Invisible Cow Linky

Matt Taibbi (still making Rolling Stone worthwhile all by himself) breaks down the situation in Camden – one of the USA’s dying cities. The man who struck the killing blow? Leading candidate for the Republican candidacy, Gov Chris Christie. (via Amund)

Twistiest tongue twister ever. But it’s a nonsense phrase as far as I can tell, which is cheating as far as I’m concerned…

People with opinions about the NZ film industry ought to read Jonathan King’s perspective on the thorny issues of subsidies.

This:

Confirmed: the Universe is a hologram! (Actually more technical and theoretical than this, of course, of course, but it’s always good to be reminded that for several decades hardcore scientists have basically concluded our perception of reality is wildly screwed up.) (via Chris Elder)

Love Actually movie critic showdown. I’ll just link to the opening salvo and finishing move, both by Christopher Orr. The second one links to a bunch of other responses. Sadly only five words survive of my post about it from a decade ago: “Went to see the new Brithope”. I said this whole thing that I’ve never seen anyone else get into. I might have also talked about the Keira Knightley/Egg storyline, because that’s by far the most interesting to talk about – Orr devotes most of his second piece to attacking it with gleeful ferocity. Love Actually! It has become a Christmas classic, though.

The world’s first real-life superhero. A gunfighting PI with hooks for hands. Weird and fascinating.

Upworthy headlines! Everyone is talkign about them now, not just me. They are a thing!

7-year old Russian kid draws pictures of himself riding around shooting bad guys. The pictures date from the 13th century.

Arresting series of nude photos – raises some questions about being “attractive”. Just fun. Not safe for work, obviously. (via Susan IIRC?)

This clip of Jason Segel and Paul Rudd, promoting 2009 bromance I Love You Man, has been doing the rounds. Because they are obviously really tired and it all goes very weird. Lovely

And it gives me an excuse to link to my review of the film, which was a real high point of this blog if you ask me.

Ursula K. LeGuin goes deep & smart into Tolkien & Middle-earth.

Ray Bradbury’s newly-released script for Moby Dick.

You’ve all seen this dog breeding thing, right? Damn. The photos are intense.

What life is like for players right on the bubble of being in the NFL (via Blaise)

Model of the I Love Lucy soundstage from above. Wondrous, somehow. (thanks David R for advising that this is a model, not a pic of the real thing! D’oh.)

And finally, via Hamish: find the invisible cow

Insurance, Monique says ur dumb

This is a call for advice, because insurance companies are dumb. It’s a small-scale issue in the grand scheme of things (cough Christchurch cough), but it’s irritating. So:

We had a fence & gate in our back yard. Then the big storm happened. Our gate fell down. Tower Insurance came to the party. They replaced our ruined shed, replaced our ruined carport roof, and put a new gate in the fence. The fence was finished September 13. We were happy customers.

On October 25 there was another storm in Wellington. It was just an ordinary sort of storm, I thought. The new gate did not survive.

gate2

gate1

We told the insurer, hey, that gate didn’t withstand its very first Wellington storm. Wellington gets high winds and storms all the time. Ergo: it was not up to standard. Fix the gate properly this time. They replied, nope. That was a new event. You have to make a new claim.

We said: uh no way. So they sent an assessor around, who advised them: “the damage is not from bad workmanship but from another event.”

So. What’s our next move?
Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown: we let them get away with it because what were we expecting anyway.
Make it right or we’re outta here: we put a finger in their chest and stare them down and say their guy is wrong and if they don’t fix our little gate situation then we change insurance providers, capeesh?
Counterstrike: I don’t know maybe there is some customer response channel that they are not telling us about where we can say, they got this wrong, and something might come of it. Also I want a pony.

Like, we’re not stupid, are we? Would any builder say that a brand-new fence that is fit for purpose would split apart like that one did in its very first, very average, storm? Was it a very average storm, or am I misremembering its severity?

And how broken is a system where the insurer chooses the builders to do the work, pressures them into delivering work fast and as cheap as possible, then has the absolute power to decide whether their work was good or not?

Insurance is dumb.

Flick Kick Legends, Providence Summer

Sorry folks no time for linky today. But I do want to call attention to two releases of personal importance:

Flick Kick Football Legends
I’m the credited writer for this game from Wellington’s own Pikpok Games. So most of the dumb jokes are my fault, as are many of the weird little stories that unfold down the line. It’s well worth a look I reckon!

It’s a free download:
For Android at the Google Play store
For iPhone/iPad at iTunes

Providence Summer
I’ve also just released this “series pitch” for indie tabletop game Dramasystem, based on an amazing game I ran a decade ago in Scotland. It’s basically “Stand By Me the roleplaying game”. Again, a free download. This is also notable because it’s the first bit of graphic design I’ve ever done (the whole thing, words and visuals, is my work), and the first release with the Taleturn branding on it (albeit tucked away at the end). Taleturn is my business/freelancing/consulting identity, and I do have public-facing ambitions for it, so hopefully this is the first step of many…

Find Providence Summer here

Day of the Doctor

Made it to the afternoon screening spoiler-free. Embassy Theatre full to the brim with families and teens and aging chaps like me. And the lights went down…

I have not been a fan of the latest era of Doctor Who. Despite loving Matt Smith in the role I have been frustrated and bored by the show’s narrative with its weightless mysteries. So my expectations were low.

And that does make me sigh a bit, because this is my show, barmy and self-contradictory and ever changing but always, always kind. How annoying to be waiting for change in my show as it climbs undreamt of heights in popular culture. And to have the 50th anniversary during this period!

But I was delighted. The special showed all the best of showrunner Steven Moffat, and very little of the worst. And the first moment, the first blurred hum of the opening theme from the original credits, still utterly strange and timeless, brought a tear to my eye.

I’m starting to think this special is, in fact, the highlight of the revived show. Tremendous.

My only regret is that by the time I made it out of the auditorium most of the fans in costume were gone. I really wanted a pic of the girl in the marvellous Ace costume.

Happy.

Flat Linky

Ian Rankin reviews Asterix and the Picts.

There’s a “wander about Middle-earth” thing, linked to the new Hobbit film, for users of the Chrome browser. I looked at the first bit and it was very pretty.

Short film by Alfonso Cuaron’s son showing who was at the other end of that radio contact in Gravity

Web series Flat3 is back for another run of lovely, funny episodes about an all-girl all-Asian flat in Auckland. So good. Watch it! Here, I’ll make it easy, here’s the first ep of the new run:

English has a new preposition, because internet

Where’s Wally/Waldo? Usually in the same places, because brain

Facebook has transformed my students’ writing – for the better

One of Emma’s Sigourney Weaver poems (on Helen’s blog)

Via Rachel B, a great wikipedia injoke – see what this page says on list entries where there is no illustration
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Star Wars invades kitschy Thomas Kinkade paintings

And finally, revealing the secrets behind card tricks. Wow!

Twain Linky

man. just feeling wiped. you too? have some linky.

Mark Twain secretly wrote a vignette of Queen Elizabeth swapping fart and sex jokes with Shakespeare, Jonson and Bacon. (via Allen Varney)

Oscar the Grouch vs Grumpy Cat (via Craig Oxbrow)

Linguists in the audience, does this sound legit? “huh” as the one word common to all humans. It sounds like a just-so story to me…

The best hundred novels, from the perspective of the end of the 19th century. (Again, Allen Varney)

Zombie movie scenes rendered as impressionist art. These kinda work on some stupid level; there’s some spice to using impressionist techniques to depict the shambling hordes.

Ol Dirty Bastard of the Wu-Tang auditioned for the part of Mr Ed. This audio sounds very genuine to me; could it be authentic?
also: oral history of the Clan’s breakout album

Game of Thrones vs Mr Men/Little Miss

Star Wars as an Icelandic saga

Great Gamasutra piece on the demise of “social games” as a thing.

Did you two-strap it? Or were you a one-strap pony? #onestrappa4lyfe

And finally, the Gangsta Party Line. (Not worksafe due to abundant profanity.)

Ruminator: Rape & NZ culture

I expanded the first chunk of that last post into a longer piece for the Ruminator: Rape is easy here.

It’s another example of how I’m using the existence of the Ruminator as a prompt and motivator for a different style of writing, with a different set of goals. (e.g. I write here often for myself, whereas there I often write to whatever audience I imagine.) I’m very pleased to be a contributor to the Ruminator and intend to keep sending them content.

The Ruminator is also fundraising. In theory “pay our writers” is part of the goal but I’ll just be happy if it covers the ongoing costs of hosting and registration. If you like what the Ruminator is doing, you might want to send a few virtual coins its way…

Roast Busters: Two thoughts

Two small thoughts on this whole awful business, to clear my head:

* Because of our cultural distaste for direct expressions of what we want and don’t want, NZ youth find it very difficult to seek or express sexual consent. In consequence, NZ youth are predisposed to see hazy consent as commonplace and normal

* Because of our national reliance on alcohol in social situations, NZ youth are predisposed to see gross intoxication as commonplace and normal; even desirable.

* (The above two interact in a dangerous way – I would wager a fair percentage of Kiwi youth have at least once deliberately intoxicated themselves beyond the point where they could meaningfully consent, and done so to make a sexual experience more likely.)

* This means many of the sexual interactions of NZ youth float around in a murky fog of assumption, expectation, and impaired judgment.

* In sum: certain pervasive features of NZ youth culture mean that rape is easy here.

—

And – this is definitely a minor point, but:

* Among the comments and outrage, I’ve seen several commenters refuse to accept that a young woman would freely choose to participate in this kind of sexual activity, particularly if she knows she is likely to be subjected to online bullying afterwards.

* They’re quite wrong, as they would know if they honestly interrogated their memories of teenage life. Sometimes, young women can and do freely choose things that seem appalling to adults. (Often that’s part of the point.)

* Of course, it’s very clear that some (perhaps a majority?) of the Roast Busters’ sexual partners are correctly seen as victims. They did not, or could not, give consent; or they were unable or afraid to withdraw consent when the reality of what they had agreed to became clear; or they decided afterwards that they had given consent to resolve cognitive dissonance.

* But not all of them were victims. This overstatement is a minor point – but it does irritate me, and I think it’s important in the long run, because if you want to change things in our society you have to start by respecting the full range of behaviours and choices made by young women (and young men, but it’s young women whose volition is typically challenged).

—

And now that I’ve typed that out hopefully I can get back to work without thoughts buzzing circles in my head.

Fermat’s Last Linky

Yeah, busy busy, etc etc. [EDIT: so busy I wrote and published this on the wrong day. Genuinely confused that Friday didn’t follow Wednesday. Buh.]

That one time Homer solved Fermat’s Last Theorem – math geekery hidden in the Simpsons

BABY TEETH short story collection out now. Scary stories about scary children for scary charity. (Charity not actually scary.)

William Shakespeare’s Star Wars (thanks Billy & Jamie; delightfully, Ruth has scheduled reading this as a game session at Kapcon in January!)

Scroll down to Riker

Horror films reimagined as entries in the R.L.Stine horror-for-kids book series Goosebumps. Suspiria becomes “Attack of the Ballet Witches“.

The Thing on the Fourble Board – a lost classic of terror from the age of radio.

Necropants – surely this isn’t a real historical artifact?

My friend Ron has been conducting research into communal religious rituals. His reflections on some physically extreme ritual activity are interesting – warning, contains some unnerving photos.

The decline of wikipedia? For more insights into how the info-sausage is made, read Phil Sandifer’s examination of wikipedia’s awkward embrace of transphobia.

Amazing photography of miniature buildings and vehicles.

The DSM reviewed as a work of dystopian literature.

And finally, superheroes as manatees

To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf, 1927

Micro-review. We’ve had Woolf’s classic on the shelves in a 60s Penguin edition for years, and finally the time was right to pick it up. I knew virtually nothing about it, only that it’s often talked about as a partner to Joyce’s Ulysses as one of the milestones of early-20th-century modernism. (It’s also a fraction of the length.) Given how much I enjoyed Ulysses, I was looking forward to this.

But I nearly put it down and didn’t pick it up again.

I was enjoying the read, Woolf uses language beautifully of course, but I hit the half-way point and I just wasn’t *grabbed* by it. It seemed like one of those art milestones that you can’t read properly any more because all of its innovations have since become cliches. The stream of consciousness shifting perspective Woolf offers has become a commonplace stylistic trick. Heck, I’ve done it myself. Combine that with a busy run that saw days go by between chances to knock off a few pages, and I almost lost momentum entirely.

Then I hit the second phase of the book. I had no idea it was coming; a sudden change in tone and style and scope, crossing decades after spending dozens of pages in the minutia of a single day. Then the narrative eased into a third and final phase, another intense dive into character POV across the moments of a single day, a decade on from the first section.

And I *loved* it.

I can’t think of another time my reaction to a book changed so completely in the span of a few pages. The structural moves Woolf made completely won me over. Simple and powerful, retroactively making the first section seem fresh by the unexpected (to me) contrast with the final section. I think I’ll be going back to this one in a few years.

(Also: I imagine this book would be frequently studied in english lit courses. I am glad I never had to apply the scalpel of analysis to this – I doubt it could survive the experience. This seems to me a book to be felt rather than understood, even though there is so much in it to be understood. That’s a definite contrast to the cheeky gamesmanship of Joyce, who seems to be clearly writing with such analysis in mind.)