellar. I could torrent the nation if only I had a single thing I was interested in.)
It will be another hour or two before regular people get up, but even though I wouldn't mind making the push to hold out and get truly nocturnal I usually crash and sleep, finally ending my yesterday hours before people start today.
Actually, crash is the wrong word. I don't wearily drag myself to bed and fall asleep immediately.
More often than not I'll actually just arbitrarily declare it "probably time to sleep, right?" and then lay in bed watching my curtains slowly glow brighter until I drift off to the sound of everyone just starting to get down to the business of my tomorrow.
So basically, summer is a giant load of crap and I'm utterly fucked when it's time to be a real person again.
This is bullshit, you're bullshit, and everything is bullshit.
Usually I would say like, ignore whatever crappy video this is but this is actually just some guys vacation footage of Switzerland I think? Anyway it's just perfect. Everything is fine.
Doubledit: THAT WAS FAST
I'm so bored I can't sleep.
I want the full implications of that to sink in.
I'm too. bored. to sleep.
It's summer, you see.
This used to be a good thing. When I was a kid summer meant going to my dads and sitting on my ass playing videogames and watching movies and eating barbecues like a real American.
I had no desire for summer this year. I think I wrote about this last summer too. Fuck. Who needs a break. School was just getting interesting. Sure, finals sucked but they don't actually take long and then hey, you get to get drunker than any man has ever been and shout about molecular orbitals.
If there was an available class I could take right now, I would be all over that shit. Let me teach that shit. I will show up in a tie.
But...instead, I'm stuck sitting on my ass playing videogames and watching movies and eating barbecues and it has begun to LOSE ITS CHARM.
Maybe I didn't really register how much of my life revolves around education. Apparently the answer is "most of it, dunkass". Now that I've lost that, the framework of my very existence, my life has begun to fall apart.
I wish that phrase didn't have so many connotations attached. I meant it figuratively, but in a better way than the way it is usually used. What I'm trying to say is imagine my life as a scaffold, and this salt shaker here is my university, which is a startlingly appropriate term when you really break it down, and when you knock it away the scaffold begins to LOOK lady if you didn't want the lecture you shouldn't have picked an open-air table at this cafe
I am temporarily personal-responsibility free, and it is hideous for reasons I do not fully understand.
I mean, I have videogames! I'm sitting on Dragon Age - just staring at it and for some reason I can't bring myself to put it in the Bawks.
The days of the week suddenly blur together into a meaningless jumble. Oh, it's Tuesday? Who gives a fuck. What significance is that to me. Today will be just like tomorrow.
My sleep schedule is the most fucked of all. I try to set my alarm but it goes off and I just stare at it. This thing is beeping at me, and I know that that beeping is supposed to signal that it is time to get up but...without external impetus the signal loses meaning. I have literally no reason to get up that I wouldn't be creating solely for the sake of having a reason, and that thought wearies me.
Shit! When you type late night expostulation down it suddenly sounds incredibly depressing! I'm aiming more for philosophical musing than depressing murmurs.
Now, prisoners and depressed people and hibernating animals use this to their advantage. Turns out if you really try, the human body can sleep for way, way longer than you probably should be able to. You can while away a solid two thirds of a day in a drowsy stupor if you want to - and I certainly have - but while that's okay in truly desperate times when I try it now a tiny voice tells me that I'm wasting a perfectly good summer that I really ought to be grateful for.
So, guilted out of intentionally wasting summer, I just sort of putter around the
(Turns out that this consumes approximately shitall calories, so I don't...actually...need to eat that much, either.
Which fucking SUCKS! I love food! Cooking is a huge time sink! So lately I've been making my one real meal fuckin' worth it.)
Without any sort of linear guidelines, my schedule....isn't one. What schedule. What needs doing.
This is what an old persons life is like.
Oh my god. What an absolutely horrifying thought. Hopefully it's more exciting in a haze of dementia, or at least a stultifying fog of old age.
Right now, of course, I have to get my brain-obscuring fog through some other means.
My current drug of choice is staring blankly at Firefox and just slapping my F5 key like a lab rat who just figured out how to make the pellets show up.
Oh, and sleep deprivation.
Like I said, typical rhythmic life has gone out the window. It doesn't help that the days have gotten freakishly long, either. The sun doesn't truly set until 9pm.
Today I went to bed at ten in the morning and got up at six in the afternoon. Breakfast was last nights dinner (again), and I spent the majority of my "day" reading about pre-charged pneumatic air rifles and their many uses. Also, learning the history of IKEA.
So...I get up whenever, and I go to sleep whenever, and I eat one big meal a day, and I spend my days in either a bemused idle haze or suddenly fierce furrowed concentration.
I'm either turning into a monk, or a monk seal.
The most interesting part of my day is interacting with other people still on the alpha timeline.
For example, my roommate will say goodnight at 11 and sleep until her alarm goes off at 5 so she can do something retarded like exercise in the mornings. To her, it's the next day. To me, it's just been a busy day of looking at the internet. She hates it.
You really feel disconnected when everyone else has already had their Tuesday and you're only half done.
I've decided to just start my clock at whatever time I get up at every day. Whenever I get up, my internal day declares it to be roughly 10am, an appropriate time to start a day. People really love it when you greet them with a Good Morning! at four in the afternoon. Breakfast is whatever thing I first eat. Dinner is whatever thing I eat last before I go to bed.
The weird thing is when people start drinking. To them, it's a party after a long day of work or study or whatever the fuck regular people do. You know, a casual evening cocktail, and then later they go to bed.
Except for me, it's roughly "noon", give or take an hour.
So that's an interesting start to my day!
"We're getting drunk!" "What? Are you crazy? It's not even twelve o'clock!" "....It's six thirty."
Now typically, I like to end my nights of debauchery by flinging myself head first into the nearest My Own Bed available, sleeping through the potential hangover period and waking up fine late the next morning. But now, I'm not actually tired. So I have the unpleasant experience of sobering up throughout the "afternoon" period of what real people would call the early hours of the morning.
Getting drunk in reverse is not as fun as you'd think.
Then, it's back to the internet for...many things.
Having the house to myself throughout the night/morning (my evening/night waitwhat) is fun though, and this whole "sunrise" thing people have been telling me about for so long has turned out to be actually pretty neat. Birds wake up along a two hour period from four to six, and cars start driving past by five.
Which is my 11pm.
By around 7am to 9am alpha I'm fairly tired and the internet has run out entirely.
(My bandwidth during this time, by the way, is usually fucking stellar. I could torrent the nation if only I had a single thing I was interested in.)
It will be another hour or two before regular people get up, but even though I wouldn't mind making the push to hold out and get truly nocturnal I usually crash and sleep, finally ending my yesterday hours before people start today.
Actually, crash is the wrong word. I don't wearily drag myself to bed and fall asleep immediately.
More often than not I'll actually just arbitrarily declare it "probably time to sleep, right?" and then lay in bed watching my curtains slowly glow brighter until I drift off to the sound of everyone just starting to get down to the business of my tomorrow.
So basically, summer is a giant load of crap and I'm utterly fucked when it's time to be a real person again.
This is bullshit, you're bullshit, and everything is bullshit.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Wind On Fire
The Wind on Fire Trilogy is one of the best young fantasy series I could recommend.
I'm in the middle of rereading the second book right now and it's a wonderful and strange feeling, to re-experience the actual book and my initial memory/feelings (and subsequent reading/feelings) at the same time.
I think the reason the Harry Potter books were so beloved - not just enjoyed, but loved - was due to the fact that they grew up with us.
This only half means the characters aged as we aged - although that was significant.
I mean the writing style, the seriousness of the plot, the interactions of the characters, the subject matter, all got progressively more....adult, as we did.
I mean, the first one is sort of a "tralala yerawizardEri, ever flavor beans" and the third one is "hey, there are actual dark wizards around" and the fourth one is where things start going "hey, woah, holy shit", and the fifth is "oh my god fuck" and the sixth is "fuckfuckfuck" and the seventh is just a soundless, agape O-shaped mouth.
So that metaphor was stupid.
The Wind on Fire trilogy is a much better and condensed example of works growing up with the readers. It's one of the few book series that I would actually want to space out throughout a young readers life, on a scale of months if not years. (Other series, I hear you asking me to support my argument, include Ursula LeGuinn's Earthsea [from, say, sixth to eighth grade] and honestly maybe even His Dark Materials, just for the emotional content requiring maturity [not, of course, to insinuate with great age comes great maturity. In these examples I am {as I am entitled to do on this blog} assuming the hypothetical person we are discussing is merely a copy of myself.] in order to be fully understood)
Ah, been a while since I let one of those triple-bracketers out. Must be this rereading of old books. I'm a sentimental old man.
Each book is just so different, so changed, so perfect for its specific duty.
The rarity of three separate and specific things working harmonically, carrying a thread of characters and story throughout, just makes you appreciate it all the more each time you change books.
The first one, The Wind Singer, is a fable. Possibly even a fairy tale.
It's a journey story, it's a fantasy novel in which there is set a stage and a cast of characters and we learn about the history and the past and everything is told in simple terms and...has this dreamy quality about it that you just accept. No, not accept as in you acknowledge and read in spite of - I mean it has that matter of fact statement of the incredible style in the manner of American tall tales (i.e. "Well, what I reckon I need is a gun, said Pecos Bill. So he invented himself the six shooter.)
The children go on a journey. There is a goal of salvation, an evil to oppose them, a clear delineation of good and bad, a diverse cast of characters.
Everything is so simple - not stupid, not small, just simple. There is only one of everything. The mountain is The Mountain. The desert is The Desert. People who are good are All Good, and those who are Evil are Pure Evil (and, may I add, downright unsettling).
This is not to say that it is a typical tale, of course. The Wind Singer is lovely and original. It is beautiful and captivating and it ends happily and with closure. This book could exist alone, and ought to for the young child who reads it.
Because Slaves of the Mastery, the second book, tears it all down five years later. With terrible beauty. The City and its People burn to death. Are enslaved. Are marched across the land.
It makes the world so much bigger. There are other, greater evils than The Greatest and Only Evil. There are other cities, other lands, other peoples, and they need slaves. Characters who were toddlers are now fully fledged young identities. The older among them are that much closer to death.
Characters who were teens are now young adults.
And all that that entails.
Slaves of the Mastery is the best of the books, simply because of the level of wonderment that comes from seeing this (beautifully rendered, fully functioning) two dimensional world and its characters suddenly get fleshed into three full dimensions.
New characters who are perfectly shaped to interact with these updated older characters are introduced. Unchanging concepts are, of course, challenged. Changed.
And behind it all, built upon the vague allusions of the first book, the real trilogy-wide storyline begins to take shape. We are given glimpses of the great and terrible future.
It is a time of exciting adolescence, of death and love and fight-dances and dance-fights. People die.
(It is worth noting here that the author of this book has written some other examples of this sort of thing.)
People we cared about die.
And people we hate, with good reason, die!
And some people who don't die, grow up and kill!
Or love.
I read the first Hunger Games book (with no small amount of apprehension, due to everyone reacting exactly the same when I asked them about it), and the whole time I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being instructed to feel strongly about something that didn't quite deserve the amount of emotion it was asking of me. It was a strange feeling, no doubt, but a highly specific one. It was too heavy handed in its emphasis that this was the thing I should be feeling contempt or horror or enthusiasm or hope for, and this was the thing I should be feeling at this time.
Several times I was reminded of a scene that paralleled the Hunger Games in Slaves of the Mastery, that managed to accomplish similar things with less everything and more skill. It spurred me to reread this series.
The best thing is how different it all feels, compared to the first one. Everything is ambiguous, and heroes behave poorly (but not in a heavy handed way, merely in a natural progression of events way) and -even worse- sometimes the evil is calm, compassionate, and rational. Sometimes the evil is beautiful and compelling.
The whole book is beautiful and compelling. But still....young adult, of course. Always with that grain of sand.
I mean salt.
The third one, Firesong, is exactly that.
I have no words for Firesong.
People die. Everyone dies.
Everyone also lives, of course. Because it's that type of book.
There is less time dilation, it pretty much picks up from the end of the second book - but then again, it follows all the way to the end of everyone's lives.
Everyone.
Characters from the second book that were picked up are changed as thoroughly as those from the first book were changed in the beginning of the second.
Everyone is older still.
Good and evil are totally ambiguous, and the style of telling even more so.
Back comes the dreamlike quality, in which our protagonists(?) drift through a world of incredible art and wonder, back comes the travel through a magical land with a cast of strange characters, but along with it comes the sobering reality of the second book.
If book one was the seed, and book two was the tree, book three is the house the tree was built into. And the fire the tree was burned in. And all the influences the tree has had.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to follow multiple lives throughout a trilogy of books of startling literary difference and somehow come out with an ending that is satisfying?
Sure, it's heartbreaking and gorgeous and final, but it's perfect. It fits, god damn it.
I'm so excited to finish the second and read the third book.
I'm so terrified.
Really. I'm apprehensive. I mean, how often do you reread the Amber Spyglass? This is not light reading. There are going to be tribulations. I know what the outcome is going to be, and I am still wary.
Read these fucking books.
(Holy shit man I just watched half of Gladiator again. Oh man.)
I'm in the middle of rereading the second book right now and it's a wonderful and strange feeling, to re-experience the actual book and my initial memory/feelings (and subsequent reading/feelings) at the same time.
I think the reason the Harry Potter books were so beloved - not just enjoyed, but loved - was due to the fact that they grew up with us.
This only half means the characters aged as we aged - although that was significant.
I mean the writing style, the seriousness of the plot, the interactions of the characters, the subject matter, all got progressively more....adult, as we did.
I mean, the first one is sort of a "tralala yerawizardEri, ever flavor beans" and the third one is "hey, there are actual dark wizards around" and the fourth one is where things start going "hey, woah, holy shit", and the fifth is "oh my god fuck" and the sixth is "fuckfuckfuck" and the seventh is just a soundless, agape O-shaped mouth.
So that metaphor was stupid.
The Wind on Fire trilogy is a much better and condensed example of works growing up with the readers. It's one of the few book series that I would actually want to space out throughout a young readers life, on a scale of months if not years. (Other series, I hear you asking me to support my argument, include Ursula LeGuinn's Earthsea [from, say, sixth to eighth grade] and honestly maybe even His Dark Materials, just for the emotional content requiring maturity [not, of course, to insinuate with great age comes great maturity. In these examples I am {as I am entitled to do on this blog} assuming the hypothetical person we are discussing is merely a copy of myself.] in order to be fully understood)
Ah, been a while since I let one of those triple-bracketers out. Must be this rereading of old books. I'm a sentimental old man.
Each book is just so different, so changed, so perfect for its specific duty.
The rarity of three separate and specific things working harmonically, carrying a thread of characters and story throughout, just makes you appreciate it all the more each time you change books.
The first one, The Wind Singer, is a fable. Possibly even a fairy tale.
It's a journey story, it's a fantasy novel in which there is set a stage and a cast of characters and we learn about the history and the past and everything is told in simple terms and...has this dreamy quality about it that you just accept. No, not accept as in you acknowledge and read in spite of - I mean it has that matter of fact statement of the incredible style in the manner of American tall tales (i.e. "Well, what I reckon I need is a gun, said Pecos Bill. So he invented himself the six shooter.)
The children go on a journey. There is a goal of salvation, an evil to oppose them, a clear delineation of good and bad, a diverse cast of characters.
Everything is so simple - not stupid, not small, just simple. There is only one of everything. The mountain is The Mountain. The desert is The Desert. People who are good are All Good, and those who are Evil are Pure Evil (and, may I add, downright unsettling).
This is not to say that it is a typical tale, of course. The Wind Singer is lovely and original. It is beautiful and captivating and it ends happily and with closure. This book could exist alone, and ought to for the young child who reads it.
Because Slaves of the Mastery, the second book, tears it all down five years later. With terrible beauty. The City and its People burn to death. Are enslaved. Are marched across the land.
It makes the world so much bigger. There are other, greater evils than The Greatest and Only Evil. There are other cities, other lands, other peoples, and they need slaves. Characters who were toddlers are now fully fledged young identities. The older among them are that much closer to death.
Characters who were teens are now young adults.
And all that that entails.
Slaves of the Mastery is the best of the books, simply because of the level of wonderment that comes from seeing this (beautifully rendered, fully functioning) two dimensional world and its characters suddenly get fleshed into three full dimensions.
New characters who are perfectly shaped to interact with these updated older characters are introduced. Unchanging concepts are, of course, challenged. Changed.
And behind it all, built upon the vague allusions of the first book, the real trilogy-wide storyline begins to take shape. We are given glimpses of the great and terrible future.
It is a time of exciting adolescence, of death and love and fight-dances and dance-fights. People die.
(It is worth noting here that the author of this book has written some other examples of this sort of thing.)
People we cared about die.
And people we hate, with good reason, die!
And some people who don't die, grow up and kill!
Or love.
I read the first Hunger Games book (with no small amount of apprehension, due to everyone reacting exactly the same when I asked them about it), and the whole time I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being instructed to feel strongly about something that didn't quite deserve the amount of emotion it was asking of me. It was a strange feeling, no doubt, but a highly specific one. It was too heavy handed in its emphasis that this was the thing I should be feeling contempt or horror or enthusiasm or hope for, and this was the thing I should be feeling at this time.
Several times I was reminded of a scene that paralleled the Hunger Games in Slaves of the Mastery, that managed to accomplish similar things with less everything and more skill. It spurred me to reread this series.
The best thing is how different it all feels, compared to the first one. Everything is ambiguous, and heroes behave poorly (but not in a heavy handed way, merely in a natural progression of events way) and -even worse- sometimes the evil is calm, compassionate, and rational. Sometimes the evil is beautiful and compelling.
The whole book is beautiful and compelling. But still....young adult, of course. Always with that grain of sand.
I mean salt.
The third one, Firesong, is exactly that.
I have no words for Firesong.
People die. Everyone dies.
Everyone also lives, of course. Because it's that type of book.
There is less time dilation, it pretty much picks up from the end of the second book - but then again, it follows all the way to the end of everyone's lives.
Everyone.
Characters from the second book that were picked up are changed as thoroughly as those from the first book were changed in the beginning of the second.
Everyone is older still.
Good and evil are totally ambiguous, and the style of telling even more so.
Back comes the dreamlike quality, in which our protagonists(?) drift through a world of incredible art and wonder, back comes the travel through a magical land with a cast of strange characters, but along with it comes the sobering reality of the second book.
If book one was the seed, and book two was the tree, book three is the house the tree was built into. And the fire the tree was burned in. And all the influences the tree has had.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to follow multiple lives throughout a trilogy of books of startling literary difference and somehow come out with an ending that is satisfying?
Sure, it's heartbreaking and gorgeous and final, but it's perfect. It fits, god damn it.
I'm so excited to finish the second and read the third book.
I'm so terrified.
Really. I'm apprehensive. I mean, how often do you reread the Amber Spyglass? This is not light reading. There are going to be tribulations. I know what the outcome is going to be, and I am still wary.
Read these fucking books.
(Holy shit man I just watched half of Gladiator again. Oh man.)
Friday, June 3, 2011
its important for you to remember, when cooking...to use food
This magical girl has won my heart
Each one is better than the last.
They are all amazing
Each one is better than the last.
They are all amazing
Friday, May 6, 2011
No one wins a dance, boy
I have nobody that can play with me.
dear diary shut up.
It is still strange to think there are people who struggle to swim, who find it unnatural or awkward.
not that I don't fear water, mind you
I feel the same way about people who don't know how to play chess.
Their parents never taught it to them?
Why not?
It's important!
It's the game of kings.
People think this implies kings play it, or used to.
Wrong.
It's a pun.
IIIIII geeeeet iiiiit shut up.
I like chess. And, as usual, I tend to hate people who take it too seriously.
None of this rook-to-E4 frippery.
None of this "Compte de Buckfenwald's Gambit" opening movery.
I like old men in the park chuckling amiably at the inevitable failure that comes from getting too clever with their pieces, when they ought to know better.
I like the excitement that comes from watching your opponent stumble into a trap you hung all your hopes off of, and the frustration when they don't.
My dad taught me how to play, off a crappy plastic set we would set up on lawns and beaches.
He bought a nicer set later that - thinking back on it now - I didn't really notice much, but I'm absolutely in love with now.
We do not play anymore, really. Not for any dramatic reason; I simply beat him without contest now. It isn't fun for either of us.
Not to imply I'm an excellent chess player, by any means.
When I went to Seattle, I met a youthfulerubescent erudite. We played in tiny stupid coffee shops, as befits stupid college students, and he actually knew moves, gambits, this bullshit rule about diagonal pawn capturing or something, who knows, and had specific strategies.
He trounced me and it wasn't fun.
I'm going to talk about Super Smash Bro's now.
I'm about equally good at both. Which is to say, passable. Adequate. Capable of holding my own.
More importantly, I am skilled.
The Gamecube was the first system I actually owned, and SSB Melee was my late middle school/early high school...it was my introduction to playing videogames with people, really. My brother had the TV so we would cram into his room and play for hours - we being me, him, and any of his handful of friends who were surprisingly competent. I was the odd young one out, but I had an advantage in this area.
Playing mattered to me. To these teens it was a worthwhile distraction and an entertaining time, but to me it was an opportunity to prove my cleverness and equalityas only a younger brother aims to among older boys.
Don't misunderstand me - I played videogames because they were fascinating and amazing. Denied them in my youth, I was raised to a feverish curiosity by the mere glimpse of a game on a distant TV set.
I want to make that clear. SEEING videogames got me EXCITED. I would literally hang outside my brothers window and spy on him playing Warcraft II.
I got in severe trouble for breaking my DOS computer when I loaded a game that I knew would make it crash just to play it anyway. TWICE.
It was some shitty platformer where you played an elemental girl thingy and if you hit this glowing thing you could turn into a phoenix?
But that was the point. If you hit this brown thing, you turned into a frog. It was wonderful, it was...potential. It was pure potential of experience, of finding things out and doing them.
So. Super Smash Brothers was my first console game, and I played it with such incredible fascination it sounds weird to talk about it now.
I would play single player, of course, but that isn't the heart of SSB.
I mean multiplayer, with four people and a few others shouting. Super Smash Brothers requires an audience. It is a spectator sport.
But I would play just as happily without anyone else, in "Practice" mode.
You could spawn any item, you could play any character against any number of others. You could adjust the camera, and most fascinating of all you could adjust time.
So I learned every character's moves, every items effects, every stage, every pokemon. And then I went back and did it again in slow motion.
I would literally watch my character lazily twirling through aerial attack chains like it was a....I don't know, a rare bird or something people find really fucking interesting.
The natural conclusion to this is to assume I became a whirling dervish of death with a controller in my hand and everyone bowed down in deference and wonderment.
FOR AN IDIOT THAT CONCLUSION IS I MEAN. Have you ever been a younger sibling to a host of older kids? You don't get to stay and play if you whip everyone at your stupid videogame. You get kicked out of the room and you have to go read a book or some lame shit. While you listen to them have fun.
So: You don't hone your skills to dominate the game. You learn everything so you can control it. So you can orchestrate a good show.
Maybe someone is lagging behind a bit. Help them. Discretely. Attack their enemies. Fumble an item into their hands.
Maybe someone is showing off and playing a weak character to brag.
What's more entertaining? If they get summarily pounded, or if they crush their foes with Jigglypuff anyway? What makes for a better story?
In the end it always came down to my brother and I, of course.excuse me while I wax poetic about vidyagames. you come here for this, you know it
We would duel. We had special rules.
Super sudden death so the first blow ended it.
Ninety nine lives so we could try everything we knew.
A versatile stage. Medium items. Nothing overpowered.
Final Destination is a fucking boring map. It's like saying "okay, lets play chess. No bishops." You're all fucking stupid.
He would be Roy, I would be Marth. Of course.
It was satisfying. Incredibly so. Dodging around, shielding, feinting, dodging down. Air dodging. Catching items.
We were good. Your thumbs would get sore.
But we weren't excellent, not at all.
Competition SSB is nothing like what we played. Competitions aren't games.
I looked up some stuff once, later, on the interbutts.
Forums were full of acronyms for move combos. Full of super-wave-dashing Samus tricks, full of using glitches as regular gameplay material as easily as B attacks.
It was technical to a fault, it was min-maxing in the very worst way.
This is why fighting gamers are incredibly boring to play after the first ten minutes of learning all the moves.
They go about it all wrong. They memorize opening gambits and White-Queen-to-G9 and then they go out and either crush unknowing rabble instantly or end up spending ten minutes of furious standing around cancelling each others moves out.
It isn't a game, it's a travesty.
I can say this with conviction because I've seen true super smash bros. I've been a part of its magic, at the holy mecca of smash bros essence.
Caleb's parties.
It's fucking rare, it's fucking beautiful, and it's the best example I can give of Smash Bros done right: The Dorf
Does he give a fuck about winning? Absolutely not. Does he often win? Yes. Is it by the skin of his ass? Yes. Does that make it all the more magnificent? YES.
Caleb's Drunken Ganondorf is legendary.
Let me tell you why.
A) It takes skill. Truthfully. He is the slowest, strongest character in the game, to a point of absurdity. You cannot hope to hit your opponent. Like, ever. So what do you do? It's very zen. Punch where your opponent will be. Caleb will charge up a fucking insane corkscrew haymaker of dark energy facing entirely the wrong direction, and Mr Clever Dick will dodge right into it and get his teeth punched out his kneecap.
B) It's utterly natural and unforced. It isn't ever about "hey, look what I can do" or "let me do this". The Dorf is merely one element of the greater game, and so has a place and time. Hell, he doesn't even do it most games.
C) It's indicative that he understands the true way of the game. He knows what its for: Entertainment. For everyone, not just the four playing. So he Russel Crowes it up and gives it to them. Whether they want it or not. Fantastic recoveries. Incredible throws. Solid fucking beatdowns and hilarious beatings. Noble deaths. Shows of dexterity, of skill, and of effort. Spectacular failures, more often than not.
That is what group videogames are about. Stupid things done with skill and grace. Astonishing things accomplished accidentally.
That is what you hear people talk about later, when the subject comes up. That is what people remember.
So that is my goal!
But here....nobody knows how to play chess.
It is disheartening. But there are some exceptions.
I will talk of them later.
It is still strange to think there are people who struggle to swim, who find it unnatural or awkward.
I feel the same way about people who don't know how to play chess.
Their parents never taught it to them?
Why not?
It's important!
It's the game of kings.
People think this implies kings play it, or used to.
Wrong.
It's a pun.
I like chess. And, as usual, I tend to hate people who take it too seriously.
None of this rook-to-E4 frippery.
None of this "Compte de Buckfenwald's Gambit" opening movery.
I like old men in the park chuckling amiably at the inevitable failure that comes from getting too clever with their pieces, when they ought to know better.
I like the excitement that comes from watching your opponent stumble into a trap you hung all your hopes off of, and the frustration when they don't.
My dad taught me how to play, off a crappy plastic set we would set up on lawns and beaches.
He bought a nicer set later that - thinking back on it now - I didn't really notice much, but I'm absolutely in love with now.
We do not play anymore, really. Not for any dramatic reason; I simply beat him without contest now. It isn't fun for either of us.
Not to imply I'm an excellent chess player, by any means.
When I went to Seattle, I met a youthful
He trounced me and it wasn't fun.
I'm going to talk about Super Smash Bro's now.
I'm about equally good at both. Which is to say, passable. Adequate. Capable of holding my own.
More importantly, I am skilled.
The Gamecube was the first system I actually owned, and SSB Melee was my late middle school/early high school...it was my introduction to playing videogames with people, really. My brother had the TV so we would cram into his room and play for hours - we being me, him, and any of his handful of friends who were surprisingly competent. I was the odd young one out, but I had an advantage in this area.
Playing mattered to me. To these teens it was a worthwhile distraction and an entertaining time, but to me it was an opportunity to prove my cleverness and equality
Don't misunderstand me - I played videogames because they were fascinating and amazing. Denied them in my youth, I was raised to a feverish curiosity by the mere glimpse of a game on a distant TV set.
I want to make that clear. SEEING videogames got me EXCITED. I would literally hang outside my brothers window and spy on him playing Warcraft II.
I got in severe trouble for breaking my DOS computer when I loaded a game that I knew would make it crash just to play it anyway. TWICE.
But that was the point. If you hit this brown thing, you turned into a frog. It was wonderful, it was...potential. It was pure potential of experience, of finding things out and doing them.
So. Super Smash Brothers was my first console game, and I played it with such incredible fascination it sounds weird to talk about it now.
I would play single player, of course, but that isn't the heart of SSB.
I mean multiplayer, with four people and a few others shouting. Super Smash Brothers requires an audience. It is a spectator sport.
But I would play just as happily without anyone else, in "Practice" mode.
You could spawn any item, you could play any character against any number of others. You could adjust the camera, and most fascinating of all you could adjust time.
So I learned every character's moves, every items effects, every stage, every pokemon. And then I went back and did it again in slow motion.
I would literally watch my character lazily twirling through aerial attack chains like it was a....I don't know, a rare bird or something people find really fucking interesting.
The natural conclusion to this is to assume I became a whirling dervish of death with a controller in my hand and everyone bowed down in deference and wonderment.
FOR AN IDIOT THAT CONCLUSION IS I MEAN. Have you ever been a younger sibling to a host of older kids? You don't get to stay and play if you whip everyone at your stupid videogame. You get kicked out of the room and you have to go read a book or some lame shit. While you listen to them have fun.
So: You don't hone your skills to dominate the game. You learn everything so you can control it. So you can orchestrate a good show.
Maybe someone is lagging behind a bit. Help them. Discretely. Attack their enemies. Fumble an item into their hands.
Maybe someone is showing off and playing a weak character to brag.
What's more entertaining? If they get summarily pounded, or if they crush their foes with Jigglypuff anyway? What makes for a better story?
In the end it always came down to my brother and I, of course.
We would duel. We had special rules.
Super sudden death so the first blow ended it.
Ninety nine lives so we could try everything we knew.
A versatile stage. Medium items. Nothing overpowered.
He would be Roy, I would be Marth. Of course.
It was satisfying. Incredibly so. Dodging around, shielding, feinting, dodging down. Air dodging. Catching items.
We were good. Your thumbs would get sore.
But we weren't excellent, not at all.
Competition SSB is nothing like what we played. Competitions aren't games.
I looked up some stuff once, later, on the interbutts.
Forums were full of acronyms for move combos. Full of super-wave-dashing Samus tricks, full of using glitches as regular gameplay material as easily as B attacks.
It was technical to a fault, it was min-maxing in the very worst way.
This is why fighting game
They go about it all wrong. They memorize opening gambits and White-Queen-to-G9 and then they go out and either crush unknowing rabble instantly or end up spending ten minutes of furious standing around cancelling each others moves out.
It isn't a game, it's a travesty.
I can say this with conviction because I've seen true super smash bros. I've been a part of its magic, at the holy mecca of smash bros essence.
Caleb's parties.
It's fucking rare, it's fucking beautiful, and it's the best example I can give of Smash Bros done right: The Dorf
Does he give a fuck about winning? Absolutely not. Does he often win? Yes. Is it by the skin of his ass? Yes. Does that make it all the more magnificent? YES.
Caleb's Drunken Ganondorf is legendary.
Let me tell you why.
A) It takes skill. Truthfully. He is the slowest, strongest character in the game, to a point of absurdity. You cannot hope to hit your opponent. Like, ever. So what do you do? It's very zen. Punch where your opponent will be. Caleb will charge up a fucking insane corkscrew haymaker of dark energy facing entirely the wrong direction, and Mr Clever Dick will dodge right into it and get his teeth punched out his kneecap.
B) It's utterly natural and unforced. It isn't ever about "hey, look what I can do" or "let me do this". The Dorf is merely one element of the greater game, and so has a place and time. Hell, he doesn't even do it most games.
C) It's indicative that he understands the true way of the game. He knows what its for: Entertainment. For everyone, not just the four playing. So he Russel Crowes it up and gives it to them. Whether they want it or not. Fantastic recoveries. Incredible throws. Solid fucking beatdowns and hilarious beatings. Noble deaths. Shows of dexterity, of skill, and of effort. Spectacular failures, more often than not.
That is what group videogames are about. Stupid things done with skill and grace. Astonishing things accomplished accidentally.
That is what you hear people talk about later, when the subject comes up. That is what people remember.
So that is my goal!
But here....nobody knows how to play chess.
It is disheartening. But there are some exceptions.
I will talk of them later.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Straight Heat/Hate Street
I'd put this on the Ear, but I recently had a Glitch Mob feature already and it seems too jarring to put anywhere else.
I dunno. The whole Drink the Sea album is really fantastic ambient music. It is fire-flinging music again. Music for walking and staring at people, daring reality to crack for one minute so you can unleash your life force as a wave of blinding heat and lightning.
Holy shit you guys have I told you about MSPaint Adventures?
I feel like I should become a Homestuck Witness and go door to door, spreading the good news.
I feel that kind of burning urgency.
Muse muse muse muse muse muse muse.
I dunno. The whole Drink the Sea album is really fantastic ambient music. It is fire-flinging music again. Music for walking and staring at people, daring reality to crack for one minute so you can unleash your life force as a wave of blinding heat and lightning.
Holy shit you guys have I told you about MSPaint Adventures?
I feel like I should become a Homestuck Witness and go door to door, spreading the good news.
I feel that kind of burning urgency.
Muse muse muse muse muse muse muse.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
fire-brandisher of blizzard of ogress of protection-moon of steed of boat-shed
Greetings, programs.
Cataclysm has breathed new live into WoW, using a metaphor that seems strange at first but reveals itself to be perfect when you stop and think about it.
The Buddhists had it wrong, you know. The concept of the Bodhisattva. It doesn't work like that, not anymore.
Know that this, this beam to you, this gold-plated record affixed to the satellite, comes via herculean effort on my part.
This is building the mental equivalent of lactic acid. Tendons are tearing.
The old saying.
Mothers, soft soccer moms, have been known to lift entire city buses to reach their crushed children.
The Ulfheðnar of Norse legend - those 'tasters of blood', those eaters of fire and metal, those consumed by berserkergang.
Was it real, you wonder.
Does that matter, I wonder.
Someone said it was so.
Note that the same attributes (see: the lifting of city buses) have also been associated with those on crack.
Note most importantly that the soccer mom story, the only modern version we have, fails to note the all-important last page of the tale - the one that gives it weight, gives it a humanconditionaftertaste.
Maybe real people can do such things. Maybe they have.
Maybe we should believe these stories again.
That's not the point.
The point is we have forgotten that berserkergang burns you up from the inside out.
We have remembered Odin's blessing, learned thermodynamics, and forgotten the cost.
Or have we embellished old stories, pasteurized them, and forgotten the meaning.
Back to the Buddhists.
The Bodhisattvas with their bodhicittas. The Wisdom-Beings with their enlightenment-wish.
Those who walked the three score miles and ten to Babylon and, and this is important, came back to tell everyone else how.
This is important because it cannot happen.
I'm pretty sure last time that happened we crowned him, nailed him to a tree and pierced his side with a spear in the proper method of sacrifice for Goði Hrafnblóts, for Hangadróttinn, for Geirlöðnir Spear-Inviter Farmr-Galga All-Father God of the Raven Offering Lord of the Hanged Blind One-Eyed Two-Eyed Trickster Mad Screamer Wōden Wôdan Wuotan Wotan Óðr.
Or perhaps not. Maybe I tell a lie. That isn't how it went.
The reason the Bodhisattva concept cannot exist is because I refuse to believe anyone would willingly turn back.
Or rather that the act of going back wouldn't require so much effort as to incinerate you from the inside out, as to consume all of your energy and convert what remaining mass you had into more energy that still wouldn't be enough.
See. It all comes together.
Soccer moms and Odin and Bodhisattvas and crackheads and Berserkers and I.
You can either have your green on this side cake slice imagehope of the way things ought to be, or you can eat your green on that side pacman restofcake reality of the way things are.
Even this reaching burns so much.
Now open it, it's not sealed.
Use like, one finger.
Come on.
Willpower!
There is a special excitement that I've felt only rarely throughout my childhood that is specific to videogames.
Pokemon, usually. Pokemon, WoW, Mass Effect.
It is the excitement before you play the game. The excitement of planning, of theorycrafting, of imagining. It is better than the real game will ever be. It is the excitement of christmas contained on a chip.
It is potential, that urgent reassurance of future greatness that seizes your breastbone and jerks it several inches out in front of you, that worms into your mind and keeps you from falling asleep.
It invariably fades. It would be impossible to live in constant childlike frenzy, and whatever you end up doing pales in comparison to what you dreamed up the night before.
You will burn out at around level 30, a scant six levels before your starter reaches its third evolution, because by then you'll be bored. Your pokemon will languish in their respective boxes until you start again.
You WILL burn out around lvl 10, lvl 30, and lvl 50 because by then you'll have trained the majority of your workhorse spells and you'll be tired of running halfway through an instance with shitty PUGs. Your new troll druid will turn out to be exactly like the last druid you tried to roll.
You will get tired running around the Citadel for those damn Keepers a second or third time. The great spinning galaxies will lose their lustre, and your Engineer+ with Sniper Rifles will become tedious.
But it's okay, because later on you'll get that old feeling again, that physical tightening around your lungs and the fire up your brain stem.
It will come again. It is cyclical.
In time you find out that most things are.
But not enlightenment. By its very design, it hates circles.
.....so how do I explain 円相?
Cataclysm has breathed new live into WoW, using a metaphor that seems strange at first but reveals itself to be perfect when you stop and think about it.
The Buddhists had it wrong, you know. The concept of the Bodhisattva. It doesn't work like that, not anymore.
Know that this, this beam to you, this gold-plated record affixed to the satellite, comes via herculean effort on my part.
This is building the mental equivalent of lactic acid. Tendons are tearing.
The old saying.
Mothers, soft soccer moms, have been known to lift entire city buses to reach their crushed children.
The Ulfheðnar of Norse legend - those 'tasters of blood', those eaters of fire and metal, those consumed by berserkergang.
Was it real, you wonder.
Does that matter, I wonder.
Someone said it was so.
Note that the same attributes (see: the lifting of city buses) have also been associated with those on crack.
Note most importantly that the soccer mom story, the only modern version we have, fails to note the all-important last page of the tale - the one that gives it weight, gives it a humanconditionaftertaste.
Maybe real people can do such things. Maybe they have.
Maybe we should believe these stories again.
That's not the point.
The point is we have forgotten that berserkergang burns you up from the inside out.
We have remembered Odin's blessing, learned thermodynamics, and forgotten the cost.
Or have we embellished old stories, pasteurized them, and forgotten the meaning.
Back to the Buddhists.
The Bodhisattvas with their bodhicittas. The Wisdom-Beings with their enlightenment-wish.
Those who walked the three score miles and ten to Babylon and, and this is important, came back to tell everyone else how.
This is important because it cannot happen.
I'm pretty sure last time that happened we crowned him, nailed him to a tree and pierced his side with a spear in the proper method of sacrifice for Goði Hrafnblóts, for Hangadróttinn, for Geirlöðnir Spear-Inviter Farmr-Galga All-Father God of the Raven Offering Lord of the Hanged Blind One-Eyed Two-Eyed Trickster Mad Screamer Wōden Wôdan Wuotan Wotan Óðr.
Or perhaps not. Maybe I tell a lie. That isn't how it went.
The reason the Bodhisattva concept cannot exist is because I refuse to believe anyone would willingly turn back.
Or rather that the act of going back wouldn't require so much effort as to incinerate you from the inside out, as to consume all of your energy and convert what remaining mass you had into more energy that still wouldn't be enough.
See. It all comes together.
Soccer moms and Odin and Bodhisattvas and crackheads and Berserkers and I.
You can either have your green on this side cake slice imagehope of the way things ought to be, or you can eat your green on that side pacman restofcake reality of the way things are.
Even this reaching burns so much.
Now open it, it's not sealed.
Use like, one finger.
Come on.
Willpower!
There is a special excitement that I've felt only rarely throughout my childhood that is specific to videogames.
Pokemon, usually. Pokemon, WoW, Mass Effect.
It is the excitement before you play the game. The excitement of planning, of theorycrafting, of imagining. It is better than the real game will ever be. It is the excitement of christmas contained on a chip.
It is potential, that urgent reassurance of future greatness that seizes your breastbone and jerks it several inches out in front of you, that worms into your mind and keeps you from falling asleep.
It invariably fades. It would be impossible to live in constant childlike frenzy, and whatever you end up doing pales in comparison to what you dreamed up the night before.
You will burn out at around level 30, a scant six levels before your starter reaches its third evolution, because by then you'll be bored. Your pokemon will languish in their respective boxes until you start again.
You WILL burn out around lvl 10, lvl 30, and lvl 50 because by then you'll have trained the majority of your workhorse spells and you'll be tired of running halfway through an instance with shitty PUGs. Your new troll druid will turn out to be exactly like the last druid you tried to roll.
You will get tired running around the Citadel for those damn Keepers a second or third time. The great spinning galaxies will lose their lustre, and your Engineer+ with Sniper Rifles will become tedious.
But it's okay, because later on you'll get that old feeling again, that physical tightening around your lungs and the fire up your brain stem.
It will come again. It is cyclical.
In time you find out that most things are.
But not enlightenment. By its very design, it hates circles.
.....so how do I explain 円相?
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