Huzzah Wha?

I have a blog?

Well now.

Spent the last few time intervals struggling with school, disappointment, and bemused obsession.

Expect more posts soon.

yours,
Noah J.

Like, Totally Freaking Out

Hate to post and run, but this article is about a robot that is controlled by cultured neurons.

If you're not like, freaking out, might I suggest you reread that sentence, and then the article and then start FREAKING OUT.

This is the single coolest thing to happen during my lifetime thus far.

yours,
Noah J.

...I Watched as the World Shrunk Before My Eyes

Zwoop! There it goes!

What? Right. Google.

The time stamp will tell that I am up late tonight, and finding myself unable to concentrate on anything I was supposedly up to do (writing, natch), I've spent the past few hours doing my usual time waste- when I've bloghopped myself to death I start jumping over my Science/News links, and once that's run out I just cruise around on Wikipedia and IMDb.

Somewhere in the middle of it all I noticed a little blip on PopSci about Google's newest map feature and decided to check it out for myself. In the process I discovered a few things that you will no doubt be wildly interested in.

The feature discussed in the article was Walking Directions for Google Maps, a useful little addition that I've been wanting for a while. It avoids no right turn signs and one-way streets, and makes me just that much more dependent on its route calculations than I already was.

Turns out I've been right about my way to campus being shorter all along. Take that.

Of course, once trapped in the endless labyrinth that is Google extra apps, I started using Street View, and lo and behold, some minor mapping has been done in France (which follows the Tour de France, note if you will the modified icon for the route), some cities in Japan and a whole lot of Australia- you can check out a little bit of Paris, or quite a bit of Tokyo, or some mysterious post-apocalyptic wastelands. The resolution of the Tour de France street views are a significantly higher resolution than the rest of the world, which is refreshing, even if it makes every other street view that much more disappointing.

The oddest thing that I found though, is that Google Maps has no mapping of Israel. None whatsoever. They have satellite imagery, but just try getting it to give you directions from Cairo to Leipzig. Apparently, Google Earth was being used by Palestinian militants to plan attacks.

Seems so pedestrian, but I guess you can weaponize anything if you try hard enough.

I can easily plot the course, however, from Paris to Berlin.

yours,
Noah J.

Some Games that Matter

I suppose they'd matter a lot more if you actually cared about video games, but since these are all free on-line you can afford to.

You Have to Burn the Rope

What it Is: You Have to Burn the Rope wears the guise of a classic 8-bit platformer, with its axe-tossing bebowlered pink blob of a protagonist and the terrific chiptunes that play in the background, but it’s a lot more than that, or really, it’s a lot less. YHtBtR plays perfectly like the genre it apes but it clocks in at something under two minutes of gameplay- like the title says, all you really have to do is burn the rope.

Why it Matters: YHtBtR’s minimal approach to its genre is shrugged off (“we didn’t feel like making a longer game” the end credits cheerily report) but it’s a brilliant post-modern* satire of modern gaming, a pointed jab at the moody seriousness and over-complication that’s become the cliché of games today, much as coins and kidnapped women were the standby of days since past. They even give delightful instructions as you pass through the opening tunnel, as though the title weren’t enough already. Even if you could care less about satire, the games ending credits (stills of your epic adventure and a quirky song) are worth the trip, brief though it may be.

Ben There, Dan That

What it Is: Ben There, Dan That is a amusing and generally well-written send-up of the point and click adventure game, and it follows the exploits of its creators, Dan Marshall and Ben Ward, two lay-abouts who just want to watch television. For those of you unfamiliar with adventure games, allow me to enlighten: these games generally drop you in some sort of situation (helpful, I know), and then leave you to puzzle it out. Objects will be examined, picked up, combined, and used, often in a frustratingly unintuitive way. BTDT manages to sidestep the frustration however, and is weird without being annoying, and most of the puzzles are on the easy to medium side, usually with a minimum of illogical puzzlecraft. The graphics are simple and fun, and though the right-click-to-cycle-actions thing is annoying, the dialogue is clever and entertaining (barring the relatively dull alien conspiracy plotline).

Why it Matters: Truth be told, BTDT doesn’t really matter. It’s an ode to a genre that’s long been dead, and despite a few half-hearted efforts to revive it (i.e. Zach and Wiki for the Wii) it doesn’t really seem like the point and click gaming that gave us Sam and Max and the Monkey Island series is ever going to make a mainstream comeback. But that’s also sort of the point. BTDT is the perfect sort of parody, much like Edgar Wright’s Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (I’ll jump mediums when I damn well please)- though relentless in its spoofing, it’s also a completely valid work of the genre it targets. With plenty of direct and indirect references to its progenitors, BTDT matters every joke and jab is made with love, and it makes a valiant though largely unheard call back to the days when writing wasn’t an afterthought, and games about goofy pirates and animal detectives weren’t just allowed- they were lauded.

Façade

What it Is: Everything seems like its fine when your slightly awkward friend Trip calls you over for drinks with him and his wife, Grace, but by the time you’ve gotten out of the elevator and knocked on the door, it already seems clear that their perfect marriage has more than its share of problems. Façade is the most unique and bizarre game I’ve ever played- it’s a first-person drinks-and-marriage-counseling simulator, where your only weapon is your voice. That’s it. That’s what you do. Stop looking at me like that.

Why it Matters: Façade doesn’t sound that special, well maybe it does, but at first glance it seems more weird and unique than significant. It starts to hit you after you’ve spent a bit of time making small talk with these people, and I say people very pointedly. You know that your making tense conversation with two computer controlled players but it’s eerily difficult to identify them as such. Their manner, their voices, the looks on their faces and responses to what you say (Façade uses a pretty slick text parser to read your typings)- it’s uncannily human. They respond to your actions, and you guide the argument to some sort of conclusion, whether it be Trip guiding you out of the apartment, or Grace confessing to an affair or both of them deciding to work on their relationship. Only after your third or fourth time through do the limits of the conversation become apparent, but those first few run-throughs are a spookily convincing player guided story, something that the gaming industry has been trying to make for decades. This isn’t to say it’s perfect (the text parser sometimes seems to get the exact opposite of what you said; some dialogue lines get retread with annoying frequency; where the story actually ends up can seem frustratingly unrelated to your prodding questions) but it’s the most significant step that’s ever been taken in this direction. Color me excited for The Party, the sequel that’s the same technology upgraded and applied to a whole crowd of chatty uncanny-valleyers.

That was... longer than expected. Go and download them. Now.

yours,
Noah J.

*I know what post-modern means, and am allowed to use it. Quit your scoffing.

A Movie I Would Like to Talk About

I've seen a lot of good films recently: In the last month I've seen The Dark Knight, Taxi Driver, Through a Glass, Darkly, Wall-E, and Yojimbo, but despite all of that the only movie I really want to talk about is Wanted.

Oh how I've been wanting to do that. So anyhow:

"You're not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank!" shouts Tyler Durden from atop a burning, paint-spattered building, or at least he does in my head as I try my good goddamnedest to ignore the oversaturated sarcasm that drips through James McAvoy's insipid voiceover.

Now it might be a stretch to say that Fight Club dealt with corporate drudgery and modern emasculation with a delicate hand, but the claim seems infinitely more reasonable after sitting through a hundred and ten minutes of Wanted, a male power fantasy so broad and stupid in its choices that blowing up credit card buildings becomes sensible in comparison.

The problem isn't that Wanted wants to be Fight Club, the problem is that Wanted never bothers to understand the nuanced of the film. It asks similar questions (what is the role of masculinity in a society that seemingly discourages it? Is violence the answer? What is the second rule of wait a minute now) but rather than discussing the various angles it simply pulls back on the trigger and screams "Yes!"

Of course, any one who saw the movie and drank it up is probably wondering what I'm going on about, since Wanted really only bothers with these sort of issues in its first act and a little in the last. "Noah J.," you might say, "why worry about all of these high-falutin' thematic notions when all we really want is a whiz-bang action extravaganza?" Well I'm glad you asked me that, me, and since I'm asking I might as well tell you- Wanted can't even deliver well on that front.

Take for example the first real action sequence, the shoot-out in a grocery store leading to an absurd car chase. As far as consistency goes, these scenes fail to make any sense; why is Fox (Angelina Jolie) using a gun-on-a-swivel when she can supposedly bend bullets? Okay, I'm nitpicking, but be honest- can you really enjoy the flow of an action scene when every few seconds James McAvoy screams jesus christ and goddammit, neatly translating the crash bang crescendos into annoying little bits of ugly syncopation. Barring even annoyance, it's difficult to avoid that deja-vu feeling that seems to crop up every few minutes in the film, that little voice in the back of your head that says "haven't I seen this before?"

Maybe it would be quieter if the special effects didn't rip every genuinely interesting stunt from the Matrix CliffNotes. It can't even get that right either, opting to explain every moment of its physics raping action bloodfest with heightened adrenaline, instead of, say, super powers, which might be less realistic (ha ha ha) but at least the film wouldn't be breaking its own rules every thirty-five seconds.

Admittedly, Wanted is adapted from a comic book, and the comic book was one of those unfortunate okay-at-best sort of ventures, so themes and consistency and rule breaking could maybe be forgiven, even a little bit, but nope, they have to go ahead and make the Loom of Fate.

Let me repeat that for you. The Loom of Fate.

Writer: Okay, so I've gotten everything worked out, I think. We take the supervillains and make them assassins, we take the super-powers and make them adrenaline stuff-

Producer: Adrenaline?

Writer: It's stupid but it'll hold. It's an action movie, right?

Producer: Okay, okay.

Writer: We just need something to hold it all together, a unifier.

Producer: How about weaving?

Writer: Um... weaving? I- uh. [a pause, the noise of shuffling papers] Hm... well maybe, actually. Like, a secret society behind a legitimate front? That might actually work.

Producer: What if they got their assignments from a giant automated loom that they read the names of targets from?

Writer: Pardon?

See Wanted if you enjoy watching things explode. If you seek not to waste your time and money on a half-assed ripoff of other movies' points and particulars, and are not yet convinced, allow me to reiterate, and please, understand just how dumb this is.

The Loom of Fate. The Loom of Fate.

the loom of fate

yours,
Noah J.

p.s.: sorry for the rambles.

Writer's Block

It is not a good thing! It is, in fact, a very bad thing, and a perfect explanation why there hasn't been a substantial post in relative ages in either of my steam-powered binary word collectors.

It's a terrible rut to get in- I've been doing nothing, less and less as the days go by. I'm starting to become threatened by my word processor; my laptop will sit open on the couch in the living room as I sit nervously in the kitchen, trying desperately to avoid making eye contact. Every time someone asks me what I've been up to this summer, I reply that I've been working on personal projects, writing and such. Every time someone asks I feel worse about the delivery and feel more and more like a fraud.

Whine, complain. Complain, whine whine whine, bitch, moan, complain.

Complain complain.

yours,
Noah J.

Though the Blog Probably isn't

I promise there'll be an interesting post soon. Possibly after I see The Dark Knight.

If you seek entertainment, check out the RottenTomatoes page for TDK, find the negative reviews and click the comments page. Mob mentality, you've found yourself a good home.

Until later, enjoy the picture. I know I did.

yours,
Noah J.

Update: Poems!

On the first page of images for the search term "Nymphic." It is a modified porn picture for a DnD website. I think this is hilarious, but you are allowed to disagree.

I added some poems to the main, which you can find under writings.

Nothing I'm particularly proud of, but I felt I should put them up there regardless.

I spent about three hours figuring out how javascripting works to make the particular page, so at least check it out for the fancy show/hide features. That I should have figured out in five minutes. But didn't.

Alack.

yours,
Noah J.

Huh

Who is that handsome, inarticulate man?

yours,
Noah J.

Grrr Raaaaaaar Etc.

Alright, position update. I am currently located in a delightful coffee shop on State St. in Madison, WI, little place called Fair Trade Coffee. Good coffee (or so I would say if I could afford any) and an excellent atmosphere: the walls a are nice warm yellow, the table distribution is calculated and perfect for accommodating everyone from that kid in the yellow and black sweatshirt by himself with the laptop to the small gaggle of peers that I've been dragged along behind.

So that's where I am (and if you could tell me right now I'm sure I'd love to hear where you are) and now that you know we can move onto more interesting things, like films I've seen recently. Let's go with The Incredible Hulk.

So, The Incredible Hulk, pseudo-sequel to Ang Lee's 2003 Hulk or The Hulk or whatever, is actually... not bad? Yes! It is! It is not bad, a worthy film to portray the Hulk-Smashtastic action that fills the comics and should be an easy adaptation to the screen, or so you'd think, and you'd probably be wrong, because the Hulk is another one of those Marvel characters with the wonders of internal conflict that the company might as well patent and slip somewhere into their logo. Unlike Spider-Man and Iron Man and all the rest of those witty bastards, however, Bruce Banner is too busy trying to cure himself of his oddities to bother with much wit, and the eponymous monster is too dumb to do anything but blithely narrate his actions, albeit infrequently. It makes for a strange comic book movie, all of the slam-bang action but none or at least few of the grins. They make it work, somehow, probably thanks to the lovely Liv Tyler, who manages to cement an emotional core into the film that one can actually care about, and even if you can't manage that (for God forbid a movie demand anything more than your ability to wonder slack jawed at CG explosions) than at least you can ogle her until your eyes dry out.

I'd talk more about the weird choice of Tim Blake Nelson for Dr. Stern and the occasionally spotty pick of William Hurt and maybe even how excited I am for the things that Marvel Studios is up to but I'm not getting payed by the word and Lord knows you lost interest somewhere around the word "gaggle."

Hm. Not as good as Iron Man, though.

Found a Job...

...and quit it immediately. Okay, to be fair, I'll be officially quitting it in... about seven hours, but even so, the effect is the same so cut the whining because I am sick of hearing it.

Isn't that a lovely picture? It only half relates; the notion of vegetarian shoes though... pure charm.

It wasn't the worst job, it was just boring and soul crushing and awful. Like customer service, except that people actually want information from you when you're standing around in the middle of Target like a very active coma victim. They're much less appreciative when you jump onto their doorstep begging for money with idealism leaking out of your nostrils. It's worse than them just not wanting it, it's them loathing you, the very fact of your existence about the equivalent of a particularly large and needy mosquito.

Canvassing. Door to door canvassing. The institution, Wisconsin Environment, lovely people really, had me memorize some lines, stuck a badge on me and kicked me out on my own into an upper middle class neighborhood obviously more worried about the length and coloring of it's lawns than the air around it. Now admittedly, global warming is not something the human brain was ever designed to fear but I would like to think that someone would give a damn- exactly the sort of thinking that gets one twenty eight doors in your face.

I don't care if I'm broke as hell. My self-esteem can only take so much, and enough people dislike me already.

No point convincing the whole of suburbia that I'm no good.

yours,
Noah J.

Concerts

So I spent last weekend in Chicago, which was much fun and plenty of ROFLs. Seeing Third Eye Blind in concert was sort of surreal- their sound is about one hundred percent the same and I felt like I was about twelve years old listening to them. They spent a lot of stage time talking about their soon-to-be-recorded fourth album (fourth? how long have they been around?) and displaying questionable fashion and headwear choices. Such is life.

The important part of the Chicago concerts was actually Broken Social Scene, who was pretty much wonderful. Kevin Drew does a great job of being rock n roll awesome without being a dick about it- plucking out the bassline of Shoreline was greatly improved by the addition of jump kicks and pick-held-high type maneuvering. Somewhat of an upsetting concert for me, though. Broken Social Scene is hell of good, but that means it got a lot of play and association- about seventy percent of the songs I know by them are the soundtrack to the various heartbreaks of my life, so the concert was somewhat melancholy in that respect.

The Cool Kids played as well. They were pretty good? They need more material before I can judge them proper, and then judge them I shall.

Overall, a good weekend with good music and fun times. This post wouldn't be quite so terrible if I weren't so tired, so I'll catch some sleep so I read this in the morning before crying, brought to tears by the shame I have brought on my family .

yours,
Noah J.

Manhattan

Every time that I log into this account I get all sheepish, typing in my login slash e-mail whatever rocknrollanoah. It's a holdover from older times, you know, and though I've grown very attached to it I sometimes wonder what people think looking at it.

Finally got around to watching Manhattan tonight. I'm absolutely in love with Woody Allen movies, at least the movies from his earlier period (forgive him his later period work, I beg you); the dialogue is just so tight and witty and it has that completely unrealistic quality of reality that really only exists in movies. Watching Woody Allen and Diane Keaton fall in love on screen is always so exciting- they have a very unique chemistry that makes me one hundred percent okay with them having their relationship over a whole slew of films.

The soundtrack was phenomenal, Gershwin throughout. Usually I'm not the sort that would even discuss the soundtrack but recently I've found myself listening more- maybe I'm getting better at watching movies.

The girl who plays Tracy in the movie, no one big, just, you know, Mariel Hemingway. It's strange though, women in movies I mean; Mariel Hemingway became really quite attractive but at the age of something young that she was for Manhattan she's a sort of face you don't see in movies anymore. Like Shelley Duvall, a good actress with a very unique look, attractive on some level that is definitely not the mainstream. It's disheartening. Today I look at movies and I see woman all in some degree of the popular aesthetic and I can't help but wonder where all the original actors went.

God bless Laura Linney, I guess.

yours,
Noah J.

Pornography

This would be my... second blog? Third? One way or another, I've left a couple of them trailing in the dust. I've been trying to sort out for a while what the point of blogging is; I don't want to be another web diary, endlessly noting the inanities of my daily life, demanding that people care, weeping nightly at my empty comment spaces.

I did that anyway for a long while, and I have had quite enough of that thank you very much and yet the horrifying urge to blog remains, so I might as well make it interesting, at the very least.

So anyhow, pornography.

Now, I understand completely that I'm not everybody and there is certainly no universal truth to be said about people, except perhaps the constantly dreary presence of Death hovering over our collective shoulder, but I feel relatively safe saying that men watch more pornography than women, and it's quite likely that I watch more pornography than the rest of the men in my apartment.

Let me clarify.

I'm an English major, which means that not only will no one hire me, I also find delight in analyzing the living fuck out of any thing that jumps around in my periphery, waving its hands about for attention, be it video games or movies or music or the lunatics that I refer to charmingly as friends, little escapes my overpowering desire to intellectualize, and picking apart their every facet has become as compulsory as eating. Porn, for me as for so many others, began as a supplement to masturbatory impulses and it served that purpose just fine until my brain started picking up on patterns and variance and next thing you know I'm watching pornography in my downtime, puzzling over different varieties of faked orgasms and kinks and wondering what the hell it is that's up with the internet or maybe society but more importantly what the hell it is that's wrong with me.

Regardless of any hesitation I have about my newfound fascinations something in me wants to write about it. That something deep inside is crying out that a thesis on the development of fetish pornography or the mainstreaming of amateur content would be worthy and interesting. It's a tough voice to shake and it just keeps yelling. "C'mon!" it shouts, not without allure, "I'm sure it couldn't possibly backfire on you!"

Then on Craig's List I saw an ad looking for freelance writers to write reviews of adult films, and it was like a shining door lined with gumdrops suddenly appeared before me. Write reviews of adult films and get paid to do so? Phenomenal. Sign me up and do it quickly.

But a certain reluctance overtakes me, which I guess is a problem of reputation, which Iago tells me is not really of much importance but he was a tit anyhow so I guess I can throw that out the window. How can I go into this endeavor the reviewer that reluctantly and snobbishly watches porn and avoid becoming a porn obsessed pervert so overtly dedicated that he can't help but write six paragraph diatribes on breasts?

What? I don't know either.

yours
Noah J.