simosakari

And that was all he wrote. At least here, or at least for now.

I have come to feel I am losing precious time with this journal. I still like many things I have posted (mostly some time ago), and that others have posted in response—but the returns have become so diminished of late it no longer feels worth it. I wish it did, but wishing does not make it so.

Thank you for everything to all my friends, most especially cavefelem. I love you.

As for the future, allow me to take out my crystal ball and slip into my fortune-teller's turban.

I believe the future development of adventure games will involve (like Jane Jensen said in an interview) something more holodeck-like. And not only in terms of being three-dimensional, but in other ways as well. In fact the closer the experience of playing a game gets to the ease and enjoyability of the holodecks in Star Trek: The Next Generation (when they work!), the more I enjoy them.

The technology already exists to add virtual three-dimensional elements to actual physical environments. Currently the technology requires wearing special glasses, but sometime in the future even that will not be necessary.

But aside from the technological challenges, I think there is something more fundamental missing from most adventure games these days. I have spent years and years thinking about this and the conclusion I have reached is that adventure games almost never any longer speak to the fantasy-fulfilling aspects of our psyches. In their aim for supposed non-derivativeness or so-called realism or verisimilitude, storylines have become so specific and so elaborated that they have lost that appeal.

Keepsake, for example, just to use the first example that comes to mind. I can only speak for myself, but I have never had any particular wish to wander endlessly around a large deserted academy with only a guy who has been turned into a wolf for company. Or CSI. I have never wanted to be a drudge (no matter how personable a drudge) going over one depressing crime scene after another with various technological gadgets.

But I have fantasised at some stage in my life about the roles I get to experience in certain classic detective games, and in Police Quest, and the couple of Star Trek games from Interplay, and yes, in the Larry games as well, to name just a few.

These classics fulfil the simple desire to act out an archetypal role, just as Captain Picard will go into the holodeck to act out the part of Dixon Hill, the hard-boiled detective, or Commander Riker will recreate a New Orleans bar of the early 20th century.

This is what I miss in adventure games these days. (Well, that and a sense of fun and adventure, and the ability to affect the outcome of conversations and at least minor parts of the story. As was already done some 15 years ago by Interplay.)

[From a posting on CORT-X, The Unofficial Gray Matter Website.]

These magazines are in danger of extinction. While neither of them is perfect, I really do feel the world needs decent competition for Future Publishing and their stranglehold on the market (virtual monopolies breed complacency). I wish there was something I could do.

Heal everyone and everything.

There are those who will smile with you when all is sunshine and roses, but disappear, or worse, come dusk and dark; when the roses wither ere the dawn of another season of plenty. This evening I praise all who will extend their hands even in the cold and uncertain night.

English voiceovers for the upcoming Jane Jensen adventure game Gray Matter (2010) have been recorded. Steven Pacey is Dr David Styles, Phillipa Alexander Samantha Everett. (Source: GameBoomers)

I have missed reading comic books. I enjoy the ephemera that go with monthly issues: the letter columns, previews of other titles, background material on the creators, the ads, even the newsprint of times past.

The world of random mid-run issues is a world of free love: you can flit from one flower to the next without committing to a long-term relationship unless you really want to—which is when you go for the collected editions.

I just got Star Trek: The Space Between from IDW Publishing, their first title based on the license. I am deliberately spacing these out so that I read only one issue per evening.


But in order to sate the appetite thus stimulated, I dipped into my cases of semirandom back issues of various titles and came up with a reprint of the sixth and last part of John Byrne's The Man of Steel. I like many aspects of Byrne's work here and elsewhere, but I have to admit that Superman in this series comes across as something of a thoughtless, though well-meaning, oaf.

For example, his reaction to having the sum total of Krypton's art, history, sciences, and so on dumped into his brain is basically, "I have all this in my mind. I could recreate these things. But when it comes down to it, it is all meaningless. What matters is that I am here on Earth, in America."

Fine as far as it goes but what of the heritage of all those Kryptonians? To consign all that they were, all that they knew, all that they would ever be, to the scrapheap of the ages, eventually to disappear for all time with his own passing . . .

(Imagine if McCoy had simply placed Spock's katra in the Recycle Bin, then multiply that by how many billion inhabitants? Admittedly not quite as bad as clicking on "Empty the Recycle Bin" right away.)

This may be kind of a silly problem to have but here goes. Last week I was prescribed these eyedrops for an apparent eye inflammation. They were of a fairly thick consistency that irritated the skin on my eyelids, making them somewhat itchy. Over the last few days I noticed my eyes were getting increasingly runny. The emulsion I had to put in my eyes for the night seemed less of a skin irritant.

Now the inflammation seems almost completely gone and I ran out of the eyedrops, but my eyes still feel a little sore and a little runny. The problem is that as it happens, I have been feeling, coincidentally with the eye inflammation, very down lately. So now I am not sure if I simply feel like crying or whether it is an aftereffect of the eye problem or the treatment, or all of the above. I would like to avoid crying for now, so as not to irritate the eyes any further.

But a relapse would not be good either and since the drops did not quite last the recommended week, I may just have to consult a nurse.

The main problem I have with the new Star Trek film series so far is the amount of unlikely physical action. One of the main appeals of Star Trek for me has always been that it was the universe I wanted to live in. The frenetic, frankly testosterone-fuelled universe depicted in the new film, comprising one belief-beggaring action sequence after another, is no longer that universe. Psychologically, such a life would lead to severe shell shock, assuming you even survived it for ten seconds—hardly an inspirational future towards which to build. And this latter is an awfully important aspect of Star Trek. I live in hope they will move in that direction with the sequels, though it seems unlikely they will be toning down the action quotient.

Which is unfortunate, because I see no reason why a thoughtful story could not be compelling again the way it was with Star Trek III: The Search for Spock or Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. There was not a single moment in these older films that had me thinking the characters would have broken several major bones by now, and probably their necks as well. As everyone must realise by now, CGI makes it ridiculously easy for filmmakers to put in gratuitous, and ultimately mindnumbing, action sequences that in no way stand up to scrutiny in terms of how likely it is that all the main characters would emerge through not just one, but numerous such sequences without either major brain damage, a serious case of death, or at least need for some kind of medical attention.

I have smaller quibbles regarding why it was necessary to make one of the Starfleet applicants nothing less than a violent idiot (and worse, he got in!), or destroy Vulcan, or kill off Spock's mother (other than to avoid paying for Winona Ryder again), etc. But it is mainly this avowed aim of the current creators to make the films more Star Wars-like that is preventing me from enjoying this incarnation quite wholeheartedly. Surely it would be better to play to the intellectual property's own native strengths than try to make it into something we already have too much of anyway.

A new love have I, her name is Beauty,
Her skin is black, powerful is her frame;
What lies within, yet more powerful still.

I bid her come to me, she said she would,
Now waits for my pleasure, sat on my desk;
My new love awaits, to do what I will.( Worksafe? )

Dear Diary,

Today I relistened to Martin Landau's audio commentary for The Twilight Zone episode "Mr Denton on Doomsday". I was reminded of what a very special man he is.

Well, I think it is time for bed again. Good night, Dear Diary!

A while ago I wrote that many of Tim Burton's films seem to work less well for me than they work for many others. But as counterbalance for this statement I would like to point out that Ed Wood may be my favourite film of all time.

One of my favourite moments at FinnCon 2008 came when a panelist described the typical fantasy book's "trekking through various biotopes".

This elicited a hearty belly laugh from fellow panelist M John Harrison. Upon recovery, he said with almost incredulous but unreserved admiration, "That was so cool!"

And he added, nodding vigorously to the other, "And very accurate!" It was such an authentic and irresistible reaction, a real moment of reality.

Dear Diary,

We went swimming today at Rauhaniemi (Cape of Peace). The water was cold. Then we played a couple of rounds of a funnily named game where you throw a wooden block at other wooden blocks. I won one.

Today I learned that it is not about winning, it is about who scores the most points. Well, I guess it is time for bed. Good night, Dear Diary.

OMG JFK izded :(

I wholeheartedly share the feeling expressed in the paragraph immediately preceding and that immediately following the picture in this entry from M John Harrison's blog (13 May 2009).

Colin Wilson, Alan Moore, Allen Ginsberg, Walt Whitman, William Burroughs: writers who have said things that have been helpful for me and to whom I have had the same basic progression of reactions from delighted discovery to slow reveal of subsequent disquietude to eventual acceptance of the complexity of the individuals. They cannot be fitted into boxes labeled Accept or Reject. In the final analysis we have all of us suffered too much already and deserve continued attempts at understanding rather than ostracism of whatever kind. I continue to read and learn from them and they have my gratitude. I hope to write tributes to them all when I feel more able to cope with the perplexities of the multiform universe.

[Annotated asylum for a comment now removed from a friend's journal for being unwelcome. There is no implied criticism here of anyone who likes things that work less well for me, or vice versa.]

"Personally I have always loved the original Lewis Carroll stories and John Tenniel's illustrations[1] and think Tim Burton's upcoming film looks terrible.[2] Actually all his films seem to look the same these days.[3] (Their colour schemes hurt my sensibilities something awful, like the Warren Beatty adaptation of Dick Tracy.) I feel basically the same about Neil Gaiman's work.[4] Both creators seem rather stuck playing themselves.[5] Ah, but never mind me. It is terrific if others like what they are doing.[6] Still, I thought I would voice a differing opinion."[7]

[1] This is just the way it was: I read the books over and over, watched the animated series, and it was one of my favourite imaginary games to play as a child.
[2] The most concise way of expressing the feeling I get from this and many adaptations these days is, "This is not the way to do these things." An obscure part of my psyche says, "Ralph Bakshi's motion capture". Something about the overcooked visuals is similarly depressing.
[3] This is not to say there are not many good things about them.
[4] Same here.
[5] This may not be entirely their own fault. Their admirers generally seem to regard their work as something of a brand and might be disappointed if they did something really new. But it would certainly be in these creators' power to do very much more if they wanted to.
[6] I would not say this if I did not mean it.
[7] Because I enjoy a genuine exchange of different views and ideas. I sometimes forget not everyone does. I do not play games with opinions and would not use them as implied insults.

I think the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Yesterday's Enterprise" occupies a uniquely important place in the history of this intellectual property, its portrayal of an alternative timeline an eerily prescient anticipation of the franchise's actual future development.

We were all crowding inside the church where they were about to show A Matter of Life and Death, the 1946 film on which I had just seen an article written by Oliver Sacks. Most people had already found their places on the pews; I was still in the foyer. They started rolling film, but I had to go to the bathroom. I walked to the other end of the foyer, entered the bathroom, and closed the door. I thought maybe a couple of minutes passed by.

But when I emerged back into the foyer, the film was over. Everyone was filing out of the church. I had lost almost two hours. I had no recollection whatsoever of what I could have been doing in that time. Later they found some bloody towels in the bathroom's laundry bin. Everyone was convinced I had murdered someone, and the worst of it was that I could not say for certain they were wrong.

This was my first experience of missing time, albeit in a dream. What makes the dream particularly interesting for me, apart from the possible symbolism with the church and the title of the film, is the chronology of events:

1. It is morning; I am sleeping; I experience the dream up to the point where I have closed the bathroom door and seated myself on the toilet. (Is this more symbolism? While everyone else sits on pews, watching a classic film, I "take my seat" in the toilet.)

2. I stir in my dream and cavefelem, already awake, asks if I want coffee. I say no, thank you, I really need to get some more sleep.

3. I fall back asleep; the dream picks up from the moment I exit the bathroom and find people filing out of the church. There follow long drawn-out suspicions of murder in the midst of some kind of hybrid schoolroom experience to which my subconscious is treating me; this I rather enjoy, since I get to flirt with some classmates I had a thing for (which particular flirting never happened in the waking world).

4. It is afternoon; I wake up. I reconstruct this chronology.

Admittedly I cannot be absolutely certain this was the sequence of events, since I was drifting in and out of sleep for much of it. But it was rather a relief to realise the whole episode involving missing time was a dream.