optic: lol this looks like an awesome game http://www.excalibur-publishing.com/deliverytruck.htm
optic: ooh they have a bus & cable car simulator
optic: also PORTS
kent: jesus
kent: i’m not big on video/computer games in general but if i want to play a game i want an escape from real life, not a game that lets you pursue some mundane aspect of real life.
optic: lol london underground simulator
optic: YOU GET TO DRIVE THE TRAINS, ALONG THEIR FIXED TRACK
kent: do they have a washing up after dinner game?
kent: or a chasing dust-bunnies under the furniture game?
luna: i’d like to try AIRPORT SECURITY LINE SIMULATOR
kent: the only game i play regularly is Ableton Live, and I may have beaten that.
optic: lol http://www.excalibur-publishing.com/londonunderground.htm
kent: can you play london underground as a homegrown islamic terrorist setting bombs?
optic: i’d like to play a game that simulates what its like to look at random web pages at work
optic: nope kent but there are realistic announcements
luna: these cant be real
rich: isuppose ypu guys never played flight aimulator
optic: maybe it’s a game producer simulator
luna: im throughly enjoying hte progessive house soundtrack
optic: EXPERIENCE THE REAL EXPERIENCE OF CREATING GAMES
kent: howabout SLASHDOT COMMENT TROLL SIMULATOR
optic: better yet, game player simulator
optic: game player simulator sounds like something Borges would have thought up
kent: what about game player simulator simulator
kent: see also infinite regress simulator
optic: HAVE THE ACTUAL EXPERIENCE OF PLAYING A COMPUTER GAME WITHOUT ANY OF THE RISKS OF PLAYING A COMPUTER GAME — BY PLAYING A COMPUTER GAME
rich: damn if i had headphones i could watch netflix streamng on my iphone
luna: you didnt bring a book OR headphones to jurty duty?!
rich: nope
optic: jesus rich
luna: how about JURY DUTY SIMULATOR
luna: where if you forget to bring a book or headphones, you automatically lose
Month: September 2011
Movies, August 2011
*** Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We watched part 1 and part 2 in August. They were sort of long, and a lot of it seemed pointless and boring, and the whole “deathly hallows” thing seemed like a silly distraction from the horcrux business, and then the ending was kinda eh, and Snape (AKA the only interesting character in the whole series) was kind of short-changed, and the postscript just seemed dumb. But all of that was in the book and isn’t really the movies’ fault. The movies were okay; the first one was pretty meh but the second got going okay and was a decent way to entertain away an evening.
*** Captain America. The best superhero/comic book/action movie I’ve seen in a long time. All around good. Also, memo to Hugo Weaving: keep playing self-important villains and no more elves.
Books, August 2011
*** David Foster Wallace – Fate, Time, and Language: an Essay on Free Will. I did not read all of this. It took me back to a time in my life when I was more interested in working out the logical puzzles necessitated by thinking deeply about philosophy or linguistics. Wallace had a good argument and did a good job making it clear, and that was enough for me. I didn’t need to read all the tedious working out of the details.
** Lee Doty – Out of the Black. This book was okay while I was reading it, except for the forced and very unconvincing banter. And then the kind of wtf ending. And the kind of hard-to-follow timeline back-and-forth (like, if you’re going to do the split timelines thing, make them palpably distinct, not like two days apart). I liked the attempt at doing hard-boiled mystery and what he tried to do with magic and technology. But then it just kind of turned to mush in my mind, and then I made the mistake of looking at the Amazon reviews, where the author replies to every single negative review in a way that is just not good.
** Douglas Adams – Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. It’s Douglas Adams, and it’s fun to read, but the whole thing just doesn’t hang together enough. It feels to me like, with the Gently books, Adams just didn’t define enough what was and wasn’t possible in that universe, and so he feels free to just make up anything and the result is kind of aimless. Entertaining but ultimately empty and sort of pointless.
** Douglas Adams – The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. See above.
** Beth McMullen – Original Sin. This book was okay. I’m interested to see if she continues the series and gets better with the character, but this one wasn’t that compelling.
*** Roald Dahl – FFantastic Mr Fox. Roald Dahl is pretty much always good, and this was no exception. Of course, there’s not that much to it.
** Kurt Vonnegut – Cats Cradle. I expected more from this rereading it for the first time in 20+ years, but meh. There really isn’t much there. Sure, ice-9 is a fun concept but otherwise, snuh.
** Terry Jones – Douglas Adams’s Starship Titanic. Terry Jones doing a passable imitation of Douglas Adams. Pretty forgettable, and it’s fairly obvious that it’s a novelization of a game; it was hard not to be aware of how the plot points were determined by game dynamics rather than, you know, interesting storytelling.
Books, July 2011
*** Alastair Reynolds – Revelation Space. Interesting and carefully thought-out universe. Some great and compelling characters, though several of the elements driving the story never really convinced me. I’d like to read more of his writing.
** Tim Powers – The Anubis Gates. Utter cheese, but entertaining. I doubt I’ll read more of his books unless I’m desperate though.
Movies, July 2011
*** Intelligence. It’s been called “The Canadian Wire” because, like the Wire, it involves criminals and police and surveillance and it’s set (and made) in Canada. It’s not the Wire, but it’s pretty good. Some really good characters and good story arcs over the course of its 26 episodes. I got into that obsessive must-watch-next-episode mode, which can be so disastrous when watching something on Netflix streaming. I first heard of this series on Slate.