Roderick

I, also, am not religious events.

Shammack; my apologies. I insulted you and wasn't even aware of it. By the time I wrote that the discussion had become about generalities, not about the specific usage by you.

Hahaha, by jove, that's another one. I'm gonna have a ball with this.

I know. I know. I just have this one filed in my 'must bring up whenever' folder along with the other examples. I also make it a sport to correct Dutch people pronouncing 'accessoires' (accessories) with the double-c as a soft s instead of the correct 'ks'. I have no friends and everyone hates me.

But the sequence is naturally read into it: I have at many, many times in my life had cake and eaten it. This is standard practice when you get a slice of cake in your hand: what else are you supposed to do with it? This isn't goddamn Schrodinger's cake. Moreso, it's a warping of the original saying and just as obnoxious as current popular, erroneous phrases like 'I could care less' or 'it begs the question'. Just because the wrong use of a saying gets popularized, doesn't mean one shouldn't rally against it. I know language is changeable and dynamic, but I draw the line at when it's clearly used wrongly and without knowing why. I will try to educate, and then at least people can make an informed decision about it.

I have an issue with the last few minutes of this podcast, wherein it is postulated that Buzz Aldrin's head might be indefinitely stored on the surface of the moon without the need to be frozen since it's cold in space. This isn't true: as soon as it hit the sun side, Buzz' head would burn to a cinder. Since the moon has no atmosphere, it exists in the same vacuum as space itself. In a vacuum, heat can't escape properly from the body, so the sun's warmth would quickly warm up poor Buzz until his head melts away like Toth's face after opening the Ark of the Covenant. One of the major difficulties of space exploration is actually getting rid of the heat you build up in the void, not staying warm. Clearly your conspiracy theory is full of holes!

Shame, the trailer made it look like it could be fun. And, sorry to get all Unabomber on you, but the expression is 'you can't eat your cake and have it'. It makes zero sense to turn that around, because you can actually have a cake and then eat it, whereas the whole point of saying that is that you can't have it both ways.

Yes, that's basically what I thought and it's super. The whole reason I'm interested in the book cast is that I do in fact expect some level of serious discussion, particularly since there's audience participation and we're all invested in, you know, (fuck this sound so horrible), elevating the thing. I finished Thousand Autumns, by the way, and I have some stuff to say about it. But now I'm thinking I should keep it to myself in case there's ever a podcast about it. Thanks, Idle Thumbs.

I couldn't watch that! It featured the 'orchestral Requiem for a Dream' soundtrack, which was very impressive in 2001 but by now the new Carmina Burana of trailer music: just don't.

Alamut sounds like a really interesting story, not in the least because of unexpected Assassin's Creed ties!

On the subject of style and flourishes and showing off: I'm currently almost through The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. I'm leaving judgment out in the open until after I've finished it, but let me say this: I love Mitchell's style. He rarely, if ever, describes a scene in formal sentences or paragraphs, but rather creates an image by a careful use of words. There's no filler, every sentence is valuable, valid, important. He will only often interject sentences and dialogue for small snippets of description, in this way: "This may be an example sentence," a bird flies off the till into Jacob's face, "but it's still valid." It's a good way to set the scene while maintaining the flow and expediency of the story. Mitchell is pretty consistent in this style, excepting a mere handful of passages where he suddenly goes apeshit and spends a whole chapter describing in the most visual, visceral language how it feels when Jacob is eating a goddamn piece of fruit. I hated that. It feels like him showing off: 'look at how graphic I can be with words!' The careful and deliberate tone of the book is capriciously exchanged for Miéville-esque fripperies.

Oh shit, the piano version at the beginning. I listened to it, good opening podcast. I was delighted at the discussion about Tinker Tailor, having seen only the film. Good that you feel you can branch off into other media if it's a valid discussion. I can equally relate to Chris deliberately arranging longer commutes to work to create reading time. For this and various other reasons, I had planned to do the exact same thing. Once I get a job somewhere, I will try not to live in the same city (note that Dutch cities are tiny and propped up next to each other) so I have to travel. That will hopefully mean more time for reading, a quieter and cheaper living location and that wonderful feeling of going places when you take the train every day. Lastly, perhaps in an attempt not to scare away newcomers, or because the subject is books instead of video games, it seems this podcast is a lot more serious than the other. I'm not complaining! But is there a truth to it that you feel that you need to tackle this subject with a bit more severity than video games?

I'm finally catching up with this last flurry of podcasts. I lost it when Steve's lattice of sunglasses came down on the QuakeCon audience to deal with Nick's single sustained sax note.

I will give this film another shot, but I stand by how irritated I was and am about how it completely screws up the science for no good reason. That's just dumb-dumb.

Pushmo / Pullblox (downloadable), Kingdom Hearts 3D (if that's your thing), Resident Evil Revelations (if that's your thing), I heard positive things, if that's your thing, about Kid Icarus too. Don't get Metal Gear Solid 3, that's apparently a bad port.

Well, then it's the most subversive, and best, film ever.

If the aliens actually don't initiate hostility, that would be an amazing twist that I didn't even notice in the cinema and that would give this movie actual legitimacy. But I'd have to see it again to check if it really is in there. Sorry for doubting, but I just find it so hard to believe. Until that time, I found it an entertaining, dumb movie that had some funny winks to the original game (those landmines they use to check the position of the aliens), but that is also frustratingly stupid. I hated how they mangled the science in the beginning. All the shit at the beginning with yellow beam radio waves that travel faster than the speed of light, it destroyed the world for me. It was my flying snowman. I just couldn't get over it, and that was that.

Last weekend I was at the Dutch Abunai convention for Japanese pop culture. It turned out to be an amazing social gathering of 3DS owners. On Saturday I tagged over 100 Mii's (thus getting a pretty hard to get achievement and lots of puzzle pieces and progression in Mii Quest). Everyone seemed to have a 3DS. I saw exactly zero PSVitas. It's also interesting that you can see what people are playing when their Mii drops in. Kingdom Hearts 3D was easily the most popular game on the convention, New Super Mario Bros 2 was about as rare as Kid Icarus. I wonder if sales reflect these one-time impressions.

Did somebody order a LARGE HAM?

Didn't the aliens send out the whirring death balls to various cities? I got the impression they distinctly did make the first move, but it's been a few months and this movie's not a sticker.

Maybe 2D characters will be part of their stretch goals? (I doubt it.) I share everyone's feelings: the art looks a little off. I could get used to it, but they had me going there for a while by saying things like 'unashamedly 2D'. But I'm still way more bothered by the lack of PayPal options.

The day Kickstarter finally supports goddamn Paypal is the day I'll be happy with another fantastic, must-support, adventure project.

By Odin's raven!

I know, right? Super weird they didn't underline the C in Cancel.

It makes sense; they have the 3DS models ready and the franchise has been pushed into the limelight again.