Dude's a regular Jack Handey.
― I'm Calling My Loyer! (Old Lunch), Friday, 4 August 2017 14:45 (seven years ago) link
I know that my dramatic reading could never do justice to Ernest Cline's ravenous hunger for nerd porn, but a copyright strike seems extreme pic.twitter.com/CkXsLctjgl— supergreatfriend (@supergreatfrien) August 4, 2017
― groovypanda, Friday, 4 August 2017 14:50 (seven years ago) link
Justin Trudeau, 23rd Prime Minister of Canada • 23e premier ministre du CanadaAnswered Apr 3I am a massive reader, have been all my life. I read anything, and everything, in huge quantities. These days most of what I read are scholarly policy works and briefing papers, so listing my favourite fiction is really tough. I guess starting with a few authors for whom I’ve read just about everything they’ve ever written: Stephen King, Neal Stephenson, and Tad Williams. Other recently-read novels I’ve loved: La part de l’autre by Eric-Emmanuel Schmidt, and Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.
I am a massive reader, have been all my life. I read anything, and everything, in huge quantities. These days most of what I read are scholarly policy works and briefing papers, so listing my favourite fiction is really tough. I guess starting with a few authors for whom I’ve read just about everything they’ve ever written: Stephen King, Neal Stephenson, and Tad Williams. Other recently-read novels I’ve loved: La part de l’autre by Eric-Emmanuel Schmidt, and Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.
― the shape of a hot willie lumpkin (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 4 August 2017 14:51 (seven years ago) link
and with that, America's love affair with the boy prince of Canada came to a crashing end.
― evol j, Friday, 4 August 2017 14:54 (seven years ago) link
I always had a hunch that Cat's Cradle was the weakest Vonnegut but now I am confident
http://m.theweek.com/articles/481262/ernest-clines-6-favorite-books
― El Tomboto, Friday, 4 August 2017 14:55 (seven years ago) link
Who reads Snow Crash after the age of 16 or so and thinks "oh the guy's name is Hiro Protagonist this is GREAT"
― El Tomboto, Friday, 4 August 2017 14:56 (seven years ago) link
It must be a helluva feeling to receive a copyright violation notice from someone who seems to have built his career around exploiting other people's IP.
― I'm Calling My Loyer! (Old Lunch), Friday, 4 August 2017 14:56 (seven years ago) link
I hate nerd culture. When is the next star wars coming out
― El Tomboto, Friday, 4 August 2017 14:57 (seven years ago) link
no wait u see it's funny because the japanese name 'hiro' sounds like the english word 'hero' and 'protagonist' is like another way to say 'hero' so
― the shape of a hot willie lumpkin (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 4 August 2017 14:58 (seven years ago) link
TBF, 'Hiro Protagonist' is just a stone's throw from a name you'd read in Pynchon.
― I'm Calling My Loyer! (Old Lunch), Friday, 4 August 2017 14:58 (seven years ago) link
France 13 December 2017 Italy 13 December 2017 Netherlands 13 December 2017 Norway 13 December 2017 Sweden 13 December 2017 Armenia 14 December 2017 Argentina 14 December 2017 Australia 14 December 2017 Brazil 14 December 2017 Chile 14 December 2017 Czech Republic 14 December 2017 Germany 14 December 2017 Denmark 14 December 2017 UK 14 December 2017 Greece 14 December 2017 Hong Kong 14 December 2017 Croatia 14 December 2017 Hungary 14 December 2017 Israel 14 December 2017 Malaysia 14 December 2017 New Zealand 14 December 2017 Poland 14 December 2017 Portugal 14 December 2017 Serbia 14 December 2017 Russia 14 December 2017 Singapore 14 December 2017 Bulgaria 15 December 2017 Canada 15 December 2017 Estonia 15 December 2017 Spain 15 December 2017 Finland 15 December 2017 Ireland 15 December 2017 Japan 15 December 2017 Lithuania 15 December 2017 Philippines 15 December 2017 Romania 15 December 2017 Turkey 15 December 2017 USA 15 December 2017 Vietnam 15 December 2017 China 5 January 2018
― the shape of a hot willie lumpkin (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 4 August 2017 14:59 (seven years ago) link
i'm not sure reading a lot is something to brag about anyway but if all you read is shit then definitely not
― put your hands on the car and get ready to die (Noodle Vague), Friday, 4 August 2017 15:05 (seven years ago) link
There are many accomplishments which one may find personally impressive but which are likely to prompt a very different reaction when shared with others.
― I'm Calling My Loyer! (Old Lunch), Friday, 4 August 2017 15:10 (seven years ago) link
yeah i kinda regret putting "wanking" on the skills section of my CV
― put your hands on the car and get ready to die (Noodle Vague), Friday, 4 August 2017 15:11 (seven years ago) link
there's more of that trudeau response btw
Webcomic: xkcd.com (I have a signed Randall Monroe print of “Centrifugal Force” on my office wall.)
america = 4chan / canada = reddit
― the shape of a hot willie lumpkin (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 4 August 2017 15:12 (seven years ago) link
nothing worse than starting a new job and then failing at a task you claimed to be familar with
― the shape of a hot willie lumpkin (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 4 August 2017 15:13 (seven years ago) link
Let Ernest Cline show u how it is done.
― I'm Calling My Loyer! (Old Lunch), Friday, 4 August 2017 15:45 (seven years ago) link
When it came to my research, I never took any shortcuts. Over the past five years, I'd worked my way down the entire recommended gunter reading list. White Guy. White Guy. White Guy. White Guy. White Guy. White Guy. White Guy. White Guy. White Guy, White Guy, White Guy, White Guy, White Guy, White Guy, White Guy, White Guy, White Guy, White Guy, White Guy, White Guy. I read every novel by every single one of Halliday's favorite authors.And I didn't stop there.I also watched every single film he referenced in the Almanac. If it was one of Halliday's favorites, like Movie Starring White People, Movie Starring White People (and one Black Guy At The End), Movie Starring White People, Movie Starring White People, or Movie Starring White People, I rewatched it until I knew every scene by heart.I devoured each of what Halliday referred to as "The Holy Trilogies": Movie Trilogy Starring White People (original and prequel trilogies, in that order), Movie Trilogy Starring White Men, Movie Trilogy Starring White People and One Holy Black Guy, Movie Trilogy Starring White People, and Movie Trilogy Starring White People Fighting Brown People. (Halliday once said that he preferred to pretend the other Movies Starring White People Fighting Brown People, from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull onward, didn't exist. I tended to agree.)I also absorbed the complete filmographies of each of his favorite directors. White Guy, White Guy, White Guy, White Guy, White Guy, White Guy, White Guy, Hispanic Guy, White Guy. And, of course, White Guy.I spent three months studying every White Guy teen movie and memorizing all the key lines of dialogue.Only the meek get pinched. The bold survive.You could say I covered all the bases.I studied White Guys. And not just Movie Made By White Guys, either. Every single one of their films, albums, and books, and every episode of the original BBC series. (Including those two "lost" episodes they did for German television.)I wasn't going to cut any corners.I wasn't going to miss something obvious.Somewhere along the way, I started to go overboard.I may, in fact, have started to go a little insane.I watched every episode of TV Show About White Guys, TV Show About White Guys, TV Show About White Guys and one Black Guy, TV Show About A White Guy and His Car, and TV Show Made By White Guys.I memorized every last White Guy stand-up routine.Music? Well, covering all the music wasn't easy.It took some time.The '80s was a long decade (ten whole years), and Halliday didn't seem to have had very discerning taste. He listened to everything. So I did too. Pop, rock, new wave, punk, heavy metal. From White Guys Group to White Guys Group to White Guys Group to White Guys Group. I tackled it all.I burned through the entire White Group discography in under two weeks. White Group took a little longer.I memorized lyrics. Silly lyrics, by bands with names like White Guys Group, White Guys Group, White Guys Group, and White Guys Group.
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 4 August 2017 20:52 (seven years ago) link
Mega mega white thing
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 4 August 2017 21:01 (seven years ago) link
Jeb Lund gives this thing the thorough vivisection it deserves.
― grawlix (unperson), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 18:50 (seven years ago) link
I'm curious why the cognoscenti feels the need to give this more scrutiny than any other summer escapist blockbuster.
Yes, Gen X feels nostalgia for a period (arguably ending around 1987) when we were young, and popular culture seemed less homogenized in the corporate blender. We're not the first, nor will we be the last, generation to have those sorts of affective hot buttons. RPO's protagonist seems a stand-in for millenials, who in many ways have been encouraged to share their parents' nostalgia (cue pictures of children at Star Wars prequel premieres), but for whom it remains second hand. Pull the zoom back, and RPO is a paper-thin story of trans-generational culture appreciation, and evils wrought when real world interests intrude on emergent cultures of social media.
Is that a useful story to tell now? Yes. Was this the best way it could be told? No. Is it any worse than other summer fare? I doubt it.
― #IMPOTUS (Sanpaku), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 19:29 (seven years ago) link
https://ih0.redbubble.net/image.74660018.4835/raf,750x1000,075,t,fafafa:ca443f4786.u1.jpg
― put your hands on the car and get ready to die (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 19:32 (seven years ago) link
The film is scheduled to be released on March 30, 2018.
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 19:38 (seven years ago) link
Probably because even something as stupid as Transformers isn't just two kids in striped tube socks and 'Where's the Beef?' shirts slamming their action figures together while making 'pew pew' noises and occasionally looking up at the camera and asking, 'Remember this?'
― I'm Calling My Loyer! (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 19:48 (seven years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWmkXBupMJ8
― Old Lynch's Sex Paragraph (Phil D.), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 19:52 (seven years ago) link
great quote from the Jeb Lund article:
This book is an orgy of the cardinal writer’s sin of telling, not showing, filtered through IMDB and delivered so relentlessly literally that it’s amazing Cline doesn’t just include a cartoon of himself dressed like Peter Griffin from Family Guy saying, “Holy crap, Lois, this is just like the time the author addressed his creations at the end of Breakfast of Champions.”
― frogbs, Tuesday, 8 August 2017 19:58 (seven years ago) link
Good god that review is such a jerk off session. The most interesting part is the plot synopsis, and apparently there's only one really objectionable part of the book as there's that same list passage I keep seeing over and over again. Could writers be any more jealous of this guy's success?
― sleepingbag, Tuesday, 8 August 2017 20:05 (seven years ago) link
Based on the synopsis the entire enterprise seems pretty objectionable tbh
― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 20:11 (seven years ago) link
Ah, the "y'all just jealous haters" defense. Always welcome in any discussion of art, never says anything depressing about the person offering it.
― grawlix (unperson), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 20:24 (seven years ago) link
Could writers be any more jealous of this guy's success?
it's an unearned success. there is nothing there. it may as well be a webpage full of links.
it doesn't even do references artfully. like he finds the Firefly spaceship and has to mention that, oh yeah, it's from Firefly the movie. this is shit writing.
also apparently the plot involves characters re-enacting two entire films in this? as if endless lists of references wasn't hollow enough they pause to do the writing equivalent of Lip Sync battle.
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 20:24 (seven years ago) link
how does he do this, does the book just stop and you are reading the Wargames script for 20 pages?
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 20:25 (seven years ago) link
more or less
with occasional interjections from the narrator about how cool it all is
― Number None, Tuesday, 8 August 2017 20:28 (seven years ago) link
it's an unearned success. there is nothing there.
The same could be said for most writing for the mass market. Does J. K. Rowling "deserve" to be a billionaire? Hell do most billionaires?
― #IMPOTUS (Sanpaku), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 20:37 (seven years ago) link
Transformers isn't just two kids in striped tube socks and 'Where's the Beef?' shirts slamming their action figures together
Nor is RPO. It not a work for the ages, but there's is a little more going on than the oft-quoted Bret Easton Ellis-esque listmania. The 80s nostalgia is the lure, but there's some pungency in the environment of environmental/governmental collapse, the implied critique of escapism into virtual worlds, and the pervasive anti-corporatism.
― #IMPOTUS (Sanpaku), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 20:43 (seven years ago) link
The same could be said for most writing for the mass market. Does J. K. Rowling "deserve" to be a billionaire?
J.K. Rowling single-handedly created a multibook franchise based on original characters that was massively successful for all age groups and resulted in a series of 7(!!!) highly successful films all critically acclaimed, a feat not even matched by Lord of the Rings
also Harry Potter wasn't named Merlin and he didn't have to re-enact the entirety of The Hobbit because the writer couldn't think of anything else.
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 21:04 (seven years ago) link
there's some pungency in the environment of environmental/governmental collapse
this feels like the same mindset marketing Batman V Superman that mistakes "dark" for meaning. get over it people have been doing apocalyptic fiction since the dawn of time.
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 21:07 (seven years ago) link
this is totally the right thread to point out that there were 8 films
― put your hands on the car and get ready to die (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 21:07 (seven years ago) link
lol
― this iphone speaks many languages (DJP), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 21:07 (seven years ago) link
an all of them fucking awesome. damn right she deserves to be a billionare
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 21:08 (seven years ago) link
J.K. having no plagiarism in her game is stretching the point a little
― put your hands on the car and get ready to die (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 21:09 (seven years ago) link
there have been 9 films now fwiw.
rowling accomplished a synthesis of some kind that amounts to an original creation that has clearly resonated with a whole fuckton of people. there are some hacky elements and some parts that wear the influences a little too blatantly, sure, but come on.
not having read RPO i just have to say that the escapism and anti-corporatism stuff is also just recycled from genre tropes right? i started that podcast someone linked above and one of the first things they point out is that the landscape of stacked-up RVs or whatever is ripped off of a specific sci-fi story, i forget by whom. it kinda seems like saying "okay so the combat stuff in equlibrium is all just a matrix ripoff, sure, but there are some really original themes in its depiction of a dystopia run by emotion-suppressing censors who destroy cultural artifacts until they discover an underground resistance but even this discovery is all part of the evil plan!!"
― yellow is the color of some raisins (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 21:12 (seven years ago) link
I really hope someone screams "YOU ARE A BATTERY BRO" in the film
― Neanderthal, Tuesday, 8 August 2017 21:13 (seven years ago) link
Most genre fiction, including the Potter series, is recycled from genre tropes. Lots of people were similarly querulous when the second HP book, "surely" just another YA fantasy, was being read by our peers in 1998-9. Was it "better" than say Philip Pullman's contemporaneous His Dark Materials series? IMO at the time, Pullman was tackling far more interesting issues.
Rowling benefited from network effects; Pullman did too, to a lesser extent; now another genre publishing phenomenon is. From a far enough removed (read: old) perspective, it just seems fairly absurd to care deeply one way or another.
― #IMPOTUS (Sanpaku), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 21:33 (seven years ago) link
what genre is this? science fiction? sci fi usually has something to say about the world it creates and how our world is different/same. what critique of capitalism does it have in it? how the whole thing of the text i have read has been about fetishizing corporate IPs.
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 21:49 (seven years ago) link
rowling is fun to read, and everything i've seen quoted from cline is like nails on a chalkboard. i dunno if she was "tackling interesting issues" but it was very solid kids' fiction, especially in the first few books when the plot carpentry is tighter. the characters are likeable. the world is intriguing and full of charming detail. the plots are compelling page-turners. the themes were appropriate for books that were to be read by parents and kids together - loyalty, friendship getting you through tough times, doing what's right, not fitting in, the everyday evils of selfishness and vanity and prejudice, etc. etc.
― yellow is the color of some raisins (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 21:50 (seven years ago) link
merge this and the Emoji movie thread
delete the rest of ilx
― Number None, Tuesday, 8 August 2017 21:51 (seven years ago) link
omg flappy bird is a sanpaku sock
― yellow is the color of some raisins (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 21:54 (seven years ago) link
Emoji sounds far more interesting to me compared to this. they are kind of ambiguous and less over-analyzed cultural symbols, abstract/more and tied to the collective unconscious.
RPO is like, fuck, a Transformer and a Minecraft guy, together, and look, it's Iron Man. its a Target commercial.
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 21:57 (seven years ago) link
I barely remember RPO from long walks with the dog 2 years ago, but there are those sorts of themes. They're common to all YA fiction. What distinguishes them is largely the environment they posit. Harry Potter being a largely benign environment where evil is real and has a personality, His Dark Materials one of oppressive religious institutions, Ready Player One a post-apocalytic world were escapism predominates, Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker/Drowned Cities denying even escapism. They all address loyalty, friendship getting you through tough times, doing what's right, not fitting in....
― #IMPOTUS (Sanpaku), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 21:58 (seven years ago) link
Perhaps someone else will confirm that the usual YA themes are also present in Hunger Games and Divergent. Lifes too short for me to have bothered with those franchises.
― #IMPOTUS (Sanpaku), Tuesday, 8 August 2017 22:02 (seven years ago) link