twoflower

Tweets by Ranneko today were:

• 06:42 played Heavy Weapon Deluxe yesterday gamerdna.com/r/3Thr #
• 11:28 Sigh, iPhone/Touch game makers, please think twice before turning off what I am listening to. Is it really necessary? #
• 22:10 It's strange to think that one of the things that improved the thing I was at today was the TV breaking, since it forced a venue change. #

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We're into the second third of 1950, and it's a popular time. All but one of these ten cartoons that follow are on the Golden Collection sets.

( Read more... )

Some of my all-time favorites there. In the final third of 1950, we see Bugs in Revolutionary War days, in Australia, and singing opera; Granny, Frisky Puppy and Sylvester, Jr. are introduced, and we bid farewell to Inki. D'ja remember Inki?

Allergies are doing their level best to kill me. I am doing my best to sleep through this bullshit. I'm not sure who is winning.

• 11:28 I like Teto (the pink-drill-hair girl) in this one: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RDDSOYsIfE #

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Tweets by Ranneko today were:

• 00:54 The LAN at @Palchan 's was highly entertaining. Gave me some game ideas for RanLAN mid next month. #

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How distinct is art from its medium? As in, when does "art" begin, and the medium on which that art is expressed end? Or are they intertwined?

I was just thinking about this when considering Games As Art. Would a game with great story, presentation, music, graphics, so on and so forth still be considered "art" if it were crippled by technical flaws? Could a game ever be art because of its technical flaws? Or, to put it less negatively, its technical limitations?

I would assume that it makes a difference whether a drawing is done on watercolour or crayons, or a sculpture on marble or ice. Would the art-game be different if it was on a PS3 versus a XBox360? How about a PS2 versus a PS3? A XBox360 versus a NES?

This thought was sparked by yet another debate on whether Games can be Art. The primary objections I can see are that firstly games are often tied to the system they are developed for not through artistic merit, but by commercial considerations: even is a game on a PS2 is Art, it cannot be played on a XBox360 if it's a Sony-exclusive, and if there is no commercial interest for emulation. (Non-commercial interest tends to run either towards charity or bootlegging.) I've heard Planescape: Torment cited as "good game-as-art", but I've never been able to play it because it seems to be out of print.

Secondly, something can be one part Art, but the rest not as much. Taking the Planescape: Torment example, the story and presentation and whatnot may be Art, but is the combat system Art? Or is it just an inconvenience that has nothing to do with Art value, like having to book a ticket to France to travel to the Louvre?

Thirdly, the skills used to appraise Art do not often have much to do with the skills used to play a game. Art-appreciators are not required to have twitch-reflexes. If the Art bits are gated based on gaming skill, then the Art can only be witnessed by proxy: someone posting the stuff on Youtube, or transcribing the script, or whatnot. Is this different from seeing a picture of the Mona Lisa on Wikipedia instead of seeing it for yourself?

Fourthly, a game that is Art may not end up being a very good game at all. Which ties in to all that comes before: if a game is intended to be Art but has sucky gameplay, is full of bugs, and is unnecessarily difficult or pointless, then can it be Art?

Very few things make a day longer than having your sinuses actively trying to kill you. Like mine, after half a day spent at mom's house, where she keeps all manner of nasty beasts, and I'm not even counting my siblings.

I have an adapter on the way so that I can use my wii with my monitor, I have books on the way, and I went ahead and ordered wii sports resort, because I want me some fucking swordfitan.

And then I pretty much spent all day under assault of allergies while trying to read Valdemar books and play SRTK.

And now I am watching an utterly fucking surreal conversation in #BESM with someone whose primary language is clearly not english. It is really confusing.

These ants have been driving me fucking batshit. We knew when we moved into the apartment two years ago that there had been an ant problem. The tell-tale sign was that there were little plastic flower-shaped Raid Ant Bait traps underneath the kitchen sink. It's gotten to the point that I see ants in my kitchen every day. If I don't take an hour or so out of my day to murder a long line of marching ants and clean up whatever they're after, it's a good day. They've been wearing on me for the last couple of months, though.

Over time, it felt almost as if the ants were trying to personally hurt me. At least once a week, while I'm watching TV or something, an ant crawls over my glasses. My GLASSES. Some mornings, I would wake up and find them nomming on a spoon that had sugar on it from my cup of coffee. I would sigh, wipe them up, and continue about my day. Ants like sugar. This is to be expected. But then, another day, I brewed a cup of coffee and found a dead ant floating in it. They DEFILED my sacred, precious Hello Kitty coffee maker. Why? Why would they be in my coffee maker? There's nothing in there that tastes good on its own! I found a few of them inside my rice cooker, too -- and it was empty! Why would they possibly want to get into an empty rice cooker? Because they hate Asians. These are racist ants, my friends.

Another personal jab to me happened during the special time during a girl's life when she bleeds out her vagina for a week. Back in my old apartment, I learned not to trust the toilet when flushing tampons, so I'd wrap them and toss them in the trash. Somehow, the ants had eaten a hole through the caulk in the bathtub and later that night, I came home to a ravenous swarm of ants EATING MY USED TAMPON.

I can't keep living like this. I just can't. These ants are RUINING MY LIFE.

We've tried the very same Raid Ant Bait Traps. We've tried being extremely meticulous about not leaving anything the ants might find appetizing. To keep from harming our kittens, we made special "natural" ant bait traps out of honey, Splenda, and 20 Mule Team Borax.

Those looked like they were working. We slipped them underneath the kitchen counter and behind heavy bags of cat litter. Within a couple days, there were long, thick lines of ants swarming over the poisoned honey traps underneath my kitchen sink. Zero ants in plain sight.

For a few weeks, the ants and I had a truce. I'd re-stock the ant trap with various poisoned goodies -- sugar-water, mayonnaise, watered-down cat food slurry -- and they'd stay off of my counters. It was kind of fascinating to see how many of them would eat themselves to death every day. Some would just drown in the poison, unable to swim back to safety.

But last night, after the Christmas festivities were over and I was trying to relax, I found two lines of ants marching over my counters. They had broken the truce. And on the night of Christmas Day, I had finally had it. I locked the cats out of the kitchen, opened the window, turned on the fans, and blasted some Coheed and Cambria on my iPod. I took the poisoned goodies and I dumped them out in the sink, then I ran the garbage disposal. And then, the big guns: I used ant spray on those little motherfuckers and sprayed the shit out of the crack between the wall and the plumbing they were coming from. Then I used duct tape to seal them off.

I wiped up their soggy ant corpses and then I cleaned the rest of the kitchen to make sure there was nothing else they would want to eat. I know deep down that this was just another battle, and the war is far from over. They'll be back. I've got a sugar bowl on the kitchen table I use for my coffee -- I'm sure that's next. But, this Christmas, the ants were not going to get the best of me. 

Merry Fucking Christmas, you disgusting little fuckers.

So. For my birthday, a friend died. Can't do anything about that, so... moving on. Christmas wasn't quite so bad, but... I don't actually have Christmas anymore. Not for a long time.

I can't say that's a problem... well, that's not entirely true. I've known for quite a while that there's... something... wrong with me. I've got empathy for others, definitely, more than certain members of my immediate family have for sure. It's what makes me good at customer service. But beyond that... there's just not a place in me for other people. Names vanish like mist in my mind, and I just don't like the thought of spending my personal time around others. That goes for family, too. I'm not proud of it, but emotionally I don't have a problem with lacking any kind of family bonds. This probably makes me a bad person, but I'm nearly 40 years old now, and I don't see this changing any time soon.

So, I got my annual Christmas/birthday present of money from my mother, which helped me get over the hump to the point where my unemployment kicked in, which was good. And that's it. I usually also get a package from my aunt and uncle, but they seem to have opted out this year. Not that I blame them; even discounting that it's been a while since I've been in a position to give gifts, I haven't even bothered to send cards or thank-yous. Like I said, I'm very bad at being a relative.

...I think that's enough for this particular installment of my failings as a human being, though.

My review of Avatar: Painfully predictable. One-dimensional military. One of Cameron's weaker movies... but still really beautiful visually.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/12/from-exact-middle-of-nowhere.html

Waving from the Middle of Nowhere, where there's no TV, my cell phone doesn't work and the internet is slow and klunky enough that semaphore might be more efficient.

Passing decent haul of presents this year.

In-house:
- Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
- an external floppy disk drive
- a Nintendo Points card
- Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, the "authorized" Winnie-the-Pooh sequel/follow-up
- Wisdom of the East 2010 page-a-day calendar (this makes two years in a row for it)
- a can of Pirouettes, aka piroulines (sp?) - basically the cookie equivalent of Combos, very tasty

Outside the immediate family:
- After Dark by Murakami Haruki and Nocturnes by Ishiguro Kazuo, both from a friend of ours who works as editor for Knopf
- assorted munchies (shared among the family) from assorted relatives and friends

So, a good Christmas overall. The first three in-house items were things I'd specifically requested, and Murakami is one of my favorite Japanese authors (in translation at least). I'm probably plowing through Bowser's Inside Story faster than I should ...

Oh, and the Nintendo Points card? Already redeemed on the Wii, and procured Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord, which I greatly enjoyed the demo for. (Ironically, Lurker got his copy from me on my own nickel, and then I bought it for myself with the gifted card .... ^^)

Yes, it's getting near that time again. I will be in the Toronto area from 2/11/2010 to 2/15/2010, visiting with Matt and Ann in Whitby. As always, I hope we can get together for some shindig or other. Just bought plane tickets on the deluxe Porter Airlines.

Tweets by Ranneko today were:

• 00:54 Seriously Apple, you've had Boot Camp working for how long and you still don't bother to fix up the time issue between OSes? #
• 06:39 played Heavy Weapon: Atomic Tank yesterday gamerdna.com/r/3RVJ #

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I braved an incredible blizzard today in order to get to my mom's house, where we did our annual secular exchange of gifts on our paid day off.

After a fairly lackluster set of gifts last year, my family wins the awesome award this year, having presented me with a wii, some gift cards (which I used to obtain a number of wonderful books, inluding The Learner's Japanese Kanji Dictionary, Slayers Text volumes 2-4, and the Illuminatus! Trilogy), and a big fuzzy blanket.

I am honestly not sure whether the wii or the huge fuzzy blanket is more awesome. I really love big fuzzy blankets.

I got my sister her much desired clothes shopping card, which I get her every year, because that's what she wants, and I got my mom a kindle. Which is just another in the string of "things I want that I get my family before I get myself".

In conclusion: Big fuzzy blankets rule!