We do what we must because we can.

Noting the existence of Stir, which is pretty much match.com based around liquor, but equally fearing for my poor liver, it's been suggested that I should start one up, but based around culture.

I'll totally pretend to do it if I can come up with a ridiculous, web 2.0 name for it. Suggestions?

Man, I can't write anything right now. And I don't mean that in a sort of writer's block sense where I'm getting existential angst over the empty page, or in a physical I broke my fingers sense, but in a I accumulate some collection of words, figuring I can discursively complain here if anywhere, then proceed to toss them readily.

And if you do a radio drama, there should be an unspoken goal that the Narrator should not do most of the talking. It, you know, ceases to be a radio drama if you do that.

When you spend eight chapters of your interstellar trader book discussing how good looking your main character is, you may have a Mary Sue on your hands.

This is bad.

It's possibly one of my worst ideas. But there's more than a little payoff for it. And, oh my, as many of you who are invested, you are involved, should I have permission at any rate.

FALLEN_SCHOLAR hires the service that cleans the office he works in to clean his apartment as well. The intention was that they would clean only certain parts of his apartment, but the language barrier proved insurmountable. These cleaners also have very strange ideas of what "cleaning" consists of at times, but that's a story for another italicized section. Nevertheless, today, the cleaners are taking inordinately long.

DRONE 38934173: What did you do, have a rave?

F_S: I don't know! My apartment's not that messy! The hookers clean up after themselves!

D: Where's that line from?

F_S: I just came up with it right now.

D: You have to twitter (sic) that, write it down so you don't forget it.

F_S: I don't have a Twitter account, but I can blog it.

D: See, you're already the next John Grisham.

F_S: Soto voce, and in continuation of previous conversations on the internet today But I don't want to wake up at 4 in the morning to write.

F_S: That sums up the problem with this world: people who have names that should make them detectives, become brokers instead.

I get the Despair, Inc. catalog. I'm quite glad to see that they've secured the rights to republish Ponzi's autobiography, but that's not why I'm posting.

If you look on the back of the catalog, there's a preprinted address label that's on top of some of the picture of the product, specifically laptop skins, totally obscuring the image. There's also the normal blank at the bottom of the catalog, where preprinted addresses used to go. In that blank is the following text:

Hey - check this out! A (former) bonehead in our graphics department laid out the back of the catalog incorrectly. The USPS told us the address sticker has to go OVER the Laptop Skin pic or they can't mail it. So we're using this newly available "ad space" to bid a fond farewell to Cody. (Mourn you 'till we join you, bud. Peace.)

A while back, someone on my F-list posted a freakishly accurate INTP assessment. I'll readily admit that I treat the Myers-Briggs as sophisticated hokum, and closer to a supermaket book of sun sign horoscopes than anything honestly perceptive.

Still, I have to give it to this one. It's very 'mentally sticky,' and it's hard to not rephrase a lot of my thoughts about something within the context of "no, that's not ______; that's an INTP response." I don't think it fits perfectly, but it provides a lot of perspective I didn't have.

While I convalesced, I played Persona 3 FES. I've been playing it for a while now in fits and starts, largely when on the treadmill. I thought, well, here's a few days I don't have much else to do other than read and sleep, so I can probably get through the game. I was sorely mistaken. P3FES is a game where, when it says on the box "70+ hours of game," it actually means 70+ hours of game. Most other games that make a claim like that it means 20+ hours of game with 40+ hours of running about, looking to collect every ___ for the sake of getting the bragging rights.

Here, there's 70+ hours of game. Or at least 20+ hours of game, 40+ hours of story along with the game. I didn't finish. I'm close, but not done. I actually got to a point where I just decided to stop for a while, in order to savor the experience.

I then, since I had a copy, decided to fire up Persona 4. Yes, you're permitted to mock me for this. I'm quite shocked. While keeping a lot of the same principles for the game, the designers really kicked the Jung up to eleven, and (at first glance) added a lot of social commentary. The only major downside is that either the translation or vocal talent is so far a lot less impressive. As a cultural analysis it's a interesting shift, because it took a game that was the closest you can come to a "playable" anime and pushed it much more west, making it much more Buffy, or at least what my perception of Buffy and shows of that ilk is.

Of course, at the rate I play, I should be done about some time around Whitsuntide of 2011.

On the mend from having The Death Flu, which explains my absence. Life & the mind is a much different place at that temperature. The eerie thing is that, living above the office and next to F_S Mom, food and medicine gets left on my doorstep, which feels half like some sort of offering, half like I'm in quarantine.

Still trying to shake the last of the wheezes. I still don't really feel up to it, but I'm going to go try and run, because I know it's much more useful at rehabilitating my lungs than the medication is.

Did I miss anything important?

Last night, I dreamed that, if I were able to cure the falling out between annamaryse and mayjojo (n.b. neither know, or even know of, each other), a rift that was due to a person named "Parker," I would be granted complete dominion over the Elemental Power of Fire.

This has got to be a metaphor for something.

Other highlights include the Big House at the Farm, which is often a setting in my dreams, repaired and with my room having now a secret door to it. (A somewhat obvious secret door, but a secret door all the same). I was in the process of directing a web-based film, clearly based off of Firefly. Most of the the cast of said show was there, and had a number of cameos or other sorts of involvement. Of specific note was Summer Glau, who kept grabbing at me to shake my flesh and call me fat whenever there was a break, and Nathan Fillion, who was just too damn nice a guy, and whether he was joking around with the crew or quite patiently dealing with the fact that, oh, everyone I know was there and wanted to talk to him, it was somewhat obstructive to my project. There was also a dream within the dream about football.

Today, I feel crazy. I take it as a matter of faith that it gets better, but whoo boy, does it get rough around the edges from time to time. My life is in the need for special sorts of reform.

Closing taking place in the office today. It terrifies me. I don't know why, because it shouldn't.

And while we're on the topic, it reminded me to rewatch another set of episodes.

Trial of a Time Lord is a really hard episode to place. It's three episodes of crap for one final episode that would easily sit in my top ten list, would it not require the three crappy episodes for a proper payoff.

Although, seeing some of the supplementary information is enlightening. I have the sense, more or less, that the series was in free-fall, namely and specifically because no one was collaborating anymore. Producer, writer, director, and actors ceased to actually work together. I think that fans, including myself, tended to blame either Colin Baker or Nicola Bryant, and I don't think this blame is warranted.

I just picked up a copy of the classic Doctor Who episode Image of the Fendahl. It's not only one of my favorites, it's one of the best. It's a very architypical episode. It's got all the good and all the bad. A plot that ties into myth and literature, mad scientists, sane scientists, the conflict of magic and faith, a monster that manages to be both cheesy and terrifying (strong shades of the new series Blink that way), sex, betrayal, the Time Lords proving why they deserved to get destroyed, odd action sequences, and a really strange and largely untouched weird spin to continuity.

Doctor Who went through a "horror" period during the time of the episode. Most of that period I don't like, because I don't like horror that much, and I don't particularly find those episodes scary, even as a kid. This one I still find absolutely terrifying. It has the most frighting speech in all of Doctor Who, and that's including Davros' anti-conversion.

I'd say that my near loss of a 52' LCD wounded me sufficiently that I felt the need for retail therapy with a new monitor. There is a little more to it. All "my anti-drug" jokes aside, there's an inverse relationship between video games and alcohol consumption for me. With MMOs it can be fun, because, at best, a MMO is a mixture between a bar and an arcade. With anything else, specifically the heady sorts of games I like to play, it's less conducive, which reduces my desire overall. So I really don't mind driving to penury for the sake of my set up. I'm not an a/v-phile, so it's unlikely to truly put me in the poor house. It's just, you know, that pesky cash I should be saving for a house, or a trip to Europe.

There's a few others too. (Fair Warning: this paragraph has a number of acronyms). I have a computer that has a sorely outdated monitor in the office, so I have something positive to do with my old one. Also, the (small) LCD TV that I have has always had a sort of flutter with the HDMI slot. Visuals cutting out on you while playing a RPG is annoying; during Rock Band it's killer, and can destroy the mood in the room. I only noticed the problem with that TV, so I can fix it by hooking up the Xbox into the this one. That allows me to keep the Xbox near to my hub for DLC. Also, since I have the PC on the DVI, I can leave both the PC and the Xbox hooked in.

I don't use my Xbox that often, but, as stated before, I want to fire up Fallout 3 again. Likewise, both Mass Effect 2 and Bioshock 2 are coming out soon.

I'm really afraid for Bioshock 2. The trailer caused me to imagine the following meeting at Take2:

MANAGER: So, what's on the agenda?

DEVELOPER: Well, we put out a creepy, evocative teaser for Bioshock 2, so we should probably do something about that. Well, other than remove, replace, then remove the subtitle "Sea of Dreams."

MANAGER: Hmm. So, why did people like Bioshock?

DEVELOPER: Gripping storyline, moody atmosphere, Objectivism, a Giant Squid, horror elements, well developed antagonists...

MANAGER: Right, so let's get a trailer together. I want explosions. Lots of explosions. Add multiplayer. You can't sell a game these days without a multiplayer component.

DEVELOPER: Except Bioshock.

MANAGER: We got away with it once. We're not getting away with it again. Can we do more lighting? And more giant squids? And if it's set underwater, make sure you can actually be in the water.

DEVELOPER: Oh, hell with it, I'll make it so you can kill people with a drill-arm. Everyone goes crazy for a drill-arm.
***

Mass Effect 2, on the other hand, has a carry-over element. You can import a character from Mass Effect. This interests me specifically, because it's the story decisions that carry over. To recap that one thing that sets Mass Effect apart from, oh, most other games ever is that the Karma meter operates very differently most of the time.

Most games have a primitive sense of morals. There was one moment in the KotOR series that will always exemplify this for me. A man comes up to you and asks for some spare change. You can:

A) Tell him to get lost (neutral).
B) Give him $5,000 (good, and this is early in a game where money is never incredibly flush).
C) Kill him.

Mass Effect has these moments as well. But the principle guideline is based more around a good cop/bad cop paradigm. The question is whether you follow the rules or whether you're "results oriented," whether a xenophile or xenophobe. Most fascinatingly, a number of the decisions operate wholly independent of anything. For instance, there's an incident that's a clear analog for the "vaccines = autism" topic, though, you know, real, at least in the fantasy world. Whether you say "yes, vaccinate" or "no, don't vaccinate," is wholly a choice made by the player, and independent of your karma rating. It's not whether you say yes or no, it's the manner in which you persuade the other persons of that decision that matter.

This is much more satisfying on a number of levels, but, importantly, it allows the potential for a lot of diversity in decision making between people's characters, with some rather interesting possible results in the second game.

Though, if I'm discussing Bioware, I should also discuss Dragon Age. For those of you not in the know, this is the spiritual successor (and made by the same people) to the games that remain firmly entrenched as the gold standard for computer RPGs. It's metacritic score is really good. Everyone loves it.

I'm worried. I'm worried because the site I trust the most for my reviews, Eurogamer, gave it a...well...a really bipolar review, which has caused a bit of a stir. As the review progresses, you expect a 7/10 or even a 6/10. The score is an 8/10. Mind you, with an 8, Eurogamer has one of the lowest reviews for the game. (Additionally, the Xbox review savages it, though, again, the review reads closer to a 5, when it's a 6).

The thing is, what Eurogamer complains about the game is what I really worried about the game, and possibly what kept me from pre-ordering it. Dragon Age has been the focus of a media blitz the likes of which that only compare to HALO 3. There's already books and movies in the works. But, from all the Eurogamer review states, we've all been here before. This is what we've already seen. It's all the standard fantasy cliches and flat dialog taken out for another spin. It's the same equation of "Mature = Sex & Violence."

I don't think that gamers don't understand or appreciate good, detailed, and creative stories. I think that the work involved in getting to those stories, however, never managed to quite pull off in the past, and so Designers are dissuaded from putting in the necessary effort. Moreover, I think that the RPG market is so dead - dare I say killed by the Japanese - that every time one of these occasional forays into something less suck shows up, it's heralded as the Second Coming.

All I can hope is that the success of a few of these might mean that more come out, and possibly with enough regularity that we finally get to something more interesting.

All the same, 24" of awesome. Every time I plug in or do something new to the computer, I'm always waiting for it to say to me "I am SHODAN," and this is no different. I'm still not sure that I have all the color skews and adjustments just right, it still looks a little off. Also, I haven't cracked it open to try the Xbox yet. Sort of staying away because I know that means buying DLC, and I want to try to finish the games I have going first.

The only thing that bothers me is that I think the bottleneck for my system is my processor. What's bad about that (and I actually thought this was otherwise - I almost can't believe I made the mistake) is that I have a outdated processor slot on my motherboard, so replacing the processor means replacing the motherboard, upgrading the heatsink, and potentially replacing the memory. This I do not look forward to.

I think that the 'audiotext all the time' process is skewing problematic. It was bad enough when I discovered that yes, I could read a book and listen to an audiobook at the same time. Last night I was listening to TED talks and playing The Witcher. I wound up having a dream that I was attending TED, based on my prominence as a slayer of mythical beasts. It was odd. Cool action scenes for the actual fights though.

I was going to take the multitude to task for picking a scene from "Casablanca" (at least, any scene that involved Rick & Ilsa, rather than Rick & Louis - I'm probably the only person in the world who watches the movie for the bromance), but then I realized my choice was (most likely) the nunnery scene in Excalibur.

To recap ( Read more... )

EDIT: It doesn't hurt that it's followed by either the number one or two most entertaining individual scenes out of all movies, ever, which also focuses on love ("you brought me back...your love brought me back").