Comic books and the importance of timing:
- Dr. Jon Osterman
- John Constantine
- Steve Rogers
- The Joker
- Kang the Conqueror
Our guest of honor, Dr. Osterman, who hadn't appeared in public for quite a long time, opened the panel by stating he was sorry for not being able to prevent what was going to happen. He was almost immediately interrupted by the Joker, who proceeded to steal every tie worn in attendance - and shoot down the couple people who hadn't taken seriously the "Wear a tie or Die" sign left at entrance - before leaving the reception hall, laughing, as one should expect. He reportedly shouted "Oh, yes ! It's all about the timing" on his way out.
Mr. Constantine arrived fashionably late around ten minutes after that, during a heated (at least on that later's part) exchange between Dr. Osterman and Kang the Conqueror on the relationship between the nature of time and "spaces of artificially limited dimensions". His main contribution mainly consisted of chain smoking sometimes interrupted by an interjected "bollocks" or an ostentatious look at his watch.
After a long and fascinating debate, irate at his inability to convince Dr. Osterman of the possibility for one to change history when one was not part of the reality based community, Kang summoned heavy-armored troupes from the future, declaring he would prove his point by actions rather than words.
None were wearing ties.
They all died laughing, slowly disappearing in a puff off green smoke and throws of cackling pain. I can still hear that laugh now, the laugh of legions laughing as one till the collective jaw breaks, revealing the oblivion that lies beneath the skull - I even think I saw its eyes staring back at me.
The government has ordered quarantine over House Number 5. The people around me are changing, their skin growing protuberances of emerald green and deep crimson. I can still feel the laughter itching at my brain. No one has seen Mr. Constantine since the attack.
We are still waiting for Steve Rogers to return.
(It almost seemed to work when I thought about it this afternoon... well, hope some will find it enjoyable.)
Serge@128:
Is that covered by ours ?
Serge@113:
I'd say what would be needed is more something among the lines of a coconuts made software parser (or maybe a lactose intolerant volcano, I'll give you that).
Serge@75:
Eleven footnotes?
Is Sarah channeling Abi?
Cargo Cult Abi; next on Salon.com.
Recently back from Mauritania, and I must say what I saw there, what I know from personal experience living in France, and what I'm reading of the current US health-care debate is driving me clause to that strange laughter/tears state (no, not the good one).
LLA@580:I had an English teacher in high school who taught me to hate Charles Dickens (because she thought he was the greatest writer EVER).
As I've been saying for years, nothing like Literature Classes to kill literature (Hmmm... always surprised it's "littérature", but "literature"... dura lex).
Also: Chaotic Neutral means you don't have to.
(I think "experience-for-killing-stuff" and the alignement system where the first things my friends and me took off from D&D when we started playing. I know undestand the historical reasons that led to the development of those, but at the time we were all like "What, you get xp for killing things"?)
Damn, time's up. Thanks for Obnox and thanks for the Making Stuff particles. Always inspiring.
albatross@64: Are there countries where the immigration/customs bureaucracies function especially well?
Depends on what you mean by "well". I think most of them do what they were intended to pretty well. They keep people away, disunited and miserable.
Or, worse, that they made a mistake and won't admit it.
One of my teachers had to fly back to the US midterms because of one such mistake made by the French administration. "Kafkaian administration" is so redundant you barely see it at times.
Serge@171:
At first I read "was solved by using bayonets instad of a single envelop".
Giant airships made of knives (and, oviously, made to be fitted on giant cannons !).
Good Lord.
Serge@571: I'll lend it to my friend, if I hear no complaints, I'll know it's safe to read.
*evil scientist laugh*
"Charivari": to those of you who speak french, may I recommend Anne Lombar-Jourdan's lovely book on the subject (yup, she makes a charivari/carnaval connection) ?
Honk convoys at weddings are almost mandatory here, I don't think I remember a marriage involving cars where it didn't happen (and the only one I remember where it didn't happen was because it mostly didn't involve cars until days after the wedding proper had ended - an incredible event it was, with guests in the hundreds and the most incredible "Jeu de la Jarretière"[1] I ever witnessed).
Now that I think of it, that kind of honking always interrupted my music classes around once a week. And everytime, invariably, the teacher would go to the window and shout to the passing convoy: "Yeah, we'll talk about it again in ten years."
He was such a lovely man.
heresiarch@683: that's a reaction I couldn't really understand, watching Helvetica. I only care in the choice of fonts in things I want to read.
In a way, the haphazard and heterogeneous magazine adds that one rather passionate designer presented as repulsive I found less jarring than what he defended (I guess because they came from a time when publicity was still advertising, if I make sense.). He reminded me of those people who want every house on the street to be imposed the same coloring pattern (but then this comes from someone who'll only own dishware in single items).
[1] "wedding garter auction" is the closest translation I can think of?
J Austen: I really hope all this helps you somehow. I've lost a good chunck of my life because I unexplicably decided not to see any doctor when my problem first became apparent (like that would help), and now, all I can say is: don't make the same mistake. Even if you end up not having ADD, at least you'll be certain.
Serge@559: In case you're interested, Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1910 is finally out.
Yes, and it's right here on my working table, tempting me. But I won't give in. I'll wait for the remainding volumes to be published. Never start a work that isn't finished, or you might get zelaznied as my friend say (we were convinced as kids that The Chronicles of Amber would see no conclusion because Zelazny had died before he could write it... Truth is my friend's mother had hidden the last book from the library and played that prank on us for reasons I have yet to understand. The term stuck anyway)
Wait, wait, WAIT ! Kimiko is supposed to be a "stylized object of [...] lust" ?
In other news: still my favourite.
Daniel Klein@10: it wasn't brief but it was informative, in the way only someone passionate can be.
Too bad it started with utter and complete lies. This is the bestest pen and paper rpg ever (forget about the setting, it's all about the rules).
I'll cordially await for a duel time of your aproval.
(Or we can conclude that Houses of the Blooded has the better system, and Spirit of the Century is the better game as in "better fluff and rules equilibrium", and share some coffee. Damn it, I off-dueled myself again !)
Xopher@130: I once had a whole conversation start based on this qui pro quo. Felt awkward ("RPGs' main interrest is that they are cheap and easily available due to mass production".)
Ada Lovelace - The Origin.
Sent by a friend this morning, made me smile to no end. The crowd here probably knows it already, but passing the love anyway.
Daniel Klein@241: Not that I'd encourage borderline illegal activities, but there is such a thing as abandonware.
Well, no, not really if you happen to listen to some people in the industry.
I personally don't find anything morally wrong with it as a whole if it allows people to experience some games that would not be available any other way (or who've become ridiculously overpriced), but the area (51?) sure becomes very grey very fast. For example, most Lucasart adventure games never actually fell in the abandonware zone, as they were re-edited numerous times (a batch of them made it to the shop next to my place around january this year for around 10€). A pain to get ? Yes, definitely depending on where you live. Abandonware ? Not stricto sensu.
(On a semi-related notice, since there was that whole Amazon talk recently, I must confess I just hate they just won't export video-games. No matter if the game was never released in your country, or you want the original text rather than a translation. Not that there aren't other sources, but still. Can you believe the DS version of Chrono Trigger, a 1995 game, and a major one, was the first to be officialy released, this year, for most of Europe ?)
Check-splitting: Considered perfectly fine here in Paris. Be warned though, some restaurants won't allow to add the tip to a credit card payment.
Lee@252: "Tout-plein-de-bonnes-ondes" for them.
On the uses, and lack thereof, of street space in Japan:
One of the things I found disquieting while there is how inhospitable (however clean) the streets were made to be in some areas, and how different our conceptions of space could get. Streets were meant to be walked across, not lived on, apart from specified times and places (the difference being, I don't think I remember people taking possession of the streets, they had designated place they could use, if I make sense). No bench or trash cans for miles, and when you did find some they were designed specificaly to drive users away. Phony "Modern art" placed in such a way as to actively prevent the use of space (my guess is: to drive the homeless away in most cases).
Eating on the streets though ? Vulgar ? Probably. Rude ? I don't think so, not as such.
Now I'll need to enquire... Would eating directly in those half-open-on-the-street food shops (and I'm not talking about the carts) they had in edo-architectured japan have been considered "proper" behavior or were most people indifferent to it, and the idea that it wasn't something to do crept from (my guess) upper classes ?
I'm pretty sure from my period readings people did happen to eat on the streets... I never wondered about the cultural values associated with doing so (for shame).
John Houghton@166:
Pffff... would have been nice. Instead I spent my end afternoon mad rushing into a fight with the great polycephaled admistrative monster. The civil servant in charge of my father's retirement files went on vacation without finishing her work on it. He'll start being paid three months late, among other troubles, and, since he's in Africa, can't do anything to correct things himself.
I just love how casualy they dismissed my complaints/fears with a "No need to get upset, he'll get paid eventually"... I mean, he will manage all right (and at worst we're here), but just thinking how quickly the situation could turn desperate for someone else, while wondering how many other files still are in limbo left me irate.
Worst is they wouldn't understand why.
Bah... he knows he's awesome anyway.
siriosa@45:"Here in the material world, everything has a beginning, and an end. Sometimes they are close together. Sometimes they are farther apart. But they are always connected."
YOUNG IKKYU, looking pensive, has been waiting for his master to come back.
- Master, why do people have to die?
MASTER.
- This is natural, everything has to die and has just so long to live.
IKKYU, revealing the shattered remnants of his master's favourite cup.
- It was time for your cup to die.
"drink from the cup as though it is already broken."
I have trouble explaining that to some of my relatives, from my friends going "You drink in a 400$ cup ?", to my mother, who won't use that Korean celadon set from fear of breaking it.
*sigh*
Also: I lost most of my cup/yunomi collection when my overzealous neighbour drilled so far inside our common wall he caused my shelf to fall (the joy of living in a flat).
Remember to use your cups, shelves are just too damn dangerous !
Vampsters are nothing but hamster propaganda to hide the plain, unbearable, truth; I quote:
"If there's one thing that small-pet breeder Pip Wallace has learned over the years, it's that mankind's greatest ennemy is the hamster.
The horrifying truth is that their cute and fuzzy exteriors conceal a deep and uncompromising evil.
Over the Years, Pip has been able to discern these hateful creatures' malevolent intentions.
Their goal is nothing less than genocide.
Even now they are preparing to rise up, throw off the shackles of their habitrails and fun wheels, and gnaw the throats of our children while they sleep.
...
Fortunately, they're just hamsters."
(From Vertigo's Jack of Fables number 29; written by Bill Willingham. Wanted to upload the image, but can't from this computer it seems.)
First thing I thought about when reading the title was the new Burning Wheel game, I intend to play as soon as I'm done with the translating and playtesting of this.
The hamster names confirmed that first thought.
Let me just say I'm glad no weapons appeared on those photos. My (now well justified) fear of hamsters would have triggered a panic attack.
All that to say... condolences, and plenty of adventures to Aggie Maggie ( ! DM sense tingling : I can has new NPC).
Lila: "Tout plein de bonnes ondes" as my friend say. Mind-sending some mango/chocolate cake for you and the family (been saying that for weeks now... I should try fedexing a cake to see if it'd work).
Terry Karney: Sorry, I laughed.
Serge@604: I think one of my scariest moments was in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when Indy finds himself in the middle of a book burning, and all the monsters of the Nazi Party are there.
This had me thinking all week-end. I'm always amazed at how much different non-directly visceral fear (or humor in general, for that matter) can be from one individual to the other. My most scary movie moment ("Sunshine Through The Rain" in Kurosawa's Dreams) is generally not considered anything scary at all by most. That scene in The Last Crusade I remember as somehow grotesque and ironic. Certainly not scary.
On the security circus (like security theater, but with a different focus on the elephant in the room) front, a Paris-Mexico flight was forbiden to fly American airspace because one of its passenger (Hernando Calvo Ospina, a journalist, was on board (and on the air flight security list, woot! zeugma).
Stumbled on this topical article by Bruce Sterling this morning.
Thought I'd share it.
anthony@113: 1984 is a erotic text (how come everyone forgets how hot the fucking is in that book)
I... serioulsy ? I remember it as a rather sad thing myself. An act of rebelion agaisn't, failling at being satisfying/fulfilling or at generating genuine positive connection between participants.
Book I have read but forgotten ?
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 34 |
| 2008 | 1 |
| 2007 | 129 |
| 2006 | 35 |
| 2005 | 35 |
| 2004 | 30 |
Total: 264 comments. View all these comments on a single page. (May take some time to load.)
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by MD²:
Show all comments by MD².