Being of astute faculties and superior perception, you will recall my previous post on how the National Government is going to screw the country.
Ha ha! How often reality outstrips the imagination.
Gerry Brownlee's firing up the mining rig and preparing to go prospecting in our national parks, based on some numbers that a mining industry stooge basically pulled out of his ass.
Anne Tolley, not content with her school-closing plans, is warming up National Standards for our primary schools, despite all the evidence from civilised countries like the UK and others that they're a terrible idea. In the words of an educator friend: "She is actually evil."
Paula Bennett is strapping on the monetarist dong and preparing to shaft beneficiaries of all stripes. Back to work you go, bludgers, and fuck your children! We've got tax cuts to finance!
I guess that after being made to stare at balance sheets all day, and having the chief whip howl economic policy through the Beehive's PA, Government ministers simply lose sight of what it means to be a human fucking being.
The only bright spot in all of this is being able to read, in a beautiful point-by-point takedown breathtaking in its artistry, just how wrong Sir Roger Douglas is.
Monday 12 April 2010
Sunday 11 April 2010
Experiences for the eyes and ears
In other words, a media roundup. Note to people receiving this on their feeds: this is actually the final one of a series of posts. I post them in reverse order so it looks OK on the blog frontpage, where other readers link from. Hi other readers, welcome to the final post in this series!
Autechre - Oversteps
Ae have gone back to their roots for this one, and it's a delight. There's not a drum machine in sight; everything's built out of synths that alternately shimmer like sunlight on a lake, and brood like a blizzard-obscured mountain face. The complexity that I admired in 2005's Untilted is still there, constructing often vast edifices of sound, but it's employed in service to these glittering melodies, rather than intimidating them. On Confield and Untilted, finding the tunes was often a lot of work, requiring patience and an archaeological bent that was tough but rewarding. Oversteps, on the other hand, is their most accessible record since 1998's LP5; gone are the "typewriter kicked down the stairs into a spinning laundromat" sounds. This thing's been on almost constant rotation since I got it. Oh, and it's nice to be able to actually pronounce the damn track names for a change (Draft 7.30 and Quaristice, I'm looking in your direction!).
Don't take my word for it: R Ess; Treale; Yuop.
The Future Sound of London - Environments II
This is the second in FSOL's "Environments" series. The first was made of mostly old material remixed into two long shapeshifting pieces, in which could be glimpsed familiar elements of their work from 1993 to 1996. It was cool, but was more of a retrospective than anything else; a summary.
Environments II is almost entirely new, and is terribly exciting for this reason. New FSOL! As in new new, not just the psychedelic rock revival (right down to the enormous flares, beards, hats and sunglasses) that Gaz Cobain did for a bit, or part of the massive avalanche of archival material they've been publishing lately. New!
At first listen it sounds like they've just been channeling The Orb, but the indelible FSOL stamp is there, and what they do with it is immense, as the cover artwork suggests (funnily enough, this art would not have been out of place on the front of Oversteps). As well as their trademark collagist, sample-based sound, they employ decidedly un-FSOL-like rhythms and melodies to [load of complete tosh excised]. Suffice to say it's really rather good.
Hear for yourself: Boca Manu; Factories and Assembly; Glacier (Part 2).
Gridlock - Formless
I'd been chasing this album for years, and then one night a strange voice said "why don't you go look at the iTunes store?" In 2006, when the New Zealand iTunes store launched, I blew a bit of a valve about it, upset that it contained plenty of music for your embarrassing auntie but bugger-all actual Kiwi music, so I was tempted to ignore this voice. Come back iTunes, all is forgiven!
Let's make no bones about it: Formless is nigh-perfect. Listening to Gridlock's evolution through their albums, I knew this one would be pretty damn fine, and I was not mistaken. Not a single dud track; dream-like sci-fi synths wedded to insistent and sometimes threatening industrial rhythms and effects predict a shiny if fractured carbon composite future, before a long and thoughtful coda lets you mull it all over. It's amazing.
Some examples: Re/Module; Song23; Done Processing.
Mass Effect 2
I'm not going to bother adding to the vast tomes written about this game's impact, design and execution. I just want to record how, despite enjoying it immensely, it left me feeling disappointed and let down emotionally.
Gameplay-wise, this is probably due to the way the ending differed from the first game's. Gone was that tremendous kinetic energy that pushed me relentlessly through ME1's final chapters in a blaze of excitement and almost non-stop action (the sole pause - the conversation with Vigil - was a masterfully constructed piece of exposition that only served to heighten the urgency and sense of awe).
Instead, you go through the Omega 4 relay when you're good and ready. When you're done, everyone sort of goes "whew, how about that!" and carries on like normal. I guess this is the game suffering from "middle child" syndrome.
A lot's been written, too, about the relationships in the game, specifically how same-sex relationships are not possible. See, for example, these explanations by the game's authors, which are some truly astounding bullshit. My problem at the end of the game is the same mentioned by Tracey John in the post.
I play a female Shepard. Through ME1, Tali was my go-to girl. With her and Wrex, I blitzed through legions of geth, kicked Saren's ass and generally saved the day. Sure, she was a naive post-teenager with daddy issues, but that didn't make her less interesting.
Now she shows up in ME2, leading scientific expeditions and commanding troops, but still the sensitive and caring soul I remember: she blogs about how she wishes I could share her discoveries; she gets all embarrassed talking about her feelings; her loyalty mission is at once one of the most stirring and heart-wrenching things you'll find in a videogame. Shit, you even have a conversation where she admits she'd like to "link suits" with you (how Quarians express intimacy).
Would it have killed them to take it a little further? Even if it's just a little cuddle on a couch somewhere. I hated how they kind of left it dangling with the "link suits" thing. Having all the emotional investment in the character, having the trailers suggest she'd be a romantic interest, and then she's too busy cleaning an engine to talk to me? I know that, as a videogame, it has limitations, but, quality of the majority of the game aside, this made me feel terrible for days. If these jackasses are going to carry on about "immersive storytelling" and suchlike, then turn around and say "but, having immersed you, we're going to gyp half of you out of your emotional payoff," that's some nerve right there.
Borderlands - The Secret Armory of General Knoxx
One of the things I most admire about this game is its sense of humour. This episode does not disappoint.
Machinarium
Oh boy. I think I'll just let John Walker over at Rock Paper Shotgun handle this one, reiterating only that this is a game of startling wonder and beauty, and the music will entirely take over your brain (here's the free EP to get you started).
Sorry about all the Mass Effect angsty wank, gongardulations on making it this far!
Autechre - Oversteps
Ae have gone back to their roots for this one, and it's a delight. There's not a drum machine in sight; everything's built out of synths that alternately shimmer like sunlight on a lake, and brood like a blizzard-obscured mountain face. The complexity that I admired in 2005's Untilted is still there, constructing often vast edifices of sound, but it's employed in service to these glittering melodies, rather than intimidating them. On Confield and Untilted, finding the tunes was often a lot of work, requiring patience and an archaeological bent that was tough but rewarding. Oversteps, on the other hand, is their most accessible record since 1998's LP5; gone are the "typewriter kicked down the stairs into a spinning laundromat" sounds. This thing's been on almost constant rotation since I got it. Oh, and it's nice to be able to actually pronounce the damn track names for a change (Draft 7.30 and Quaristice, I'm looking in your direction!).
Don't take my word for it: R Ess; Treale; Yuop.
The Future Sound of London - Environments II
This is the second in FSOL's "Environments" series. The first was made of mostly old material remixed into two long shapeshifting pieces, in which could be glimpsed familiar elements of their work from 1993 to 1996. It was cool, but was more of a retrospective than anything else; a summary.
Environments II is almost entirely new, and is terribly exciting for this reason. New FSOL! As in new new, not just the psychedelic rock revival (right down to the enormous flares, beards, hats and sunglasses) that Gaz Cobain did for a bit, or part of the massive avalanche of archival material they've been publishing lately. New!
At first listen it sounds like they've just been channeling The Orb, but the indelible FSOL stamp is there, and what they do with it is immense, as the cover artwork suggests (funnily enough, this art would not have been out of place on the front of Oversteps). As well as their trademark collagist, sample-based sound, they employ decidedly un-FSOL-like rhythms and melodies to [load of complete tosh excised]. Suffice to say it's really rather good.
Hear for yourself: Boca Manu; Factories and Assembly; Glacier (Part 2).
Gridlock - Formless
I'd been chasing this album for years, and then one night a strange voice said "why don't you go look at the iTunes store?" In 2006, when the New Zealand iTunes store launched, I blew a bit of a valve about it, upset that it contained plenty of music for your embarrassing auntie but bugger-all actual Kiwi music, so I was tempted to ignore this voice. Come back iTunes, all is forgiven!
Let's make no bones about it: Formless is nigh-perfect. Listening to Gridlock's evolution through their albums, I knew this one would be pretty damn fine, and I was not mistaken. Not a single dud track; dream-like sci-fi synths wedded to insistent and sometimes threatening industrial rhythms and effects predict a shiny if fractured carbon composite future, before a long and thoughtful coda lets you mull it all over. It's amazing.
Some examples: Re/Module; Song23; Done Processing.
Mass Effect 2
I'm not going to bother adding to the vast tomes written about this game's impact, design and execution. I just want to record how, despite enjoying it immensely, it left me feeling disappointed and let down emotionally.
Gameplay-wise, this is probably due to the way the ending differed from the first game's. Gone was that tremendous kinetic energy that pushed me relentlessly through ME1's final chapters in a blaze of excitement and almost non-stop action (the sole pause - the conversation with Vigil - was a masterfully constructed piece of exposition that only served to heighten the urgency and sense of awe).
Instead, you go through the Omega 4 relay when you're good and ready. When you're done, everyone sort of goes "whew, how about that!" and carries on like normal. I guess this is the game suffering from "middle child" syndrome.
A lot's been written, too, about the relationships in the game, specifically how same-sex relationships are not possible. See, for example, these explanations by the game's authors, which are some truly astounding bullshit. My problem at the end of the game is the same mentioned by Tracey John in the post.
I play a female Shepard. Through ME1, Tali was my go-to girl. With her and Wrex, I blitzed through legions of geth, kicked Saren's ass and generally saved the day. Sure, she was a naive post-teenager with daddy issues, but that didn't make her less interesting.
Now she shows up in ME2, leading scientific expeditions and commanding troops, but still the sensitive and caring soul I remember: she blogs about how she wishes I could share her discoveries; she gets all embarrassed talking about her feelings; her loyalty mission is at once one of the most stirring and heart-wrenching things you'll find in a videogame. Shit, you even have a conversation where she admits she'd like to "link suits" with you (how Quarians express intimacy).
Would it have killed them to take it a little further? Even if it's just a little cuddle on a couch somewhere. I hated how they kind of left it dangling with the "link suits" thing. Having all the emotional investment in the character, having the trailers suggest she'd be a romantic interest, and then she's too busy cleaning an engine to talk to me? I know that, as a videogame, it has limitations, but, quality of the majority of the game aside, this made me feel terrible for days. If these jackasses are going to carry on about "immersive storytelling" and suchlike, then turn around and say "but, having immersed you, we're going to gyp half of you out of your emotional payoff," that's some nerve right there.
Borderlands - The Secret Armory of General Knoxx
One of the things I most admire about this game is its sense of humour. This episode does not disappoint.
Machinarium
Oh boy. I think I'll just let John Walker over at Rock Paper Shotgun handle this one, reiterating only that this is a game of startling wonder and beauty, and the music will entirely take over your brain (here's the free EP to get you started).
Sorry about all the Mass Effect angsty wank, gongardulations on making it this far!
Tuesday 1 September 2009
Brown paper parcels, tied up with string.
Some of my favourite linkable things, both current and ongoing.
Mission Control - Internet radio station featuring ambient music overlaid by radio chatter from Apollo and Space Shuttle missions. Brilliant in all ways.
BLDGBLOG - Possibly the most interesting site on the internet in terms of sheer depth of ideas and imagination. Inspiring and often breathtaking.
Whitechapel - Warren Ellis' forum associated with his excellent Freakangels webcomic. A rich diversity of topics discussed by sharp and intelligent people.
Schlock Mercenary - Epic sci-fi webcomic about a group of mercenaries in the 31st century. Deep, varied and reliably hilarious. An archive of eight years of daily strips is worth taking the time to read.
Rogue Trader - The new Warhammer 40K roleplaying game. This is what I was after from an RPG set in that universe.
The Bugle - World affairs analysed by a couple of Brits. Bowel-wateringly funny.
That'll do to go on with.
Mission Control - Internet radio station featuring ambient music overlaid by radio chatter from Apollo and Space Shuttle missions. Brilliant in all ways.
BLDGBLOG - Possibly the most interesting site on the internet in terms of sheer depth of ideas and imagination. Inspiring and often breathtaking.
Whitechapel - Warren Ellis' forum associated with his excellent Freakangels webcomic. A rich diversity of topics discussed by sharp and intelligent people.
Schlock Mercenary - Epic sci-fi webcomic about a group of mercenaries in the 31st century. Deep, varied and reliably hilarious. An archive of eight years of daily strips is worth taking the time to read.
Rogue Trader - The new Warhammer 40K roleplaying game. This is what I was after from an RPG set in that universe.
The Bugle - World affairs analysed by a couple of Brits. Bowel-wateringly funny.
That'll do to go on with.
Saturday 1 August 2009
All aboard the handbasket!
Man, New Zealand politics. What happened? We started off with a whoosh and a roar, the new right-ish monetarist government detailing all kinds of plans that sounded sensible and beneficial, things like national cycleways (because bugger being a cyclist on a main NZ road) and the house insulation subsidy to make our shitty homes, of which mine is one, actually inhabitable by human beings. You know that when the Green Party is applauding the National Party for something, you have entered territory that is seriously weird.
Too bad that we seemed to have sailed right back out of that territory again into terribly familiar waters. Visions of the 1990s are floating about in an unwelcome fashion, because you know that when a party famous for its dogged worship of economics and little else gains power during an economics-obsessed period in world financial history, the gloves will be coming off and the things which might enrich us as people are pushed aside in favour of blinkered decisions based on ideology. It also seems that "being retarded" is another deciding factor.
(Brief aside: anybody on TV or in print using the ghastly cliche "in this current economic climate" gets a punch in the neck. Public figures, use your imaginations! For once!)
Here are some things that have popped up just recently.
Let's close more rural schools! This was something that the previous Labour government was into, until Trevor Mallard suddenly realised that it was fucking stupid and slapped a five-year moratorium on closures. Now that's expired, and Education Minister Anne Tolley is gleefully rubbing her hands. The local paper alone featured a dozen schools looking down the barrel; some kids will face a 150 minute commute to and from the nearest school, which is basically inhuman. Yeah, yeah, Correspondence School and all that, but it's a bad excuse. Try telling these kids that they don't get to hang out with their friends all day anymore and see what happens.
We promise not to privatise anything in our first term! Oh, nice caveat. Very smooth. No-one at all will notice you assembling the menu for the second-term slaughterthon. The menu includes:
It seems to be a thing about Tory governments in New Zealand, unique among other similar countries, that they will plow forward into massive cost-cutting measures, completely oblivious to any social costs down the road.
(Or indeed financial costs: how much money could Telecom have made for the government had we not sold it in 1990? Although it was a Labour government that sold it, its finance minister, Sir Roger Douglas, was a model for the National government that was elected that same year)
It is this blinkered approach that is loading up the handbasket. The Labour government may have been dull as old socks, but they implemented some good changes while managing to not make too big a mess. This new lot? The recession has given them carte blanche to steam in and fuck everything up for those who can least afford to be fucked with, and they're being cheered on by a majority of Kiwis who don't even realise what's going on.
To summarise, there's a good chance this country is ruined. There's a lot more to cover, about judicial reform, New Zealand democracy in general, and the sorry state of our media, but that requires a great deal more space and I need to go get some breakfast.
Too bad that we seemed to have sailed right back out of that territory again into terribly familiar waters. Visions of the 1990s are floating about in an unwelcome fashion, because you know that when a party famous for its dogged worship of economics and little else gains power during an economics-obsessed period in world financial history, the gloves will be coming off and the things which might enrich us as people are pushed aside in favour of blinkered decisions based on ideology. It also seems that "being retarded" is another deciding factor.
(Brief aside: anybody on TV or in print using the ghastly cliche "in this current economic climate" gets a punch in the neck. Public figures, use your imaginations! For once!)
Here are some things that have popped up just recently.
Let's close more rural schools! This was something that the previous Labour government was into, until Trevor Mallard suddenly realised that it was fucking stupid and slapped a five-year moratorium on closures. Now that's expired, and Education Minister Anne Tolley is gleefully rubbing her hands. The local paper alone featured a dozen schools looking down the barrel; some kids will face a 150 minute commute to and from the nearest school, which is basically inhuman. Yeah, yeah, Correspondence School and all that, but it's a bad excuse. Try telling these kids that they don't get to hang out with their friends all day anymore and see what happens.
We promise not to privatise anything in our first term! Oh, nice caveat. Very smooth. No-one at all will notice you assembling the menu for the second-term slaughterthon. The menu includes:
- The public service. The dialogue goes something like this:
"Hey! Public service! Be profitable or you're out! BTW we're cutting your budget."
"What? We're the public service, we're not meant to be profitable."
"You might be if you were privately owned!"
"Wait, no, put that axe down - *sputch!*" - Prisons, now with more shipping containers. The fundamental flaw with private prisons, which the US is experiencing without really realising it, is that prison profits hinge on number of inmates. This gives rise to a prison lobby that does its best to torpedo efforts to reduce prison population. In fact the more people in prison, the better!
- ACC (a public Accident Compensation fund, for my overseas readers). Because allowing Tories to get their hands on something that benefits workers and that employers see as a salty pain in the ass will work SO WELL.
- Meridian Energy. You know, it's not like power companies aren't already gouging us with inflated prices so they can pay monstrous bonuses to their chiefs; I'm sure privatising a power company wouldn't make this worse at all!
Shamubeel Eaqub, principal economist at the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research, said GST was a fair tax in the sense that it was uniform and avoided the distortions often found in the different rates of income tax. Increasing GST and lowering income tax rates would be a "positive" move in principle.Note to ivory tower economic knobtouchers: "uniform" does not equal "fair". In fact, where tax is concerned, uniform is in fact the opposite of fair. Doubly so here, since a low-income person will experience a tax increase; a high income person will not. Flat income taxes penalise those on the lowest income because...why am I even explaining this? It's Tax 101. I can only assume that the assholes who push these things do so because they have no conception of poverty, that poor people are an inconvenient speed bump on the road to accumulating more wealth.
It seems to be a thing about Tory governments in New Zealand, unique among other similar countries, that they will plow forward into massive cost-cutting measures, completely oblivious to any social costs down the road.
(Or indeed financial costs: how much money could Telecom have made for the government had we not sold it in 1990? Although it was a Labour government that sold it, its finance minister, Sir Roger Douglas, was a model for the National government that was elected that same year)
It is this blinkered approach that is loading up the handbasket. The Labour government may have been dull as old socks, but they implemented some good changes while managing to not make too big a mess. This new lot? The recession has given them carte blanche to steam in and fuck everything up for those who can least afford to be fucked with, and they're being cheered on by a majority of Kiwis who don't even realise what's going on.
To summarise, there's a good chance this country is ruined. There's a lot more to cover, about judicial reform, New Zealand democracy in general, and the sorry state of our media, but that requires a great deal more space and I need to go get some breakfast.
Thursday 23 July 2009
There's something on the wing!
As I work my way through a three-year-long wishlist back-catalogue of Xbox games, there's a strong danger of everything I say being a discussion of my emotional response to Game Z and no-one wants to read that shit. Well, not every day.
So today, a post about UFOs.
It was probably an early sign of future geekiness that I was a fan of UFOs during my turgid early years.* I read and watched everything I could get my hands on concerning Unidentified Flying Objects, because the idea of Aliens was cool (obviously at this point I was unacquainted with the works of Ridley Scott and James Cameron).
These days I am of a much more sober disposition, reluctant to see evidence of extra-terrestrial involvement in every light that blinks after dark. My family's native skepticism has soaked deeply into my judgement. I take great care to subject all observed phenomena to rigorous testing.
To date I have seen three things that I could explain by no means within the realms of our day-to-day experience and knowledge. The first was as a child, in the back of a van on its way into town. The second was biking home from Capping Show rehearsal. The third was very recently, at the last of the great Campbell St parties.
The party had spilled onto the deck, as it tended to do, even in winter. I had taken a step away from the group to look at the stars. They were very clear that night. Something tweaked my peripheral vision, and I spotted a light moving toward the zenith from the north-west. "Oh, a satellite," I said, "I haven't seen one of those in ages." King Richard was the only person who heard me. He turned to watch.
Every satellite I've seen has displayed identical behaviour: they trundle across the stars in a straight line, never in very much of a hurry. The observation of a couple of seconds indicated that this light was moving at a real clip, much faster than a satellite, yet slower than a meteor. Furthermore, the light was very clearly moving on a curved path, arcing around toward the south.
The real kicker, however, took place a second or so later. Now heading very much toward the south, the light's path abruptly angled about 30 degrees to the left. It continued in this new direction before fading from view in the manner of something that's really far away. King Richard confirmed that he'd seen the same thing as I had.
OK, checklist time. Things that it could not have been: plane, meteor, satellite, atmospheric disturbance, cloud or other weather effect, reflection, swamp gas, weather balloon. So what was it?
This is often the point at which people launch straight off into the deep end with something like "OMG IT MUST BE ALIENS." I'm not prepared to make any definitive statement about what it was that I saw. I just know that it was damn fast, possessed a not inconsiderable agility, and was completely silent.
There's a change that has overcome the term "UFO" in the last ten or fifteen years, one that has delegitimised it and turned it into a flag for mental fragility. It's assumed that "UFO" automatically means some 1950s vision of Little Green Men, or big-eyed folks with smooth skin and a penchant for violating oroficial privacy, and that the folks who see them are a little on non-linear side. It certainly no longer means that for which is is an acronym, i.e. thing in the sky which cannot be readily explained away.
Dennis Kucinich, candidate for the Democratic nomination in the last US election cycle, got a pretty raw deal from the media along these lines. Besides appearing more obsessed with his wife Elizabeth than with his progressive policies, they also brought up his admission that he'd seen a UFO, with a definite "surely a prospective candidate for the US Presidency cannot seriously believe in such crazy things" angle. Kucinich was rightly all "I just meant I saw something I couldn't explain, fucking duh. Jimmy Carter saw one too, where's the media hackjob on him?" but the damage was done.
Anyhoo. If anyone's got any good Stories of the Inexplicable, I'd love to hear 'em. And to nip this one in the bud, the identity of whoever let the dogs out will likely remain one of the great mysteries of our time.
* "turgid" is just the greatest word.
So today, a post about UFOs.
It was probably an early sign of future geekiness that I was a fan of UFOs during my turgid early years.* I read and watched everything I could get my hands on concerning Unidentified Flying Objects, because the idea of Aliens was cool (obviously at this point I was unacquainted with the works of Ridley Scott and James Cameron).
These days I am of a much more sober disposition, reluctant to see evidence of extra-terrestrial involvement in every light that blinks after dark. My family's native skepticism has soaked deeply into my judgement. I take great care to subject all observed phenomena to rigorous testing.
To date I have seen three things that I could explain by no means within the realms of our day-to-day experience and knowledge. The first was as a child, in the back of a van on its way into town. The second was biking home from Capping Show rehearsal. The third was very recently, at the last of the great Campbell St parties.
The party had spilled onto the deck, as it tended to do, even in winter. I had taken a step away from the group to look at the stars. They were very clear that night. Something tweaked my peripheral vision, and I spotted a light moving toward the zenith from the north-west. "Oh, a satellite," I said, "I haven't seen one of those in ages." King Richard was the only person who heard me. He turned to watch.
Every satellite I've seen has displayed identical behaviour: they trundle across the stars in a straight line, never in very much of a hurry. The observation of a couple of seconds indicated that this light was moving at a real clip, much faster than a satellite, yet slower than a meteor. Furthermore, the light was very clearly moving on a curved path, arcing around toward the south.
The real kicker, however, took place a second or so later. Now heading very much toward the south, the light's path abruptly angled about 30 degrees to the left. It continued in this new direction before fading from view in the manner of something that's really far away. King Richard confirmed that he'd seen the same thing as I had.
OK, checklist time. Things that it could not have been: plane, meteor, satellite, atmospheric disturbance, cloud or other weather effect, reflection, swamp gas, weather balloon. So what was it?
This is often the point at which people launch straight off into the deep end with something like "OMG IT MUST BE ALIENS." I'm not prepared to make any definitive statement about what it was that I saw. I just know that it was damn fast, possessed a not inconsiderable agility, and was completely silent.
There's a change that has overcome the term "UFO" in the last ten or fifteen years, one that has delegitimised it and turned it into a flag for mental fragility. It's assumed that "UFO" automatically means some 1950s vision of Little Green Men, or big-eyed folks with smooth skin and a penchant for violating oroficial privacy, and that the folks who see them are a little on non-linear side. It certainly no longer means that for which is is an acronym, i.e. thing in the sky which cannot be readily explained away.
Dennis Kucinich, candidate for the Democratic nomination in the last US election cycle, got a pretty raw deal from the media along these lines. Besides appearing more obsessed with his wife Elizabeth than with his progressive policies, they also brought up his admission that he'd seen a UFO, with a definite "surely a prospective candidate for the US Presidency cannot seriously believe in such crazy things" angle. Kucinich was rightly all "I just meant I saw something I couldn't explain, fucking duh. Jimmy Carter saw one too, where's the media hackjob on him?" but the damage was done.
Anyhoo. If anyone's got any good Stories of the Inexplicable, I'd love to hear 'em. And to nip this one in the bud, the identity of whoever let the dogs out will likely remain one of the great mysteries of our time.
* "turgid" is just the greatest word.
Wednesday 15 July 2009
Media roundup
It's been a busy and exciting time. Loads of new things to take in! I reckoned I'd let you know what I thought about them in descending order of relevance to the common man.
Music!
It's been really ages since I listened to any new music. No, yet another Halo soundtrack and ripping the game music out of World of Warcraft don't count. I had a crack at a method that's worked in the past: keep the Recommended Listening page on Questionable Content open in one tab, the City Library online catalogue open in the other. What I ended up with was this:
Royksopp - Junior
Who would have thought pop music could be so enjoyable? Lots of bright cheery sounds and lady vocals. Great stuff.
Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
Complex vocal layerings sung from the back of the room create a sound that is as compelling as it is unfamiliar. Held together by delicately sequenced electronic noodlings. This one's been on repeat pretty much since the day I got it.
If anyone's got any further recommendations, I'm all ears.
Film!
House-sitting lets me take advantage of Dad's monster TV and his region-free DVD player. International delights for all!
Mongol
Chronicles the rise of Genghis Khan. Makes him out to be a pretty stand-up guy. There's not much in the way of actual battles, but that's OK: all your attention will be on the mind-blowingly gorgeous Mongolian scenery.
Rec
You might also be familiar with its American version, Quarantine. For the uninitiated, Rec is a Spanish horror flick about people trapped in a building with some kind of nasty infection. We watch through the lens of a news crew following the firefighter who get called out to the scene. It's sort of The Blair Witch Project meets 28 Days Later.
The makers knew what they were doing. If there was a book called "How do to horror movies right," they learned it by heart. Rec hits all the bases, combining "BOO!" frights with the gnawing sort of fear that's much harder to pull off.
Muggins here decided to watch this while alone in a big dark house in the middle of nowhere. Not the brightest move, especially with the last 10-15 minutes being everything the box claims them to be. It isn't as utterly petrifying as the first half of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse, but it gets pretty damn close.
As much as I want to, I can't really talk about why it's so scary without spoiling the scares, so just go rent it, would you?
I've Loved You So Long
It's really hard watching the lovely Kristin Scott Thomas, made up like she just emerged from a concentration camp, spending almost the entire film in a blank-eyed fug of emotional self-mortification. The film is right there with you, willing her to believe that she deserves better.
This is another tricky one to talk about, given that the question lending the film its central moral and ethical thrust isn't even asked until the final scene. My review for the paper was singularly hard to write because of this.
My one hint: this is a film probably best appreciated by parents.
Lots of goodies coming to the cinema soon. Coraline, Public Enemies, Drag Me To Hell, District 9, Up.
Games!
Ah, finally we get to it. These are the things that have been provoking all the emotional responses lately.
Statute of Limitations Fair Warning: I'm probably going to talk about the ending of games that are two to three years old. If you're late to the party like me, and don't want to know the ins and outs of these things, now's a good time to stop reading.
Halo 3
There was no way this game would have been able to live up to the years of people telling me how good it was, so I'm not going to mark it down for not blowing me away as much as it should have. Certainly there were a goodly number of "holy shit!" moments, mostly involving colossal vistas a million kilometres across, but the story was only OK and the play ranged from "quite intensely pleasing" to "this is penance for something, I'm sure."
I'm going to skip my more detailed thoughts on the game itself and get right to the good bits: the relationship between Master Chief and Cortana, because secondary to being a "save the world" story, Halo is also a love story.
(There's another thing, but I'll get to it afterward)
Master Chief is a specially enhanced super-soldier (called a Spartan), bred since childhood for war. He can never have true friends, such is the pedestal upon which he has been placed. His few Spartan peers - the only friends he might actually have had - are all (presumed) dead. He's thrown into a terrible war, the fate of not only humanity but the entire galaxy resting firmly on his shoulders.
His only companion in this is Cortana, an AI construct bearing the imprint of the now-dead Dr Catherine Halsey, the overseer of the Spartan programme. She spends most of her time in his neural net, guiding him, warning him and implicitly encouraging and reassuring him. She herself is peerless, having no friends or associates other than Master Chief.
For the first two games the relationship is pretty understated. It's not until the third one that it becomes clear just how much the two need each other (for the super-oblivious, the final video really spells it out). It's there in Cortana's words and Master Chief's actions and body language. It mitigates the punch-in-the-gut ending somewhat, but that in itself is a way of farewelling the two for the time being.
The "other thing" I mentioned above is the participation of the Firefly guys. Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin and Alan Tudyk all voice random marines, and it's a pleasure to listen to them bringing their Firefly characters to the game.
Something outrageous happens, and there's Fillion yelling self-aggrandisingly, "That's right! That just happened!" Conclude a firefight and you hear Tudyk, in a very Wash-like fashion, ask for a check-up, or comment about how awesome he is - or about how awesome Master Chief is. Baldwin just channels Jayne the entire time, talking about wanting steak, or, you know, quoting Firefly directly. There are Firefly references ("shiny," "Gorram," etc) scattered throughout the dialogue.
The three of them have big parts in the upcoming Halo: ODST game too, which looks like crazy amounts of fun. Of course it helps that Fillion is a Halo 3 nut.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat
Brilliant, beautiful and yet awful at the same time. The full power of modern weapons directed against human beings is on display here, whether it be snuffing out men with a sniper rifle or annihilating their little glowing heat signatures during the utterly chilling Spectre gunship sequence (actual Spectre footage is...Christ, it's just ghastly). The Middle East street battles evoke the terror such fights must inspire; if it was anything like that over in Iraq, it's easy to see why kids with rifles went sailing right off the edge and shot anything they saw.
Visceral personal reactions aside, the game is made by the high-velocity, no-punches-pulled story and matching gameplay, as well as the gorgeous scenery. There's a flashback level set in Pripyat, Ukraine - the city right next to Chernobyl - which is all long grass, abandoned buildings and shadows. Can I have an entire game like that, please? Oh wait...
Gear of War 2
Blerg, I'm running out of steam here. Mallen and I have been playing through this co-op, and it's top stuff. I thought it would lack the punch of the first game, but Epic upped the ante with loads of challenging new monsters and some great level design: the Riftworm was a good idea executed dully, but the level following was the creepiest a game has been since System Shock 2 - and given that SS2 set the bar for creepiness and horror in sci-fi shooters, that's high praise.
OK, I've written myself into a stupor. Time to go pass out.
Music!
It's been really ages since I listened to any new music. No, yet another Halo soundtrack and ripping the game music out of World of Warcraft don't count. I had a crack at a method that's worked in the past: keep the Recommended Listening page on Questionable Content open in one tab, the City Library online catalogue open in the other. What I ended up with was this:
Royksopp - Junior
Who would have thought pop music could be so enjoyable? Lots of bright cheery sounds and lady vocals. Great stuff.
Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
Complex vocal layerings sung from the back of the room create a sound that is as compelling as it is unfamiliar. Held together by delicately sequenced electronic noodlings. This one's been on repeat pretty much since the day I got it.
If anyone's got any further recommendations, I'm all ears.
Film!
House-sitting lets me take advantage of Dad's monster TV and his region-free DVD player. International delights for all!
Mongol
Chronicles the rise of Genghis Khan. Makes him out to be a pretty stand-up guy. There's not much in the way of actual battles, but that's OK: all your attention will be on the mind-blowingly gorgeous Mongolian scenery.
Rec
You might also be familiar with its American version, Quarantine. For the uninitiated, Rec is a Spanish horror flick about people trapped in a building with some kind of nasty infection. We watch through the lens of a news crew following the firefighter who get called out to the scene. It's sort of The Blair Witch Project meets 28 Days Later.
The makers knew what they were doing. If there was a book called "How do to horror movies right," they learned it by heart. Rec hits all the bases, combining "BOO!" frights with the gnawing sort of fear that's much harder to pull off.
Muggins here decided to watch this while alone in a big dark house in the middle of nowhere. Not the brightest move, especially with the last 10-15 minutes being everything the box claims them to be. It isn't as utterly petrifying as the first half of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse, but it gets pretty damn close.
As much as I want to, I can't really talk about why it's so scary without spoiling the scares, so just go rent it, would you?
I've Loved You So Long
It's really hard watching the lovely Kristin Scott Thomas, made up like she just emerged from a concentration camp, spending almost the entire film in a blank-eyed fug of emotional self-mortification. The film is right there with you, willing her to believe that she deserves better.
This is another tricky one to talk about, given that the question lending the film its central moral and ethical thrust isn't even asked until the final scene. My review for the paper was singularly hard to write because of this.
My one hint: this is a film probably best appreciated by parents.
Lots of goodies coming to the cinema soon. Coraline, Public Enemies, Drag Me To Hell, District 9, Up.
Games!
Ah, finally we get to it. These are the things that have been provoking all the emotional responses lately.
Statute of Limitations Fair Warning: I'm probably going to talk about the ending of games that are two to three years old. If you're late to the party like me, and don't want to know the ins and outs of these things, now's a good time to stop reading.
Halo 3
There was no way this game would have been able to live up to the years of people telling me how good it was, so I'm not going to mark it down for not blowing me away as much as it should have. Certainly there were a goodly number of "holy shit!" moments, mostly involving colossal vistas a million kilometres across, but the story was only OK and the play ranged from "quite intensely pleasing" to "this is penance for something, I'm sure."
I'm going to skip my more detailed thoughts on the game itself and get right to the good bits: the relationship between Master Chief and Cortana, because secondary to being a "save the world" story, Halo is also a love story.
(There's another thing, but I'll get to it afterward)
Master Chief is a specially enhanced super-soldier (called a Spartan), bred since childhood for war. He can never have true friends, such is the pedestal upon which he has been placed. His few Spartan peers - the only friends he might actually have had - are all (presumed) dead. He's thrown into a terrible war, the fate of not only humanity but the entire galaxy resting firmly on his shoulders.
His only companion in this is Cortana, an AI construct bearing the imprint of the now-dead Dr Catherine Halsey, the overseer of the Spartan programme. She spends most of her time in his neural net, guiding him, warning him and implicitly encouraging and reassuring him. She herself is peerless, having no friends or associates other than Master Chief.
For the first two games the relationship is pretty understated. It's not until the third one that it becomes clear just how much the two need each other (for the super-oblivious, the final video really spells it out). It's there in Cortana's words and Master Chief's actions and body language. It mitigates the punch-in-the-gut ending somewhat, but that in itself is a way of farewelling the two for the time being.
The "other thing" I mentioned above is the participation of the Firefly guys. Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin and Alan Tudyk all voice random marines, and it's a pleasure to listen to them bringing their Firefly characters to the game.
Something outrageous happens, and there's Fillion yelling self-aggrandisingly, "That's right! That just happened!" Conclude a firefight and you hear Tudyk, in a very Wash-like fashion, ask for a check-up, or comment about how awesome he is - or about how awesome Master Chief is. Baldwin just channels Jayne the entire time, talking about wanting steak, or, you know, quoting Firefly directly. There are Firefly references ("shiny," "Gorram," etc) scattered throughout the dialogue.
The three of them have big parts in the upcoming Halo: ODST game too, which looks like crazy amounts of fun. Of course it helps that Fillion is a Halo 3 nut.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat
Brilliant, beautiful and yet awful at the same time. The full power of modern weapons directed against human beings is on display here, whether it be snuffing out men with a sniper rifle or annihilating their little glowing heat signatures during the utterly chilling Spectre gunship sequence (actual Spectre footage is...Christ, it's just ghastly). The Middle East street battles evoke the terror such fights must inspire; if it was anything like that over in Iraq, it's easy to see why kids with rifles went sailing right off the edge and shot anything they saw.
Visceral personal reactions aside, the game is made by the high-velocity, no-punches-pulled story and matching gameplay, as well as the gorgeous scenery. There's a flashback level set in Pripyat, Ukraine - the city right next to Chernobyl - which is all long grass, abandoned buildings and shadows. Can I have an entire game like that, please? Oh wait...
Gear of War 2
Blerg, I'm running out of steam here. Mallen and I have been playing through this co-op, and it's top stuff. I thought it would lack the punch of the first game, but Epic upped the ante with loads of challenging new monsters and some great level design: the Riftworm was a good idea executed dully, but the level following was the creepiest a game has been since System Shock 2 - and given that SS2 set the bar for creepiness and horror in sci-fi shooters, that's high praise.
OK, I've written myself into a stupor. Time to go pass out.
Monday 22 June 2009
On games
It had been in my mind for some time to pick up an Xbox 360. Well, last week I did just that; one of the new 150 watt versions that don't Red Ring of Death. This last was purely by accident - I had asked around about them, no-one seemed to know anything, so I threw up my hands and said "screw it!" and was promptly pleasantly surprised.
So far I have Gears of War, Halo 3 and Halo Wars (the latter came bundled with the console). A little bit about each:
Gears: ultra-violent "save the earth" chainsawing simulator with super-hard protagonists, a neat cover system and the ability to shoot dudes with orbital lasers. I'd never played through it properly, start to finish, so it was most gratifying doing so with Mallen.
It's a highly visceral game, and not just because of the vats of gore and body parts spilled. It's the chainsaw option that really makes it. Rev your chain bayonet, run up to a Locust and carve him in twain. There's even a sort of mini cutscene when you do it, complete with blood splattering all over the camera.
It is an action for which you are rewarded in the most fundamental way possible: your body dumps all kinds of delicious chemicals into your heart and brain and you receive a primal pat on the back for vanquishing your foe so conclusively. The hit is especially potent if the game has been frustrating you; it's like an orgasm for your heart and limbs.
Do researchers into video game violence include this kind of biochemical factor in their reasoning? I kill a guy and my body rewards me for it. How is that not intoxicating on some level? (I should note that I'm carving up actual monsters here. Games where humans get a similar treatment repel me.)
I felt a similar way playing World of Warcraft. I became frustrated after a run of bad luck, and required vengeance, something my warlock's drain-life-over-time spells were simply not capable of giving properly. I couldn't kill that orc any harder than I already was. So I switched to my warrior, getting up close and hearing the meaty thwacks and thumps of the critical hits, watching the numbers fill my screen, and it was much, much more satisfying.
I'd love for someone to tell me conclusively why this might be.
Anyway, back on topic.
Halo Wars: A neat, compact little Real Time Strategy game, doing its simple console RTS thing. It's fairly basic, but it contains little bonuses for players of the Halo series - the marines (including Australian Guy) chatter amongst themselves amusingly, there's lots of unit back and forth about combat ("Aw man, there's Grunt bits all over the grille!"), and when you first see Spartans...oh boy did I get a shiver down my spine. I'm not even especially invested in the setting. There's just something about them, some aura of badassery that bleeds out and infects you. And that was even before they'd shown up in-mission and started doing their thing...
Oh, and there are really neat little cinematics after pretty much every mission. It's a polished if somewhat shallow product.
Halo 3: I'm saving this one. I want to play through Halo 2 again and it hasn't arrived in the shop yet.
Halo was a seminal title, innovative and compulsive despite its abominably designed levels (publish a level like The Library today and you'd get lynched). The second game was a big improvement that resonated with me emotionally, for unknown reasons. Perhaps it was the apocalyptic feel the game's last chapters summoned (something I really like in media); maybe it was the tug of destiny felt throughout the game, combined with that sense of unknowable and ancient mystery.
I'm really looking forward beginning the third game. I've played a bit but not enough to adequately appreciate its full breadth.
One more thing: while in Wellington recently I played Flower on the PS3 ("flower" as in bloom, rather than one who flows), and it is about as close to magic as I've ever experienced in a game. You control a flower petal that floats about on the breeze, causing other flowers to bloom and thereby making the dry grass green again. When you hit that last flower and the green spreads out across the hillocks like a ripple, fresh flowers blooming in its wake...well, that's something special right there.
It hits all my buttons - open, sunlit landscapes; ancient standing stones; artifacts in the middle of nowhere (wind turbines in this case) - presented in an enchanting visual and audio style that really just knocked my socks off.
If you have a PS3, there's no excuse for not snagging this off PSN right now.
So far I have Gears of War, Halo 3 and Halo Wars (the latter came bundled with the console). A little bit about each:
Gears: ultra-violent "save the earth" chainsawing simulator with super-hard protagonists, a neat cover system and the ability to shoot dudes with orbital lasers. I'd never played through it properly, start to finish, so it was most gratifying doing so with Mallen.
It's a highly visceral game, and not just because of the vats of gore and body parts spilled. It's the chainsaw option that really makes it. Rev your chain bayonet, run up to a Locust and carve him in twain. There's even a sort of mini cutscene when you do it, complete with blood splattering all over the camera.
It is an action for which you are rewarded in the most fundamental way possible: your body dumps all kinds of delicious chemicals into your heart and brain and you receive a primal pat on the back for vanquishing your foe so conclusively. The hit is especially potent if the game has been frustrating you; it's like an orgasm for your heart and limbs.
Do researchers into video game violence include this kind of biochemical factor in their reasoning? I kill a guy and my body rewards me for it. How is that not intoxicating on some level? (I should note that I'm carving up actual monsters here. Games where humans get a similar treatment repel me.)
I felt a similar way playing World of Warcraft. I became frustrated after a run of bad luck, and required vengeance, something my warlock's drain-life-over-time spells were simply not capable of giving properly. I couldn't kill that orc any harder than I already was. So I switched to my warrior, getting up close and hearing the meaty thwacks and thumps of the critical hits, watching the numbers fill my screen, and it was much, much more satisfying.
I'd love for someone to tell me conclusively why this might be.
Anyway, back on topic.
Halo Wars: A neat, compact little Real Time Strategy game, doing its simple console RTS thing. It's fairly basic, but it contains little bonuses for players of the Halo series - the marines (including Australian Guy) chatter amongst themselves amusingly, there's lots of unit back and forth about combat ("Aw man, there's Grunt bits all over the grille!"), and when you first see Spartans...oh boy did I get a shiver down my spine. I'm not even especially invested in the setting. There's just something about them, some aura of badassery that bleeds out and infects you. And that was even before they'd shown up in-mission and started doing their thing...
Oh, and there are really neat little cinematics after pretty much every mission. It's a polished if somewhat shallow product.
Halo 3: I'm saving this one. I want to play through Halo 2 again and it hasn't arrived in the shop yet.
Halo was a seminal title, innovative and compulsive despite its abominably designed levels (publish a level like The Library today and you'd get lynched). The second game was a big improvement that resonated with me emotionally, for unknown reasons. Perhaps it was the apocalyptic feel the game's last chapters summoned (something I really like in media); maybe it was the tug of destiny felt throughout the game, combined with that sense of unknowable and ancient mystery.
I'm really looking forward beginning the third game. I've played a bit but not enough to adequately appreciate its full breadth.
One more thing: while in Wellington recently I played Flower on the PS3 ("flower" as in bloom, rather than one who flows), and it is about as close to magic as I've ever experienced in a game. You control a flower petal that floats about on the breeze, causing other flowers to bloom and thereby making the dry grass green again. When you hit that last flower and the green spreads out across the hillocks like a ripple, fresh flowers blooming in its wake...well, that's something special right there.
It hits all my buttons - open, sunlit landscapes; ancient standing stones; artifacts in the middle of nowhere (wind turbines in this case) - presented in an enchanting visual and audio style that really just knocked my socks off.
If you have a PS3, there's no excuse for not snagging this off PSN right now.
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