Navigation

Author Archive | Roderick

Name of the Game

By on November 19, 2009 8
Paragon Park's Bermuda Triangle

Paragon Park's Bermuda Triangle

Back in the mid-80s – and specifically, IIRC, the summers of ’84 and ’85 – I worked at a now-defunct amusement park in Hull, Massachusetts, called Paragon Park (which proudly advertised itself as featuring “the world’s oldest all-wooden rollercoaster,” like that was a good thing). And in the park’s arcade area, hidden amongst the pinball machines, was the most amazing video game I’d ever seen.

I don’t remember what the game was called, but it featured a race among flying cars zooming along a highway that twisted and curved through outer space (so one had to dodge random asteroids and so on). This game not only had far more sophisticated and realistic digital imagery than anything I’d seen before – it also had far more sophisticated and realistic digital imagery than anything I would see for years after that, while relatively unfancy-looking games like Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, and Snake continued to dominate the market.

Eventually, of course the look of my mystery game became standard throughout the industry, and its quality has long since been surpassed. Still, for a long time that game was, in my experience at least, a solitary advanced scout for the wave of the future, without contemporary parallel or, apparently, contemporary fame. So my question is: do any of my readers have any idea what this game could have been?

Not having a picture of the game, I offer a picture of my favourite ride (both to ride and to operate) at Paragon Park – the Bermuda Triangle.

Uncle Sam Goddamn

By on November 15, 2009 4

 
(Video CHT Kelly Patterson via Charles.)

Lyrics:

Welcome to the United Snakes
land of the thief
home of the slave
the grand imperial guard
where the dollar is sacred and proud

Smoke and mirrors, stripes and stars
stolen for the cross in the name of God
bloodshed, genocide, rape, and fraud
writ into the pages of the law, good lord
the cold continent [?] latchkey child
ran away one day and started acting foul
king of where the wild things are – daddy’s proud
’cause the Roman Empire done passed it down
imported and tortured a work force
and never healed the wounds or shook the curse off
now the grown up Goliath nation
holdin’ open auditions for the part of David
can ya feel?
nothing can save ya, you question the reign
you get rushed in and chained up
fist raised but I must be insane
’cause I can’t figure a single goddamn way to change it

Welcome to the United Snakes
land of the thief
home of the slave
the grand imperial guard
where the dollar is sacred
and power is God

All must bow to the fat and lazy
the fuck you obey me
and why do they hate me – who me?
only two generations away
from the world’s most despicable slavery trade
pioneered so many ways to degrade
a human being that it can’t be changed to this day
legacy so ingrained in the way that we think
we no longer need chains to be slaves
lord, it’s a shameful display
the overseers even got raped along the way
’cause the children can’t escape from the pain
and they born with the poisonous hatred in their veins
try an’ separate a man from his soul
you only strengthen him and lose your own
but shoot that fucker if he walk near the throne
remind him that this is my home – now I’m gone

You don’t give money to the bums
on a corner with a sign
bleeding from their gums
talking about you don’t support a crackhead
what you think happens to the money from your taxes?
shit, the government’s an addict
with a billion-dollar-a-week kill-brown-people habit
and even if you ain’t on the front line
when Massa yell crunch time you right back at it
plain look at how you hustling backwards
at the end of the year add up what they subtracted
three outta twelve months your salary pay for that madness
man, that’s savage
what’s left? – get a big ass plasma
to see where they made Dan Rather point the damn camera
only approved questions get answered
now stand your ass up for that national anthem

Custom made (you’re so low)
to consume the noose (you’re so low)
keep saying we’re free (you’re so low)
but we’re all just loose (you’re so low)
keep saying we’re free (you’re so low)
but we’re all just loose (you’re so low)

Geographiction?

By on November 15, 2009 10

The Wikipedia page for Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in Eighty Days comments that “Verne is often characterised as a futurist or science fiction author, but there is not a glimmer of science-fiction in this, his most popular work.”

Earth

Well, there is no generally agreed-upon definition of science fiction (see this list of proposed definitions; my own view is that it’s a family-resemblance concept for which no precise definition should be expected). Some definitions do require that the story’s milieu be different from our own as the result of scientific or technological advances – and by that standard Around the World indeed does not count as science fiction. But at least one popular definition or family of definitions focuses merely on the idea of a story that depends crucially on some point of science – without necessarily involving extrapolation to some alternative milieu. Given that the plot of Around the World turns on the fact that one gains or loses a day when crossing the international date line, the novel thus does count as science fiction by some definitions (geography being, y’know, a science), so the “not a glimmer” line is something of an exaggeration – perhaps yet another example (see here and here) of the bizarre resistance on the part of some Verne fans to seeing Verne characterised as a science fiction writer. At any rate, those who make these pronouncements seem oddly incurious about what the proper contours of the concept of science fiction might be.

I would add that Verne’s Captain Hatteras, generally not considered sf, has even greater claim than Around the World to the category, since it portrays a successful expedition to the North Pole at a time when this had not yet happened, and speculates (inaccurately, but not impossibly) as to what would be found there – thereby turning (unlike Around the World) not just on a point of science but on an extrapolated future development of a science (viz. geography); and similar remarks apply to Five Weeks in a Balloon and Measuring a Meridian. Those who deny it the title of sf are implicitly assuming, I suspect, that the only relevant extrapolations of science are those that involve new technology.

IP Query

By on November 11, 2009 4

anarchy vs. copyright

A question for IP experts: What is the legal status of falsely claiming copyright?

I often see reprints of works that are definitely in the public domain, stamped by their publishers with a current copyright (with no qualification as to what’s being copyrighted, e.g., no restriction to a new introduction or to new illustrations – and often there’s no such new material in any case).

Given that such copyright notices could be interpreted as implying a threat of force that is regarded as illegitimate even under current IP law, is there any law against what they’re doing? Are they vulnerable to any sort of cease-and-desist order? Or are false copyright notices just regarded as harmless speech until they make an effort to enforce them?

Six Hours of Your Life That You’ll Never Get Back

By on November 11, 2009 1

DESTROY THIS MAD BRUTE -- ENLIST

Today commemorates the day that thousands lost their lives during the six hours after an end to World War I had been officially agreed to through negotiation, because the powers that be wanted the symbolism of ending the war at 11:00 on 11/11 (hell, why not 11:11 on 11/11?); see World War I: Wasted Lives on Armistice Day. (CHT Jesse Walker.)

Of course, the lives that were lost in World War I before Armistice Day were pretty much wasted too; but at least it was pretended (on both sides) that those lives were lost in the service of some cause of great significance – democracy, or Kultur, or an end to all further war. By contrast, on Armistice Day the pointlessness of all the mass slaughter, along with the attitude of the powerful to those under their control, was revealed without disguise, in all its naked unloveliness. Happy Armistice Day.

Powered by WordPress. Designed by WooThemes