much shorter

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Posts posted by much shorter

  3. Posted

    I thought the same thing.

    EA branded rockets might be the worst possible media scandal.

    Also I am perfectly willing to put money down on an Activision/Assassin's Creed branded tomahawk or bow at some point during the 4 or 5 games they release as a sequel to 3.

    I'm going to get that tomahawk and go on a rampage in Afghanistan :samuelljackson:

  4. Posted

    You're super late, but you're definitely not the only one amazed. TF2's big rollouts have all been super impressive. My favorite one is still the War rollout, with Soldiers versus Demomans trying to tally up the most kills, regardless of team side. It was a weird couple of weeks there, where you would run into another Demo on the opposing team out on the map and know that though you were enemies, you were also on the same side.

    I'm aware of previous releases, but I guess I didn't engage with them like I did with this. I feel like a kid I'm so excited about this.

  6. Posted

    I like it when Valve is super blunt in its public communication. I used to be on their press list, and I'd get emails from Doug Lombardi which were always super concise and direct, as opposed to the painfully drawn out and poorly-written press releases of most game companies.

    Were that email account still active I'd be refreshing waiting for an email like this:

    Subject: Half-Life 3 Announcement

    Body: We'll be showing Half-Life 3 at gamescom. Contact so-and-so to schedule an appointment to see it.

    Fuck ARGs and all other sorts of "viral marketing." Let's hope they don't do that.

    I'll carry my own torch and say: Valve ARGs are awesome :tup:

  9. Posted

    Man Valve just does everything right with TF2, their presentation is so fucking good.

    e: I honestly can't believe how well they are doing with presenting new content, regardless of how good it is they still manage to make it look and feel incredibly awesome. This is nothing new but they must have some insanely fun people over there to somehow manage to hit all the right notes. It's hard to extract what's so good about it, but everything from theme to form to content is just right. I can't think about anything else this morning.

  10. Posted

    I try to cook seafood as often as possible, and meat. Think French without the wild/game and more disgusting American sauces. Then I drink beer/a variation of whisky/champagne and the occasional cocktail and whine.

    Obviously this is far from manageable in day-to-day, but I like to aspire to be special. And in some OCD fashion I like to emulate a certain cuisine.

    EEEE: What do people do for Bloody Mary? I'm thinking Cherry Belle / Champion radishes might be good in addition to the usual vodka / tomato juice / spices / celery but I'm not sure. Do you have any good recipes?

  11. Posted

    Unlike, say, Peeping Tom, Psycho, Cape Fear, The Manchurian Candidate, Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, The IPCRESS File, Blow-Up, Point Blank, Rosemary's Baby, The Damned, Carnival Of Souls, Night Of The Living Dead, Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Performance or The Witchfinder General?

    I've seen very few of those movies. I'll try to express myself better: Lawrence of Arabia settled me for an old-timey adventure flick, but around the point where

    Lawrence executes one of his own men to settle a tribal conflict, a man he earlier risked his own life saving

    I realized that this wasn't what I thought it would be. And when Lawrence later

    admits that he LIKED executing said man

    you start forming a completely different opinion.

    All in all it was a pretty interesting psychological drama compared to what I was expecting, that combined with the cinematography made it very unsettling to me, especially considering how raw it was when it comes to those dark scenes and Lawrence's actions during them.

  12. Posted

    Considering that the book is a memoir of sorts, it'd be weird if she didn't talk about herself. Personally, I loved all the instances where she wrote more about her personal life; Ms. Bautman is an interesting lady! Her descriptions of her time in Uzbek were fantastic, especially if you have any experience with that part of the world. I found the whole book the exact opposite of shallow.

    Well all Russian lit. wasn't written about her, which is the feeling I got from that book.

    Good for you though, didn't mean to piss on your fire.

  13. Posted

    Elif Batuman The Possessed—on her adventures with Russian literature, learning Uzbek, and wild literary conferences—is fantastic and the funniest book I've read in years.

    Did you like it? I remember that her criticism applied to her life was very annoying. It was SO egocentric and shallow I got tired pretty quickly. Each to his own I guess.

    I think Proust can be pretty funny, but that's mainly because the dissonance between his meandering and incredibly detailed ways of seeing things which worked for me. And all of Saul Bellow's work I've read so far have been hilarious, he is just GREAT at writing good characters that interact in fun ways.

  19. Posted

    Holy shit yeah both of his parents were pretty awesome.

    And a question to the book-cast, will it be about literature (literary or genre-fiction) or about books in general (taken to mean history, science, humanities, and such)? I prefer the former when discussions regarding form, language and presentation are encouraged rather than critical discussion regarding the content, which would be hard or limited in usefulness without expertise (books about video games are excused).

  20. Posted

    His father, Mario, was a tropical agronomist and botanist who also taught agriculture and floriculture. Born 47 years earlier in San Remo, Italy, Mario Calvino had emigrated to Mexico in 1909 where he took up an important position with the Ministry of Agriculture. In an autobiographical essay, Italo Calvino explained that his father "had been in his youth an anarchist, a follower of Kropotkin and then a Socialist Reformist". In 1917, Mario left for Cuba to conduct scientific experiments, after living through the Mexican Revolution.

    - http://en.wikipedia....Calvino#Parents

    Pretty baller. Can't find a bio on his mother, got some to share?

  23. Posted

    What was that extract? Is that actually from the book? Even the formatting is different in the middle. Is that just because of how it was copied into the post?

    I am so confused. Is that actually how the book will be? Are they just going to crowbar sex scenes written in a completely different style in the middle of other passages? What the fuck? How would anyone think that would be a good idea? I thought I had had a temporary schizophrenic episode while reading that!

    Nah I'm just fucking with you guys, and the formatting is off because I copy-pasted two different things.

    But I will probably self-publish this as an EBook, after rewriting the sex, to glowing reviews.

  24. Posted

    Well my dream was set in the same nondescript Africa as Far Cry, but instead of gathering diamonds you where combating disease by harvesting information from tests you made on villagers, animals and flora which you then used to design ailments in your laboratory. Like Spacecop-CDC employed by Pfizer I think.

    Well.

  25. Posted

    Man I remember fall down an entire escalator and ripping my back up pretty bad but refused to call an ambulance and instead took the bus and subway and walked to the ER with blood pouring down my back. Ended up with 21 odd stitches. Man you are dumb when you're drunk.