Another Open Thread
Okay, this one is for people who want to talk about what video games they’re playing right now so that I can enjoy them by proxy. Or any good books people might be reading – I’m always looking for things to put on the shelf and stare at and swear that I’ll get to sooner or later. Books and video games. And beer. The stuff of life.
Oh, and I’m think we need to start a Barleywine Party to take some of the steam out of the Tea Party sails. Those damn Tea Partiers are ruining actual tea parties for the rest of us. Every time I hear my daughter ask if I’d like to play tea party with her I get visions of old white dudes hoisting anti-Obama signs about the deficit and socialism. It takes the fun right out of it. Yay Barleywine!
Barelywine Party! Could we have a rule where everyone drinks barleywine every time someone on cable tv compares something to Hitler?Report
Definitely. That will be central to our purpose.Report
Woo hoo! If we’re going to have our own party to challenge the Tea Party, we’ll be needing a Michelle Bachman-like champion to carry our banner on cable news.
I nominate Basil Marceaux.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hvaeHllwtwReport
I’ve been pretty slacking on video games but tabletop miniatures I have been on fire with.
I am currently in the process of buying/painting/assembling miniatures for the following games: Malifaux, MERCS, Dystopian Wars, and Warmachine.
Malifaux is set in a steampunk alternative reality with a wild west/victorian feel. It is a skirmish game that uses a deck of cards instead of dice to resolve attacks etc.
Mercs is a new skirmish game set in the near (160ish years) in the future well all governments have merged with mega conglomerations. Each side gets a squad of five soldiers and must use tactics, maneuvering, and rolling high on d10’s.
Dystopian wars is a naval/air/land combat game set in a steampunk 1870. I am so close to getting my fleet painted that I can taste it.
Warmachine is a game that uses magic/steampower robots in warfare. The robots can bodyslam and throw other miniatures.
That is what I am doing with my free time.Report
Have you explored Descent? (Silly question?)Report
No but my store has it on the shelves.Report
We played Descent (coupled with “Road to Legend”) in my gaming group for a year.
We *ADORED* it. We’ll probably never play it again but it is one helluva game for a group of 4 or, preferably, 5.
Additionally, you can (and probably will) use the tabletop map pieces (they join together like a puzzle) they give you for, among other things, 4th edition.
It’s a seriously *AWESOME* game.
However, it’s probably closer to “entry level gaming” than not.Report
I’ve been playing Warmachine for about a year now (Cygnar). It’s a really interesting game, you can never tell how it’s going to end until it does.
I’m just painting up a little Malifaux at the moment. I haven’t played it mcuh yet, but it looks really interesting.Report
Re-reading Dorothy Sayer’s “Busman’s Honeymoon”, as my “twenty minutes prior to bedtime, need something I’ve read before as a brain turndown”. Also reading Posner’s “A Failure of Capitalism” and Allison & Zelikow’s “Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis”.
Video games, I’m sadly on hiatus… Civilization III: Conquest when I have time for that sort of thing, which is almost never at the moment. Also enjoying young Jack’s attempts at Lego Star Wars II with the aid of his sister (occasionally, Daddy needs to jump in on a controller to get someone over a jump).Report
Yeah I’ve been on video game hiatus for a long time now. Sigh.Report
Just bought a new house, which necessitated a television upgrade to HD (*), so the old Sony 32″ that I’ve had since 1996 is now in the garage. Soon to be hooked up to the Atari 400, the Sega Genesis, the Sega Saturn, the Sony Playstation I, and the Nintendo Game Cube.
Not sure which will get more play out there, or if it will ever actually be turned on…Report
I’m pretty sure that Resident Evil 4 is available for the Gamecube. Pick it up used and you’ll likely drop only 10 bucks for it.Report
I already picked up Zero for the Gamecube.Report
(Warning: May Contain Stuff That You Consider A Spoiler)
Generally, I hate unreliable narrators. In movies it generally gets me to think that I’ve spent the last two hours wasting my time. In novels it’s usually even worse… but there is a significant exception to this, I’ve found:
Horror.
If you get a decent horror flick (or horror novel), the unreliable narrator transforms from a gimmick to yell “GOTCHA!” into a sinking sensation of dread.
Which brings us to video games…
When video games want to creep you out, there’s generally two ways to do it.
1) Dread. A knowledge that there is something awful happening and you, little you, know about it but can’t stop it. There is something wicked, vile, evil who has the command of entire universes of knowledge and experience behind it and you are just this guy… who, most likely, is going to be obliterated by this evil without it even noticing much. (The Silent Hills used to be good at this. The Fatal Frame games too.)
2) Tinkling discordant music as you walk down a hallway with flickering lights that suddenly TURNS INTO A CRESHENDO AND BLARGH A ZOMBIE RIGHT IN YOUR FACE SHOOT IT SHOOT IT SHOOT IT.
In my youth I preferred the former. Then I saw The Ring in the theater and that screwed me up forever and I don’t have the stomach for much more than the latter anymore.
I need my sleep more than I used to and I can’t afford to hold the covers tight and just stare at the ceiling until 4AM.
Which brings us to Dead Space. And Dead Space Extraction. And, yes, Dead Space 2.
Dead Space was pretty much Resident Evil 4/5 in space. There was some creepy stuff with religion and some creepy stuff with The Corporation but the creepiest part of the game for me was the big reveal… but even that wasn’t *THAT* creepy.
What was creepy was in Dead Space Extraction. The very first part of the game takes place when the artifact was extracted from the ground and you play the role of one of the guys who takes on the first aliens that show up… except, at the end of the chapter, it becomes clear that, no, there were no aliens. You’ve spent the chapter shooting your co-workers. Because you are crazy.
Now *THAT* is horror contained in a little tiny bit of BLARGH A ZOMBIE SHOOT IT.
Anyway, Dead Space 2 is out and waiting for me at home. I’ll try to get a review for y’all by this weekend.Report
I’m a big fan of the Resident Evil series, although I never got around to playing Zero or IV or anything thereafter.Report
4 was the first one that I *DEVOURED*. They fixed *EVERYTHING* that was screwed up about the gameplay. (The gameplay of 1 drove me *NUTS*. They mitigated it a little in 2 and a lot in 3… but it wasn’t until 4 that they *FIXED* it.)
5 was indistinguishable, gameplay-wise. (The setting, however, did a good job of making one feel somewhat uncomfortable.)
I really recommend playing one or the other (or, hell, Dead Space).Report
You mean, that gameplay device where you have to retrace your steps for every item you pick up to deliver it to the proper place where you insert/turn/use that particular random item?
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/10/13/Report
Erm. No. They kept that one.
I was talking about the shooting zombies in the head mechanic.Report
I loved Dead Space so I’m feeling you there Jay. They did a great job with ambiance. Particularily on the ship.Report
Have you checked out Alan Wake? They do a *GREAT* job with ambiance in the forest areas.
Maribou tried to watch me play but she said that creepy guys in the woods probably press different buttons for male gamers than female gamers. She went back to Zuma.Report
I’m currently playing Alan Wake. I’m about half way through. Second the recommendation (at least so far). The designers did a genuinely excellent job of evoking a sense of place, while working with an extremely limited, muted colour palette. There’s also quite a consistent sense of low level creepiness that works well. Relatively smooth (ie. forgiving…) combat controls, too.
Downside is that it’s very linear, even by the standards of the genre. Where you’re physically able to stray off the beaten track it’s almost always not something you’re rewarded for. Doesn’t stop it being well worthwhile, though, especially now it’s available cheap.
I’d also heartily recommend Dead Space. It’s a splendid game. Somehow couldn’t get into Resident Evil 5, though I love the rest of the series.Report
Pretty sexist, EDK, that girls should play house instead of Mama Grizzly.
BTW, there are few polls on it, but Quinnipiac had the Tea Parties @ 55% female. Perhaps the narrative needs a recalibration, altho angry, older and white still might fit.Report
Hey now. For every tea party there’s a super-hero adventure or a quest to rescue the knight from the evil dragon.Report
Howzacome nobody ever rescues the dragon from the evil knight?Report
Good one. We’ll do that one next.Report
Erik, I admit my own prejudice that gamers are male. But females may be as high as 40%.
Dunno what to make of it, but I found this interesting:
http://scienceinthetriangle.org/2010/09/female-role-in-gaming-industry-grows/
We’ve done a lot of studies and we’ve seen that a lot of the male game players prefer to play females, especially in [massively multiplayer online role playing games]. You ask them why, and they say, “Well they’re nicer to look at.” Secondly, they’ve found that when they’re playing a female character, a female avatar, others within the game will assume they’re a female playing. They’ve said they actually get a lot of free stuff – weaponry, swords, all kinds of things! It’s interesting to see the dynamic there in terms of the men choosing to play the female avatars.Report
” You ask them why, and they say, “Well they’re nicer to look at.” ”
I suspect this is a politically correct ( and less embarrassing) way of saying “They’re always drawn with big cans.”Report
I’m reading lots of stuff for my course, but recently the bedtime reading has been an account/cultural history of modern pagan groups called “Drawing Down the Moon”. It’s okay. The writer is writing both as a historian and a witch. I sort of wish she was the first more than the second. But there’s a whole lot of new information there- at least new to me.Report
And I guess this won’t be surprising, but the last video game that I was any good at was Frogger on the Atari, so I’m no help there.Report
Knee deep in three books:
* Wolfe Hall, about Cromwell, which I’m almost finished with is fantastic.
* Infinite Jest, which a post by Will inspired me to buy and start yesterday, so far so good.
* At Home by Bill Bryson has been delegated to bathroom reading only status, and it can be entertaining but feels much more like a collection of unrelated interesting anecdotes than Brief History of Nearly Everything.Report
Brief History was great. Loved that book.
Haven’t read the other two, but I find Cromwell pretty fascinating so I might have to check out Wolfe Hall (or at least put it on the shelf and promise to read it eventually…)
Last book I read was Wind in the Willows; before that the Hunger Games books (and something in between but it escapes me at the moment).Report
Wind and the Willows & Hunger Games – were those pleasure-for-Erik books or connect-with-the-kids books?Report
Pleasure now, though both in the long run I’m sure.Report
Wolf Hall was excellent. What post inspired Infinite Jest?
As far as historical novels go, I’m finishing The Name of the Rose, which was excellent, and Burr, inspired by none other than Michelle Bachmann.Report
Checking to see which post, realized that it was actually Jason’s comments, not yours Will.
I read the Name of the Rose a few months ago, and was surprised how much I liked it. Years ago I tried to get through Foucault’s Pendulum for a few weeks before deciding I was never going to start enjoying it.
And I’m curious how Burr is, but as curious as I am about how was it inspired by MB?Report
Bachmann said reading Burr turned her into a conservative. Something about Vidal showing insufficient reverence for the Founders.Report
I am currently reading two of the three books on your list, At Home and Infinite Jest.
At Home is likewise bathroom reading for me. The other book in my bathroom right now is Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies. Also reading Right Ho, Jeeves! and cooking a lot from 660 Curries. Not sure if that counts.
Also I’m playing Eve Online, as I have for almost the last two years. If anyone wants to meet in-game or get started with it, I’ll be happy to help.Report
Not sure if the 660 Curries counts, but I’ve already put it on hold on-line at my library. Just finished going pretty much through Rick Bayless’s Everyday Mexican and am looking for new reasons for my wife to want to stay married to me. Can’t go wrong with cooking curries.
Regarding and Jeeves books, I confess I’m good with just watching the Steven Fry/Hugh Laurie reruns.
What is Etymologies?Report
The Fry/Laurie Jeeves and Wooster is just brilliant beyond words. Fortunately my parents own all of them so I can borrow them and watch them any time I like.
I’ll have to check out that curry cookbook though. I need some new ideas.Report
Etymologies is a compendium of human knowledge from the seventh century.
It’s so entertainingly weird that I’ll have to post some bits of it. Even the ways Isidore talks about classical Latin grammar are radically different from ours, and I’d have thought those would stay the same.Report
“Etymologies is a compendium of human knowledge from the seventh century.”
Not sure what I thought you might say it was about, but could have guess for a long, long time without hitting on it.Report
You’re on EVE? I’m on EVE! Love to connect online, if you’re amenable. I hang out in Heimatar and Metropolis a lot.Report
I (actually we) live near Amarr. My Amarr standings are very good, which you wouldn’t guess from looking at my real life. Out of pod, it’s pretty obvious I’m Gallente.Report
My Amarr standings will get me shot on sight, so that’s probably a no-go then. I’m Matari, which I think is actually a decent fit.Report
Can I add one more, RTod? “Musicophilia” by Oliver Sacks. A tremendous, beautiful, beautiful book. (Yes, that’s the Sacks who wrote, “Awakenings” and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat.”)
You will love this book. And you will quadruply love it if you love classical music. It has it all–neuroscience, musical hallucinations, even a chapter on “Musical Martyrs”, (no, they don’t pack their instruments with plastic explosives to kill Jews) , perfect pitch, complete, total, absolute love of music, especially Bach.
Your brain will feel deeply enraptured and nourished with Dr. Sacks’ greatest passion in life–music!
I think Michelle Bachmann is hot, hot, HOT!! Is she married? I find her irresistible, with that great Midwestern accent and her refreshingly lack of pretense. And I really love the, sucking-on-sour-lemons expressions, liberal and lefties get when she’s speaking–Schadenfreude at its best! Would it be terribly inappropriate of me to fly my ultralight trike into her yard, and on bended knee, pledge eternal love? Oh well, just kicking around the idea. Such an occasion would just cry out for Beethoven’s 5th piano concerto–The Emperor–hey, maybe that would do the trick! Then again, if she’s married, her husband might just pull out one of those heat-seeking missiles and blow me right out of the sky. Worth a try, though.Report
“Would it be terribly inappropriate of me to fly my ultralight trike into her yard, and on bended knee, pledge eternal love?”
Certainly not if I could watch. I’d pay good money to see that.
And I’ve heard good things from a lot of folks about Musicophilia. I’ll put it high on the list; though with Infinite Jest on the bed stand, it might be a few weeks.Report
And a VERY Happy, happy, happy BIRTHDAY to Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart!! Who needs faith when you have Mozart? It is as if all of heaven rains down upon Herr Mozart-there is a rainbow, an arc, every blessed, glorious note infused with God’s DNA. His genius is so total and boundless–he excelled at the very highest possible level in his operas, string quartets, trios, piano sonatas, masses, piano concertos, duets, symphonies, violin concertos and many other musical genres. Somehow, someway, Mozart was inevitable at the moment of the Big Bang. With Mozart the luminous arc was from heaven to earth—with Beethoven, from earth to the heavens. Beethoven’s unfathomable suffering and torment, his agonies and ecstasies, his inevitable withdrawal from the human race–all manifestly, transcendental represent his Heruclean sacrifice from terra firma to the heavens. The second movement of his final piano sonata, Op. 111, is one of the most masterful, sublime pieces of music ever composed. It’s beginning has a prayer-like quality, a resolution to fate, a summation, deep reverence, a mystical letting go. It is rapture and dare I say, touching the face of God. I think God needs us as much as we need Him. It’s the only possible equation that works.Report
RE: Beer
If you’ve always wanted to give brewing a try, but haven’t managed to pull it together, I can’t say enough about the Coopers Microbrew Kit. Probably way too pre-packaged for homebrewing snobs, once you amortize the equipment you’ll be brewing tasty beer for about 50 cents/bottle.
The entire process is stupid simple. Completely impossible to screw up. We’re drinking down a batch of Real Ale. Cerveza is next up. Best $100 I’ve spent in a long time!Report
50 cent beer might be enough to convince the missus…thanks!Report
Seriously do it. Go to Amazon. Something like 50 five star reviews (including one from me), 25 four star reviews, and nothing lower. The kit ($120)comes with everything you need to make your first batch except bleach to sanitize everything.
The first batch (5 gallons) works out to $2/bottle for the entire investment. Kits cost about $30, which is about 50 cents/bottle. The more you make, the more your equipment investment amortizes.
The beer is really, really good; and gets better the longer it bottle ages. (So far we can’t make it past two weeks of bottle aging.)
The last time I felt this evangelical about something is when I got Instant Boats back in 1998, and you see how that turned out!
Seriously. If you don’t have the cash, start putting your beer money in a jar. (That’s what we did.) You wont’ regret it!Report
I second the endorsement. Cooper’s is what I used in my homebrewing novice ‘Bisquick’ phase in my college days.Report
Bisquick! Yes! Perfect!
Is Bisquick the ultimate in home baking? No, but better and cheaper than anything you’re going to bring home from the supermarket. And more likely to convince you it’s worth doing than paging at the King Arthur catalog and wondering if you really do need a $50 marble rolling pin and $5/pound flour.Report
I’m hoping that’s what he meant… and not that he was using Bisquick to brew beer.Report
Playing: Call of Duty Black Ops (I’ve only been playing the single player campaign). It’s the best in the CoD franchise thus far, IMO, though early instantiations lacked quite a bit, given Microsoft’s launch of the Xbox and its flagship title Halo shortly after the first Call of Duty hit shelves for the Playstation.
Reading: “Too Fat to Fish” by Artie Lange. I’ve really got a thing for autobiographies of junkies, and this one certainly fits the bill—there’s some self-flagellation in the book, and some public apologies, but there’s enough funny and humanity in it to keep me interested to the final cover. I should be finishing this weekend.Report
The only barleywine I’ve had is Dogfish’s. It was a bit sweet for me. Suggestions on another?
I’m reading “Now Playing at the Valencia,” a collection of Stephen Hunter’s film criticism. Really, really good, that there Hunter is.Report
The other video game worth talking about is Dance Central.
You know how Rock Band got you to say “maybe I should get me a system” (whether or not you actually did) when you realized that the drum set actually approximated playing drums in a way *COMPLETELY UNLIKE* how the plastic guitar approximated playing a guitar (in its defense, it did help people better learn how to play air guitar).
Well, Dance Central is the game that will make you say “maybe I should get me a system with a Kinect”.
This game will teach you dance moves. Like, for real for real dance moves.
Like: I KNOW HOW TO DO A JAZZ SQUARE NOW.
I cannot yet move my arms at the same time as doing a jazz square, though. *BUT*. This game taught me how to do a jazz square.
The songs are fun and cover a range of dance hits from Lady Gaga to Dirty Vegas to that damn “come and ride the train” song. Rump Shaker, Funkytown, and crap you’ve never even heard of.
It will make you sweat, it will make you curse your two left feet, and it will teach you, eventually, how to do a jazz square.
Investigate this game. You won’t believe it.Report
Can you do the Charleston? How about the Lindy Hop?Report
No. And No.
Perhaps I ought to say “not yet”. But no.Report
I’m glad I inspired you. 🙂 Now does anyone know some good barleywine brews to try out for this weekend? I’ve never had it before, so something quintessential will do the trick.
I started reading the Gardens of the Moon a month or two ago, but it’s really hard to get into. There seems like so much potential, but so far I’ve mostly felt lost. Does it get easier later?
In terms of videogames, I’ve been on a Metroid kick as of late. I played Other M, which I thought received a lot of unfair criticism, especially in regards to Samus somehow being portrayed in a sexist manner. However, after going back and playing the Metroid Prime Trilogy again, it does seem like a bit of a step backwards. Oh, well, I still enjoyed it, and I’m glad Nintendo decided to take a risk, because by the third Metroid Prime game it was starting to get stale.
Anyone ever play Deadly Premonition? I heard it’s supposed to be really scary. And in a “build suspense” way, not a “have things jump out at you” way.Report
Thank you for the inspiration!
Also, Gardens is the least good of the books I’ve read so far. You just have to get through it – it does get better. Subsequent books are better still. I have burnt out on the series for the time being however.Report
Zelda: A Link to the Past! I’m old school. Rather, I’m cheap. I have some moral reservations about the game, however. Most of the town seems to live in relative poverty. Meanwhile, the castle is very large and the King seems to have an outsized army considering that there is not, to my knowledge, a neighboring kingdom that poses an existential threat. Presumably, in order to pay for all of this he would need a significant tax-base. That means that Hyrule either has great mineral wealth, which the royal family is not sharing with its townspeople, or the people themselves are producing wealth and the King is taking an outsized portion of that. Otherwise, we’re looking at conscription and slavery (for the building of the palace and the armor/weaponry). It’s all really quite disturbing that I am supposed to be working with/for the leaders or such a government.
Oh well, I guess when you compare them to Ganon, they are the lesser evil. Even so, after Ganon and his ilk are defeated once and for all, revolution!Report
Perhaps the army is large because Ganon, by manipulating the king through his alter ego Aganhim as he was gathering the 7 descendants of the Wise Men, conscripted and brainwashed a large amount of the populace?
Also, sequence breaking the Dark World in that game adds a lot of fun to playing it again. My favorite order is 1 > 4 > 2 > 3 > 6 > 7 > 5.Report
This is true. We do not know how long Aganhim was influencing the king. It is possible, then, that the royal family had previously lived in less extravagant accommodations until recently.Report
What about all the roaming monsters attack everyone who leaves the village? Isn’t that a reason to build up an army?Report
Epic Mickey! I’m playing through as a “good” Mickey this time and will likely repeat as a “bad” Mickey later.Report
I never tire of returning to Vagrant Story. As for books, I’m reading Anna Karenina and Ricoeur’s Freud and Philosophy.Report
Martha and I watched “84 Charing Cross” tonight, a real choker for me. We watch it ever so often simply because we’re bibliophiles ourselves and Martha always associates with Anne Bancroft’s role. “Few could have carried that off so well,” she tells me.
We have maybe 1500 books or so, some of which are on bookshelves though, as we grow older, many now line the walls without benefit of shelves. It’s a funny thing, I suppose, a book can become a friend, a guide and they are a very difficult thing with which to part. At least for me and the missus.
I don’t play video games, but the wife does.Report
As far as video games go, Red Dead Redemption is destined to be a classic. By the guys behind the GTA series, it’s a sandbox game set at the tail end of the old West (1911) that nails pretty much everything. Act I is classic spaghetti western, Act II is “which side are you on hero?” of Eastwood western revisionism, and Act III is the West versus modernity. Near pitch perfect in all accounts.
On the other end, you’ve got EA’s remake of the NBA Jam series which is mindless fun. Boomshakalaka!Report
Completely addicted to Call of Duty: Black Ops right now. Just hit level 40 on the online play. That game is ridiculous.Report
My kids play this a lot. Every now and then they talk me into playing, and every time we start I have about enough time to say “Now wait, what does the B button d-” and then I’m dead.Report
Just finished “He Walked Among Us” by Norman Spinrad. Magnificent!Report
I’m playing Fallout New Vegas at the moment (I wanted to wait for it to be patched a bit before buying). I’m enjoying it a lot (a few residual bugs notwithstanding), and I’m glad to see much more of the spirit (and lore) from the first 2 Fallouts come to the fore than in Fallout 3, which I thought was a bit of a disappointment.Report
Oh, Fallout New Vegas! I adored this game. I said “I must beat it to see all 4 endings!” and realized that… no… there are a lot more endings than that.
I get the feeling that I’ve only seen about 75% of the content despite beating it 4 times.
There are hours and hours and hours hidden in this game.
For the price of 2-3 movies (with, what? 10 hours of non-interactive entertainment?) you can get a game with 80 hours of play, a deep story, and endings based on your inclinations.Report
Currently reading the short story anthology “Lemon” by Motojirou Kajii in Japanese. As far as I know there is no English translation outside scholarly literature (although there is a Kajii short story anthology in French). I am planning to try and market my own translation sometime next year. Think J.D. Salinger meets Edgar Allen Poe meets Mao.
I’m generally partial to mindless videogames and prefer trips to the arcade. There’s one near my house where you basically pay twenty bucks for three hours. My favorite games there: (1) a shooting game with a huge screen where I can wield two uzis at the same time and throw electronic shuriken at attacking ninja; (2) a game where I beat evil electronic frogs with a fly-swatter; and (3) Street Fighter 2.Report
Books: I took my kids to the library the other day and was casting about in the “young adult” section. I was kind of stunned to see “True Grit” in there with all the Harry Potter stuff. Young adult? I would not have been inclined to read it based on the movie reviews, but I was intrigued. It seemed like straight up “old adult” fare. I am reading it now, and it’s worth the effort, quite honestly. And I am still interested in knowing whether it really “belongs” in that section. Or whether that section should exist at all. I often see Lord of the Flies in such sections. Young adult has to mean something more than “there are young people in it,” no?Report
V.C. Andrews ends up in “Young Adult”.
I suspect “young adult” means, among other things, “books for folks who don’t know any better yet”.Report
It often means “Book whose protagonist is young”. Hence True Grit.Report
That’s the sense I get. But it seems weird. You wouldn’t put “Kids” in a young adult film section. Or… I dunno. Maybe you would. Is “Catcher in the Rye” a “young adult” book? Romeo and Juliet?
I smell a non-distinction based on marketing. Harrumph!Report
The last time I went back to the States for Christmas, giftcard in hand, I paid a visit to my local Barnes and Noble megastore chain. There was a simply massive “Young Adult” section, subdivided into smaller sections, one of which was “Paranormal Teenage Romance”. The “Paranormal Teenage Romance” section was about the same size as the not “Young Adult” but full on “Adult” subdivision called “Philosophy”.
This “Philsophy” section was sandwiched between a section of equal size full of books on the impending 2012 volcano people disaster and the shady bathroom area with a sign reminding customers not to take merchandise into the toilets. Upon closer examination, “Philsophy” was mostly full of books like “The Philsophy of Batman Begins” and “Dr. House for Dummies”.Report
Book: Against the Day , Thomas Pynchon. I read a few pages of this every few days. As with good chocolate, it’s pointless devouring it all at once.
Game: MSFT Flight Simulator, set up for landing at O’Hare 27L in bad weather in a Learjet. Funny how stall speed Just Doesn’t Matter when you encounter a microburst. I make about 1 of 3 landings.
Life on the road is not amenable to the brewing of beer. I do make my own bread though, here in the hotel room. There’s a great brew pub just down the road here, Granite City: they keep my growler full of bock. One great thing about six months here, a year there is getting to know the local brewers: Summit Brewing makes a superb red ale.Report
I tried reading Gravity’s Rainbow and just couldn’t continue. There were just far too many things I disliked about the book. Pynchon seems to me to be the literary equivalent of conspicuous consumption, like Radiohead’s music or Wes Anderson’s films. I don’t particularly want to think that, but I just can’t help myself. One of my friends recommended I familiarize myself with Pynchon’s earlier works before taking on Gravity’s Rainbow. Any recommendations?Report
Gravity’s Rainbow is kinda pointless without understanding Pig Bodine and the rest of the Whole Sick Crew from V. Crying of Lot 49 is really the best place to start, if you want to take the plunge into Pynchon, mostly because it’s short. I’d read them in the order as-written.
Truth is, you may never overcome your distaste for Pynchon. For many of the same Conspicuous Consumption reasons, I dislike Don DeLillo and especially Jonathan Franzen. David Foster Wallace narrowly escapes this judgment, but only by the skin of his teeth. My taste in modern novels runs more toward William Vollmann.
But I’ve always been this way: no sooner does something become Popular than I abandon it. Perhaps it’s just another form of elitism. I found Pynchon before Gravity’s Rainbow was the crit-lit darling it has since become.Report
Thanks for the rec. I may pick up Crying of Lot 49 to decorate my bookshelf until I overcome my crippling blog addiction.Report
Yes, you don’t read Pynchon — you experience Pynchon, and if you don’t enjoy the experience, it’s just not your cup of…of…whatev.
Like Blaise, I read them all early on, and at some point just relaxed and enjoyed a genius — rare these days.Report
Where is ‘here’ Blaise?Report
$6 Growler Refills!Report
Currently, Eagan Minnesota. The tale of my most recent journey, over hereReport
Your site is interesting, Blaise. I’m curious how you classified all those links into “liberal” and “conservative”. What was your framework?Report
Yeah I would definitely not put Balloon Juice in red….not anymore or for the past few years.Report
I also see a dearth of “liberal” or “nonpartisan” war blogs. I recommend Ink Spots (http://tachesdhuile.blogspot.com/) and Abu Muqawama (http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama).Report
Well, it’s not my site, and I’m seriously considering abandoning writing there. The level of partisan rancor over there is just a Bit Much at present. L’enfer, c’est les autres.Report
Apologies. I guess when you assume you make an ass out of u and me.Report
I mostly play TF2 and Minecraft.
Starcraft 2 and Civ V sit unopened until I can devote the time to getting into them.
I just finsihed Game of Thrones which was fantastic, I’m not sure what I’ll start this weekend, probably A Visit From the Goon Squad but I won’t discount that I dive into something from my pile of unread sci-fi.Report
^supposed to be a new comment but I hit the wrong button, whoops!Report
A Clash of Kings maybe?Report
Then A Storm of Swords. Then stop.Report
A little late to the party, I guess, but I’ve just recently started Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men by Jeffery Rogers Hummel. I picked it up on the recommendation of Mr. Cheeks (and it doesn’t hurt that I’m a history geek anyway). Haven’t read far enough into it to say anything about it yet.Report
Just got a new job, so been taking it easy a bit, but I’m keeping up with both EVE Online and Civilization V. Picked up Call of Duty 4 the other day, but not hugely into shooters, so we’ll see how that goes.
I’ve been avoiding my Dwarf Fortress addiction pretty well and haven’t played Minecraft mostly out of fear.Report
As grad student I have very little time for video games or reading books for pleasure, however, Civilization 5 is extremely good. That game has almost infinite replay value since the maps are always randomly drawn at the start of each and every game.
As for books I highly recommend Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina 1816-1836 by William W. Freehling. An excellent history of that precursor to the Civil War, just as much an economic history as a political history. Its an older book and well worth a read.Report
I’m still on Civilization IV, Beyond the Sword.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
Samiclaus was the only barleywine I’ve had that I cared for. I’ve had the Thomas Hardy’s Ale, and maybe it wasn’t aged enough, but I didn’t care for it. A few others I’ve tried as well, but the Samiclaus is tops in my book.
Been involved with editing mp3’s for my mp3 player. “In the New Age” by King’s X, “Invader” by Judas Priest, and “Let Me Entertain You” from Queen Live! Killers all have an extended intro that interferes with the music. That stuff had to go.
And “Fools” by Deep Purple. If iMusicTweet was still around, I would post the edited version so you could enjoy it. My version runs 6:37, and this one runs 8:22, but you’ll get the idea if you forward it to 1:42.Report
I beat Dead Space 2 last night:
I admit to feeling apprehension about the game as soon as I saw the ad campaign for it. The ad campaign, if you haven’t seen it, is to show middle-aged/elderly ladies watching footage from the game and expressing horror at it. YourMomHatesThis.com is the website.
This *IMMEDIATELY* tells me that they don’t want to talk about the game. Why don’t they want to talk about the game? Well, the most obvious reason would be that the game sucks. (I learned, in my youth, to not go to a movie where the commercials show people talking about how awesome the movie is rather than footage from the movie.)
As it turns out, my fears were misfounded.
(I’ll try to make this about as spoiler-free as I can.)
Months and months ago, I had heard a rumor that the story was this: Isaac is in a mental institution and the USS Ishimura was decommissioned and dismantled and the scrap metal was used to build a new colony… this colony has gone silent and the powers that be had to dig Isaac out from his medicated state and get him to find out what’s going on with the colony.
This is not the story. It’s, like, not even *CLOSE*. The good news: the story is better.
(I prefer video games to television shows or movies. The vast majority of all of them are mediocre (if not crap), of course… but even a mediocre videogame is designed to be interactive and engage the player on a level that even the best television shows or movies can’t replicate. And there are the best videogames that have storylines that rival the best television shows or movies. And you have to buy a full series of a television show to get the same number of hours of entertainment that Fallout 3, for example, has to offer.)
Back to the game.
There are two levels of creepy going on in the game. The first is the space zombie stuff. These are pretty much all BLARGH A ZOMBIE SHOOT IT kinda scares. These are done competently. The second, however, deal with your ex-girlfriend (you remember her from the final cutscene in Dead Space 1). These needle into you and give you a feeling of dread and inevitability that make the space zombies a mere annoyance by comparison.
Additionally, this has made it stand out from Resident Evil 4/5.
Dead Space was Resident Evil 4/5 *IN SPACE* but Dead Space 2 has changed a handful of things with gameplay, setting, mood and so on that it has carved out its own voice to the point where I’m hoping that Resident Evil 6 is more like Dead Space 2.
4 out of 5 stars. This is an interesting universe. I look forward to Dead Space 3 already.Report