BIOSHOCK 2 TRAILER ON YOUTUBE

AWESOMEAWESOMEAWESOME! An extra on PS3 version of BioShock is this teaser trailer for BioShock 2. It looks beautiful. I can’t wait.

McCain and Palin: The “Hatefulness” Ticket?

Most of us who’ve been paying even the most vague of attention to the campaign have heard of the character assassination tactics that McCain and Palin are using, like linking Obama to an ex-Weather Underground member. Here’s the thing: they’re very carefully worded intimations to claims that are downright hateful or wrong. Is that what’s going to inspire the swing voters? Anyway, this video’s pretty shocking. It’s footage of McCain supporters and what they believe. Now, I realize (and hope!) that most McCain supporters aren’t like this. But…still… how can you be comfortable with these tactics? Is that what America means to you? I’m not asking you to change your politics. Just help to get people to understand that this is nothing but a message of hate, and get McCain to stop it. These people’s behavior is absolutely contemptible.

John Hodgman Interview @ Wired.com

John Hodgman does an amazing interview at Wired about geekdom, being a former literary publisher, Borges, his upcoming cameo on Battlestar Galactica, and being the PC guy from the Apple ads. Interview’s here.

It’s just an awesome interview, really fun to read and really intelligent. Hodgman is a guy I would really, really like  a chance to drink several beers with and yell about sci-fi, literature and stuff like that.

WTF? A Free, Flash-Based, Side-Scrolling, RPG

WTF? is, as indicated above, a free, side-scrolling RPG. It’s based on the ever popular World of Warcraft, and it’s pretty neat. I haven’t played much of it, yet, but it seems well worth at least one shout-out. Besides, if you’re like me, and have been attempting to kick the MMORPG habit, it’s nice to have a few things to fall back on. 

About the game:

The time/space continuum of Azimuth has enfolded. A Rift Lord’s unwittingly opened a portal from the earthly netherworld, and the place is crawling with infamous historical thinkers, like Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Mary Daly, each of whom is trying to enlist your help in effort to figure out WTF Azimuth is all about. And… as you might imagine, there’s plenty of conflict as they attempt to make sense of the ways in which, as Mary Daly puts it, “the game naturalizes a Western militaristic heterosexist hypersexualized patriarchal capitalism, played out in relation to a spiritually infused race war – kinda.” 

It’s an ideological revolt, or perhaps it’s just ideologically revolting. Something is definitely afoot. You must choose whom to align with as competing factions attempt to find the means to wrest control of Azimuth away from whomever, or whatever, currently holds power. Think WoW meets social theory meets game studies meets, well… tabloid journalism… since you also dig up plenty of dirt about some of these characters along the way. Woot!

 

Sounds pretty good to me. You get to play as either a Blood Elf Priest(ess) named Phallicity or a Gnome Rogue named Lumpen. Great names, they’re not. Anyway, the mechanics seem pretty good, and if you feel like downloading it, it’s only a 9MB download. Here’s the link to the homepage: WTF? Enjoy.

Colbert-Spiderman ‘08: The ‘Truthiness’ Ticket / The Pop-Cultural Entity Returns

Man, remember when Stephen Colbert tried to run for president? Wasn’t that awesome? 

Marvel Comics sure thinks so. In the Marvel Universe, Colbert’s still running. And gathering speed. That’s a pretty goddamn cool thing, in my humble opinion. Wired.com reports, interviewing Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, and the Webhead’s writer, Mark Waid. Interview with Joe Quesada and Mark Waid.

On an unrelated note, I think Colbert’s becoming a pretty remarkable figure, passing beyond the bounds of comedy (brilliant comedy, might I add) into what the more pretentious of us might label ‘performance art.’ He somehow manages to lever his celebrity into whole new realms of historic memorialization: from getting a spider named after him, getting his own ice-cream, and now he’s got an ongoing cameo in Spider-Man. He’s becoming a kind of new take on celebrity; a self-aware, self-satirizing kind of media vampire. (I mean that in the best way possible.) The more he feeds, the more powerful he becomes! In that regard, perhaps he’s perfect for a comic book. Few comedians have ever accomplished something so widespread, not even the immortal Yakov Smirnoff. 

I’ve written before on the presence of the intangible, and the new realm of popular conception, on our behavior before (on the Anti-Emo Riots in Mexico, here) and Colbert seems to me to be a new breed of celebrity/pop-cultural entity. (PCE, for short.) A PCE traditionally has existed solely as a passive thing to be observed, that has little effect on the real world. But again, as with the anti-emo riots, with Colbert, we’re beginning to see things from that intangible world start affecting the rest of us, even altering (in however small ways) the course of history. These new breed of PCEs are blending into the realms of politics and even into your day-to-day life- Sarah Palin’s a great example. While the old guard of politician are still having trouble adopting a larger than life persona, but Palin is a perfect of example of a character, as opposed to a real person. It’s what makes her so popular. After all, she’s cute and well-written.

(More on PCE’s after the jump…)

Sarah Palin Quotes Facistic, Openly Bigoted and Pro-Nazi Journalist

Say, did you know that Sarah Palin quoted an American facist writer named WESTBROOK PEGLER? There’s a Wikipedia link there, and here’s a few more links on the subject: BoingBoing, Constant Siege. 

My own take: sure, the quote she chose was in fact, all about how good small-town life is: that “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity.” Except, that’s clearly not true. Small-towns have exactly the same ratio of assholes to good people as everywhere else, because you know what? People are people, and by and large, people suck. All this is a ploy to emphasize her down-hominess, which, while probably real, is being blatantly cultivated to make herself more appealing to the masses. Again, not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s part of the political process. However, the major issues are the following:

1) Regarding the quote, one should ALWAYS get a sense of who you’re quoting before you choose that. I understand Palin didn’t write the speech herself. But what the hell kind of speech-writer decides that picking a line from a anti-Semitic, and a PRO BIGOTRY journalist, is a good idea? And who the hell lets them get away with that? This is an honest question: why would you do that? Is it a good enough quote to merit distinction from its author? I don’t think it is, so what do you accomplish by invoking Pegler’s legacy of hatred? It’s confusing. I suspect it was merely an oversight, but… it boggles the mind. 

2) Sure, Palin’s down home-y. Sure, she’s Joe-Six-Pack’s friend (maybe). You might be able to relate to her personality. But personality is not what we’re electing. This ain’t American Idol, it’s a presidency. I ask you, why does America love Sarah Palin? Because she’s attractive, and relatable. I have yet to see her actually impress me with anything other than a sort of animal cunning, able to dodge questions and make it seem like she’s doing a good job as she does it. (I say this as a slightly biased source, but nonetheless, I mean this honestly.) Joe Biden, in the debate, was constantly naming names, providing evidence for his points– even if some of what he referenced was incorrect, the man was working from a fundamental base of accumulated knowledge. Sarah Palin works on your emotion and your desires. She is trying to manipulate you. 

And furthermore, I just disagree with her politics, which is an entirely separate point. But that’s not a problem, that’s just the way opinions work. It’s that dishonest attempt to manipulate me that I resent so much, and that bothers me about her. I honestly wouldn’t mind the attempt to seem like she’s from America’s heartland (which, by the way, Alaska is obviously not) if it seemed like she was genuine, if I didn’t feel like there was a basic contempt for me in the way she looks down on both people who’re advocates of intellectual discourse, as well as her own constituency, thinking that she can represent them by merely adopting a guise of friendliness, and then do whatever she wants with the power, thereby fucking us all over. 

That’s just this man’s take, though.

The Rock that Was: Blitz – Second Empire Justice

I’ve got a very special treat for you all tonight: a DL link to an album that I think is absolutely fantastic. Blitz was an 80s post-punk (though previously just hardcore) band in the general vein of Joy Division or The Cure, and their album Second Empire Justice is absolutely killer. 

I tried to find a good review, but I haven’t come across much of any. Therefore, you’ll have to make do with my own rather scattered thoughts on the album:

The album starts off with a kind of auditory tribute to the deservedly famous “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” with their own take, entitled “Flowers and Fire.” And that’s not a bad thing. In my mind, these ex-Oi Oi Oi types pushed what Joy Division was doing into new areas. You’ll hear echoes of “Love…” throughout the album, especially in “Into the Daylight.” But what makes Blitz’s sophomore effort stand out is the ways they differ: though the goth and eurodance overtones are there, there’s also a intense dedication to a more ambient, Eno-esque fuzz soundscapes, resulting in a kind of ur-shoegaze. So what comes across is a more contemplative sound, one where the vocals take a backseat to the guitar lines, leaving you awash in a kind of glittering, alien sea of distortion. You can definitely imagine My Bloody Valentine sitting around listening to this album. Then there are simple rockers that somehow channel that into a weird, beer-hall type chanting, like on “White Man,” which are hauntingly incantatory. The entire album has a kind of classic science-fiction vibe, like the kind of music you’d get wandering through a Asimovian landscape, or the dystopian cities conjured up out of Gibson’s Neuromancer.

Anyway, that’s a shitty review, but you get the general sense of it, I hope. 

Link’s in the comments section. As ever, these are just links I find, so RIAA, ’tain’t my fault.

For the Really Brave Readers

I’ve been working for the last couple of years on a project that is rather epic in its scope; a 72 part poem entitled, The Goetia. I’ve finished a rough draft of parts 1 & 2, and I thought I’d put them up here as a preview. Let me know what you think, if anyone actually bothers to read this! These two parts aren’t that long. 

The Goetia (A Preview of Parts 1 & 2)

In other writing related news, I also edited Meandering Poem, which you can get HERE. 

As ever, all of my writing has rights reserved under a Creative Commons license.