No One Lives Forever

As in: Game Journal

In the Video Game Culture course I plan to teach next semester, students will be required to write game journals, an idea I got from Laurie. We'll be using Blogger to write our journals, so I thought I'd start keeping a game journal on this blog, both to provide model entries for students and because I know you loyal readers out there care deeply about my gaming.

I recently read about the upcoming FPS Thriller F.E.A.R.. While I wasn't excited by what I saw before, the article in PC Gamer interested me for two reasons: 1) it talked about lots of nifty stuff the game does that makes it worth thinking about and playing and 2) it mentioned that the game was produced by MONOLITH, the company who created No One Lives Forever, a highly entertaining, campy 60s spy game. Having been reminded of NOLF, I decided to start playing NOLF2, which has been sitting on my shelf for some time.

I particularly enjoy funny games. Serious games are fine and dandy, but I prefer to chuckle than cringe. NOLF did that. I was excited to see whether NOLF2 would do the same. Sure enough, the first level features several conversations you can overhear, along with funny notes like this:

It's gonna be great!

The Namesakes series

As in: Teaching

In This is Spinal Tap, David St. Hubbins shows Marty DiBergi a tape from the "Namesakes" series, in which celebrities read works by authors with the same last name. For example, Denham Elliott reads T.S. Eliot and Dr. J reads the collected works of Washington Irving.

What if you ran an "intro to theory and pop culture" course along similar lines? Each unit features a theorist discussed in class and related to a namesake in pop culture:

• Walter Benjamin on Andre Benjamin
• Gregory Ulmer on James Blood Ulmer
• Frederic Jameson on Jenna Jameson
• Helen Benedict on Pope Benedict

And if you were allowed to stretch it a bit...

• Marshall McLuhan on Sarah McLaughlin
• Kate Hayles on John Sayles
• Gilles Deleuze on Dom DeLuise

Others?

The future is now (or) Sharks with Friggin Lasers

As in: Prognostication

Even sharks deserve a warm meal.

Or dolphins, rather. Craziness, thy name is the US military.

Random thoughts about 'Saw'

As in: Media

Spoiler Alert! I'm gonna write about the plot of this movie and reveal bits of what happened, even the end! Turn back now!

Clowns are Scary

• "It's Seven, with a hint of Cube and The Most Dangerous Game."
• Clowns are almost always scary.
• It's not clear to me how the killer decides who to kill, or why they have to be killed the way they were. One of the brilliant moves Seven makes is to unite form with function. Here, the violent deaths only tangentially relate to the people they're inflicted upon.

• I love the end reveal that the doofus orderly whom we thought to be the killer is, in fact, another victim.
• This killer's motivations are pretty obscure. Apparently, since he has a terminal disease, he's found a new appreciation for life and wants to share that by killing other people. Huh.
• The old canard that, in a mystery, a gun on stage must be used in the third act plays out here. The hacksaw at the beginning MUST be used by the end of the film. Otherwise that teaser poster would be pretty lame.
• Why doesn't the doctor know how to tie a tourniquet? What a doofus.
• Can someone explain to me what Adam's "task" was in all this? Is he just screwed? The others all have to do something to survive, but I couldn't figure out what he had to do.

I wish I'd remembered my medical training!

Remember Sammy Jenkis (1)

As in: Media

Spoiler Alert: If you haven't seen Memento, you might not want to read this post, as I'll probably reveal stuff about the film you don't want to know.

I just watched Memento with my students and am thinking about it a bit. Obviously, the structure of the film brings the loop to the forefront, something I'm sure I'll talk about at MPCA, but what interests me at the moment are Leonard's tattoos. Some floating ideas:

• Tattoos are "all the rage." Why have tattoos become mainstream body art? (When A&E has a show about it, it's mainstream.) I've heard the notion that tattoos are "something to remember 'me' by." Memento obviously plays on that. They're also permanent, and broadcast something about the tatt-ee. Natalie calls Leonard's tats creepy.
• They become metonymic for the shifting reality of the postmodern world. I'm tempted to make a few connections here, but they aren't all that flushed out: the tattoos and notes seem to be metonyms for print and electric communication. The former are more sturdy and reliable, but they may still be inaccurate.
• The tattoos also provide the founding myths of Leonard's life, much like print texts provide founding structures for national mythologies. (CF The Atlas of the European Novel and others.) In other words, the "John G. Raped and Killed Your Wife" tattoo becomes the driving force behind Leonard's life despite the fact that, if Teddy is to be believed, Leonard's wife survived. In that light, they function much like the Horatio Alger myth.

Other things to ponder: the looping narrative and the polaroids.

5th sentence

As in: Memes

Via Pharyngula via Profgrrrrl via The Way Seeker

Rules:
1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

Figures this wouldn't work:
Cannonball Adderly, Sophisticated Swing, disc 2

My 24th entry, though, yields this:
When asked about her scheme, she countered, "Your mother sells hot dogs."

On the way to work today...

As in: Flotsam

• The conductor stopped the train for longer than usual and announced: "Your attention please: we're currently waiting while we experience a security sweep." They usually say conduct rather than experience.
• I sat in the tiny seat at the front of the car perpendicular to the door. Cramped but you don't have to share.
• A man crossed the street against the light, glancing to make sure there was no traffic coming. A young woman, perhaps twenty feet behind him, crossed without looking and, striding forth from behind a parked bus, narrowly avoided getting run over by a car. She didn't look bothered by it.
• I politely refused a Chinese takeout menu.
• Watching the light change from yellow to red, I saw a man sprint into the crosswalk, only to get stranded in the middle. As the bumper-to-bumper traffic surged past, a woman in a sporty silver car tried to merge and dial her cell phone at the same time.

Orderly mp3-ing progresses apace

As in: In the Stereo

Added to my iTunes library last week:

Today
• Jack Knife & the Sharps, Ace Cafe
• Jack Knife & the Sharps, Jack Knife & the Sharps,
• Interpol, Antics
• Husker Du, Warehouse: Songs and Stories
Friday
• Alice in Chains, Dirt
• Alice in Chains, Facelift
• Alice in Chains, Sap
• The Adjusters, Before the Revolution
Thursday
• Sam & Dave, Greatest Songs
• The Rolling Stones, Hot Rocks, Disc 1
• Django Reinhardt, The Best of Django Reinhardt
Wednesday
• Koerner, Ray, & Glover, The Return of Koerner, Ray, & Glover
• James, Seven
• Fatboy Slim, Palookaville
Tuesday
• Moby, Play
• Bill Morrissey, Something I saw or Thought I Saw
• A New Found Glory, Catalyst

Sunset

As in: Photos

TiVo Fracas Roundup

As in: Copyfight , Favorite Things , Media , News

Yesterday, the internet was a-flurry with rumors that TiVo was implementing a copy-protection scheme that would prevent users from keeping shows beyond a certain point:

I recently got a sample of Tivo DRM, accidentally I suspect. Recently a Simpson's rerun recorded with a red-flag next to it (an icon I've never seen before). When I selected the episode, I got a message to the effect that "the copyright holder prohibited saving the episode past date mm/dd". I also noted that this episode could not be copied using Tivo Togo (Link)

TiVo responded quickly:

[The TiVo rep] said the copy protection is trigged by a flag in the video signal. The reports appearing on the Web appear to be cases where TiVo misinterprets noise in the signal as a copy protection flag, and imposes the restrictions.

"During the test process, we came across people who had false positives because of noisy analog signals," he said. "We actually delayed development (of the new TiVo software) to address those false positives." (Link)

But apparently, that doesn't make any sense.

In the room are film executives, consumer electronics manufacturers, software and operating system vendors, semiconductor manufacturers and conditional access system designers. When I asked them if they believed that noise could be "misinterpreted" as a DRM flag, they burst into positive howls of disbelief. One present talked about Macrovision's checksums and said that that must have been "incredible noise if it completed the checksum." A semiconductor expert laughed out loud. (Link)

Alas, I end up feeling link this guy

The basic question is why TiVo is implementing these crap features. But if you want to live with the features, the next question is, who has access to the flag controls? If someone inside TiVo flipped the flag on, for whatever reason, TiVo should say that now. If the broadcaster -- through the analog signal being named as the fall guy by Mr. Denney -- can turn the flag on whenever they want, the power of this feature is in the wrong hands altogether. (Link)

and agreeing that "while I'm a fan of the machine, I'll bolt as soon as this new "feature" kills out a show I'd been saving. There are alternatives that don't do this".

Why, TiVo? Why?

That was predictable

As in: Blogistry , Memes

I am Ash, from the "Evil Dead" trilogy.
I'm the guy with the...chainsaw.

Which Random Cult Movie Character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

(via CultureCat)

Incoming Cleese!

As in: Media

Covers

As in: In the Stereo

Hank Williams' I saw the Light is playing on The Current as I write this. What a strange moment in my personal songography.

I've only heard this song one other time, when Johnny Cash was singing it as the nogoodnick Evalgelical singer on a particularly amusing episode of Columbo. At the time, I assumed the song was a Johnny Cash original written for the Columbo episode--particularly since the singer was supposed to be shooting up the music charts with that ditty. Now I realise that Cash's character was climbing the charts via a cover.

I'm reminded of the saga of The Adjusters, a funk/soul band whose album I bought because I liked their modern take on the 60s soul sound. When I got the album home, I discovered that my favorite song of theirs, "Toehold," was a Wilson Picket cover. Doh!

The question of the remake arises, then, as a question of context. How much responsibility lies with the writer to make sure the reader knows the text is a remake? I remember being told that the European tradition is to leave off citation, expecting that a competent reader will recognize a quote when they hear it. In the American academy, we make no such assumptions. If we want to look to the remake as a model for intellectual practice, what do we do with the citation? (Does it go in the liner notes?)

Addendum: I read/ heard somewhere about a child who, upon finally seeing the film Annie, commented that they'd ripped off Jay-Z.

You've been missing my music posts

As in: In the Stereo

Since I moved our office into the living room and started MP3-ing my CDs instead of playing three at a time on rotation, I've stopped posting my "in the stereo" posts. I'm sure you're all shuddering from withdrawl.

Thus begins my new weekly post: what I've MP3'd in the last week.

Today
1. Ani DiFranco, Imperfectly
2. Bob Dylan, Another Side of Bob Dylan
3. Everclear, So Much for the Afterglow
Friday
4. Simon & Garfunkel, Greatest Hits
5. The Senders, Jumpin Uptown
6. Various, Saturday Morning Cartoons Greatest Hits
7. Silent Grey Fellows, Front Porch
Thursday
8. Counting Crows, Across a Live Wire (Disc 1)
9. Colin James, And His Little Big Band 2
10. Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks
11. Blink-182, Blink-182
12. Brian Wilson, Smile
13. Bush, Sixteen Stone
14. Flogging Molly, Drunken Lullabies
15. Ministry, The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste
16. Green Day, International Superhits
17. Iva Popasov & His Orchestra,Orpheus Ascending
Wednesday
18. The Committments, The Committments Soundtrack, Vol 1
Tuesday
19. Rusted Root, When I Woke
20. They Might Be Giants,The Spine
21. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Chronicle, Vol 1

I just listen to my music on "party shuffle" now.

Neato

As in: How things work

From WPA:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Petrty amzanig huh?

Hilarious typos

As in: Teaching

Proofreading my syllabus for my class that starts tomorrow, I found this noteworthy quip:

I take academic integrity very seriously, and am deeply insulted by it.

At some point in the past, I must have changed plagairism to academic integrity. Ha!

Phuds doomed.

As in: News

Pharyngula, one of my guilty-pleasure blogs, discussed the woeful pay situation for us Phuds. Who does CNN go to when they want to know how bad it is? My father in law, Phil G.

Just what I needed!

As in: Flotsam

From my inbox:

Hurricane, hurricane, hurricane, hurricane, hurricane, hurricane, Cheap Shoes!, hurricane, hurricane, hurricane, hurricane, hurricane, hurricane.

Ease vs complexity; Brand loyalty

As in: Design

Apologies: this is a bit of a ramble. In a response to my new music habits post, Laurie echoes others in recommending iTunes:

...When you rip CDs directly into iTunes, you can choose MP3 or other formats, so it's just a click of a button and then everything is really easy, intuitive, and--almost uncannily--beautiful from there on. Sorry to sound like an advertisement; iTunes is just awesome and it's one of those programs that inspires love, like Emacs:)

Having read some of CBD's work, I'm always alert to the use of the term easy, but I'm particularly struck by its use in this case. My curiosity comes as I wonder if people unfamiliar with emacs might think that program is also "easy, intiuitive" and so on. Of course, we all know it isn't. It's complex, clunky, and hard to get used to. Once you do, though, you can be blisteringly fast and do so much.

My question, then, is about brand loyalty. Do both ease and complexity inspire brand loyalty? I'm enjoying iTunes, but I also feel slightly disconnected--there are things I instinctively want to see but can't, such as a file-system display. Complexity often seems to offer control at the expense of ease.

Mostly I was just amused by the comparison of emacs and iTunes. A new marketing slogan: "emacs and iTunes, your digital workhorses."

PS: I like the party shuffle mode, which just randomly plays songs from throughout your library.