Thyroid

An announcement is announced.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! 1) It felt right. I suppose I'm just experimenting with styles. I've never been one for traditional, A-to-Z writing. Some people do it, and do it really well; I, on the other hand, prefer to do wild experiments. I'd strip away fat and polish the thing before showing to anyone, of course, but I've found that experimentation yields good results. Your idea's something that's never occurred to me, by the way, so thanks for that. 2) Interesting. Is that how it read? Hmm...My original line had been "He was a goner anyways - he'd crammed...", but I kept thinking it was grammatically incorrect. Jordan, though I've lived in various other places. I really don't know. It was just something that came out of me. The original line that I wrote as "The Great Rock and Roll Swindle began in 1972, when Charlie Burkowitz managed to get himself shot in a hotel lobby." It made no sense, but I was never going to continue the story. I looked it, put my hand on the delete key, decided to stop censoring myself and just goddamn wrote. It was a surreal feeling, and one I've needed badly. I changed the first two paragraphs a little before posting them on here, just to have them make a bit of sense. The setting and time period changed, by the way, as the story went along. I don't even have the gritty noir detective. That's the last thing I wanted to do. If I ever decide to write a proper story, I'll show it to you guys to illustrate what I mean. I guess I could write about the Arab world, but I'd just end-up censoring myself. Remember: we have no rights here. If I write the wrong thing and post it on the internet, someone could find it and create a shitstorm. I could censor myself, I suppose, but that was exactly what I was trying not to do. That, I'm afraid, I'll have to write when I'm a little less worried about writer's block making a comeback.

What? No, come on. I only meant that I don't know if Balthazar is a compliment, a dig, or neither - I appreciate it, whatever it is. :tup: I just wanted to show you guys the first thing I managed to write in forever (apart from the Mixnmojo stuff, which doesn't count).

I can't tell if that's a good or bad thing, but at least you read it. Don't get me wrong, I'm aware it ain't exactly The Big Sleep, but I've just started writing after long bouts of failure. I'd get up at four, still at the paper for hours and write nothing. For that alone, I'd say it's not bad. At least, I think (hope?) it's not entirely cringe-worthy.

Nooo? Idon'tgeddit.

Haha, yeah, that'll happen. I once managed to accidentally get onto a website that Trojan'd the shit out of my laptop. Every website I visited had their ads replaced by porn. It was amusing for a couple of hours, but I had to kill it.

Why don't you get Uncharted 2? I mean, I'm the quintessential Schafer fanboy, and even I think UC2's the superior game. Objectively. I have a lot more fun kicking porcupines into a glamhog's face than going Tarzan at the trees yet again, but the point stands: Uncharted 2 is brilliant.

Japanese official site is up. Not much on there besides trailers and such, but there's som unbelievably high-res images (panoramas, really) and you get to hear the Toriko sniffing and scratching itself.

Carrie's alright. I think 'Salem's Lot and The Shining were better. The Stand's story is one of the most gripping and terrifying, for 800 pages or so, but then falters and essentially cheats on the ending. Excellent setup, lazy payoff. In all fairness, part of my displeasure with The Dead Zone stemmed from me wanting to read something different. Something like The Wire, Sam and Max, or Monkey Island, since apparently that's all my brain can churn at any given time. I feel like kicking me too. I'm starting either Cold Mountain (Charles Frazier) or Dark of the Moon (John Sandford) tonight. I hope those are better.

I just read The Dead Zone. I don't like it very much. It had some good parts, but it peaked too early and needed a better editor. Alternatively, I've just outgrown Stephen King. I think my recently re-discovered love of great writing had something to do with it. Sigh. People keep giving me books and I still have another 7 of his in the closet. I am not looking forward to reading them. (For anyone interested, they are Cujo, It, The Eyes of the Dragon, Different Seasons, and Dark Tower III-V. Yeah, people like giving me sequels. It's an Arabic thing, I guess.)

Six.

I watched the first episode of The Wire, and was so impressed I went out and, ahem, bought the entire series. My reasoning is that it's good, it's gotten some notable recommendations, and that the writing is so far removed from the kind of thing I put out when I try my hand at something. I could use the influence: I need my own writing to be grounded in reality a bit more, instead of being just, oh, like Monkey Island (not necessarily of the same quality).

Hmm. I'm surprised. The writing is bloody brilliant in that film, though I do remember thinking the females were a little bit...Oh, objectified, I suppose. Maybe you should try again at not-very-close point in the future, after my praise wears off a little. I'll have to watch it again myself. The dialogue in that movie's very intelligent. That's what I remember most about it: how the dialogue always had one on you. It's the kind of thing that made Casablanca so good. I wonder if you didn't like the movie so much because it's a little misognystic. There's a lot of people who hate an all-man or all-woman movie.

I just saw Sherlock Holmes. It's not as bad as I expected (thank goodness they at least tried to ). On the one hand, Victorian London looks neat. On the other, it's essentially a dumbing-down of the source material. I'd recommend renting it instead of going to the theatre. We went to see Avatar yesterday, but it was sold out (for two showings). We ended up flipping a coin between Princess and the Frog and Ninja Assassin (yeah yeah, we were bored). We ended up with the latter. It was incredibly dumb, but at least entertaining. Gory, though. There was this kid sitting in front of me, maybe six years old, who got upset and had to leave halfway through. I wanted to call his mum an idiot for bringing him into an R rated movie, but I refrained. Stupid cow.

I think this has already been mentioned, but if it hasn't: go check Amazon.co.uk's DVD sale. Shit's up to 80% off.

Anyone ever see Becker? It's not a ground-breaking sitcom by any means, but the writing is just so damn good. The show's setting and characters could be set in any run-of-the-mill drama, or even a subpar sitcom, but what I've seen of it so far (the first season and a good chunk of the second) has been of a consistently high quality. Check it out. It's got Ted Danson as the titular character, if that's incentive.

I'm actually getting a new PC - my first with my own money. I've saved a lot and am now getting the best thing the market has to offer, a monster so terrifying it'll cause the IGN writers to be hit by a cerebral hemorrhage. My dumb and admittedly ignorant question, though, is this: will getting a 64-bit OS affect me at all? Are there games or programs that simply need Windows 7 to be in 32-bit? Sorry for the dumb question.

Oh, I wasn't intentionally maligning your opinion or implying you were a sheep. I was just responding to the joke about Casablanca being the last movie humans should have made, which implies that it's as close to perfect movies will get you. It's a great movie, but way overrated; The Big Sleep is just as good but doesn't receive the same amount of praise. I finally vented out about people following movie critics around like sheep. I wasn't thinking about you at all. I'm sorry I came off that way.

I really like Casablanca, but I think it's way too overrated. I especially get annoyed by it being the #2 or #3 movie on the Top 100 AFI list. Even the screenplay is praised too often and too much. Don't get me wrong, the writing is top-notch (the part where aside, I mean), but there's only so much praise you can give something without it seeming you're just saying it because fucking Ebert said it too. The Big Sleep, which came out one year later, was just as well-written and probably just as good a movie (I haven't seen it in ages), but you don't hear people talking about that because no sweaty film critic is rubbing his dick all over it.

I just saw the movie Amelie. It's not for everyone, but I really liked it. I'll spare you the whys and suggest that, if you want to see a postcard French movie with lots of charm, then watch Amelie.

Excellent. I was hoping some of that God Hand flavor would carry over. Sold.

I'm not the kind of guy who particularly cares about covers. If a cover's good, yay; I look it over and appreciate it. If it's not, I ignore it. Movie tie-in covers don't bother me at all. These, however, I'm finding hard to ignore. I don't know which I prefer, the Twilight-style cover Wuthering Heights is sprouting, or the blood-curdling scream of rage your average middle-aged literary snob will proceed with once he finds this shoved in the Classic section. (PS: I read a bit of Eclipse yesterday. Stephenie Meyer may just be the greatest writer everIt's hilarious. There's this phrase: "Roseanna [or whatever] stood at the doorway, her breathtaking face looking around." Something like that. Plus seven pages of that Jacob guy and Bella making out. Oh, oh, and a kiss that felt wrong - "like it was a prelude of bad things to come". Gotta love it.) Romeo and Juliet and Pride and Prejudice have also been given the Twilight treatment. Wuthering Heights. (From Wired.)

Ohhh, I think I might've been mixing up between Cage and Molyneux. I always thought Jake looked a little like Krist Novoselic, especially ten or so years ago.

Hah, I was going to create a similar thread today, but instead focus on women's armor in games. Is it just me, or do games seem to think that all a woman needs to protect from weapons, fire, lightning, the cold, etc are her nipples and crotch? (The ass is optional.) Women love to take their clothes off in games. Even if it's something basic like showing off a leg for no reason whatsoever, like in Trine. Why is this? Don't women in game development object to this kind of crap?

Question: why do so many on Idle Thumbs consider David Cage to be such a joke? I'm not being defensive: I've never played any of his games (though I finally bought Indigo Prophecy during the Steam sale), and I'm completely unaware of any antics/ego. The only thing that comes to mind was his comment from a while ago, that the "Uncanny Valley no longer exists". But he's not like American McGee, who'll proudly rub his dick on anything. That boxart is terrible, by the way. I could make a better one in 5 minutes a broken copy of Photoshop, and I suck at Photoshop.