Kim has posted some interesting thoughts in response to my earlier post about pregnancy, emergency contraception, and other topics I’m not really qualified to discuss. Just in case you were interested in a slightly different take on the subject.
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I was in Chicago last week for a conference–and while the conference was reasonably fun, my annual trip to Games Plus was even more so. Each year, as a reward for surviving several days’ worth of networking and schmoozing at the conference, I travel to Games Plus to browse the aisles of that gaming Mecca.
My acquisition this year was Weapons of the Gods, a wuxia martial-arts game set in mythic China (think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). This is one of those games I purchased at least partly so that I can boast that my gaming library includes it–my game bookshelf (OK, make that bookshelves) contains RPGs covering most every genre known to man–fantasy, sci-fi, horror, western, pulp, samurai, and various combinations thereof), but nothing that would be of much help should a group of angry gamers burst into my living room and demand that I run a mythic China RPG right now. (Hey, it could happen!)
Of course, I had brought along some RPG reading material to the conference to help me survive through the several days until my Games Plus trip. My evening reading this year consisted of Conspiracy X and the new d20 version of Dark*Matter, both of them set in the government/alien/conspiracy genre and quite clearly based heavily on The X-Files.
Both are great games, but is it just me or is the whole government-conspiracy angle decidedly less compelling than it was a decade ago? Back in the early 1990s, it was perhaps shocking to learn, when confronted with a mysterious event or sinister cover-up, that The Government was responsible. Imagine, our own government doing something shady behind the scenes! These days, I’m so jaded that I’d be shocked to hear that the government isn’t responsible for a given sinister conspiracy. Whether or not the government-conspiracy angle is still scary, I may soon find out–both CX and D*M are on the list as potential candidates for my annual Halloween Game Day.
In the meantime, I’ll try and hark back to the day when “trust no one” wasn’t a perfectly reasonable way to approach politics, government, and everyday life…
by It’s been a while since my last post–but between a work conference and other Real Life excitement, I’ve not had much time to devote to gaming. I will note quickly, however, that the results of the gaming hobby survey are in, and have been compiled over at Wargamer.com. Interesting reading–go check it out!
by I can certainly identify with these journalists, faced with the challenge of making sense out of David Lynch’s latest movie:
Asked if the film was supposed to make sense, Lynch told a news conference following a press screening: “It’s supposed to make perfect sense.” […]
Lynch was in no mood to help journalists fathom the film’s meaning.
When asked to explain the appearance of three actors wearing rabbits’ heads, one of whom stands in the corner doing the ironing, the 60-year-old replied: “No, I can’t explain that.”
I can appreciate Lynch’s desire to not out and explain the symbolism behind his movie before mainstream viewers get a chance to try figuring it out for themselves. But I think I’m going to have to side with the bewildered journalists here. I can testify that Lynch’s films, while interesting in a what-the-heck-is-going-on sort of way, definitely do not “make perfect sense,” and if Lynch is under the impression that they do, then somebody’s confused, and it ain’t just the people watching his movies. Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive are two of the least comprehensible films I’ve seen in my entire life. I’ve seen some truly noble and tortured attempts online to wring coherence out of both of those films, but to little avail.
I love a good perplexing book or movie that requries concentration, discussion, and even research to interpret. Some of my favorite such stories are those that, even after I’ve read and understood them, still leave me with the nagging sense that I haven’t really uncovered everything the creator intended me to find–those are books and films I can revisit years down the road, always finding new bits and pieces of meaning. But if you don’t provide the audience the contextual clues they need to even begin deciphering your work of art, then you might as well just be making the film for yourself, because nobody else has the slightest clue what you’re trying to say. Maybe Mulholland Drive makes perfect sense to David Lynch, but I’ll go ahead and bet that 99% of its viewers were left scratching their heads when the credits rolled. He’s certainly created something that’s vaguely impressive, but a work of art that speaks to people? Not so much.
So go ahead and keep making movies, Mr. Lynch. But try not to act quite so surprised when nobody seems to know what the heck you’re trying to say. The rest of us are busy entertaining ourselves with much less artsy fare–things like Arrested Development, with such populist and unsubtle scenes as this:
Rita: Is that a story?
Maeby: Not yet. It doesn’t have an ending. He’s in LA, she’s in Japan–how do I get these two characters together?
Rita: Maybe they could walk.
Maeby: Across the ocean?
Rita: If it’s not too deep.
Maeby: No… deep is good. People are gonna say “What the hell just happened? I better say I like it,” ’cause nobody wants to seem stupid.
Rita: I like it!
by Last week, I managed to get XGL running in Linux. (Given the infamous difficulty–at least in my personal experience–involved in successfuly implementing anything video card-related in Linux, I think this qualifies me as some sort of extreme hacker.) At the moment, XGL basically adds a number of nifty features and eye candy to the Linux desktop. It’s still a bit rough around the edges, but it looks really nice, and several of the features are right on par with the Mac desktop features they’re clearly imitating. Other goodies include some slick-looking window animations and assorted 3d-ish effects. Here’s a few screenshots, of the fancy desktop-switching eye candy and the OS X Expose-style window selector respectively:
I don’t think it’s going to have Mac users tripping over their discarded MacBooks in a frantic rush to embrace Linux–at least, not until XGL takes less than a days’ worth of tweaking to install and get running. But it’s certainly nice to have a Linux desktop that looks as nifty-keen as a Mac desktop for a change!
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