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I Rant, Therefore, I Am.
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Number Six from The Prisoner, since I love that black suit. He's anti-social, libertarian and completely bad-ass. And played by Patrick McGoohan. He's also basically a surrealistic Bernard Black, and really...who doesn't love that? | comments: 7 comments or Leave a comment   |
| | Tags: | bone, comics, torchwood | | Current Music: | "You Only Live Twice" Nancy Sinatra | | Time: | 06:48 am | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://s35.photobucket.com/albums/d163/Spike5392/DW%20moodset/tired.png) tired |
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| Bone is SO AMAZING! I'm a little bit less than halfway through this monster of a comic and it keeps getting better and better. It's funny, it's dramatic and it's just extremely smart.
Last week's Torchwood, which I watched last night, was awesome, too! That show is really starting to turn around from last season. | | comments: 7 comments or Leave a comment |
| Fran: Do you know nothing about modern culture, Bernard? Beckham, Posh, Pokémon--
Bernard: PAC-MAN! It's pronounced "Pac-Man"!
I got my Black Books DVD and it's wonderful! I don't want to turn my journal into a repetitious log, but seriously. Yesterday I watched most of the third series (I finished it this morning) and this afternoon I ran through the first again. The third wasn't as good as the first two, but it was still fantastic. I'm pretty sure my favorite series is the first--every episode is a winner.
Lately I've been playing my copy of Midway Arcade Treasures Volume 3 for the Gamecube, which has been pretty good. The only game I've played with any depth in it is San Francisco Rush: The Rock, which so good! I sold off my copy of the N64 Rush game about four years ago, and it's just been a blast. Even better is the fact that they ported The Rock, an updated arcade revision released after the N64 version. It's just how I remember, only better!
I've also played a few quick games of You Don't Know Jack: The Ride this weekend, which is a much better game than I first thought it was. The departures it makes from the rest of the series really aid it, especially the breakneck pacing and its episodic question style. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| Just when I think my David Lynch fandom can't get any bigger, he does something like this.
Apparently, it's in the special features of the Inland Empire DVD, which I have yet to check out. Hm... | | comments: Leave a comment |
| This Ron Paul campaign dynamite has made for a fascinating two days. The responses over at Reason's blog have summed up how I feel about this. It's really bringing about a conflict between those in the libertarian movement who are Old Right extremists and those who hold a more moderate view.
My eyes are wide open now. Libertarianism, I've learned, is full of kooks and cranks and nutters. See...the thing is, I knew this. I knew that paleoconservative scumbags like Lew Rockwell, Gary North and Alex Jones have been in bed with the libertarian movement for close to forever. The only thing is that I never knew how many of them there are, or how far Ron Paul has gone in the past to pander to them. I don't believe Paul wrote these newsletters. I do believe (and his tepid response to this so far has proven this) that he has too great a tolerance to racists, bigots and neo-Confederate morons.
Libertarianism has to be examined from two sides. First, there are philosophical libertarians. I'm going to call them "cosmopolitans" for short. They're socially liberal, appreciate cultural and economic exchange, and have an affinity for the free market. They are best represented in the media by the Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation. I consider myself a member of this group. We view government as incompetent, not evil.
However, there is a more extremist camp of libertarians. Their home is the Ludvig von Mises Institute. They are not interested in incremental change, like myself. Their ranks include many of the bile-spewing groups I mentioned above. They use libertarianism, with its rhetoric of state's rights and individual liberty, to promote views that sympathize with Confederacy and wish the gold standard would come back. They are largely populists and, in my opinion, have more in common with Ross Perot (ugh) or Pat Buchanan (double ugh) than they do with the less reactionary and intellectual cosmopolitans.
I'm not even going to mention things like the 9/11 Truth movement or Endgame in here.
Thanks for nothing, Ron.
I'm just going to start calling myself a classical liberal, an independent and a cosmopolitarian. Okay, not really, but you get the point. Is a good, honest politician too much to ask for? | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| GIULIANI GOT TRASHED IN IOWA FTW
AND PAUL GOT 11%! And polled best among Independents!
Wow, this is so fucked up! | | comments: 10 comments or Leave a comment |
| Mann, that was a brilliant episode of Doctor Who. Definitely my favorite Christmas special yet. The script was clever, the guest roles were fantastic (Kylie Minogue was wonderful), and the episode really went to some dramatic heights I didn't expect. The new version of the theme is interesting, too. I'm so excited for next season! Hopefully the insanity of having Donna, Rose, Jack AND Martha with the Doctor won't be too crazy.
And this year's Children in Need short (conveniently on YouTube) was pretty funny. Again, it was an improvement on last year's.
AND THE PREVIEW FOR NEXT SEASON LOOKS GREAT! Even the preview for the second season of Torchwood looks great--and get this--it premieres while I'm still off from school! That show really looks as though it's going to take off. James Marsters will be in with a fake British accent, just like in Buffy! Here's to hoping it builds off of last season's great finale.
Belated Merry Christmas, everyone! | | comments: 9 comments or Leave a comment |
| Here's an interesting Christmas gift--3D Realms has released a new teaser trailer for Duke Nukem Forever. Normally, I'd care nothing about this, but it's been in development for TEN AND A HALF YEARS, after all. I wonder if development will restart again in a month or so?
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| I'll update more later, but:
I (and our Congress) KNOW HOW TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT!
(Hint: it involves micro-managing the U.S. economy!)
Ban all of the light bulbs! Watch out for the Federal Lightbulb Replacement Agency knocking on your door in the year 2020! | | comments: Leave a comment |
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I just wanted to let everyone know that the Child's Play charity, created by Penny Arcade, is up and running this year. 'Tis the season for giving! It was founded to bring toys, videogames and cash to children's hospitals around the world. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Allyson informed me yesterday that the new Magnetic Fields album, Distortion, has leaked. I downloaded it, and wow, this is great. Maybe a bit too distorted compared to 2004's i, but this is a return to the Magnetic Fields of the past: distorted keyboards and home-made production quality are back.
I did note one thing in my brief run-through of the album; there's a lot of Claudia Gonson's vocals on this, just as much if not more than Merritt himself. I like that. It reminds me of Distant Plastic Trees and The Wayward Bus, the band's first albums, when Merritt acted more as a Phil Spector-esque figure and let Susan Anway handle all of the vocals. Best song so far? "Till The Bitter End," a dark-sounding and slow-going ballad with a really catchy guitar riff. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | I just finished watching The Elephant Man. It was the first time I've ALMOST CRIED at a movie in like, four or five years. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | card games, david lynch, english class, geography, heather, ian fleming, medal of honor, peta, raymond chandler, republicans, resident evil, the hustler, the russians are coming, wii | | Current Music: | Ghostbusters on DVD. | | Subject: | Long update. | | Time: | 10:46 pm | | Current Mood: | tired |
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| Hey, everyone! I'm still alive. I hope you all had a great holiday!
Thanksgiving was really, really nice. For the first time in a long time I completely let go and didn't do any work. I surrendered myself to my DS (specifically Clubhouse Games) and two novels--namely Ian Fleming's Moonraker, which is completely different from the film it inspired, and Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. I finished the latter by this Monday and now I am COMPLETELY addicted to Chandler. This guy is my new hero, right alongside Patrick McGoohan and...uh...well, you get the point. He's amazing--he creates a noir-styled vision of Los Angeles that is utterly corrupt and uncompromising. His heroes are individuals living by unique moral codes, fighting day to day. I love it.
On Thanksgiving day, my grandmother came over and I basically hung around her most of the day, with the aforementioned books and the DS in hand. I became rather addicted to Dominoes in Clubhouse Games for some reason; I honestly have no idea why. I've also been playing lots of Blackjack, Five Card Draw, Spit, President and several others. I love Clubhouse Games because it's taught me how to play all these card and board games. I also ate my weight in stuffing on Thanksgiving day in addition to the rest of the dinner.
I've also made quite a bit of progress on my final English Composition essay, which is proving to be difficult. Basically, I have to write four disassociated "threads" based around a central concept. I've chosen to use the concept of "memory," specifically memory on a collective, cultural or societal level. So far I have four threads--the minimum, but just managable for me to finish it:
-My authorial thread. This involves me ranting about Che Guevara t-shirts (the guy was a mass murderer people WAKE THE FUCK UP) and my grandfather's World War II service; really, about how I saw his division on The War and how I formed a link to the past through it.
-Picasso's Guernica, and the act of terror that provoked him to create that specific work. I am ashamed to say that I did not know about this before. I felt sick writing about it, how Franco and the Germans could do something so heinous and disgusting to the Basques.
-Some writing about the actual mechanics of memory. This was all taken from my Psychology textbook. Simple.
-Finally, a section about David Lynch's films, and how they subvert common images of American culture (white picket fences, small towns, gargantuan metropolises) and make old things (film noir and Roy Orbison songs, for example) feel new again, often by reimagining them in new contexts. I zero in on Blue Velvet and its usage of music, but I briefly mention Mulholland Dr., Twin Peaks and Wild at Heart.
Now it has to be finely-tuned, cut together (I have all the sections written separately, which is a no-no on this assignment) and proofread. Ugh. Speaking of David Lynch, Mulholland Dr. was on MyTV9 last night, in widescreen. That's right, on basic cable. I was so happy to see it--I would have sat down and watched it if dad and I weren't watching The Russians are Coming, which we had taped the night before. That was a really funny film. Very screwy, but fun.
Earlier this week I also watched The Hustler, which was pretty great. Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason having their pool games was intense, and seeing Piper Laurie in her pre-Twin Peaks career was interesting. I'd recommend it, especially if you enjoy classic film.
Thanksgiving weekend was made better by some purchases immediately beforehand; I picked up Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles and Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 on Wednesday and they are both very decent games. I know that the whole World War II first-person shooter genre has been done to death, but I've never played one before. There's definitely something that feels strange about playing a war game while an actual war is being waged, as Heather (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) velveteencat) has noted. I can't help it, though...it's just fun. And hard! I was shocked that I could barely beat the first mission on the normal difficulty level. Ouch! And Umbrella Chronicles is pretty awesome. Zombies, monsters and guns. The only thing I'm really surprised by is how difficult it is to nail a headshot; you have to shoot this tiny part of the zombies' forehead in order to make it explode. Makes the payoff more rewarding, I guess.
In Human Geography on Thursday my professor saw it fit to show us PETA's Meet Your Meat video, which was probably one of the most disgusting sights I've been witness to. Nothing quite like watching animals being tortured, mistreated and slaughtered, right? I was pretty down for the rest of the afternoon, until I went to the grocery store with mom. With a coffee in my hand, I went to the butcher section and looked at the meat. I subsequently had an epiphany and felt better. I couldn't resist saying to myself, "mannnn, this steak all looks so good." Then I came home and read some not-so-good things about PETA; their extremism, their euthanasia of animals, their cult of personality. I felt a lot better after that.
Mom and I drove out to the New Haven today, ostensibly to go to the Yale Art Museum to view some pieces I needed to see for Art History class, but also just to go shopping and walk around. We wound up walking around the entire museum, the Yale bookstore, Starbucks, News Haven (anyone ever go here? I've never seen so many magazines in my life before! I also got a chance to read some of Heather's Play magazine material, which was good) and Pepe's, where we picked up pizza. I hadn't really been up to New Haven in about three years, though I go to school there. I'm not letting that happen again, seriously.
Other than that, not much is going on. I glanced at the Republican debate this week, which was a joke. Can things get any more messed up, politically? | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii came out this Tuesday. I've been playing it all week.
I beat it last night, with half of the game's 120 stars in my possession. So really, I only beat half the game, but I still saw the credits.
I'm just going to come out and say it: this is the videogame I have been waiting eleven years for. It's the game I dreamed about since I saw this issue of Ultra Game Players magazine back in late 1997, on a cold autumn's evening.
And patiently, I waited. Nothing materialized. Reports of a new 3D Mario game became rumors, then vanished inside of two years. New rumors became reports which became press releases--in 1999, the Gamecube prototype, dubbed the "Dolphin," was rumored for release in late 2001, with (the press hoped) a new Mario game. The Gamecube was released right when the original rumors said it would be, but the highest profile launch titles were a mediocre follow-up to Wave Race 64 and Star Wars: Rogue Leader.
In the summer of 2002, there was a beacon of hope. Super Mario Sunshine was released. "Finally!" we all said, gasping with relief. But there was something about this new Mario game that was...wrong. It was good--don't get me wrong--but there was an intangible flaw. A few, actually. The game's perpetual tropical setting forewent all of the variety that gave Super Mario 64 an edge--there were no snowscapes, no haunted mansions, no deserts and no murky underwater depths that begged for Jacques Costeau. Sure, Sunshine had some of these things, but they felt...wrong. Existential dread had taken over the game and given it an identity crisis.
By now you're wondering just why I like Super Mario 64 so much. The truth is that I have no idea. It's just one of those things. Whenever I think about it, nostalgia floods my mind and a fuzzy feeling echoes through me, much like reading in front of my family's wood stove on a freezing snowy day. There are many other things that I can't view rationally for the exact same reason--Die Hard With a Vengeance, for example, will always be one of my favorite films, plot holes be damned, and Ayn Rand was probably both a crazy person and a hack, but the ideas featured in her novels helped shape who I am, so fuck it.
From the moment I started Super Mario Galaxy, I knew it. As I started to walk around the game's first environment, a slightly-curved version of the path to Princess Peach's castle, my face lit up. Shooting stars flooded the screen--I waved the Wii Remote around, collecting their remains with the flick of a wrist. With a cup of coffee in hand, I explored the galaxies contained in the first two or three observatories. I flew through scores of planets--I transformed into a bee--I brought down airships--I surfed on a stingray and even learned how to ice skate. This more than makes up for every misstep Nintendo has made in the last decade, especially since they have been learning their lesson for the past two or three years.
Just as I predicted, Super Mario Galaxy feels like The Little Prince infused with Super Mario 64, and the result is pure gaming bliss. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| HOLY SHIT MY BLOODY VALENTINE IS MAYBE GOING TO FIX UP AND RELEASE THAT UNFINISHED MATERIAL FROM THE MID-NINETIES
You know, the HOLY GRAIL of indie rock? If this turns out to be true, wow. Loveless has a follow-up and it will touch human ears at some point in our lifetimes after all.
In other news, Pat Robertson endorsed Rudy Guiliani today. What the hell?
I voted for the first time yesterday! It was fun.
My Bond stuff is going pretty well! Tonight I'm going to finish watching Die Another Day (ugh) but I'm going to probably watch Casino Royale (yay!) on Friday night or whenever. I also finished reading Casino Royale a couple days ago--good stuff! It even teached me how to play baccarat. Yesterday I started to read Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, which is awesome so far. Anyone (ahem, mercredimatin) ever see the movie? | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The gunpowder, treason and plot,
I know of no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| | There's a new Magnetic Fields album, entitled Distortion, coming out (oh god, that's quite an unintentional pun) on the 15th of January. Huzzah! | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
It's time to crack open the Lovecraft, stock up on some candy and kill a few zombies. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
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I Rant, Therefore, I Am.
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