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Tim Burton is making Alice in Wonderland — expected to be released in March 2010. The casting looks good:
Alice: Mia Wasikowska (never heard of her)
The Mad Hatter: Johnny Depp (better leave his Michael Jacksonesque Willy Wonka behind)
The Queen of Hearts: Helena Bonham Carter (who was always kind of scary anyway)
The White Queen: Anne Hathaway
The Knave of Hearts: Crispin Glover (yikes!)
The Cheshire Cat: Stephen Fry (OK, not bad)
The Caterpillar: Alan Rickman (I could see that)
Tweedledee and Tweedledum: Matt Lucas (fat guy from Little Britain, yep)
I sure hope this will be good, because Tim Burton has disappointed of late. Though I am firmly of the opinion that nothing, but nothing, could ever top Pee-Wee's Big Adventure.
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Yoinked from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) sabotabby who got it from.
Every now and then the police arrest somebody suspected of some terrible, violent crime, and as a piece of public relations they'll announce all of the horrible books, movies and/or CDs they found in the suspect's house, as if to prove that the suspect is obviously guilty and horrible and monstrous.
So here is my challenge to you. You can either do this from memory or take a moment to look through your book and music collections, and then answer this question:
Name ten books, CDs and/or movies that you own that the police would cite as evidence against you at their press conference.
Oh God, where to start...
About two shelf-feet of various military manuals, ex-American or Canadian military, on subjects ranging from specific weapons (e.g. the care, maintenance and use of the MK19 60mm mortar) to Guerrilla Warfare (FM 31-21) and Special Forces Operations Techniques (FM 31-20, handy pocket size).
Another three complete shelves of various books on urban guerrilla/ revolutionary/ irregular warfare in history including specific campaigns and wars (Algeria, Vietnam, the Balkans).
Boxes of old "underground" comic books and magazines, including old Re/Search material, weird art and mail-art related stuff, and Church of the SubGenius material (always a little jarring to those unfamiliar with that great in-joke of the 80s).
Hundreds and hundreds of military simulation games, many centering on revolutionary warfare and terrorism, including over 20 of my own design.
My modest collection of Soviet and Chinese propaganda posters - Mom always thought I would be arrested for those, if nothing else.
The "unacceptable" part of my science fiction collection, particularly the entire works of J. G. Ballard (who else would own four different editions of Crash and The Atrocity Exhibition?)
Music: boxes of "difficult listening", for want of a better term, on CD and cassette.
Movies: Don't even go there, though Lianne's responsible for all the slasher, cannibal and serial-killer movies on the shelves.
***
Oh, and the word of the day is "SCLEROTIC". Use it in conversation yourself!
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Found this linked off the BBC online magazine feed:
http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2009/06/lesson-in-revolutionary-politics-from.html
"Wednesday, June 17, 2009
A Lesson In Revolutionary Politics From Video Games
I realize[d] something today about revolutionaries, and this realization can be entirely attributed to video games.
I saw [the] trailer of Just Cause 2, and I was thinking how much fun it would be to actually take over a country in a revolutionary action. I mean, I'm in the process of taking over a planet in Red Faction: Guerilla, but I'm not really the leader -- more the main ass-kicker, really. So the idea of actually leading a revolution is entirely appealing.
Then I thought about how much fun it would be to lead a revolution in an action game, but then be able to run the country in a real-time strategy game. So you go from Just Cause to Tropico.
It was at that moment that I understood, more fully than ever before, why revolutionaries succeed and then fail. It's because they're switching genres. They take over the country in a third-person (or first person) action game, but then they have to play an RTS to govern the country.
That's an entirely different gaming skill set. It's much easier to wreck than to build, and not only do they have to build, they also have to stop all those first-person action heroes who want to lead their own revolution."
This is so superficial and puerile I don't know where to begin. I may design games about revolutions and civil wars, but I'm under no illusions that I am teaching or trying to simulate more than the barest beginnings of what actually happens in the real thing. And I do not do it via FPS, RTS or any other whing-dang-doodle techno-gimcrackery: my route is ideally the BOGSAT (Bunch Of Guys Sitting Around A Table), though I am trying to work up some way to do this via linked workstations.
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Just because it's been a while:
1. Would you return to high school life for a week? Why or why not?
No. It was a bore and an embarassment.
2. Who were you in high school?
Militia Nerd.
3. What was your favorite high school hangout? What did/do you do there?
We used to hang out in the computer room (which had two, count 'em TWO, Apple II Pluses!). We'd bullshit and play board games (Ogre, Richtofen's War).
4. What were your favorite three songs in high school?
Anything by Devo.
5. What was the craziest thing you did in high school?
For grad, my friend and I skipped school for two days to climb Mount Baker (a 10,700 foot high mountain in Washington state about 70 miles away from my town) and put the school flag on top of it. There was no school flag, so we made one out of construction paper. My English teacher did not believe we'd done it until I showed her the photos we took.
What is your favorite food from each food group?</b>
1. Bread (Grain) Group:
Croissants.
2. Meat (Protein) Group:
Chicken.
3. Vegetable Group:
Carrots.
4. Fruit Group:
Cherries.
5. Sugars, Fats and Oils:
Chocolate.
Randomosity!
1. What was your first word as a child?
I'm told it was "Dada". I have no way to dispute that.
2. What's the weirdest dare you've ever taken?
I dunno, I don't usually take dares. Once I ate a bug so someone would give me a stamp for a letter I'd written.
What are you allergic to?
Nothing, as far as I know, but I will sneeze if I eat dark chocolate (at least 65% cocoa).
What was the last name of the first person you kissed?
Bostwick.
Have you ever REALLY cried from happiness? What was the situation?
I almost did, when my son was born.
1. If you could live in any period in history other than now, when would it be?
Earlier 20th century - 30s to the 50s.
2. What knowledge or skills do you think you'd have to learn to be able to fit in your chosen period of history?
Not much.
3. If you could take just one thing from the modern world back with you, what would it be?
Back to the 50s? Maybe some kind of scientific dictionary or almanac, just to show how things they were working on at the time would pan out.
4. What period in history would you hate to have lived in?
The Middle Ages. Ick.
5. What thing from the past would you like to see make a comeback?
Politeness. Civic responsibility. Good hats for men. Pick any one of these.
1. What is your favorite girl's name?
Alice
2. What is your favorite boy's name?
Tom
3. What is the weirdest/most obnoxious name you've ever given to a pet?
Boots
4. What is/was your favorite pet?
Angus, a mutt we had for a long time. He was a good dog.
5. What is your most cherished dream for your future?
That Aki will go on his way, with happiness and success.
1. What do you feel is the most important quality in a close friend?
Discretion.
2. What is the one quality in a stranger you'd just met that would make you want to get to know them better?
Finding out we share interests, the more obscure the better.
3. What do you think is the most important quality in a good leader?
The ability to trust their subordinates.
4. What is the one thing that makes a child likable to you?
Politeness.
5. What do you think is the one thing that makes a good parent (other than loving their children)?
Patience, closely followed by consistency and a sense of humour.
What was your favorite class/subject in school?
English.
Who was your favorite teacher?
Mr. Cross was nice.
Why was your favorite teacher your favorite?
He would listen to me natter on about films. Now he's Mayor of Sidney.
What would you have liked to major in in college?
Perhaps history. I wanted to be an engineer when I went to university. Even if I had had the ability, I don't think I would have liked it.
Would you rather go to a small, medium, or large college, if you had the money to go to any of the three?
Depends on the program and the quality of the teaching - you can be miserable (or happy) anywhere.
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This is encouraging...
Autistic people better at problem solving than non-autistics: Research
By Amy Minsky, Canwest News ServiceJune 17, 2009 2:03 PM
New research suggests that autistic people are 40 per cent faster at problem solving than non-autistics.
( Read more... )
I suppose the visual-details and pattern-finding abilities are the best leads here. Certainly, it helps to try and teach someone using their strengths, to address their weaknesses.
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Well, I probably would have been disappointed anyway:... stuff about other things snipped:
Penn drops Stooges, Cartel films for personal time-out
Last Updated: Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Comedy fans eager to see Academy Award-winner Sean Penn as one of the Three Stooges appear to be out of luck, as the actor has dropped out of his upcoming film projects.
Penn, who won Oscars for his roles in Mystic River and Milk, is taking a break from acting and withdrawing from the Farrelly Brothers' film The Three Stooges as well as the crime thriller Cartel, a spokeswoman for the actor has confirmed.
Mara Buxbaum did not give a reason for the decision, but added that if the start dates of the productions were postponed, the actor could remain involved.
According to industry reports, Penn, 48, is taking an extended leave from Hollywood to deal with personal issues. [snip]
The Stooges project is a longtime labour of love for the Farrellys, who garnered much buzz in March with news that Penn had been cast as Larry, Jim Carrey as Curly and Benicio del Toro as Moe.
Before Penn's announcement, the comedy had been slated to start filming in August and released in 2010.
[snip]
relates to http://ltmurnau.livejournal.com/201978.html
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I don't know why I keep following this story, it's just one more fillip of choking nonsense attached to this unsavoury and unavoidable jock-sniff... only eight months to go....
2010 Games won't bring surge of sex trafficking: study
Last Updated: Thursday, June 11, 2009 | 9:54 PM PT
CBC News
Contrary to common assumptions, the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games will not result in a surge of sex trafficking in the city, a new study suggests.
The study released Thursday examined an array of international sporting events such as the Olympics and World Cup soccer games.
The findings suggest there is no evidence the number of sex workers and trafficking victims increased dramatically in those locations during the events.
"In relation to the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, public statements have been made which project an alarming increase in this human trafficking," the study says.
"These claims are inconsistent with the evidence in this research document, that trafficking and mega-events are not linked."
The study was commissioned by the Sex Industry Worker Safety Action Group — a Vancouver police initiative established in 2007 that has involved several community groups active in the city's Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. It was paid for with a provincial government grant and conducted by Frontline Consulting.
Ten Olympic host cities were studied, and researchers interviewed police, sex-trade workers and community service leaders, as well as reviewed a couple of hundred media articles, academic journals, government reports and relevant websites.
They found that sex trafficking generally did not increase during these previous sporting events for a number of reasons, including heightened awareness and enforcement by police of trafficking laws.
The study recommends that the 2010 Games should be used as an opportunity for all levels of government to educate the public about human trafficking for sexual purposes.
"Combatting trafficking for sexual exploitation is a federal and provincial government priority, yet no broad-based public awareness campaigns have been developed on these issues," it says.
"Other jurisdictions have used mega sport events as an opportunity to create such campaigns, which are considered to have played an important public education role above and beyond an immediate deterrence of trafficking."
The study also suggests that Canadian Forces, RCMP and other police and security forces be trained in identifying trafficking and exploitation and develop standards for referrals of such cases.
Tamara O'Doherty, chair of the Sex Industry Worker Safety Action Group, said there is a risk that security and enforcement measures put in place for the Games could have a negative impact on the prostitutes who already call the place home.
"If anything, we found that the conflation of sex work and trafficking can result in policy and enforcement responses that negatively affect the lives of sex workers and victims of trafficking," she said Thursday.
Karen Mirsky of the Pivot Legal Society said sex workers would become more vulnerable to violence if they were forced to move by street closures and security.
Vancouver police said they will help ensure prevention, early detection and intervention of human sex trafficking prior to the Winter Games next year.
"Sex industry workers deserve to live as safely as anyone else in Vancouver," Insp. John de Haas said Thursday.
"The VPD [Vancouver Police Department] is committed to working with industry and community organizations to keep everyone safe."
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Oh, this one's rich... empahsis added par moi:
Border closed in eastern Ontario over handgun dispute
By David Gonczol, Ottawa CitizenJune 1, 2009
OTTAWA — A border crossing in an eastern Ontario native reserve remained closed in both directions Monday morning due to a protest by local Mohawks who were angered by a new policy that would have armed Canadian border agents as of June 1.
Shortly before midnight, Canadian Border Services Agency guards left their posts on the Akwesasne reserve, which straddles the Ontario, Quebec, and New York borders, for “their own safety,” Mohawk leaders said early Monday morning.
( Read more... )
I mean, setting aside the nonsense and unnecessary expense of arming our border guards in the first place
(http://ltmurnau.livejournal.com/121055.html, http://ltmurnau.livejournal.com/127844.html,
http://ltmurnau.livejournal.com/161265.html)
we have the situation of an unofficial, apparently-disavowed-by-the-community ("well, we did ask them not to be violent"), and well-armed (perhaps not as well armed as the police, but certainly better than the border guards) vigilante group warning off an agency of the Federal government from doing its job because their agents might be carrying guns too. Is this perhaps verging on "apprehended insurrection"? (possibly, if anyone knew what precisely the term meant...)
Anyway, it's common knowledge what the situation is really about: it's not about sovereignty, it's that the Warriors want to preserve the status quo in these reserves that are adjacent to or straddle the border, to preserve the flow of contraband. And having more than one gang of people with guns around at a time leads to shootouts, and if anyone gets shot, especially a border guard (and, I repeat from earlier posts, having this happen would be a first in the 200+ year history of the Customs Service), this will bring down large amounts of Federal heat.
Best for the Warriors just to threaten, bribe, or otherwise coerce these community college summer hire kids while they are unarmed, and therefore unable to do much about it.
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I recently finished reading X Films, Alex Cox's book on the first ten films he made.
Now this, via the Austin Decider, via The Onion AV Club:
Alex Cox on his greatest films that never were
The cult director cleans out his closet
by Scott Von Doviak May 18, 2009
With the one-two punch of Repo Man and Sid And Nancy, Alex Cox positioned himself as one of the most promising young filmmakers to emerge during the indie film boom of the 1980s. Unfortunately, his eagerly anticipated follow-ups—1987’s ramshackle spaghetti Western pastiche Straight To Hell and 1987’s Walker, a politically charged allegory of U.S. intervention in Nicaragua—were not warmly embraced by either audiences or critics, and Cox has spent the better part of the past two decades in Hollywood exile, making micro-budgeted films on a catch-as-catch-can basis. He’s also accumulated a virtual file cabinet’s worth of unproduced screenplays, many of which are available for download on his website (http://www.alexcox.com/writing.htm). In honor of Cox’s visit to Austin (he presented his latest film, Searchers 2.0, last night; tonight it’s his cult classic Repo Man), Decider asked the man himself about four Alex Cox movies that never saw the light of day.
Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday
Alex Cox: Michael Nesmith and the producers of Repo Man proposed this sequel to Repo Man to Universal about 12 or 13 years ago. The weirdest thing is Universal never got back to us, so we raised the money independently. It was kind of hard to raise money for a film with Emilio Estevez, because his career as an actor hadn’t been very illustrious. Peter McCarthy, one of the producers of Repo Man, worked and worked and was finally able to put together a deal. Then, suddenly, Emilio Estevez just dropped out, and from then all the energy just fell out of it.
Decider: It did finally get made recently as a graphic novel.
AC: As a comic book! It exists as a wonderful comic book by Chris Bones, made in Australia. So it does have an existence. And we’re working on a film called Repo Chick now, which is not a sequel, but it is set in the same environment—in the same economic crisis, only worse.
Dr. Strange (co-written with Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee)
D: What was that collaboration like?
AC: It was great! I mean, he’s remarkable. The only thing with Stan Lee is that he was writing Spider-Man in the newspapers, so every day I would have to wait on him to finish before we could start on Dr. Strange. I don’t know if he still writes Spider-Man every day, or if he’s farmed it out to someone else, but he’s still going strong. I spoke to him on the phone a couple of weeks ago and he sounds great.
D: Almost every other Marvel hero has made it to the screen. It seems inevitable that sooner or later Dr. Strange will get there.
AC: I would suspect not, for a couple of reasons. One is that he doesn’t have any superpowers; he’s just sort of intellectual and spiritual. And the other thing that would really freak out the Christian right is that he’s a witch. [Laughs.]
Keith Moon Was Here
AC: That was work for hire. I think Roger Daltrey was the executive producer, and so maybe it didn’t fit his recollection of events or vision of the story. It’s a pretty funny script. It features Peter Sellers as the antagonist. Peter Sellers is the devil!
D: He’s a giant spider at some point.
AC: He’s a giant spider, but he’s also Harry Nilsson, so Peter Sellers will go out and Harry Nilsson will come in and it’s obviously the same guy. And Peter Sellers is kind of creating this hell world for Moon. That was a funny script.
D: Somehow Roger Daltrey didn’t remember it that way?
AC: Perhaps. I think that the people who wanted to make the film were expecting more of a mainstream biopic—which is really hard, to make a guy like that sympathetic. I mean, the guy’s a serial wife beater, you know? It’s really hard to make a guy like that conventionally sympathetic.
Mars Attacks!
AC: I was the person who brought Mars Attacks! to the attention of the studio. They were bubblegum cards I had as a kid. I developed Mars Attacks! with Jon Davidson, the producer of Robocop, for quite a while, but at some point my project got shut down and it was given to Tim Burton. It was a bit of a shame, but I think both the script that I wrote and the Tim Burton one suffered from not being enough like the bubblegum cards. I was very attracted to science fiction when I was a lad, but that sort of science fiction seems to have gone away now—the hardcore Harry Harrison, Arthur C. Clarke kind of world seems to have disappeared. In the science fiction section of the bookstore now, it’s just Star Trek spinoff books and fantasy novels, flying-on-the-back-of-a-dragon stuff. That really mainstream, kind of macho science fiction of the ’50s and ’60s has just disappeared.
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Archie shocker: Comic book hero picks Veronica
B-but this can't be! This eternally wobbly love triangle was what drove the comic, for over 60 years.
Oh well. Maybe sometimes they'll have Betty over to their Daddykins-provided small mansion for a threesome, then make her cook breakfast for them afterwards....
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Well, I suppose this could be a weekly feature here, but let's file these under "WTF is Wrong With Some People."
Man accused of firing pellet gun at Burnaby crowd faces 22 charges
Last Updated: Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | 6:31 PM PT CBC News
A young man accused of firing a pellet gun on Monday at a crowd near a bus stop in Burnaby, B.C., is facing 22 charges.
Thomas Anthony Proniuk, 18, made a court appearance Tuesday in Vancouver, Burnaby RCMP said. Police recommended 23 charges against Proniuk, but one count of assault with a weapon was stayed by the Crown, Cpl. Alexandra Mulvihill said. Proniuk was remanded in custody until his next court date, slated for next Monday.
At about 3 p.m. PT on Monday, someone hiding in the bushes near Burnaby Mountain Secondary School used a pellet gun to shoot at people waiting at the bus stop. As many as six people were hit by pellets and suffered minor injuries, police said, while the shooter pepper-sprayed some others as he fled the scene. Police have not confirmed the number of people who were hit by pellets or harmed by pepper spray.
Proniuk, a former student at the high school, was arrested three hours after the incident. The charges against Proniuk include one count of wearing a mask with intent to commit an indictable offence, 12 counts of assault with a weapon and six counts of discharging an air gun with intent to wound others.
Mulvihill said the wounded people were all recovering Tuesday after being treated at the scene. Among the injured was a bus driver who was pepper-sprayed when he confronted the shooter.
And:
Coroner: Texting while driving played role in death
By Joanne Hatherly, Times ColonistMay 27, 2009
A 26-year-old Victoria man may be the first traffic fatality attributed to the use of a BlackBerry device in the province, say Saanich police.
Michael Edward Wolsynuk's BlackBerry showed that he was texting a message at the time his truck jumped a concrete median and crashed into another truck, concluded a B.C. Coroner's report and Saanich police investigation.
[snip]
He wasn't wearing a seatbelt, either.
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Ah-ha!
At last, photographic evidence that people play my games and enjoy them! (or, at any rate, laugh while bits of one of my games are spread out below them on a beer-soaked table)
They are playing my game Red Guard, the only game published (so far) on the Chinese Cultural Revolution (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6723). The occasion was the second "CLASS WARGAMES CLUB NIGHT" on April 21, at The Fleapit, a pub/cafe in London. Other games they played included Steve Jackson's Coup (simpler smaller hex-based game, not about a coup so much as overcoming popular resistance to one), Guy Debord's The Game of War (a game with an interesting history, not least because of its author), and Anders Fager's card game Comrade Koba .
The players belong to a group called "Class Wargames", they seem to be an interesting bunch.
http://www.classwargames.net/pages/aboutus.html.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=58141166910
Well, anyway, if I ever return to London there's a place to look up....
Meanwhile, my illness abates but I still have a lingering cough. Spent Saturday playtesting dzherzhinski's new card-based game, Petrograd 1917. He has been working on it for years, the game includes over 400 cards featuring over 150 personalities from the major political movements in Petrograd at the time, each with an individual portrait and ratings reflecting his painstaking research. Fortified with lemonade and cheese larva, we played and argued far into the afternoon. The best way for the leadership of the Provisional Government to affect play remains to be seen, and proven by further testing.
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Stayed in bed most of the long weekend and I still feel ill. Not quite as bad as last week, got rid of the fever and much of the congestion but I'm still a mucus and cough factory. Managed to make everyone else in the house ill too, so at home they call me "Patient Zero" or "The Infektor". Perhaps I should have taken a day or two off last week, but I needed to come into work as I was Temporary Acting Little Boss, and indeed I am TALB all this week and next Monday too.
Meanwhile, apparently 50 people have made pre-orders for Summer Lightning. Only 200 to go and they'll print it.
Last night I was watching an old episode of SCTV, one that had the development where Tex Boil leaves Edna and she is holding auditions for a new husband/organ player. Rick Moranis plays some kind of electronic music genius who plays famous pieces of synthesizer music, including about 20 seconds of Kraftwerk's "Autobahn", before taking a drink and saying, "Thet's roight Ednuh..."
So after that I had to start watching "Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution", a three hour documentary on Kraftwerk and the Krautrock/ German electronica phenomenon. Mostly in German, an hour and a quarter in and they are just now talking about Ralf and Florian's first two albums. Features Karl Bartos, an ex-Roboter who joined Kraftwerk in 1975 and left in 1991, and the DVD case notes that the film is "not authorized by Kraftwerk". I have to wonder why, they haven't said anything critical of them yet....
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It could just be me -
I've been coughing and feeling exhausted all week, feels like a relapse of that cold/flu, coming back as bronchitis -
or it's the weird weather -
or just apathy -
but I don't feel like doing an electoral post-mortem as I did in 2005:
http://ltmurnau.livejournal.com/80294.html
http://ltmurnau.livejournal.com/80401.html.
But I probably will. Can't keep away from crunching those numbers, in my amateurish way. I see there are a few recounts, and in 16 districts there was less than 5% difference between elected and runner-up.
But no one particularly seems to care - voter turnout was under 50%, down from 58% in 2005, down from 70% in 1983. I just read a news story where it alleged that the Stanley Cup playoffs interfered with the voter turnout, or maybe it was the election that interfered with the Canucks' chances (ha)....
This kind of stuff amazes me though! If people can't be arsed to go and vote, but will stay in line for two or three days to get tickets for something, then they shouldn't have the right to complain about the government they elected, or didn't elect, however you want to look at it. Voting is one of those acts of civic responsibility that seem minor but are actually quite important, it's an act of faith in the idea that people getting together and choosing others to run things on their behalf has merit. And if you don't turn out for that, well, I guess that's a choice too.
BAH! (shuffles off, coughing and hacking)
[EDIT: saw this in the comments to Rafe Mair's post-election column in the Tyee:
"... according to the wisdom of the BC electorate [we should have]:
Conservative - 0 [ ~ 2% counted voters]
Green - 3 seats [ ~ 8% counted voters]
New Dem -19 seats [ ~ 42% counted voters]
Liberals - 21 seats [ ~ 46% counted voters]
Empty seats - 42 [ ~ 50% / absent ]"]
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OK, I'll bet that didn't mean anything to most of you.
But click on this anyway:
http://www.locknloadgame.com/Section_Cat_Content_Detail.asp?SID=33&SCAT=87&ID=95
P500 is how a lot of wargames are being published (or not) these days: they advertise it on a company website, and if enough people place pre-orders with their credit cards to make producing it pay, they print it up and send it out. If not enough, then they don't. Simple economics.
This company does mostly tactical games but is branching out, the publisher thought the topic would sell and the art is pretty good:
Why would/should I design a game on Poland '39, you ask? Well, there aren’t many wargames on the Polish campaign, probably because the conventional wisdom is that it was a very unbalanced contest. I think this is informed mostly by hindsight. The German Army knew it had superior numbers and organization, but much of its equipment was no better than that fielded by the Poles, the concept of blitzkrieg had not been proven in actual combat, and they were not at all sure that the campaign would not bog down into static fighting. As it was the Germans lost over 16,000 dead in five weeks of campaigning.
I used a game system that worked quite well in two other games of mine (one on the Battle of the Bulge that's been in print for five years, and one on hypothetical Allied counter-invasions of the Balkans that's due out this year), and came up with many options to vary the game for both players and make it as equal (or unequal) a contest as they want.
Anyway, you don't have to order this, I just wanted to tell you about it....
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Yep, been a few days but the days are rolling right along, and not a lot of time to post. Guess that's better than the opposite.
The other night I went over to shadesofwinter's place for, of all things, a jam session. He has a sort-of experimental band called Idoru (after the William Gibson book) and wanted to see how some of my homemade faux-Mongolian instruments sounded. [Guess I haven't written much about these: a while ago I made up several homemade instruments out of junk I had lying around the workshop. They outwardly resemble and function like musical instruments in the same way as the traveller who was hiking in Nepal stopped in a guesthouse for the night, saw "pizza" on the menu, ordered it and was served a chapati covered with ketchup and melted yak cheese. One day I'll take some pictures.] I brought over the Small One-String Tin Can Fiddle, even found an old lump of rosin after a brief search (I still don't have my workshop area squared away).
Anyway, we laid some of this over some guitar improvisation by John and some keyboard stuff by shadesofwinter, and it sounds really eerie. If my effort ever makes it onto the CD, I will be credited with playing the Cambodian Death Fiddle. It was a lot of fun and I'd like to do it again some day, who wouldn't?
They're making a movie at my place of work all this week - some kind of driect-to-cable thing called "Sorority Wars", at title like that could be good but instead it's Faith Ford trying to get her daughter to sign up for the same sorority. The front of the building is done up as one of the buildings of "Tate University", which includes the Medical Ethics Department, and later they are clearing out our best boardroom to do it over as a dorm. Sheesh. The halls are full of extras made up as students (well, maybe some of them are, but as the movie takes place in summer in a warmer place they sure look cold as the weather has done little else but strew wind and rain about) and grotty-looking technicians with little radios growing out of them.
Off to the Lewis Black show tonight at the Royal Theatre! Expensive but this should be good.
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Over the weekend, J. G. Ballard succumbed to illness caused by prostate cancer. He was 78. He had been ill for several years, as he revealed at the end of his very last book, Miracles of Life.
JGB was a brilliant writer, a highly original thinker, my favourite author and an interesting man in his own right. No one saw the world just as he did, and he became, without most of the rest of that world knowing it, its unacknowledged prophet and psychic chronicler.
I read my first Ballard at age 13 - I saw a Penguin edition of The Terminal Beach, a collection of short stories, on a shelf in a dusty used bookstore in Sidney. I read them without completely understanding them at first, but there was this quality to the writing and the ideas that kept me coming back.
Since then, I have read everything that he wrote, with the exception of uncollected pieces that he did for newspapers and magazines. It's sad to think that there will be no more books or thoughts from him, ever.
THE site for things Ballardian: http://www.ballardian.com/ has a very moving personal tribute by Simon Sellars, and a collection of remembrances etc. by other authors. Here it is, I could not say it any better:
Goodbye, Jim…
As publisher of this site, my goal has always been to take J.G. Ballard as a philosopher, rather than simply a ‘novelist’. Sometimes this has truly angered fans and champions of his work, more often it has brought me into brilliant and inspiring contact with writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers and theorists who all see the world through that same Ballardian lens — and with Jim Ballard himself, who, along with his partner Claire Walsh, always remained supportive of the site.
Ballard articulates clearly to me the implications of living in an age of total consumerism, of blanket surveillance, of enslavement designed as mass entertainment. But he also speaks to me of resistance through irony, immersion, ambivalence, imagination — of remixing, recycling, remaking, remodelling.
Ballard embraces dystopian scenarios, including the archetypal non-space often characterised as a deadening feature of late capitalism. But this is not simply a call for nihilism. Ballard’s characters are not disengaged from their world. Rather, they embody a sense of resistance that derives from full immersion, a therapeutic confrontation with the powers of darkness, whereby merging with dystopian alienation negates its power.
This is predicated on concurrency: Ballard’s writing turns objectivity into subjectivity, opens up gaps where there is room for new subjects. His scenarios are what I term ‘affirmative dystopias’, neither straight utopia nor straight dystopia, but an occupant of the interstitial space between them, perpetual oscillation between the poles – the ‘yes or no of the borderzone’, to use a phrase from his work.
Here, dystopia becomes the real utopia, and utopian ideals, typically represented as a stifling of the imagination, the true dystopia. He reinhabits the frame to present a clearinghouse in which corporate and national governance is overthrown and regoverned as a ’state of mind’.
To read and to understand Ballard, then, is to be gloriously, finally liberated.
To James Graham Ballard: thank you.
Links, etc. - there are hundreds of Ballard sites out there but here are a couple I stuck in, for want of anything better or having to look harder:
CBC's rather superficial obit, apparently cribbed from Wikipedia_: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2009/04/19/ballard-obit.html
[EDIT: a much better written appreciation of Ballard replaced this shortly afterwards: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2009/04/20/j-g-ballard-obituary.html]
Guardian article on JGB and pop music: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8008277.stm
And another reminiscence from V. Vale, co-founder of Re/Search of San Francisco which published a lot of Ballard miscellany (http://www.researchpubs.com/Blog/?p=163):
I particularly hate it when “rebels” die — there are already so few of them/us. Sometimes it seems like virtually everyone you meet these days in the world is a slave to the profit motive/capitalist imperative: “What’s the meaning of life?” “To make money!” J.G. Ballard, and another of my relatively recently deceased role models, W.S. Burroughs, both refused to prostitute their writing, and they both refused to shmooze and “network” merely to further their “careers.” Both had a hatred of bourgeois hypocrisy and phony politeness, while at the same time being deeply polite and courteous, almost to a fault …
But for now, let us think of ways to publicly mourn one of the greatest thinkers and poets of the past century. By some irony, “The Complete Short Stories of J.G. Ballard” is reportedly soon to be published in the United States, complete with two additional stories not included in the U.K. edition. Short stories, more than novels, may appropriately suit the trend of the increasingly shorter attention span of the human populace, who demand more flash ads, tiny videos and music quotations as they read their two-minute, two-page articles on the Internet. I suggest that for the next month (or year), readers shut out everything else and read ONLY J.G. Ballard novels, short stories, essays, interviews and reviews. Your mind, language, and outlook are guaranteed to be permanently altered…
“Death always presents the face of surprised recognition,” wrote William S. Burroughs. He also advised all of us to “Stay out of hospitals,” and “Avoid Doctors.” Well, even though I had been concerned about J.G. Ballard’s health after hearing two years ago that he had been diagnosed with “advanced” prostate cancer, I still felt a kind of unthinking complacency mixed with my concern: “Almost every humane male has prostate cancer when he dies; it acts very slowly and can take decades to kill a man.” To be honest, having seen him recently in October 2008, I really didn’t think he would die THIS SOON. And when I found out he had died — I had arrived home from a 9-hour bus trip today to hear the news on our answering machine — well, my first thought was, “There’s no thinker left alive that I can totally trust. They’re all dead.”
For the past two or more years Ballard had been undergoing state-of-the-art, high-tech treatment from a young doctor who reportedly was trying every new medical breakthrough remedy or procedure which promised “hope” for Ballard’s condition. Recently, however, Ballard had been rushed to a hospital, and after sustained care there had returned to the home to his longtime (40-plus years) companion, Claire Walsh. The latest word was that he had recently required around-the-clock care by visiting professional nurses, which sounded somewhat alarming. Still, I maintained calm. Now I wish I had tried to telephone him and talk one last time, even if just for a minute. I think I expected Ballard to live at least as long as Burroughs, who reached the age of 83, even after having been “a junkie” for years of his life. By a strange logic, I felt that since Ballard hadn’t been a junkie, he should live even longer than 83. Well, I was wrong. And now the world will miss his unique, witty, and sometimes acerbic commentaries on itself. We miss him and are grateful for his dark sense of humor and generous output.
– V. Vale, RE/Search founder back in 1977, San Francisco
I have that UK edition of his complete short stories and will start working through it. And I'm going to have a prostate exam. Let's all bend over for Uncle Jim! (well, the men, anyway)
One thing relatively few remembrances/comments I have read so far mention is his sense of humour and grim wit. I liked that in him; he was actually very funny, in his way.
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And I'm not talking about that stupid "teabag party" thing either (honestly, did no one know about the associations of that word? This is as bad as the time the Conservative Party wanted to call itself the Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party, of CCRAP).
From the Department of Homeland Security, a new report on the growth of rightwing extremist organisations and a threat assessment:
http://video1.washingtontimes.com/video/extremismreport.pdf
or here
http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/rightwing.pdf
Associated Press News (April 16/09) says that "in September 08, the agency highlighted how right-wing extremists over the past five years have used the immigration debate as a recruiting tool. Between September 2008 and Feb. 5/09, the DHS issued at least four reports, obtained by The Associated Press, on individual extremist groups such as the Moors, Vinlanders Social Club, Volksfront and Hammerskin Nation."
There are also hundreds of instances documented by the FBI of veterans joining extremist groups - not in large numbers overall, but in leadership positions (http://file.sunshinepress.org:54445/fbi-military-nazis-2008.pdf : this is from July 08). The Department of Defense also did an internal investigation in 2006 of penetration of the military by racist gangs and skinheads. Though I would think actually one good way to get those stupid ideas about "mud races" knocked out of your head is to train, take orders from, and go on patrol with a few of them - which is how the US Army became, by the early 1960s, one of the most integrated organizations in American society.
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Certainly it is now common knowledge that Glenn Beck is Losing It Big-Time, but I missed this segment of his show that aired in February 09 where they more or less fantasize about insurrection against their own duly elected government.
Didn't you ever wonder what had happened to the militia movement, who used to supply all the stock bad guys and wackos for the crime shows back in the Clinton Years?
***
Sunday Feb. 22, 2009 07:36 EST
Fox News "war games" the coming civil war
( Read more... )
Link with other links and references:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/22/militias/
More on Glenn Beck, Fox News and conspiracies:
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/135541/
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Secret, Sweeping Treaty with US in the Works
Infringe copyright, go to jail? Battle over anti-counterfeiting agreement heats up.
By Michael Geist
Published: March 31, 2009
TheTyee.ca
Next week, the Department of Foreign Affairs will conduct one of the stranger consultations in recent memory. Officials have invited roughly 70 stakeholder groups to discuss an international intellectual property treaty that the U.S. regards as a national security secret, about which the only public substantive information has come from a series of unofficial leaks.
( Read more... )
Wow... Just... Bizarre.
Every time I hear or read about "industry" doing something reasonable about IP and copyright, I later find two or more examples of things like this Draconian, unenforceable garbage.
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puckish
caffeinated
fulla dogs
constipated
hungry
cranky
sick
tired
seriously bummed