RPG Articles

I actually saw this the weekend it came out, but wanted to process it for a bit.

Two important factors here are that I saw this alone, so it was two hours of being reminded that I’m alone, and that I’m pretty sure something was wrong with the projector’s focus.

That focus thing killed me. I honestly don’t know what was going on, whether it was the projector or the way it was shot, but the depth of field appeared to be six inches from the camera, and only one thing, or sometimes just part of one thing, would be in focus at a time. This really killed any good visuals for me, and left me rather confused as to why the DP wasn’t executed, or at least publicly flogged.

Casino Royale built a lot of tension, and allowed the characters room to interact, to peel back layers of each other. While the acting in this one was good, the script and direction didn’t allow for any of that. Everything felt very superficial, and by the end I just didn’t care who was doing what or why.

The fuel-cell office building…. thing…. was weird. It was generic looking, and apparently suffered explosions every hour. “You know how unstable these fuel cells are” or whatever the hell he says to clue us in that these idiots have built the worst office building ever. It was all shoehorned together, and utterly pointless.

The water/oil relationship I was ok with, being a big believer in hydraulic despotism. It doesn’t matter what a nation needs, so long as it’s something a despot can control he’s happy. Having the whole thing be a bait and switch, as in this case, was an ok concept. Using the idea of something valuable, especially something everyone is pretty sure you won’t find, to swindle someone out of something crucial has a certain gleam of Machiavellian quality that I can respect.

Still, the whole thing felt flat. Maybe I’ll see it again next year and feel totally different, but I doubt it was all the veil of depression.

Over the years I’ve received some odd calls. Companies looking to verify employment because the name of my company was the closest they could find to what the applicant listed, a guy looking for arcade machine buttons, and things forgotten, I’m sure. Recently, however, the dial has apparently turned to 11.

First, somebody was convinced that my phone was on a party line, belonging to someone named Tiffany. It took some time to convince this fellow that this was not the case and that I, in fact, did not want to hang out with him. Then, last night, I get a call from an odd area code. I don’t answer calls from weird area codes, they’re almost always totally irrelevant. So this number left two message, a little before 9PM. I looked up the area code, and it’s from Sacramento. The first message was “This call is for anonymous, this is MC <something>, I did my part, now you do yours.” and the second was virtually the same. I… I have no idea how to respond to that.

Here is where I’m chronicling my vida hobo.

You can also roll over there to see my response to this.

The emotional quality of this book is amazing. At least the first half, the second half is a little… Zardozish. That isn’t really accurate, but it’ll do.

Unlike Zardoz, this is worth going through. It’s a sci-fi story from 1953, with an interesting concept and some great insights. In the first half. Unlike Armor, where the second half was eventually so very worth it, this just dissolves into the same territory so much sci-fi of the era does.

The book, if nothing else, reinforced my belief that prose is superior to poetry for conveying a feeling. Poetry is too concerned with structure, and people that write it are too concerned with playing at word games to make an impact. I generalize, naturally, but that’s the overall view I have. Word games are fun, to be sure, but people always talk about it conveying feelings. Compare any damned thing you like with this for bringing across a deep depression conveyed by isolation-

“The sap falls and the bear sleeps and the birds fly south, all doing it together, not because they are all members of the same thing, but only because they are all solitary things hurt by the same thing.”

I mean, that’s just brilliant. Thankfully I was already depressed, so it just put a slight edge to it.

Go, any who find this, and read it. The damned thing breaks down, but it was such an early time for the genre that everyone felt they had to shoot for utopia.

It doesn’t really matter who is sticking what in your hooha, or vice versa. I simply want your hyper-herpes to engage and make you combust.

Thanks.

You are only 53MB in size, yet you install like a three gig hooker of a framework.

Good lord what a piece of shit.

No, seriously. If someone gives you this book, I’d suggest you only hang onto it for starting fires. It’s some ok to pretty good artwork filled with the author jerkin’ his Jesus complex over and over.

The premise: A blue light shrinks everyone down. Adults average six inches tall.

As premises go it isn’t really bad, but the writing is. Everyone freaks out, and I do mean everyone. Except for the precognitive son of some dude in an office building. See previous reference to Jesus Jerkin. I don’t know about you, but I’d be way more concerned if I was the only one shrunk. I have enough self-image issues. But no, we’re expected to believe that mankind would devolve to barbarism and tribalism within an afternoon because of this. It just doesn’t wash. A good writer could probably suspend disbelief enough to play with the concept, but that isn’t what we get here.

In the short- Boring, bible thumping garbage without a single thing to recommend it. People ooh and ahh over the artwork, but it really isn’t all that impressive. Some panels are good, most are about average. We can only hope the author accidentally strangles himself while flogging the bishop over his Left Behind collection.

The real horror- It’s already optioned as a movie.

Suck it honkies!

Is it honkies or honkys? Doesn’t matter. Yes, I am quite white, by the way. That means it’s ok for me to say honky.

Seriously though, I’ve never felt inspired by an election before. I hate the very idea of being governed, and he still inspires me. Unlike some, I’m pretty sure he isn’t The Second Coming, which is to say the world’s most perfect person, but I definitely like most of what I’ve heard so far. We’ll see how it all shakes out in the coming years.

Also, it’ll be refreshing to have a President that can fucking talk. Bush sounds like a puddinghead, even when sane words come out of his mouth, and McCain is just as bad. Clinton was a good speaker. Bush the senior was ok, but he had a bad voice for it, though not as bad as his son’s. Reagan was a good speaker too, from what I recall. Well, you know, until he pretty much disappeared after the whole brain thing. If nothing else, Obama is an amazing speaker, which is great to have in a President.

Oh, and the people complaining about the $120k tax re-definition thing, shut the hell up. First off, it isn’t like you’re elected and your plans are immediately adopted, since this isn’t a dictatorship just yet. gHod knows we tried, but apparently only just under half of America liked that idea. Secondly, you probably haven’t even looked at what it would actually mean for you, or weighed it against how you feel about the social contract. I haven’t, because I make very little money, currently, and all of my views are going to be distorted by that.

Ok, on with the day.

I think that last name is keeping this dude down. I can’t even look directly at it without feeling a little vertigo.

As I read this I found myself thinking “Huh, Michael Clayton in space“. This isn’t really fair, but it’s not really that far off either.

It’s set in a pretty believable future, with nothing on that score to niggle at me. I know, obviously my hate machine is slowing down with old age, right? Just wait until I bother to talk about Brian Aldiss here, that’ll convince you otherwise. The setting is the moon, where the five mega-corporations of the future have created a large settlement that seems to be equal parts industrial park and tourist trap.

The first scene in the book is the only one that bothers me. One of, if not the, primary characters has arrived on the moon and is awaiting an overdue escort. Another fellow makes conversation with him, which, towards the end is becoming somewhat strange in its forced “hey let’s go hang out buddy” tones. Then another fellow flanks the main character, sits silently for a few minutes, then starts talking to the other random dude, both trying to sweep our main man off to parts unknown.

I don’t know about you, but by this point I’d have gotten the fuck out of Dodge, yet our main man never even acknowledges that this episode seems entirely like an attempt to roll a man with obvious resources.

If you can let that slide you’ll be treated to some great characters. The book builds slowly, but strongly, with only a few times where I felt something was a misstep. Characters don’t grow so much as they’re revealed, like watching someone carve a statue from raw stone, and by the end I was surprised by the revelations, yet they remained totally believable.

I look forward to digging up the next book.

This book was delightful to read. It was interesting to find a lot of parallels to my own experiences, minus the vagina and international backpacking. I suppose I shouldn’t say experiences, but rather emotions. Mostly a bag of schizophrenic voices convincing me to do things that I knew weren’t a good idea and so on.

Here and there she rolls off onto a tangential story from her childhood, which the rest of the tale clearly illustrates the dents these events left in her character, and it’s done so seamlessly that you really absorb the impact, relating it starkly against the present day her (the her as related in the story). That’s the other thing, it’s all written from that time’s perspective, rather than as a person telling you something that happened to them in the past, which I found worked very well here.

Anyway. The book is an incredibly personal look at a young person’s sex life and I highly recommend it.