Roderick

It doesn't work for me. I tried it twice now, but it doesn't show up. Am I doing something wrong? Country, city, zip code, they're all there. EDIT: it works if I don't enter the zip code.

'Meet' is a strong word, we were probably in the same lunch line at some point and I think I exchanged two words with him. Now I'm sad Suitemates didn't have a coffin scene.

A classic:

You'll love them in no time, Twig. You've been living in a blur!

Yes, do get well soon again, Zeus!

GOOD LORD!! Listening to this episode, when the name Ray Wise came up (for the one hundredth time in the show), something suddenly clicked in my head and I remembered that years ago I actually worked with him for two days on the set of Suitemates when I interned in Hollywood! Why didn't my brain remember that earlier? He has the most recognizable face and I had seen Twin Peaks at that time. I am an idiot. (It was a corporate sponsored web series also starring Kevin Pollack. I worked on set design.)

When it comes to movie adaptations of manga, I was quite partial to the 20th Century Boys trilogy. Again, it's a Japanese thing, so that might not count when it comes to Hollywood. Here's my Filmadeus article of it.

That's basically my argument against almost all 'extended universe' material for anything. It waters down what usually once was a precise, metered out, delineated thing with a narrative spray of buckshot, filling up the fans' desire for more and more and more. It ruins the taste by saturating and democratizing and slackening the source material.

Frank, I don't know if you read this thread or not, but Gearheads was the first game I bought with my own money. It was at a PC convention in the Netherlands and it was priced just within my range. I liked especially the animations of all the pieces you put on the board. It startled me to suddenly, after years of nothing, hear an in-depth conversation about Gearheads. Oh, the spooky magician is the best.

I am resisting looking at this. I mustn't look.

I thought discerning, quality people around the globe agreed that Alien 3 was underrated and Aliens poorly aging with every passing year?

I came to realise, after two years of on and off reading, I was never going to finish Le Comte de Monte-Cristo in ye olde French. It was a staunch attempt and I persisted through 600 pages, often aided by a dictionary, but I was dwindling down. So I switched tactics and got the Gutenberg e-book on my new Kindle and am now swishing through it in English. WHAT A DIFFERENCE! I read a good five times faster, I comprehend the text twice as well and it's not nearly exhausting me as much as the French version did. This is what it feels like to bite off more than you can chew, but being too stubborn to give up.

« Come come, Mr. Bond, you get just as much pleasure from killing as I do... » Thanks, Sean, for the Q&A and the look into your writing process. I found especially interesting how you discovered the characters' voices. I'm finishing up a novel at the moment and one character in particular has forced me to do a lot of research to get it right. It's a tricky process! The correct use of idiom, mannerisms, accent... I was critiqued for my novel from last year for writing too much in my own voice, so I'm taking special care to diversify it this time around.

I casually preordered in a store a few days ago, but there's no certainty on it being a limited edition. Or that I'm all that interested in th EU version. But we'll see.

UNF those dynamic shadows. I will be so happy to see Grim on Steam, just so I can coerce all my friends to buy it.

NEW 3DS, that's certainly a thing (and only two years overdue, really)! They finally added that second stick, people. That's hot news. Now a handful of games will be able to use that, but probably not really since it needs to be backwards compatible and still offer a good experience. Majora's Mask, now that's some hot stuff. And the faceplates! I mean the exchangeable plates on the (not XL) 3DS! (Which apparently is only for Europeans and Asians, with our tiny hands?) The face tracking is an added bonus, I'm curious how that'll improve the 3D. The screens are a little larger too, which I guess is OK, but the resolution is still the same, so things will get fuzzier, like on the XL.

On top of that, his eyes are bleeding blue meth.

Mind you, he usually looks like this so it's safe to say he's high.

I love how contractually obliged the lead singer in Wizzard feels in that clip. He'd rather do anything else than be there in that get-up.

You should probably visit the Rijksmuseum, which is huge and filled with interesting, beautiful things.

First finish of the year is The Bone Clocks, but I hesitate to resurrect the discussion above. Let me speak of a different theme altogether: And I also read Thousand Autumns as not being fantastical at all. The mid section in the mountain monastery was jarring from a storytelling perspective (completely losing focus on Jacob and Dejima), but I never got the feeling the cult was anything more than an insane superstition (indeed not befitting Japanese spirituality). The Bone Clocks does retcon the story a little, which I didn't mind. I'm curious if Mitchell had thought all of that out when he wrote it.

Spirituality is a very loosely defined thing. I think it relates to any sort of transcendent of revelatory emotion or feeling you get in life for whatever reason. Since this is by definition entirely subjective and personal, why bother trying to fix it into a greater scheme? Any person may experience it for a variety of reasons. It's not tied to religion or even anything metaphysical. It's a feeling of profundity, of yuugen, awe at the unknowable, horror at the impenetrable, melancholy at the temporary. You are allowed to imagine any sort of thing with that: energy coming from waves, the feeling of love out of an imagined father figure, transcending into a higher state of being, enlightenment. It means exactly nothing, except to yourself.

Well done, elmuerte. This was an event years in the making and it did not disappoint.

YES!

Notice how Hergé worked around actually having to draw the rhino, the lazy bum. I finally played a bit of Far Cry 4, which was the first Far Cry I ever played. What instantly struck me was how... not crazy it was. After years of being assaulted with tales of wacky hijinks and unexpected chaos when systems start interlocking, the actual experience was rather dull. The only mad things to happen were being attacked by an eagle and having a helicopter crush me after jumping out of said helicopter. But of the hours in this game, most were traversing rather empty areas by car or foot, and not much interesting happening. If I compare this to Arkham City, where there's something going on at every turn, Far Cry 4 is positively dull. Even the animal mechanics weren't that interesting. I'd been expecting massive stampedes of wildlife trampling around villages and getting into fights everywhere, but nope, you just throw some weaponized meat around and a badger spawns and maybe attacks a dude. I dunno, perhaps it ramps up later on, but the minute to minute gameplay was disappointing after the wonderful stories of crazy shit happening.