gwax’s rumblings

Dear Intarwebs,

I feel that it behooves me to bring the existence of the Infinity Maze to your attention. Infinity Maze is the webcomic of my brother, Dave. As might not be surprising for the work of one of my kin, the comic is rather bizarre. The art is somewhat crude but the writing is usually pretty top notch, in my opinion. I may be biased by the humor matching my sense thereof but, that said, I do highly recommend the comic to you, my good Intarwebs.

–gwax

This past Saturday was SantaCon here in San Francisco and, for the second time, I attended. This year, I dressed Baldr up as a rein-dog and brought him along for the romp. We had a fantastic time and Baldr was unquestionably the star of the day, with dozens upon dozens of people taking photos with or of him.

Baldr’s popularity on Saturday brings me to a challenge: I challenge you to find as many photos of Baldr as you can; leave links in the comments. I have attached a particularly cute one that I found to get you started, but I have seen others out there.

With two appliances primarily to blame, there’s been a lot of great culinary exploration and experimentation going on in my apartment of late. Firstly, I recently purchased a hand cranked meat grinder and; secondly, Jacob, friend of the apartment, having roommates who would not allow a deep fryer, bought a deep fryer for our apartment. The primary result of the meat grinder has been lots of meat loaf, which is tasty, healthy and endlessly reheatable. The results of the deep fryer have, so far, been: buffalo wings, onion rings and deep fried meat loaf, which are all amazingly delicious and terribly bad for us.

We’re only at the beginning, though, future plans include: duck burgers, Fosters beer battered kangaroo nuggets, rattlesnake burgers, loaves of every meat you can imagine and deep fried pretty much everything.

I spent this past weekend in Seattle at Penny Arcade Expo 2008, which is a great big convention for gamers of all sorts and those of similar persuasions. I met up with Riad, Gautham and Ariel in Seattle and we had an awesome time. Between the exhibit hall, the panels, the talks, the tournaments, the freeplay areas and all of the other people, PAX was three solid days of fun. I highly recommend PAX, in the future, to anyone with any interest in video games, board games, the Internet or good times in general.

For me, the major highlights of PAX were:

• Monsterpocalypse - Privateer Press was selling preview releases of their new game, Monsterpocalypse. Monsterpocalypse is a collectible miniatures game focused around destroying opposing monsters and cities. It is a very well constructed game and a heck of a lot of fun to play; I purchased enough for two people to play and I intend to get more when the game is actually released in October. I played two games at PAX, one more last night and I really like this game. Monsterpocalypse is awesome and I highly recommend looking into it.
• Starcraft II - Blizzard had playable demos of Starcraft 2 up and it seems really good. Starcraft 2 seems to have kept the feel and gameplay of the original while replacing some of the interface annoyances, improving the graphics and adding a few more units. I am now really looking forward to Starcraft 2’s release.
• Demigod - I hadn’t heard of Demigod before PAX but, as one of the random things I saw in the exhibit hall, it looks like a lot of fun. I probably won’t get Demigod because it seems like the sort of game that’s best suited to multi-player, which I haven’t really been in a good situation for since undergrad, but if I were looking for a fun multi-player game, Demigod would be on my short list.
• Minibosses - The Minibosses, a rock band that exclusively plays covers of video game music, were the last act at PAX’s Saturday night concert. I’ve seen the Minibosses before as they’ve played Steer Roast a couple of times but they’re still great. There is something particularly awesome about hearing the theme song to Ninja Gaiden, Megaman 2 or Metroid played on electric guitars, bass and drums. The Minibosses played a ~2 hour set that was solid glory and totally worth staying up until 3AM for.
• MC Frontalot - MC Frontalot is probably the best known and most popular nerdcore hip hop artist. Frontalot is pretty good and an awful lot of fun. He puts on a great show and his raps are really entertaining and well targeted at the audience. Heck, Frontalot is probably responsible for making nerdcore what it is today.
• Pitch Your Game Idea - We pitched the oft-discussed in Fort Awesome game idea for Eco-Slayer, which met with mass audience approval but didn’t win any prizes with the panel. The reactions and getting an honorable mention from three of the four judges was pretty great. Shout outs to Mar, whose idea Eco-Slayer was originally.
• DTS - PAX had this wonderful system called the Distributed Tournament System; basically they gave you two pins at the beginning of PAX to wear. If you were wearing at least one DTS pin and saw someone else wearing at least one DTS pin, you could challenge them for a pin. The challenge could take any form you wanted, in previous years it was only for handheld gaming, and the goal was to collect the most pins at PAX. I didn’t really collect as many as I should have but I had an awful lot of thumb wars, Indian wrestling contests and games of rock-paper-scissors. DTS made for a great way to interact with and meet random new people, even if it was just for a short competition and conversation. Seriously though, I had some truly epic thumb wars, one even ended in a draw after about 15 minutes of fierce competition.
• Other people - One of the best things about PAX was all the other people. Sure there were some annoying socially awkward people but there were also a lot of really cool people. It was a great big convention for people that like some of the things that I like and for which I, as a person, probably fell within one standard deviation of normal. It was a nice feeling being surrounded, in a sense, by my peoples.

I’ve been drinking a lot of vanilla milkshakes recently. So we’re clear, I’m from New England and I’m not talking about frappes. My vanilla milkshake recipe is very simple, very quick to make and very good:

• glass cold milk
• couple or few teaspoons sugar
• tablespoon or so of vanilla extract

Stir ingredients with a spoon. Drink.

One central element of the recipe is that precision is not important; sometimes I completely leave out the sugar. Another thing worth noting is that while real vanilla extract is fairly expensive, artificial vanilla is really cheap, especially if you get it somewhere like CostCo. Do not dismay at using artificial components, vanillin is incredibly easy to synthesize with no loss of flavor. I find it to be an incredibly tasty beverage, in addition to being good for you (it is milk) and easy to make.

Enjoy.

This morning, I purchased a cup of coffee, a Café au lait to be specific. What makes buying a cup of coffee noteworthy is that it’s the first cup of coffee that I have purchased, or even consumed for that matter, in about 3 years. I don’t normally drink coffee for reasons that date back to my Junior year of high school.

I found high school exceedingly easy and, as a result, I was almost constantly bored. In spite of the fact that I usually did my homework during other classes so as to avoid doing it at home, I rarely slept sufficiently–a habit that I’ve carried with me since. The not sleeping meant I drank coffee in the mornings, rather a decent amount. The boredom, and who I am, led to experiments of all sorts. Eventually, the logical happened, I combined my coffee with my experimenting. I usually made coffee with our Moka Express–a phenomenal device for making good coffee by the way–so that served as the platform for my experimentation. Mokas produce rather tasty and very potent coffee. My first experiment involved the production of three Mokas worth of coffee, which were then boiled down to the volume of a single mug; the boiling down concentrated the caffeine but absolutely ruined the flavor. Experiment one was a resounding success; I was alert, wired and full of energy all day, though I did crash at the end of the day and become quite exhausted. At the time, I had a bit of a penchant for consuming cake frosting (if only I still had my teenage metabolism) and I suspect the container I ate that day helped maintain blood-sugar levels against the energy draining effects of caffeine. Obviously, my second experiment, which occurred a number of weeks later, involved the same process and four Mokas; again there was cake frosting and it was quite a success, though I did suffer some jitters and stomach discomfort. Worth noting, I estimate a caffeine content of approximately 200mg per Moka, with acute overdose levels starting somewhere around the 300mg range, modulo tolerance; hospitalization can be necessary for as little as 2000mg. Not willing to be deterred, or perhaps just being a complete idiot, later on came experiment three: five Mokas boiled down to one cup. Experiment three was a complete failure, perhaps there was too much caffeine, perhaps it was a lack of cake frosting; whatever the reason, I was done in. I couldn’t focus; my hands shook to a large degree; I was nauseated to the point of vomiting; it took a substantial portion of my willpower to hide my situation from my teachers and peers, eventually making it through the day, collapsing in bed and sleeping for an excessive period of time.

Aside from the negative effects immediately following experiment three, I developed a strong psychosomatic allergy to the flavor of coffee, as indicated by an inability to stomach decaffeinated coffee, coffee ice cream or anything with a hint of coffee flavor while still being able to consume large quantities of caffeinated soda. Every so often, I have tried to consume something coffee related, usually trying for very minimally coffee options, and I have slowly found myself more capable of stomaching them. Most recently, I think that I had a bottled Starbucks frappachino drink thing and was only somewhat nauseated by the experience.

Today, however, I would say that I have only been minimally nauseated; to such a minimal extent, I would say, that I may see about bringing coffee back into my life. My psychosomatic coffee intolerance is a weakness of constitution that I would really like to kick. Further testing is clearly necessary but I am cautiously optimistic.

For rather a long time, I’ve been a stalwart Marvel comics fan but upon seeing the Watchmen movie trailer, I find myself re-evaluating my stance a little. I’ve always liked the X-Men; Thanos, Galactus and Magneto are awesome villains; Superman is super lame; and there are so many other reasons to love Marvel, like all the cartoons. However, all that neglects some of the great things D.C. has been involved in, for instance, pretty much everything Batman except the movies between Batman Returns and Batman Begins. The Batman books are gold, the Batman cartoons have all been gold, Jack Nicholson’s Joker was gold, Batman Begins was gold and I am so psyched about The Dark Knight that it’s not even funny. On top of that, there’s a bunch of other things D.C. has done right, including Watchmen and Transmetropolitan, probably the two greatest graphic novels of all time.

Marvel, however has been putting out movies best classified as bad followed by worse, with the notable exception of Iron Man, which was pretty ok. Why then does Marvel deserve my praise? Their comics are still pretty decent but they certainly aren’t Dark Horse, though really, nobody else is. Are the X-Men really that great or is it that they were really cool when I was a kid and I haven’t come to realize how simple they really are?

You know, I think I’m switching my allegiances. As of now, I officially like D.C. more than Marvel, though I still prefer Image, Dark Horse and a few indie publishers more. Seriously though, The Dark Knight looks awesome as all get up and so does Watchmen.

Ok, I’m going to watch the Watchmen trailer one more time and then I’ll be done geeking out.

Saturday evening, I went out with some friends and saw The Fall, which was, I must say, a gorgeous movie. The movie is quite artistic, pretty and rather fun. It gets a wee bit on the odd side at a number of points and there are a few WTF?! moments but, overall, the film is quite coherent and a very nice way to spend a couple hours. Unfortunately, The Fall, being thoroughly independent, is suffering very poor distribution and showing up in a rather small number of theaters but, in my opinion, it’s worth seeking out one of those theaters and seeing it.

In today’s edition of George brings you obscure movies that you should have heard of, District B13. This 2004, French film, produced by the great Luc Besson, stars David Belle, founder of Parkour and involves acrobatics and ass-kicking that easily match the better things coming out of Asia recently. Take one part post-apocalyptic action film, add a dash of drug lords, some neutron bombs, two parts crazy martial arts, a liberal sprinkling of really good French traceurs, bake for an hour and a half and you get, well, a pretty phenomenally awesome movie. No wires or special effects necessary.

Ralph Bakshi is a particularly interesting American maker of animated films. I expect relatively few of you have ever heard of Ralph Bakshi and almost as few have seen any of his works, which is why it is necessary that I bring Ralph and his works to your attention.

My first encounter with Ralph Bakshi came when, at a young age, I saw the box for his 1977 film Wizards at my local video rental location, Video Revolution, and thought that it looked phenomenally cool (same image as the poster image to the right). For reasons I do not recall, I didn’t manage to actually watch Wizards until I was in high school and, let me tell you, it’s a pretty fantastic movie. Wizards is set in the far, far, post-post-apocalyptic future and tells the story of a war between two wizard brothers, Avatar and Blackwolf of the land of good and evil respectively. If I recall correctly, the war is precipitated by Blackwolf’s discovery of ancient Nazi war propaganda. The film does a fantastic job of alternating between light, dark and flat out surreal; I highly recommend it.

It wasn’t until just recently that, in deciding to hunt down a copy of Wizards, I learned the identity of Ralph Bakshi. Being the obsessive consumer of media that I am, I decided to see what else Ralph has done and, lo and behold, Ralph Bakshi was responsible for Cool World. Cool World was a rather odd mix of cartoons and live action that I am rather fond of in spite of the rather poor critical acclaim that it garnered in its time; I must be a member of the cult for which it is a cult hit. Upon realizing that Ralph was responsible for Wizards and Cool World, it became necessary for me to track down his other works and what should turn out to be his seminal work? None other than the film version of Fritz the Cat. Fritz the Cat is noteworthy both as the first independent animated film to gross more than $100 million in the box office and as the first X-rated animated feature film. R. Crumb did not like Bakshi’s take on Fritz the Cat and killed off the comic character in retaliation but, by most accounts, R. Crumb is a whack-job and the film was great; I have obtained the film but have not yet had the chance to watch it so I must withhold my personal views for now.

Ralph Bakshi is one of the behemoths of mid-20^th century animation, responsible for many things beyond the few that I have mentioned, and I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t bring him to your attention. Having done so, the disservice of not watching Bakshi’s works is now yours to remedy.

Rest in peace, Albert Hofmann. 102 years is quite a good streak; too bad your work was hijacked and vilified in your lifetime. The world was not ready for your discoveries but, hopefully, one day it will be. Goodbye.

Last night, I attended the Bay Area Yuri’s Night celebration, which was a big celebration of Yuri Gagarin. Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space and the celebration was at NASA Ames, with a couple great big hangers full of art, science and/or engineering exhibitions, constant musical performances and some other wonderful stuff. It was an amazing celebration, my favorite parts included, but were certainly not limited to, the Amon Tobin set, the aerobatic show, Spore and, quite frankly, my roommate Gene’s dynamic fractal exhibition piece. It was an amazing event, made better by how many people I knew that were present but it was, at the same time, a sad reminder of how under-appreciated NASA is by our country, our government and our people.

Today marks yet one more year of my survival on this planet; go me! This year, I’m starting the George New Year right: thoroughly beat up. Last night I caught a Ministry and Meshuggah show, which was amazing, and availed myself of the mosh pit. As with other metal/industrial mosh pits that I’ve encountered, things were very civilized and the intent was definitely one of energy and excitement, not one of violence. It was a good mosh pit, but it was a pretty brutal one too; I am certainly rather thoroughly tenderized and I will be aching for at least a few days. It’s been quite some time since I’ve gotten a chance to be in a proper mosh pit and I’m quite pleased to have gotten the chance again. Now, time to take it a bit easier and let my body recover, also, find some cake, birthday cake that is.

When I see a number or sequence, I have a tendency to deconstruct it into other numbers or sequences; I do this with license plates, addresses, receipt stubs and all other manner of things. It is receipt stubs, specifically from restaurants that I’d like to take as my discussion nucleus today. Yesterday, for the first time, I got a steak and cheese from Theo’s Cheesesteak at the Rincon Center nearby and I happened to be order number 64. Upon seeing 64, I internally deconstructed it to 2^6 and spent the subsequent few moments thinking generally about powers of two. Today, having enjoyed yesterday’s cheesesteak, I decided to get another and went, again, to Theo’s where I, once again, happened to be order number 64. Performing the same deconstruction to 2^6 immediately reminded me that I had been given 64 yesterday, allowing me to note that I had received the same number from the same restaurant, two days in a row. Coincidence: yes; synchronicity: I found it meaningful, so yes; evidence for numerology: oh come on, no.

This particular synchronicity got me thinking philosophically about the nature of significance and how we attach meaning to things. We humans are pattern finders, we do it very well and we tend to do it unconsciously. Patterns simplify the world and allow us to abstract things into easier pieces. Since we use patterns to better understand tho world, we tend to do our best to fit things into patterns, even if it’s merely a coincidental pattern, which is fine because patterns do arise spontaneously. People, in my experience, tend to conflate the existence of a pattern with the presence of meaning. In the case of numbers, I believe that the relative ease of constructing arbitrary patterns often leads people to attach meaning to things that are random in nature. I know that I’m guilty of attaching meaning where it isn’t due but, at least, I tend to be conscious of and complicit in my misattributions.

The question now is whether or not I should get a cheesesteak tomorrow, for pseudoscience and all.

Arthur C. Clarke died today in Sri Lanka at the age of 90. I won’t even try to summarize the amazing things that Arthur C. Clarke has contributed to the world, I wouldn’t be able to do him justice; if you care, ask wikipedia. Rest in peace Sir Arthur C. Clarke and thank you for all that you’ve given us.

I’ll leave you with Clarke’s three laws:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Saint Patrick’s Day, 2008 is not on March 17th as usual but, rather, on March 15th. This shift is because March 17th falls during the Christian Holy Week. The Roman Catholic Church moves Saint Patrick’s Day whenever it coincides with the Holy Week, a coincidence which last occurred in 1940 and will next occur in 2160.

In quickly polling around, it seems as though very few people are aware of the date shift. In fact, even my wall calendar has the date wrong. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good drinking holiday as much as the next person but if you’re going to hijack a holiday and use it for drinking, you really should do the hijacking correctly.

Drinking on the wrong day makes the as-yet-unressurrected baby Jesus cry. Don’t do it!

Those that know me well enough will understand why and those that don’t will have to accept as truth that I consider the attached YouTube video one of the most beautiful things that I have ever seen.

Hint: It’s because I have had a deep and profound love for paper airplanes since I was a small child.

Ok, blogosphere, or whatever you interwebzorworkpeople want to call yourselves, this is a plea for help. I try not to depend on other people for much but this is truly important to me and if you can help me, I will be gracious towards you in quantities hard to express.

There was a movie that I saw on television when I was young (somewhere between 6 and 13 (so 1989-1996 probably)) that involved some kid waking up in his bed, seeing a weird glowing over the hill behind his house and then getting abducted by aliens that wanted to do terrible things to him. Eventually, this kid escapes from the aliens and returns to his home and finds comfort with his family. Unfortunately, it turns out that the kid’s family have already been taken over by the aliens and turned into aliens themselves and another adventure ensues. The kid, returns again to his home and manages to destroy the aliens, which I think resolves the matter but might not. I admit that I remember very little of the movie but I know that, if I were to see it again, I would instantly recognize it. So, if any of you have any idea what I might be talking about, please let me know and I will investigate the leads.

Really, the key bits are the kid waking up from sleeping to see some weird glowing behind the hill in his back yard, going to investigate, finding aliens trying to eat him, escaping, returning home, finding his parents are aliens in disguise, repeating the whole escaping part and then being left unsure as to whether his parents are real or not. Seriously, this movie is something that I remember with a combination of intense curiosity and traumatic peculiarity, which I would like to track down for my personal edification. I think the title was something like Martians ate my Parents or Martians ate my Family but I am not certain.

Please, tracking down this movie will either serve to resolve some weird issues that I have holed up in my psyche or, at the least, it will enable me to source some weird memories that I can’t seem to rid myself of.

I don’t generally ask too much of you, Internet, but this I ask of you for your own good: go see the new Transformers movie and go see it now. I saw the new Transformers movie at the earliest possible showing, last night at 8pm, and was completely blown away.

The new Transformers movie is everything that the first generation cartoons and movie were and so much more. With this new movie, the transformers have finally become everything that they should have been before. Now, understand, as I say these things, that I have loved and worshiped the first generation cartoons since I was a child.

The new Transformers movie improves on the old cartoons in a number of ways and adds depth in ways I could not have imagined. The biggest improvements come as a result of the freedoms found in PG-13 movies targeted at teenagers and twenty-somethings, specifically the shear brutality of the Decepticons and interpersonal interactions that haven’t been dumbed down or overly cleaned up. Where Megatron was once a greedy and self-serving megalomaniac, he is now a cruel and brutally violent sadist; it feels as though Megatron has come into his own as never before. There is a depth and amusing fish-out-of-water awkwardness to the Autobots that makes them both endearing and surprisingly human. Michael Bey has done a fantastic job of direction and, combined with fantastic cinematography, every scene appears to come across as total perfection; there are times when the tension is palpable, others when the comic relief smooths things over, slow-motion at just the right moments and then the action sequences are amazing.

From about five minutes into the film, clear through the end, I was stuck in a deer-in-headlights state of paralysis, unable to escape the onslaught of awesomeness that was bombarding my senses. The culmination of all my expectations and the majesty of the films orchestration left me, quite literally, in tears as the credits began to roll. If you’ve already seen the new Transformers movie, I’m sure that you already know that I’m right, but if you haven’t seen it yet, I can’t understand why you’re still reading this instead of going to see it right now. Seriously, go now; it’s more important than anything else you could possibly be doing.

I have just finished reading The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists by Neill Strauss and I can safely say that it was an enlightening read. I would like to highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone, women especially. Although the book is, ostensibly, an autobiographic narrative about one man’s journey into the society of male pickup artists, it says an awful lot about human nature, interactions and frailties.

I found the book enlightening because it has opened up my perception to a new way of looking at social interactions and manipulations. Sadly, since being so enlightened, I have seen quite a few examples of how pathetically weak-willed and easily manipulated people can be. The Game also has a fair amount of commentary on the robot nature of many people’s social interactions. Having recently seen some strong examples of people giving in to their robotic reactions, I find myself very disappointed in some people specifically and humanity in general. It will likely take me a bit of time to re-equilibrate my perceptions and morality but until that happens, I’m going to stick with a general sense of disappointment for a while.

Rogue Smokey Blue cheese is like a block of sex. I recently found myself in the cheese section of one of our fancier local grocersand found myself buying cheese, as often happens to me in such situations. One of the cheeses that I bought was Rogue Smokey Blue, which I chose because I wanted a blue cheese and there was a sign claiming that this particular one had won some award. Upon returning to my place of residence and trying the various cheeses that I had obtained, I discovered that I had chosen a real gem. So, if you’re looking for a good blue cheese, I highly recommend the Rogue Smokey Blue.

(inclusive)

Coming home after an evening of light revelry, I found myself a might bit peckish. Finding myself in such a situation and feeling it best to resolve matters before I set sail for the shadowy realm known to us as sleep, I set about making myself a sandwich. Having availed myself of the bounty to be found at the most local supermarket earlier in this day, I found a number of wondrous substances at the ready. Beginning with two slices of German Dark Wheat bread, I set myself upon the first ingredient that caught my attention: chunky peanut butter. The peanut butter added to the mix, I found myself at a grand impasse: Nutella or raspberry preserves. Upon realizing that the joy of peanut butter and jam had crossed my pallet more recently than the exquisiteness of peanut butter and Nutella, I selected Nuitella to grace the slice of bread opposite my chunky peanut butter. Moments before I brought the Nutella coated bread and the chunky peanut butter coated bread together, a fantastic idea struck me.Coming to me in a flash was the notion that I could pour a bit of honey down upon the bread before sealing the sandwich. This stroke of inspired genius led to the construction of my first chunky peanut butter, Nutella and honey on dark wheat sandwich ever. As sandwiches go, this one has few parallels or competitors.

Truly, I must have a muse hanging over my shoulders. Only a muse of truly divine merit could inspire me to devise such an ambrosial delight.

Dear Internet, go out and see the movie Hot Fuzz at your next possible option. Every moment that you delay going to see Hot Fuzz increases the extent of the disservice that you are perpetrating against yourself. Hot Fuzz is the best, funniest, most entertaining movie that I have seen in a very long time. Hot Fuzz is a buddy cop movie by the guys who made Shaun of the Dead and it manages to combine all the best elements of, make fun of and pay homage to all the good action and police movies of the past. I was totally engaged and laughing for nearly every minute of the entirety of this movie.

Bottom line, if you haven’t seen Hot Fuzz yet, you should be checking movie listings right now and getting yourself to the next available showing. No hyperbole, this is the best movie that I have seen in a very, very long time (and I have seen some pretty good movies recently). Don’t delay, don’t wait for the DVD, just go see this movie now, right NOW!.