A gothic tale of kidnapping, murder, cannibalism, and mayhem in the insect kingdom, Ten Little Ladybugs, written by Melanie Gerth and illustrated by Laura Huliska-Beith, presents a troubling view of the devastating havoc that eschatological idolatry and ideology wreak on America’s children. That such potentially scarring material is promoted as a “children’s book” is even more troubling.
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Archive for April, 2004
Ten Little Ladybugs
April 30th, 2004 by peterbAnd the Ass Saw the Angel
April 28th, 2004 by peterbOne of the more egregiously out of print books, in America at least, is Nick Cave’s And the Ass Saw the Angel. Elise introduced me to this book ages ago, lending me a copy of her precious (Imported! British! Naked lady on the cover!) paperback.
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Simple pleasures
April 27th, 2004 by peterbTwo eggs
1 – 2 teaspoons soy sauce
generous squirt of sriracha chili sauce (a.k.a. “rooster sauce”)
dash sesame oil
scramble in skillet with a little canola oil
Enjoy with tea.
Beyond Good and Evil
April 23rd, 2004 by peterbCurrently on the bargain racks for the Xbox, GameCube, PS2, and PC platforms is a little gem of a platformer: Beyond Good and Evil. It was released with some fanfare late last year, and proceeded to impress critics and fail to sell at all. The fact that this game (essentially) flopped makes me a little sad. I am not certain if it is a sign that the publisher, Ubisoft, is an incompetent marketer (as a friend of mine said, “Beyond Good and Evil? They might as well have named it Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations“) or a sign that the game playing public is, by and large, composed of morons. Given that the somewhat inferior (but “branded”) Prince of Persia handily outsold Beyond Good and Evil, and that the latest abysmal Need for Speed driving game outsold Project Gotham Racing 2, I lean towards the latter hypothesis.
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Blood and Treasure
April 22nd, 2004 by peterb
Why this picture? Why now? Mostly because of this woman who was fired for sharing a picture like it.
Photo courtesy of The Memory Hole and the Freedom of Information Act. Link courtesy John Scalzi.
Children's Books vs. Video Games
April 20th, 2004 by peterb33. If You Give a Mouse a Glock 19 [peterb]
32. Duck on a Warthog [peterb]
31. Horton Hears a Sniper [agroce]
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Fnord!
April 19th, 2004 by peterbLast night I read The Da Vinci Code (detailed review forthcoming). Tonight while idly wanting to see some of the paintings the author describes, I stumbled on this kook’s site:
The best part is that that diagram is the sanest thing on the page. The text is a hundred times worse.
I always assumed that Robert Anton Wilson was joking or exaggerating about conspiracy theorists’ ability to see echoes of their delusions in anything and everything. Bad assumption.
President Forever
April 18th, 2004 by peterbAs a followup to my preview of The Political Machine, I decided to try President Forever, which was suggested by one of my alert readers (who, I believe, is involved with the publisher?) There is a free demo available, and the full game can be purchased and downloaded for a mere $12. I paid more than that for lunch this week. (They also will sell you, as a bonus, their previous game President 2000 for just $2. I bought it, because I’m a sucker for a bargain, but I haven’t tried that one yet.)
President Forever is a Windows-only game. (Question for game publishers out there: why aren’t you developing all your games in SDL? Then you’d get great graphics and sound and everything could be trivially ported to Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and probably other platforms. This isn’t a rhetorical question — I really want to know.)
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New Addiction
April 16th, 2004 by peterbThe only MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) that is any fun: The Kingdom of Loathing. And it’s free!
I blame Zarf.
Dawn Comes Early, With Rosy Fingers
April 15th, 2004 by peterbIt has been a long time since I’ve experienced a web site that filled me with such elation and glee as does Winged Sandals, a Shockwaveriffic introduction to Greek mythology for kids. It has really enjoyable, accessible movies that everyone can enjoy, some neat activities (I like the trading cards), and a wonderful searchable “Who’s Who,” which while not comprehensive is well designed. The art style is Samurai Jack meets Pocketskeleton. The load times are substantial, but worth the wait: do the Flash version if you can.
I am, as it were, a mythology geek, and love diving in to the legends, tales, and fables of just about any culture. There is something exciting to me about reading fables and myths; the archetypes that underlie consciousness are distilled and pickled in myths, and they can take your breath away when you taste them. True, a superb author, such as Italo Calvino or Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, can channel those archetypes to create a novel story that nonetheless feels like it came from the deepest recesses of cultural memory. But there are only so many Salman Rushdies (or J. K. Rowlings) in the world, and so I return to the oldest tales whenever the mood strikes me, which is often.
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