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Archive | December, 2010

Don’t judge me! (A post about video games)

By on December 12, 2010 in But is it art?, Monkeys!

Dara O’Brien just nails the whole video game art form, not only from the ridiculousness of the games themselves, but also from the perspective that not everyone plays them.

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Some of my fave quotes:

“You cannot be bad at watching a movie; you cannot be bad at listening to an album; but you can be bad at playing a video game, and the video game will punish you, and deny you access to the rest of the video game. No other art form does this. You’ve never read a book and three chapters in, the book has gone: ‘what are the major themes of the book so far?'”

“Oh my god I’m in a gun battle! Which one of these buttons isn’t crouch?”

“You’re not supposed to like video games. It’s the largest entertainment industry in the world, and we’re supposed to NOT enjoy it. … If I’m at a dinner party and somebody asks me, ‘hey Dara, how do you like to relax after a gig,” it’s less embarrassing to say: ‘I like to masturbate to hard core pornography.'”

And his pantomime of what his video game characters look like perfectly reflects my character’s actions the first time I played Bioshock.

You can find the video at YouTube if the embedded one is stuck on crouch.

Hey, Alltop likes that pet a unicorn game! Via The Daily What.

Disquieting Postcards I’ve Recently Received from My Future Self

By on December 10, 2010 in Skwibby fiction

Here’s a snippet from one of my recent short fictions, published by the brand-spanking-and-awesomely-new, AE – The Canadian Review of Science Fiction. Essentially, it’s about the dangers of self-improvement through time travel:

Dude!
Recognize the handwriting? Yeah, it’s me. More precisely, it’s you, circa fifteen years from now. Good news — you’ve finally lost that twenty pounds! Too bad you had to amputate your right leg to do it. At least it means our BMI is low enough to keep us out of the local “Fat Reduction Centre.” The less said about those, the better. I hope you like the card. This is a picture of our home town after the alien invasion. Cool, eh?

M.

— P.S. Don’t sweat the aliens. They’re good for us.

Read the rest of the story at AE, and be sure to check out the other short fiction and essays too.

Alltop once married its own great-great grandparents.

Bringing Good Things to Life

By on December 9, 2010 in Toulouse Le Grandfig

bringing good things to lifeNeil was a tiny and polite human employed by the General Entropy division of NaziWorks 3000 (The Caring Company), where he was an accomplished lamp.

For the most part, he was just happy not to be eaten by the large CEOs that roamed most of his planet, but his current supervisor had found him a choice placement.

Tina was the daughter of a mid-to-large Hyper-Clone outfitted with the devastating Clone 12000, and COO of a Regional Infection division within NaziWorks. Her father’s frequent explosive diarrhea kept her hopping, cleaning up the house, but when he powered down for the evening, she would read under her favourite lamp.

Neil especially liked that she always undid the first three buttons of her blouse first.

Alltop likes lamp. Originally published in 2007.

From Toulouse Le Grandfig in the Land of the Future.

You clay stassy, San Diego!

By on December 8, 2010 in Monkeys!

Love this clip, in which a newswoman demonstrates how to call a turkey. Safe for work, but really, it shouldn’t be:

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Also found on YouTube if the embeddy thing doesn’t work.

And if THAT wasn’t classy enough, here’s another hilarious (but rude) cartoon from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal:


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Alltop approves of all forms of lurkey tove.

Classics of Literature — Ender’s Game

By on December 6, 2010 in But is it art?, Reviews & Rants

Ender's GameThis is a fun and page-turning read about eugenics, institutionalized child abuse, and genocide.

Humanity is at war with a distance race of aliens (called “Buggers”) and for some reason, the adults are unable to discover the best way to fight this implacable ant-like enemy. (Apparently, Boric Acid doesn’t work.)

What it really requires is the sense of wonder and innocence that only a child can have, and so, the people in charge of Earth’s governments start a breeding program to turn out kids designed to be excellent space warriors.

The children are all tagged so the authorities can monitor all their thoughts and movements, while they are being evaluated for service in the International Fleet. (A device that is similar to an iPhone, but a little smaller, and you can’t download your own apps to it.) After he is un-tagged, a young Ender Wiggin is attacked by bullies, and he kills one of them, so that the bullies will no longer bother him. The IF realizes it has made a horrible mistake. This is just the kind of ruthless logic they need in their war.

The rest of the novel follows Ender’s rise through the ranks at Battle School and Command School, a marginally creepy shower scene, and eventually, the set up for an excellent sequel, The Speaker for the Dead.

It is worth noting that an anagram of Ender Wiggin is “Ending Grew I.”