The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. The book that gave a name to the problem with no name.
If you are a feminist or you agree with some of the principles of feminism (that women and men deserve equal opportunities and treatment) and you haven’t read this book you should. You should get ready to get mad. If you think we don’t need feminism anymore, or that we didn’t need it in the first place, you should read this book. Continue reading Cannonball Read #4 – The Feminine Mystique
Sonic Rob: http://www.joystickdivision.com/2011/05/gamers_love_to_right_and_it_ma.php
Sonic Rob: guy complains about nerds tearing apart the “Space Marine looks like Gears” guy
Sonic Rob: nerds promptly tear the new guy apart as well
FyreHaar: dude, seriously
FyreHaar: take your beating and go home
FyreHaar: gamers don’t love to be right
FyreHaar: they love to prove you wrong
Sonic Rob: ha
FyreHaar: and especially when you are so demonstrably incorrect
FyreHaar: you are gonna get jumped on
Sonic Rob: I really think it’s somehow related to console wars
Sonic Rob: people get really invested in things
FyreHaar: “This sad affair says more about gamers than it does about Dean Takahashi’s journalistic chops.”
FyreHaar: really?
FyreHaar: That he has none
FyreHaar: or that he decided to be lazy and got fucked for it?
Continue reading Chat Box
FyreHaar: also
FyreHaar: really got into Ass Creed Brotherhood this weekend
FyreHaar: I suddenly remembered: I love stabbing people in the neck!
FyreHaar: I also really like the 100% conditions
FyreHaar: and replaying to get it
SonicRob: yeah
SonicRob: you can do it the easy way or the hard way
FyreHaar: it ups the challenge at your discretion
FyreHaar: in discrete bits
SonicRob: yerp
FyreHaar: well for the mazes with the wolf dudes
SonicRob: and you can always go back and redo stuff
FyreHaar: the first time through I’m getting the chests and the flags
FyreHaar: later I’ll do speed runs
SonicRob: oh man, the Romulus temples are a pain
FyreHaar: I enjoy them
SonicRob: they are the new Templar lair
SonicRob: psst do them all ASAP
FyreHaar: good swag?
SonicRob: so good
FyreHaar: nice…
FyreHaar: dude, I am digging this game hard
FyreHaar: but I played it on Mother’s Day
SonicRob: yeah, I spent a hard month just playing nothing else
SonicRob: you can do
SonicRob: a lot
SonicRob: the city building goes on much longer
FyreHaar: and I want to talk to her about it so much
SonicRob: you can
FyreHaar: I want her to answer back!
SonicRob: well that’s asking a lot
FyreHaar: Ass Creed II made me weep with frustration because I wanted to know what she thought
FyreHaar: I think she would like it
FyreHaar: but also be snarky about what they get wrong
Sig Fem Seks: So when are you getting LA Noire?
Sonic Rob: $40
Sonic Rob: or the GOTY edition
Sonic Rob: I want the one that has all these extra cases
Sig Fem Seks: That’s a shame
Sig Fem Seks: You could be playing it right now
Sig Fem Seks: and enjoying it
Sonic Rob: I have heard lots of good things
Sonic Rob: seems like a good time to buy Red Dead Redemption ;P
Sig Fem Seks: You still haven’t played that, have you?
Sonic Rob: neeeope
Sonic Rob: I am always about a year behind
Sig Fem Seks: You are a fucking criminal
Sonic Rob: I am immune to hype
Sig Fem Seks: You love missing out on fun!
Sig Fem Seks: You are not immune to that!
Sonic Rob: It is the modern equivalent of mortification of the flesh
Sonic Rob: It brings me closer to 8-Bit God
Sig Fem Seks: You know what brings me closer to 8-Bit God? A HEMI!
Sig Fem Seks: I… what
Sonic Rob: uh
Continue reading Chat Box: Special Guest Chat
The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett. Snarky Fantasy.
The Colour of Magic is the first Discworld novel. It is a send up of fantasy, a genre ripe for mocking. The heroes are a wizard who failed out of magic school and a tourist from the other side of the world, which is a disc that rests on the back of four elephants who are riding on a celestial turtle.
Rincewind, the wizard, is tasked with showing Twoflower, the tourist, around the continent. Twoflower is the first tourist from his side of the world to visit the main continent. He is extremely naive as to the culture on the continent he is visiting. Most of the hijinks that ensue do so because of his ignorance and polly annaish nature.
Absurdism abounds and is quite diverting. Eventually it became distracting. The satire is forced and relies heavily on puns. The tourist, Twoflower, brings modern day concepts into the story but they are sometimes hidden behind impenetrable veils of punnery. It just broke the frame. In the end the point was the absurdism rather than the plot, which in the end meant absolutely nothing. Definitely not escapist fantasy. This book was so self aware that it is hard to get into.
-fh
Via Shacknews, we’re informed that THQ and Games Workshop have announced an extension of THQ’s license to publish games set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. This initially sounds unsurprising – why futz with a good thing, after all – but it at least suggests that GW is feeling good about what they’ve seen of Space Marine, Dark Millennium, and maybe Dawn of War 3 as well. To be fair, GW seems to feel pretty good about pretty much any licensed project; if someone had sat me down and screened Ultramarines for my approval, I’d have canned the whole thing and eaten the cost.
That’s not to say that there aren’t good GW licensees – I’ve heard the Fantasy Flight RPGs are good, and the Black Library turns out some good stuff – but honestly it doesn’t seem like GW are actually that picky, so good licensed product like DoW seems as much a product of luck as of careful management of the property.
Still, we can hope that there’s more Chaos Rising on the way and less Soulstorm.
-ssr
We don’t talk about analog gaming too much on the site, but I’m quite fond of Warhammer 40K, particularly its hobby aspect. Last year a group of prominent 40k hobby bloggers got together to paint up and raffle off a beautifully-painted Space Marine army. The $16,000+ they raised in the raffle went to Doctors Without Borders (MSF), a fine international charity. This year they are doing it again, only the raffle includes four armies rather than just one, as well as regular smaller prizes in the time leading up to the main drawing in July.
Please consider following the link in the image above and entering the raffle. Even if you don’t particularly care for 40K it’s a worthy cause and another opportunity, much as we regularly have with Umloud and Child’s Play, to prove that gamers and hobbyists are caring people with a healthy sense of our place in society.
In other words, every dollar you give to charity as a gamer is a big middle finger to Jack Thompson.
-ssr
This is a description of some time spent playing Dead Space 2, so be forewarned that it’s all spoilers.
When I last left Isaac Clarke, aka Space McClane, he’d been brutally killed by a gymnasium full of feral zombie children. With my nerves sufficiently recovered, it’s now time for a second go at the big School Fight.
This battle is kind of a motherfucker, and I felt a lot better about the trouble I had with it when the game gave me an achievement for finishing it. My mistake the first time around was in trying to precisely and quickly shoot all of the little kids swarming the auditorium stage in some sort of tactical order. For my second go around I try just punching my way out of things, as Isaac’s haymakers can kill multiple little leapy Pack toddlers in one go. This would work OK if it weren’t for the little suicide bomber infants that are crawling around among the toddlers, and Isaac is exploded limb from limb in my second go.
Yes, this is a real thing.
There’s no store in the school. This makes sense – who would sell mining equipment to little kids? – but it’s a pain in the ass for someone who realizes that he just hasn’t got enough damned plasma bullets and needs to buy more. The trip all the way back out of the school to the store and back to the auditorium is fantastically quiet, like the rest of the game has been shut down to save up juice for the fight that’s queued up and ready to go.
Third time’s the charm. I telekinesis a nearby stasis bomb lamp thingy into the mob of angry little runners – it would do me more good to shoot it off later in the fight, but I still don’t have the hang of telekinesis in hectic situations like fights, so I use it first. After that it’s a half-blind mix of plasma shots and roundhouse punches. Hardly the graceful, leet way out, but Isaac survives with one health bar left and limps off through the door that opens up once the last enemy dies. How do the doors always know the bad guys are dead?
FyreHaar: I was watching triathlon videos online on Saturday night
FyreHaar: or Friday or something
FyreHaar: you don’t know how much you need something til you can’t have it
Sonic Rob: I think you need a little more breadth in your hobbies
FyreHaar: I knit
FyreHaar: I sew
FyreHaar: I garden
FyreHaar: I play video games
Sonic Rob: yeah
Sonic Rob: but you don’t need those the way you seem to need to run
Sonic Rob: they are things you do when you aren’t running
FyreHaar: that is true
FyreHaar: but what could possibly take its place?
Sonic Rob: I spose that depends what you get from it
FyreHaar: it’s calming and exciting
FyreHaar: it centers me
FyreHaar: zones me out
FyreHaar: pumps me full of endorphins
FyreHaar: relaxes me
FyreHaar: gives me time with the dog
Sonic Rob: I suggest getting a massage and mainlining heroin while skydiving, then
FyreHaar: heh
FyreHaar: running is cheaper and easier
Sonic Rob: oh, so now you want budget alternatives?
Source Code – Groundhog’s Daytrix 001/xxx
-ssr