Argobot

I would like to directly respond to this point. I'm not sure how the feminist movement is to blame for women getting higher grades than men. Are you suggesting that women are being given undue academic favors because they are women? If so, please talk to any woman who has ever studied in the hard sciences field, they'll tell you otherwise. There are numerous reasons why women tend to score higher than men in an academic setting. A lot of it has to do with psychology and how the two genders are socialized, but there's no nefarious feminist plot to keep men down by rewarding all the A+ to the ladies.

I try to not get too worked up over endings because they are so incredibly difficult to pull off. They also rarely have an effective on how positively a show is remembered in the long term -- just look at The X-Files or BSG or Seinfeld. For me, the ending is separate from everything that came before it and as long as the end is too ludicrous, I'm fine with it. So I didn't hate the Breaking Bad finale, but I'm disappointed that

It makes me sad that you have such a low view of games' social value. Even if the majority of games are about dumb stuff that doesn't mean they have no social value, and it certainly doesn't mean that they have no impact on society. Most dumb things have a huge impact on our culture and society, which is why criticizing and analyzing them is so important. But I do agree that games criticism oftentimes ignores the design side of games, or gives too much credit to developer intent. It'd be great if mechanics were given equal weight as story.

Tegan wins the "Owner of the Book with the Best Cover" Award.

Great that you finished! Any plans to move onto to other DFW writing?

Replacing the word feminism with something more inclusive (humanism gets tossed around a lot) obfuscates feminisms actual purpose. Yes, there is a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats mentality as far as feminism benefiting men in a lot of meaningful ways, but ultimately, for feminism to succeed as a political/philosophical movement, certain groups of men will have to give up a lot of the social/political/economic power they've held in society. Using a different word just to make men feel more included in the movement doesn't really make much sense and weakens the ultimate goal of feminism. Now the debate over using a new term so that we can move away from the racial baggage that the feminist movement has, is much more relevant. White women have disproportionality benefited from feminism, and until recently, there hasn't been a huge effort to include WOC into the movement. If you read WOC blogs or articles, you'll see the word 'womanist' used quite a bit, in an attempt to distance the current movement from its embarrassing past. Of course, this argument is incredibly esoteric and while I find it interesting on an academic level, at the end of the day I don't care what you call yourself, as long as you agree that the system is unfairly stacked in a certain direction and you want to work to help balance out that system.

The beginning 30% of this podcast is pretty great.

Wow, I'm sorry, but that sounds horrible. I can't believe that this scene adds that much value to the overall story, even given the context that the main protagonists are torturing against their will (seems like a lazy way to get around the issue). Simon Parker had an excellent article about this at the New Yorker. Just the question of how evil a video game should allow you to be: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/09/grand-theft-auto-v-how-evil-should-a-video-game-allow-you-to-be.html It's so callous to include an intense torture scene in a game that for the 99% of the time is encouraging you to commit indiscriminate murder.

I'm really digging his new book. In anticipation for its release, I read Inherent Vice. Modern Pynchon is so far afield from what early Pynchon feels like; seeing the transition in an author who has been writing for decades is incredible. Also, wow, is Bleeding Edge funny.

I am jealous that you're coming right off of Infinite Jest and going into Pynchon. Earlier Pynchon novels obviously influenced David Foster Wallace, but Bleeding Edge (and Inherent Vice) feels like Pynchon mimicking David Foster Wallace mimicking Pynchon. It's completely bizarre but also amazing to read.

Well The Bleeding Edge was released yesterday. I'm only 60 pages in, but already I'm loving this book. It's more like Inherent Vice than Crying of Lot 49, but it's so fascinating to see the evolution in Pynchon's writing and humor. His book is steeped in pre-9/11, early 2000s culture, which is when I was a teenager. It's weird to revisit that time period now, but so far Pynchon is doing a really masterful job at describing the atmosphere after the dot com bust and right before all hell broke loose in America. I've been looking forward to this book for awhile, and so far it is more than living up to my expectations. Definitely worth checking out.

Game reviews based on what's in the game, instead of...wait. I can understand someone playing GTA and not caring about it's central story, but since these games are so heavily marketed as being about something (in this case, being about masculinity or about modern America) it's completely fair for reviewers to discuss the game's story and criticize anything they find lacking or ridiculous. Finding amusement in something shouldn't mean that you have to ignore the bad or questionable parts.

I also found Leigh Alexander's piece to be more a criticism of the kind of generic reviews fans of these big AAA games expect, not necessarily a criticism of the people who enjoy or find value in these games. But Greg's right in that there are a lot of people ready and willing to mock others for playing GTA (or Bioshock, or TLOU, or Saint's Row...), for no other reason than "it's a triple-A game and therefore it has no intrinsic value." That to me, is as closed-minded as the rabid fans who are unwilling to entertain any kind of criticism for [insert whatever the big game du jour is].

I love Kundera and would say that The Book of Laughter and Forgetting would also make a really great pick; it's like the Soviet version of Sense of an Ending. Plus Kundera is just a fascinating figure in his own right, outside of his novels.

These games seem to really want to offer a deconstruction of modern America that's on par with something like Goodfellas. That could work, if the story wasn't bolted onto a tonally incongruous gameplay system. But that's a criticism you could make of virtually any triple A game -- a meaningful story (told mostly through cut scenes) that is undermined by its own mechanics.

Clue is a criminally underrated film. Buzzfeed did an article recently that goes into the movie's history -- initially a big flop, but now a cult classic. When I was in middle school, this was the movie I would always rent for sleepovers at my house. There was a span from ages 11-13 where I must have watched it a few times a year. Then I didn't watch again until a few months ago. Still hilarious.

This is also tangentially related to how fans react in the video game community. Active online communities tend to mirror the opinions of their community hosts. So if those hosts support a toxic environment -- whether explicitly or implicitly -- the community sees that as permission to be as disgusting as they want to. That's why it makes me so happy to see video game monoliths like Kotaku or Giant Bomb (or The Idle Thumbs) make unequivocal statements on "volatile" issues in the games community. That makes it harder for the community to get away with spewing hatred and is more effective than having a moderator wade into a comment thread every so often to weed out the nastiness.

I'm rewatching Aliens vs. Predators (yes, REwatching) and I can't believe how similar this movie is to Prometheus. The overall plot, even some of the sets, are shared between both films. Of course, Prometheus has a bigger budget and better actors, but I'm amazed at how much it reminds me of this knock off Alien franchise movie. It could just be a coincidence, but I have so little respect for Lindelof at this point that I wouldn't be surprised if some the similarities are there on purpose.

OH MAN: the translucent blocks. Anyway, this song has been stuck in my head since 1995 "It's some time, in the future" -- good writing Gave my little sister a huge bruise on her leg because of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8MgCTdz2lU

I'm always so happy when someone else brings up those Pizza Hut rewards. Ah those halcyon days of youth, where mindless capitalism mixed with unhealthy food to immorally and unethically motivate a child to read. Every time I finish a book, a faint aroma of pepperoni and melted cheese on cardboard lingers in the air around me. Like Pavlov's dogs, I salivate for the reward that will never come again. The reward that is denied to me by age and time. As adults, we have been cast out of the child Eden that consisted of The Animorphs and shitty pizza.

It's weird seeing my name in a game, even weirder considering Argodale is so far off from being an acceptable faux-Eastern European name. (Also, I probably would have detained myself)

I've read The Known World. (It was also really good)

And now I've finished reading Stoner. I take back my earlier The Group comparison. This book is more akin to Evidence of Things Unseen, especially its ending (but with a much tighter and contained focus). I'd been really hesitant to read this book -- despite Greg's praise -- because it's description seemed so generic. How can a book about a 1920s Missouri college professor hold any meaning? But Williams uses that simple story idea to give the reader a brutally honest exploration of one man's life. This is absolutely one of the more beautiful and meaningful books that I've ever read. I'm not sure if this would be a good Idle Book pick, but I am sure that I want everyone to read this book.

"Video games? Aren't those for babies?" I whisper. He sits there, stunned. Then in a flurry of movement, he rips the SNES from the TV stand and smashes it on the floor, flinging small pieces of plastic around the room. I smile. The tiara on my head catches the light and begins to shine, as I sit back on my throne of smashed video game consoles. The tiara reads: FAKE GEEK GIRL. Anyway, those are my tips for dating the mystical gamer.

I was also not a big fan of The Departed. It was entertaining at least, until that scene where they play that godawful Dropkick Murphys song. It was so dumb and grating, instantly colored my opinion of the whole movie.