I realize this is being posted everywhere, but it’s just too incredibly cute.
Monthly Archive for November, 2009
A couple of days ago, Wikiquote’s Quote of the Day came from celebrated idiot Eugene Ionesco:
I believe that what separates us all from one another is simply society itself, or, if you like, politics. This is what raises barriers between men, this is what creates misunderstanding.
If I may be allowed to express myself paradoxically, I should say that the truest society, the authentic human community, is extra-social — a wider, deeper society, that which is revealed by our common anxieties, our desires, our secret nostalgias. The whole history of the world has been governed by nostalgias and anxieties, which political action does no more than reflect and interpret, very imperfectly. No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.
I couldn’t disagree more. But I do have to praise Ionesco: has has managed to perfectly express his moronic self-importance, his intentional disengagement from reality, his betrayal of artistic vision, and ultimately his own irrelevance as anything but a tool for showing artists who the enemy is.
What is Ionesco saying here? He is saying that our real problems are “human sadness”, the “pain of living”, the fear of death and our “thirst for the absolute”. Economic and political problems are just surface – the real issues are abstract and timeless.
So the Jewish child sitting in a German concentration camp is really no sadder than Ionesco sitting in his flat in Paris, because they both are suffering “human sadness”. The Palestinian child sitting in an Israeli concentration camp half a century later is experiencing the same pain as Ionesco is when he’s sitting in a nice restaurant in Paris, eating delicious food and pondering the essential “pain of living”. The fear of death experienced by a family in Iraq as American or European soldiers point guns at them is the same as what Ionesco feels when he considers that some day he will quietly pass away in his bed. As for the “thirst for the absolute”… yes, that’s what the Afghani man who hasn’t had a drop of water in days is thinking about, just like the starving Detroit woman, waiting for help from an overwhelmed food charity. No political system can help these people, so any art that actually engages the reality of the world and stands against it is bad. Or maybe it’s just inconvenient for people like Ionesco, whose brand of meaningless bullshit mainly exists to keep people convinced that nothing can change.
So fuck you, Mr. Ionesco. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
Today we recorded all the lines for two of the main characters of Phenomenon 32, Dr. Anna Halvorsen and Dr. Emma Bronstein. It took a fair bit of time – it’s now half past one at night – but I am very, very happy with the results.
Telling this story is great fun, and I only wish I could add more and more details. But of course, art is never finished… or, to paraphrase Ben Burtt: games are not released, they escape.
Our friend Sebastian visited us yesterday, and there are two awesome things from last evening that I wanted to share:
The first is The Man from Earth, a movie written by Jerome Bixby (his last work, in fact, completed on his deathbed) and directed by Richard Schenkman. It’s a very simple story: a teacher quits his job and decides to move away, and his friends come to his house to confront him about it and/or to say goodbye. Eventually he reveals the reason he’s leaving: he is 14,000 years old and moves on every ten years or so when people start noticing that he doesn’t age.
How is that for an awesome concept? And it’s beautifully executed, too: the whole movie consists of a group of people sitting in a room and talking to each other, but it’s a million times more exciting and compelling than the lastest Michael Bay blockbuster. It may be set in one room, but it’s based on the power of storytelling, of imagination – and in your mind, you see grand vistas, high mountains and vast plains and the wanderings of one man throughout history. Michael Bay can never get special effects like that.
And it’s also deeply philosophical – in a real sense, not in the superficial sense of something like Battlestar Galactica: The Plan. It’s a movie that lingers in your mind and makes you think – about religion, about immortality, about history, about love. If you see this movie with an open mind, you will feel that you were part of something special.
In other words, I totally recommend it. Buy it on DVD, or if you can’t afford that, get it on BitTorrent (and later donate some money on the film’s homepage). You’ll be a better person for having seen this movie.
The second awesome thing of the evening was this excellent and wonderfully hilarious video, which you have probably already seen, but which I had completely missed :
Finally, we also recorded a bunch of lines for Sebastian’s character in Phenomenon 32, the German-Scottish mechanic Klaus McKie. That was cool too. *grin*
The dialogue/updates/etc. of Phenomenon 32 comprise more than 6000 words. Not bad for a game that was supposed to be mostly visual.
Verena’s been having a problem with her ear, so the last couple of days have mostly consisted of waiting for doctors and getting infusions. Not fun, but hopefully she will be OK.
I haven’t managed to get any work done at all, and right now I’m too tired to do anything meaningful. This is a very real source of (additional) stress for me, but so are suboptimal results. At least Verena is getting a bit of writing done right now, though I think we shall be going to bed soon. One more infusion tomorrow and we’re done. Again, hopefully.
I should probably write something interesting or witty here, but I don’t have the strength. I just want my wife to be happy and healthy and stress-free. Everything else is secondary.
Alejandro Amenábar + one of the most important and tragic stories in human history = this movie.
I’ve always wanted to make a good movie about Hypatia and the Library of Alexandria. Looks like Amenábar got there first. If the movie is as good as the trailer, and I suspect it is, I won’t be jealous. Just happy to have a new movie in my top 10.
I don’t think I’ve been this excited about a movie since… I don’t know when.
Edit: OK, let me make this clearer. To me, the Library of Alexandria is the greatest wonder in human history, its destruction one of the greatest crimes. The Library is present in much of my thinking – Hypatia herself is referenced in the introduction to Phenomenon 32, and the TV series I would like to make one day is heavily inspired by it. So I would argue that, to me, this is actually the most important story in human history. I cannot put into words how much it means to me. And the film looks good, it looks really good. You have no idea how badly I want to see it.
36 years ago, the fascists came to kill those who stood up for freedom and democracy. But for all their violence, they couldn’t kill the idea of freedom. This is what Greek people celebrate on the 17th of November.
Today, it’s starting to become acceptable to excuse the crimes of the fascists in the name of “economic progress” and similar abstract and misleading concepts that have nothing to do with what happened to real people.
This photo tells you everything about what happened to real people. Tanks happened. Slavery happened. And today, it’s happening all over the world.
Remember this, and fight.
I just got this email:
Hi Jonas,
I’m somewhat proud to inform you that one of the most gifted walkthrough makers in Holland has responded to my question to him to make a walkthrough for The Strange and Somewhat Sinister Tale of the House at Desert Bridge.
The result is a stunning piece of work with pictures of the game included. He has put it on his site, the for all to see part, in total to view and as a zipfile for downloading.
The link to his site is http://www.pcgames-walkthroughs.nl/
The walkthrough is in Dutch so for your fans in Holland I guess.
Regards,
Cees Porck
I think this is very awesome.
I have good news that are also bad.
Phenomenon 32 is getting close to being finished. All that’s missing is the “endgame” areas – that and the new voice acting I recently decided upon. Yes, I’ve decided to add a few more characters (and actors to voice them). It’s an important decision, because it means I have to write more text and spend time recording it, but once the choice was made it seemed so essential that I can’t imagine the game without it anymore. So this is likely to add a few more days to the release date, but it’s going to elevate the quality of the storytelling to a whole new level.
Storytelling, you see, was one thing I was worried about. The game relied too heavily on telling its story through visuals and music – through atmosphere. But this isn’t a game about the ruins of Earth; it’s a game about humanity, and humanity needed a stronger voice (literally, in this case). I’ve written several pages of text now, and for the first time I feel like I really get the game. Before this, I was happy but nervous – now I feel like I know what I’m doing. Now the game has a soul.
And, you know, I think it’ll be awesome to have a full voice cast.
