In my random web wanderings last night I happened upon the website for the Left Behind books. You know the ones: millennial fear-mongering gussied up to resemble a Tom Clancy-ish potboiler. Not long ago I actually bought into all this, and the private high-school which I attended was... well, strange. Now, it just seems all so hilarious. Call that backsliding or enlightenment, whatever you want, but I stand by it. But you have to admit: The hallucinogenic ravings of the Apostle John may make bad trash fiction, but it's better than claiming it's literally true.

P.S. For some interesting reading, try Religious Tolerance.
- posted by JohnH @ Friday, March 28, 2003

I rue the day irony went mainstream.

First, Freedom Toast. Now, a group of, in their own formatting, US PATROITS want to ship the Statue of Liberty back to France. Link from Memepool.

A worthy cause, even despite the prohibitive postage. After all, the United States possesses a unique culture, painstakingly derived over the course of several decades, and only very slightly derived from that funky European country, with its Socialist leaning and nonsensical language. How admirable (and possible!) to rip those insidious tendrils of French culture out from our national psyche! Why....

...hm. Heh heh. Actually, now that I look at it more closely, this can't be for real. I mean, look at that ship! And they want to replace the SOL with a big sculpture of Ronald Reagan? They even wrote out Freedom Fries in multicolor allcaps, they're either colossal idgits or people brilliantly pretending to be colossal idgits. And look very carefully at the bottom-most photo on their Hall of Patriots page. No, they've gotta be pulling my leg.

Except that it's not really obvious it's a work of satire. I know, oooh you'd better believe I know, that there are people out there who'd take this seriously, and even rally behind it. If it is a big joke, it's one that fills all the purposes against which the joke rails. Who is being laughed at here, people trying to expel France from U.S. culture (in other words, mindless nationalists), people ranting against people trying to expel France from U.S. culture (that is to say, maybe-almost-me), people writing about people ranting against people trying to expel France from U.S. culture (e.g. possibly-actual-me), or people who love people and so are the happiest people in the world (dwindling number)?

Really, how much sarcasm is too much?

- posted by JohnH @ Friday, March 21, 2003

Happy Unprovoked Aggression Day!

This means that we're going to be seeing Bush's somewhat-goofy mug a lot more on the telly for a while. Does he know he consistently mispronounces "nuclear?" He sounds like my Uncle Leran, who keeps cows in his backyard for fun and lost a finger at the local paper mill.

(Actually, Uncle Leran is a hard-working, nifty fellow. I learned to drive from him. His political views are probably typical for this benighted, Southern U.S. region, but he's still a great guy. Sorry for comparing Bush to you, Unc.)
- posted by JohnH @ Thursday, March 20, 2003

A disclaimer.

I'd just like to say, in response to the attacks on Iraq, by the U.S., that have just begun, "Don't blame me, I just live here."

(That is to say, in the U.S., not Iraq. Though I don't know why you'd be blaming me for living in Iraq.)
- posted by JohnH @ Thursday, March 20, 2003

Things about cream soda that are shocking if you don't know them, and obvious if you do.
Originally posted on Everything.

Why is it called cream soda? Well, I found out, and I also found out why you don't often get brands of cream soda in soda fountains (at least, in the ones I've seen).

A "fountain" cream soda doesn't actually come from a fountain, and is just so much better than a "bottled" one, and is made on-site in a cup instead of mixed by a machine. A real cream soda is rather close to its name: seltzer water, a flavored syrup (most commonly vanilla), and cream. It is extremely good, and you can get it in some coffee shops. (I got mine at The Daily Grind in Statesboro, Georgia.) Putting a brand of "cream soda" in a fountain would be a monstrous travesty, as bottles of the stuff are only simulations anyway - the cream would probably go bad on the shelf if it were real. Not that soda companies are in any way adverse to the concept of monstrous travesties. (Witness New Coke.)

I was a bit of a bottled cream soda fanatic until I tasted one of these. Now, the manufactured stuff may suffice for a while, but it's gotta be the real drink for me, even with the typical coffee house charge doubling or trebling the price.
- posted by JohnH @ Sunday, March 16, 2003

Chalk dust

I've never had allergies this bad before.

It all started two weeks ago, when my nose opened forth its floodgates, much like a faucet set full blast, and began to dribble. In both directions, that is, forward out the nostrils, and backward, down my throat. I could put up with the constant nose blowing, but the occasional coughing fits in order to keep the stuff out of my lungs... I could do without.

The ground outside is stained yellow with pollen. It looks like a chalk truck overturned. The corrugated edges of the yellow stretches look like the coastline of some miniature continent, peopled entirely by tiny little packets of genetic information by which my nose cannot abide.

My sinuses are packed with that entertainingly-spelled bodily humor, phlegm. Phlegm! I feel like shouting it when I wake up, do more than shout it every time I snort pale green out my nostrils. I feel like I must be made of snot. My sinuses are under such pressure that I feel that if I press just right on the top of my nose, their contents would aerosol outward in a fine mist. But they don't, and believe me I've tried.

Then, the pollen began to recede. Either that or I got used to it, or something, I don't pretend to know much about the pollen and plant reproduction (though I suppose I should), but there didn't seem to be as much yellow, and I know there wasn't quite as much snot. The constant rains we've been getting washed much of the stuff away, and sea level inside the catacombs of my lower head began to drop.

Until Spring Break. Now I'm back home again in Brunswick, and the shores of yellow, it seems, never disappeared, they just moved, tectonically, south about a hundred miles.

Sudafed doesn't even seem to be helping much. And the red pill did such wonders for Neo.
- posted by JohnH @ Saturday, March 15, 2003

Actually I have a little more to say about the game industry so bear with me for just a minute longer which is fine by me because I have to head in to work in a few minutes anyway and the clock is ticking so I'm likely to write extremely long sentences such as this one and where was I oh yeah.

Costikyan's right in that gaming is unique in that it's "virtually infinitely plastic" (his adverbs not mine), that anything should be possible. That it isn't is a testiment as to how bad off the industry has gotten.

But I don't know about you guys, but I don't see many good, original games in any venue, either on store shelves or on the Internet. I didn't go to the IGC, so I don't know what kinds of things they had on display, but you'd think their work, if it was good, would generate some sort of internet buzz. Unless we've not been able to see it to buzz about it. Busy little bees.*

The thing about games that gets me is that we've gotten to a place now where implementation is easy, but design is hard. Programming skill is almost a commodity these days, which strikes me as strange because I used to sweat out long nights in 6510 assembler on my old Commodore 64, but it's true, but coming up with the Good Idea seems to be eluding a lot of people.

In case any of these people are reading this, I'll let them in on The Secret, if it'll just get them producing new original games. Here it is: when brainstorming for new ideas, either start by keeping in mind the limitations of the hardware and trying to come up with something that takes special advantage of it, or, start from something entirely outside of videogaming (like Miyamoto's garden), and "work in," so to speak. Don't, under any circumstances, start from a previously-existing game unless you change so many things about it that it would have been easier to start from scratch. I mean it, DON'T! I don't care if you think Gauntlet would have been great if you fought aliens instead of monsters. I don't care if you think Tetris would have been great if there were only different kinds of blocks. I especially don't care if you think a game in which you run around and shoot things is "enough," whether it's set on Mars, in a fantasy realm, in an office building, in the subway, or in the works of Lewis Carroll. In fact, if it's set in the works of Lewis Carroll, please do us a favor and not make it yet another Quake clone!

Yes, I'm talking to you American McGee! I don't care if you think it's in the spirit of Alice in Wonderland, I'm the great holy Turd of Truth floating down in my crappy etherial splendor, here to tell you it damn ain't! Don't you realize that you based that thing off a great work of literature that was written with wit and awesome intelligence?! Would you put Captain Ahab in a starship chasing Monstro-the-freaking-space-whale in real-time dogfight sequences?! Would you give Yossarian a pistol and a hundred powerups and have him gun down Colonel Cathcart?!! Would you put Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas in Dynasty Warriors -- wait, someone's recently done just that!! God, I'm foaming at the mouth here.

Damn it, I hate this industry!

Sorry about that, just something I had to get out from under my hat. But back to the original point: take the ultra-geek approach, or the no-geek approach. Either go all the way, or don't go at all.

The great trash heap has spoken. Nyaah.

(* Actually, I hated Gladiator. And I admit, I don't exactly swarm all over game development sites at the moment.)

- posted by JohnH @ Tuesday, March 11, 2003

Reading Greg Costikyan's recent weblog post on the Independent Game Developers conference was interesting. Of course, the game industry has been heading that way for years, but Costikiyan does such a good job of laying it all out on the screen. I have completed, by my current estimates, over three-hundred-and-fifty video games, and I think it's obvious that things have deteriorated greatly from the slightly-older days and the much-older days. The only damn games that I'll play anymore are: anything from Nintendo (even their missteps, like Super Mario Sunshine, are so much fun that I play through them several times), and once in a blue moon something else. Recent somethings else: ToeJam & Earl III (the game I bought an Xbox for, I keep telling people, as if it mattered), Neverwinter Nights (plug-plug for my module, which I assure you, is still being worked on, just slowly!), Serious Sam (which is notable not for doing anything new but for doing it the old way extremely well), and Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2 (Among the hardest-yet-fairest games I've ever seen, and hopelessly addicting. I will get to Master Mode someday...!)

But I'm ashamed to admit that my favorite part of the whole article was reading "The Computer is your Friend" again. Man that brought back memories. Good on ya, Mister C. (That is, Costikyan, not The Computer.)

- posted by JohnH @ Tuesday, March 11, 2003

Saw this on Boing Boing, an Edward Gorey book online!

For those of you who don't know (and I see too many places that just assume you do), Gorey wrote perfectly ghoulish picture books, in which many of the folk illustrated die in bloodless, and somehow hilarious, ways. If you ever liked the cartoon introduction to PBS' Mystery better than the actual show then you need to look at this.
- posted by JohnH @ Monday, March 10, 2003

I was going through my hopeless CD collection a little earlier, uploaded onto my Xbox-which-I-hate for easy access. That's the (only) cool thing about the Xbox, the fact you can use it as a console music player without tying up your CD collection. I'm sure this makes me hopelessly behind the scene, me using it as a slightly-less-expensive, non-portable, TV-bound iPod, but hey.

In particular, I found the old Space Ghost/Zorak/Brak CDs (1, 2, 3) released by Rhino, the ones compiling the music and sketches from Cartoon Planet and Brak Presents The Brak Show Starring Brak. Both of these shows didn't last as long as Space Ghost Coast to Coast, from which they arose, but were actually better, less purposely random and antagonistic towards its audience, and more genuinely silly and weird.

These days it's almost impossible to find on the air. Cartoon Network has been known to air it in the same time slot as SGC2C, but that's iffy at best, and I don't think it's even aired anymore. It's a shame. The only good explanation I've heard for it is Sesame Street on mind-altering drugs, and that is no exaggeration.
- posted by JohnH @ Saturday, March 08, 2003

Something that's been on my mind lately...

People say that something will "never" happen fairly often. The instance that gets on my nerves most often is when some pundit says something (to give an example) like "Moore's Law will never fail." Or "We'll never see a good music-sharing app that won't get pummeled by the RIAA." Or "Open-source will never replace commercial software."

Now, each of these things is desirable or not for different reasons, but I (and, I suspect, a substantial number of geeks) get rankled by the use of the word "never." Forever is a long time, and while we might not see something like the above in our lifetime, or even our children's lifetime, unless we hit the end of the world uncomfortably soon, it doesn't seem like a good idea to say that these things will never happen.

It's difficult to predict something even five years in advance, there's just too many variables. [[Any chaos theoreticians out these may disagree with me, but I feel I can safely ignore them because I really hated that chaos theory guy in Jurassic Park.]] A lot of things that happened just fifty years ago seem hopelessly quaint and naive now. While this is unavoidable, for the most part, using "never" in non-limited contexts makes the problem much worse unless you have important artifacts of the physical universe backing you up, such as Relativity, and even then you can always get around that pesky speed-of-light thing with things like worm holes [[and stupid Star Trek gimmicks]].

How's that for a second post? [[Is my tone sufficiently whiny yet?]]

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NOTE: Double brackets denote sarcasm. Please, please, please don't write me and tell me that that character wasn't annoying because of chaos theory. I promise to get cross if you do, [[and also to overuse ostentatiously British words like "cross".]]

- posted by JohnH @ Friday, March 07, 2003

The title comes from the fact that we all strive to say things that won't come off, either in the present, or near future, or distant future. The longer we're talking about, the harder it is, but even five minutes from now isn't a foregone conclusion.

Saying something new risks being called stupid, but sometimes the dumb things are the ones that need saying most.

Even so, I don't think I'll be renaming this blog to "Hopefully Stupid."

- posted by JohnH @ Thursday, March 06, 2003