The Ark and The Dove

Cowboys vs. Aliens vs. God

Since moving to our current location, Isabel and I average about one movie theater experience a year.

Sad, isn't it?

We used to be pretty avid movie goers back in the day, especially when she used to live across the street from an AMC. My Movie Watcher card was practically worn out back then.

Nowadays, it is rare for one of us to want to see a movie enough to warrant a half-hour drive to the theater. This summer, Isabel had her heart set on Cowboys and Aliens. I think she was hoping for Harrison Ford to redeem himself from Indiana Jones IV. I'm not quite sure he did, but this was, by far, a better movie.

There is almost nothing original in Cowboys and Aliens. You can predict pretty much everything that happens in the movie, as it follows every cliche Western and sci-fi plot device in the book. And it really isn't even that much of a mash-up. We've seen westerns set in space for years now...this is just the first time a major production has brought space to the western.

Perhaps the movie's most provocative element (for me at least) was that it took a surprisingly earnest and sincere look at faith and possibly even Christianity through the (also cliche) figure of the gun-toting preacher who keeps assuring other characters of the existence of free will, grace, forgiveness, and God. I'm not sure that the movie itself sides with the preacher in the end, at least on the God part, but he at least comes off as a virile, strong, masculine, character. More importantly, he doesn't come off as naive or an innocent lost in the woods. He comes off as a character who has seen a lot and been through a lot, but still chooses to believe despite the hardships of the Wild West...and despite the appearance of man-eating aliens.

On a more secular note, try not to think too hard if you see this movie. Most of the plot development depends more on the necessities of genre than a logical unity of action. Isabel made the comment that she felt as though there were scenes missing: she thought perhaps she had missed an explanation or rationale for characters to make certain choices. Instead, it was more tautological: the sheriff does X because that's what sheriffs in Westerns do.

When the movie does attempt to explain itself, the experience is painful. Why are the aliens abducting people? We learn that aliens are abducting people so that the aliens can perform experiments on them and learn their weaknesses. Really? Because it was pretty evident to me that 19th-Century humanity's greatest weakness was being shot with a laser beam...just sayin'.

I also found it frustrating that whenever humans managed to kill an alien, they never tried to steal its weapons and use them. Even the Ewoks figured out how to use Imperial blasters.

Most confusing, the film proposed an absurd plot contrivance to establish the stakes. Conveniently, the aliens that have arrived are a scouting party. The aliens, using alien logic, will never attempt to take over a planet where the scouting party is lost. Apparently, they don't even send rescue teams or call for backup. Maybe this is some kind of warrior code or something. I didn't get it.

Also, we noticed that when the humans are abducted, they are apparently sent to the Guardians of Ga'Hoole movie: (the human prisoners are all hypnotized by a giant-glowing structure in the ceiling that is right out of that snoozer owl movie).

Back on the positive side, though, the movie was a kind of Anti-Avatar. Indeed, Cameron's Avatar and Cowboys and Aliens are almost identical in plot...only, in this case, the humans are the victims rather than the victimizers.

Why I Need Isabel

Today, I was working intensely on a short piece that I am writing for one of those popular press collection. The deadline is coming up, and I had to cut quite a few pages. When lunchtime came, I was still hacking away...and I hadn't quite managed to change entirely out of my sleeping attire. Isabel was hungry, but I was on something of a roll, so I didn't join her when she went out to grab a sandwich. As the hours passed, and I finally managed to cut the piece down to the maximum length, I noticed there was a sale on action figure at Toys R Us...so I decided to reward myself. I put on my outside clothes, hopped in the car, drove to the toy store...checked out some other usual haunts (I will find you, Wreck-gar!)...stopped at a Borders to see if there were any good sales yet...drove home, and checked e-mail until Isabel came home...which she eventually did.

That's when I learned the pocket on my t-shirt had somehow migrated to my right shoulder blade.

I had, in fact, spent much of my afternoon wearing my shirt backwards.

Rotting My Brain...for Charity!

Just when I thought it was safe to turn on my computer again, I stumbled upon a link to The Humble Indie Bundle.

The H.I.B. is an experiment in freemarkets, a political statement, and a charity to boot. Here's the deal: five independent game developers offer one of their titles as part of the bundle. The bundle is sold with a pay-what-you-like model. Even more provocative, the purchaser is offered a series of sliding bars to determine precisely where his or her money goes. The money can be distributed among a) the Child's Play charity, b) the Electronic Freedom Foundation, c) the developers themselves, and d) the Humble Indie Bundle site itself. If you want, you can give all of the money to charity, or the developers, or divvy it up however you want.

But again, you name your price for these games...which usually sell online for around ten bucks each. And (this is starting to sound like an advertisement), if you pay above the current average, they toss in another set of games to boot!

It's also been an interesting study in human behavior to watch the site's numbers. They post how much people are paying and break down the data into sets.

For instance, they've made $1,132,074.62 at the time that I'm writing this. That's from 232,663 transactions...so the average payment is a little under five bucks. Then you find out that the average Windows user is only donating $3.89...the average Mac user is donating $6.71...and the average Linux user is donating a whopping $11.67. (Very few people evidently think these games together are worth the retail price...but they all think they are worth owning.)

Windows users pay below the average while Macusers pay above average. This sort of makes sense given that Mac users obviously are willing to spend more money on technology. But Linux users, people who are using an OS that is freeware, pay the most. It seems clear that Linux users want to make a statement, rewarding people who are willing to trust the consumer by making their games available for virtually nothing. (The games are also DRM-free, so you could be a jerk and make copies of them if you wanted...but the H.I.B. crew assumes that jerks don't win in the software market.)

Obviously, I bought the bundle already.

Fortunately, most of these games fall under the "casual" category, so I can jump in, play for a few minutes, and then go back to work. And they are all really good games. My favorites in this third bundle so far are Crayon Physics and VVVVVV. Crayon Physics is an "incredible machine" type game where you draw in the machine parts using a crayon, VVVVVV is a retro call-back to C64 games. (And if you donate above the average, you also get Braid...which I would say is probably the best game in the collection. It's very artsy-fartsy.)

Anyway, given the kinds of people who still read this blog, I thought I'd let you know about it. You can pay as little as five bucks to get $110 of games.

Is Stephen Fried?

A BoingBoing blog post links to an animated video (really, its more like a moving illustration than an animation) of a debate between Stephen Fry and Ann Widdecomb on whether or not the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world. BoingBoing is hardly sympathetic to the Catholic Church (although it is almost always ready to defend Islam as a misunderstood religion), but I tolerate their more intolerant moments because they sometimes have interesting tech and geek culture posts.

Anyway, the debate is unfortunate. It appears to be heavily edited, so I don't always know what the context is for individual statements...and it's unfortunate that Ann Widdicombe's voice comes off sounding a bit screechy whereas Fry sounds relaxed and mellow.

Widdicombe's first point is salient, worthwhile, and goes pretty much completely ignored for the rest of the video...both by Fry and herself. She starts by stating how much charity work the Church does in the world today. She also described the hope that the Church brings to the poor today. But it seems to me she should have kept using this as her retort throughout the whole debate. Maybe she did, and it was just cut out.

Fry's counterargument, for the most part, seems to revolve around only a few modern issues, and dwells repetitively on history.

The modern issues that appear to nullify the Church's widespread and generous charity work: 1) the Church (or, rather, he says just the pope in particular) tell him that it is not his "sexual destiny" (his term) to have physical relationships with other men, 2) the Church made a statement to the U.N. that hindered birth control, and 3) women can't be priests.

Really? These issues weigh more heavily than the good the Church does?

Other than that, Fry whines about Church abuses in history -- Inquisitions, indulgences, yaddayaddayadda. Widdicombe attempts to put these in historical context, but it comes off flimsy. She says we'd have to condemn all of history, and I bet Fry would be willing to do so. Rather, I would have preferred if she had shown how the Church was generally a force of progress and improvement.

Many modern historians believe that while the Inquisitions certainly got out of hand and could be abused, they also brought order to an even more abusive and even more superstitious system of jurisprudence. Issues like slavery also have a historic context. While we could pat ourselves on the back if the Church had expressed 19th Century abolitionist sentiments back in the 15th Century, the fact is that our ability to perceive the humanity of the slave is largely due to Christian morality. Even the complaint about indulgences is a bit old now. It's not like the Church forced people to buy them, which is less than we can say about the environmentalist movement. But if we eradicate institutions because scam artists prey upon people, then we're going to have to shut down the Internet on account of all of those Nigerian princes.

In any event, we aren't burning people at the stake anymore, and Chaucer's pardoner has been long dead...or at least he's swapped his relics for a laptop.

Perhaps the most original argument Fry uses is that Jesus Christ would be deeply offended by the Vatican and all of its ostentatious displays of wealth.

But this is a weak argument. Jesus has a tendency to surprise us with his responses. Remember, it is Judas who complains when Jesus lets the woman waste perfume on him that could have been spent on the poor. (But maybe Fry will say that passage was inserted into the Gospel by greedy prelates.) It always boggles my mind when people assume that the Pope lives like Scrooge McDuck...swimming in mounds of gold...as if the modern day Vatican is the Pope's personal playground and not a living museum of Church history.

What both bugs me and comforts me the most, though, is that Fry uses standards for the Church that he wouldn't use for any other institution. It's obnoxious, because it seems like bad rhetoric. It's comforting, though, because it means that Fry still somehow recognizes that the Church is on a higher order than other institutions. He demands nothing short of perfection from the Church and its members...which is more than God demands. God invites perfection, but He anticipates our failings.

Analogy: People like Fry perceive the Church in the way that children perceive heroic figures like their parents. They build up these huge enormous expectations and are utterly and completely devastated when they find out their former heroes have flaws...so they lash out and condemn them as frauds.

Fantasy Shakespeare

Some people play "fantasy football," so, naturally, Isabel and I decided we would start playing "fantasy Shakespeare."

Today's game consisted of trying to cast a "fantasy King Lear." Of all the Shakespeare plays for which to fantasize an ideal cast, we felt this one was most pressing...since you generally want to cast Lear with people who might not be around long enough to finish memorizing their lines.

For example...I had wished for years someone would cast Charlton Heston as Lear. It would have been the perfect cap to his career, going from Moses and Ben Hur, to a raging, violent, somewhat senile old man...

Maybe it would have been typecasting.

Anyway, here's the line-up we fantasized so far:

The "A CAST"

William Shatner as Lear
Harrison Ford as Kent
Emma Watson as Cordelia
Uma Thurman/Angelina Jolie as Regan/Goneril (does it really matter which is which?)
Hugh Jackman as Edmund
Benedict Cumberbatch as Edgar
Steve Martin as the Fool
Christian Bale as Cornwall (he'd probably have demanded the part of Lear and want to change the ending, and that would be his motivation for his part)
Martin Freeman as Albany
Robin Williams as Gloucester (wouldn't you be disturbed for weeks if you had to watch Mork have his eyes gouged out?)

 

The B CAST

Brian Cox as Lear (he would have been in the A cast, but we figure nobody knows him by name in America)
Samuel L. Jackson as Kent
Jack Nicholson as Gloucester
J. Lo as either Regan or Goneril
Zoey Deschanel as the other one
The Twilight Girl for Cordelia
Matt Damon as Edgar
Joseph Gordon Levitt as Edmund (maybe he should be in the A cast...maybe he would be an A cast Edgar...)
Nathan Fillion as Cornwall
Sean Astin as Albany
Ricky Gervais as the Fool

What I've Been Playing

In case anyone was curious what digital narcotics were keeping me from becoming an overnight millionaire, or if anyone else was looking for a distraction, I thought I'd share some titles...

 

1. Terraria

The biggest devourer of time at the moment is a little game alled Terraria that I picked up for $2.50 on sale a couple of weeks ago. It's $10 now. Why is it always the really cheap games that end up eating the most time? It's hard to explain what this game is. You take one part Adventure of Link and one part Minecraft, shake them up, and something like this pours out. There isn't much in the way of linear narrative. The game itself is set on randomly generated worlds, and there are just a few bosses that you can hunt down and kill. The real way it sucks up time is through mindless spelunking, grinding, and collecting so that you can find or unlock special items that change the gameplay. You can also build houses for NPC's and to store all of your loot.There is a multiplayer feature that lets up to four players either cooperatively explore or play competitive vs. matches against each other. I haven't actually tried the competitive match, but Isabel and I started a new world together. Curiously enough, we very quickly ended up recreating primitive human gender roles. Isabel decided that she preferred to stay at the base camp where she could design and decorate houses...while she sends me out on missions to go find the materials for the items she wants in the house.

She also sends me out to kill the zombies that show up every night while she locks herself in an underground panic room.

Just like real life!

In my opinion, this game's greatest success is that it generally leads the player to create their own goals...and therefore their own narrative. It's what the game theorist Henry Jenkins calls "emergent narrative." He uses the "Sims" as the prime example of this type of game in which the developers give the players tools and objects that will tend towards certain kinds of "stories" within the game, but that the player spontaneously creates that narrative on their own. For instance, I decided at one point that I wanted to build a road from one side of my world in Terraria to the other...and kind of transcontinental railroad. I didn't get any points for doing this, nor did I unlock any powers or minibosses. It was just something I decided to do because the developers gave me the ability to do it. In the process, I essentially made a little story for myself, incorporating the obstacles I faced, the treasures I inadvertantly stumbled upon...and that little narrative continues whenever I use that road. For instance, my little warrior is like a superhero whenever my homebase gets attacked by goblins. If I see the alert, my first move is to find my road, and then speed back home...something I couldn't do as quickly if I were still navigating the randomly generated terrain.

2. Spiral Knights

Spiral Knights is a fancy-looking "free to play" game that is one part A Link to the Past (notice a Zelda theme, yet?) and one part eBay. This is the online game that has sucked up most of Isabel's gaming time. At first, it's pretty  addictive. It's fun watching your adorably cute little steampunk knight hack and slash at equally cute critters in an attempt to steal whatever treasure they have. (Both Spiral Knights and Terraria have a certain imperialistic streak to them...one engages with nature only to dominate it and plunder its riches.) However, the "free to play" aspect has a hitch. To do just about anything in the game requires spending "energy points"--either to play the next level of the game or to make better weapons. You get 100 free points a day, which is good for about an hour's worth of play (and those points do not accumulate). You can also buy accumulating energy for either in-game currency or real cash. There's even a little market where players bid on energy and items. We're cheap, so we refuse to pay real cash...but it has been a pretty interesting study in economics seeing how other players try to work the system. Unfortunately, the game mechanics are starting to get pretty monotonous, and Isabel and I have reached the point where upgrading our characters to the next level would take months. I keep describing this game like a "ship in a bottle." You can do a little bit every night, and in the end, have something kind of cool. But it has become tedious. Besides, Isabel finally bought her little knight the cowboy hat she wanted, so she no longer really has any goals set for herself.

The game is also a MMORPG, and, frankly, I'm getting sick of the little kids and likely predators asking me weird questions while I'm in the middle of bidding on weapon upgrades at the auction house.

You can't build houses or anything in this game, so it doesn't feel as immersive as Terraria. The most interesting "narrative" so far has been Isabel's making of a hat. The game does try to build in narrative, letting you find little notes left by NPCs that have gone through levels before you, what Henry Jenkins calls "embedded narrative," but, to be honest, I never bother reading the notes. I wasn't in it for their revolution. I just wanted the money for Isabel's hat.

3. Plants vs. Zombies

This Popcap game is pretty ubiquitous at this point, but I only just picked it up for $4. I've slowed down a bit after beating the adventure mode, which was also just about when Isabel got into Spiral Knights.

PvZ is part of the "tower defense genre," which is probably one of the most popular independent game genres out there. My suspicion is that tower defense games are easier to program than most action games. The programmer doesn't have to worry about constructing vast terrains, or even scrolling screens. Everything pretty much takes place on a static playing field. Heck, PvZ's playing field is even a locked-in rail-like grid, which probably makes the game even more simplistic. It's a bit like the old arcade game Tapper, if, instead of patrons wanting drinks, you had zombies wanting brains, and instead of giving the patrons what they want, you were trying to stop them.

What the game has going for it is infectious cuteness, catchy music, and just the right amount of difficulty--you have to keep pretty active to win, but I wouldn't say I felt "frustrated" at any point.

This might be closest to what Jenkins calls "enacted narratives." Here, Jenkins suggests that something as simple as learning how to overcome an obstacle in a game is, in a sense, a "micro-narrative." In this regard, PvZ is full of micro-narratives. Each zombie that appears on the screen poses a new problem, a new conflict that you have to overcome...especially when different types of zombies start appearing with different strengths and weaknesses. While the game technically has an overarching plot, the most memorable moments comes not from the random cutscenes, but from individual moments..."That zombie was soooo close to eating my brains before I dropped that exploding mushroom on him...haha, zombie!"

4. Super Mario Sunshine

I picked up this old Gamecube disk a few months ago, but only started playing it this summer. I dropped it when Isabel and I went on vacation, and have only been chipping away at it since. (I've actually kind of forgetten what the point of the game was...so I feel a little less urgency to beat the game.)

What I will say for this game, though, is that it does a tremendous job of what Scott McCloud calls "synaesthesia"--in his view, the ability to convey multiple senses through one sense, typically sight.

Ever since the dreaded and infamous incident at Exit 36, I have hated travelling. However, if I ever decided to take a Caribbean resort vacation, it would be because of this game. Like I said, I'm not entirely sure what Mario is doing on a tropical island anymore, but Nintendo's designers have done a phenomenal job making you feel like you are actually at a tropical...albeit, inhabited by large, vegetable-like goon creatures. Now, I'm sure actual tropical destinations are nothing like this game, but the fact is that Nintendo has captured the essence of what I expect an tropical island to feel like. Neal Stephenson describes Disney's ability to do a similar thing with its amusement parks in his essay In the Beginning Was the Commandline, and I suspect the success of Nintendo and Disney is due to a lot of overlaps in this department.

And, not to break my pattern, this experience is what Henry Jenkins describes as "evocative narrative;" the idea that the very way the environment is presented in a game evokes a mood, indicates the game's genre, and thereby plays upon a whole host of pre-packaged narrative elements that we bring with us every time we consume "genre" fiction.

Juxtaposition

Coincidence? Embarrassing aggregate advertising? Subtle satire? You tell me...

UPDATE: Isabel thinks I missed a joke by not also noticing the juxtaposition between a card advertising VIP access in airports and the fact the lead headline is about groping TSA agents...

Layers upon layers, here, folks...

First Quote of the Day

"I'm talking to you about something that's anxiousing me." -- Isabel

Watermelon: An Exercise in the Law of Diminishing Returns

I ate a lot of watermelon this week...a lot of it. Between the excess of watermelon and the disgusting amount of time I idled on the Internet today, I feel like I'm having a mini-Carnival. A minival, if you will.

Anyway, eating so much watermelon, I came to a realization:
Eating a watermelon slice perfectly embodies the concept of diminishing returns.

The first bite is delicious. It is sweet and juicy. It's like biting into nature's own bran of water ice.

The next bite is good, although by now your fingers and cheeks are getting sticky. You are already starting to think about napkins instead of thinking about watermelon. But that first bite was really, really good...you can't help yourself.

Before long, however, the watermelon is losing its sweetness. The red is turning to a pinkish hue. The delicate texture is becoming meaty.

Pretty soon, you are gnawing on sour pieces of rind...hoping to squeeze one last taste out of whatever vaguely speck of red or pink you can find. But you know it is too late. You are at the end of the watermelon slice. There is nothing left for you there; just memories  of sweetness spoiled by the bitterness of the present.

Until you pick up the next slice.

Today's Inventions: Universal Loyalty Card and the Arcnasium

1. Universal Loyalty Card -- I was thinking about getting my semi-annual haircut today (Isabel has taken to binding my hair in various tails as I play Plants vs. Zombies), but then I remembered at some point being handed a Hair Cuttery card. No idea where I put it. At this point, I have a SuperFresh card, a Giant card, a Panera card, a Toys R Us card, a K Mart card, a CVS card...and on, and on...I almost have enough cards for a game of poker. And it's not like the cards actually do anything. They just keep surveillance of my purchases and send me occasional coupons. It seems to me that the market is ripe for someone to propose a Universal Loyalty Card -- something that you can swipe, scan, or flash anywhere. You'd just have to find a way to register your stores on the card so it would no where to send the data. Any of my tech friends want to get on top of this?

2. The Arcnasium -- I will spend a lot of time "grinding" in RPGs. The current addiction of choice is a freeware game called Spiral Knights. Isabel and I are doing a kind of buddy system in the game where we split our winnings after dungeon crawls. Anyway, if I spent the same amount of time building up my actual strength and dexterity that I spend building that of my fictional avatar, I would be a superman. Now, there are some games that have tried to marry exercise and experience points. Pokemon had some kind of Nike-Plus type device (Penny Arcade had a good comic about it), and I've read there is now a site that will keep track of your exercise and give you "achievements." The problem with these kinds of systems is that they largely work on an honor system. If they were ever linked up with an actual online games, overweight hacker-gamers would just find ways of hooking up their devices to paint shakers or treadmills to earn points without doing the work. That's why I would propose the Arcnasium -- an arcade/gym hybrid where "referees" could keep everyone honest. The points you earn exercising in the Arcnasium would then be uploaded to some affiliated online game.

These are awesome ideas. They would totally work. All I'm asking for is a cut of the profits...or a potentially long, protracted lawsuit against anyone else you successfully executes them.

I have seen The Social Network.