| Incantation |
[Nov. 19th, 2009|01:53 am] |
The wonderful thing about language is how we use it constantly, to the point of familiarity breeding contempt, yet certain combinations have the power to evoke wonder anew. It catches a hook on your brain and you have to repeat it over and over like a charm, just for the pleasure of the sound, heft, and shades of meaning. They're often simple, common words, but the way they're crafted amounts to something magical. Today's is,
HE PUNCHED OUT ALL OF MY BLOOD |
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| Uncharted 2 |
[Nov. 1st, 2009|04:26 pm] |
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Just for once I would like to see a big, scarred, Russian good guy. |
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| Old game music |
[Oct. 21st, 2009|11:14 pm] |
I love arranged albums from games. The music you love, with 45% more Engrish.
The game industry's drastic strides forward in graphical realism has really affected how much onscreen murder you can get away with. Suikoden II is a great example of how much murder, war, despair, and flat out homicidal nutjobbery (ah, Luca Blight) you can portray in the medium of cute little sprites. The music is also nice.
Anyway, here's Orrizonte. |
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| I'm bitter and I don't trust the world anymore. |
[Oct. 15th, 2009|12:42 pm] |
If I've defriended you, it's not because I hate you. I just really don't want to hear anything about Peace Walker. I'm living in my own, happy little universe where it's recognized that MGS3 was about as perfect as a game can be and that trying to add to it can't do anything but detract. Yes, I love Big Boss, I'm gay for him like everyone else with a pulse, but if you don't stop milking it I'm gonna hate him pretty soon. Tell something new already! We know how this guy's story ends. It ends with being set on fire with hairspray. (Or being a fire-breathing purple cyborg, but we don't talk about that.)
The people behind MGS4 shouldn't be doing anything except sitting on a couch and talking to a nice person about their problems with misaimed aggression. And really, the PSP? The handheld people only remember exists when it snorts an extra block and thinks ad campaigns like this are a good idea?
The only thing I want to hear about is Miller's sweet ascot. |
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| More stuff! |
[Oct. 9th, 2009|12:39 am] |
Adding stuff as I find or remember it.
The giveaway/clearing the crap out of Dahne's back room continues! I stumbled on another cache of posters. These ones are pretty big and made of some kind of plastic stuff durable enough to withstand a year in a dorm room and getting hauled a couple hundred miles south none the worse for wear.
I plan to send it all out this weekend, so if you see something you like, speak up! I might ask you to pay shipping, depending on how much it is, but definitely if you're not in the US. That's what you get for having public health care, suckers!
Just leave a comment saying what you want and e-mail me your address (and your screenname, so I know who you are and don't send you the wrong thing). More than one thing per person is fine with me. I doubt competition's gonna be that fierce, but if it is, you can knife fight for it.
The Stuff, With Pictures This Time!
One Piece - The crew of the Merry Go and some sheep painting a picture of what appears to be a giant shark-sheep. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ansemaru
Final Fantasy 7 - The old classic Cloud on the bike, from back when he used the word "mosey" and was suspiciously easy to convince to wear a dress. athenemiranda
Trigun - Vash and Wolfwood posing with their weapons. I love Japan because all their crosses are either guns or lasers. hanakowings
Yu Yu Hakusho - Yosuke, Kurama, Kuwabara, and Hiei. Arguably the best shounen fighting series where in the first episode the main character gets hit by a car and dies.
Fullmetal Alchemist - Various cast members. Includes shirtless Armstrong and Al + kittens.
Hellsing - Alucard being all glowy-eyed. hanakowings
Wall Scrolls:
Dragon Ball Z - Look, we were all 14 once.
Gundam Wing - Look...You know what? No. Gundam Wing had a guy ordering an assassination from a bubble bath just because he could, and it was carried out with exploding makeup. It had a boy who was the world's least emotive clown by day, giant robot pilot by night. My favorite was Quatre, because besides the whole terrorist badass giant robot thing was just a nice guy. I'm not gonna apologize for liking Gundam Wing.
Evangelion - I love things where by about halfway through they're not even pretending everyone involved hasn't gone utterly batshit crazy. darkravenkiki
Non-Poster Stuff:
Two enormous Superman/Smallville bags from Comic Con. Seriously, you could put a dead body in these things and still have room for the shovel. Other side.
Also a nice blue Shounen Jump bag with Naruto on one side and Zatch Bell on the other. Much more normal sized, bookbaggish.
See anything you like, speak now! |
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| Anybody want this stuff? |
[Oct. 4th, 2009|08:58 pm] |
Posters! All in really good condition, cause that was the year they were giving out poster carrier thingies.
Huge:
Devil May Cry 4 emerald_embers
Medium:
Avatar Book 3: Fire, with Aang being all fiery and glowy-eyes imouto
Spiderman Web of Shadows
Dwight from The Officedarkravenkiki
Little:
Wolverine and the X-Menansemaru
Also:
A poster carrier thingy with a melange of Fox stuff on it, like Buffy and X-Files and Simpsons and also some random stuff like something called Shutter which I guess they were hoping would be popular.
I'm trying to clear out all the stuff I've held on to because I reasoned somebody might want them, and hey, if you guys aren't somebody, nobody is. |
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| I'm not sure why it's not 'float,' 浮ぶ's a perfectly good word |
[Sep. 26th, 2009|12:12 am] |
From Kino no Tabi II, by Keiichi Sigsawa:
「防弾チョッキは重いだろ。動きが鈍くなるよ。蝶のように舞って蜂のように刺す!」
"Bulletproof vests are heavy. It'll slow your movement down. Dance like a butterfly, sting like a bee!"
This makes me happy.
I also like the preceding chapter, 人を食った話. The moral of the story is, if you help people, they will try to kill and eat you. |
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| Bad context, man. |
[Sep. 24th, 2009|11:49 pm] |
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You know it's going to be one of those days when you see somebody wearing a shirt with an inspiring scripture quote from Job. |
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| Geek spring cleaning |
[Sep. 24th, 2009|03:46 am] |
Anybody want a shitload of old Animericas and Shounen Jumps (in English)?
I've also got an enormous Snakes on a Plane poster, a book of fantasy novel sample chapters that includes an excerpt from Touched By Venom aka The Venom Cock Book,* a Chuck t-shirt, the soundtrack to Destroy All Humans, a variety of pretty nice Shounen Jump tote bags scattered all over the place, and a book from my gay lit class about a boy who has a creepy obsession with a guy and at one point rapes a peach. That last one has nothing to do with anything; I just want it out of my possession.
* It's almost better than the full thing because it means that someone expected this to sell books.** The other samples appear just as hilariously terrible, too.
** The infamous bit is right there. Plain as day, even though word is the author's tried to deny it. Honey, when you write the words "revere the venom cock," you've got nobody to blame but yourself. |
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| Bits and pieces |
[Sep. 13th, 2009|02:44 am] |
| [ | music |
| | 光を求める影はたわいないジョークしゃべる | ] |
Arkham Asylum is really worth a play. So far it hasn't been nearly as willing to dive into the craziness and psychological implications as the comic of the same name, in favor of a much more prosaic super soldier serum oh noez! plot, but it's really not fair to compare anything with Grant Morrison in terms of crazy. As far as I remember, in his script "the dragon that the hero must defeat in order to overcome his flaws and ascend from the underworld back into the land of the living" was Killer Croc.
But yeah. Good game. The controls are beautiful and fluid, the production values are lovely, and it's fun to have stealth that isn't nearly as unforgiving as what I'm used to. And oh sweet Moses, the voice actors. They managed to get a ton of people from the great old animated series, and that was a part of my childhood, so everything just sounds right. It all shows that it must've been a labor of love. I'd play a game called Mark Hamill Joker Rants About Things.
There's some neat stages around the Scarecrow that are so strongly reminiscent of the levels in MGS2:Substance where you run around and hide from a giant Gurlugon on a circle of platforms around him that I'd think it was an homage if anybody besides me ever bothered to play those.
Batman doesn't do cartwheels, though.
Southern California is lousy. Hated every second here as a kid, and swore I'd never come back. Job is dull, though it could be worse. Just swiping kids' cards and doing cashier stuff at this little college cafeteria. Not what I envisioned myself doing right now. It's getting to me. I already mentally refer to the time when all the Korean kids come in as the zerg rush.
Batman should do cartwheels.
I was watching an anime opening and thinking, "Hey, the English is pretty decent, besides the cheesiness here and there." Turned out to be by Oasis.
The other day at work I got a stool. It's really sad how dramatically this improves my life.
Today I watched Brazil and made a frittata. Productive!
Did you know Oasis was still around?
I think I love Terry Gilliam a little, the crazy bastard. It's a great example of that uneasy line between the funny and the deeply disturbing. Take when the main character is being locked into a chair for torture, and a guard advises him, "Hurry up and confess, or it'll ruin your credit rating." It's funny for the exact same reason it's horrifying.
It's funny the way the internet plants phrases and images in your mind so that they take you by surprise when you happen on them in context. It's an odd feeling to recognize a phrase, or that, oh hey, I've seen icons of that horrible laughing fat baby mask.
I was so sure I'd have a life by now.
My comic book reading tending to be dictated by what trades the library happens to have, I picked up Persepolis and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The latter is fun, the former is highly recommended, if you haven't read it already. I like the contrast. "I'll take the strikingly relatable and human story of a Iranian girl coming of age after the Islamic Revolution, and the one where Mr. Hyde rapes the Invisible Man."
I also really enjoyed The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. |
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| It's a great book |
[Sep. 3rd, 2009|11:32 pm] |
The same [1961 Life magazine] article went on to note how a computer in Glendale, California, was programmed with the five hundred words most frequently used by beatnik poets and told to create its own poems. Typical of the genre was "Auto-Beatnik Poem No. 41: Insects":
All children are small and crusty
And all pale, blind, humble waters are cleaning
A insect, dumb and torrid, comes of the daddyo
How is a insect into this fur?
The reporter noted that when several of these poems were read to an unsuspecting audience at a Los Angeles coffeehouse, many listeners "became quite stirred up with admiration."
-Bill Bryson, Made In America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States
As long as there have been computers, there have been trolls.
God bless us all. |
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| It is a pretty great rant |
[Aug. 20th, 2009|03:05 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  amused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | and the only sound that's left, after the ambulances go | ] |
I wonder how much more disturbing *coughmumbleyouknowthisalready*'s rant near the end of Persona 4 is if you really do live in a country where
1) only police officers can legally carry guns
2) the average life expectancy is 80 years
and
3) people actually trust the police. |
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| Gainful |
[Aug. 18th, 2009|01:48 am] |
| [ | music |
| | the best in terms of pants | ] |
Yesterday, I was reading a thing about a 46-year-old man who pretended to be a young female squirrelperson roleplaying in Second Life* as a hot female bunnyperson and I thought, "Hey, that's what they call a Recursive Structure in Godel, Escher, Bach"** and that's when I realized I need to get out more.
So I guess I have a job now. The little Christian college where my mom does accounting stuff needed somebody to run the cafeteria register. Nepotism: Make It Work For You! Every time I start thinking about being lucky to have a relative to get me a job in the middle of a depression, the next thought is about the Green Mile, and then I feel a mixture of skeevy and glad I don't have to electrocute people.
Pretty much all I can say is it could be worse. Lots of swiping cards, lots of boredom, lots of college students who I swear come in about three subtypes per gender.The people are nice, despite the high probability of being Republicans. Orange County, whatcha gonna do. I did hear somebody say "Palin" in the special tones people use to speak those unique volumes of crazy, so I may not be totally alone.
So, yeah. Life.
In something moderately unrelated, here's something there should be a word for: arguments that, by their own existence, prove that they cannot be true. I mean a very specific kind of contradiction.
No professional American video game could possibly let you run around sodomizing people, because we can't even have a tame, fade-to-black sex scene without a hysterical article about how the game lets you run around sodomizing people.***
The government is never going to assassinate Grandma or punt anybody's Downs baby off a cliff, because we can't even fix the healthcare system so that we have fewer people sick and dying because they can't afford medicine without people wailing about how they've going to kill old people and babies.
You know, I thought I was doing some creative lateral thinking by paralleling those two, but it turns out they have something hilariously in common. Guess what Mr. Mass Effect Wharrrgarble's latest articles are about.
I think he just picks a proper noun he's vaguely heard of and arranges superlatives around it.
* A program whose appeal I do not at all understand. If you can't fight a bunch of yetis to help a gnome recover his missing robot, it's not a game.
** The answer to what decision procedure can define whether xpyqz is a theorem in the pq- system without progressing through a potentially infinite series of axioms is logicians suck.
*** The infamous article seems to have collapsed under the force of its own stupidity and vanished off the face of the internet. It's fun to page through the site looking for it, though. It's like bobbing for piranhas in water that is made of sad. |
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| I refuse to acknowledge there is a name for these people |
[Aug. 7th, 2009|03:13 am] |
The funniest thing about people who go on about Obama's birth certificate is that they honestly seem to think the racism is veiled.
It's like the hilarious tiny censor bars on the dicks in hentai. You're not fooling anybody, guys. |
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| Crazy easy, though. |
[Aug. 4th, 2009|02:02 pm] |
The latest Prince of Persia reboot is probably one of the better games about Zoroastrianism I've played lately.
It's odd when games don't quite trust you to play them. Press a button and "All right, give here, I'll do it." |
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| David Hayter |
[Jul. 26th, 2009|07:37 pm] |
"My voice sounds like Snake all the time right now, because I was out til four a.m. last night drinking with Gaius Baltar."
Nothing else needs be said. |
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| Geektopia ahoy |
[Jul. 23rd, 2009|03:19 am] |
BRB Comic Con.
There's some ridiculously good stuff going on. I could go see Josh Keaton talk about Spider-Man* or David Hayter talk about Watchmen, or guys talking about making a God of War clone out of Italian poetry, or Neil Gaimen, or see Terry Goodkind to see if his eyesshine with pure undiluted objectivist crazy. It gets huger every year, and now it must be pushing the limits. I saw some statistics saying that last year there was something like 129,000 people. For the sake of comparison, the Republican National Convention: 45,000.
In Hall H, the inevitably filled show room where you could store several brontosauri, they tend to show the big movie previews. It's arranged in blocks by studio, so this year one of them consists of Astro Boy, some shitty I Know What You Did Last Summer rip off no one cares about, and New Moon. What I want, more than anything, is for the old school manga fans and horde of fourteen-year-old girls with dependency issues to get into a dance battle. With extreme prejudice.
As luck would have it, at a rare point in time where there's nothing that demands immediate attention, there's a panel for Supernatural with Misha whatsisface. Everything I know comes from internet osmosis, and it all points to Supernatural fangirls are absolutely batshit. I plan to venture in, as into a strange and hostile culture. I will recount what I find, if I emerge alive.
If anybody else is coming, on Saturday and Sunday I'll be the idiot dressed like a Happy Happy Cultist or the merchant from RE4.
*the new cartoon where no one has pupils, and that gives me a weird complex about wanting Ocelot to have an old aunt who gives him pie and tells him to be home by 10. |
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