Tag: art

Moses down from Sinai, a poem

unattributed.

You never forget
The words of
A vagrant prophet
A junkie messiah
Anointed in the
Castoffs of the
World, spiced
By the rancid
Odor of
Rotting teeth

No

You never forget
Never mind
That he’s deranged
Consumed by
A hunger
Nothing here
In reality
Can provide

In hoarse words
He assaults your ears
Spitting preacher’s words
From a waste bin pulpit

“The world opens
And shopping
Carts fall in,
Then you
Will know
The age of
Garbage has
Come
The rise of the Refused.”

Powerful words
Even when they
Mean nothing
For a mere coin
More such street
Wisdom can be
Bought
For a bottle of
Cheap liquor
An Apocalypse
Is yours

Just remember
The given words
Are yours alone
For this destitute
Joshua leaves
All his memories
At the bottom
Of empty bottles

Trying to free
Himself of the demon,
God.

 

PS – If you enjoyed reading this, if this touched you in anyway. Please let me know. This is one of (many) poems I am considering for submission. I’d like some feedback and critique though, as I can’t get it anywhere else. So, if you have a moment please leave a comment with your thoughts. Thank you.

MADE: Creating a space for Video games

That’s the video pitch for the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment in San Fransisco. MADE is raising money right now on Kickstarter to rent out a space where they can set up the Museum (as of this writing they had 50 more days and only $8,000 more to go.) I’ve already given money to the program. I’m writing this though to tell you why you should to.

Unlike books, movies, music, paintings, sculptures, and every other artistic work. Video games don’t have museums, galleries, libraries, or archives to preserve them. They don’t even have the recognition of being works of art in many circles. Videogames, as seen by the mainstream, are just more disposable entertainment. Sadly, this view is too often held even by game designers and publishers who have been only too happy to condemn design documents, artwork, and code to the trash heap.

This problem is compounded by videogames digital nature. Digital storage mediums degrade at a rate that would give archivists heart-attacks. The hard- and soft-ware necessary to run much of this code does not only degrade with time, but some of it is irreplaceable and no one knows how to repair or maintain it. Code can be preserved but art has to be delivered in a context and much of it is being consigned into landfills or recycled at e-waste centers.

That’s where MADE comes in! They want to not only preserve videogames as artistic works but to present them in their original context. Old Sierra On-line games running in DOS, Atari 2400s hooked up to old CRT televisions, etc.

To read more about the preservation crisis that the video games industry is facing please see John Anderson’s articles on the subject [1, 2]

I know that the space MADE sets up is going to be small. But, I can envision a day when MADE is just as large and important  as the MoMA, or Smithsonian  and where people will come to see and experience the work of past designers who were able to meld story, art, and interaction into what we so commonly call “games.”

I know you’ve got five dollars lying around you aren’t using, so why haven’t you clicked over to Kickstarter and helped preserved our heritage?

Ultramarines: HQ Units

This was more of that “needs more metal miniatures” I was talking about last weekend… So here are some pictures of the various HQ units for my Ultramarines Army in Warhammer 40k. I think I painted these seven or eight years ago before I came up to college. I bought into 40k during third edition. Instead of saving the money I made at my job for college I spent large amounts of it on little toy soldiers and their accessories.

Since moving up to Davis I haven’t done a lot of painting or playing WH40k which is a shame because I really do enjoy the game and the hobby. (Worse I have friends up here who want to play it with me!) Maybe if you see these and tell me how great they look, how you want to see more, and wonderful things like that I might find the energy/time to finish assembling, painting, and playing with all the models I have lying around.

I don’t know how Games Workshop or Privateer Press takes pictures of their models… However they do it, I wish they’d share. I swear while these might not be professional grade models they don’t look as bad as these pictures make them appear. If the pointer hovers over the image you’ll get some inside commentary on painting these little guys!

Tiny space marines fight across enemy held desk
The Old Marneus Calgar
Captain with power sword and storm bolter
Chief Librarian Tigerius
Chaplain
Techmarine
Veteran Sargeant

There is an apothecary in that group photo but every picture I tried to take of him was a blurry, white mess. That’s it for the HQ. If I continue doing this I’ll put up pictures of my Elites next.

Next time I’ll do it myself!

Five lions are always better than one

I was going to write about some of the books I found at my parent’s house today but I have all sorts of books and I’m getting more and more all the time. So a blogpost about books didn’t seem to be that interesting. Then I was going to blog about the state of education in California and how the Legislature intends to deal with the problems in the upcoming year but, that takes a lot of research I haven’t quote done yet (I might do it someday.) So, I was kinda at a loss as to what to make today’s post about… I could do another picture diary of Ninja Turtles or video game manuals or some other random thing I have in my closet but I wasn’t feeling that either.

So what is a blogger with writer’s block to do? Oh it’s February and my Let’s Play of King’s Quest II: Romancing the Throne starts!  I can write about that… Except I haven’t started it yet. Hrmm. Hrmm. I got my W-2s and I can do my taxes now and get a fat tax return! No, that is boring… I know!  I’ll talk about how I was ripped off last night by Dimple (They bought out part of Tower Records.)

Dimple is a one-stop music/movie/video game store that also sells vinyl and objects usually found in a Hot Topic. I’ve never shopped at the store all I knew is that they bought used Movies, CDs, and Video games. I recently needed to make some money and after putting numerous items on eBay was slightly burned out making auctions and wanted something simple. So I forego the internet and head over to Dimple with the entire American Voltron cartoon collection, the kind that came in these nice fancy tins. Now prices for these thing seem to be all over the place on-line. Amazon has volume four for just over five dollars, volume one for sixteen, and volume two for over thirty… Ebay’s prices are just as erratic with brand new copies costing $9.99 and used ones in good condition for over thirty. Perhaps there is some misunderstanding and some of these are in the tins and others are not. I don’t know. I do know though that all Dimple gave me was $16.  Yup, if I had wanted to buy a CD (and who does that anymore) I could have received $20 in store credit. It doesn’t matter how cheap these things are now I would have made more money if I hadn’t saved myself the minor trouble and sold the things myself.

Dimple isn’t the only store that does this. Gamestop is notorious for its used game policy. Gamestop will give you less than half of what a game is worth in store credit, even less for cash and then put it back on the shelves for just under the price of a brand new copy. The margins they have on used games are criminal. This is why I always sell my games on-line.  Even if I don’t get much I’m guaranteed to get more than I would from Gamestop and the person buying from me is likely to get the game cheaper as well!

Laziness is expensive I guess.  Here are some more cool pictures of Voltron:

JPRart
lastscionz
Mborkowski
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