Moving Pixels Podcast: The Seamier Side of Fairy Tales

My intense dislike for the Fables's version of Snow White encouraged me to make the Big Bad Wolf very bad.

Stupid Snow White. Stupid Fables.

Moving Pixels Podcast: The Seamier Side of Fairy Tales

I wore black, and she wore white.

There is no us. There is only I.

Dropped like a tear from my mother's eye.

Are the Wonderstuff playing with the HCE from Finnegan's Wake? Dunno.

Don't care.

Saw these guys open for Siouxsie. Lead singer drained a full bottle of Jim by the end of the set, and yet, they only played about eight songs.

Not even the rain has such small hands

I've been up all night trying to round off the infinite

I had forgotten about this video, charmingly weird, charmingly 80s.

The old man is doing bits from Steven Wright. Or else Steven Wright stole all of his material from this video. Somehow I doubt that.

In grad school, I very nearly came to blows at a party with a guy concerning the quality of the Pet Shop Boys music (and, perhaps, specifically the Please album?). Sarra restrained my uglier instincts. Probably for the best.

Probably.

Care

So jacked. So beautiful.

From the soundtrack to Cunt, where its inappropriateness (the purity of sentimental 50s doo-wop) breathes a beautiful irony into the game's otherwise grotesque subject matter.

Still though, internally the song speaks of its own self contradictions with its off beats and the intentional break up of its own flow. It acknowledges its own quaint and antique nature with the sounds of dead technology (the sound of the needle on the record embedded in the music itself) punctuating its themes of inspiration and care. Its very wrongness makes it so right. It declares its own quixotic nature.

“One in a million, that is you”: Device 6 and the Decentralization of Player Identity

I'm off hiatus.

To be honest, I didn't know that I was on hiatus, but I haven't written about anything since at least mid-February.

So, I'm off hiatus with the following piece on Device 6 and the manner in which games diminish personal identity while creating the illusion of significance for the player.

Oddly, I actually think it's pretty good. Hmmm... maybe i needed a hiatus.

“One in a million, that is you”: Device 6 and the Decentralization of Player Identity

Moving Pixels Podcast: 'Brothers', A Tale of Rubbing Your Belly, While Patting Your Head

You see, I don't actually play video games anymore. For example, here is a discussion of a game that takes just four to five hours to play that I still couldn't complete in time.

Pretty soon I'll be giving up on most Hearthstone matches about a minute and a half in.

Moving Pixels Podcast: 'Brothers', A Tale of Rubbing Your Belly, While Patting Your Head

Running down the length of my thigh, Sharona

First album that I ever recall seeing a Parental Advisory Warning sticker on (of course, that would have been years after its release, as those stickers didn't exist when it actually was released), which actually speaks to the goofiness of all the terror about such media. So much censorship in retrospect, so much hand wringing by Mommy and Daddy even though they already grew up hearing these same things themselves, play acting the past as if it was somehow so much less corrupt than it was, than it is.

Original sin isn't new (nor is lust, desire, and uncertainty for that matter), kids. It's "original," starts with the dawn of humankind. Every generation tastes it, then pretends like they never experienced it themselves. Liars.

My wife actually had a copy of Chipmunk Punk (yes, Alvin, Simon, and Theodore do punk) with this on it when she was a kid. And this song ran completely uncut with the Chipmunks singing every line as it was in the original.

And the original is so awfully good. Very basic, very visceral, and so desperate in its post-pubescent angst, the music matches the theme so very well. Desperation, desperation, desperation.

Clear eyes, full hearts, or something like that

Yeah, so I mediated a discussion for a group that was having a bit of a disagreement the other evening. It began as me just giving people an opportunity to air grievances. Then the thing took a turn, and suddenly, I wasn't myself. One of the guys involved says (with some disbelief--he's known me for a couple years), "Professor, you're getting pretty inspirational." Which was sadly true. I was like, "Yeah, I really need to go out and kill a puppy, so I feel more like myself again."

That being said, actually my "inspirational speech" drew from two seemingly drastically different sources, both of which I somehow actually find to be reasonable when put together. First, I quoted Sartre's infamous "hell is other people" line, before moving on to a passage from Ecclesiastes: "Two is better than one. For if one should fall, then the other is there to pick him up."

I believe both statements are utterly true, and yet, I realize that they sound like polar opposites. The thing is that this seemingly paradoxical paradigm is the heart and soul of the introvert. It isn't that we don't love individuals. We do. We bond very closely with few. We recognize our need for them and their need for us. But "people," the group, this we find troubling. We don't trust the collective. We know their nature. We have that same ugliness in ourselves, after all. I do, at least.

Luckily, I guess, I was talking to a group of people that are probably made up largely of introverts (And actually that may be part of the trouble that they were having. We indeed don't work well with others--or at least large groups of others). Somehow I think what I said may have helped. I've watched them today work very effectively and efficiently as a unit, weird for a band of misfit toys.

But then again, I've always lived on that island. It's more interesting anyway. There's far fewer "people" there and those that are have more interesting shapes, colors, and flavors than "people" are supposed to have or allow themselves to have as a group.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

This was a sixth grader from my wife's school's artistic response to this age old question:

My daughter drew herself as a walrus trainer (in anime style, of course).

Zen, Zenner, Zennest

Oh, wait, maybe I'm missing the point.

A brief excerpt from my forthcoming Harlequin romance novel

After listening to the Earl of Deptford's comments, Agatha was uncertain whether she should feel offended or unbutton her blouse.

After some reflection, she decided to do both.

So bleed me.

Navy blue is a desperate attempt to believe that there is a legitimate alternative to black.

It's sad really.

You know what spikes blood pressure?

Ibuprofen and nasal decongestants.

You know what the two things in life that are most needful to me are?

Ibuprofen and nasal decongestants.

Jellyfish heaven is where jellyfish go

To get away from Mormons and drunk eskimos.

---

When I saw The Dead Milkmen live many years ago, they did not unfortunately perform this song (perhaps, my favorite Milkmen song). What I did get to see was a kid stage dive into a thinned out space in the crowd (A very bad judgment call on his part--maybe his first dive? Dunno.), and I swear to this day that I heard his head crack against the cement floor over the music. Show stopped, ambulances called, a bit of shuffling about, then the show continued.

A son to read the dark.

A son to rend the dark.

I don't know what the world may need

but I'm sure as hell that it starts with me.

And that's wisdom--
I've laughed at.

I grew up in the 80s

when everything was plastic and neon
and filled with a terrible, aching beauty.

Back in real life, though

You're for me, punk rock girl.

What I love about the Milkmen is the purposely strained rhymes. It is their aesthetic, dirty, damaged.

It's like the book of Proverbs was recorded as a pop song

Okay, well, maybe not.

Still, though, Brit, I feel you.

Wouldn't it be charming if i could just fast forward about a week and a half?

In all seriousness, though, maybe this is just a bit of autobiographical writing from Britney (or maybe not, I'm too lazy to check on the writing credits of a song called "Work, bitch."). All that being said there is just something so ruefully, so appropriately American about this song. It is what we worship: the act of work itself.

Who has time to appreciate the outcomes? After all, there's always more work to be done, bitch.

Embrace the curse, hold it close, kiss it on the mouth.