Monthly Archives: August 2009

links for 2009-08-31

YouTube – Cat Stuck in Tree on News (tags: dumb funny humor news tv cat tree stuck) Flickr: Museum of Animal Perspectives (MAP)'s Photostream (tags: video science pov animals cute cam)

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links for 2009-08-30

WHY SO FABULOUS? (tags: Joker Whelk Batman) Dating Without Kundera Thoughts on the romantic role of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and possible replacements (tags: essay books dating funny)

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Read Recently: My Life As a Man and The Breast, by Philip Roth

Someone told my dad, the two Roth novels (other than Portnoy’s Complaint) in which psychoanalysis plays the most central role. I think My Life As A Man is fantastic; The Breast did not really do much for me. I’ve been … Continue reading

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Notes For An Essay Against XKCD

XKCD is sometimes very, very clever, but I’ve been souring on it a little bit. It feels like the vanguard of a kind of nerd triumphalism. I am a nerd! I understand the tribal urge. But the message of XKCD … Continue reading

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Read recently: Starship Troopers by Heinlein

The title “Starship Troopers” has aged poorly, I think because it has become generic in the decades since the book was first published. (Ironically, the campy tone the title has today makes it a good fit for Paul Verhoeven’s movie … Continue reading

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Watch some movies, maybe

I watch very few movies, and very few of them in the theater. Partly this is because (for the most part) I only like to watch really good movies, but it’s also because I forget about movies I want to … Continue reading

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Read recently: American Pastoral by Philip Roth

I got a late start on Philip Roth, for some reason. I read The Human Stain when it came out, and liked it, but it didn’t electrify me. But when I read Indignation, last year, I realized I had to … Continue reading

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When the Future Refuses to Change, and extra notes

I have a new essay up here, about what Game Over means in the narrative universes of games. Game stories interpret and explain gameplay for the player, but the pattern of getting Game Over and restarting is usually left out … Continue reading

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On gaming and the old

Little discussion up here. I couldn’t post my comment there, so here it is: “More pertinently, why is growing older considered the end of a journey rather than the beginning of one?” Isn’t it simply true that journeys are most … Continue reading

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Dawn of War II: joys and disappointments

The single-player campaign is a coke high. It’s the true successor to *craft in the real-time strategy arena. The originals at Blizzard took Diablo and Warcraft and mashed them up into World of Warcraft, and left Starcraft 2 a traditional … Continue reading

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