Secondary Innovations
Posted by News Fetcher on April 27 '15 at 10:16 AM
By Tycho from
Penny Arcade:
I wouldn’t mind playing around with an Apple Watch, and I don’t doubt that it represents a very specific fork of our wearable future, but I don’t sense
a hole in my life the device would fill. I also think the pricing is outta fucking control. What’s funny is that I would not find a traditional timepiece in that range offensive; such a device represents a graphable point in life, is Property, is functionally a phylactery which will communicate my cold will to future generations. I am trying to imagine how one would “inherit” a piece of notoriously transient first generation hardware. My daughter’s daughter would have to hit up Future Etsy for an artisanally made cable just to update the firmware.
I’m a believer in this class of device - if you’ve ever been to a convention with and without a
Pebble, let’s say, you know that one of these scenarios is a substantial improvement over the other. At this specific chronojuncture, Pebble Time represents something lower to the ground and closer to what I want, or think I want, but who knows. A youth spent at the end of a bully’s lash means that in any confrontation, I choose David over Goliath. Then again, I typically follow up a block of reasoning like this by going and doing precisely the opposite of what I just said. At PAX Prime, pay close attention to my wrist.
It may be that there is some “must” The Orple Wurtch will be able to do that my phone can’t, some profundity I’m not able to conceive of. When I look at that app space right now it reminds me of when console manufacturers invent some new, more complicated way of doing some normal Goddamn thing, and now Nathan Drake has to throw his grenades with the Sixaxis or some shit.
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Timeless Sentiments
Posted by News Fetcher on April 23 '15 at 11:15 PM
By Tycho from
Penny Arcade:
I feel compelled to tell you that I am not at the office. I’m not even writing this! I am having a man I barely know dredge a needle through the skin of my forearm, over and over. And, as if that weren’t enough, he’s dipping the tip of this needle in
ink so that even once they’ve healed the scratches this miscreant is scratching will leave permanent marks. It’s rude at
best. What’s more, I’m paying this highwayman for the privilege of being thus savaged!
It’s a gruesome inversion of the natural order.
If there is anything to be said for this violent werewolf, at least he is giving me some say in the shapes he indelibly carves. I work with text enough to know that it only holds meaning for so long when looked at; words become shapes very quickly. That’s one
more reason not to get the tattoo rendered
in the strip</i>. I make these posts out of what is, essentially, dry sand; I have to pile it up fast before it becomes a big ol’ heap of bowls and serifs. That’s what I like, though, words I guess, and I think I’ve squared the circle. I’ll post a picture of it later. I mean, you tell me.
The problem is that I’ve had too much time to think about what to get, now; I’ve wanted to do it for, oh, twenty years let’s say. Of course, back then I wanted to get <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath_%28Gargoyles%29">Goliath. From Gargoyles…? Or some shit? I can’t really see my back, just because of, like… where it is on my body, so I have often fantasized that I
did do it. But then I think about having to explain the mystic admixture of ferocity and nobility the Gargoyles represent every time I take off my fucking shirt, and I think “maybe I saved myself a bunch of time.”
(CW)TB
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Vorvax, The Forgotten
Posted by News Fetcher on April 22 '15 at 10:00 AM
By Tycho from
Penny Arcade:
I got these three frames in a text message a few nights ago, and I can’t prove it but I think he may have drawn them on a pile of spare printer paper, in his lap, while
also playing Destiny. I mention it, because I can barely do
one thing at a time.
Hey! So, I got kind of a weird opportunity a week or so, and I jumped on it. I was asked to write flavor text for a game called
“Apocrypha” on Kickstarter. Sort of surprised nobody took that name already, but there you have it. I agreed to do it, of course, because it’s being built by
Mike Selinker. His name there links to his BGG Designer page that has a lot of games on it, and it’s very broad, from his Pathfinder Adventure Card Game to Betrayal at the House on the Hill to Lords of Vegas to all his other insane shit. You’ve played one his games, most likely. You may even have enjoyed it.
Apparently I was a stretch goal? It is weird to be a “stretch goal.” I was surprised that he asked me, to be honest; I thought I’d foreclosed any possibility. We were walking through the hall once when he was gonna give feedback on Gabe’s Thornwatch stuff, and at one point he stopped, turned, and said, “You’re one of those people who doesn’t believe anything is real, aren’t you.” Which was so weird, because I’m always trying to account for this belief in my conversations with people. I’m always saying, “Dude, you seem really tangible today,” or “Keep on existing, like you obviously do!” accompanied by a double thumbs up and a smile that says “There’s a reality independent of our observations!”
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Bass Ackwards
Posted by News Fetcher on April 20 '15 at 09:45 AM
By Tycho from
Penny Arcade:
Captain Forial’s finger hovers over the communications circuit, withdraws. Then it flips out straight, like a retractable antenna, only to retreat again. Now she’s holding her fist against her mouth. She would go through the cycle again, maybe, if the channel hadn’t flared open, if a tiny version of her nemesis hadn’t appeared.
“Captain,” says the tiny, glowing light man.
“Yes, Admiral… Neeb,” is her precision engineered reply. She had discovered that saying Neeb without laughing was as hard as anything she’d done in her life. And she’d recently secured Captain over a Chiss. So.
“We’re moving the AT-ATs to Endor, as you saw in my recent communique. After their tremendous success routing the Rebels on Hoth, I see no reason not to press this advantage on other fronts.”
“Excellent, Admiral. We await their arrival.” Establish a front. Then, flank: “Have we considered that there may be environments whose native
terrain might deliver even greater results than on…”
“AT-ATs are All Terrain vehicles, Captain,” burps Admiral Neeb. His voice is fringed with exhaustion; he can’t believe he has to explain this. “
All Terrain.”
From the observation deck, she looks out at Endor’s third moon. It’s green.
Very, very green. Except where it’s blue.
“I forget,” she says, her voice thin. “Does Hoth have any trees?”
He doesn’t answer right away. She hears him typing something. And when he comes back:
“No, no trees.”
“Just a big ball of ice, right?”
“Snow and ice.”
She lets that one go. She has to. If she swings at the console, she’ll need the medical droid again. And then, the medical droid will need the repair droid. Again.
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Exchange Rate
Posted by News Fetcher on April 17 '15 at 09:45 AM
By Tycho from
Penny Arcade:
I’m given to exaggeration. Example: I once said that mice were “way, way smaller than voles,” and got an earful from the Rodent Liberation Front, Friends of the Mouse
and the Vole Association. But I am not exaggerating and am in fact being
circumspect with my language when I suggest that redemption arcades are
a spectacularly bad investment.
I’m not sure I would have thought the new Daredevil show was possible before I’d seen the new Daredevil. I thought the same thing about The Flash, I guess. If I hadn’t been forced
to sit on ice and not move for a couple days, I still wouldn’t know that The Flash - against every natural law - is a worthy investment of one’s dwindling lifeforce. Still can’t watch Arrow. After the Crossover episode before, I decided I wanted to be an Arrow fan but I only got a couple episodes in. It’s not for me. And I’m not saying that I don’t like it! I’m saying that they made it for someone else, so me not wanting to watch it sorta makes sense.
It’s about the parenthesis, the containment membrane, in either of the last two cases. They cleverly play around with this idea even in dialogue: The Flash and Arrow are from different towns, and these towns have different rules. Given the thesis for Flash, they’ve actually constrained themselves substantially. I don’t feel like Arrow makes sense even according to its own rules. I’ll dip a toe back in when the seasons ends, maybe I missed something. But let’s talk about Daredevil.
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101, Part Two
Posted by News Fetcher on April 15 '15 at 11:15 AM
By Tycho from
Penny Arcade:
This is
the last strip in this series, at least, I think it is; ol’ Gribbz gets home tomorrow, and it may be that something has occurred to him in the intervening period. Judging from the response to it and other content in this vein (something my associate alluded to in an
earlier post) we, uh… hm. It seems like there is a huge group of people that nobody is talking to about this stuff, and they really,
really want to know it. Complicating matters is the fact that, in their situation, to ask the question is to fail! You’re supposed to know it already, and if you don’t, that’s one more thing you’ve fucked up this afternoon. The only way for you
to learn it is for someone else to volunteer it. Wheels are in motion.
I try not to let my first feeling about something be my only feeling. My initial read on the
Saurids, for example, is that they were amphibious reptilian bipeds. That isn’t a good example I guess because that all ended up being true. But, let’s say we were talking about
Mortal Kombat Easy Fatality Packs. These are packs for Mortal Kombat which allows players to execute Fatalities easily. On the surface. But is that what they actually do?
Yes.
I think I need to have my, uh… metaphor thing calibrated.
One hearkens back to the environment fighting games hatched in, an agar plate of teenage anguish in which all manner of dark creatures grew, and when I think about a person beating you in the arcade and then putting in another quarter to do a Fatality, or to perform some other literal or figurative emasculation, I try to imagine this person escaping with their life.
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