Thyroid

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Posts posted by Thyroid

  3. Posted

    One of my favourite sitcoms is legally up on YouTube. Corner Gas is a great, care-free show. It's a little dry and you may need to watch a few episodes to get its style, but it's a treat.

     

    It also has my favourite single episode in a sitcom with "Gopher It", the season four finale, at the time telegraphed as the last episode. I wonder if it holds-up as well now (I saw it when it aired), but at the time it killed me.

     

    Please give it a try!

     

    I saw The Big Lebowski all the way through for the first time only about a year ago. I'd seen all of it in separate bits and pieces throughout the years, but never all at once.

     

    I enjoyed it. It ain't bad by any means, but I don't get the extreme love. 

     

    I'm also annoyed that every time I drink a White Russian (my drink of choice!), people think it's because I like The Big Lebowski. I was drinking that before I even knew it was a thing in that movie. Goddamnit pop culture.

    Watch again. It gets better on re-watch. I've seen it three or four times, and enjoyed it more every time (though I suspect said enjoyment plateaus here). 

    Then read Roger Ebert's Great Movies review, which provides an interesting take on the film.

     

    My own interpretation is that it's an anti-noir story. I learned to appreciate its brilliance after reading The Big Sleep. 

  7. Posted

    I recently read Pride and Prejudice, by (you won't guess) Jane Austen, and was amused by how similar some aspects of it are to today's dating process. It's a book heavy on the irony, written with her tongue firmly-in-cheek. Some of the dialogue between Darcy and Elizabeth is crackers. I don't know if the book's as feminist as some people make it out to be, but it's funny and fun and I'm happy I read it.

  8. Posted

    After talking to Jake, it looks like I won't be leaving, or at least not as permanently as I'd thought. I'll have to PM some of you later, asking you to edit stuff of mine you've quoted and that I need removed, if that's OK. This post will be edited too. But yeah, this whole thread is now probably useless for purposes other than me fluffing up my own ego.

  13. Posted

    I don't know. It's complicated. It's mostly that I want to...clean-up. For various reasons, personal and otherwise. But also because I feel like I spend too much time online when I'm supposed to be doing stuff. I wish I could talk about it, but it'll just be convoluted and sound insane.

     

    Thanks to everyone for the wonderful words, though. I didn't expect that anyone would really care. I'll of course miss this place - not just for the support I got in places like the "Life" thread, but the general friendliness of this forum and all the enlightening discussions you've had, especially the stuff that I was always too lazy to contribute to. And all the David Cage-directed fist-shaking I did that you all politely endured.

     

    PS: If deleting my account means the more popular threads I've made get deleted, I'll simply go through my 500+ posts and delete them manually. But still waiting on an answer to the question via PM.

  15. Posted

    At the beginning of Ico, there's a gap in a bridge you need to cross. You jump over easily enough, but Yorda refuses to.

     

    You have to move closer and closer to the edge, trying to encourage her to take the jump. In the end, she does, running for it and grasping your hand, almost falling over. You pull her up.

     

    You adventure. She points and cheers and tries to help you solve puzzles. She chases doves and splashes happily around in a stream. You grow closer. When you pull her, saving her from shadows, your controller simulates her hand muscles. It's almost like she's in pain, but she knows you're desperately doing this so you two can get out.

     

    Towards the end of the game - when it seems like you're finally about to escape the castle - you face a similar gap in a bridge.

     

    You jump. You tell her to jump, too, and, without hesitation, she does.

     

    That's why Ico is my favourite game.

     

    Honourable mentions:

    Shadow of the Colossus

    Monkey Island (all of them)

    Day of the Tentacle

    Grim Fandango

    Portal

    Morrowind

    Metal Gear Solid 1-3 (each has things I like about it)

  16. Posted

    It is well written, but I'm pretty sure I disagree with (what I gather to be? excuse my shitty reading comprehension if not) the idea that suffering or being insufferable is necessary to create great writing.

     

    It started-out very tongue-in-cheek, as the Hemingway, Mahfouz, and Fitzgerald sections hopefully show, but as I grew more tired I think I started taking it seriously. That having been said, I pity, not glamorize, all these people. I think I need to spit and polish it at one point.

     

    Oh incidentally, are you familiar with the work of David Markson?

    He peppers his writing with all sorts of obscure biographical trivia/apocryphra about various writers, artists etc.

    A lot of his books are more than 50% comprised of such anecdotes even though they're classed as novels.

    I wasn't. Thanks for the recommendation; it sounds interesting.

     

    You successfully expressed your glamourous view of self-destructive creatives.

    Your similes and metaphors don't provide me with additional understanding. I'm not sure if it's your selection or if it's a lack of implying the connection directly enough. For example:

    " It creates a splash in the neighborhood; the local gossip will nibble on the sea-weed the waves bring for weeks."

    Did you choose this metaphor as a way to describe the place? Or is there something about how sea-weed gets nibbled on by waves that is representative of the gossip?

    Another example is the continuation of the ocean metaphor through out the Fitzgerald part. After finishing that portion, I wasn't sure of why the ocean is a particularly reflective subject with which to relate Fitzgerald's life. I'm glad you are writing again. I hope this experience reminds you of why it is worth pursuing.

     

     

    As I mentioned to juv3nal, it started-out heavy on the irony (as hipster-ish as that sounds), but I think I lost the plot around the time I arrived at Carson McCullers. But I seem to have not gotten that across.

     

    The sea-weed thing was representative of gossip, at least how I view it: someone brings in the tide, little, unremarkable fish live off it until the next one.

     

    As for the F. Scott Fitzgerald section, it's a play off the final paragraph in The Great Gatsby. A lot of aspects from their lives could be threaded together using an ocean metaphor, and the final lines of the book - how Gatsby doesn't realize that getting Daisy is something he's already failed at - mirrors Scott's own attempts at reconciling with Zelda. It's also why the final lines are straight from The Great Gatsby.

     

    Thanks for your feedback. I do hope I learn to love to write again, but maybe they did too good a job at too formative a time. We'll see.

  17. Posted

    A little over a week ago, I was feeling a little agitated and so sat down and tapped at the keyboard, posting the result at my blog.

     

    Years ago, I wrote without effort and loved it, but that ended in 2006 due to continual reminders that writing is not a talent and, if it is, it is certainly not a talent worth pursuing.

     

    Anything I've done since - most of it garbage I filled Mixnmojo with - has been scraps. Therefore, this was hugely cathartic for me, as it felt like I'd fallen back into something important, however momentarily, to me.

     

    I want to know if it's well-written, or if it is shit. Is that OK with you guys?

     

    It's not short, and probably without point. It's certainly without direction. But I want someone to read it and give me their opinion on it, even if that opinion is a thumb pointing in a general direction.

     

    It's here.

     

    Thanks.

  18. Posted

    Why wouldn't I?

    Seriously, though, enjoy A Storm of Swords.

     

    That having been said, I'm not happy where they ended season three.

     

    Game of Thrones season four spoilers:

    - I guess they're leaving Balon's death off to introduce Euron.

    - But still, I think ending the War of the Five Kings this season would have been thematically rewarding. You've killed off Robb Stark; finish the job, use it to introduce Dorne.

    - I guess the whole North of the Wall thing is coming to a head next season, which means season five ought to cover the majority of A Feast for Crows and A Dance With Dragons.

     

    Game of Thrones season...five? Four, more likely, but just in case:

    - From the Rat Cook exposition story (according to the comments I've read) and a certain sighting at the Red Wedding, we look to be getting some pie.

  19. Posted

    I have mental lists of favourite authors or books (The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Skippy Dies, A Song of Ice and Fire) or bands (Pixies, Portishead), but thinkers is one I consider a bit amusing. I'm not teasing you! But this idea that you'd go up to someone and say, "You're one of my favourite thinkers!" makes me smile. I'd never even considered that. But in a good way, promise.

     

    --

     

    I've been reading The Inheritors by William Golding. It's wonderful how he manages to get Neanderthals' lesser intelligence across without being judgmental, condescending towards his audience, or resorting to cheap tricks. He just makes something as trivial as putting a log across water a difficult, mundane task for them, then phrases their cognitive processes in ways that make you realize the Neanderthals were less intelligent than Homo sapiens. I'm not far into it, because I'm catching-up on much, much needed sleep these days, but this far I recommend it.

  20. Posted

    Last season I'd been reading the book along with the TV show, but this year I hadn't had the time. As soon as I saw the latest episode, I immediately picked up book 3 to read up to it and see how it's depicted in the book.

    You get whatever you want if you manage to stop reading from that point on. The last four hundred pages of A Storm of Swords are absurdly good.

  24. Posted

    I haven't seen the episode, since I wait for them to be available legally (in 9 hours I can see it on pay-for-TV), but from the reviews I'm reading, it wasn't similar, but apparently quite effective.

     

    Spoilers for episode 10/finale (book readers you can read this):

    However, they haven't shown what happens to the corpses.

     

    Book three spoiler that might be a spoiler for season four:

    And although it's looking unlikely, I'm hoping Joffrey gets married next week, too.