Balls and Walnuts
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Braided
This morning, I bought Braid online, and of course Jake’s the one who’s playing right now. Truly the mark of incipient old age: whether it’s chess or Braid or some tower game (Defense Grid the Awakening, to be exact), I’d rather watch my son play than get involved myself.
Braid is a Super Mario-style game with fiendishly clever puzzles all based upon the main character’s ability to manipulate time. His time-shifting abilities differ from one world to the next; for example, in the first world he only has a rewind function, while in a subsequent world, his motion (left versus right) controls time’s arrow. The result is that the exact same puzzle map in one world has a wildly different solution in the next.
There is a certain amount of arcade-style coordination-intensive keypunching which I dislike, but this seems to be unavoidable in scrollers like this (Oddworld, which I love dearly, has a similar flaw). I wish my puzzle games were puzzles and nothing more. Still, I prefer Braid to the Myst/Riven/Uru games, where you bang your head up against a wall trying to figure out how this lever makes that doowhizzle spin in order to make a gearbox door open, thus allowing you to let the light from Keyhole A hit Lens B just so, opening a door to Engine Room C . . . you get the idea.
Braid’s music is great, too. Unfortunately, you’ll be screwing with time so much (and thus, screwing with the soundtrack) that you’ll feel like a 1960s teenager searching for secret messages on Abbey Road.
The main character wants to find his girlfriend the Princess. Their relationship has hit the skids and has somehow wandered off into the realm of the hopeless. Hell, he can’t even find her (she’s been kidnapped by a monster, I think — don’t you hate it when that happens?) But he has learned from his mistakes, and now, wiser, he wants to go back in time to make things right.
This story is told in brief snatches between worlds (levels). The writing is alternately impressive and annoying, possibly the work of someone with a lot of raw but unpolished talent. Sometimes the author tries a little too hard.
I predict that when the little guy in the dress jacket finally finds his princess, no combination of time-shifting abilities will make things right again. Or at least, that’s how I would end things.
D.
Bakersfield!
I was going to write a “God help them, they know not what they do” post, but I think perhaps I should sign the contract first 🙂
D.
The need for speed
Picture it:
I’m catching the Red Eye from Portland back to San Francisco International, which means I have to be up at 4:30 to make my flight. Night before my trip, I’m in bed by 10, but the hours tick away as I lie awake, fretting about my now-history Portland interview. It’s 10:30. Six hours of sleep? I can function on six hours —
It’s 2:30. Yeah, I can function on two hours of sleep. Not well, but I can function.
Every half hour, something roars by the window. It’s the most massive street cleaner I’ve ever seen, the mega-Zamboni of street sweepers, and I find myself wondering why it has to clean the same street again and again.
Nice thing about the Red Eye, it gets its tail into the air on time, and before I know it I’m picking up my Toyota from long term parking. I couldn’t sleep on the plane, still too distracted over Portland.
All I can think about is getting home. Fast.
Post 2000
I thought that was kind of remarkable.
I keep hoping that when my life settles down, I’ll have time to reflect, to write, to entertain again.
I miss the old Balls and Walnuts.
D.
Cool critter of the week
We saw one of these at the California Academy of Sciences on Sunday:
I’ll quote someone else:
The males grab onto the females in piggyback fashion, hanging on in front of her hind legs. The frog pair rolls over while floating in the water, and the female lays three to five eggs while she is in the upside down position. The eggs catch on the male’s belly, then drop onto the female’s back as the pair completes the roll. Instead of the eggs sticking to vegetation or floating off into the water as they do with most frogs, the eggs stay on the mother’s back, where they become caught. Her skin swells up around the sides of each egg. In all, she may have about 50 eggs on her back, which remain there for the next three or four months. At that time, the eggs hatch right into froglets, which pop right out of her back.
We saw a female with eggs on her back in various stages of development. Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense that they would be at different stages, unless her back traps the eggs before fertilization and they’re fertilized at different times? I dunno. One of the mysteries of life.
Oh, wait! Only 3 to 5 eggs per mating, up to fifty on her back . . . whoa, she’s been busy!
D.
Some folks can’t take criticism
In the new California Academy of Sciences Tropical Rain Forest Exhibit, Karen overheard a mom telling her kid that chameleons change color to blend with their surroundings.
We were all milling around the Chamaeleo pardalis display. Don’t know who this guy is trying to blend with, but his shirt must be fabulous.
Karen said, “No, they don’t,” and the woman looked as if she wanted to slap Karen silly. (I’m betting the wheelchair saved my wife’s skinny ass.) “I’m sorry?” she said.
I think Karen understood right away that she had somehow stepped in it. Apparently this is a woman you don’t correct. But Karen pressed on.
“It’s a common misconception. They’re not trying to blend, they’re communicating with one another — for mating purposes, or to say, ‘Get away.'”
IIRC the woman countered with, “Okay, whatever,” in her best fuck-you tone of voice, which led to Karen asserting dominance by saying, “No, no, I used to breed them!”
I got Karen out of there before they came to blows.
D.
A fundamental misunderstanding of time travel
From Cracked Dot Com: Worst Excuse Ever?
Okay, here’s a question for you: has anyone out there read Jonathan Stroud’s (he of the Bartimaeus Trilogy) new book Heroes of the Valley? Any good?
Am currently reading Michael Swanwick’s The Dog Said Bow Wow. Interesting. Interestingly bad. I love Swanwick’s novels — just got done with Dragons of Babel, which I recommend without reservation — but his short stories never fail to disappoint. Most of them were pubbed in Asimov’s, and it shows. They all have that same cheesiness which turned me off Asimov’s and F&SF years ago.
Only one story thus far has intrigued me (if only briefly) — The Bordello in Faerie, about a young man who discovers he likes being whored to the magical beings of Faerie. Wonderful premise, great follow-through, but then the whole thing fizzled. It felt like Swanwick had had a great idea but not a great story.
Read any good books lately?
D.
Brilliant
What would I do without my son to turn me on to strokes of genius like Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog? From Joss Whedon (you know — Buffy, Firefly). It starts here.
D.
Young men have lost their appeal
Bad enough my flight was 2 hours late flying out of Ontario. (Ontario CALIFORNIA, Rella!) No, they had to seat me in front of some 400 pounds of male twenty-somethings, two exemplars of Jocko testosterosus. They reeked of alcohol and blood and bluster. I remembered a dozen or more of the drunks I sewed up during my residency, tough guys who weren’t so tough when you came at ’em with wimpy little 25 gauge needles. Big men.
I wish I could have slept, but their mouths never stopped. Remember Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen’s you know how I know you’re gay? routine in 40-Year Old Virgin? Imagine that, without the humor. Imagine Beavis and Butthead grown up. Heh heh heh. Shut the F$%# up! No, you shut the F$%# up! You F$%#’in shut up or I’m gonna kick your ass so high it’ll be like, high. No, you shut the F$%# up or so help me I’ll break your nose. It’ll be so fun to watch you waah like a baby.
I figure they had to be at least 21, right? Because the stewardess served them booze. Like they needed more. Fortunately, our prop jet was noisy enough I couldn’t hear most of their conversation. Only when their laughter descended into argument (about once every five minutes) could I pick out the words. You’re so ugly you’re like, uggg-leee. You’re so ugly my butt gets better dates.
I predicted that when the plane stopped, they’d be the first out of their seats, and they would charge to the front of the plane. And I was right.
D.