The Gamer's Quarter

seryogin · Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 7:58 pm Post subject:

I want to read it again before coming to a conclusion about it. Though I'll say that I thoroughly enjoyed Bernard's character, I'm glad that he didn't fall into the Winston Smith bathos model of dystopian protagonists... The more I think about Orwell the more I dislike him... I didn't much like the way Huxley handled the Savage. I understand that he was supposed to be a foil for the Overseer, but, still, come on.

Huxley wants me to believe that some pitiful nerd, who was shunned by everybody for most of his life would resist the advances of a beautiful young girl, who literally throws herself at him. What are you?! Fucking stupid?! I was on the bus when I read those chapters, periodically I looked up from the book and saw a beautiful Asian girl sitting next to me. As was expected, I began to pity myself for my inability to ever strike up a conversation with an unfamiliar female, and, well, this lead to a train of thought that should be painfully obvious to those who know. If you don't, well, there's no use in me telling you about it.

Here I am, jerking off to the sexier NES game covers (recalling my youth, as it were), trying to squeeze as much fucking pathos out of the books that I read in the hopes that it just might make me forget about everything else for a few hours, and you're telling me that the Savage would rather have his Shakespeare than a beautiful girl. Your words are as empty as your soul!

One has to never have felt the dull, searing pain of sexual frustration for any extended period of time to romanticize "noble isolation." I understood the Savage in the chapters that dealt with his life in the reservation. He read his Shakespeare because he was excluded from everything else by the cruel pack. In fact, I understood his insane devotion to the Bard, it's clinging on to the one thing they couldn't steal from him. Yet, when you tell me that he doesn't like it when he's put into a situation where everything denied to him may be acquired, I scream heresy and bourgeoise lies!

Shoot them like mad dogs!

I need to roll myself a cigarette.
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GSL · Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 8:11 pm Post subject:

seryogin · Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 8:26 pm Post subject:

dhex · Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 9:46 pm Post subject:

i was going to simply reply "1984 is not science fiction" but here's the real rub:

how many of us, with our face in the rat cage, would have been some sort of hero? generally speaking, you get shot in the head long before that.

no one is unbreakable, no matter how stubborn.
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seryogin · Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 9:57 pm Post subject:

dhex · Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 10:14 pm Post subject:

exactamundo!!!
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seryogin · Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 10:48 pm Post subject:

simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

Has anyone got insight into William T. Vollman? I just picked up Argall cause it looked interesting (and cause I recently saw The New World and wanted to compare interpretations of that whole situation), and I read about half of Butterfly Girls a while ago before losing it. Any decent criticism on the man out there?

seryogin · Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 11:37 am Post subject:

I'm reading the Great White Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson right now. It's ridiculously funny.

It begins with the words:

"To Richard Milhouse Nixon

Who never let me down." And doesn't let up from there.
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dhex · Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 6:21 pm Post subject:

man, i hit the strand today. it was hot. i fucking love that place.

http://www.strandbooks.com/home/

it's much more awesome than the website makes it look. though it's more like a high school library than the ancient and dusty old university feel. the basement is ace though. it even had a puddle today. a bit dangerous, but endearing.

gift cards make good gifts.

i bought:

the blank slate and how the mind works by steven pinker
the civilization of europe in the renaissance by john hale
cocaine nights and a user's guide to the millenium by jg ballard
the book of illusions by paul aster
suburban safari by hannah holmes

if i could buy one place on earth to make into a work/living type situation, i'd buy my old town's library and build a studio on the top floor. it's originally from the early 1800s and probably haunted.

"natural law: or don't put a rubber on your willy" is a great title for a book attacking natural law. it may also be the only book on natural law worth reading.
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seryogin · Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 7:56 pm Post subject:

Both of those Ballard books are massively bad.

Ballard ain't much of a critic, so his reviews read like a toxic mix of pretentiousness with that bland British newspaperman style, sort of like Orwell without the bite. And he never did cocaine, so that novel is a cheap, posturing piece of shit. Ballard should've just stopped writing after Empire of the Sun.
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Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

No-one disses Ballard on my watch.

And anything Dan Brown is Tom Clancy for teenage atheists.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

seryogin · Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2006 4:25 pm Post subject:

sawtooth · . Joined: 02 Nov 2005 Posts: 419

most of my devoutly religious friends have read and loved the Da Vinci code. I think everyone's a sucker for conspiracy fiction (that is a wonderful phrase).

My group gave its presentation against Dan Brown last week; I only spoke for about one and a half about the allegations of plagiarism. It's a large class, and my group had 13 people, so we never really went in-depth. After the pro-and-con groups had their turns, my professor spent most of the rest of the class ripping the book apart piece by piece. She noted that a year of research for a book of such supposed historical knowledge is far, far too little.

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

seryogin · Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2006 7:30 pm Post subject:

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

I happen to come from the British Isles.

They are indeed vile. I've lost hope in seeing brilliant TV series and musicians coming out of them again. At least we have the comic writers...

Oh right: I agree, by the way.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

dhex · Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 2:08 am Post subject:

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/zak_smith/title.htm

huh.
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GSL · Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 1:15 am Post subject:

seryogin · Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 3:00 pm Post subject:

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

I'm fairly certain my point still remains. It's all well and good to know exactly what mark boots specific counter-terrorist cells use, but the man has, as stated above, little grasp of any culture past, possibly, his own, not to mention the politics and tactical accuracy.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

TheRumblefish · . Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 258 Location: Florida

I just started Rainbow Six out of pure boredom. The book itself is alright, it;'s nothing that would blow anyone's mind. The details are there I supose, it has stereotypical characters and has a problem with hiding some of the author's problems with culture, as stated before in the previous two posts. That's really true about Clancy, all of his cultural ideas and facts are messed up beyond belief.

One that sticks out is when he described the Team's Sniper, Dieter Weber and compared him to looking like a face on a WW2 Gestapo poster. That just didn't sit well with me. All the detail in his books lies in equipment and nothing else.

Aside from crappy reading, I just finished Tom Mes's "Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike". The book was a Valentine's Day gift, and was probably one of the best gifts ever. The book deals with all of Miike's films from his V-Cinema days, to his current, mediocre budget movies in theatres. The great thing is that it deals with the director's constant themes of rootlessness in all of his film, which opens up a lot of explanations for some of his more "prolific" films. It's an excellent book if you dig that kind of stuff.

I'm looking for a copy of Crime and Punishment now, as I stated I would read that book for my own sake.
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SuperWes · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 11:59 am Post subject:

This is my favorite thing ever:

How awesome is it that Tom Clancy is in huge letters at the top and the actual author's name is in tiny print at the bottom?

-Wes
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TheRumblefish · . Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 258 Location: Florida

Mr. Mechanical · Friendly Stranger Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 1276

My dad reads Tom Clancy shit. He even read one of the Splinter Cell books. After he finished it he recommended to me because we swap books sometimes. I read the first chapter even.

It was, well, it was a book based on a videogame. I mean, really, how far inside the mind of Sam Fisher can you get before you realize there's not a whole lot there. At least it had no shortage of cool superspy moments and stealth killing.

Persona-sama · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 1:04 pm Post subject:

I recently read a book called THE TURK by someone, I have no idea. It chronicled a automaton (well not techincally) that was able to competently play chess against a human player. It was made in the mid-1800's and passed through dozens of owners before being lost somewhere in America.

Automatons are an interesting subject!
Did you know a Frenchman made a small machine duck that could waddle, quack, eat food, digest, and then poop it out? It was all powered by weights too! Fascinating stuff.
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TheRumblefish · . Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 258 Location: Florida

sawtooth · . Joined: 02 Nov 2005 Posts: 419

Lackey · . Joined: 11 Jul 2005 Posts: 1107 Location: Canada

And this?
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sawtooth · . Joined: 02 Nov 2005 Posts: 419

Persona-sama · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 9:57 pm Post subject:

Lackey · . Joined: 11 Jul 2005 Posts: 1107 Location: Canada

dhex · Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 12:37 pm Post subject:

found myself in upstate new york this weekend. (don't ask)

found ourselves a very nice used bookstore, decent prices, not too much conneticut markup, etc.

found myself a 2nd edition of the soft machine by uncle bill. for ten bucks. very nice.

also found myself a complete translated copy of the taoist classics from the 1970s, to further compare and contrast with other translated copies i have lying about. that and chuang tze is teh (mythical) man.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

I now own more books than I will probably have time to read all year. Some of these include, but are not limited to:

Idiot
The Sailor who fell from favor with the sea
Ubik
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

and more manga than I can shake a stick at (includeing 4 volumes of Berserk to get myself caught up!)
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

dark steve · . Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 1110

Ubik's pretty good. It's my favorite "normal" PKD book.

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

seryogin · Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 11:53 am Post subject:

dhex · Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 11:59 am Post subject:

i read pkd and see a guy who fired one too many neurons, mostly to his benefit work-wise, if most certainly not life-wise. his writing is often obsessed with farce of the police state of the future, both real and imagined, perhaps because he'd spent so much time ripping apart his own mind and trying to police it himself.

i hope they don't fuck up a scanner darkly.
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dark steve · . Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 1110

It's gone horrendously over-budget and they've been swapping animators out pretty heavily.

All signs point to beautiful disaster.

dhex · Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 12:05 pm Post subject:

the trailer was good, though, you know? i thought they captured some of the flavor of that book.

frankly, i woulda just hired david cronenberg to do it, since he seems to be the only guy on earth who can film unfilmable books correctly.

unrelated: the old man and the sea is still fucking awesome each time i read it.
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seryogin · Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 12:16 pm Post subject:

The Old Man and the Sea is a horrible book. I mean, it's pathetic, like Hammy Hem needed to make himself feel better about growing old. It reminds me of the plucky proverbs that my mother likes to throw around everytime I lose another job. In the sense that that it's equally cringe-inducing. You aren't old enough to like that book, dhex!
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dhex · Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 12:20 pm Post subject:

you're fucking crazy. it's about patience. i'll explain later.
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seryogin · Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 12:21 pm Post subject:

We'll see...
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Now I see why Chris never emails me. You stole my boyfriend with your poetry!
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

dhex · Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 8:08 pm Post subject:

so cocaine nights by jg ballard is the story of nights and cocaine, but not really, you see, it's a sleazy 80s noir set in the 90s, or like crash with retirees instead of cars.
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GSL · Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 2:39 am Post subject:

Seryogin! I have not forgotten nor abandoned you, I've just been really really busy with the sort of real-life events that sound absolutely banal when described, but are utter hell to actually suffer through, i.e. trying to balance the week before finals and a part-time job with shaking one's groove thing in a vaguely Japanese manner, as well as moving to a new and less trashy apartment. I shall elaborate more on the above in a large e-mail, Coming Soon! By the by, have you recieved the books yet? I'm growing a little worried--this would be an adequate delay in delivery if I were shipping them to Japan. I fear the Postal Service is behind this.

And Shaper, don't fret: I find your prose to be as breathlessly exhilirating as Seryogin's ideas vis-a-vis Russian cyberpunk. I've got more than enough love to go around!

seryogin · Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 11:46 am Post subject:

Shit, dude, your book have yet to arrive, I suspect treachery on the part of my doorman or the post office.
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Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

I happened upon a copy of Nick Cave's only novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel a week ago. I'm a fairly big Nick Cave fan, and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing his upcoming movie The Proposition, so I figured I should treat myself. It's an uncompromising book, harsh and Earthy in its details. Can be quite lyrical, as is to be expected. I'm still early into it, and I'm still left wondering if Cave's typical tongue-in-cheek quality is to be found yet.

For my courses, I'm reading The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry and W.G. Sebald's On the Natural History of Destruction. The former is a thorough collection of various WWI poems from authors of all kinds of nationalities. What interests me particularly is the very experimental style most of them adopt, even if some of their later works appears more conventional. The latter collects Sebald's Zürich lectures on the subject of post-war Germany and his examination of the seemingly avoidant attitude Germans have adopted towards their bombing experience.

Issue 4 of Warren Ellis' Fell, his experiment in cheapo comics, was released after a substantial delay. It's a great read and one of my favourite stories in the series so far, as we get to see how Richard Fell copes with losing a case in a city gone to Hell.

I'm going to see V for Vendetta tomorrow with some friends, because we all know how terrible an adaptation it's going to be, not to mention how overtly anti-Bush the Wachowski siblings will have made it, it will make Fahrenheit 9/11 look subtle, and we want the laugh. On that note, you're better off familiarising yourself with the classic comic first if you intend to see it. This goes for any Alan Moore adaptations, really, From Hell being the most lackinbg one in my opinion. Not that the movie was that bad, but because there was just so much material and research involved in the comic that the movie barely glances over.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

GSL · Posted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 12:33 pm Post subject:

Damn, I never knew From Hell was based on a Moore comic! V For Vendetta--the comic, at least--comes highly recommended. I've said before that it's like 1984 if Winston had more balls and wore a mask, and I'll keep saying it until everyone reads it and is awed by the awesomeness.