"'Gainst The Dragons Of Anger, The Ogres Of Greed..."

Once again SpaceSquid serves up a delicious dish from yesteryear, the oddly blood-soaked hack-n-slash Moonstone: A Hard Day's Night.

I adored this game as a kid, which since I didn't own it meant I taxed my friends's patience to the limit by constantly demanding we play it whenever I was over at their place (sometimes we seemed to be the only middle-class family in the county to lack an Amiga).  Playing it some eighteen years on, I'm amazed I ever thought it particularly difficult (there are basically nine types of opponent to face, and you just have to remember which tactic works best against each one), but it's still an awful lot of fun to carve your way through Baloks, Troggs (who look like ratmen) and Ratmen (who look like Critters).  Plus you get to slay the occasional dragon.  What's not to love?

A Tale Of Cocktails #33

Metropolitan

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Ingredients

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1 1/2 oz vokda
1 1/2 oz Chambord
1 1/2 oz cranberry juice
1 1/2 oz orange juice
2 cranberries
lemon wedge
caster sugar

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Taste: 4

Look: 8        

Cost: 8  
Name: 9
Prep: 7

Alcohol: 4

Overall: 6.4

Preparation: Run the lemon wedge around the edge of the glass and then frost with caster sugar.  Shake ingredients with ice.  Strain, garnish with cranberries, and serve.

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General Comments: Man, that's a lot of trouble to go to to get a drink that tastes like muddy orange juice.  It doesn't help that I don't like vodka, but the real issue here is that both the Chambord (ounce for ounce the most expensive ingredient I've used yet) and the cranberry are buried far too low in the mix.  This is basically an expensive screwdriver with some weird, unidentifiable twist.

Looks great, though (if you ignore the crap in the edges of that photo; the Other Half and I don't have much in the way of free space right now), and even given my allergy to DC I have to admit the name rocks.  I shall have to try this again with less vodka.  Or possibly with gin.  You can't go wrong with gin.

D CDs #494: Searching For New MGMT

Oh, dear God in heaven; no.

There is simply no way anyone with functioning mechanoreceptors could consider this the 494th best album ever recorded.  You remember that bit in The Insider when Jeffrey Wigand explains how tobacco companies described a cigarette as "a delivery system for the nicotine"?  This disc is the delivery system for "Time To Pretend".  Which, admittedly, is a phenomenally good slice of music - Rolling Stone places it as the 493rd best song of all time, and I have no intention of arguing with that - but since alternative delivery systems for it include just downloading the damn thing, I'm not sure what purpose the full LP really serves.

OK, I'm being slightly unfair.  This isn't an album with just one great song.  It's an album with two great songs ("Kids" may be no "Time To Pretend", but the combination of dark lyrics and that awesome ascending synth line is tasty enough even before you get to the sublime middle eight), alongside one competent one ("Electric Feel", which combines wigged-out panpipes with one of the best funk basslines ever written by a white guy).

Elsewhere, though, everything falls apart.  One can admire the invention in tracks like "Weekend Wars", which features so many shifts in structure that it makes the ADHD punk-rock of mid-period Biffy Clyro sound like a single organ chord held down for forty-five minutes.  But what's the point of all this dervish-like activity if none of it is particularly good?  If all your fiddling around with genres and approaches (and relying more on Grandaddy than I've seen anyone admit) leads you to a second rate knock-off of Queen's "Innuendo" like "4th Dimensional Transition", isn't it worth reconsidering what exactly you're hoping to get out of your recording contract?

Basically, you can divide this album up into thrilling gut-punches and insufferably smug quasi-cleverness.  You can also divide it into songs released as singles.  You get the same two groups either way.

Naturally, having served up three songs and seven half-formed piss-arounds, the band announced they were just being silly on their three singles, and vowed that their follow-up wouldn't have any track that would be commercially viable on its own merits.  Which kind of sums up this whole endeavour; a work of such detached posturing artifice that accidentally generating an emotional reaction in the listener is something to bitch about with disinterest.

Four tentacles (and three of them are for that song).

SpaceSquid vs. The X-Men #43: Cold As Ice

Once again it's time for the old villain-to-hero switch.  Obviously, Frost is far from the first such example of this comic phenomena amongst the X-Men.  That said, if we dismiss those characters who were only briefly villains (or who only rarely showed up at all, like Marrow), there's really only two major examples: Rogue and Magneto.  Most of our discussion of Rogue centered around female characters in the medium, and the Magneto post mainly concerned itself with the nature of the character's back-story, so I think we're overdue a consideration of what a successful transition from supervillain to superhero actually entails.

So far as I can see, there are three goals that need to be reached if this kind of thing is to be pulled off successfully.  First of all, there needs to be a compelling reason for the change of alignment.  Secondly, there needs to be a plausible way for the X-Men to be able to forgive or at least overlook the past crimes of their new recruit.  And thirdly, there needs to be something about the character that makes the effort that goes into this kind of manoeuvre worthwhile.

Of those, the third is the easiest to deal with; if you can't do something interesting with a character who's switched sides, then you may as well not bother.  If, for instance, Emma Frost had been intended to simply be a snarky telepath with a ludicrous rack (even by Marvel standards), then there'd be no reason to not just create a character from scratch.  But the first two are at least as important.  Particularly the second.  If you can't come up with a good excuse for the new status quo (Rogue's sudden insistence she was terrified of her power and didn't want to murder people any more, for instance, came entirely out of the blue), then that can sink a few stories during the transition period.  Screw up the justification for forgiveness, however, and the whole enterprise is doomed.

Take Marrow, for instance.  At first her role on the X-roster made sense; the US mutant population was being decimated by Operation: Zero Tolerance, and the fact that the crisis made for uneasy bedfellows wasn't remotely difficult to understand.  With the (editor-mandated) return to the status quo following the cross-over, however, her place on the team was obviously ridiculous, since she showed no remorse whatsoever for the innocent civilians she had killed or tried to kill, and constantly seemed on the verge of a new bout of homicidal violence. Rogue at least quickly managed to prove her willingness to change, and Magneto's rehabilitation was (correctly) deemed so important as to require the entirety of UXM #200 to work through.

(We could also briefly consider Gambit, here, who got around this by not letting on as to what his past crimes were, and therefore gained all the advantages of being a former villain turned hero without any of the baggage, at least until UXM #350).

Magneto, in fact, is a useful comparison for Emma Frost, because they both joined the X-Men for similar reasons: the desire to mould the next generation of mutants.  This both ensured Emma past the first of the three tests, and represents one of her most fundamental character traits; her love of teaching.

A Tale Of Cocktails #32

Daiquiri
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Ingredients

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2 oz white rum

3/4 oz lime juice

1/2 tsp sugar syrup

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Taste: 8

Look: 6          

Cost: 9       
Name: 9
Prep: 6

Alcohol: 4

Overall: 7.3

Preparation: Shake all ingredients with ice. Strain and serve.

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General Comments: Making sugar syrup is almost as much of a pain as juicing limes. It's a good job that this is so clearly worth it, then. It's a bit plain looking, but if you're going to go with something plain, green is definitely the best choice. And it tastes absolutely wonderful, sweet and sour and, er, a third thing, that comes from the rum. Rummy, I guess.

Also, daiquiri is a great name. It's so commonly used that it might seem a bit boring, but just try saying it. "Daiquiri." Really put your back into it. "DAIQUIRI".

Point proven, I believe.

Friday Talisman: Mean Ginge Killing Machine

Turns out the Other Half has a significantly superior camera to me when it comes to photographing miniatures.  Here, then, in new and improved Flissvision, is the Doomsayer. Who might say rather more optimistic things if he could find a decent tailor.

Special bonus models: I've successfully doubled the size of my Blood Angels fleet.  I would've taken pictures of them in the Carpet Nebula as is traditional, but the Space Marine Strike Cruiser is one of the most unbalanced models Games Workshop ever put out.

Sophie's Choice Of Custodians

This press self-regulation vs government press regulation argument that's been re-sparked by the upcoming release of Lord Levenson's musings really has me confused.  Do I want the press policed by the shits who caused this whole mess in the first place, or do I want it policed by the shits that were buying champagne for the shits who caused this whole mess in the first place?

It's a tough one, and no mistake. Still, at least it's handed Nick Clegg another opportunity to collapse like a blancmange gazebo.  Like we were running out of them.  Maybe not, though; maybe Nick really will leap to his feet and say some mean things about David Cameron.  Not so much biting the hand that feeds him as biting the hand that stole his food causing him to make an online video apologising for ever promising to eat.