Remi's Bloglet - Sunday 2 February 2003

Um, game? _
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09:03:27 PM, Sunday 2 February 2003

I kept trying to put the Columbia tragedy into words. These starkly normal pictures of debris in Nacogdoches, TX pretty much sum it up. _
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10:01:14 PM, Saturday 1 February 2003

And I'd just like to say, "Johnny Cash's 'Hurt' video rules!" Creepy, moving stuff. If you have a chance to see it, do so. _
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03:05:17 AM, Saturday 1 February 2003

Just in case you were wondering, Susan Orlean like 'Adaptation'.

[via kottke] _
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02:51:59 AM, Saturday 1 February 2003

I missed her joining the 'mass, but Welcome Erika! _
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02:40:39 AM, Saturday 1 February 2003

"To pull a woman's arm off only pulling on the finger, there's only one explanation."
"Yeah?"
"Ninja Lions, Dan, Ninja Lions." _
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02:11:16 AM, Saturday 1 February 2003

Okay, I have a problem. The site that Too Fat to be a Rockstar was on has disappeared completely from keenspace. I don't have any of the first 2 or 3 months of Too Fat strips in complete final form due to an archival failure from when the idiots at Mac Medics copied the hard-drive of the computer that died on me. Some of the strips show up on Google image search, but not when I click through. Is there any way I can get these strips back? _
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02:57:53 AM, Friday 31 January 2003

Peter Jackson has stoked more fan outrage by adding a new character to Return of the King. _
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02:04:43 AM, Friday 31 January 2003

Yes! Spirited Away will have a deluxe 2-DVD release on April 15th! I loved this movie so much, and this quick-turnaround release on DVD will allow so many other people to discover the beauty and wonder and vitality of Spirited Away. Also on the slate for release on the same day are Kiki's Delivery Service and Castle in the Sky, both worthy Miyazaki movies. I've watched Castle untranslated a few times, it'll be nice to be able to know what's actually happening. It's also good to see Disney finaly making good on its partnership with Studio Ghibli (Hayao Miyazaki's animation house) and put these out. _
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02:03:00 AM, Friday 31 January 2003

This is for the Feng Shui players out there: Robin Laws, creator of Feng Shui, is, according to this interview, the new writer of Iron Man. IRON MAN. _
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01:54:47 AM, Friday 31 January 2003

An amazing gallery of beetle pictures. Give a click here or here or here, and be amazed at the beauty of one of our most common kind of friend. There's posters and books available on the site, if you want a more constant reminder of the incredible variety of nature. _
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01:51:43 AM, Friday 31 January 2003

Maybe the Flaming Lips have sold out. _
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01:47:33 AM, Friday 31 January 2003

A pretty cool article on the link, or lack of a link, between fat and fitness, and the dangers of the thin craze, in the New Republic (registration required).
[Via Metafilter] _
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01:46:48 AM, Friday 31 January 2003

Yeah, I'm supposed to be in bed, but I just finished Coraline. Deliciously creepy with a very strange, but utterly appealing, heroine. There's a very few kinds of stories that I read that immediately send me into a sort of mind-buzz where all the ideas in the book seem new and interesting and utterly consuming, and they sort of bounce around and move and keep me awake and vibrating, and Coraline is one of those stories. My only complaint is it felt so much like a timeless fairy tale that the references to computers and microwaves felt out of place and irrelevant. That's hardly even a quibble, though. What a fantastic book! (thanks again, Julia) _
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05:01:33 AM, Thursday 30 January 2003

I'm back. I have a job. It's coming together. _
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02:23:58 AM, Thursday 30 January 2003

I'm taking a week off from the blogmass. I can still be reached via e-mail and AIM. _
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12:17:47 AM, Friday 24 January 2003

Salon does DOOOOM! _
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10:05:37 AM, Wednesday 22 January 2003

::sigh:: "Get a Writing Sample" didn't mean 'bring in a piece of writing that's polished', it means that I have to do some sort of essay during the cattlecall interview. I haven't written an extemporaneous, hand-written essay since high school. Luckily, I vaguely remember how to write AP-style essays. If I get this job, I'll write Mr. Ruppel and thank him again. DOOM _
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09:35:22 AM, Wednesday 22 January 2003

The George Foreman grill does a surprisingly good job on grilled cheese. It's a little wavy (because the grill iron is wavy), but the bread comes out nicely browned and crunch, and the cheese is wonderfully melted. I've never been able to not-burn grilled cheese before. _
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01:05:59 AM, Wednesday 22 January 2003

So I'm thinking, for my birthday (in three months, can't start planning too early), of putting together a one-off band to cover geek/freak/outcast songs. I'm thinking along the lines of early Talking Heads, TMBG, Moxy Fruvous, Muppets songs, the weirder bits of Tom Waits' catalog, things like that. Any suggestions? I'm looking for 45-60 minutes of music.

(Also, I'm still waiting on HotB CD's from a couple of people. C'mon, folks, it's been almost two months, get on the stick!) _
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06:53:43 PM, Tuesday 21 January 2003

So a judge declares X-Men toys 'nonhuman' to give Marvel a lower tariff tax and the fanboys go NUTS! "The X-Men are all about tolerance towards mutants. They fight to be seen as human," they scream and snivel! It's a bunch of toys based on fictional characters, you hunchbacked morons! Action figures with skingtight suits and bulging crotches! This is not a life-changing event or a challenge to the precepts of philosophy. It's just toys with erections. Sometimes I just want to burn all my comics and never look back at this twisted wreckage of a storytelling medium. _
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03:01:57 AM, Tuesday 21 January 2003

Warren Ellis talked about CSI in one of his Bad Signal e-mails, and it seemed a shame that anyone should miss it:

CSI is exerting an unnatural fascination for me at the moment. Both CSI and CSI MIAMI. Because they're both the same. Both feature gifted actors who don't really have a lot to act with. Their characters exist as names, one or two background notes -- he's an ex-gambler, she used to date snipers -- and one or if you're really fucking lucky two recurring personality traits. Poor old George Eads in CSI only has one background note. His character's from Texas. That's it. He's got a name and a state.

But it doesn't matter. This is what I hooked into with AUTHORITY. Sometimes, it just doesn't matter.

CSI is about invincible robots hunting you down with implacable determination from the analysis of the faded and ephemeral fart you released at the crime scene.

Doesn't matter if you committed your crime while swaddled in eight metres of bubblewrap. Someone will have coughed on that bubblewrap before it was sold to you, and the nanoscopic degraded remains of their sputum will inevitably connect you to the crime.

William Petersen is studying the shape of your fart in a three-dimensional volume of air -- and he knows you had a pint of lager on Sunday.

And broccoli in your Sunday lunch.

They have no personalities. Their interpersonal relationships are so vestigial as to be pointless, and ultimately could be faked by a couple of computers. In the world of CSI, you cannot escape them. Piss in the wrong place and in ten minutes Jorja Fox will be sticking a Q-tip up your willy and connecting you with the infamous bloke-who-took-a-slash-up-the-side-of-The-Luxor case...

They'd be the new Sweeney (http://www.thesweeney.co.uk), if they had personalities and guns. But no. They are faceless and you cannot reason with them and they will not stop and they will not sleep until they have used the great machine of Police and amazing technology that JPL keyboard monkeys jerk off over before bedtime to hunt you down and stick you in prison.

Behave, or David Caruso and his creepy monotone will get you.
_
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04:47:57 PM, Monday 20 January 2003

Warren Ellis is right, this is very beautiful _
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03:59:50 AM, Monday 20 January 2003

What the hell? When did dollarshort get so ugly? _
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03:38:03 AM, Monday 20 January 2003

Game Quote of the Day:
JESUS FUCK, PHIL! I knew I should have wiped my feet more carefully before leaving hell! _
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02:53:52 AM, Sunday 19 January 2003

Saw Adaptation this afternoon. A movie that wears its flaws as merit badges, and has an ending so ridiculous it can't be anything but a synthesis of ideas earlier in the movie, all horribly and hilarious presaged throughout. Nicholas Cage is funny and winning in his double roll, and the guy who was the lead in Office Space plays a hilariously slimy agent. Very entertaining. _
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09:21:52 PM, Saturday 18 January 2003

Don't take this the wrong way, but Moira has made my life more difficult. I used to be the only one with a capital R in the blog title. I'd scan the blt list and get all excited when I saw the 'R'. Now Moira's blog has a capital 'R', too, and I get that little thrill followed by little letdown, because all the comments are for her. I'll live, though, because it's worth it to know when Moira posts, and hopefully this will help me read her blog more faithfully instead of in fits and spurts (furts and spits?). Welcome to the blt'ed 'mass, Moira! _
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02:19:18 PM, Saturday 18 January 2003

For all you people who ever worked downtown (at least until the summer of 2000), Penny Arcade has a Sweet Factory reference. Ah, if only it were true that giant reptillian killing machines visited that soulless place of overpriced candy dispensement, perhaps Dave Bohannon would not have gone mad. _
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11:20:07 PM, Friday 17 January 2003

Applying for a job grading tests, again. But this time I'm early enough to get in on the first round of 'interviews', which are more like cattle-calls. Assuming that I haven't gone illiterate in the past few months I'll do fine. _
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11:36:19 PM, Thursday 16 January 2003

I really, really hate Charles Taylor's reviewing style and taste. But even an elitist asshole can have a few good ideas. His views on the place of critics are right on. _
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11:30:21 PM, Thursday 16 January 2003

Still occasionally getting cheapie games for the ol' Dreamcast, the latest acquisition is Rayman 2. It's fun, and the graphics and characters are suitably wacky enough to keep me entertained. But I am going mad collecting all these stupid Lums. _
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11:27:00 PM, Thursday 16 January 2003

Nooooooooooooooooooooo!
(yes, I realize it's pathetic) _
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01:25:15 AM, Wednesday 15 January 2003

I had forgotten what a mess quote games made of blt. _
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12:54:21 AM, Wednesday 15 January 2003

Didn't get the job. _
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12:48:54 PM, Tuesday 14 January 2003

That was an pretty silly way to spend two hours. _
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04:02:58 AM, Tuesday 14 January 2003

Greg Costikyan's blog has been mentioned in a number of places, but don't miss his article on storytelling and gaming, which is a great, well thought-out, read. _
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11:57:26 PM, Monday 13 January 2003

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