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Sweet! Woohoo! Bitchin! Wooohooo! First Post! Wooohoooo! Sweet.

Cool stuff Nate. Consider yourself bookmarked.

no one here but us chickens.

just so you know, you are twice the Blogger Jim is already by having a comment section.

Jim, I notice your blog refers to bloggers named Tacitus and Hesiod. Did you foist those Classicisms on them too? Is Petronius taken yet?

Nate, I’m in agreement with you here, Liberia is our concern and we should be doing something about it. In the past, we have taken on conflicts caused by other nations, France’s in Indochina, France’s and Britain’s in the deconstruction of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the modern states of the Middle East. This problem is uniquely ours. Southern states, such as Virginia and Maryland, pushed for a colony in Africa to relocate their free black citizens. I wonder how many American’s realize that the capital of Liberia, Monrovia, is named after the fifth president of the United States?

Ed: Yeah, I kind of knew I was stretching with the sex lives bit. It’s a long progression, but it goes something like this:

You People voted for the top 100 and put Tolkien on the top.
Tolkien is all right — when I’m ill. When I’m ill, I want to rest, and not think about or have sex, and since there’s no sex in Tolkien’s world, it’s restful.
Therefore those of you who read Tolkien all the time and vote for him on top 100 lists must feel all the time the desire to rest and not think about sex that I feel only when I am ill. Your sex lives suck.

Like I said, a stretch.

Doh. Message to self… don’t make a word plural with an apostrophe, especially when you’re trying to be pompus.

Ed: Anything after the Peleponnesian War I consider too recent to have sorted itself out yet, and of no interest. So I’m definitely in the clear on Tacitus. Hesiod misspelled “Theogony,” so I ain’t taking the blame for that.

The shattering truth is that I didn’t suggest “Polytropos” as a blog name exactly. Actually I sort of did in a throwaway “surely you’re not interested in this killer blog name” way, but it was really one of the candidate names for a PC superhero of mine in our new Marvel Universe RPG campaign.

I WILL take partial credit for the description, “A blog of twists and turns” though.

Nate,
Good commentary. I side with your pessimism. Bush has stated his doctrine, and now people are wondering if it applies to more than just states with oil or ones his father fought against. My guess? Nope. Given that North Korea (a whole other ball of wax altogether, granted) has given outright proof of its nuclear capabilties and the President has barely batted an eyelash, I doubt heavily that this administration will have the balls to back up its own doctrine. It’s a really similar situation to what happened after the war in Iraq–very well thought out and executed front-end policy, no thought whatsoever given to what would happen next as a result of it.
*Sigh* So nice to share ideas with one person at a time, and one whom I won’t piss off inadvertantly at that. Keep up the great writing.

This is a test to see whether I’ve made it so you don’t have to submit an email address.

Noticed that you’d linked to my blog, but couldn’t figure out why or where… the HP article it turned out. Great that it was useful to someone.

She’s as faithful, longsuffering, and forgiving as Penelope.

Oooh… there’s a Telemachus on the way isn’t there? Or a Telemache….

Voice In Head kicks ass!

Of course, I didn’t remember about the pictures until after I posted.

Nate,

I enjoyed your piece on Backgammon. I have a question you might be able to help me with. My father was an avid Backgammon player while he was in the Navy, and they had a variant of Backgammon that I think was called “Acey-Duce”. Do you know anything about the variant?

Thanks,
Ed

An extra roll if you roll 2-1? I’d win every game I played.

Oh please please please tell me that the New Pornographers were all my doing…

[fingers crossed please please please fingers crossed]

Thanks for the plug, Nate! We even got a mention in this week’s Baltimore Guide. http://www.ebguide.com/selead2.html
It’s the second story, halfway down the page. It’s a little scant on details, but it’s somethin.

Wouldn’t a Polytropsosmobile be a car of twists and turns? Sounds scary to drive. Be careful.

Hey #1. My first venture to Polytropos, and I get to read about good ol’ Potter. I’m barely smart enough to read the books (they’re long and don’t have pictures), let alone any of the literary criticism thingies you and your pals are slinging around (where did I put that Thesaurus anyway?), but in my humble opinion, you are right on the money. You expressed my thoughts so well that I didn’t even know I had some of them until you just told me so. Except for one eensy weensy little thing: Quidditch is cool. And the only reason you don’t know this is because you don’t, as far as I know, like any sport. (I believe you once asked me whether Barry Sanders played for the Red Wings). So you’ll no doubt parden me if I express some skepticism about your qualifications (bright and articulate though you are) to comment negatively, positively, or really in any conceivable fashion, about the rules of any sporting event. And if your team was busy “supporting” your seeker (I’m not really sure how that would go — does it involve yelling encouragement?), my team would be busy tossing the Quaffle through your unminded goal and and earning 10 points a shot. By the time your crack unit spotted the Snitch, my team wold be slurping butterbeers in our dorm’s common room.

So – thought it might be good to get a little diversity in here. Good old-fashioned mindless sports talk. Not a big word to be found. But way, way too many parentheticals. (Sorry).

Nate,

You forgot to mention the cardon-dioxide filling trunk that Smug had.

I’ll see ya there tomorrow, I hope.

nate, hope you’re having fun — like your site! let’s talk sometime about your methods (and madness)…
c.

Ed: You have no idea.

Matt: I think he only filled it up like that for you . . .

Nate #2: You haven’t read any Jeeves and Wooster. Shame on you, man. Get with it. Talk to Matt.

Matt: This one was read by Frederick Davidson. I’ll burn it for you. For myself, too — I didn’t get a chance to hear it since I ended up playing Goblet of Fire the whole time.

Ed’s going to run a of game of ‘Life with Master’ at work. I’m looking forward to it, and hope to blog on it afterwards.

I would say that we have significant interest in Liberia.

Nicholas Kristof, in a opinion piece in today’s New York Times — Hearing Liberia’s Pleas — has this to say: “Liberia’s warfare has already infected Sierra Leone, Guinea and Ivory Coast, costing perhaps a half-million lives in all since Charles Taylor grabbed Liberia in 1989.” He warns that a West Africa in turmoil could result in the same conditions as existed in Taliban dominated Afghanistan.

Whether we like it or not, one leg of combating terrorism is going to have to be helping maintain world stability. We and our allies must act so that conditions of lawlessness do not completely engulf West Africa and other regions.

Alan -

We certainly come from different premises and will have to agree to disagree. I’m not willing to make a blanket statement about whether or not the U.S. should deploy armed forces on humanitarian missions.

On the Iraq War, I’m one of those people who think that the long-term effects of getting involved there will be counterproductive to our efforts against terrorism, and thus ultimately against our self-interest.

Nate, I left a hole in that “blanket statement.” I would have considered supporting a Rawandan intervention. But I don’t think it’s a good idea to deploy U.S. forces into the middle of a civil war, merely to stalemate a battle that’s causing a lot of civilian casualties. If the objective were to finish off Taylor, then get out, that might be a different matter; but no one has proposed such a course of action.

BTW, I disagree with Hand’s false parallel between Afghanistan and Liberia. The latter is not an Islamic nation, and it hosts no anti-American movement that I know of. That will come later, if we’re foolish enough to play “peacekeeper” among people who haven’t finished killing each other. This principle applies to the West Bank also.

As for Iraq: if not there, where? Saddam’s regime was the weak link in the chain of Islamic terror. Now we’ve broken it. Suddenly the Saudis are killing terrorists, the Palestinians are looking less intransigent, and the mullahs of Iran are desperately trying to contain a democracy movement. These are not coincidences; they are proof that Bush has done the right thing.

Thanks again for the Planetary books, Nate. I’m already into the second one.

And you can mention to Jonathan he can borrow mine anytime.

Actually, according to Gaiman “1602″ is pointedly NOT a “What If” story. It’s in continuity.

Make of that what you will…

Oh and…Nice blog.

– MDT

Nate, and others who are interested in Planetary. I have to admit that I don’t share your enthusiasm for Planetary. If you are interested in hearing why, let me direct you to the Captain Comics Message Board:

http://www.captaincomics.us/forums/index.php?showtopic=167

I posted a rather long analysis there, too long to just re-post over here (I think, I’m willing to post it if someone wants me to).

Of course he’s going to say it’s not a “what if” thing, so that readers don’t pigeonhole or prejudge it. Doesn’t mean it ain’t so.

Crazy Igor’s… thought they went out of biz… what is the story do they still have a store or does igor just go to the cons?
Hogan

Can I barge in on the conversation and ask for some Hellboy suggestions? It looks really fascinating, but I’m not sure where to start (and the books are numerous and pricey enough that buying them all isn’t an option at the moment). Where would I start with Hellboy? Is it chronological, or can I jump in wherever I want?

Maybe the President has confused you, Ed. He often seems a bit confused himself. “War on Terrorism” is a nonsensical misnomer. Terrorism is a tactic, not an adversary. For whatever reasons, Bush can’t bring himself to say “War on Islamic Fascism.”

We’re fighting an international movement that’s funded by our own petrodollars and bent on destroying the Great Satan. I cannot imagine any threat of such magnitude arising separately in West Africa. I do not believe that America can or should intervene in every local conflict.

I would have to disagree with your characterisation, Alan. If you want to get particular, “Islamic Fascism” would be a form of government, not an adversary. In this “War on Terrorism” we find ourselves in, our adversaries are those that would use terrorism to futher their goals. The president has been clear about that, as I have.

Clearly, you see circumstances in which we would get involved in a local conflict, such as your mention of Rwanda in a prior post. Perhaps we disagree to the severity of the conflict before the United States should get involved. Is half-a-million deaths enough for you? How about a million? Is the collapse of three nations good enough?

I believe we have a moral responsibility to provide aid and assistance to other nations and their people. Call me an idealist or call me naive, that is the way I see our role in the world.

Alan – Thank you for the clarification. As I said, clearly we disagree on the role of the United States in the world. I think when the people of a nation ask us to alleviate their suffering, as the people of Liberia have asked us, we should respond. IMHO, it is the right thing to do. Take Care. – Ed

Cool! Thanks for the Hellboy tips. On your advice I think I’ll go for Seeds of Destruction and proceed from there.

I agree. When we enter a situation with military force, we should have clear goals.

Hi Ed – Our yoga studio teaches Hatha yoga. I think I would be getting more out of the prenatal yoga if I had never taken yoga before because we obviously take it pretty slowly. It’s worth it, though, just to talk with other pregnant women and share our experiences. The teacher has some really good advice, as well. Congratulations on your little one! ~ Suanna

This years GenCon brought out lots of pretty diverse Star Wars costumes- ones prior were pretty much just jedi’s, storm troopers, etc – this year had a great selection.

Nate,
18 years after Jaws came out? In what, shark years? Anyway, something else that makes Jaws a terrific watch is that you actually see so little of the shark – an inspiration often attributed to Spielberg’s genius but rather a result of the mechanical shark’s unreliability when exposed to salt water. The barrels used to represent the shark’s presence work much more effectively in building the suspense – and they offer the added benefit of continuing to function in seawater. Them’s my thoughts, fer whut itz werth, you perfect predator you.

Ana — yep. I have the pictures but haven’t gotten around to scanning them yet. That was pretty darn cool as well.

I had been “saying” it wrong in my head. Thanks for setting the record straight. Although, correct, it does seem more awkward than “Polly-TRO-pos”. Oh well. Now that we have a handle on that one, how do you pronounce “Gigli”?

I, um, accept your repentance, Dave. Once every couple weeks, after losing a match because of two lousy rolls, I, too, am convinced that there’s not a lot of strategy in backgammon . . .

Hey there,

Cool discussion of the class. I, too, enjoyed yoga quite a bit–it was the most relaxed I’ve ever been. But, that was actually part of the problem. I don’t know if the method I took is a more relaxing method (Anusara), but I found that after a while I wasn’t getting as much out of it.

So, I moved on pilates. Perhaps one day you will see the light and do so, too, Nate. There’s no danger of ohms or chanting in a pilates class–at least with my instructor. She was a drill sergeant in another life.

Jon,
Sadie loves spider? Are you *sure* she’s your kid?
I’d double check if I were you.
dan

You clearly don’t use a RSS reader, if “it hasn’t been updated in a while” is a problem, eh?

How good are the available computer programs? Are they pretty good players, or world-class, or perfect? It sounds as if they’re better than the best programs for go–which I strongly recommend both for “age and dignity” and depth.

I admit that the Bush adminsitration could have done a number of things better, but it’s easy to be a critic when you are not the one making the decisions.

I wonder what it would have been like if Gore was President over the past few years. I think that it is probable that the Taliban and the Baath party would still be in power while we debated it in Congress and brought all of the public opinion together post 9/11. Or, likely, we would have tried to understand the terrorists and continue to implement appeasement policies. Or perhaps there would have been a “slap in the face” response similar to the Clinton Administration’s retaliation to the USS Cole and the Kenya and Tanzania Embassy bombings which proved weak and ineffective.

We know now that the weapons of mass destruction angle was overblown, and that Saddam was not really as much of an immediate threat as he was thought to be, but because of taking decisive actions, these repressive regimes are out of power. Eventually, the governing of their countries will be turned back over to them (the sooner the better).

So, while the speech may sound nice, I support the actions that were taken. I just hope that the new governing bodies that are placed into power there are not worse.

Bryan — Ha! You did it too! “Implement systemic solutions.” What does that mean?

I get the rest of it, though.

Nate,
Resistence is futile. You will be assimilated.

Ok, maybe a better way to say it is “to get computers to do stuff that is taking people too damn long.”

Thought Treason was a pretty good book myself, although I find her tone to bit a bit over the top at times. Looking into the McCarthy era, in particular, I found very interesting. Following many of the sources she quoted from, I discovered that my perceptions of the events surrounding McCarthy were mistaken and shaped by Hollywood’s version of the events. I’d understand if you don’t want to buy the book, but borrow it from someone. Check out the Venona project at http://www.nsa.gov/museum/venona.html for some interesting primary source material.

nate, you weenie, I work for CSC.

because you’ve been spending the last X years teaching literature or something, you’re allowed to not know it (though Suanna probably does). I, of course, work in the whole military-industrial complex, except now it’s the buearocratic-information complex.

CSC, like Accenture, Mantech, EDS, and a raft of others, are IT (and other stuff) consulting. They do a little of everything.

Where I am, we’re doing Software Engineering, building custom software for FERC. Over there, in the Pentagon, it’s network support and PC staging.

and CSC is only 5th in the list of companies doing federal consulting. (or maybe DynCorp was 5th, and now that CSC bought it, they’re 3rd or something. have to check the propoganda.)

Never apologise for blogging on games!

Never played MECCG. Did a little MTG and whatever that computer hacker one was. Then I went for my MA and unloaded my distractions.

I’m sorry, Bryan, but I, for one, refuse to agree that the ends justify the means. More and more, that line of argument is used for justifying foreign policy. And to argue that everything would be worse if Gore had been innagurated is just as weak as to argue that everything would be better if he had.

Dan,
I respect your position. The “ends justifies the means” approach is partly why nearly the rest of the world hates the U.S. now. We’ll never know how much better (or worse) things would have been if Gore had been inaugerated, so all we can do is support or not support the actions that were taken. Gore second guesses the actions (and I concede that he does make some good points). My take is that although matters could have been approached differently, and more wisely, I ultimately support them.

That said, what we do need to start doing now is a better job in “rehabilitating” Iraq. I am growing increasingly alarmed at the number of cultural misunderstandings that are taking place between the Iraqi people and the U.S. soldiers. I fear if we continue down this path, we will actually end up worse off then we were before. It is not too late to change the approach. Hopefully, after the elections, Iraqis will be able to view at the U.S. as a liberator and not an interloper.

Nate – I’m having a flashback to eight months ago, as we were picking out all the baby accessories. You need to convince Suanna that the baby will need a Mac G5… didn’t work for me, but maybe you’ll have better luck. How many items have you put on your Amazon/Babys R Us registry?

Nate-

here’s what you do. You go to Babys ‘R Us (if you have one, which you should). You go with a list of things you want to look for. (crib, tub, monitors, mattress, whatever) You talk to someone there who knows what they’re talking about (ideally a manager who’s also a mom in her late 20s to mid 30s) and isn’t trying to just make a sale. You take notes. You compare prices at Amazon. Buy where you want to.

I enjoy shopping for geeky stuff and CDs at Amazon. I can’t imagine trying to shop for baby stuff at there, for many of the reasons you’ve stated. Talk to a human being if you want to research, not to Nancy from Tacoma.

Why? Because you’re a man, despite what French says about you. Now put down that Harry Potter zine, sit yourself in front of the TV with your hand down the front of your pants, watch some girls jumping on trampolines and let Suanna make all the decisions, which is as it should be. I only wish someone had given me this advice 16 months ago. Oh, and it’s “loath,” not “loathe.”

I caught part of the end of the Man Show once, anticpating the start of Daily Show, but the force of my wife’s glare caused the TV to change channel before something bad happened. There was nothing I could do. I think the relationship between pregnant women and the Man Show is similar to that between matter and antimatter.

A solution for the logistical problem… turn the volume up and walk in the other room until the trampoline frollicking is over. When you hear the opening to The Daily Show, immediately walk back in. I would say that this can be done by staying in the same room and just turning away from the TV, but, personally, I would not be able to pull this off. My head would turn to the Man Show closing credits like a moth drawn to light.

Ah, but the getting graphic about cruelty is not at all unique to Rowling, at least in modern fantasy. In fact, she is toned down and better positioned for children (as is appropriate).

I wrote a little on the “sado-masochistic cult” of fantasy a week or so ago in my thing on “realistic fantasy.” Those works tend to be far more graphic in, especially, the depiction of torture. They are also evertly sexual, and the violence often has a sexual nature or at least sexual overtones.

It’s important to remember that the fairy tales to which most of us have been exposed are censored. They are much more graphic in all respects in the early versions (though who’s to say how they were originally conceived?)

I see where Byatt comes from with her note on the lack of sexuality in Tolkein. I think that was a phase in fantasy in which Victorian sensibilities still dictated (seems Lord Duscany was a bit, err, limp in that respect too). The Inkling impulse to Christian fantasy, of course, played a major part with Tolkein.

Nate, you keep looking to Lewis and Tolkien, but what about going further back for a potential comparison to Rowling. I find that her work (and her world) have a lot more in common with Frank Baum’s Oz and Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland.

Bah, Neal just doesn’t end his books cleanly. It’s eaither some weird post-modern thing, or he just doesn’t know how to wrap things.

I enjoy them right up to the 95% mark, then I want to throw them against the wall.

He just doesn’t make it into Gibson and Sterling’s class for me.

It isn’t that I don’t want him to succeed. I never have enough good books to read!

Of course, I had a few technical issues with Crypto, but he did a better job than a lot of books do with very-near future tech. I can forgive some mistakes there.

p.s. Forgot to mention, I don’t think he’s postmodern, I think ending stuff is a skill of the novelist he hasn’t mastered yet.

I still prefer him to Gibson or Sterling, because of his cultural insights, and because he’s more to to read. I don’t mean that flippantly; his prose is livelier and his characters are more engaging. I’d be happy to know what anyone thinks G&S’ best novels are, though — I’m underread in both cases.

Okay, Crypto’s end was better. It still was noticeably weaker than the book deserved, however.

Neuromancer knocked my socks off when I first read it. You have to look at the copyright date to understand that. Gibson’s later books are all good, but I haven’t had the extreme reaction I did to that first one.

Been a while since I read Sterling’s. (I sort of unloaded 30 boxes of mostly scifi paperbacks when I went off to Chicago for my M.A.) But from what I remember of them, besides his excellence as a writer, I now prefer him (generally) to Gibson.

Cyberpunk is tough because it gets dated so fast. Part of the pleasure of the ‘harder’ sorts of scifi is the speculation on scientific and technical developments. That doesn’t age well. The wonder is lost once it’s either disproven, or last decade’s tech.

dude, behind your sculpture, you can see both your Nobilis and Amber DRPG books! what’s the one in the middle, i can’t make out its title.

“1602″ is a pretty good read thus far. I didn’t even notice the lettering issue. Perhaps I’ve simply been thoroughly co-opted by the degraded aesthetics of this hybridized, liminal, disposable “art form.” Actually what I found “verge of annoying” about 1602 was the wordplay on every character’s name. They all have some “clever” medievalization about them. I realize that such playfulness is part of the gimmick of the series, but does every single bit character have to be introduced by their full name just so we can all admire Gaiman’s linguistic gamesmanship?

I found it very distracting…but I am enjoying the series so far.

– MDT

From the previews, it looks like Kate bites her lip in Underworld too, only this time, she has fangs!

Hmmm, yes, well, that wasn’t the movie I was thinking of, exactly . . .

Thanks for posting pictures.
I agree with you, the costumes were terrific but I was disappointed with the judge’s decision in the Star Wars category. The winning costue didn’t deserve it at all.
Matthew

Yes, what does it say about me that I have seen Serendipity and not Miller’s Crossing? (a hypothetical question, don’t answer that)

I’ll definately have to see it soon.

Nate, I despise you.

I won’t get my copy of 1602 until Friday.

I took your suggestion, Nate, and have been enjoying McCloud’s Understanding Comics.

Now I’m hoping you veteran readers in the medium can point me toward the best work out there. Do I remember correctly that Sandman is Gaiman’s? I assume that comes recommended. I have Maus and The Dark Knight Returns, and I once read the dark superhero comic that starts with a close-up of a happy face button. What should go on my must-read list?

Great comments Nate. And I agree that the “D20″ standard has become the Microsoft Windows of the RPG world. I became concerned when I saw that they were releasing a D20 version of Traveller. I guess I’m more comfortable with the notion of D20 versions of some of the other games, as I never played them, and don’t know enough to make an informed judgement as to how game play was affected. Traveller, on the other hand, I played almost as much as D&D, and there’s something about having classes in Traveller (used other than in the character generation process) which feels wrong. It works just fine without them. Also, I think Traveller’s attributes, which happen to also be six in number, fit very well to Traveller’s setting.

It reminds me of the South Park episode where they’re trying to prevent George Lucas from remaking Indiana Jones. Can’t they just leave our childhood memories alone?

Dave, Keep an eye out for Marvels by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross, Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross and Astro City by Busiek and Brent Anderson.

Oh, and the smiley face button comic is The Watchmen.

Of all the flaws, I’d argue that the biggest of them all is the attribute restriction. Classes and levels don’t bother me so much. If you think about it, a “class” is really akin to a descriptor or trait, to borrow a couple of terms from Theatrix and Over the Edge. I could imagine a flexible, supple use of “classes & levels” in games for almost any setting. (For one thing, couldn’t you legally have a d20 game with a progression that goes like this? Level 1, 0-1,000,000 experience points. Level 2, 1,000,001-10,000,000 experience points. “On average, players will earn 100 experience points per session.”)

I CAN’T imagine being happy with Strength-Intelligence-Wisdom-Dexterity-Constitution-Charisma in many settings at all.

Jim: the big difference between “class” and a “trait” a la Over the Edge is that there are, presumably, a finite number of classes — certainly a finite number presented in a core rulebook. Like custom Attributes, they can be a good way to clue the players in on what the game world is like and what sort of stories will be told. But not all settings will have characters that can fit so neatly into discrete categories. Certainly you could define “class” so broadly that they’re perfectly flexible, but at that point it’s a class in name only. Same with levels if you were to implement them in the way you describe.

I’m all for d20 publishers pushing the envelope in those ways, but the ones I’ve seen so far have remained slavishly devoted to the D&D model — whether because of licensing restrictions or lack of creativity, I’m not sure.

> snicker-snacking away at the governor’s thugs…

Thanks for the plug, Nate.

I’m suddenly hungry for a snack. Maybe a Snickers.

Mike: Indeed they are. What’s the myxomatosis reference in Hitchhiker’s?

Nate, if you hear any noise, it ain’t nobody but me and the boys, gettin’ down.
We have returned to claim the Pyramids.
Put a glide in your stride and a dip in your hip and come on to the Mothership.
Loose booty.
Doin’ the funk.
Ain’t nothin’ but a party, y’all!

With regard to the emphasis in lettering, it’s not as bad as all that. I admire Neil for having the stones to admit he likes it. When it’s done right.

Seriously though, I’m jealous. I would love to have been there, I will catch them someday. Cool write-up, Nate.

[looks into his heart]

I do not have the funk.

No PICTURES!! you are fake!

What Fun! Survey Says:

_Polytropos_
My Beef with d20: Male
The Treacherous Queue: Female
Liberia: Female

_(pronounced lock-lin)_
Weekend in Pittsburgh: Male
Weekend in Pittsburgh 2: Female
So Why am I still in GR?: Female

_Locust Wind_
Thinning Oil: Male
The Piano: Male
Indoor Cat (less REM lyrics): Female

A thought: do any of the business sites from your Googling provide customer reviews a la Amazon?

Nate, thanks for being sober enough to remember the whole set list…! Peace, Mick.

Ed — No, I missed those, but I’ve always meant to try them out. I may have been exaggerating a wee bit about the tech tree, but it’s definitely bigger than most, especially considering this is a game where the campaign strategy isn’t even supposed to be the main focus.

Ed, I don’t think it’s possible to understand the books Nate lists – Dark Knight, the entire Moore superhero _oeuvre_, Planetary – without reference to intertextuality. Warren Ellis wants you to know that “Axel Brass” is Doc Savage. Moore pretty much needs you to recognize the Golden and Silver-Age tropes and characters from which he builds SUPREME. And Nate’s list is partial indeed. Every DC Elseworlds rests on a foundation of the reader’s expected familiarity with the “official” continuity(ies) of the characters portrayed. Kingdom Come, Earth/Universe/Paradise X – all require a readership wise to the references contained therein. A mood of twilight retrospect, I called it when I wrote about the ages of comics and the present (Amber) age.

“not possible to understand” is a pretty strong phrase. Are these books really constructed in such a way that there is nothing there for a reader without the requisite background; that they will walk away from the story befuddled and confused, wondering why their time was wasted?

Ed, I take it you haven’t read these books? I am near mystified, then, as to the basis on which you are critiquing Nate’s thesis.

I spent the whole time writing this entry trying to think of That One Word, which turns out to be “intertextuality.” Duh.

Link to Jim’s Ages-of-Comics entry, which I should have put in the main text:
http://www.highclearing.com/archivesuo/week_2003_06_15.html#004197

Whether we say “not possible to understand” or bandy about some phrase like “enjoy a complete aesthetic experience,” what we’re driving at is the question of whether a given reading can be ‘complete’ absent some prior piece of information.

Obviously, any art can be appreciated to some extent even by people who have no clue about the context, particulars, or genre. Equally obviously, there is no upper limit to the amount of that kind of knowledge that could theoretically enhance the experience for the reader.

So the question here is: at what point does intertextual awareness become necessary to get “most” of what’s going on in a work, or get the “main” point.

It’s a continuum. Over on one end there’s Ultimate Spider-Man, which reinvents previous characters, but very much stands on its own. What’s at the other extreme is a bit more open to debate. Probably Dark Knight Returns.

I LOVE that game. Dave Van Dyke and I used to play it all the time at — crap, whatever Chuck E Cheese was before it was Chuck E Cheese. Or maybe that’s what it was. Anyway, we’d play at the same time — I’d fly and he’d shoot. It was awesome.

Nate you might also be intrested in this site. Its annotated 1602.

http://www.thefourthrail.com/features/0803/marvel1602-1notes.shtml

They have a bit of diffrent intrepretation of the Virginia Dare character. Her White-Indian protector is identified as Steve Rogers, Captain America. And Virginia Dare is seen as standin for Ororo Munro, aka Storm, who has weather power and white hair.

1) I’m not an impending father (!), but I too choked up at the breakfast-table scene.

2) Thought the ending twist was brilliant, actually–maybe because it played right into one of my personal obsessions: how far we are willing to go in order to have a _role_ in the world, a place that makes sense. How desperately we search for a role. To me, the ending Shyamalan chose was the most hardcore option possible.
ELT

The case against the ending is the one disability activists would make: “Oh. So the cripple is the bad guy. Again.”

I liked it, though.

Completely agree with your interpretation. M. Night has a perfect movie in him, somewhere. He’ll find it eventually.

I, too, get choked up when I watch the table scene.

I liked signs better than Diana did, but you had to swallow the idea that this story was taking place in the only farmhouse in Pennsylvania where the residents had a) no gun; b) no notion that they might acquire one.

What Shyamalan is great at is family dynamics. That carries Signs for me, and more than carries Unbreakable. What I liked best in Signs, though, was that the first proof that the Mel Gibson character was coming back to his faith was when he started _cursing_ God.

Nate, just a suggestion that helped me out. If you want to avoid some of the commercialism, I suggest going down the hand-me-down route. Sarah and I were able to get much of our stuff for Joey from relatives, friends and consignment shops. You’ll be amazed at how fast your baby will grow out of stuff, and you’ll be likewise amazed with the baby things some of your friends and coworkers have that they will never need again. Sarah and I are proud to say that most of the big ticket items we needed were used and for the most part, in excellent shape. My advice, ask around.

Heh heh. Maybe mentioning the new one was only a pretext for bringing GRRM up in the first place. He seemed rather crestfallen when I didn’t express immediate and deep familiarity . . .

He was surely looking for his soul mate, and you failed the crucial 2nd part of the test.

I actually thought the twist ending in Unbreakable was perfect. What ruined it for me was the attempt to wrap everything up in a paragraph on the screen at the end. You know, the whole “Elijah Price was arrested and sent to a mental institution” thing.

I think it would have worked much better if it had ended just before that, with the look on Bruce Willis’s face when he realizes that Jackson’s character was the bad guy all along.

I just checked Martin’s site and he still has the “not finished writing yet” message up regarding Feast for Crows. Amazon has a June 2004 date listed for its publication. So yes, Nate, you still have some time to catch up. I know I blogged recently that the Dark Tower series is the most important contemporary fantasy series written, but Martin’s series is pretty amazing too.

I think it would be cool if you met up with Metro guy again a year from now (but not once until then), on the Metro, and you’re both making your way through “A Feast for Crows.” Now *that* would be something.

Seems that I’ll be needing to see this movie a third time with a special eye for the ending. It’s funny — I didn’t talk to many people about it at after it came out, but the universal opinion among those I did talk with was that the ending sucked. Here, it’s near-universal the other way.

Dave: There must be some line, on one side of which camera work is unobtrusive unless you’re looking for it, and on the other is calling attention to itself. And naturally the line is in different places for different people. The unforgiveable fault is to have camera work that 1) calls attention to itself and 2) is pretentious, overdone, or otherwise inept. I don’t think M. Night is guilty of any of those things.

> The baby will want to learn and all…

On the other hand, the baby will probably be tempted to eat the doubling cube, or to build candlesticks without thinking about distribution.

Ah, put it on the registry anyway.

You sure it wasn’t Ecclesiasticus?

Please don’t take this as an attempt at an underhanded crack on backgammon, but rather an actual, knowledge-seeking question:

My assumption is that, at a certain point, most backgammon players have roughly similar skills. That is to say, given a certain board set-up and dice roll, there’d be very few “best” choices of moves, allowing for personal choice (in aggressiveness or defensiveness). That being the case, it seems to me the games themselves are determined entirely (short of a player making a “mistake”) by chance, i.e. by the roll of the dice. Do you find this to be true?

Some background: I’ve always grouped chess and backgammon together in my mind as Cool, Old-School Games that are somehow superior to games of my generation (i.e. Clue, Monopoly, etc.). Part of this is the vastly superior pieces (though maybe Sorry!(tm) would be as cool if it had solid, weighted pieces and a hardwood, parque board. . .naa). Most of the superiority, however, comes from their simplicity of play verses their complexity of strategy. Anyone can learn to play chess and backgammon, but superior players will beat inferior players on a regular basis. Which brings me back to my question. How much more superior does one have to be at backgammon to consistently beat their opponant? Or does that not come into play once you’ve learned some basic strategy, because ultimatly the dice determine the winner? Maybe that’s an exaggeration. The dice rolls being roughly the same (which -theoretically- they should), should produce the more skilled player as winner most of the time. But I recall an instance at a chess tournement when, right after being mated, a player jumped out of his seat and yelled, “You got so lucky!”. Well, that’s absurd. There’s no luck in chess. So I’m wondering, does your enjoyment of backgammon necessarily involve an excitement of the randomness of the dice? Does backgammon even lend itself to competition, or is it more like the buzz generated around a craps table? If it is competitive, isn’t it horribly disappointing to have a solid lead evaporate with just a few rolls of the dice?

Thanks.

Robb: excellent questions. So good that I think I’m going to field them in a separate entry in a couple days.

I agree that Jai is the weakest one and it would be a stronger show without him. I have only seen a couple of shows, but I’ve enjoyed them. I think that I read somewhere (Entertainment Weekly maybe?) that Jai was a very late addition who assumed that role not long before the first airing after there was a falling out with the initial “culture guy” due to personality differences. Incidently, I also read that guy is now suing the other members for his share of the pie.

Yep, I believe that’s the case. Looking forward to them.

I’m a sucker for foreign currency and stamps. I was a bit of a philatelist in my formative years, in fact, so I’m extremely happy to see a new color making its way into our banknotes.

Sweet site, too. I’m going to have to go through the whole thing and pick my favorite contemporary currency.

And yeah, the Gabonese notes rock.

Surely the way to make it hard to pass counterfeit bills is to stop changing the damn things for long enough that people can get used to what they look like?

Jonathan: that’s the plan, according to the article. I’m with you on Kaylee.

Er, that sounded kinda gross…

Joss directed many of the best episodes of Buffy, and a couple of Fireflys and Angels as well; at least for TV, he’s apparently a very good director.

I remember the same…working just a few blocks from where you live. When I got int he show that mornign everything was normal. By the time I was drying off one plane had hit the WTC and my wife and I watch the second one impact. I still get chills.

Megan was home sick from work and I was so, so glad, especially when we felt the boom in my office a half and hour later. The Pentagon had been hit. The TV ws blaring with word of a bomb at the State Department, at Union Station…then word of a plane headed toward the White House…

What I hope history doesn’t miss is the senes of uncertain anticipatory doom that I think we all felt in DC and in New York – there was no sense of the attacks being finite. It seemed like a bad dream that got worse and worse as the day went on. If they could hijack four planes then why not a dozen? We knew not what would come next. We only feared the worst. It was horrible.

It still is.

– MDT

I was at home with my new baby (10 days old). I woke up late since I had been up for hours during the night…the first thing I did was turn on the computer to check my email, just like I did everymorning. We were using a free Aol account at the time, and suddendly there was picture of one of the towers buring right on my computer screen. I turned on the tv after a second or so of shock, realizing that this wasn’t some movie trailer. My first comment to Chris was, “funny from this angle you can’t see the other tower.” I could see it because it had just fallen.

I think my memories of my post-partum period will always be tied to Sept. 11. My life wasn’t devastated like it was for so many others, but it was definetly altered just a little bit. Part of me is very selfishly hoping I don’t go into labor in the remaining hours of this day, I don’t want to births so tied to it.

For me Dean is an acceptable second-best to Kucinich.

“The Falling Man” was indeed a tough read, but worth the time and emotions. Thanks for pointing it out.

I went through the “Which Babylon 5 Character Are You?” quiz. Owning to the fact that there’s really no character that’s very much like me at all, I wasn’t surprised to come up with something completely out there: Garibaldi.

Vir would have been closer, but he’s not an option.

I agree with Jim here. The limited intervention has led only to more meaningless, bloody muddle, just as I predicted when we debated this point a couple of months ago.

Updating my links list today, and adding Polytropos even though we disagree.

Alan:

First, thanks for the link. And thanks for all the superb Isabel coverage on Fresh Bilge.

Second, do you agree with Jim that the current limited intervention hasn’t helped Liberia, or that any such intervention is inherently racist? Or both?

First, it depends how you define “help.” As a result of the intervention, there have probably been fewer people killed in the short run; but Taylor and his bunch should have been left to the rebels’ untender mercies. Now more people will die in the long run.

On racism as an unrecognized component of the rationale for these interventions, I absolutely agree.

Mike: In New England, maybe. South of the Mason-Dixon, the Greek pantheon holds sway.

Perhaps such things in general have not made it to the internet, but the Agrippa has:

http://digital.lib.msu.edu/onlinecolls/author.cfm?AuthorNo=122

In GIF and PDF form no less.

sounds like an alternate setting for a Nobilis campaign…

Greg, that’s brilliant. Somebody should make a d20 game out of it.

I didn’t see last night’s episode, but I’ll chime in anyway. I’d keep Kyan around too because I find humor in him instructing people how to shave in just about every other episode: “Shave with blade pointing down, not up and shave after a shower and after placing this product on your face to soften the beard.”

Wow! It’s a good thing that the trees fell away from the building. Well, something like that was destined to occur after your posting at 9:12 PM. You just had to taunt Isabel, didn’t you?

Conwell spoke to someone this morning who “rode out” the storm on the Outer Banks. He said that by Frisco (north of Hatteras), a new 300 ft. wide inlet from ocean to sound was created and the experts think that it cannot be filled back in. Looks like there will be a new bridge there.

We hope to make it down to assess damage on our Nagshead house this week or next weekend. We are hoping it is minimal.

You mean if I’d have known I could have asked you to get me signed Scott Kurtz pieces??? I hate you.

hey, I have, or perhaps HAD, a timeshare right on the beach in Kill Devil Hills.

now waiting to get the letter telling me about the insurance settlement for the destruction, or the special assessment for the repairs.

Hey Nate,
I hear later this year the Indianapolis Colts are going to introduce a new device that is supposed to revolutionize the game. They call it a “Sun Sword.” Thundarr would be proud.

Nate,
I enjoyed reading this posting. Sorry that I could not be there to share what will likely be your sole football experience of 2003. Ed mentioned fantasy football in his posting. If you think the events were a bit hard to follow with two TV’s and a PIP and constant channel changing, fantasy football takes it to another level. Then, you are pulling for individual players and not teams. It can be head spinning, especially if you are in more than one fantasy league.

Anyway, we’ll compare commercial notes during the Super Bowl in January.

Doesn’t Stephen Fry do the Harry Potter books? He certainly does in the Commonwealth part of the world.

Nate,

Regarding the icons of comics fandom question.

One, generally an artist can only work on one book at a time while most writers can handle 3 or 4. When you consider that many artists also handle their own writing chores, it isn’t surprising that you know of more artists than writers- there’s more of them to know.

Two, your convention experience has colored your perception. Artists have their alley where they can sign and sell their work. But most conventions also have panels, and some conventions have Q&A sessions with writers. When I went to San Diego, I sat in on a number of panels and was able to ask one of my favorite writers (Mark Waid) anything I wanted. That’s how I learned the stories behind the stories.

Nate:

I you like P. Craig Russell make sure you try to find his Ring of the Nieblung series. Most of his stuff is available in TPB. His art is absolutely breathtaking. He has done nearly a half-dozen operatic adapatations and we have really enjoyed all the ones we have sampled so far.
Ana

Ludwig Wittgenstein mentions games to illustrate the idea of family resemblances. It’s not that something is shared by all and only the games, he says, but that each game is related to many other members of the family in various ways. Perhaps the resemblance is in the details, perhaps in the overall structure.

Wittgenstein has been speaking of language-games. He’s arguing that there need not be any all-encompassing account of how language works. We have instead many different games, many linguistic practices. There are family resemblances among them, but no one essence that unites them all.

What strikes me about the RPG/story discussion is how well it confirms Wittgenstein’s point about games. For that matter, the same could be said about stories. They’re a diverse bunch. At the least, the notion seems plastic enough to include the plots of RPGs.

BTW, for an anticipation of Calvinball (maybe even its inspiration), see Philosophical Investigations, section 83. For the main discussion of games, see sections 66-71.

Ana:

Oh, I picked up on the alarmist bit with the first one. Don’t worry, I’m onto them.

“A story is a shapely account of motivated action.” Discuss. “For RPGs, the problem comes in the word ’shapely.’ ” Discuss.

Also, I’d take argue that in the computer-game version of Blade Runner, the player can actually escape “mere audience” status. When I played it, I felt a keen sense that I was, as it were, creating meaning by my decisions. In those pre-blog days, I was so struck by the experience of playing that game that I even vaguely intended to write about it. (Didn’t happen.) One particular: Blade Runner boasted a certain replayability based on randomly resetting certain facts with each restart (e.g. who’s a replicant and who isn’t). Much as I enjoyed the game, I didn’t want to replay it _because_ I felt like replaying it would be to betray the experience I’d already had with the game.

pre-emptive stike: get a cat. or several. our children love the cats (you should hear Ginny squeal in delight whenever one of the cats walks by.) and while Daniel enjoys petting a dog, when asked if he wants one, he says, “No, because it would chase my cats.”

Ed: Actually, I chalk it up to “needing something to blog about on a Friday.” My emotional investment is under control. The only of them I’d go gay for is Ted.

Dana:

While I freely accept the mantle of Uncharity, I must reject your analogy. Baby: human. Dog: not human. Therein lies all the difference.

The bow tie was a clue to immediately flee the scene. As you know, I am dog lover and own two. That said, if some bow tie wearing loon could not keep his unkempt cannine from invading my personal space, I would have been a bit put out as well.

Nate,

Please elaborate on the offending scenes from Two Towers. Granted, the question comes from a Tolkein neophyte working his way through FOTR as we speak. I’m assuming there were rather major deviations from the book?

Tom

Nate: I’ll go sailing with you sometime. I have no idea how to do it, but I love boats, the ocean and the marine world just as much. So count me in (if I can get to the Atlantic, that is).

Alternatively, you could always carry around big pieces of chocolate, and when a dog invades your personal space, you kneel down, say “I bet you want a piece of candy!” and feed the dog the chocolate. If nothing else it’d wipe the unwarranted look of pride off the offending owner’s face.

Alan, Jonathan: I’d be more than happy to take you both up if the opportunity ever presents itself.

Isn’t there some evidence that Sir Isaac Newton’s insanity, late in life, was brought on by experimentation with Mercury?

Also, I thought Queen Elizabeth’s makeup was primarily Lead-based, another toxic metal.

When I was in fourth or fifth grade a thermometer that I had in my desk for some reason broke, and the mercury got out and I got to play with the little blobs of it. I don’t know what eventually happened to them; I didn’t call attention to it. Did I ingest any of it? No idea. Draw your own conclusions.

Jonathan: Whatever are you talking about? It looks fine to me . . .

Did he explain why he pronounced it that way? AFAICT, both words are pronounced with short vowels in both languages. Probably an example of a word having changed its pronunciation as it’s been handed down through generations. I’m sure there are examples in English, but I can’t think of any just now.

Nice job on an accurate and colorful portrayal of the paintball events. Thanks for leaving out the part where I rented a paper thin “camoflauge” top with an oversized “OA” (for Outdoor Adventurers… the name of the facility) flourescent orange letter decal on the back. To those who were not there, thanks to Nate’s maniacal laughter and finger pointing, I promptly returned the top and received my money back no questions asked.

I agree that, as good of a time that I had, I would not be back on a regular basis due to the the cheating involved. I guess that could be fixed by using real bullets, but then if I was that passionate about it, I would just join the army.

Michael: By the rules, you’re out if you or your gun are hit by a bit of paint. If a pellet hits you dead-on and causes a big kersplash there’s little room for interpretation. But if you’re trading shots with someone twenty yards away from behind trees, it’s easy enough to ignore it when you’re hit and even wipe the paint off when you’ve got a chance. Two refs are there to adjudicate but they’re not enough to watch everything that goes on.

no collection of plush Lares and Penates though I suppose?

Ed: Well, I had to look up “lares and penates,” but having done so: nice reference! And no, no such things in the car, alas.

ah, duckies and pooh. it will only increase as you see the big smile appear on your child’s face when presented with their favorite duckie which they dropped over the side of the crib last night…

I liked Puddingtime’s comments on this, quoting Electrolite:

“I would be utterly opposed to personally harrassing Guy McFarland, who lives at 9 Dancing Cloud Ct. #42, Destin, Florida, 32541. I certainly would oppose any and all efforts to pester him via his phone number, (850) 269-3388. Goodness, that would be ever so wrong. How we would deplore that.”

http://www.puddingbowl.org/archives/blogs/001316.php

Samizdata has been commenting on this. I picked a good time to get my comments working. At least that site isn’t yet on the search engines.

I’m for giving them a taste of their own business. Let’s track them down and each send them a few email protests, or comment protests if they run anything that accepts comments, or a phone call or two, and those who live near them, stop by and protest in person,

Doing it more than a couple times each would be abusive. Doing it two to three times each should be both perfectly legal and perfectly ethical.

We just need for a lot of us to do it.

And if THAT doesn’t work, then we can discuss the next step.

Hmm, class action lawsuit, anyone?

Dan: Stephenson has said that the Baroque Cycle is, like Lord of the Rings, a single work that’s divided into three solely for the convenience of publication. So the answer to your question must be deferred, although, treating Quicksilver as a Part 1 of 3, I think it ends rather well.

Patrick: I’ve read the same criticism in some reviews, but for whatever reason I didn’t have that response myself. I think the license we grant a historical novelist not to have to write in the diction of the period I unconsciously extended to the dialogue as well. I don’t think NS is trying to make his dialogue mirror the way people spoke then, except for an occasional flourish.

As for anachronistic words, some folks are having fun finding these things and putting them on the Metaweb. I didn’t catch any myself, which is as clear an illustration as any that “ignorance is bliss.”

Nate-

This has also happened to me:
http://www.jonathanlaughlin.com/archives/000036.html

You could ban their IP address, right?

The whole process seems to be geared only toward getting higher rankings in search engines. In this case, the best recourse would probably be to simply delete the content before it’s indexed.

Jonathan

Thomas. if you have a boy, he will like Thomas. he will love Thomas. and after a while, you won’t be surprise to find that you know all the names and numbers of the engines… (1-Thomas, 2-Edward, 3-Henry, 4-Gordon, 5-James, 6-Percy, 7-Toby, 8-Duck, 9,10-Donald/Douglas…)

and then the girl you have a few years later will love him as well, oddly enough. (it’s peep-peep, not deet-deet.)

Hmm. To my mind the big difference between the quotes is that Stephenson seems to admire his vision of another time, while the Pynchon is one long sneer.

Nate: Could it be that you’re becoming territorial over the coffee shop? After this post and current one, I’m becoming worried.

It is the RZA. He did the score for _Ghost Dog_, too.

While reading _Quicksilver_, I was glad to have had more than a passing familiarity with the life and times of Sir Isaac because that knowledge gave me a somewhat firm basis upon which I could situate (and revel in) Mr. Stephenson’s multifac(e)ted tale. However, even with a fairly good grounding in the time-space of _Mason & Dixon_, I still found the novel to be the kind of seismic upheaving of my pre-existing knowledge-base that makes Pynchon’s writings so endlessly fascinating (at least to me).
This is not to diminish Mr. Stephenson’s accomplishments in any way. It’s just that for him, history (and language) provide a kind of gateway into his fictional realms. With Pynchon, however, history and language undo one another at every turn, thereby leaving the reader having to constantly re-construct almost all preconceptions as s/he reads his tales. Encyclopaedic esoterica inhabit the realms created by both authors, thereby necessitating total (or near-total) immersion for their readers. But, irony of ironies, in _Quicksilver_, maps can be drawn to help us get our bearings through this maze of information. In _Mason & Dixon_, however, the map one draws, the line(s) one plots, will never unravel this Minotaur’s labyrinth.
To expect anything other from two such distinctive writers would, I daresay, invite, well, sneers from them both.

Yeah, because he’s never gotten one of those letters before.

Nate, I was considering what you stated about a possible Saddam exile. Wouldn’t you think an exiled Saddam would still provide a rallying point for the Baathists? There is yet another possibility for dictators: the return to power. As an example, consider Napoleon after he escaped his first exile on Elba and how he returned to power for one hundred days.

It seems that for some reason, perhaps it is his bombastic nature or his overt and some how indecorous gushing love FOR his influences makes Tarantino everyone’s favorite “originality” whipping.

Fankly I think it is a cop-out for reviewers at every turn to trumpet that Quentin T. is merely a refiner and revisiter of earlier works and themes. Somehow every review of QT’s films can’t avoid speaking of his “influences” in some kind of derogatory way that is somehow designed to diminish his accomplishments and make him appear less the artist.

These same guardians and demarcators of THE NEW always and inevitably fail to name anyone who is doing something definably new, ideosyncratic and unique? Why? Well, I’d contend at least in part that there is no film-maker working today worth a damn about whom one can defensibly or convincingly make that claim.

Oh sure there are a few we could discuss who seem to be spreading the cut on the bleeding edge of narrative constuction, visual design, character forumulation or technical advances, but are these accomplishments really any more NEW than QT’s work? I don’t buy it for a moment. In fact, I’d argue that on that bleeding edge is exactly where Tarantino sits.

He has achieved a seemingly effortless internalization of the language of cinema, using it with economy and abandon as the moment permits and the narrative demands. There is no more inventive visual stylist working today.

Another frequent mistake is to reduce Quentin by focusing on the violence in his films. While the violence in Kill Bill is hard to ignore I’d say that what it really illustrates is tarantino’s masterful control over his narrative. When i look at his films, I never feel exploited by the violence exhibited.

Simply referring to “violence” as some kind of uniform concept or mass noun in Tarantino’s cinematic language is a vast oversimplification. moment of violence – no matter how extreme or minor – has exactly, the predicted effect Tarantino intends. He can convey brutal emotion or impish glee with equal virtuocity and that is an amazing feat.

But there is more than to violence to Tarantino.
No one’s else’s dialogue sizzles quite the same.
He writes for actors.. that simultaneously mimick our real life digressions with Seinfeldian precison but also morph into big long glorious solioquies that create that mythic cool that is his signature.

Tarantino is also capable of lovely quiet moments that speak as much to his ability to stage a scene as they do to his reputation for quick witted hipster banter.

And yet despite all this somehow Quentin has gotten the rip-off bum rap. With all the drek that passes for cinema these days, why must we, under the guise of critical viewing, manufacture spurrious arguments to diminish the work of one of our true auteurs?

Frankly, I can’t shake the feeling that some folks, for reasons that are all their own, just like the idea of reminding Quentin that he’s still a former video clerk from a jerk-off California suburb.

Sheesh….mayhap I should hire a copy editor.

- M

Maybe he’ll phone in his lines WHILE wearing said paper bag over his head. In PynchonWorld, after all, one can never be too paranoid. (Just kidding, of course. Well, sort of.)

yeah, just bought this great game called Medieval towar war:viking invasion a week ago and wow, the game really blew me off. the graphics is fantastic, better than age of empires or cossacks. this game got me really perked up i started surfing the net from info about the histories of such and such like Novgorod, Moldavia etc. every saturday, i would be sitting behind the computer for about hours and hours. speaking of tech tree, can you give me a site where i can download it.

Cheesecake Factory sucks. It has no “coolness” quotient and the food isn’t even good. They are all about quantity instead of quality. Their approach is that if they load a whole bunch of food on plates, the masses will arrive, wait 2 hours to be seated and think that they are getting value. Sorry if I have offended any Cheesecake Factory fans… I just hate that place… maybe even more than Nate hates Billy Joel’s “Keepin’ the Faith”.

It’s good that the bloodshed has stopped for the moment, but Taylor and/or henchmen will probably do it all again, in due time. I still think it would have been wiser to let the civil war play out to the end that seemed so near. Yes, more people would have died in the battle; but Taylor and his friends would be dead too, and the country’s future more hopeful for their demise.

Y’know, Nate, it sounds like you’re more upset that he was playihg Billy Joel than that he was playing music in a public place.

Strollers? THINK ALUMINUM FRAME. Do not buy the all in one stroller, carseat combo. Thou shalt regret.

Woo-hoo! I’ve been plugged! Thanks Nate.

And yeah, Grain sounds great. I might have to see if they’re doing anything when I’m in Pgh for Thanksgiving.

While I didn’t quite get the same impression you did, I’ve been to three ultrasounds now (2 for Sadie, 1 for Gabe) and on all three occasions, I was the least important person in the room. And yeah, I’ll admit that I kind of was. My wife was the pregnant mom, the technician was the one making things happen, the bundle of joy was the reason everyone was there, and me … well, I was BoBo the sperm guy.

Nate,
Next time, when the nurse/technician/illegal alien starts firing up the ultrasound machine, try saying something to Suanna like, “This one better not be a girl or you’re in for a savage beating, woman.” That tends to grab everyone’s attention. Another tactic: grab the bottle of goo they spread on the belly and take a big swig. You can follow that one up with a spit take if you like, then say, “I thought you said this was Crystal Pepsi!” or something similarly nonsensical. Then of course there’s the old standby of yelling, “What?! You’re pregnant!?”

The options are limitless, for those who absolutely must be the center of attention at all times. When it’s time to decide, listen to your heart and soon everyone will be listening to you.

Thanks for those links.

Bryan: I’ll remember to curse your name as our cherished institutions crumble into dust.

Jonathan: Yeah, I think we’ll give it a try. But rather than try to pick up in the middle, we’ll probably just rent the DVDs as they come out.

Do you really think West Wing is still good? I’ve been incredibly disappointed with it this season. The dialogue is terrible.

Rebecca: Of course it’s still good. This season for me kicked in two episodes ago — I did think they stumbled a little around the whole kidnapping thing. But the dialogue has always been excellent.

Karen and I saw this mess on Saturday. You will recall after seeing Reloaded that I was still “going with it” and gave it a “B+”. I was able to bear the Zion dance scene and insipid dialogue since at least the movie had the outstanding car chase sequence and other teasers of greater things to come such as what was actually behind the architect’s words. I thought that, in Reloaded, the action was great, but what was missing was the philosophy and mystery that made the first Matrix so gripping. I held out hope that the finale would get back to some of the ingredients that made the first one so special. It didn’t.

I could spend the next 15 minutes to type out everything that I did not like about this movie, but you can get most of that in Stephen Hunter’s review in the Washington Post a couple of weekends ago. It is on point and impressive given that it is written from a critic who is also a fan standpoint and wanted, as we all did, for this to be so much more.

I really don’t know which is worse: What Revolutions did to my view of the Matrix trilogy, or what Attack of the Clones did to the way the I view the Star Wars franchise with a sense of wonder.

I am sure that I share the thoughts of many fans of the science fiction/fantasy genre when I say that at least we have Return of the King to look forward to. While I run the risk of setting myself up for another major let down, somehow I know -just know- that Peter Jackson will not disappoint.

Bryan and Michael:

Good article on the Matrix trilogy here:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2090943/

Bryan: One thing I was commenting on yesterday — now that the Matrix trilogy has fallen flat on its face, Peter Jackson has no competition whatsoever for the title of King of the Geeks.

Michael: I’m coming for you, you bastard. It was because of you that I went into the theatre with a modicum of hope. Watch your back.

Nate wrote, “[Gore] definitely has an ineffable something that the nine actual contenders are all missing.”

Yeah, I think that ineffable something is called “a campaign manager.” Like Bob Dole (strangely enough), Gore was someone who listened way too much to his political handlers and less to his own instincts. I’m sad that he’s not running, because in a rematch, I think he could easily take Bush out.

I agree as well that he could take Bush out if an election were to be held today. I’ve never heard Bush use advanced words such as “rubric”.

Malcolm: What’s funny is that there not really a correspondence between number of people who comment and number of people who read a specific entry. Between heavily-commented ones and heavily-read ones, I’m content.

But you’re right — people ignore the literary ones.

Mark your calendars — one week from today we start getting near QEFTSG eps, and the Jaiwatch will recommence!

I dunno, man. I keep hearing about this on the Forge and I have yet to feel even the tiniest spark of enthusiasm about the premise. De Gustibus and all that, though — maybe it’s just a blind spot in my cool-idea-o-vision.

Nate, Bravo.

You brilliantly articulated everything I and others have been talking about since this train wreck was released.

One more point I would just like to add is that omitting any kind of homage to Gloria Foster added insult to injury.

The 2 questions I walked out of the movie with and continue to retorically ask(since the brothers refuse to speak) is when is the real movie going to be released and who made that piece of trash, “Revolutions”? Thanks for answering the 2nd question and since you seem to be an intelligent fellow, can you answer the first one?

From Matrix fans everywhere, I thank you!

Hellboy definitely rocks. The Hellboy piece du resistance is clearly the sequence starting “Ooooooh no! No way! I don’t like Pamcakes!”

You should consider Angel again. Whedon seems to be more involved again and since about mid-season last year, Ben Englund has been a major creative force on the show. Last week’s episode (about Mexican wrestlers who were Champions in the ’50s) even included use of the term “nigh-invulnerable.”

It shouldn’t be long before Angel intimidates someone by sucking on a straw.

Nate, please note that I’m not really an expert in the history of English scholarship, so everything following should be taken with a heaping spoonfull of salt.

I think that few would dispute the New Critics importance to the discipline of English, but it’s hardly surprising that they’ve fallen into disfavor. Their politics are deeply unfashionable. I’m not just thinking of their politics politics, although the links between the Agrarians and the New Critics were deep. (I’ll Take My Stand is a deeply racist book, not in some sort of “it references ‘Dixie’ in the title and is written by a bunch of white men” sense but in an “it argues in favor of segregation and against educating blacks” sense.) More importantly, they’re critically unfashionable — ahistoricism and relentless critical attention to the text seems to have had two high points, under the New Critics and under the DeMan-fueled deconstructionists, and neither movement seems to have really created a real, lasting permanent following (although I think it’s worth noting that both movements generated a number of tools that are still in use and will probably remain in the repetoire of scholars for a long time to come). The standard line is that New Criticism was great for freshman English, because you could hand out a John Donne poem and spend a class unpacking it without having to give any sort of grounding in Donne’s millieu, his literary predecessors, his readership, whatever. As an observer of the process of turning a student of literature into a professional scholar, that “whatever” seems to carry a lot of weight.

That aside, my only reading of All the King’s Men was back when I was in high school; I remember being impressed by the Warren’s use of language, but not particularly impressed with the book as a whole. Maybe I’ll give it another run through.

One other point I’d like to make is that government agencies are often given money that they haven’t requested. For example, the military has been given money in the past for weapons systems they don’t want. I think it’s a bit unfair to say “State Department Spin” as I see no proof that the State Department actually requested the money.

Oh, I completely agree that the money has to do with Taylor. Clearly, there are some in the House that would like to see more direct actions taken with respect to Taylor, whether the State Department likes it or not. This observation was my primary reason for bringing up the resolution in my first comment. I’m sure there are some in foreign countries looking at how our government works and shaking their heads, as a group of congressmen can pass resolutions and appropriate money in ways not coordinated with our State Department’s articulated positions.

Steve: Saying that the NCs are in ‘disfavor’ is oversimplifying things a bit. Politically, it goes without saying. But when it comes to their ‘relentless critical attention to the text,’ there’s a wide gap between how that attention is caricatured by their critics and how it’s described by Wimsatt and Beardsley. And there’s an even bigger gap between that and the way it was (and still is) practiced in the classroom. If you look at a classic New Critical teaching text like The Makers and the Making, and it’s clear that Warren and Brooks were in no way ahistorical.

I agree completely that the good ol’ close reading, while an excellent tool for baseline literary criticism, is only a first step when it comes to professional scholarship. But it’s a first step that everybody takes, even the folks who gleefully pooh-pooh the NCs. So while New Criticism doesn’t have a broad ‘following,’ its precepts are deeply integrated into the teaching of literature in the U.S.

ATKM is definitely worth a second look. This time around it was the language that held up the best for me — it was better than I remembered, whereas the depth of Burden’s existential dilemma wasn’t.

Yes, yes it does. Give me a little while to figure out what it is?

Um yeah, could you look any more like the fanboy that you are? Nice work.

Awesome.

I knew that eventually being clinically insane would save my ass.

Wow; you’re taking this in directions I didn’t mean to. What you’re talking about here is players taking “director stance,” i.e. narrating things around their characters as well as their characters’ actions.

I was really more interested in the process whereby things people talk about become entities which have rules consequences.

You point out perspicaciously that the most simple and common way this happens is the “die roll bonus.” I say something that seems cool or useful, and the GM gives me a +3 or something. Bam, that +3 now is the game-rule representation of what I just described. GM adjudicated, player suggested.

In your discussion about “storytelling games” I think you generalize too much to say anything useful about the point though… Topos never tried to be an RPG or anything particularly like it. There are really no rules that have anything to do with in-game events in Topos at all; I don’t think it counts as an RPG by my definition of the term, even. So let’s drop that off the table. Universalis is a borderline case at best…

I’m getting from this post that you’re viewing things like Uni and Topos as the endpoint of a slippery slope that begins when you start allowing players to have Director Stance at all… Is that the case?

That seems like a bit of a red herring to me, because my question isn’t really about that at all. Even granting for the moment that we never give players any director stance, that we leave them peering out from the inside of their characters’s skulls through their eyeballs, and pulling the strings that make their arms and legs move, how and when does the GM clothe verbal things in game rules? Do different games have different standards and techniques for that? What consequences do those differences have for play?

That’s kinda what I’m asking about.

Ed: I missed all the buzz on Director Stance. My fault for not reading Forge — apologies if I trod over old ground. I tried to make clear at the outset that I was addressing only a subset of your questions, but in the process I never really got around to the root of your question.

So maybe I’ll get to that tomorrow.

I woudln’t say that’s any more or less true than the idea that having rules for combat is a “lateral move” which if taken far enough will remove you from RPGs altogether and put you in the land of wargames.

Why call it a “move” at all? That already implies that it’s some kind of deviation from what is normal and natural.

Breshnev is on the cover of mine. Although I am sure that somewhere inside the issue of the following week an article on the Kent State situation. I was born on May 3, 1970, one day before the Kent State killings.

Frigthening, very frigthening indeed.

By the way Nate, speaking of TV, I gave up on 24 this week as well. I stuck with it through 3 episodes, but figured that it was not worth the time this year. If it turns out that the show improves, I can always wait for the DVD.

Bryan: That’s my take on a lot of TV these days. If it turns out to be good, I’ll just catch it on DVD. We watched season 1 disc 1 of Alias this week from Netflix and enjoyed it very much.

I did one:

Audiences aimlessly gobble
Infinite variations on reality
Momentarily pausing
To regard my infinite weakness.

Greg: Thanks for the info. Makes sense, but as you say, disturbing.

Nate,
If you miss so much as a single post to Polytropos or appear to be mailing it in at all because of the onset of fatherhood I am going to fill your comment boxes with more “I told you so”’s than if it were a site for Jewish mothers who opposed the war in Iraq. Otherwise, though, good luck to you, Suanna and the little Polytropito.

Hopefully this coming year offers new and more exiciting costumes then last year. Lots of the same costumes tend to show up – though Ill say this..at the costume party there was nothing cooler then watching a stormtrooper do the robot.

Nate,
That is great to hear. I just purchased it this past weekend and plan to view it very soon before I see Return of the King. If you can believe it, although I own the extended version of Fellowship, I have not yet viewed it (GASP!). I plan to do so over the upcoming long weekend.

And, if somehow you are able to wait until November 2004 to see Return of the King, I know that the world must be coming to an end.

Bryan: Haven’t seen the extended Fellowship yet?! For shame!

Though now you can watch both of them back to back in a 7.5 hour Tolkien-fest.

Wow. I don’t know how I stumbled across this entry, but I’m glad I did.
I’ve been a Tolkien fan for the majority of my life, now, and I loved the first movie.
I hated Two Towers. Yes, yes, I saw it twice. I am weak, and stupid. But I hated it. It made me so mad.
So I stopped paying attention and decided not to see Return of the King.

I didn’t even know they’d released an extended version.

I’m glad I know. If they fixed it, I’d love it. What made me so mad at Two Towers was that it seemed to have briefly flirted with the idea of being a good movie, and then somehow changed its mind. That’s what was so infuriating. I hated the pacing, i hated… you know, I really can’t think about what I hated without getting mad.
But if it’s better now…

… You see what a sad, pathetic, weak person I am, because I really was dying to love that movie. And now you’ve got me all hopeful again.

Dude, someone made a whole book – Lexicon Urthus by Michael Andre-Driussi, for like, 40 bucks. Yes, of course I have it. How could you doubt me?

Jim: That’s too cool. Too bad it’s out of print.

Nate,
I suggest we send the Fab Five in to Taylor’s Nigerian pied a terre under the pretense that they’re there to film a pilot for Queer Eye for the Straight Dictator or something. Once they have him lulled into a false sense of security as they admire his new sconces or how well Carson has dressed up his boring old fatigues, the Marines rush in and grab him. And in the off chance he sees through the ruse I recommend sending Jai in as the point man. That way, if the mission is compromised and gunplay breaks out, there’s little significant loss to the viewers at home.

Malcolm: Ooo, good. You’re almost there. Actually, the Fab Five come in to help him prepare for a big dinner party, and then leave before the guests arrive. Then they sit there back in New York watching on closed circuit as the guests unveil themselves as Special Forces and the whole party completely falls apart. Plus they make lots of snarky comments about how Taylor doesn’t know how to shave right.

Nate,
That’s all well and good, but under your plan how do we eliminate Jai? You see the problem, of course.

spygeek, your friend is an incorigible nerd. i’m picturing the comic store guy from the Simpson’s.

polytropos, electrolite was right. you too the words right out of my mouth, though i’m afraid i may have dozed through the scene where Gandalf explains Sauron’s fear (which is going to set up some great Palintiri stuff, I bet), so I’d better go rent that DVD myself (watched it at a friend’s house over good food and wine).

I definitely agree about Gimli. It’s sad. I was just listening to the commentary track right at the part where Gimli’s snorfing down his food while Aragorn and Theoden are debating, and Peter was talking about how clever John Rhys-Davies was for doing that and how it added some needed levity to the scene. No it didn’t! It was annoying! Ah well.

As far as students of Old English go — they would certainly be aware that the funeral song that Eowyn sings is in Old English. Nifty.

Sis: What, not for the discussion of roleplaying game theory?

Nice writeup Nate. I agree that not only is TTTX better than TTT, it’s also more of an improvement over the theatrical release than FOTRX was over its original version.

I wrote the following comment over in Brad DeLong’s post linking to you and since I’m a comments whore I’m reposting here

One of the interesting things about this series for me has been watching the interplay between the artistic and business halves of the production team.

Obviously all of the interviewees in the extendended edition features are on their best behavior and (with the humorous exceptions of Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan) are very careful not to say anything unkind about each other. But there are hints from Barry Osborne and Rick Porras in the biz/hollywood camp, and Peter Jackson and Phillipa Boyens in the artistic camp, that there’s a substantial backstory about the back-and-forth with the New Line bigwigs.

The main pressure on Peter came in the form of editing constraints to fit the film into the 180-minute length that the mall/megaplex theater companies demand to fit their extortionate profiteering schedule — hence the choppy, abbreviated theatrical releases. There’s a simple arithmetic at work: with three hours you only get three shows a night per screen, and you need to open on n-thousand screens in order to make $100M opening weekend. Even though FOTR has taken some $860 million[1] in worldwide box office reciepts, New Line and, hence, Peter Jackson are still subject to the rules.

I’d argue that it’s actually good, or least “less bad”, that it came out this way: they let him have free rein on the actual design, production and filming, where artistic compromise would have been deadly to the overall quality of the films, and imposed on him in post-production. I also get the sense (though I admit this is speculation) that the biz guys granted Jackson the extended edition DVDs as an olive branch to make up for the savagery they imposed on the theatrical releases.

[1] http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2001/LRDRN.html

It happens mostly in the Theatrical Version DVD (which has a different set of extras) that you hear one set of people talk about “Rohans” and the other about “Rohirrim”. I didn’t do any analysis, but it was mostly the Hollywood/Studio types who used “Rohans”.

But the key scene for me is the meeting first meeting with Eomer, as man, elf, and dwarf pursue the orcs. That’s what nails the culture: Eomer realises he has failed ro rescue, and maybe killed, prisoners of the orcs. That gift of the horses, whom he calls by name, is wergild. He doesn’t say he’s sorry, he pays his debt.

These are incredibly deep films, solidly rooted in their world, and so many people are going to miss that. And that Charge across the Pelennor is going to mostly go clean over their heads.

But I have hope for the kids who, if they haven;t already, will see the films and then, waiting for another Harry Potter, make a grab for Tolkien.

Dave: Ooo, nice catch about the wergild. I’d always liked that scene but hadn’t noted how apt that aspect of it was. I also always liked Theoden’s “no parent should have to bury…” speak over the gravesites — parts of it are practically lifted from Beowulf.

If it’s tacky to complain that one side or the other games the system, may we who pay for it complain that it is set up to game?

Hello, Nate. I started watching the extended DVD on a laptop aboard my boat last night. Not exactly the most propitious viewing conditions, and I didn’t even get through the first disc. Will finish tonight…then reread and link your blog entry tomorrow.

As a translator of Beowulf, I’m probably more attuned to the Tolkien-Beowulf resonances than most viewers (other than Dave Bell!) but I have found the Jackson screenplay rather oblivious to Tolkien’s OE scholarship. The scene with Eomer rings well because it is taken almost exactly from Tolkien. On the other hand Theoden’s mourning speech slips into modern sentimentalism when the screenwriters try to abbreviate the source text.

I agree about the debasement of Gimli. I was appalled at the extended-version comment on “squirrel-droppings.” The Jackson films would be better by far if the writers had hewed more closely to Tolkien’s language. Their attempts to imitate or interpolate dialogue make me wince every time.

Anton: Yeah, by all means!

Got here from Electrolite (to whom thanks as well), read your write-up the day before Thxg, and spent yesterday alternately cooking and eating turkey and savoring TTTX. Your detailed and affectionate write-up is superb! I, too, was annoyed and disappointed with the theatrical release, and completely agree with your assessment that the improved pacing is the best addition/change.

I still think it was a mistake to make the Ents into “walking” trees. I always imagined them as moving on root systems somehow – like the Martians in the Simpsons, only of course much more solemn and dignified . But the restoration of their importance and dignity, the fuller view of the cleansing of Isengard, Merry and Pippin’s raid on Saruman’s pantry, and the extremely unsettling disappearance of thousands of orcs under the limbs of a forest that wasn’t there yesterday are probably my favorite new scenes.

Fretting now, however, about the rumors of Saruman’s fall to the cutting room floor. They must – MUST – include Gandalf’s breaking of his staff in the ruins of his fortress, which I consider one of the highest points of the book. And I am bitterly disappointed in the reported removal of the Scouring of the Shire which, to me, is really the crowning glory of the trilogy. Maybe they’ll do it as a full sequel – there would be real virtue in using all the hobbit actors 4-6 years older!

But so much to be thankful for here, especially and again your thoughtful review (and the other comments). So Thanks!

Sean is right.

I still haven’t seen the whole extended version: two evenings weren’t enough to get all the way through. Will finish tonight and write tomorrow. So long for now.

Anton: I don’t know if it would be possible to stuff more goodies in. I’m banking that they’ll offer all three together in a special box in another year, but that the basic content of the DVDs won’t change.

Alan: Whenever they stray from Tolkien’s language it always gets dicier, I agree.

Mark: Your idea about how Ents move is fascinating, if not exactly canonical. In the book our first indication of Treebeard’s locomotion is: “Treebeard lifted up first one large foot and then the other . . . the rootlike toes grasped the shelf.” As for the Scouring: I was sad too, but they always said they weren’t going to do that section, so I made my peace with it a while ago. I’ll be disappointed, though, if they don’t have a good long scene of the hobbits’ return to the Shire, if only to establish the home that they’ve managed to save.

Sean: The one I was referring to is one before that that helps to establish why Frodo has to believe that.

I’m delighted to see so many comments on this entry! Welcome, everyone!