 |
version seven. http://demongin.org |
No, You're the Liminar
A few items; mostly concerning popular entertainments.
Monday, 2005-01-24 | Classic Gin, Film, Lists, Music, Videogames
Form, certain of us have said, necessarily follows function and exceptions to this rule (those ones that therefore make its existence as a rule possible) are found only in the world of art.
Functionally, I am impaired--scattered and ruined (cf. the Latin root). Therefore, the form that this entry will take will be one that is analogous to my scattered, ruined state. As always, I encourage you to invite bullet-points and lists with suspicion and contempt:
- Koji Igarashi's Castlevania: Lament of Innocence would have been a great game if he had bothered to finish it. As it stands, we are certain and comfortable in our certainty that the game lacks polish. I would also like to suggest that we regard the game as fundamentally incomplete; we should regard it as we regard some of the other potentially great but sadly unfinished games of history like Bungie's Halo or Sega's Otogi.
- If you follow Nine Inch Nails (and I do), you might be in an uproar over the recent activity at T. Razzle's website. Not only has he gone so far as to declare a release date for the forthcoming NIN album, With Teeth, in early May, but he has also vowed that there will be a tour and that the new NIN band will 'destroy you.' This particular boy has cried wolf so many times, however, that it is not only difficult to respond excitedly (or even enthusiastically) to these bombastic and bellicose declaimations, but impossible; the closest thing to a response I can muster is a bemused and patronizing smile, as if I meant to say to him, 'Oh yeah, when those tickets and albums go on sale, I'll be right there next to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny to catch the first glimpse of the Emperor's New Clothes.'
- It's hardly appropriate to throw this off as a bullet-point or one memorandum among many memorandums, but it certainly seems to be the case that the Oliver Stone's incredibly career is careening to an ignominous close. I Was reflecting on such classics as Platoon, Wall Street and Natural Born Killers and thinking about how unfortunate it is that a man of such certain vision and exacting specificity should fade into a cacophonous series of universally panned student films. I still haven't actually seen Alexander, however, so it is entirely possible that his latest work is a redemptive one. Given his trajectory that seems a stretch.
- There is a certain discomfort that I experience when people ask me if I'm 'religious.' I'm never sure how to answer them cleverly and assaultively, so I generally just say, 'oh yeah--big time,' because I figure that is the answer that they simultaneously desire and fear. If it makes a few people a bit more secure in their complacent Persian Bazaar of conjecture and generalization, i.e. if it helps a handful of Yalies regard the Chop Suey of mixed metaphors and appropriated divinities of Kevin Smith's Dogma with a little bit more smugness, I'm all for it.
- Contrary to what you may or may not have heard, I too experience existential angst from time to time. The difference between myself and others, however, is that I don't believe in mine; effectively exercising matter over mind. You might like to try it some time; the next time you feel like you're wasting your life, try to remember that existential perfection is a state of selflessness not totally unlike that experienced by ants, worker bees or cockroaches.
