Wistful Sigh...

At Wyrd tonight, we watched two very good movies. One, Clash of the Titans, is an interesting spin on the Perseus/Andromeda myth, borrowing from several stories at once, but the spirit's there, and it's an honest one.

But Labyrinth, the other one... my, my. It's one of my favorites, and I'm trying to pinpoint the reasons why.

The first reason is that it's the first movie I saw at Wyrd. I went there one Thursday evening freshman year... I sat in the back and listened as a few loudmouths made sometimes funny comments throughout the movie, and other people chatted happily together. One person (Becky) tried chatting to me. I answered politely, but was shy enough that I left before the second movie. I'd be back at the start of next semester, but that'd be another 3 months. But even then, I liked the movie, and it was a good experience, always carrying the positive connotations of Wyrd... an easygoing, geeky social place.

But there's more to it. This is the third time I've seen the movie in four years, and I like it more every time.

You can probably go to Wikipedia for a more clear summary, but it basically starts with this teenager, probably about 15 or 16, who is fond of acting out her favorite fairy tales and pretending. She comes home to find out her parents are going out again (they do so once a week) and leaving her in charge of her baby brother. She is understandably distraught at her parents thrusting things on her when she could have other plans, and so when the baby starts crying, she tells him a story about the goblin-town and the goblin-king. She ends up wishing the baby away forever. And so the goblin-king comes, takes the baby, and challenges her to find her way through a labyrinth in 13 hours... or her brother is his forever.

She doesn't like the baby, but she didn't really mean what she said, and so she starts out. She'll meet a variety of strange people, some helpful, some obscure, some utterly mad. She will make many friends... and a lot of things will be said and will happen that can only be called... imaginative. It's a wildly creative journey... one for which the phrase "wildly creative" seems tame in comparison. In the process, she learns how to grow up some, and the goblin-king... well, he plays with shiny crystal balls and has musical numbers. (He's David Bowie.)

But I feel no shame saying that I experience great emotions for the main muppets. Hoggle, Ludo, Sir Didymus the fox, and Ambrosius his sheepdog steed. I could just sit here and smile all night.

And the lead, Sarah... she's real. Tangible. I really feel for her. I like her fantasies. There's a part of me, the one back in high school, who would've liked to live in the 80s, if only because I might've known an interesting person like her. (I did the same thing with Bridge to Terabithia.) Of course the idea is silly that I'd have to go back to that time, and going back to that time is no guarantee of finding anyone... I've been lucky to find people here and now that I can enjoy for the quirks and who love fairy tales and such... but there is a part of me that wants to be her friend. It's that real for me. That over half of the movie is muppetry doesn't matter.

And there aren't that many movies like that. Entertain, yes. But they don't engage as much. They aren't true enough. They are fabricated for our humor... but the fabrication isn't quite right.

If Labyrinth were made today, they would've probably used CG. And it seems like it wouldn't have worked as well... MirrorMask, its closest analogue with CG, used it to good effect. But it's not the same. Not quite. And other movies don't come close.

And if Clash of the Titans were made today, there'd be a lot more ab. And a lot more blood and action. And some sex. But, strangely enough, less nudity.

Question and Answer

Q: What do English majors writing their thesis on a medieval work do when they get tired of doing research for the moment?

A: Read about this! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_European_martial_arts

And play Soul Caliber. ;)

President

So I'm trying to convince Dylan to run for SGA president again (with little seriousness in the campaign). When the prospect of collecting 500 signatures became too much, I thought of another tactic. Form an exploratory committee, never actually declare candidacy, and instead bank on independent coverage and outlandish use of his column to get write-in votes.

It amuses me. Because every year I've been here, the composition of parties has been about thus...

1. Fairly traditional party
2. The generic change party
3. The progressive party.

It's a pretty boring dynamic. Pretty predictable. The progressive party had my attention last year, Students for a Just University, mainly because I knew a bunch of people working and running for them, right up to the vice-presidential candidate. I ended up voting for them, but I didn't really support everything they were standing for... it was mainly charisma and who I thought deserved the seat on a Senate whose role is either diliatory or advisory.

I just like the idea of satirizing the process.

For Shame!

Now, now, I have a little insight into the voters' black hearts. I know why Kucinich had to drop out. It wasn't because of his unpresidential stature, his very liberal views, or anything of the sort.

So let me ask this one question, America: Are you afraid of having a Catholic as President of the United States?

...

And, joking aside, there is a point where people are afraid to have a president, isn't there? Catholic is pretty much fine today. But Mormon's a little bit sketchy. What about a Jew? A Muslim? A Buddhist? Atheist? Agnostic? Someone who just doesn't have a stance on religion? Some would refuse to vote for her/him because they are not electable. Others would confirm the previous opinion. How far can we go until we've gone too far? Would the moral discrepancy really be that bad? Or would it just be the jarring realization that not everyone feels like they have to fit into the camp of God in order to try.

(One note here... most people are Christian, and so of course most candidates will be Christian. I just find it curious that I can't think of any exceptions at all.)

Enough About Illness

I'm sick. Leslie is sick. A lot of people are sick. No, being sick doesn't feel good, but... I tend to dwell on being sick a lot when I am sick. Sort of a, "I'm watching the way my body works, because it's so interesting... darn it, I'm leaking nasal lubricant again!" My one hope is that it clears away soon, so I can get substantive things done.

One thing first though... I don't know why, but my first pretense is normally to trace a line of infection... a finer word for blame, maybe, whenever illness happens. Not that we're all maliciously trying to get each other, but... it's interesting to think about just how the disease spreads. How did I get my cold? How did Leslie get hers? Are ours even related? Did one give the other it? Did someone give us both it? Are they completely unrelated? It doesn't matter that much in the end. Sickness is just one of those things you can't do much against... you can be cautious, and if someone else gets it, you can try to comfort them... entertain them, but otherwise... rargh.

Scott's (Hatshepsut) and my (Otto von Bismarck) conquests have gone according to plan so far in Civilization IV. We have been leading a joint attack on the Spanish (Isabella), which are a narrow sea away. (The map is randomly generated.) When we left, Scott had taken one city, and I had lost one. This time, the tables turned. We researched a modern revolution, employing cavalry, riflemen, and (later) cannons against her longbowmen, macemen, and trebuchets. I ended up taking three cities, including her capital, while Scott by agreement took the strategically important Barcelona. After that, we were able to get Isabella to become our vassal, as we also declared our mutual hegemony in a permanent alliance. Now we are going to turn our forces toward Saladin, the strongest player in the game after us, and with no such lack of technology to take advantage of. This means we'll have to actually be strategic instead of simply sensible. (Interesting note... it took a couple of times to get that worked out. Scott would launch a few troops toward Madrid, and they'd get squandered because they didn't have enough support. He lost a general this way. >_<)

Well, interesting for us.

Ill?

Well, yesterday was an adventure. Fatigue and headaches and soreness. It was off and on... I felt well enough, for example, to go to both of my classes and Wyrd, but on the other hand when I wasn't doing that or studying I was pretty much sleeping.

So I had to make sure that it wasn't the flu. I went to Student Health Services for the first time.

I had to wait for a fifteen minute flu test and the doctor's constant scoffing that it might be mono. So I guess it's just a vicious cold. But still, I'm going to read my homework in bed and then nap whenever I get tired enough. I think if I get another day of rest, I'll be better... I felt mildly better this morning. Now it's just fatigue.

So class was cancelled today

... at least until 10 AM. It's not that there's snow on the ground, but I realized that conditions weren't ideal going to breakfast. They had been putting salt on the sidewalk. As a precaution, I thought. Then there's this pedestrian bridge that goes over Cumberland, which I always cross to go eat breakfast.

It curves. Ordinarily, this means that you start out going like you're going uphill on a good trail, and end with speedily trotting downhill, or in most people's cases, stubbornly maintaining the same pace even though gravity makes it feel so wrong!

Well, about a quarter of the way across, I nearly slip. Ahead of me coming the other way, two people are gripping the handrail with both hands, half-laughing as they try to get over the middle. I spend the rest of my trek across going redundantly slow, one hand on the rail, stepping about a foot and a half with each step as if I'm marching at a half-pace. I only broke a few bones, leaving those precious few more for the walk back.

While in the dining hall eating breakfast, someone starts cheering excitedly. "School's out until 10! I can sleep! Yes!" she cries excitedly to her friends. She signed up for the text message alert system, so she would get that. I resolved to check when I'd get back.

One arrogant guy started asking around for confirmation (like any of us could give it except the one). "Is that true?" He loudly asked. "I have an 8:10 class and I don't want to go to it." And so on. Yes, yes. You don't need that silly tie until ten. Go sleep. And quiet down, please.

Not that I could sleep. I have work that starts, say... at ten. And I have trouble sleeping shortly after I wake up. Or during the day, really. Most of those, if I ever take them, turn into half-awake dozes where I realize I'm not fully awake, but I can still think and mark the passage of time. Boring, I'd rather have it skewed by lack of sleep! Also, I'd prefer to get stuff done, even if the stuff is as simple as reading a book or playing a game.

Oh. Yeah. And I'm going to Atlanta in a couple of weeks. For a possible grad school position. Won't say any more. Wish me luck.

Video Games I Love

So, I'll probably do this occasionally. When I feel like it.

One thing I love is video games, a fondness that goes back to seeing a table arcade in a crowded late 80s Pizza Hut and the Commodore 64 we got around that time.

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In the years leading up to now, they have been a fairly constant companion. Some of them I've loved, most of them I've gotten along with, and a few of them I have absolutely loathed. But it's far easier to remember some of the ones I prefer.

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I consider it a challenge, in a way. Save for Leslie and a few others, I haven't met anyone offline that has the same or similar preferences for games. And even my preferences sometimes go away from what many people would consider great gaming. But I have reasons for liking them. If I can convey my appreciation of a few of those games to you adequately, not all is lost. And if you get curious enough to look the games up yourself, well... then I've bowled a clean game.

Legend of Mana (Seiken Densetsu: Legend of Mana in Japan)

System: Playstation

Release Date: 2000

Grade I Played the Game First In: 9th

In this game, you start out as the nondescript hero. Unlike most RPGs from Japan, you can customize your character, choosing both your gender (male/female) and what weapon you specialize in (ranging from swords and axes to bows and staves). Then you could eventually choose a pet, develop musical instruments to cast spells, build golems, grow your own garden... but those aren't central to anything. Primarily, this is an action RPG, meaning that when you go into an area, you move around the screen at once, pressing buttons to slash your enemies, cast spells, and dodge their attacks. There is a good deal of strategy involved in this, and also a lot of good old fashioned button pressing, but it isn't terribly difficult to learn how to do. The battles are fun, but I don't love it for the battles.

No. I like it for the artwork, first. Just look at that screenshot. It is terribly pixelated and not that high-quality (the screenshot, that is), but the original was quite a sight. It had bright, vibrant colors, but it wasn't a canned cartoony feel. The characters, human or otherwise, were well-proportioned, the environments were always impeccably done. It was like leafing through a storybook. One with talking trees and bunny-looking things that tried attacking you, and onion warriors that would become your best friend.

Second, the music. At its worst it was mediocre, uninspiring, but not cringeworthy. At its best, it was aural bliss. There were several tracks that set the mood perfectly, like one where you enter a ruined city of marble and gemstones... more gemstones than marble, even, but the place is abandoned. With it plays this quiet accompaniment, in piano and some wind instrument I can't identify, drawn out in its ponderous beats, dwelling on all the right notes, sounding like teardrops falling onto the strings... which is relevant to the plot, by the way. (You can go to here and read a review of the soundtrack: http://www.rpgfan.com/soundtracks/lomost/index.html)

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Then there was the way the story worked, which is also how the world was laid out. In most RPGs, especially earlier ones, you have a world map where you go from place to place, and then an area where you explore, talk to people, or fight... a place where the plot unfolds. With Legend of Mana, it took the concept a step further. Each place on the map represented a distinct place, which is normal... but it also represented part of a story. There were 63 or so different stories in all, some simply part of its own place, others connected to other stories and places in grand story arcs that would eventually connect in the revival of the Mana Tree and the endgame, which is yet another story. To make things simple, you start out with one place, and then place a second and a third on the map when you have completed a story... and the story possibilities start multiplying from there.

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But it wasn't a game that had its prefabricated, "We're going to save the world, and we're going to do it all game!" (These can turn out really well.) Nor was it a game that said, "We're going to save the world for most of the game, then we'll let you do side quests and such for a while until you get tired of the game and never finish it." (I don't know how these turn out... I never finish.) The joy was in the main plots... but no plot being too centrally focused, it was easy to like and enjoy several at once. Like, again, reading a story book, with fun action to keep the story going. And if it ever did get tedious, like trying to learn to talk Dudbear, you could always go to some other place.

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This last one is what got most of the reviewers (the story, that is). They could readily admit it was a pretty game, and even a fun game, but they couldn't get over the lack of a central, core story. There were core stories, but finishing them didn't mean the end of the game, even if it meant you had saved the Jumi, saved the world, whatever. And then finally, at the opportune time, you did one more story, one that was representative of all your previous progress, even if it wasn't the same villain.

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Ah. There it is. The final reason. The characters. Which should have been implicit if I liked the story and the character artwork, but... the characters were well-developed. They weren't fully good or evil. People who you might consider villains turn out to be not so simple, and people that you might consider good guys might, say, desecrate a temple in pursuit for a profit? Friends might not treat friends that well, but they'd make up in the end. And, as I said earlier, if you would ever want to avoid a character, you could... so long as you liked a lot of them, you could avoid a story arc or two nearly altogether and still finish the game. If that's important.

The joy of the game is in the journey.

(All images are from www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_Mana, save the title screen, which has been bumbling around . More importantly, they were made by Square, then Squaresoft, then Square-Enix. Using them for any profit would be uncool. Yo.)

E-mails

Well, today was my first day of classes.

Middle English: Well, this will be fun. There's a decent group of people in there, including at least one graduate student that specializes in Old English. Can we say... squee?

The material is pretty difficult though. In demonstrating how to pronounce the vowels, they took recourse to... modern French when there wasn't a good English equivalent. Which is postly good. Except that I should be looking up how to pronounce patte now. (Actually, now that I look, it's basically just "pat." Said by Arnold Schwartzeneggar.

American Revolution: Wow. I got in by the skin of my teeth.

See, after I lost the history class I really wanted to take and that would be useful, I'd had it. If I couldn't have the useful part, I wanted a history class I'd really like. So I decided to try to add into the American Revolution class, because it fit into my schedule well, I've had the professor before, and like the subject. The class was full, but sometimes you can manage to get in anyway with a professor's approval. So I shot the professor an e-mail on Monday, asking if it'd be okay if I added in. She said yes, to come on Wednesday.

So I show up. Leslie and I talk some. The classroom fills up. And then EXPLODES! No, but there were tons of people there, and about 20 that wanted to add. The people that e-mailed her got first dibs, thank goodness. The others will largely not get into the class. >_< I was grateful, and even felt a little guilty, but not so guilty that I'd give my place up for someone that didn't e-mail.

It did entail a whirlwind trip to the sixth floor of Dunford and then back to the Registrar... not nearly so far as I walked yesterday with Leslie, but it took a good half-hour to get everything totally done with.

Ah, the walk yesterday. Leslie and I started out at my dorm, walked to the agricultural campus, walked around the greenway along Neyland and then to the World's Fair park, to Market Square where we ate dinner and had a beer, came back through World's Fair park and then back to campus. In total, it was between four and five miles, by my estimation. Perhaps a bit more.

The dinner was interesting. We selected the same thing... salmon on bread with pepper jam, which turned out to have a couple of more things, but nothing that turned me away. The place was called Oodles and it was pretty good. Certaintly had its own character, with a two+ story mural right behind me as I ate.

Tit for Tat

I have class in less than 11 hours. Don't worry, I'll go to bed shortly.

But last night, I was distracted by a long chain of Wikipedia entries on game theory. Now, they mainly have application to gambling games, or the Prisoner's dilemma, heavily weighted in probability. Now, I probably won't take any of these strategies and apply them formally. I like games you can just pick up and enjoy. But there was one strategy, Tit for Tat. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_Tat)

Now, this is applicable in a particular game (the prisoner's dilemma), but this is applicable in any adversarial game to a certain extent, especially those like Munchkin and where it is easy to hurt or help a player and there is some benefit in cooperation.

Basically, when we start, I'm going to help you the first chance I get. Then after that, I copy whatever move you make. If you help me, I help you. If you hurt me, I hurt you. But if you hurt me, there will be a small chance that I'll forgive you anyway and help you.

It makes sense. I don't always follow it (especially later in the game, when opportunism tends to take over; the system relies on there being a next time where you can punish the other player, and if there are too few turns until a victory, the reasoning breaks down). But it's a good general model if I have to choose between helping the player for some small mutual benefit, or refusing to ensure that no one gains any advantage. Plus, people like you better when you help them, and in subsequent turns they'll be less likely to smack you down. (People will kick someone down if they're too ambitious... and usually the person that gets close to winning first catches the most flak... and flax, too, depending on the game.)

There are times, though, where I play a game ruthlessly. I don't like playing those games. They aren't fun, especially if you've made the other person not have fun. It's good to have some team spirit, some camaraderie to counterbalance the rivalry, the tension that Harry and Cedric feel when they compete for the Triwizard tournament cup. Especially when it's something as small as a game.

This is a flaw with Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot. It's pretty easy to kill bunnies or lose them. In larger games, this is fine, because that means there's enough people to cancel out bad effects. With two players though, if one person grows powerful, there isn't a mass of cooperative tit-for-tats to drag them back down. (For explanation, if someone's bunnies all die, there is not very much you can do, and so turns turn into largely discarding cards and hoping to get a bunny again. It's like having a high point rummy hand when someone else goes out. Or trying to thwart someone getting 7NT when you have no face cards and your partner passed. It sucks.) It easily becomes a drudgery, to the point where I feel there should be a rule, like, "No intentionally killing the other person's bunnies if they're their last ones, unless you're killing yours in the process." For two players. Generally, even three player games work out much better.

History

Or, my not getting any history class I want.

There's one I have to take for an upper distribution credit. That one's good. The other one I was going to take for the minor. I had my sights set on either History of England or Medieval Intellectual History.

History of England fell through, because I am not comfortable with having oral reports and debate being 70% of the grade. A challenge, yes. A challenge among a semester of challenges when I increasingly realize I need a break? I didn't take it.

So I was really looking forward to Medieval Intellectual History, a challenge that promised to be engaging and enriching. Instead, I check today, and it has been switched with modern European Intellectual History.

And of course by now every single class I would take otherwise is already full, and most don't have waitlists. (The only one that really fits into my schedule and that I'd know I'd like... and that is already full... is the American Revolution class. Graaawr.)

So I have a question that I'm going to look into. If you apply for graduation with a History minor, can you still drop that minor? Because unless I can get added into that one class, or something else miraculous opens up... I'll be stuck with a host of less desirable options.

New Year!

Yay, so it's January 2nd. I didn't really make any resolutions this year.

I did a meme from a random person though!

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3

The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/

The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4.Use your graphics program of choice (for me, Paint) to throw them together, and post the result as a comment in this post. Also, pass it along in your own journal because it's more amusing that way.

I like the band name. Roland Leather. I imagine it being this sort of neo-Medieval court music with a hint of the Old West. I don't know how a lollipop would fit in though.