posted by admin on Sep 30
I’ve been trying to beat Bioshock for the past week. My main problem is I haven’t played the game in almost 9 days and, as I’m sure you can imagine, this creates a bit of difficulty in beating the game. There are 2 things holding me back. (1) The game is blatantly a commentary on Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” and her philosophy of objectivism. I won’t go in details but I find it absurd to criticize a philosophy that glorifies the individual by making a video game in which a solitary person plays as a solitary character from a FPS perspective. This strikes me as counter-productive. And (2), the game has “Zelda Syndrome”. Basically, in every Zelda game I reach a point where I know the entire story, I know what I have to do to win and I know what will happen after I win so I’ll be god-damned if I’m going to collect the 9 pieces of a map, the 6 artifacts and then the 3 Tri-Force pieces. I have 20 different things I need to go get in real life and, granted I don’t often use a sword/telekinetic powers in obtaining them, I’d rather not run virtual fucking errands.
This is the fundamental problem with video games, the medium actively seeks to prevent you from experiencing the narrative.
posted by admin on Sep 30
I am tentatively obsessed with Feist’s “I Feel It All.”
I say tentaviely because it seems the rest of the country, or possibly just my TV, is god damn obsessed with their “1234″, which you may know from the most recent iPod commercial. I worry I find the song so appealing because it’s safe enough to say I like but different enough to make me look cool in that “I actually listen to rock albums” way. Also, your favorite song can’t be from a commercial, that simply asknowledges the complete commercialism of the music industry in a way that instantly ruins the world I like to believe I live in. The last time I listened to a song this much was The Smashing Pumpkins “Disarm” which I had always liked until it invaded my soul in the summer of 2003 and I listened to it at least 10 times a day for three months.
This makes me think of an interesting phenomena. There are songs I love, I would not hesitate to say any of them were my favorite song ever but I skip them when they come on my iPod because I’ve heard them so damn many times. The aforementioned “Disarm” falls into this category. Also:
The Clash - “Lost in the Supermarket”
Nirvana - “All Apologies”
George Harrison - The Entire “All Things Must Pass” Album
The Rolling Stones - “Satisfaction” (This one is probably not my fault)
Pearl Jam - everything
U.N.K.L.E. - “Rabbit In Your Headlights”
There are more but I am struck but how absurdly fucked up this is. I like something so much I can no longer listen to it, it’s not as earth-shaking as I remember, it’s just pop music. I’m sure this says something about me. But god damn I can’t get enough “I Feel It All”. And “Yellow Submarine”, that never gets old.
posted by admin on Sep 30
I am a Chuck Klosterman fan. I secretly wish I wasn’t. I’m reading “Killing Yourself To Live” right now and I’m approximately half way through it but the book, like all his books, feels like a secret addiction. I read with my door closed, listening for someones approach. That or in the bathroom. The similarity to my behaviour when masturbating should not be lost. The main problem with Klosterman is not that he’s a bad writer but that he’s good (I think) and refuses to write about an appropriate subject matter. He writes about the same shit everyone writes about in their blogs: music, movies and sex. I think if I were smarter I could look down on his writing as irrelevant and narcissistic but that is the kind of his point anyway. Everything Chuck Klosterman writes follows the same theme; anything we care about it is largely irrelevant in the world and anything relevant we don’t care about. I spent today intensely concerned over how men I have never met would perform in a game I couldn’t watch because it affected an entirely imaginary competition. (Fantasy Football) That pretty much sums up the state of the world, my emotional happiness hangs on the health of Travis Henry’s ankle.
