Image Carcassone

A few nights ago I played a game called Carcassone. In it, players draw tiles from a pile that have natural features as well as man-made cities, houses, and roads on them. The goal is to complete and claim structures by placing the land tiles on the table. For instance, a player gets points for a complete road, a city surrounded by walls, and the space around monasteries. It's surprisingly intuitive, and far less complicated than I am probably making it sound.

Before I go on, I want you to know that this game is a lot of fun and that you should play it or buy it at your earliest convenience. I already secured a good price on a set and bought it with birthday money (thanks Jim and Sherri!).

Two things struck me about the game. First off, it gives constructing human habitation a very organic feel that seemed more accurate than games like Sim City. Sure, those simulators give you more tools and options, but Carcassone quietly suggests the uncontrollable and unpredictable way that humans spread out. Though there is strategy to the game, it feels like you're not playing against your opponent so much as an unseen and progressive creativity that is not your own.

Second is how the look and play of the game put natural and manmade geography together. You have to work around fields and other features and find a way to make them work for your strategy. Like the unseen human force, the natrual world is another absent opponent.

Growing up near cities and suburbs, I am honestly not used to thinking about the world in this way. I've considered nature to be a commodity, because living next to a lake is better than living next to a factory; or as a hinderance, because these trees keep dropping dead limbs into the yard.

This feeling was stirred again yesterday when I read this article in Wired about new maps showing how humans have changed the landscape. The subjects of the article make the claim -- which I found quietly shocking -- that we're living in a new geologic age based around human's use of the natural world. We no longer live in Biomes, but in Anthromes.

Image: Wired

“You now have a biosphere that’s completely transformed by people. Biology goes on in the human context, not the natural,” he said. “And given the idea that most of ecosystem form and process is created by and ruled by human activity, how did it get to be that way?”

Carcassone isn't really like this, and maybe because it uses a medieval motif and setting instead of a modern one. Perhaps that's why Sim City is so different despite having so many superficial similarities to Carcassone. I don't know for sure, but it does make me want to run into the hills and build a house like Falling Water with a boulder at the hearth and a river underneath.

I'm sure this feeling will pass, but I wonder how well I would do in a Carcassone world.

I came across this video in the NYTimes Bits blog this morning. The video, which I've embedded below, shows Steve Jobs in 1997 launching the "Think Different" campaign. It's funny in these days when everyone has an iPod, every college student is equipped with a MacBook, and I use an Apple-made cell phone that I still think of Apple the way Steve Jobs talks about it 13 years ago: as underdogs and visionaries.

Apple's most iconic ad was the famous 1984 ad, and Jobs mentions that in the video. But based on my preceptions of the company nearly 15 years after this campaign aired and probably a decade since it ended, I think you can make a very good argument that this was a more successful series of ads.

I'm not a fan of advertising, and to be honest I find marketing kind of distateful, but what I admire is the successful communciation in Apple's ads. I think most people, regardless of what they think about Apple's products, perceive the company in much of the same way as Apple's consumers and fans do: as outside the mainstream despite being mainstream. I'm looking at this video and reflecting on Apple's old ad campaigns not as an exercise in successful marketing, but as an exemplar of creative communication.

When writing, I often struggle with how to show a reader a scene, or an idea. Over the the years I've come to realize that the only way to do this is to write invisibly. You can tell your audience about the staircase and how grand it is all you want, but the manner of the description and the way it interacts with the story is going to tell the audience far more. Professor E.S. Rabkin once said in his class (and I hope he will forgive me because I am sure I am about to misquote him) that the greatest sentence in Science Fiction was "The door irised closed behind him," for this very reason. These few words tell us boat loads about the door and the world that door exists in without ever addressing either.

This is why I find these ads so noteworthy. They say so much about the company, how it perceives itself, and how it wants to be perceived without ever talking about the company. I need to take notes.

I swear, this isn't going to turn into the Scott Pilgrim blog, but apparently there was a brief animation made to support the film that I wasn't aware of until yesterday. Assuming that you, gentle reader, are like me and also missed it, I thought I'd post it here for posterity.

My only beef with this lil' cartoon is that the actors are better at their roles in the film then they are at voice acting, and I think the Kim Pine actress missed the mark entirely on the cartoon. But it's cute, and fun, and if you're a fan of the book then you'll probably get a kick out of it.

Good ol' Cathy Fisher has started up this website where she (and others) discuss heady issues in comedy today. She's graciously extended me the opportunity to contribute to her site, and I finally took up that noble cause today with a discussion about what makes the new film Scott Pilgrim vs. The World so awesome.

My main point in the post is that Scott Pilgrim belongs to that special fraternity of comedies that goes well outside the standard format, and discusses it as a spiritual successor to the likes of Annie Hall and Crank 2: High Voltage without looking derivative itself.

I hope I don't come off as pretentious, but that's really how I felt. I was sitting in my car, at the 88 Drive-In and thought "this must have been what it was like when Annie Hall premiered."

What I didn't talk about was how the original comic series by Bryan Lee O'Mally stacks up against director Edgar Wright's vision of the story. That's a discussion for another day -- if ever, because the source v. movie discussion particularly tiresome. I will say that Wright's movie is very much his own vision, and stands apart from the books in a very good way.

Anyhow, go read this thing I wrote, and go see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World because America needs more movies like this.

I've always had a soft-spot for the Batman cartoons because of my love of the original that aired on FOX Kids in the early 1990s. Though I am sure my memories of it as a cutting-edge and daring cartoon are colored by my childhood adoration, I do look back fondly on it. Hence, my interest in the following conversation:

Cousin Phil: Have you seen the new Batman cartoon?

Me: Is it that "The Batman" thing?

Cousin Phil: No, it's worse. But there's an episode where Batman fights Neil Patrick Harris with song.

That was really all I needed to hear. Within the hour we were on YouTube and I watched with amazement as the greatest, silliest thing to ever happen to Batman since he fought Predator unfolded before me.

Besides being over the top bizarre, the episode also showcases some of the most sexist writing to grace children's television in some time. Everything that comes out of Black Canary's mouth is so outrageous that it's actually laughable.

There's so much great happening here. The costume changes, the reference to the Bat-tosi, oh rapture! And to top it off, a song about how everyone hates Batman. Perfection!

What can you say, except that it sure was one hell of a death trap. But really, Black Canary, couldn't you have done something other than sing about how you're going to die?

And what about that ending! Green Arrow and Black Canary share a tender moment while he sings a song about her, and she sings a song about Batman. Uncomfortable! I guess it's a minor point now that all governments have collapsed due to worldwide looting and everyone's been deafened.

Though I am making fun of this show, I can't help but respect it. It's pretty daring to do something like this on a kid's show, especially something as all-out and completely sincere. Kudos to whomever greenlighted this, and to Neil Patrick Harris for proving, once again, that he can do anything.

A while back, my pal Adrian drew this for me. He's a quirky guy with a bombastic sense of humor. Check out his stuff, he's all over the internet.

A while back I was encouraged by a friend and a book to try this writing method that involved getting up every morning and writing three pages before doing anything else. To my own surprise, I stuck with it for more than a few days but did eventually drop the habit. I am not a morning person by nature, and I was already getting up pretty early to get to work (ah, the heady days of employment). 

The results were frequently odd, rambling explorations of my mind and vocabulary. When I don't know what to write, I play with words; their sounds and meanings mixed around and stitched together into something else. I don't have a lot of direction when I enter this mode and the words just pitter off into something strange. Recipients of my postcards will understand this. 

 It's an interesting experience if for no other reason than emphasizing both the power and limitations of words. Words are just parts; you build complex and impossible things out of those words. But words are also packed to the brim on their own: history, emotion, sound, meaning. I am intrigued by the concept of creating something coherent and meaningful out of a complete madness of words. Not like how pixels are arranged to make an image, but how music can make you feel and give you indelible images without direct suggestion. Anyway, that's a lot of navel-gazing rambling itself. Especially useless because most of the time I was writing about dreams I had and things that were going on around me. So here's some of the more interesting excerpts from my morning writings. They have nothing to do with anything, and share no connection at all to real life.

Aug 13: I walk into your neighborhood looking for you. You're not immediately around so I go into your local 7-11 to hang out. I'll get a slurpee, check out the milk and batteries. Oh, hey: you guys have lithium batteries now? 

Aug 14: Dreamed about big churches with fat, stupid choir boys that used their British accents like hammers on the brain. 

Aug 29: The wind rubs the window of your soul clean while you walk to the 7-11 to pick up milk. Wipes it down with a squeegee and doesn't even ask for a tip. Hallelujah!

It's a beautiful day and I want to run around with my friends. Raise hell all 'cross town. Bouncing off of rubber cars, leap off tall the tall buildings to bounce on rubber roads. Run, holler, and scream until it's evening. 

 Then we'd eat dinner, sit down on the pier to pull on our tweediest jackets, whip out our pipes, and get all intellectual and shit. That would be awesome. 

 Bright light through white blinds brightens the room like morning should. Scares out all the nightmares under the furniture, hiding in the corners, and between the couch cushions. They'll be back again tonight -- though they are not wholly unwelcome. 

 Sometimes the letters don't get in the right order, or the right shape, and I need to sculpt the lines on the page into a more pleasing shape. [Small drawing of an elephant with an arrow pointing to it, and the word "ELEPHANT."]

 Sleeping is like setting in to a mold for your soul. And when you can't sleep, you're sliding along the sheet of metal, sometimes your feet fit in but you can't quite get your head to settle in. Or else a bit of blanket is wrapped around me middle and I just can't fit snuggly in the groove. IT's like a lock, and all the pieces all have to fit in just right. I slide into my groove, and then get rotated under a plate as the handle is turned. More like turning a machine, really; cranking the handle of the dream generator. Who's hand is that? It's certainly not my own. Maybe it's the bearded man down the street that gives away chocolate and pennies at Halloween -- dressed in 19th Century diving gear.

One day, a while back, I sent this image to my friend Zack Beauvais:

He responded with a press release:

In response to this as well as Kris's Twitter post, I release the following official statement:

The statistical research supporting the supposed inherent hazard of wearing ponchos is dubious at best and is overwhelmingly funded by xenophobic, anti-immigration activist groups.  There is no clear evidence linking ponchos to kitchen fires, gang activity, or sexual deviancy.  In fact, there is substantial support presented in the occupational safety literature for the contrary.  Hyman et al. 1985 points out that since the introduction of ponchos into the U.S. marketplace in 1918 fatalities in both the meat packing and garment industries have decreased by over 97% - not to mention the substantial decrease in infant mortality during that same period of time.  There is a strong mandate among the poncho wearing population to stem the tide of anti-poncho hate speak in the national vernacular.  As an out-spoken individual for the cause of poncho technology what you and your cronies are doing goes against every tenet set forth by our founding fathers.

Best,

Zack

If you couldn't understand before, this is why I love Zack. He's quick, funny, and with a style all his own.

It wasn't until a branch of my family relocated to Kentucky that I became acquainted with Touchdown Jesus. I don't remember that first trip heading south through Ohio, but I remember the return trip. I was caravanning with my father and the rest of the family in the lead car. I followed in my trusty truck, Bucephalus.

Ohio, like most of my beloved Midwest, is flat as an iron. This gives the eye a certain tendency to wander across the landscape looking for something to take in, especially when driving through the region. Little things along the side of the road stand out: the way a corn field looks like a running woman as you drive past, the family that has a caboose tucked behind two fruit trees in front of their house, a rocky stream bed cutting through a cow pasture. It was grey that day, in early winter, and it gave the ground a curious sickly look to its normal green-brown.

My eye didn't have far to wander when we got close, of course. I was surprised to learn that it was only 62 feet, from torso to fingertip, because in person it appears far larger. Perhaps it was the low building behind it, or the lowness of the land in general, but that day Touchdown Jesus lorded over the land. If you've never seen it, neither my description nor photographs will do it justice. That day, the white craggy surface of Jesus' arms stood out brilliantly against the sky. I almost didn't believe what I was seeing, but there was no mistaking it.

The son of God. Up to his waste in water, holding his hands apart and his chin upward. Across his chest was a slightly misshapen cross. True to the name I would learn much, much later, his face had the almost indignant look of a football fan throwing up his arms as his team scores. "Of course this would happen," it seemed to say. "It was a forgone conclusion."

Of course, the first thing I thought was that I'd somehow driven to a post-apocolyptic future where anarchy reigned. Like the Statue of Liberty, it looked as if some damn dirty apes had gone and blown up Jesus. As if to complete the image of a forgotten relic, some children were climbing up on to Jesus and jumping into the water below.

My phone rang as soon as I had driven past the spectacle. "Oh my god," said my stepmother. "Did you see that back there?" I said that I did, and told her about the apes and the children. She laughed. "Your father said, 'help! Help! Someone throw Jesus a rope, he's caught in the quicksand!'"

And so it began for us. We'd tell stories to the disbelieving faces of friends and relatives who hadn't reason to explore Ohio. When discussing religion around the house -- a rare event -- "Quicksand Jesus" wasn't far behind.

I was shocked then that years since I had last laid eyes on the waterlogged savior, news should filter back to me about the statue. I was in the final stages of my bus trip across America (see: Assault on America's Senses) in Seattle. My friend Matt turned a sly eye to me while crossing the street and asked if I'd heard of 'Touchdown Jesus.' At first, I thought he meant the Bobby Bare song (which I genuinely adore), but he said no.

He described the statue as anyone would: one hand used to quickly indicate the water level across the torso, and then throwing his hands up as if in exasperation. I immediately understood. He went on to tell me that a freak bolt of lightning had hit Jesus' outstretched fingertip which sent the entire structure up in a burst of flame. Apparently, unworried of divine intervention/wrath, the statue was made of styrofoam over a metal frame. No attempt had been made to guard against lightning.

"It's in the middle of Tornado Alley," I said, in disbelief as he showed me the article announcing the destruction. "You'd think they'd do something!"

But they didn't, and now I don't know if I'll have the heart to glance out my window the next time I travel that way. It was silly, bombastic, and possibly obscene. But I was glad it existed, if only because it meant that the world was a little stranger.
---

Read about the statue, its history, a list of nicknames, and how PETA is going to be involved in its rebuilding on Wikipedia.

News report of the event, plus video of the fire.

I really like this, and if this is the trailer I am surely going to have to go out and see the full-fledged film.

Elsewhere I have written about how much it frustrates me that humanity can never live up to its ambitions. We have proved we are capable of great things -- the great wall of China, Polio vaccinations, the moon landing -- but these are too often exceptional cases. This is a small example, surely, but they decided to bring sunlight to their town square and accomplished it.