A Lesson is Learned about Video Games That Waste Your Time But Make You Feel Like You Accomplished Something

"The meaning of life in [World of Warcraft] is you’re some schmo that doesn’t have anything better to do than sit around pressing a button and killing imaginary monsters," he explained. "It doesn’t matter if you’re smart or how adept you are, it’s just how much time you sink in. You don’t need to do anything exceptional, you just need to run the treadmill like everyone else." - Jonathan Blow.

Jonathan Blow is the creator the game Braid. As a reaction to the games like the one he described above, he created a game like Braid. I'll admit I've never played World of Warcraft, the game itself seems like the polar opposite of WoW.

It's a basic, one player 2-D platform game about time, relationships, lying to ourselves, and the atom bomb's creation (I think) that takes a couple hours to finish (I haven't yet). But it is probably the most aesthetically pleasing, most cerebral game I've ever played.

Some of the prettiest, most mournful music you'll ever hear in a video game, too.

Just check out the video below, if you ever had a desire to play the game on PC or XBox Live, just watch trailer for the game below. Don't watch too many videos on youtube because you'll spoil a lot of puzzles:

Braid trailer from David Hellman on Vimeo.

The art design is based on the work of David Hellman. He is also the artist behind A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage is Irreversible (written by Dale Beran). And like Braid it's pretty surreal. Also funny and poignant, too. Like the strip below:



It's all kinds of awesome. Sometimes it lapses into cheeky irony land. Most of the time, it's beautiful and trippy. Shame its been on hiatus since 2006. Check it out.

Na zdravie! or A Little More Upbeat Than The Last Post

Up until a couple weeks ago, I'd probably tell my favorite live performance would be something by the Flaming Lips or Ben Folds. Maybe Pearl Jam.

But as of 10:20 p.m. tonight after my dad called, it's of Dzedo (on the far left) performing Redovi (the Slovak Bridal song) with his late sister Mary (in the middle) at a wedding in Pittsburgh from around 1989. He did this at my cousin Jim's wedding, but I don't think that bootleg is on youtube.

Dzedo, tearing it up like they did back in '89:

Do Depressed Rockhoppers Tear at Their Feathers? or Tell 'Em That it's Human Nature

I'll keep this quick, since the last the thing the internet needs is a blogger (or reporter, or whoever else for that matter) blogging about the death of Michael Jackson. Roger Ebert wrote probably the best obit I've seen since his death.

I don't really want to get into his influence, or the sordid details of what did or didn't happen. Just want to relay a story.

Here goes:

I went to the zoo on Sunday with my girlfriend. It was pretty awesome. We saw the penguins exhibit, it was kind of cool I guess. I think I would have enjoyed it a little more if the birds were not mic'd up so that we could hear them constantly squawking. It was also easily the most crowded exhibit. I would have liked to get up a little closer to check it out, but I didn't want to be the guy blocking a bunch of toddler's view of penguins.

But anyways, during all the commotion of the penguins feeding was a single Rockhopper Penguin standing off to the left. You know, the penguins with the yellow stuff sticking out the sides of it's head, making it look like a cross between Wolverine, Gene Shalit, and Larry Fine.

It was the only one in a pack regular (I guess you'd call them) looking penguins. It wasn't trying to get near the other penguins to get food, and the other penguins weren't anywhere near him. He had a healthy radius of space surrounding him.

The rockhopper looked a older, its feathers were disheveled, and he was shaking. Christina, who is kind of an amateur orinthologist, had told me years ago when a bird is upset, it starts to tear at its feathers.

The penguin walked around in a circle by itself and defecated on the ice below its feet. A couple of kids and parents laughed. I was hoping he had a plan to escape the embarrassment of how totally different it was in that moment, maybe he'd jump down into the water. He'd jump back up in that weird looks-like-the-tape-is-being-reversed way that penguins tend to do when they hop back out of the water, his feathers smoothed out. He'd waddled over happily and fold right back into the pack. He didn't.

Christina and I both decided to leave because we couldn't take our eyes of the guy. We went over and looked at the jellyfish for a little while. It's entirely possible that we were projecting something onto a situation that didn't even exist. From my understanding the Pittsburgh Zoo takes pretty good care of its animals, and if a penguin was sick, it wouldn't be out there with the rest of them. Also, I would like to think that most people that work at a zoo are compassionate types that would spend a little more time with an animal that has been exiled from the pack. I'm not even sure that penguins do the feather thing when they are sad or upset.

It took me a couple days to notice the parallel between that bird and the famous guy who died last week. I was just struck by the isolation (real or imagined) that I saw with that bird and couldn't help but think that Michael Jackson was in a similar lot for most if not all of his life. The Onion put together a timeline of his life, and on the last date it said "June 25, 2009: Jackson experiences the only normal event in his entire life."

So what's the point of this whole thing? I don't know, go adopt an ugly mutt from an animal shelter instead instead of spending a bunch of money on expensive combination of Poodle and Dalmatian (PooMation? Dalmoodle?). And make fun of people less. I guess.

Anyways, here's my favorite Michael Jackson song:

Computer problems

Yeah, my computer was down for awhile. Gonna do a longer post, in the middle of it right now, actually. But my eyes are tired, here's a couple things I should give a shout out to on here.

Here's my girlfriend's blog.

Here's my friend Sean's blog, he intends to review every issue of Amazing Spider-Man (up to I believe issue 500) that he got on a DVD or CD-ROM or something. I'm intensely jealous for several reasons: 1. He has 500 issues of Spider-Man at his disposal, as long as he does not scratch the disc. 2. It's a good idea. 3. He could conceivably have the will power to see it through to the end. I'm pretty sure I'd crap out after about 30 issues of Stan Lee dialogue.

Here's my homie Brian Nac's blog on music, it's so good people have been sending him free stuff.

And finally, here's a link to a cool site called Xtranormal, once you sign up you can pretty much stage, direct, and write dialogue for little weeble people, it's pretty fun.

Here's the one I did. It took me about an hour or so on a Sunday afternoon to make. I was aiming for a David Lynch/Tim and Eric late night talk show vibe. I'm not sure if I accomplished that or not:

Всадник привидения: Русский человек мести гимнаста! or Why I haven't posted anything since I first started doing this

I was pretty excited about doing a blog. Unfortunately, I ended up having my computer crash on me due to a nasty virus, so I didn't have access to my laptop for awhile. As another result, I had to reformat my hard drive. I lost some files in the process. Most of them were mp3's and story notes that I would jot down onto my computer, usually things that make a lot of sense as I'm drifting of to sleep (most of which I'd come back to fully awake and wondering why I thought it would be a cool idea for Ghost Rider to be re-imagined as a male Russian gymnast).

Anyways, I didn't lose everything, and I'm slowly putting music back on my laptop. A lot of the songs were mixes that I put on, and I've bought a couple CD's since my computer went down so there's some new songs on there now, too. Same goes for some of my notes, too. Most of the ones that I thought were good ideas that got lost, I still have the same ideas, and some of the better ideas were saved some external drives.

So my computer is similar to where it was before the virus but some of the notes are different and some of the songs are gone. But the virus is gone, and it's moving as fast as it was when I first bought it. So it's kind of like my computer was retconned.

Retconning is one of the most fascinating and frustrating aspects of storytelling in comics. It's a retroactive change done to a previously established story.

The retcon at it's most simple is this: Spider-Man is a popular character, so you can't age him to the point where he is no longer relevant to the kids. So instead of his first adventures taking place in the sixties (when his series started), we're just to assume that they took place in the 70's, then 80's. Aging only a couple years for every ten or fifteen years that the book has been published.

Sometime it's absolutely necessary to keep a character that sells tons of money in licensing young and relevant. Unfortunately, the natural progression of the character suffers. That's why some of the most critically-lauded mainstream super-hero stories (Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, The Killing Joke, All Star Superman) are all, to some degree or another are self-contained stories that don't have much bearing on the previous continuity.

A good example of a complex retcon in a comic is the story of the Swamp Thing under Alan Moore's tenure. The condensed version of the original Swamp Thing is pretty straightforward: scientist Alec Holland gets dosed in chemicals, becomes Swamp Thing, plant guy. Alan Moore retconned Swamp Thing into a plant-creature who happened upon Holland during his death. He ended up taking on Hollands personality and memories, but for all intents and purposes was, according to Moore "a plant that thought it was Alec Holland, a plant that was trying its level best to be Alec Holland." In effect, Alan Moore changed the last 10-odd years Swamp Thing stories. They still happened, but they didn't happen to the character readers thought they knew.

Sometimes it makes sense (Batman was created in 1939, yet if you read one of his monthly titles, he's only been doing the crime-fighting for about 10 years) and sometime's it's done in service of the charcter (Batman kills a guy in his first appearance, his "no killing" rule was added to show how his parents' death affected him), or merely historical (Reed Richards and Ben Grimm of the Fantastic Four served in WWII, then Vietnam, then Desert Storm, I think). Sometimes it occurs in television (Kenny returning to life constantly on South Park), and it occurs in the surreal semi-real world of pro-wrestling (try to find a reference to Chris Benoit in anything put out by the WWE after the murder-suicide).

Sometimes it's a simple as recasting a character on a sitcom, like that guy in Bewitched or Carlton's mom on Fresh Prince. Even the term "history is written by the winners" is in and of itself, and idea of retconning on a particularly massive scale. Over the last couple years, and in particular George W. Bush has been saying in press conferences that eventually, the public perception of his decisions will be retconned by history.

Several summers back, I dated a girl for a couple months. Eventually it ended, and because of that weird masochistic tendency to see what someone I used to date was up to, I went onto her blog. She ended up posting a conversation in e-mail with a new boyfriend or some such guy. It was interesting because (at least from my narcissistic perspective) she used all the same terms in this conversation that she used to have with me with the new guy. It wasn't particularly upsetting, the relationship had run its course, and I still thought she was cool. But I still thought, "man I've just been retconned."

But then again, I think we do this a lot more often than you think. Both in terms of what we remember, and we do. I'm sure that if there were snarky comic book fans that read about my life, I'm sure at least one would remark "the Y2 character lost it's edge after he graduated high school. He was a lot more interesting when he was in the marching band and deathly afraid of girls."

(Three weeks mysteriously go by)

I left this blog in edit for a couple weeks, because I didn't want to post it until I had some time to look at it with fresh eyes. Looking back at it now with fresh eyes...eh it's okay. There was a lot more I wanted to write down about how we end up retconning ourselves and our memories or somesuch. I thought about deleting the whole damn thing. But then I would have retconned this blog out of existence. Har de har har (or RDRR).

Glenn Beck Loves His Fellow Man or This Brick Wall is Made of Cancer!

As far as the numerous right-wing pundits go, Glenn Beck is one of the more palatable. Not much of a compliment when stood next to well, you know who they all are, so there is no need to really mention them here.

That's not to say that I agree with the guy, most of the time I don't (his article on cnn during the campaign that I'm too lazy to cite right now that pretty much said Obama will usher in a socialist apocalypse of mythical 1984 proportions is a good example). But he at least he gives the impression of being a little less obnoxious.

Anyways, Columbia University's David Buckner passed out on Beck in the middle of his show.

Pretty embarassing for Buckner I'm sure. Kind of funny in a sad, grape-stomping way. The refreshing thing to note is that he actually behaved like a decent guy. He didn't stand there and accuse this liberal member of academia of accepting handouts from rich taxpayers. He tried to keep the guy from falling over, and then he asked him if he was okay.

This is remarkable if only because there are dozens of examples of awful mishaps that occur on youtube where a reporter is knocked out by a light, throws up, swears, or has the set fall on them, and their colleagues continue on as if nothing occurred.

So I say this to my fellow liberal, tree-hugging friends: Even if Glenn Beck is wrong 99.9 percent of the time he is only human, and seems to be an okay guy when it all comes down to when someone needs a hand. Go up to your crotchety grandfather that can't seem to keep the names Obama and Osama straight, or your uncle who doesn't want his guns taken away and paraphrase Human League:

"We're only human, born to make mistakes. I accept you, and if you ever began to pass out while trying to touch a video screen on Fox News, I would catch you. I hope you would do the same for me."

Then embrace.

The Ballad of Susan Boyle or Would You Love Me if I Looked Like a Garage?

To my immediate left is Susan Boyle.

In the last couple days, most American's who have access to any news site is aware of her story. An abridged version of her story (since, if you read blogs, you probably have heard it at this point):

Boyle, 47, is an unemployed charity worker with a learning disability, and she wants to sing so, she auditions in front of a taped studio audience on Britain's Got Talent.

She is brought in front of the three judges (including Simon Cowell) and like Christ before the mob that would free Barabbas, she is immediately met with scorn and disdain from the audience at the taping. There are catcalls and whistles, a girl in the audience rolls her eyes, and apparently the British version of Statler and Waldorf laugh patronizingly at the sassy way she addresses Cowell. In the golden age of awkward-is-funny television, it appears we are moments away from it's zenith.

Then she begins to sing, and to the shock and delight of audience both in attendance and viewing on their telly, she sings well. Really well. The audience has turned in her favor, standing ovations occur mere moments into performance. Outside our zone of perception malignant intelligences who were intending to do away with mankind, give Earth a momentary stay of execution because they are so moved by what they just witnessed on the BBC. She has talent, Britain declares triumphantly.

Then as her story hit's the news cycle, we learn what the hook to the story is:

"Susan Boyle: Unemployed 47-year-old virgin becomes overnight music superstar."- Vancouver Sun

"Frumpy 47-year-old stuns 'Idol' judge, catapults to sudden global celebrity" - WorldNetDaily.com

You get the idea, there are currently 996 articles on Google News right now that are a play on the "Susan Boyle succeeds in spite of her hideous, pathetic self" theme.

The Vancouver Sun at least, I thought was a somewhat reputable source (can't say the same for WorldNetDaily with it's credibility and logic destroying links to Ann Coulter and Michael Savage at the top of their home page), but part of me wanted to post pictures of Chris Parry, writer of the Sun article, and say "look who is calling who ugly, good sir." But a cursory search of a staff picture of Parry yielded several pictures of a frightening-looking MMA fighter who may or may not actually be Chris Parry of the Vancouver Sun.

In the event that they are one and the same, I would just like to say one thing:

Kudos to you, Chris Parry, on your article about overnight singing sensation Susan Boyle. I have nothing but the utmost respect for your prose and your ability not to cave my skull in or put me in a triangle choke.

But anyways, back to Boyle who herself admitted that she "looks like a garage." What else do we know about her outside of the way she looks or how she performed on stage? The main two, that most of the articles seem to be going with the most is that she took care of her dying mother, and the aforementioned fact that she was a charity worker. I can't take a look inside Boyle's mind, but if I were her, I'd feel rather good about myself if having only done those two things. Shouldn't she be judged on that alone?

But anyways, what if it wasn't enough? She can still sing, can that not stand on it's own merit without her looks being brought into the discussion? Has it gotten to the point now that someone who looks like the way she does has become unfathomable to our collective conciousness? What chance would a one-eyed honorary member of the Church of Satan like Sammy Davis Jr. have making it in the music industry today? Or Mama Cass, Neil Young, or Meatloaf for that matter.

I'd hazard to say that a guy like GG Allin would have a tough time getting himself noticed these days. A sad state of affairs, indeed.

Anyways, what I'm trying to say is this whole story shouldn't be that big of a deal. The biggest mention should have been in a TV recap page somewhere. But then again, I'm writing about it too. So I guess I'm part of the throngs that were begging for the release of William Hung and to see the skull of Susan Boyle placed on Golgotha.

Have a good night!