Talisman's A Charm

There now follows the second and final part of my brief series on "Things I forced Tiger into doing over the weekend". Not content with risking the total collapse of her brain over the threat of Paranormal Activity, I was also prepared to render her mind so catatonic with boredom that she would be prepared to use the last ergs of her synaptic energy to try and kill herself with a pointy strength token.

I speak, of course, of Tiger's first journey into the world of Talisman.

In some respects, it was my first foray as well, in that it marked my initial experience with the game's latest incarnation, the first one to be produced by Fantasy Flight rather than Games Workshop. Talisman was a staple of my late adolescence, and is still played religiously once a year at Christmas, so I was understandably nervous about whether this brand new version could live up to the memories of my all-but-vanished youth.

Turns out, mercifully, that it can, just about. It's still an easy game to pick up (certainly compared with, say, Arkham Horror or Battlestar Galactica), but manages to be simple without being linear. The quality of the artwork has much improved as well. Paradoxically, though, that's my biggest problem with this new edition. 3rd Edition was absolutely packed with the zany, almost cartoony humour that dominated Games Workshop thinking for so much of the mid '90s. Looking back, I definitely think they made the right choice to tone down the madcap keraaazee in Warhammer and (especially) 40K, but for Talisman, which operated in a self-contained realm (perhaps as some alternate dimension in which the Warhammer World runs along slightly different lines), the cheekiness of the setup added massively to the charm. There is little doubt that the artwork is now objectively better (see below for a comparison), but a lot of that is in the sense of being more realistic, and greater realism isn't necessarily very helpful in a game where you might run into a ghoul and a minstrel fighting over who gets to have themselves a pet unicorn.

I guess there are advantages to the game attempting to form its own identity, rather than cribbing Warhammer's, though in the process we've lost the Citadel miniatures that were so satisfying to paint (I'm worried whether the flexible plastic pieces the latest game comes with can be painted at all). If it came down to it, though, I'd still rather play the 3rd Edition (though in fairness I'm comparing the earlier edition with all of its expansions and the latter edition with none); the only real improvement is that the experience system now works much more sensibly (no more gaining craft for beating up a few goblins, or somehow exchanging experience with banishing spirits for a bit of gold). However, whilst I don't think the new version constitutes an improvement, it manages to be almost as good. Which is to say very good indeed.

Also, whilst on the subject of Fantasy Flight Games, I want to take a moment to tip my hat to their complaints department. My copy of the Innsmouth Expansion for Arkham Horror was missing a single (albeit important) card, and having complained about this, FF sent me a replacement for the entire deck, by first class international post, entirely free of charge. Nice!

Sheer, wondrous lunacy. Dante's Inferno meets Loony Tunes.

Absolutely gorgeous, but also slightly dull. Like the middle third of 2001: A Space Odyssey. You know, the bit that was just kinda sterile, rather than absolutely goddamn terrible.

The Funny Pages

I am displeased that it has taken me so long to find Comics Alliance. This archive entry alone is worth it's metaphorical weight in equally metaphorical gold. Hardly a SS v X article goes by without my "research" (i.e. reading the relevant UXN profile) throwing up some insane Silver Age story in which an alien dinosaur marries an aquatic vampire in a 1 000 000 year old temple on the moon, so I'm glad someone else is keeping track.

In fact, Chris Sims quite possibly takes the prize for funniest blogger I've read this year. I hope winning this award doesn't change him. I mean, he'll say it won't, but...

Demons And Douchebags

I have mentioned before my old friend Mad Richard (I recorded his most glorious moment for posterity here). The common theme throughout his adventures, from his refusal to stop drinking (following doctor's orders) because he believed he had two livers [1] to attempting to train an insect he thought might be a flea into jumping through hoops [2], the recurring theme is a total inability to link cause and effect, combined with the unwavering belief that he is essentially indestructible. Generally, it's pretty fun to watch, though this is somewhat less true if it takes place whilst you're in a car and he's driving.

I mention Mad Richard because he reminds me so totally of the hero in Paranormal Activity, which I dragged Tiger to this weekend (sorry for the nightmares, honey!). Spoilers follow.

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First off, I enjoyed the movie immensely. It's basically a text book example of a horror film that has a series of increasingly freaky events take place in the same location and then runs through them. It's hard not to view this as somewhat derivative, it's true, but it does it so well that I have no trouble forgiving it. I was particularly impressed with the fact that it managed so well to walk the fine line between explaining so much the unsettling mystery is lost and explaining so little it becomes impossible to tie the story together. If one considers a film to be a jigsaw puzzle, it's important that the viewer has enough pieces to feel like they can make a sensible guess as to what shape the missing pieces take (compare this with, say, Ringu II, in which it feels as though someone has mixed two entirely different jigsaw puzzles together and then handed you 30% of the resulting pile). Paranormal Activity manages that very well.

Part of it's skill lies in using its conceit (a couple attempts to videotape the strange goings on in their house) to its advantage. The static nature of the camera set up to film their hallway from their bedroom (and useless a tactic though I'm sure it would be, I'm pretty sure that if I believed a demon had set up residence in my house I'd be sleeping with the door closed) allows the film to ratchet up the tension very effectively. The same location with escalating events, as I say. This is helped by the fact that the location in question includes the characters' bedroom. One of the few things I liked about Ju-On was the scene in which a woman was killed by a ghost that slid into her bed; making what is supposed to be the place we feel most safe suddenly dangerous. This concept of the invasion of privacy is one of the film's best aspects, and is one of the reasons I think the repeated comparisons to The Blair Witch Project are so lazy. You need more than just a horror film shot with camcorders, I think.

On the other hand, there is a definite connection between the two films (and many other horror films) in one important way: the narrative is entirely dependent on at least one character being unbelievably fucking stupid. In The Blair Witch Project, that person is Mike, a man so entirely unburdened by intellect his response to finding a map difficult to read is to throw the thing away. That one act is so breath-takingly idiotic that it threw me right out of the film the first time I watched it, and it took me a long time to get back in.

As idiotic as Mike clearly is, though, he's small potatoes compared to Mika, the vacant-cranium numbnuts "hero" of Paranormal Activity. This is a man whose response to a demon haunting his home is to mock its power. A man who is so convinced that the psychic who visits his house is a charlatan that he immediately wants to disobey the advice that is proffered, namely: don't use a Ouija board to try and natter with the demon. A man who, having promised his girlfriend that he won't buy such a device (Katie being something like 15000 times smarter than he is, and that's despite the fact that the demon is clearly targeting her) then goes out and borrows one, as though her only problem was the expense involved, and then immediately asks her to help him use it. A man who attempts to interrupt the argument that follows Katie's horrified realisation that the demon used the board to spell out a message whilst they were out by asking if she'd possibly help him translate what the demon had said. He won't leave. He won't call the experts. He won't listen to his girlfriend at any point throughout the entire film. He claims to be in total control, in the same way Mad Richard will claim "It'll be fine!", only whilst in the middle of a situation in which his girlfriend's life might very well be in danger.

It's a real shame, because it does real damage to an otherwise excellent film. It doesn't exactly ruin it - the rest of the film is too good for that - but it makes it much harder to buy in. And horror films need you to buy in, especially those that are trading in "realism". I've mentioned before that I think people make too much of characters behaving "foolishly" in horror films. People go to watch a film about a mad axe murderer, and judge each character's actions as though they should be aware they are in a horror film, forgetting that they themselves hear noises in the dead of night, and don't run out of the door screaming in case it turns out to be a serial killer. Mika, though; Mika is just dumb by any metric. Not leaving the house because a door is mysteriously wobbling? Fine. Not leaving because your girlfriend has suddenly developed the world's creepiest case of somnambulism? OK. Not leaving despite the fact that you have videotaped evidence that an invisible creature is leaving footprints in your bedroom while you sleep? Get. The. Fuck. Out.

Anyway. If you have a higher (or I guess even equal) tolerance than I do for characters who are too simply stupid to be believable, I really recommend giving the film ago. Be warned, though, it's not an easy task to go to bed once you seen it.

[1] And one kidney. He described the day he was disabused of this particular notion as being akin to the moment one is informed that there is no Father Christmas.

[2] This was done by filling his bath with water, placing the wee beastie on a sponge floating in the centre (to prevent escape), holding out a hoop of some kind, and then prodding the sponge until the terrified arthropod leaped desperately to safety. Experimental conclusion: subject drowned.

Getting People's Goat

If you're having a bit of a slow day (or share at least a fraction of my interest in such things), Lawyers, Guns and Money have a brief piece up on the Monty Hall problem, a probability problem that seems to confuse an awful lot of very smart people.

I can confirm Campos' claim that the four explanations are in the right order both in terms of abstraction and difficulty. Over the years I've tried various ways to explain the problem, but all of them are variations on 2 (I grant that 3 might work better, but it requires pen and paper to write down the list, and that seems to immediately make people regress to childhood homework traumas). Certainly I'd never attempt to use the most abstract explanation 1 with anyone but another mathematician, and even then I wouldn't expect a particularly high success rate amongst geometers and numerical analysts.

I also confess to sharing in Campos' frustration regarding the near impossibility of persuading certain people to abandon their intuitive position, irrespective of how many different explanations are employed to prove it incoherent. Already the comment thread over there is overflowing with misunderstandings that it's taking all my self-restraint to not correct.

Orders Of Magnitude

I really wasn't expecting to reach 10 000 hits so soon. Sure, that's pretty tiny by the scale of almost every other blog I read (MGK gets that many hits in a weekend, not that I'm in any way bitter), but I'm very proud of my tiny outpost on the fringes of the blogohedron, and I appreciate people taking the time to look around.

It's also worth noting that the speed with which we've reached 5 figures means that it is mathematically feasible that MotCC will reach a million hits within my life time (though admittedly that requires me living to 104).

Let the great journey begin!

Also, courtesy of Pause (by way of Somethink Fun), your religious snark for the day:


Yes, "mindless followers" is hardly true for all Christians (I'd probably have gone for "Demands the consuming of blood or flesh," myself), but then it isn't really a very fair label to pin on vampires, either. Which is the greater crime?

(Edited for clarity).

Shake #30

Today's shake: Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

Taste: 5
Texture: 6
Synergy: 5
Scorn: 6
Total Score: 5

General Comments: Since edenspresence seemed entirely incapable of shutting up about it, I have finally bowed to pressure and tried a milkshake infused with RPBC (which brilliantly sounds like a underground political movement in Communist China).

I am a big enough man to admit that I fervently hoped the shake would be terrible (even if Chuck has previously forced me to confess that the RPBC itself is oddly satisfying), so as to mock edenspresence and his feeble tasting skills. Tragically, this was not possible. It's not a particularly good shake, certainly, but it can reasonably be described as adequate. My rage was not inflamed at any point, which isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world to accomplish. The crunchy remains of the peanuts added an extra bit of texture, and it managed to not stick to the roof of my mouth as I had originally feared.

Overall, I won't be trying it again, but nor did I feel like I had been robbed of £2.60. The esteemed Mr Presence can rest easy in the knowledge that this experience has revealed him as simply misguided, rather than actually evil.

Rights And Wrongs

Attaturk takes advantage of Rush Limbaugh's upcoming fourth-time-lucky nuptials to remind us of Limbaugh's take on gay marriage:

I really do not even think marriage is a right. Marriage is a responsibility. It’s not a gift that somebody says, ‘Hey, now it’s time for you to get married. It’s our bestowal to you.’ It’s a commitment that you make and it is a responsibility that you accept.

Attaturk believes the clammy hand of hypocrisy is stroking Limbaugh's back here, but I'm not sure I'd agree; certainly I would advise caution about implying three failed marriages is a priori evidence of irresponsibility.

My issue with this is somewhat different, and since Attaturk has brought the quote back up and since it feeds into some of my larger issues with the American (and British) Right and discourse in general, it's worth taking a moment to consider Limbaugh's statement in a wider context.

One of the most constant frustrations when engaging with many right-wingers is how totally they fail to grasp the notion that rights carry with them attendant responsibilities. The right to free speech carries with it the responsibility to not call for the extermination of Muslims, or tell people that a healthcare bill designed to save money and save lives is actually going to kill people's grandparents. The right to bear arms (not that I believe such a thing exists, though the difference between legal rights and human rights are probably best left alone for the moment) carries with it the responsibility to ensure guns are kept in safe places, are well-maintained, and aren't waved around at protests as some kind of bullshit display of force and rebelliousness. Both the greatest strength of and the greatest problem with rights is that we recognise that one retains them even whilst ignoring those responsibilities (up to a point where such violation of responsibility becomes literally criminal).

People like Limbaugh don't get that. They see every suggestion that they take those responsibilities more seriously as an attack on their rights (whether this is due to their paranoid victim syndrome, or whether said syndrome is based on this misconception, I don't know; perhaps they feed into each other). "If it is my right to do it, I cannot be criticised for doing it!" they whine. Witness Limbaugh's own temper trantrum when he discovered that after years of repeated race-baiting he found it impossible to buy an NFL team with an abundance of black players.

Limbaugh's comment is the logical (well, logical based on his own illogical axioms) corollary to the above. If marriage carries with it great responsibility (and on that narrow point at least I agree with him), then it simply cannot be a right. How could it be? If it was a right, then we could marry whomever we wanted at a drop of a hat without anyone objecting or criticising. That's our right. We could be polygamists. That's Our Right. We could marry someone on Tuesday, divorce them Wednesday, and then marry a duck on Thursday. And then shoot the duck and eat it. And then tell everyone the Democrats did it. OUR RIGHTS ARE LEGION![1]

It's kind of interesting to see someone with no capacity for self-criticism (or even self-awareness in general) come at this from the opposite angle they normally take, but both directions are mired in the same inability to recognise rights and responsibilities are not mutually exclusive, but rather go hand in hand.

[1] Just to head off potential criticism, I am not suggesting marrying someone on a whim is wrong, certainly not in the sense that inciting religious hatred or lying to the country to justify lining your own pockets is wrong. I would however say there are obvious potential problems such a move might cause, and the point remains that the fact it can be done does not mean there can be no criticism of it once it has been done.