“This land belongs to my ancestors!”
…said everybody, ever.
Author: Cubilone
10 THINGS NOBODY TOLD YOU ABOUT BEING CREATIVE [HIGH EXISTENCE]
Handy tips to keep around within the boundaries of your awareness. I remember I first saw this book Steal Like an Artist in Evripidis in Halandri. Should have got it.
I should have got a book to tell me how to remember to be creative. *sigh*
REVIEW: NORWEGIAN WOOD
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Some memorable quotes from this book:
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
…
“Letters are just pieces of paper,” I said. “Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.”
…
“Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.”
Murakami was born in 1949. Like Terry Pratchett, who passed away some days ago. Like my father. What would it be like to have Terry Pratchett or Haruki Murakami as your dad?
The protagonist was also born in 1949 and serves as our 20-year-old guide through the Japan of way back when: most of Norwegian Wood takes places in Tokyo and Japan in ’69 and ’70. I see it as a mental documentary of what it was to live back then. Such indirect or direct accounts always excite me and nostalgically take me back to places I never saw, memories I never had. Manos Hatzidakis gives me a similar feeling (ASXETO!)
I don’t know what it is in his writing, but Murakami-san can take me on a trip. His descriptions make sense. I connect with them in a way I just cannot with the works of a lot of other writers. I’m there. I smell the grass in the lush Japanese mountains and the cars’ fumes in dirty, crowded Tokyo. I taste the sake and the whiskey. I’m a voyeur in the sex scenes that are funny in their straight-forward explicitness. I care for the various tragic, funny or awkward characters. It makes sense that I do: I’ve got to know them. I grow attached to these living, breathing people that could easily be followers of a contemporary variety of the Tao of Zen.
So it also makes sense that I’m sick of them dying for no clear reason to me. What I can safely say is that, no matter if death at one’s own hands is a cornerstone of Japanese culture or that the protagonist considers that “death is not the opposite of life but an innate part of it”, I much prefer reading what Murakami has to say about life and love than about suicide.
Thank you Daphne for lending me Norwegian Wood.
PS: There’s a lot of ’60s music in this book and many characters playing well-known pieces on guitars and pianos. Here’s a little playlist I found that would do nicely as a companion soundtrack:
EARWORM GARDEN // MAYBESHEWILL – NOT FOR WANT OF TRYING
Post-rock + apocalyptic images + Network (1976) = Ein Hit!
EDIT: I realised I’ve posted this track before in this post (A Collection of Great Depressing Music).
REVIEW: THE BLACK SWAN
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a smart book. The author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, is one of these guys you come across sometimes who are smartasses and they know it, are in love with that smartass prestige of theirs, and who you can’t help but sit and listen to because they’re so damn interesting. Sometimes their smartassiness goes a bit overboard, similar to the scratching of an itch that at first is satisfying but can easily hurt if you don’t stop at the right moment. However, albeit barely, most of the time they keep it under control.
I have to tell the truth. Most of the Black Swan was too technical for me, too difficult. I caught the main idea but at some point I just didn’t know what I was reading anymore. I wonder if Taleb would have had a bigger impact with his book (and he did a big impact as far as I can tell) if he had made it easier to read for a broader audience. I have the impression that the more sophisticated an academic or a specialist is, the more resistant to books such as this he or she is, whereas
Anyway, Taleb’s idea, the whole topic of this book, is rather simple: life is full of Black Swan events, and…
Sod it, I’ll let Wikipedia do the talking for a sec:
The phrase “black swan” derives from a Latin expression; its oldest known occurrence is the poet Juvenal‘s characterization of something being “rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno” (“a rare bird in the lands and very much like a black swan”; 6.165).[4] When the phrase was coined, the black swan was presumed not to exist.
[…]
Juvenal’s phrase was a common expression in 16th century London as a statement of impossibility. The London expression derives from the Old World presumption that all swans must be white because all historical records of swans reported that they had white feathers.[5] In that context, a black swan was impossible or at least nonexistent. After Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered black swans in Western Australia in 1697,[6] the term metamorphosed to connote that a perceived impossibility might later be disproven. Taleb notes that in the 19th century John Stuart Mill used the black swan logical fallacy as a new term to identify falsification.[7]
[…]
Based on the author’s criteria:
- The event is a surprise (to the observer).
- The event has a major effect.
- After the first recorded instance of the event, it is rationalized by hindsight, as if it could have been expected; that is, the relevant data were available but unaccounted for in risk mitigation programs. The same is true for the personal perception by individuals.
[…]
The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:
-
The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology.
-
The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities).
-
The psychological biases that make people individually and collectively blind to uncertainty and unaware of the massive role of the rare event in historical affairs.
Basically, we can’t predict things. We think we can, but we can’t, and they are the ones we are most vulnerable to. What do we have to do to make ourselves more robust to Black Swans? Be aware of them. And screw banksters and speculators, they’re frauds. There, I just summarised the whole book!
Don’t give Black Swan a read if you’re a bankster or speculator and want to preserve your so-called self-respect. Do give it a read if you believe that the world is much more complex than any model we can come up with, but be prepared to skim, skim, skim.
QB’S “THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IS BATSHIT CRAZY” MEGAMIX
English. It’s a bastard language.
~Wayne Hall
Introductory comment number one: judging by how many millions of Speakers of English as a Second or Third Language are mispronouncing these words, including TESOL teachers, I have no idea to what extent their original, correct pronunciation will be relevant, say, 20 years from now. The evolution of the language will be highly unpredictable (not that anything in this world is so predictable, ahem) because it has the largest speakers as a foreign language/natives speakers ratio in the world: for every native speaker there are at least two who speak it at or above a conversational level, and many more the lower you set the bar. Source for the above.
Introductory comment number two: English, for all intents and purposes and despite its foundational inconsistencies, the current world language. Need more proof that people don’t work as rational actors and the world isn’t a product thereof?
The kind lady who recited the poem below, originally found here, requests that people not “hotlink to them or steal them for their own website”. Well, I don’t if this counts as stealing, but if it does… This is the web, dear Ms. English Teacher.
The bandage was wound around the wound.
The farm was used to produce produce.
The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
We must polish the Polish furniture.
He could lead if he would get the lead out.
The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
At the army base, a bass was painted on the head of a bass drum.
When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
I did not object to the object.
The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
They were too close to the door to close it.
A buck does funny things when does are present.
A seamstress and a sewer fell into a sewer.
To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
After a number of Novocain injections, my jaw got number.
Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
I spent last evening evening out a pile of dirt.
Anonymous (unless you know better)
A rough coated, dough faced, thoughtful poughman, strode through the streets of Scarborough. After falling into a Sloug, he coughed and hiccoughed.
Last but not least: follow this, if you’ve got what it takes. Use this video as a guide and see how well you fare.
Just as an aside, there is a slightly different version of this poem right here, and here’s a link to a .pdf of it in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
REVIEW: JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity ~Anonymous (as far as I know)
Metallica’s One is based on this book. The lyrics more or less summarise the plot:
Now that the war is through with me
I’m waking up, I cannot see
That there is not much left of me
Nothing is real but pain now
Hold my breath as I wish for death
Oh please, God, wake me
Back to the womb that’s much too real
In pumps life that I must feel
But can’t look forward to reveal
Look to the time when I’ll live
Fed through the tube that sticks in me
Just like a wartime novelty
Tied to machines that make me be
Cut this life off from me
Hold my breath as I wish for death
Oh please, God, wake me
Now the world is gone, I’m just one
Oh God, help me
Hold my breath as I wish for death
Oh please, God, help me
Darkness imprisoning me
All that I see
Absolute horror
I cannot live
I cannot die
Trapped in myself
Body my holding cell
Landmine has taken my sight
Taken my speech
Taken my hearing
Taken my arms
Taken my legs
Taken my soul
Left me with life in hell
(hide spoiler)]
The descriptions of early 20th century rural America once again had me nostalgic over something I never lived through. I could feel the pain of leaving behind your family, your mama’s fresh, delicious homemade food, your new girlfriend, your job, your stories… never to come back. How many millions of people in world history have had the same fate? How many of us would be ready to face such prospects?
I just have to wonder: would pro-war or at least pro-military people reading Johnny Got His Gun ever come out from it converted? Would reading the book that helped inspire the first truly massive anti-war movement budge somebody who isn’t moved by common pacifist arguments? Perhaps it is aimed more squarely at Americans, who have been waging wars in foreign lands, not their own, for at least a century. It is not the same dynamics that are at play when we’re talking about fighting in a defensive war for protecting one’s own home and people.
It has to be said, anyway, that, no matter how good it sounds, it is a dream that everybody put down their guns and their bombs and their missiles and whatever weapons the next war will be fought with, even though I’d love to see the day when a war would be de facto cancelled because the “little guys” would have turned their guns at the “big guys” to protect their own lives and interests…
Wait. Maybe it’s not a dream. I mean, we’re living through interesting times of great changes. What would happen if there was a draft tomorrow? What would a contemporary anti-war movement based on Twitter and Facebook look like? It could conceivably break new water, the same way the web and the net have helped revolutionise what we thought we knew about communication. We can’t predict what new disruptions our new social toys could bring about in such a terrible eventuality, and in this climate, Johnny Got His Gun is as an important and inspiring a read as ever before.
Among all the other reasons, it is inspiring because it reminds you of your blessings, of the little that you truly need in order to experience life at its fullest, what Joe was robbed of. But then again, the mind works in mysterious ways. It is one of the greatest obstacles to happiness, and one of the greatest human tragedies, that people can only appreciate what they have when it’s gone, including their five senses and the wholesomeness of their body. However, even in the hellish nightmare of sensory deprivation and paralysis, the capacity for some kind of happiness or satisfaction is still there.
A guy without a face and limbs is still capable of being grateful for his good fortune. How about you? Were you stressing over trivialities today, or did you stop for a second, be aware of the present and realise what a gift life is, or can be, if you let it?
EUROGAMER HAS DROPPED REVIEW SCORES
Here’s the article. I’m posting it here because it’s a spot-on write-up on the ways the industry is changing, that is slowly, imperceptibly to the unaware, but no less fundamentally. On top of that, it’s a decent rating system they’ve changed to: recommended, essential, nothing, or avoid. I like that the default is no rating at all.
Things have come a long way. I’m glad to see developments in how we look at games, criticism, journalism and game development itself, but also what new kinds of synergy and interaction have emerged between the audience, developers and reviewers.
REVIEW: TALK TO THE HAND
Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life by Lynne Truss
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Got this one in 2010 in Dundee, Scotland for £1.99 from a shop called The Works. Why can’t there be such massive book sales in Greece? For all the uncouthness Talk to the Hand wants to subscribe them to, the Brits seem to know perfectly well the importance of a cheap book.
The following two excerpts are two of the parts I thought were interesting in this otherwise unmemorable book:
…meanwhile the choice impulse is being exploited to the utmost degree. “More choice than ever before!” say the advertisers. “Click and find anything in the world!” says the internet. “What people want is more choice,” say the politicians. “Eight thousand things to do before you die!” offer the magazines. No wonder we are in a permanent state of agitation, thinking of all the unpicked choices and whether we’ve missed something. Every day, you get home from the shops with a bag of catfood and bin-liners and realise that, yet again, you failed to have cosmetic surgery, book a cheap weekend in Paris, change your name to something more galmorous, buy the fifth series of The Sopranos, divorce your spouse, sell up and move to Devon, or adopt a child from Guatemala. Personally, I’m worn down by it. And I am sure that it isn’t good for us. I mean, did you know there is a website for people with internet addiction. I will repeat that. There is a WEBSITE for people with INTERNET ADDICTION. Meanwhile, a friend of mine once told me in all seriousness that having children was definitely “on the shopping list”; another recently defined her religious beliefs as “pick and mix”. The idea of the world’s religions forming a kind of candy display, down which you are free to wander with a paper bag and a plastic shovel, struck me as worryingly accurate about the state of confusion and decadence we’ve reached. Soon they’ll have signs outside the churches. “Forget make-your-own pizza. Come inside for make-your-own Sermon on the Mount!” The mystery of voter apathy is explained at a stroke here, by the way. How can I vote for all the policies of either the government or the opposition? How can I give them a “mandate”? I like some of their policies, but I don’t like others, and in any case I’d like to chuck in some mint creams and pineapple chunks. I insist on my right to mix and match.
…
Finally, in the Guardian in April 2005, came the story of research conducted by a psychiatrist from King’s College London, which proved that the distractions of constant e-mails, text and phone messages were a greater threat to concentration and IQ than smoking cannabis. “Respondents’ minds were all over the place as they faced new questions and challenges every time an e-mail dropped into their inbox,” wrote Martin Wainwright. “Manners are also going by the board, with one in five of the respondents breaking off from meals or social engagements to receive and deal with messages. Although nine out of ten agreed that answering messages during face-to-face meetings or office conferences was rude, a third nonetheless felt that this had become ‘acceptable and seen as a sign of diligence and efficiency’.”
There was another good one about how everyday courtesy is becoming more and more similar to the kind of interaction you would expect from people behind steering wheels being angry at each other for one reason or another. This part in particular stayed with me because it reminded me of my dad. It was something he would say.
Now that I think about it, this whole book reminds me of my dad. It could have been written by him, in fact, only in that case it would have been a lot funnier.
I should just give him this book and see what happens.
GAME 2.0 REVIEW — TOTAL WAR: ATTILA
Το ριβιού.
Αν και όχι τέλειο, το παιχνίδι με ενέπνευσε με την απεικόνιση της μετάβασης του κόσμου από τα τέλη της Ρωμαϊκής Περιόδου στην επονομαζόμενη Σκοτεινή Περίοδο.
Περιμένει άραγε τον κόσμο μας σήμερα μια άλλη, νέα σκοτεινή περιόδος, με ανάλογες καταστροφές, όπως περίμενε την Ρωμαϊκή Αυτοκρατορία στην αρχή της κατρακύλας μια μακραίωνη και επιταχυνόμενη κατηφόρα;