20070927

Or Christ in Pop Culture. Or something like that.

Rich Clark of DYL and one of, what I presume to be one of his seminary cohorts, have begun regularly producing a podcast relating their Christian viewpoints to various expressions of pop culture. Spider-Man. Jason Bourne. Adult-oriented cartoons with crude humour. Three tens. And yumas. And some such. I think they talked about tv once too.

In any case, they talk about stuff like how films either reflect or refract a Christian worldview. They talk about how tv is either dooming or saving America. They talk about cowboy bravery (not as cool as cowboy bebop), how Jesus is the true template for action heroes, how the Wii is going to replace the church as the community of the faithful, how adult cartoons started with the Simpsons and are bad, how Benjamin Martin from The Patriot wasn't blood-thirsty and vengeful like you thought he was, but really just a freedom-loving patriot. Well, or something like that. I don't really listen to what they yammer on and on about.

Okay, that's not true.

I actually do listen. The format is easy-going and conversational. Less like a produced show and more like two guys sitting around talking about junk and what they think of it in relation to their faith. They'll chat about something, throw in a Top 5 list and start it all off with an ever-changing title shtick, like "Christ and Pop Culture: where the Christian faith meets Naruto and Nine-Tailed Fox" or "Christ and Pop Culture: where the Christian faith meets Don't f&¥!% with Jesus." And it's gotten at least eight times better since they dropped the prohibitive ninety-minute runtime down to a far more accessible twenty minutes. Less yap and more flap, as they say.

<nobody says that>

What?

<nobody says 'less yap and more flap'>

What? Of course they do!

<what does that even mean anyway? 'less yap and more flap.' what kind of imbecile are you anywa--> BANG!!

In any case, if you're interested in an evangelical take on pop culture (or even just pop culture itself) or if you find either Rich Clark or David Dunham (said cohort) to be attractive and hope learn enough about them to steal them away from their wives and families and pets and obligations, you may find the show interesting. Anyone with any sense of the history of this site know that Rich and I see things pretty differently in the realm of pop culture, entertainment, artistic expression, what-have-you. And that's partly why I listen. He likes to see Christian themes in stuff and point out boy-wizards as Christ-figures, whereas I just like to enjoy well-crafted entertainments without hunting for a spiritual flavour that I'm skeptical exists. I like to think of his version of things as silly and mine as erudite, but come on. I'm the guy who thinks Fantasy Football is nerdy. How can you even begin to take a guy like me at his word?

So yeah. Guys talking about stuff. And sometimes arguing with me. At Christ and Pop Culture Lips of Sin.

20070924

Nerds are known for their obsessions. For their meticulous attention toward trivia that the average participant in life couldn't be bothered with. Nerds may know what a saving throw is. Nerds may know that Orson Welles's last film roll was as Unicron in Transformers: The Movie. Nerds may know that Spider-Man fell in love with many girls before Mary-Jane Watson (among them Liz Allen, Betty Brant, and Gwen Stacy). And nerds might think that these things are not trivia but general knowledge. The thing is: nerds are obsessed with information that nobody cares about.

And now, I've discovered the nerdiest of the nerds: Fantasy sports league managers.

There are, you must trust me on this, people who take players from various teams, pretend they are all on the same team, track their stats from their real teams and follow some byzantine track to determine how good this fabricated team is. I know, huh.

I know you're even now doubting me right now that such people truly exist. As if rabidly following sports teams scores and their players stats was not already the high province of geeks and nerds, we discover this hyper-actualization of the trend. It seems to defy both reason and imagination but, believe me, it's true. Such übernerds indeed roam the plains of this earth and the Magna Carta of their community is the Fantasy Sports League. I have seen it firsthand.

Two recent hires in my office confer several times a day to either gloat or commiserate, discussing at some length their plans for trades and evaluating the performance of other players in their, quote-unquote, league. I find it baffling that they speak so brazenly, as if completely unaware of how deeply peculiar they are. But then, nerds have never had the most acute sense of their social surroundings. Perhaps they presume that they are taken part in a national interest--nay, ritual!

Or perhaps they do not care, scoffing under their breath at we lesser beings who know nothing of [here is where I would place names and jargon and vocabulary intimate to one of these fantasy leagues if I had even the slightest hope of parsing their arcane dialects].

Whatever the case, we should be aware, for there is mischief and chaos in their eyes.

20070919

---

Graphic novel.
8 volumes.

At 3013 pages, Osamu Tezuka's Buddha was something of an investment in time. I received the last two hardcover volumes of the collection (vol. 7 and 8) for my birthday at the end of July and began reading from start to finish in mid-August. It's true that one could possibly read the entire collection - and a handsome collection it is - in a day (at perhaps two hours per volume), but I didn't feel compelled to rush things.

In Buddha, Tezuka presents a curious blend of themes and styles. This project, ten years in production (1974-1984), presents the life of Siddartha Gautama, the Buddha, from birth to death, capitalizing on famous episodes and creating fictional ones as well. Tezuka includes a robust cast of characters both fictional and historical that waxes and wanes over the near-century that the story narrates.

Not being a Buddhist, I have no idea how well Tezuka's tale reflects either the historical man or the religious conception of him (though genuine Buddhist's seem to like the book - and I don't know if Tezuka was Buddhist or not, though it seems likely or plausible). But one thing is for certain, I cannot see a similar book being crafted about the life of Christ and being well-received. And a similar version of the life of Mohammed would end in bombs, death threats, and ambassadors demanding apologies.

Because the thing is: Tezuka's tale is as irreverent as it is reverrent.

He clearly thinks highly of Buddha and his teachings. And yet, the books is filled with jokes and antics and all kinds of nuttiness. Pokes and jabs at Buddha himself are rare (though present), but there are a constant stream of silly asides, even in the midst of what would otherwise be a sober scene, fraught with drama. A horse will gallop in on a messenger to deliver dire news to the king. A character will be confronted by his haunted conscience, seeing a vision of Buddha speaking to him - only to have Buddha bite him on the face and we realize he's been talking to his horse. Characters from Tezuka's other works show up not infrequently and even Tezuka himself will appear in cameos, taking the place of a character for a single panel.

The story is also filled with anachronisms as well. Both visual and verbal. At one point, a poor peasant family wishes to send their son with Siddartha as he follows the path of monkhood, claiming that their son should be able to become a monk "in this day when even actors can become president." There are further references to Paris and New York and Spielberg. And E.T. and Yoda even make appearances.

It took me a while to get a handle on exactly how to approach the book. The fact of the sheer silliness of moments. The fact of the gorgeous and highly detailed landscapes intruded upon by Disney-esque cartoon characters. The fact of main characters who die 300 pages in to the 3000-page epic. The fact that every woman in the book is topless. The fact of mixing faith and fantasy so seamlessly in a book that I believe is trying to promote the teachings of Buddha. And the fact that Buddha isn't even born until the end of the first volume. It was a weird mix, but after not too long, I found myself quite at home with his unique style and let the story wash over me.

All in all, I found it both interesting and fun. And surprising. Characters you expect to be redeemed end tragically and characters you expect to turn their back on Buddha turn out to be some of his biggest boosters. Add to the religious story the sheer scope of the political story and you've got an action-packed tale of religious enlightenment.

I still couldn't really tell you what Buddhism's about though.

Rating:

---

Rice Wine.
750 mL bottle.

Now really, I don't have the vocabulary to speak sensibly about wine. I'm thoroughly unqualified for the task.

That said, I really like good-tasting saké. Most of the stuff you'll get in restaurants is the cheap stuff. That's why they heat it. From what I understand, the good stuff gets served chilled and the bad stuff gets served hot. By and large, I prefer my saké heated. This is because it's so rare that I find a tasty saké that doesn't smack of turpentine.

Momokawa's Ruby saké, however, is one that I will always serve chilled if the bottle is fresh. It's smooth and crisp and hands down the best I've had. Yummy!

Rating:

---

Tasty Snack.
2 packs per box.

While it's no secret that I like Pocky, I don't tend to stray from the flavours I've established as my favourites. Really, this just means that a good snacking atmosphere for me should always be bolstered by having several boxes of Strawberry Pocky on hand. Fortunately I can add a new flavour to my Pocky oeuvre: Almond Crush Pocky.

Like your typical Pocky box, Almond Crush features a box full of biscuity sticks half-coated with whatever the particular flavour may be. In this case, the biscuit is half-drenched in chocolate. The chocolate, as chocolate should, is filled with little almond chips, giving you Pocky stick a form somewhat resembling a funny brown cactus.

And boy are they good. My only complaint is that due to the added dimensions that the almond chips add to the overall size of each Pocky stick, there are fewer sticks than in a standard Pocky box.

Rating:

---

20070918

One of my favourite novels of all time is Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. In one of the early chapters, the doomed narrator introduces the reader to one of my favourite ideas in the novel. He introduces us to the term granfalloon.

A granfalloon, in the theology of Vonnegut's little world, is a kind of imagined social connection between people - one that is not based on any real connection, but instead finds it whole root and nourishment in a link that is totally fabricated in the minds of its members. Examples of granfalloonery would be that kind of social endearment one feels for other alumni of an educational institute (oh? you went to Stanford too? how wonderful!). Or sports team fanaticism (go Lakers!). Or name brand boosters (xBox is for losers, Play Station is where it's at!). Or even most religions. Or the fact of nationalities; is there really anything more arbitrary than national citizenship? Well yes, there is.

Ethnic solidarity is even further abstracted from real social connection than something as ridiculous as National Identity. Ethnic solidarity may, for intents and purposes universal, be considered the Granfalloon of granfalloons. But enough about granfalloons, let's talk product.

There are a great number of benefits to granfalloonery. It's great for those whose lives are filled with inadequate society. Those with disabled social interests - those with a paucity of real friendships (those relationships built on love, trust, and mutual admiration) and with dysfunctional familial connections are ripe for granfalloonery. Such individuals take to ideas of institutional, national, and ethnic pride more more readily and fully than those with real social connections.

Granfalloons offer the illusion of society. Granfalloons offer comfort in a world of strangers. Granfalloons offer pragmatic systems of support, allowing individualists to fallback on their imagined societies for support, and members of their granfalloons will often provide that support simply because they too believe in the existence of the social mirage in which they play part.

There are, however, deficits to taking part in granfalloonery. Among the chief of these is imagined responsibility for the activities of other members of the fabricated society. I ran across this yesterday when reading about the tremendous and ancient earthen works of Poverty Point in Louisiana. In response to the note that most Americans are unaware of such archaeological treasures in their own country, a typical voice was raised:

Wouldn't want us dwelling on the fact that we stole this land, would we?

Despite the fact that it was a pretty familiar outcry, I was struck by something in its phrasing. The author did not lay blame for the tragedy of American expansionism at the feet of the leaders of the American 19th century. Instead, he took it upon himself and, as well, layed that blame upon the shoulders of all Americans (well, presumably upon those Americans of European descent). He said the WE stole the land. Not they. We.

So deeply does he identify with the granfalloon of White America, that he feels the need to take responsibility for actions to which he is not remotely connected. And these aren't even current events. He's taking responsibility for actions his granfalloon perpetrated two hundred years ago. He is ashamed of himself. And more, he must be ashamed of himself because he has chosen to identify himself with a particular imagined society and that imagined society (or at least a few of its imagined representatives) has done a bad thing.

It is this reliance on and security from fabricated social connections that prompts people today to apologize for slavery in the 1800s and for the Crusades in the whatever-00s. It's why forty-year-old Germans today feel Holocaust-guilt.

So people should really just cut it out already. The end.

20070917

With Robert Jordan's death yesterday, fans of his lengthy fantasy series are left wondering about the future of their beloved franchise. Jordan had been working on the twelfth and final book of his Wheel of Time series when he was diagnosed with a rare and terminal condition last year. He knew his time was likely short and so prepared story notes, explaining the order of events and their importance, charging his wife and the president with the task of finishing his book if the worst were to occur.

So, fans of the series may get some consolation.

For my own part, on the recommendation of a girl a vaguely liked at the time, I had read the first three books of the series - each one a sizable investment of time due to the sheer volume of words in each book. I found the story interesting but the writing trite. It was cheap fiction and so I was able to persevere. In the end, I quit the series ninety pages into the fourth book, unable to justify the investment of time the series would demand of me. Jordan had released his eighth book at the time I began the first.

As someone who never planned to finish the series, I feel no personal loss at being robbed of the ending of the story. Still, I understand the torment real fans must be feeling now. It would be hard to know which to mourn more: the death of a stranger or the robbery of the narrative consummation of so great an investment of time and heart. The reason I understand so well the loss of the series' fans is that during particular series that I had been following, one of my greatest fears was that the author would die without completion of his work.

While Scholastic is now releasing Jeff Smith's Bone in nine, coloured, hardbound volumes and Cartoon Books offers a single-volume, black-and-white edition, I originally followed the tale in its thirty-page chapter installments - much as someone might have followed the works of Dickens. I put years into carefullly following the series and as the final chapters began to trickle in at a rate of one chapter every four months or so, I began to wonder how I would feel if somehow Smith were prevented from finishing his astounding work.

I would be crushed.

Even if it were revealed that he had written full scripts and his wife, Vijaya, would be editing them and they had found an artist capable of mimicking perfectly Smith's visual technique, I'd still feel crushed. Of course I'd mourn Smith's death, but since my only knowledge of him came from what he showed me - and the world, really - of himself through his creations, it seems fair that I mourn their loss as greatly. This is what its like for Jordan's fans right now. And while I can imagine, I cannot imagine.

What about you? Are there any works in progress that you would be devasted to see uncomplete by reason of a creator's death?

I mentioned how Bone's cancellation would have killed me. I know Harry Potter fans would be beside themselves if Rowling had died in a car accident immediately after publishing Book 6. Currently, I'm following and hotly anticipating the finale to Y: The Last Man; I think it's too close to completion for me to worry about Brian K. Vaughn's chances of survival - so I breathe a sigh of relief. I just have to hope I live long enough to see it.

What else? I would love to live to see the end of the Naruto books. Other books like Eric Shanower's Age of Bronze, which could take another ten years to finish, or Jason Lutes' Berlin, which has the slowest release schedule of any series I've ever read (even slower than Age of Bronze) - these are books that I'm dying to finish.

So what about you? What series currently has you by the throat? If Matthew Fox and Josh Holloway died in a knife fight in Mexico, would you cry because Lost couldn't continue? If Christopher Paolini grows up, will you hold vigil (as a grown up, there's no possible way Paolini would continue his embarrassment of a series, Eragon)?

20070914

Just 'cause I'm like that, I thought I'd leave you the weekend to ponder 16 Games. Drink these games responsibly.

My Top 10 Favourite Table-Top Games

1 - Settlers of Catan: Cities & Knights

I really need to do a full review of this sometime. Settlers of Catan is an awesomely fun game and pretty much perfectly paced (those with xBox 360s should check it out on that platform), but the Cities and Knights expansion set turns an awesome game into an incredible game. There is so much to do and so many strategies to do it with. Most of our games end up pretty close and so we never quite know who's in the lead. My one piece of advice: endeavor to complete your turn quickly, as those who make lingering moves can drag the game out for quite longer than needed (the game should finish in one-and-a-half to two hours, but there are certain friends of ours who can stretch a game to nearbout four hours... ugh). My other one piece of advice is that if you have the five to six player expansions to the game as well, play even your three to four player games on the larger map. It gives everyone more room for growth and contributes to what may be a funner gaming atmosphere. My last only piece of advice is that you start with regular Settlers of Catan before graduating to Hot City Knights.

2 - Puerto Rico

Players each act as the governor of colonial Puerto Rico, competing to see who would make the best governor. Managing the arrival of new colonists, the growth of new plantations and maintenance of old ones, the building of essential building, the trading of crops for money to build with, and the shipping of crops back to the Old World, Puerto Rico is a thinking game that keeps everyone active throughout the whole game. Even more so than Settlers, this one keeps the leader shrouded in ambiguity even up 'til the very last move. Great stuff!

3 - Settlers of Catan

As you may have gathered from above, I think pretty highly of Settlers of Catan. It's broadly considered a gateway game - a means of introducing people to the recent European style of gaming, of drawing out those who "don't like games" because they're only familiar with boring, tedious crap like Monopoly and other Chutes and Ladders-style fare. Unlike those games of your youth, Settlers is honestly fun and combines strategy and fortune in a fun, easy-to-learn way. In the game, you play on a island (different every time you play) covered with a variety of resources. Your goal is to settle the island, building settlements and cities, connected by roads. You accomplish this through harvesting the land of its natural resources (and making trades as necessary). It's an awesome game and there are numerous sets with which you can expand the game (Cities and Knights, Seafarers of Catan, etc.), even expanding the game to fit up to six players from its original four (by adding more pieces and enlarging the island). Get it, play it, love it.

4 - Tigris & Euphrates

I will admit that the placement of Tigris & Euphrates on the list here may be a little premature. I've only played the game once. And it was a test game with The Monk. The game supports 3 to 4 players so we each played as two players to make four - and I'll freely point out that this is not the ideal way to experience a game. That said, it was a lot of fun and you can expect a full review after we get some real play time on the board. It's a pretty high strategy game somewhere between Settlers and chess. Which is fine, 'cause I love Settlers and hate chess. I'd say it feels pretty similar to Puerto Rico so far as the chance/strategy ratio goes.

5 - Scotland Yard

This one's rad. It's the only game I played as a ten-year-old that is still on my list of Fun Games to Play. One player is Mister X and the others attempt to uncover his secret movements through simple deduction to corner the poor chaps and clap him in irons. While playing, Mister X should probably wear sunglasses and a ballcap to hide his eyes.

6 - Power Grid

Power companies competing for control over the nation's power grid doesn't sound like fun. But... Surprise! It is. Budding capitalist pigs should soundly enjoy themselves. Read the review if you like.

7 - Bang!

A fun game. And I don't ever really like cards. But this is so much more than cards. It's like Fistful of Dollars in your fist. You can read my review if you want to know more. I recommend playing with six players.

8 - Dutch Blitz

I'm not very good at all at speed games. I played Pit about a year ago and kinda just stood there with trades in my hand wondering how everyone was going so fast. Even so, Dutch Blitz, as advertised, is a vonderful goot game. It's like playing multiplayer solitaire very quickly (we like to play with eight players for the pure ferocity of it). I tend to place moderately, but if you're a fan of speed games, I haven't played a better one.

9 - Wise and Otherwise

As related in my NAQ review, I'm not a big fan of party games, but as far as they go, Wise and Otherwise is far and away my favourite. I think it might be due to its catering to my taste for the absurd. For those familiar with the Balderdash series of games, the mechanic is the same. The difference is that rather than everyone crafting phony definitions for words and guessing which is the real definition, players craft phony proverbs and guess the real one. The player who's turn it is provides the first part of the proverb, such as "There is an old Nepalese proverb: A cooked dog..." and everyone writes down inventive endings to the proverb such as, "is better than eight" or "won't complain of the cold" or "is a happy dog." These are shuffled in with the real one and everybody guesses what is the truth. A fun game and the real proverbs are generally as loony as anything you'd make up yourself.

10 - Carcasonne

A tile-laying game of strategy, Carcasonne is pretty easy to pick up. And fun. Though not as fun as the games I mention above, so I probably won't play it much until I get tired of the above games.

Two-Player Strategy Games

Go & Khet

I am famously bad at games like chess, checkers, Connect Four, Othello, Stratego, etc. So I don't play them often. The Monk got me a cool laser-based game called Khet last Xmas and promptly beat me five games straight. Within minutes. It's a fun game. You should try it. Go is another game I will occasionally play. I like it for a couple reasons. For one, it makes even people who are good at chess sweat. It's too much for their computation skills. For another, it's pretty elegant. I might not be that good at it, but I still like it!

Word Games

Scattergories & Boggle

I find word games to be moderately fun. The inherent problem with most of these games is that they cater to a particular kind of person - a person with a problematic affinity for vocabulary. Simply stated: the dorkiest of the dorks in your group will win every time. Scattergories largely defeats this by allowing the use of words and terms that wouldn't be allowed in typical word games and further complicates the issue for word dorks by basing your entries not so much on letters but on categories. Boggle is fun because the rounds are short and egalitarian. Everyone's working with the same letters and the spatial element of the game may just be enough to adequately handicap a dork in order that someone less dorky might win. Still jocks will always lose, so Boggle could never make a Top 10 list.

Game I Like to Play but Not as Intended

Trivial Pursuit

I love Trivial Pursuit, but playing the game as intended is rather boring. People land on subjects and only one person gets a chance to answer a question and half the time, when people do get a question right its something aberrational and dumb like "Literature: Was Frodo Baggins the hero of The Chronicles of Narnia?" That's why I vastly prefer to do away with the board and just sit around with a roomful of people and ask whatever looks interesting on a card. That way everyone's involved and there's nothing so distracting as a bored to compel boredom to creep in. And the game ends when people get tired of not knowing what movie Paul Perkins produced for $17,000 in 1923.

Game I Like but Will Probably Never Play Again

Axis & Allies

The set-up time is two or three times what it is for Settlers (and Settlers isn't brief on set-up time) and explaining the rules to a newcomer would probably take an hour (the instruction booklet is forty-some pages long). And then the game itself, if expedience is not demanded, can last for hours and hours. And hours. And, well, hours. I've played eight hour games in my more youthful days that were only about a third of the way done. That said, it's one of the coolest war strategy games I've ever played. A good can be one of the best games ever. You just need ridiculously patient friends with a lot of time to kill (and as I get old, time is becoming more and more difficult to find).

20070912

PayPal has been giving me difficulties. I needed to explain my story using screenshots, so click immediately below to read/see a story chock full of PayPally goodness. Hope you enjoy.

20070911

Pope names are rad. You become Pope and get to choose your new identity. Popes often choose names based on, I presume, wishful thinking. Innocent? Pius? Come on, who's kidding who here? Benedict is marginally better, seeing as how the Pope merely has to be a good public speaker to merit his name.

But then, what if Pope names are really just power-fantasy and wish-fulfillment? Who am I to rain on their funny-hatted parade? I say, if you can't beat 'em (and with all that security, a sound beating is likely the last thing you'll be able to give a Pope), join 'em. So then, let's jump on that fun!

What Pope name would you choose for yourself? Some of my favourite choices follow abruptly --

• Pope Optimus the First
• Pope Handsome
• Pope Danger Hahne
• Pope Delicious
• Pope Mobile
• Pope Mania
• Pope Married the Eleventh
• Popey O'Gill*
• Pope Awesome the Rad

*pet name used by the ladies (Little People not included).

20070910

---

Book - Memoir.
400 pages?

When asked which biography/memoir I best prefer, I am unable to hold back my admiration of David Niven's work here in Bring on the Empty Horses. I understand that he previously wrote something of an autobiography but I cannot vouch for that work. It is Empty Horses that has earned my love and adoration.

Niven, above all things, is a storyteller; and his recountment of the Hollywood heyday (essentially the '30s through the '50s) is magical exploration of an era that was at once special and something impossible to mimic. Never again will a particular zeitgeist carry the particular bouquet that lilted through the rarified air of the Tinseltown of those glamour years. It's an era impossible to imagine. Yet Niven was there.

And because he was there, we are there as well.

Niven's recollection bounces from larger-than-life personality to other of the like. Errol Flynn. Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. Cary Grant. Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons. Bogart and Bacall. Marlene Dietrich. Selznick and Mayer. Judy Garland. And some guy who went by Mike Romanoff, opened a popular restaurant, and pretended to be a nephew-prince of Tsar Nicholas II. Niven really does collect a panoply of stories and, in effect, writes a biography of Hollywood itself.

I cannot recommend Bring on the Empty Horses highly enough. Check your used bookstore or Friends of the Library (where I got my hardback copy for a dollar), as it's out of print.

Rating:

---

Board Game/Party Game.
∞ minutes.

I've been spoiled. Spoiled by playing above-average game after above-average game. It was a good run. An unbroken streak of maybe eight just plain great games.

Well, those of you who have long envied the fun I have been having playing boardgames with friends and family alike, can all rest very assured. I have played NAQ and there is no going back. No matter how blissfully ignorant of what the rest of game-playing humanity might have had to endure, I have now stared into the eye of the demon, seen through it's crystalline gaze, and witnessed first-hand the blood-slick walls of the antechamber to his altar to gaming depravity. I have played NAQ. And the greatest wonder is that my soul has not been entirely drained of its tenacious will to play games.

Seriously. If you want to ruin games for someone. Make them play this. No, better yet, trick them into playing it by raving about how good the game is, thereby making all the more devastating their experience as they peel off their own flesh in an attempt to purify their being.

Now I know what you're asking yourself as you try to pick through what you assume must be thick hyperbole. Could it possibly be as bad as all that? My truthful answer to you? Probably. Maybe. Well, yes.

Yes, NAQ is a horrible awful game. Granted, I'm not any kind of great evangelist for party games. They aren't my favourite activity by a long shot. But still, I have been known to enjoy myself while playing Beyond Balderdash, Taboo, Pictionary, Outburst, etc. Certainly there are games I'd prefer, but sometimes a party game is the only game that will do. And in cases when only a party game will do and all you have available is NAQ, you have officially received confirmation that it is time to send everyone home and end your party. Because really, that's what NAQ will do as it sucks all joy from the room, causing your guests to wander aimlessly about the room quoting bits of Sarte's Nausea in an effort to properly equip themselves for the dreadful ennui that must verily follow.

Now, to the mechanic. When it is your turn, you think up a trivia question to ask everyone else. Your goal is to think up a question that exactly half of your opponents will answer correctly, while the others sit stumped and pained by their ignorance. You get points for an even split of answers and less points the more extreme the divide. It essentially comes down to Know Your Room.

If I'm playing with Tom, Reginald, Vicky, Julie, Michael, and their teenage daughter, little Auschwitz, I can think to myself, well I know that Julie, Michael, and little Auschwitz just moved from Kentucky, so I'll ask, "What county is Pikeville, Kentucky situated in?" knowing all the while that they had lived in Pikeville until two months ago. My gamble is slight - that Tom, Reginald, and Vicky would have the good sense not to know that Pikeville is located in Pike County. The thing is, once I find a divisor in the group, I can hone in on questions that will benefit from the division. Only half the group are familiar with Italian directors? Great! All my questions will favour Italian directors. I'm in a group in which half the members didn't read Harry Potter because they thought it was the Great Satan? Bingo. I'm a sure win. Or, as it happened with me, a group that was half kids half adults: Naruto trivia for the win.

The game wasn't fun. Not even by a stretch. I could imagine it being remotely less tedious in a group of friends who are all exactly the same age and grew up in similar households and no one is able to determine the divisor. But no, nevermind, then its just random guessing and where is the fun in that.

p.s. the NAQ website says "NAQ is Patent Pending." I imagine that they're having a hard time patenting "the players make up the game themselves and we just supply dice." Seriously, this thing lists for $39.95 and doesn't even come with trivia questions since you make it all up on your own. I have to pay $40 to create my own game? The Chicago Tribune rated NAQ as one of the Top 10 Cool Games of the Year. Either there were only four games released in 2006 or I'd rather have a zebra in a blender than have a Chi-Tri sitting on my doorstep Sunday morning.

Rating:

---

20070906

One of the benefits of ministry work are the comedic elements that slip in through the day. Because y'know. Just because two people share the same faith, doesn't mean they are on remotely the same wavelength.

Our receptionist-in-chief received a music CD recently from our Lord and Saviour, ostensibly. Need proof?

And yet, despite the overwhelming joy some of us might experience at the divine revelation of the music of heaven, others of us are suspicious of both heart and mind. Skeptics in sheep's clothing if you will. No, there were certain details that immediately leapt to mind and prompted us to think that this might not necessarily be the work of theophany or miracle, but of something far more mundane: a very human person of poor taste and spelling.

In the first place, it is virtually certain that the creator of all that is would know how to spell the receptionist's name correctly. So either the deliverer of this by-appearance didn't actually know her name, or perhaps Crysti doesn't know how to spell her own name. I'm open to either explanation at this point. So in the second place, the creative soul of the world would likely have better taste; the included music is the definition of schmaltz. And lastly, it is doubtful that a good and holy and just God would feel the need to pirate music in order that our receptionist might bask in the warmth of RIAA-thwarting pabulum masquerading as musical substance.

UPDATE: as it has been unveiled (as it was meant to be unveiled!), the disc was not the gift of the Messiah at all but instead the product of a really nice guy who is a touch over-eager in the realm of spiritual matters and for some reason really wants the receptionist to listen to Track #11. I suspect backwards masking. In any case, I'm troubled that she is the sole bearer of his gifting affections - as I believe myself to be at least as handsome as she.

20070905

My thumb seems to be healing at last. It's still early to tell, but I carved a pumpkin for the Labour Day party we threw a couple days back and it didn't hurt at all. So hooray for that. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take a picture of the carved rind until the day after, by which time the carving had begun to collapse in upon itself as the pumpkin* rotted. Still, you can make out most of the details and if you click on the image, you can see a comparison between the pumpkin and the BANG! card I modeled it after: Tequila Joe (Tequila Joe and Slab the Killer are my two favourites).**

*note: no matter the fruit, once carved, it is a pumpkin.

**note: the party was a day-long game day, hence the theme-appropriate carving.

20070904

Pulling once again out of the old art archives, here's a three dimensional piece I did in eighth grade, so get out your 3D goggles and have a good old time. And yeah, in 1987 and 1988, I was all about the third dimesnion. And yes again, 3D glasses will actually work on this (red on your left eye, blue on your right). Oh, and as always, click to bigger it: