The Secret Lair

• Microsoft has officially terminated Xbox LIVE support for the original Xbox console, but a handful of die-hard HALO 2 players managed to keep playing on their out-of-date systems. How? They never turned them off.
• How about that Jonah Hex movie trailer? Overlord Johnson has mixed feelings [Video]
• Nexuiz is a free first-person shooter that hearkens back to Unreal Tournament 2. It runs on Windows, OS X and Linux, and it’s ridiculously fun. [Video Game]
• When Air Commandant Moore talks about Champions Online, he is not referring to us. This will be corrected shortly. [MMO Review]
• Not enough links for you? Head on over to Radio Isopod for linky goodness from Doctor Gestalt.
• We normally only do one image per link post, but this one was too good to pass up. [Source]
  
• Finally, a question that must be asked: is a giant octopus cake technically seafood? [Gallery (of Cake!)]
  

Jason Scott, who we have mentioned in a previous podcast, had a one-hour screening of his documentary Get Lamp at PAX East about a month ago. The screening was followed by a panel featuring some of the giants of Interactive Fiction publication. In attendance were (from left to right):

• Dave Lebling, (Zork I, II and III, Starcross, Suspect, Spellbreaker, The Lurking Horror and James Clavell’s Shogun)
• Don Woods, (Colossal Cave Adventure)
• Brian Moriarty, (Wishbringer, Trinity, Loom, and Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor)
• Andrew Plotkin, (IF hacker and author, designer of the Blorb format and the Glulx virtual machine)
• Nick Montfort, (author of Twisty Little Passages)
• Steve Meretzky, (Planetfall, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, A Mind Forever Voyaging)
• and, of course, Jason Scott, looking all dapper.

GET LAMP Pax Panel: Part 1 (Rough Cut) from Jason Scott on Vimeo.

GET LAMP Pax Panel: Part 2 (Rough Cut) from Jason Scott on Vimeo.

“Games lubricate the body and the mind.”
- Benjamin Franklin

Games, in general, are expensive. The games geeks like are even more so. While some might be able to make due with a simple deck of cards, geeks are well known for their love of both intricate and pretty games, be they board games, card games, or role-playing games. There are two reasons for this: (1) geeks tend to skew higher on the IQ scale and appreciate complexity and (2) they love the ego boost of playing a game that the masses have either not yet discovered or do not have the patience/time/math to play. Let’s face it: we like to be the elite, and being the elite makes for an expensive hobby.

If you want to save a little cash, here are some things to consider when you go to your next convention or money-drunk binge at your friendly local gaming store.

Be Sure You Have Someone to Play With: Be sure you have some people to enjoy the game with you. Do you have a gaming group? Have you wanted to form one? This might be a good opportunity to do so, but you need to plan for the different tastes of the people involved. You might love playing Settlers of Catan with all of its countless expansions, but if your group wants to role-play or play card games, you’re going to blow your hard-earned cash on something you might never be able to play. What good is a game that sits on a shelf?

Transcend the Shiny: It’s easy to be seduced by the pretty art, the number of pieces, the cool board, the slick dice. You need to strip away all the pretty and take a hard look at what the game has to offer. Is it particularly interesting, or is it just a repackage of last year’s fifty-dollar box set that sold thousands of copies? Does it offer something different: a unique mechanic, extra playability, or an opportunity to foster  skills that your kids need to learn? If you cannot explain why you want it, you’re giving in to your inner child. While we do need to indulge the little tyke from time to time, you wouldn’t trust a five-year-old with your cash, would you ?

Try Before You Buy: The game is AWESOME. Positively everyone says so. Have you tried it out? Have you played it? How do you know you’ll enjoy it? The Geek Universe is no less susceptible to groupthink than any other part of society. Do not bow to peer pressure. If everyone loves it, then someone has a copy you can borrow, or there’s a friend that will run a game for you. “It seems really cool” is a weak excuse to buy a game. Not all is what it seems to be, and you work hard to get the mad money you have. Shouldn’t you try hard to make sure you’ll like what you’re buying?

How Replayable Is It? Will you play it more than once? How often? Once a month? Three times a year? Once a year? Or will it just look really cool on the shelf and make for great stories about the one time you played it? Just as stuffed animals need to be loved and Nerf guns need to fired into the cubicles of your co-workers/foes, games need to be played. If you cannot find a way to play them more than once a year, they might not be worth the money.

Hold Off on the Expansions: Don’t buy all the expansions at once. Exhaust the main game first. Get bored with it. Beat it time and again, and THEN look at the expansions. How many people have purchased all the expansions for Arkham Horror only to find that they almost never play because it’s nearly impossible to schedule a block of time long enough, what with family and work commitments? It’s far better to wear out the standard rules and then make an informed purchase than it is to buy all the toys and never use them.

• “They’re used. Some of them have stains. We cover that up.” Robert Lee owns Cullman Liquidation. They sell mobile homes. [Video]
• Volcanicast is dead! Pulp Audio Weekly lives! Bob and Wesley have retired one podcast and created another. Listen to the premiere episode…if you dare! [Podcast]
• When was the last time you were in Sim City? Were there 5.999999 million other people there, too?
• Finally, the folks at Very Demotivational bring us Grand Theft Locomotive, or as they’ve titled it, GTA Victorian Edition.
  

Last week, renowned film critic Roger Ebert posted an article titled “Video games can never be art,” in which he posited that video games are not art and will not become art during the lifetime of any gamer drawing breath today. As one might imagine—especially if one is an avid video game player—the chorus of responses to Mr. Ebert’s article are not exactly singing in harmony with him. As of April 16th, there were more than 2,600 comments on the article, the bulk of them disagreeing with Mr. Ebert’s claim.

Let me go on record as being very much on the fence with respect to the question of whether video games are (or can ever be) art. I’m firmly in the “I don’t know art, but I know what I like” camp. Personally, I feel if I’m enjoying something created by someone else, then that something is probably art.¹ I will cop to that being a very unsophisticated definition, but as a great nautical strongman once said, “I yam what I yam,” and what I yam ain’t very sophisticated.

I don’t take umbrage with Mr. Ebert or his opinion,² nor do I take issue with the gamers who offer their rational, reasonable arguments in defense of video games; I’ve seen some responses that are thoughtful, considered and present compelling comparisons between video games and more “traditional” art forms such as jazz and classical music.

Unfortunately, I’ve also seen a commenter named Lujo insult Ebert at length, in terms most would consider obscene (not to mention coprophiliac), without offering anything even faintly resembling a cogent argument supporting video games as an art form. It’s childish, puerile name-calling for the sake of name-calling during which the commenter asserts that Mr. Ebert “cannot take a real criticism or argue his case”, while spectacularly failing to even attempt an argument of his own. To which Ebert responds, “this comment approaches art, but doesn’t…quite…make it.”

Lujo’s comment may represent an extreme, but the insults and disrespect aren’t limited to anonymous commenters on Mr. Ebert’s blog. Jerry “Tycho” Holkins, writer of the immensely popular webcomic, Penny Arcade, referred to the article as “reeking ejaculate,” and then proceeded to call Mr. Ebert to the mat on his approach to the fine art of arguing.³ Rather than following with an intelligent, coherent response that encourages discourse, Holkins dismisses Mr. Ebert’s opinion as “generational bullshit”, which is both ironic and telling, as it demonstrates perfectly that the generation Holkins calls his own lacks respect and class.

When did a simple difference of opinion about something so trivial become grounds for a personal attack? At what point did “I don’t agree with you, thus you are pond scum” become a standard tool of debate? Are polite disagreement and rational discourse fated to be extinguished by the meteor that will ultimately mean the extinction of “dinosaurs” like Roger Ebert?⁴

1. Thus, I have no issue with Subway employing “Sandwich Artists”. [↩]
2. I will say that I’m not certain he selected the best point to his counterpoint in Kellee Santiago, whose TED talk provided the framework upon which the argument against video games as art was built; Ms. Santiago admits as much in  her response to Mr. Ebert’s article. [↩]
3. Nowhere does Holkins mention that proper form demands the flinging of personal insults as an opening gambit. [↩]
4. So-called by no less than seven people in the comments on “Video games will never be art”. [↩]

I want to try something a little…experimental with the show notes for this episode of The Secret Lair. Let’s call it an exercise in the power of mind over matter; a test of your ability—with your own brain and vast imagination—to have a real, tangible, discernible impact upon how you perceive reality. If you’ll just bear with me for a moment and follow these instructions very carefully, I think together we can achieve something remarkable.

All right, now the first thing I need you to do is close your eyes. Just close them nice and tight. The next thing I want you to do is visualize a vast, empty space that stretches out to infinity in all directions. Fill that space with the purest white, completely lacking in color or shadow. Now imagine a single, perfectly round dot, contrasted against the backdrop of your pristine—wait a minute. Are your eyes open? They are, aren’t they? Dammit, how is this going to work if you can’t follow simple instructions? You know what? Forget it. We’re done here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:02:53 — 57.6MB)

Hello everyone, I’d like to know if anyone has a recommendation about a good town or city for me to get work as a stripper. I recently lost my waitress job and I am willing to basically move anywhere if there is an opportunity there for me to make some good money. I danced at a gentlemans club here in Sacramento for a few weeks. I am 25 years old and have a really tight body. Anyone have any suggestions about a new city with good strip clubs to work at?

- Anonymous Spam Left in Our Comments Last Week

Dear Stripper-Wannabe,

First off, we want to thank you for getting in touch with us with your job query. While we’ve had a number of minions interested in stripping, it is usually from the more passive side of the lap, as opposed to the one doing the dancing. It’s refreshing to find a young person taking their career options seriously in this day and age, when goldfarming in World of Warcraft is just as lucrative as working down the street in the local opium den. A tip of the Overlords’ hat to you, young lady!

Secondly, as Overlord Miller learned during his time in California, the cost of living is staggering there. We suggest looking at Cleveland or Pittsburgh as possible alternatives for your job search. The reasons, you’ll find, are compelling:

• The cost of living in either of these cities is extremely reasonable. Consider your earning potential. You are, if we may say so, a novice in the Art, and as such you would not make as much as a real pro. Selling lapdances is not that different than selling cars, real esate, or clothing. A good stripper treats stripping like a business, they are able to gain rapport with the customer, close a sale, upsell, and then maintain an active customer base for repeat business. If dances are $20 a song, you only have to sell 5 dances an hour to make $100/hour. Then subtract the associated fees the club charges in order to work (house fee, dj fee, housemom fee, security fee). You’ll get more bang for your buck in a midwestern cities where apartments and housing is much cheaper. In fact, according to Bestplaces.net, Cleveland’s cost of living is 29% less than Sacramento, and housing is 73% less on the North Coast than in sunny California. One cannot underestimate the power of your dollar going farther in the midwest.
• The midwestern mindset is unprepared for, as you say, “really tight” bodies. We’re a stolid and stocky folk, packing on a few extra pounds to deal with emergency weather conditions, braving a tailgate party at the Muny parking lot on the lake on a Sunday afternoon, and, as Sir Mix-A-Lot once aptly put, unless one has much back, the anaconda don’t want none, hun. Romantic sentimentality nonwithstanding, a young lady with a firmness in breast and buttock would surely gather attention worthy of monetary recompense in small bills.  We’re not jaded like many of those on the West Coast who take such sights for granted…men in the midwest will stare slackjawed; at least until their wives kick them.
• The competition is…well…hardly fierce. Vis a vis this performance from the Adult Entertainment Expo held at the county fairgrounds last June:

Finally, when you tire of selling tantalizing views of your flesh for crisp currency, they have an excellent ninja-assassin training program you’d be well-suited for after years of pole dancing. Your flexibility and acrobatic skills would not be lost, and you’ll find The Secret Lair’s profit sharing program to be quite generous.

We hope this helps you with your decision, and we wish you all the best in future endeavours…

Sincerely,

The Overlords.

• We’d want to see Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal even if it didn’t star Jeff (Richard Coyle) from Coupling. [Movie Trailer]
• These eggs may not be Fabergé, but they’re definitely art. [via 86Words]
• Yes, that fireball you saw in the sky was part of a meteor shower. We had nothing to do with it. Really. [Video]
• Air Commandant Moore renders his opinion of the post-apocalyptic first-person shooter, Borderlands. [Dirigible of Pain]
• Stormtroopers 365 is a photographic record of the misadventures of TK455 and TK479, neither of whom appear to spend much time at their posts. [Photo Gallery]
  

In just a few short days my son will be two hundred and twenty-two weeks old. I had planned to track his age in weeks until he reached the age of majority, but like many of my harebrained schemes that plan fell by the wayside somewhere in the past four years.¹ It was to be a testament of my geekhood. “How old is your son?” people would ask after he did something incredibly cute and/or precocious. “Oh,” I’d say, in the most casual and off-hand manner possible, “he’ll be a hundred and thirty-seven weeks old tomorrow.”

I’ve made all sorts of geeky plans that I’ve failed to follow up on—when’s the last time I wrote a review for The Great Superhero Movie Project? Anyone? Anyone?—but I don’t feel even mildly disappointed in myself this time. Why? Well, because it’s a gimmick, for starters; it’s contrived and forced and I can do better. I have done better. See, in the last two hundred and twenty-two weeks, instead of keeping track of how many weeks have gone by I’ve been busy creating a walking, talking, blue-eyed, blond-haired testament to my geekhood.

If you’ve read my personal blog over the past couple of years, you’re probably aware that my young apprentice…

• …thinks the Belle (Disney’s Beauty & The Beast) PEZ dispenser my niece gave me is “yellow Princess Leia”.
• …wondered whether the Thanksgiving turkey we bought last year had been frozen in carbonite.
• …can recite the opening voiceover to Knight Rider.²
• …refers to Bane from LEGO Batman as “the wrestler who throws guys to Heaven” and The Evil Mola Ram from LEGO Indiana Jones as “the evil moron.”

He’s also been playing the Xbox since a few months before his third birthday, has his own set of oversized polyhedral dice, has seen the original Indiana Jones trilogy³ and all six Star Wars films multiple times,⁴ and knows most of the words to Jonathan Coulton’s office zombie song, “Re: Your Brains.”⁵

I’ll admit to having some mixed feelings about this. The geek in me, already a rather substantial fellow, swells with pride at my son’s burgeoning geekdom; the responsible parent in me⁶ wonders whether the bulk of the pop culture that defines my own geekdom may be a bit too violent for a four-year-old.

I sometimes hear parents talk about the sorts of movies their six-year-old children are “ready” to watch, and they’re almost invariably some of the same movies my son has been watching since he was three. In some parental circles, Spongebob Squarepants—one of my son’s favorites for well over a year now—is spoken of in a tone of voice and terms one generally reserves for telemarketers and the Anti-Christ.

Last week, my son was racing through the house singing the aforementioned zombie song (which he learned playing Rock Band 2 with my wife and me) and I had a vision of his pre-school—he starts in the Fall—calling to tell us that our son is singing songs about bashing people’s heads open and eating their brains.⁷ In my head, the conversation plays out something like this:

TEACHER: Mr. Johnson, Kyle is singing songs about killing people and eating their brains.
ME: Has he said anything about eating their eyes?
TEACHER: Wh-what?
ME: Their eyes. Is he going to eat their eyes?
TEACHER: Well…no. No, I believe he said he wouldn’t eat their eyes, but I don’t see how that—
ME: All right, then. That’s not unreasonable, is it? No one’s going to eat anyone’s eyes.

This conversation is, naturally, followed by a frantic search for another pre-school.

“You created that,” Laura said as we both watched him racing around in circles singing about undead office workers. She chuckled when she said it, and that’s how I know it’s going to be all right.

1. Probably right around week ten. [↩]
2. He now knows The Lord’s Prayer, as well, for those curious as to who “won” that particular exchange. [↩]
3. I brought Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull home from the library several months ago, but it was received with something less than enthusiasm. On the other hand, every fedora he sees is instantly declared an “Indiana Jones hat”. [↩]
4. The expurgated versions. For example, we don’t watch the defeat of Anakin Skywalker at the lightsaber of Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and we skip everything under Pankot palace except the mine car chase in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom. [↩]
5. Okay, he’s got his own interpretation in some places. For example, “I don’t wanna nitpick, Tom” becomes “I don’t want a knick-knack, Tom”. [↩]
6. He’s there, but he’s much, much younger than The Geek. [↩]
7. Because we live in Bizarro World, I seem to have no trouble introducing my four-year-old son to the concept of a zombie’s appetite for brains, but I censor the lyric “we’re all busy as hell” to “we’re all busy as heck” every time we sing it together. [↩]

The world, believe it is or not, is a pretty wonderful place. Wonder-ful, as in Full of Wonders.   Check out some of these facts if you doubt my word.

1. Woodpeckers slam their heads into wood at a rate of 20 pecks per second. What protects them from injury is a spongy area that sits behind their beaks and acts as a shock absorber.
2. When a lion wants to mate, he cannot be stopped. Copulation occurs every 15 minutes for one week straight.¹ Luckily for lionesses, lions only want to mate once every two years.
3. The blue whale is the largest creature that has ever lived on earth. It tips the scales at a whopping 170 tons – that’s the same as about 22 elephants. Its heart is the size of a small car, and its largest blood vessels are wide enough for an adult to swim through without much difficulty.
4. The largest land animal in the world is the Kodiak bear. It weighs about 862 kilograms, which is roughly the same as 14 male gymnasts.
5. Approximately 50 percent of all orangutans have fractured bones, a result of falling off of trees on a regular basis.
6. Giraffes and humans have the same number of bones in their necks: seven.
7. The brain of a roach is located inside of its body. If a roach loses its head, it can live up to nine days. A decapitated roach dies not because it cannot think, but because it cannot eat.²
8. Frogs cannot vomit. Whenever a frog absolutely has to vomit, it vomits its entire stomach.
9. When hunting in packs, wolves use different howls to communicate with one another. Because echoes can distort communication, a wolf’s howl does not produce an echo, even when emitted in a valley surrounded by mountains.
10. On average, sharks kill 10 humans every year. Approximately 100 people die each year when they are stepped on by cows.³

1. Sound like any college kids you know? [↩]
2. Sorta like a politician. [↩]
3. Fear the cow. [↩]