|
Post by Afgncaap5 on Feb 6, 2009 15:18:48 GMT -5
I'll let you know if I do read it.
See, one thing you bring up, though: I was *expecting* his works to be absurd and unreasonable. I went in with the complete understanding that stuff wouldn't make sense.
But then they did make sense, they just didn't do so linearly.
Sort of like the game The Mind Electric. It makes perfect sense, but the elements of the story don't care if they mesh together in the way things normally mesh.
|
|
|
Post by mummifiedstalin on Feb 6, 2009 16:20:34 GMT -5
Speaking of "At the Mountains of Madness"...check this out. It's not a joke or spoof: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7668070.stmI don't have time now, but I may have to do my own little blog thing on Lovecraft, who I love with some serious reservations.
|
|
|
Post by Afgncaap5 on Feb 7, 2009 2:06:44 GMT -5
Well, I just got back from seeing Coraline. I spoke about it more in depth in the Movies forum, but I figured I'd state it here. It was fun.
Very interesting article about the mountains, mumms. Who knows what bizarre secrets may lie beneath?
|
|
|
Post by Afgncaap5 on Feb 7, 2009 19:35:23 GMT -5
[glow=red,2,300]THIS! WEEK! IN! WEBCOMICS!!![/glow] Everyone...and that includes you...needs to Order Roomies! Book 1 from David Willis' Shortpacked! store. Back in the late nineties, a handful of writers and artists, as well as a large number of people who weren't writers and artists, decided to start writing and drawing comic strips. Unlike most comic strips, these comic strips were uploaded to the Internet. Nowadays, this doesn't seem too special...people are uploading everything onto the Internet nowadays. Blogs, amateur movies, webcasts, stories, a musical here and there...but fifteen years ago, the idea that a comic strip could exist outside of a newspaper or a comic book store was a pretty wild concept. Dave Willis was among that group. He went off to college, and began a comic strip called "Roomies!" which was, in fact, printed, but after a few years the "Roomies!" comic ended and evolved into another comic named "It's Walky!" It's Walky! has since concluded and evolved into two seperate strips: Joyce & Walky! and Shortpacked! That Willis likes his exclamation points, don't he? Here's the thing about webcomics. Most of them aren't stellar. In a field where anyone can fire up MS Paint and upload a drawing of a flower that's talking to a doggie (my sincerest apologies to anyone who's actually done that, I'm not judging you, I'm just using a random example from my head) there is a vast, vast field of so-so material, mediocre material, bad material and rotten material. Every once in a while, though, a webcomic shines. Dave Willis is one of those shining webcomics. He's gotten over 11 years of history to his little universe, and a lot of what makes his stories great comes straight from the first few years when he was just telling jokes about college life. He knows how to tell a serious, heartwrenching story, and he also knows when to let his comic strip characters be funny comic strip characters. This is a person who knows how to make car wrecks as traumatic as an alien invasion, an alien invasion as hilarious as a ninja in a toy store, a toy store as serious as armed robbery and an armed robbery as funny as Batman. And, as those in the know will tell you, Batman can make anything hilarious. (Except maybe Politics.)This is a collection of the first year and a half of the story that eventually became one of the reasons why webcomics can be respected as a genre. Even if you don't preorder the book, it'd be worth your while to read the archives (yes, ALL of it! ALL ELEVEN YEARS!) On the other hand, if you *do* happen to preorder the book, then that'll be one person closer to the magic number of 200 at which point the books can start shipping, which will certainly make me happier. Was this post just a massive commercial, designed to get you to help me be one step closer to getting a book version of something I can read for free online anyway? We may never know, ladies and gentlemen. We may never know.
|
|
|
Post by Afgncaap5 on Feb 10, 2009 2:31:54 GMT -5
A huge spoiler to follow. Seriously, if you've never read Dracula the book, don't read this post. I'm serious. I don't care how many movies you've seen, or how many vampire books you've read, if you've not read Bram Stoker's original Dracula, trust me, don't read.
Okay, so, I went to the *other* library that I attend a lot, and found a complete, unabridged edition of Dracula (they had two, actually. One is apparently this great big literary analysis addition with an introduction by Neil Gaiman. I would've liked to read that, but it was already borrowed, so I chose to make do with the "normal" edition.
I went into the novel expecting to have my views on Dracula change. I didn't know how they'd change, though. Would he be a let down? Would he be way cool? Would he be as over romantic as so many modern vampire novelists would have me believe (I hoped not, but I was prepared for it just in case.) Would I be scared?
It's too soon in the novel to answer any of those questions faithfully. But I've discovered something that no amount of preperations could have readied me for. Something that changes my entire outlook on the character. Something that shakes everything I thought I knew about vampires, Dracula, Bram Stoker, and horror novel in general.
...
Dracula? HE HAS A MUSTACHE!
|
|
|
Post by CBG on Feb 10, 2009 8:12:56 GMT -5
That's 'cuz he's evil.
|
|
|
Post by Captain Hygiene on Feb 10, 2009 10:25:55 GMT -5
Every time the book mentions his moustache, it's like my brain goes into a hard reset, and I wake up moments later forgetting that the moustache even existed.
|
|
|
Post by siamesesin on Feb 10, 2009 12:08:39 GMT -5
Want another spoiler?
He also has a camaro.
|
|
|
Post by Donna SadCat Lady on Feb 10, 2009 13:34:22 GMT -5
If ya really want to talk about Dracula, Affy, I can talk about it wit' ya. I was into the whole Dracula thing at one time. I even bought myself an annotated copy back when I was in high school. So, I'm somewhat familiar with the historical background of sweet ol' Vlad, as well as Bram Stoker and his own issues, and the whole Victorian milieu. BTW, hang on through all the stuff about Lucy and her multiple proposals. It ends eventually.
|
|
|
Post by Afgncaap5 on Feb 11, 2009 2:31:39 GMT -5
It's a tempting offer, though I should probably hold off until the book is done (no worries, I'm already beyond the proposals.)
I didn't really pick it up for the sake of reading about Dracula or vampires per se. I just feel like I've been underexposed to classic horror literature, and if I'm going to go around calling myself a fantasy and folklore nerd I should probably brush up on a few keystones of mainstream horror. And since I'd already read Frankenstein, Dracula seemed like a reasonable starting point.
It is a good book so far, I must admit that.
|
|
|
Post by Afgncaap5 on Feb 18, 2009 22:01:39 GMT -5
Okay, wow. Medical craziness just happened. Some backstory first, though.
Ever since the incident of the incindiary car, I've been spending a lot of time at places, waiting for rides. Fast food restaurants, libraries, anyplace that'll be open for a lengthy amount of time where I don't have to give a lot of cash (I try to get something if it's a restaurant to avoid being a complete mooch). A couple of weeks back, I was waiting at one such locale when I felt like my insides were twisting about. You know those leg cramps where the only way to make the cramping go away is to move your foot/ankle in the one direction that your brain is telling you not to move it in? It felt like one of those, but in my abdominal area. It passed after a few minutes. And really, I can't honestly recall if there was any actual pain, or if it was all just highly unpleasant twistiness.
Anyway, it concerned me, and I started looking into various causes. I wasn't sure what it might be, but all sorts of options presented themselves. A simple gas buildup, a hernia, Things Worse(tm), and other potential causes. Not having any medical insurance or reasonable supplies of cash (the former being a direct cause of the latter), it's tough to figure out just what to do about it.
Anyway, that was a few weeks ago, and while I've still been concerned about it, I'd stopped thinking about it regularly. One thought that had occured (related to learning about the wonderful world of hernias, what they might be, and what could be done to combat them), someone suggested that I look into doing crunches. Now, I'd always heard of crunches, but never really knew what they were. So I looked into them, and they looked sort of like, well...doing half of a sit-up? I'm very not sure if that's what it's supposed to look like, but that's the impression I'm getting from everything I can find on it.
So I did some about a week ago, and said "that wasn't too bad, kinda fun. I should do this regularly." Just a few minutes ago, I said to myself, "Oh, right, I was supposed to start doing crunches regularly! Well, no time like the present."
So I got onto the floor and did ten, still hoping that I was doing them correctly. I stood up, considered whether or not it was done right, and felt some of that muscle-tightness that I normally associate with working out. Now, on the one hand, I was a little greatful for that because muscle tightness makes me think that exercise was happening. On the other hand, however, I only did ten. I'm horrendously out of shape, yes, but should doing ten of them honestly count as strenuous enough work to cause that kind of muscle tightness?
I didn't think about that for too long, though, because after taking a few steps to check to see if the dishwasher had finished running, the muscle tightness built up more and more and quickly transformed into another of those twisty abdomen thingies that I said I'd gone through at the fast food place.
So now I'm more concerned than before about what this might be. I'm thinking I can cut bad gas off of my list of possible causes as doing (what I hope are) crunches seemed to cause it this time.
A possibility occurs to me, though. The first time this happened, methinks it's possible that it happened on a truck day at work. I've not done many truck days at work for a while now, but it involves moving a lot of boxes, picking things up, etc. Included in this were a few times that day where I recall reminding myself to "lift with the legs, not the back" so I must've been doing a noteworthy amount of work.
Perhaps I'm overexerting myself? And maybe I'm in a worse shape than I thought, and I can overwork certain muscles through any activity involving the abdominal muscles? That's somewhat frghtening.
Regardless, I should cut down to just 5 crunches.
|
|
|
Post by Afgncaap5 on Feb 19, 2009 19:49:13 GMT -5
In other news:
The ARG for Dollhouse (called Dollplay) failed at the word go when I went to check it out.
There are basically two rules for a succesful ARG to never deviate from: 1) The game must not know that it is a game, 2) The game must not have boundaries.
I went to the website and was immediately welcomed by a pop-uppish, java/flash/perl-lookin' window that informed me that this was an ARG, so I should pretend that everything's real, okay? :-) Beyond this window, everything will be In Game. :-) Oh, and by the way, unlike many other ARGs, we're keeping everything you need to know to progress through the game on this website, so no need to go elsewhere (unless you'd like to Google a few things to help speed you along.) :-)
Yes, that's the gist of the message and attitude that I received.
Does anyone else notice how the game began by, oh, I don't know...not being an ARG at all due to this little disclaimer? NEITHER rule was adhered to.
This is no longer an ARG. It could easily have been one, and the new game may be fun. But it's not an ARG. Instead, it's an incredibly hyped, highly budgeted and structured commercial for Ovaltine, and you don't even have to send off for the decoder ring.
|
|
|
Post by Captain Hygiene on Feb 20, 2009 10:08:08 GMT -5
Yeah...not so fun. I mean, both that and something like the Dark Knight ARG are both obviously constructed for publicity, but it's so much more interesting when the designers play it completely straightfaced and treat it as if it were real.
|
|
|
Post by Afgncaap5 on Feb 21, 2009 22:46:50 GMT -5
Right. And honestly, I don't mind a little publicity plug in ARGs here and there, but there's a difference between an offhand mention from a main character and a billboard that you see during the playing.
My knowledge of ARG lore is limited, but I think that the two ARGs with the best take on the amount of publicity to use were Perplex City and the Blair Witch Project.
In Perplex City, the ARG was publicizing itself. The puzzle cards that you purchased were things created by characters in the game and they were created to be fun puzzles...basically, the trade off was "You help us find our missing Cube, and then we'll send you some of our professional puzzles which we think you'll find just a tad more stimulating than the daily sudoku and crossword in your paper."
Meanwhile the Blair Witch Project wasn't really an ARG (the term didn't even exist until another year or two, I think), but it's advertising campaign had definite traces of an ARG: randomly sending the movie to people and treating it as an "actual documentary" and asking people to pass the video on to friends once made. As far as viral marketing goes, it was brilliant in my mind.
I'd probably list The Beast along with those two, but I've never felt like I knew as much about The Beast as I ought to. But as the first ARG, it blazed quite a fine trail, so I hear.
|
|
|
Post by Afgncaap5 on Feb 24, 2009 19:30:32 GMT -5
Alrighty, it's Fat Tuesday! Mardi Gras, the day of ridiculous gluttony and self-indulgence. Time to let yourself go.
Now the main reason I mention this is because I generally practice Lent. I'm not Catholic (I'm in the "non-denominational" denomination, which people either always think is a joke or a political statement if they're not actually familiar with the denomination that goes by that name) but I do think that it can be good for spiritual growth and healthiness to do without some luxury (or even vice) and to see how full life can be without it.
This year I'm going to try something a bit bigger than in previous years. I'm going to try being a piscetarian for Lent (a piscetarian is basically a vegetarian who also eats seafood.) And in addition I'm going to give up soda.
The soda thing just makes sense to me; it's easy to get hooked on the stuff, and saying no to it every once in a while is good.
Being a piscetarian is something I've wanted to try for a long while now, though. I've always thought that I'd make a good vegetarian because I like vegetables so much. I don't have any moral reasons for wanting to be one (though it is getting harder and harder to find companies that I can trust to not be cruel to the animals), I just like the taste. I also think the change in diet would work wonders for me, especially because of the recent explodey car situation that I talked about here earlier. I wind up waiting for rides at fast food places, and just eating a whole lot more than I'd like to. If I'm a piscetarian, it'll be that much easier to just steer towards the salad options instead of the burgers (and it'll give me an excuse to go places and try fish sandwiches.)
I've set up some ground rules for myself, though. It's only a month, so I doubt it'll come up, but I've told myself that if I'm in a situation where it might be impolite to try someone's "home cookin'," I'll certainly try some. I'm also making myself promise not to freak out should I learn that something I start eating regularly is associated with meat in some way (like if I learn that marshmallows are made of a certain gelatine that comes from horses or if my fries are seasoned with meat seasoning.)
It'll be fun to see if I make it the whole 40 days. I'm betting that it'll be harder than the year I gave up webcomics.
PS-if I started a conversation about Lent on the main boards, how far do you think it would go until someone chimed in with one of the following things to give up: -God -Religion -A political party -School -Homework -The new Diet -Some variant on the theme?
I'd be willing to bet the conversation could last four posts before then.
|
|