This was way better than football.
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It is time.
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If the malaria fatality rate is rising, the journalist simply has to find a child dying of malaria and tell the reader what she sees. The result will be a surge of emotion and a story that will feel urgent and powerful. But what if the malaria fatality rate is falling? How do you tell the emotionally gripping story of a child who is healthy? She eats breakfast. She goes to school. It’s all perfectly ordinary and dull. There’s no emotion. And no story.
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Early arcade games were made to be potentially perpetual experiences, and ironically, looking at these narratives now makes one realize that the idea of being “unwinnable” has relatively horrific narrative consequence. Again, this isn’t really an intentional goal of game design, just an interesting notion to ponder in retrospect (specifically, from the vantage point of an era where storytelling has become almost intrinsically entwined with video game design). Any player of the arcade Pac-Man knows the ending of the game before going in: Pac-Man will die; the ghosts will win. The “story” is designed that way. In other words, almost all early arcade games had unhappy endings. They spoke themes of doom and inevitable failure. Seen in this light, early arcade plots border on the nihilistic.
— Pac-Man Will Die: Cynicism and Retro Game “Endings” < PopMatters
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I should have added a pronouncer on my last name. (Taken with picplz.)
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My contribution to supporting the Prince George music scene. Swag from Coldsnap. (Taken with picplz.)
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Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Just fantastic. Read it.
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I haven’t updated my Goodreads at all…
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I don’t know if you have to be a fan of the Stones to enjoy this, or not. I am, so there you go. That said, I like the Beatles more than the Stones but have never enjoyed a Beatles biography as much as I liked this. Richards is an undeniably great character, and that comes through in this— it’s a story, not a meticulously footnoted academic piece. His biases are there, too— sometimes he attempts to villainize people in his life, yet you find yourself sympathetic towards them, not him. All in all, an entertaining read.
View all my reviews -
nanoculture dissolves time, creating a perpetual present where the old is just as now as the new.
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If I were handing out an award for 2011’s Best New Genre, I’d pick trollgaze, Village Voice music editor Maura Johnston’s inspired coining for pageview-junkie tracks like “Gucci Gucci” and Heart2Heart’s “Facebook Official”. Trollgaze wins not because the music’s good— some of it’s fine, some of it’s wretched— but because it nails a real anxiety among older critics. We grew up in the 1980s or 90s when the question “Is this for real?” seemed important, whether you sought the authentic or pushed back against it. With this music the question barely exists— even asking it puts you out of a loop. Rebecca Black’s “Friday”, for instance, might have been quite sincere, but the shape of the web event around it matters far more than any intention
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Speaking of bikes.
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Last.fm still has the best musical visualizations out there.
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I am sorry I and my fellow bike-riders are scaring you. I can certainly relate to how frightening it must be to almost crush us to death. Awfully inconsiderate of us. - Life in the Bike Lane | AndrewKurjata.ca
This is what we deal with.
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Almost Mainstream Episode 34 - Top 11 of 2011 - January 6 2011 →
For the second year in a row, a best-of music list, complete with radio show to accompany it. However, I completely ditched the format of last year. If you want a musical accompaniment while you read, there’s a few, starting with the radio-show version of this list as broadcast on CFUR. Click play…
DO IT.
.png "It is time.")
