Ready for Halloween

TIGERS CLINCH A PLAYOFF BERTH

I love cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and allspice, but my aversion to pumpkin is so strong that I will never buy “pumpkin spice” anything unless I’m 1000% sure that there is zero pumpkin flavor in it and there’s only one way to know for sure so just no.

Huzzah!

Stupid Tigers. Gotta play a whole season.

Follow up follow up pitch: A tornado in a volcano I think this one really has potential

Follow up pitch: A movie about a brilliant poet with lots of poetry in the movie but all the poetry is generated by AI and also a heavily modded hot rod that launches into space why not

Pitch a series of movies about stage magicians where CGI replaces all the work that stage magicians do. Also maybe some conspiracy theory shit why not

For Batman Day: 20 Theses on Batman, from 2017 in @unwinnable.com unwinnable.com/2017/10/04/b...

Today FB suggested that I might know Paul Giamatti. I do not, but one can dream.

If you enjoy it, good for you, no shade, but the last thing I want in the world is coffee that tastes like pumpkin

Shit, Werner Herzog started an Insta

"Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: —Introibo ad altare Dei."

Where Boys Fear to Tread from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

This sounds like a cynical take on my part, and it’s informed by a fair amount of despair over the state of games pubs and what the audience seems to want and what it seems indifferent to. But that said, I love every one of Smith’s principles. It’s almost. . . inspiring to see them written out.

I agree with every bit of this in principle and my own practice, such as it is. But I suspect that unless publishers read and take it to heart, it doesn’t much matter whether new and developing writers do so.

I love Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey but I’m not super fond of her translation of polytropos into a description of Odysseus as a “complicated man.” I just always think of the theme from Shaft.

Oh. Here I just assumed Astronomer was. . . an astronomy company. I dunno. Maybe they sold telescopes or something. I like that idea better.

Oh, no. No no no no no no no.

I unapologetically love Dragon Age II. Really excited about this book.

Re-reading a conversation I had about copyright term extending beyond life of the author that hinged on the legacy of (then recently passed) John Updike. Almost comical. How relevant now, less than two decades later, is John Updike? Does a half-century of remaining copyright term serve his legacy?

Seeing commercials for the Great Gatsby Broadway musical and reposting. (When Gatsby meets Daisy again, he completely stops throwing parties.)

Giveaway! BFB ebook of your choice (one that's already out) to two people who follow & RT this post. www.kickstarter.com/projects/gab... #giveaway #drawing #lottery #kickstarter #bookpublishing #videogames #lifeisstrange @aeneas-nin.bsky.social @kaittremblay.bsky.social

Hell yeah

I should do this more

GREAT DIGITAL STEAM SALE GAMES $5 AND UNDER 11. Jazzpunk 11 years ago Jazzpunk perfected the balance between the first-person action and narrative, with an incredible flare for parodical, surreal humor. The perfect "walking sim" (positive) for those who despise "walking sims" (negative).

Guess what - my rent is increasing! Please give me work. Portfolio below

Sinkhole on Ridgedale Avenue in my neighborhood after I-80 shutdown both directions in March after collapse above abandoned mine shaft. I feel like I need to tread lightly on New Jersey right now.

It feels like a lot of this depends on what you mean by “great” and story.” A lot of video game narrative/story is shitty. But a huge number of films and novels have shitty stories, too. (Maybe even most of them.) Telling a great story isn’t always what telling a story is about.

The trouble with glitzy, jazzy adaptations of The Great Gatsby is that in the book there’s like one party and then there’s a lot of people who don’t like each other sitting around being bored and mean to each other and occasionally driving to a second location once with unfortunate results.

I’ve been falling in and out of writing about games for so long that I have to remind myself I did actually have a newsletter and used it to play through the first three Dragon Age games. Years ago in a different lifetime, but it happened.

There are mysteries worth fathoming, and there are mysteries that are not.

Finally made it to room 46. Not sure I have it in me to dig into all of the post-(first)ending mysteries.

I liked the cover of the Library of America’s Annotated Gatsby better when it was the Modern Library’s boxed set of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.

The last year of my column at @unwinnable.com felt like something of a breakdown at the time. I genuinely cannot decide if it reads that way or not.

Mood for today: unwinnable.com/2018/07/01/b...

Let’s play two.

I just found some old college photos. No I will not be posting any. Why in the world would I do that?

If Yelena and Red Guardian spoke English with local midwestern accents when they were embedded in Ohio in the 90s, why do they speak English with Russian accents now?

While cleaning out my garage I found the papers I wrote in my undergraduate philosophy courses. Their preservation was a mistake that has been rectified.

Yeah, I’m not chasing after a Switch 2. I am way too old for that shit.

I am not afraid of my culture or any culture taking on wildly different forms from the ones I grew up in and am familiar with or any forms they have held in the past. I am afraid of people hurting people. That is what I am afraid of.

Jack Kirby

Posting about baseball like tossing a ball in the air and catching it by myself just to enjoy the feel of the mitt on my hand and the weight of the impact of the ball, leather on leather, again and again

Keep your secret heart. Be able to walk away. Do something else. Your words are for you. Make sure they are doing that work, always.

Many things, in many homes like mine, should be thrown away. A few things, particularly objects of craft and care, should be selectively acquired, treasured, and repaired when necessary

I am always in favor of examining and re-examining, mystifying and demystifying, our relationships to objects

The fact that Pascal felt the need to formulate his wager nearly 600 years after Anselm’s ontological proof should really tell you something about whether this is an issue amenable to being settled definitively.

Somebody tell this man about Pascal’s Wager, quick!