SO I am now hooked to "Evidence of everything exploding" and It took my awhile to figure out why. It is rare that something can be both complex and blunt, and that is what makes this game so intense. It not only has multiple, multiple aspects (gameplay, flying cows, prophecy's, stories in the background) but unlike movies and texts that try to have such complexity, I don't have to look for it. It is the most pleasant headache I have had in a long time. It's like watching the Beatles film "the Yellow Submarine" with a fever of 101 Fahrenheit (which i do not advise) or listening to some of Nine Inch Nails Older Stuff (More SPecifically both of the Downwards Spiral albums.) or depriving yourself from sleep for several days (once again I do not advise this. While it is fun, you become incredibly stupid partway thru day two, and things go sideways from there). All of this complexity that my brain can not comprehend is in a flash game which I can easily turn off whenever I feel like it. It not only keeps me actively paying attention by it being a game, but it also has multiple obvious layers of complexity that challenge my mind in ways normally not accessible.

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I was considering following the Creative path for our projects. My Idea was to combine poetry, illustration, and photography by creating more or less a cartoon. The idea was to more or less take away the structure of the traditional cartoon to help tell the specific narrative of the piece. Most Illustrations that we looked at did not have text unless they were specifically considered cartoons, so i thought it might be interesting to combine the two. The lack of structure itself will be on its own narrative tool, and will be conducive to the nature of the project itself.
More specifically, the idea was to draw a picture and use text and photographs in the background to provide both a backdrop for the visual narrative, but also to provide a textual narrative. I believe that this will fit the profile described to us in class.

Last night I was pretty tired, but me and my friend were watching A Fistful of Dynamite (awesome movie) until 2am so i decided to turn on my computer and try playing the text based games we have from class. I was playing them strictly for fun , and found that when I played them not as trying to complete the story, but to see what kind of stupidity i could do in this text based world it was actually a lot more enjoyable. Now I promise that my stupidity and good mood was only enhanced by caffeine, but once I started simply trying to test out the boundaries of the game, it became much more enjoyable than actually trying to get thru the story. For example In Zork, i had fun trying to see what you could do to the Grue that was about to eat you, even when you couldn't see it. For example, you can not eat it because he would disagree with that. You flat out just cant talk to it, and in a fit of immaturity I found that you cant fart on it, because the game doesn't know the word"fart". also it is possible to give someone the bird, but only if you catch one.

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One thing of interest I noticed was that the choices that allowed the best outcomes, such as getting the gold and getting to stay alive seemed to have to do with deciding to break the rules while being smart at the same time. Doing things like trusting people who seemed untrustworthy would result in either your death or not getting the gold you were looking for. That seemed to be the general idea of each choice. Everything that happens is the result of rule-breaking in the name of "adventures" and still making somewhat intelligent decisions

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The big complaint i heard about choose your own adventure comics was that they limited your choices. Several people were saying that you were not truly choosing your own adventure, since your choices were limited by the structure of the story.

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So I realized as I was flipping thru my music Collection the other day, exactly how many songs were no more than revisions of older songs, or otherwise songs based strongly on other ones. The first example of this is when I remembered that Rammstein's son g "Dalai Lama" was based on a much older tune "Erlkönig" or the Elf King, which was an old German song/ poem dating back to the 1800's. The poem was written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and was later turned into a Leider (musical piece) by Schubert. The story was definitely rewritten by Rammstein, however after reading a straight translation the similarities of the story stands out. In both of them a fathers fear of his sons omens of death but is unable to save him, and possibly fulfills the omens himself.

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In class yesterday I was reminded of my roommates Itunes, and it's proud political incorrectness. They're called the Second Carolina String Band, and their music id based around recreating Civil War era tunes, and keeping them as accurate to the original as possible. I have to admit that I was surprised when I heard my roommate listening to music tlaking about "Darkies" but I have to appreciate how that was in fact the language of the times. It sometimes was racist, but in other times it was just the term used for people of a dark complexion. We have to respect however that while we are different we can't ignore the fact that that was the terms and music that created our culture.

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In our discussion on thursday about the use of plot and stories within video games, and the thought occurred to me, of whether they were even necessary. Some of the most classic video games have nothing resembling plot. Games like pong and Pac-Man, have nothing resembling a plot, all you do is move a little round something or other in such a way that the game tells you that you are succeeding. Most people who play these games are happy with this, as the games are interesting to play without an explanation for why Pac-Man is eating his fruit, or why you don't want the ball to cross your side of the screen.
On the other hand anyone who has ever played Mario knows the story of how Bowser keeps kidnapping Peach, and Mario has to cross the magic kingdom to save her. The basic story line gives the player a basic understanding of why they are eating mushrooms, and running from one end of the map to the other. It is not hard to imagine the game without the plot, however the plot is in fact part of what makes the game a classic, just as much as the mushrooms and Koopa's.

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So in our discussion last thursday, we were defining a cartoon as a story told thru multiple visual depictions, or something like that. I was workng on a project alter and found myself wondering about our definition, becuase couldnt it then include woodcarvings, some forms of masonry, and even maybe (just maybe) totem poles? If you think about it, some of these really are non textual, three dimensional, cartoons? some of them tell stories, and they really are artistic as well? I just wanted to throw this question out there and see if anyon had any thoughts

P.S. Real Men Whittle.

One thing I noticed in our clas the other day is the surprising amount of people who watched their "television" online. It made me consider a book I read in highschool, which i wrote a couple of quotes out of
"Advanced technology is itself brainwashing us to believe in technology. For every styep forwards we take with technology, we lose two steps from somewhere else"
Now for the love of Pete I can not remember the name of the book, and I am only slightly sure that it was written by George Hayduke, so please don't quote me on that, but the idea i completely agree with. We are so hooked into believing that new technology is better that we never stop to think about where we would be without it. Nor has many people considered if new computers are actually better, only that they are more accepted. FOr example

A. has anyone considered how few Computer viruses there were in the 90's?
B. everytime a new operating system comes out, how long does it take to get all the bugs out?
c. How many times do computers (which we almost are required to own to stay in school) crash? and how much stress do they cause to get them fixed?

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