Nich and Erin and Jeremy and I have all been working very, very hard to make the best Interactive Fiction feature ever. I’m rather fond of it.

I finally got rid of my copy of Minimoni Shaka no Go to Hell. Earlier this week, I asked at my local Wanpaku how much one might get if one were to sell this game to them – casually, you know, in the manner of someone who certainly doesn’t own such an embarassing title but is somewhat academically interested. 600 yen, they said. I might’ve sold it to them, under different circumstances. But Kiryu is a small town; it’s doubtful there’s another gamer here who would buy a PSone tambourine game at any price. It would sit in Wanpaku, festering for months, my musical albatross hung around their neck, and everytime I entered, they’d glare at me, thinking, “Oh, look. It’s the foreigner whose god-awful music game is taking up an eighth of our shelf space.”

So I did what any reasonable person would do: drove over to the next town and sold it for 500 yen. Out of sight, out of my life.

On the way back, I picked up the remaining eight Famicom Mini games I needed to complete my collection. I was going to be strong, I really was, and then Nintendo announced the box. Every man has his breaking point; mine is rectangular and covered in pixel art. I didn’t want a store clerk to think I was weird or anything, so I stopped at four different 7-11’s on the drive back into Kiryu, buying a few games at each store. Normal people buy one or two Famicom Mini games … don’t they?

When I arrived back into Kiryu, I still needed Xevious, so I stopped at the 7-11 near my apartment to see if they still had it in stock. A group of about six of my students, fresh out of juku (cram school), were hanging out by the magazine rack. “Andoruu!” they shouted. “Hey,” I said, waving and walking over. One of them picked up today’s Famitsu and, smirking mercilessly, held it out to me without a word. I rolled my eyes and took it. “Huh, Jean Reno,” I said, noting the cover. “It is Onimusha 3,” said one of my students, pointing at Reno’s caricature. “I have.” I giggled, then flipped to the back and started reading Ii Denshi.

I can’t escape who I am.

Sometimes, I might say cruel things about my Omama students, things like “they’re stupid” or “they’re bad at life.” Sometimes, I worry that I might be too hard on them. And then sometimes, instead of even trying to do the English-light maze game I gave them, they apply tape-dispensed white-out to their fingernails.

(Note: Students did not pose for picture. Students did not notice picture being taken. Generally, students do not notice much of anything.)

I never thought I’d say this, but right now, today, I am ashamed to be an American.

In today’s uncertain, confusing, increasingly selfish, temporary, and disposable world … if two people who love each other want to publically commit to strengthen and maintain their bond, you’d have to be a damned fool to tell them that no, they can’t, their love doesn’t count. What you are telling them is that they are not people. President Bush’s actions aren’t just an affront to gays or liberals, they are an assault on a person’s fundamental humanity. I am bitterly and horribly ashamed to have such a bigoted, hateful man as my President.

I hope this costs Bush the election. If not, I hope I can find work in Japan through January 21st, 2009.

I mean for reals. One of these games is clearly better than the other. Yet, the other is winning. Go and vote and put right what once went wrong. That’s an order.

Tomak is pretty awesome.

Observation: according to the entry ID, this is yukihime.com’s 200th update. There’ve been some rough patches here and there throughout the past ten months, but by-and-large I’ve managed to stick to this blogging thing. My thanks goes to everyone who keeps reading, whether out of interest or pity.

I recently read two of the graphic novels I picked in the States during a legendary Christmas-break shopping binge. Both, ostensibly, were about Love with a capital L, and perhaps with a capital O-V-E, to boot. Comics about the human condition, relationships, emotions, etc. Both are fairly well-known within the comics community; both are generally well-received and acclaimed. My experiences with the two, however, could hardly have differed more.

First, we have Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore. It’s an “art” comic that’s been around for years and years, has clean and attractive artwork, and a cover quote from Neil Gaiman. Neil wouldn’t lie to me, would he?

It was awful. After reading it, I felt like I must have picked up a different book than the one so highly praised. Instead of an insightful look at personal relationships, I got broad, unfunny parody and JHS-level sex comedy. I was hoping for interesting characterizations, amusing situations, and heartfelt surprises. I got the late-night Cinemax adaptation of Tenchi Muyo. If it’s PG-rated comics with female characters who keep awkwardly losing their clothes I’m looking for, I don’t have to import them from the U.S.

On the Manichean other hand we have Craig Thompson’s Blankets. I can’t even pretend to be objective about this book, so please mentally prepare yourself for unabashed gushing before reading the next few paragraphs.

Blankets is probably the best comic I’ve ever read. It’s stunning, it’s unfathomably great. It’s wonderful. I hope that everyone reading my website will go out and buy a copy and read it. If I could afford it, I would buy everyone I know a copy, just to make sure they don’t have any excuses to pass it up.

Why do I love it so? I don’t know. Why do you love the things you love? Blankets is a semi-autobiographical story of a high school boy falling in love or the first time. That’s the core. It’s a big book, nearly 600 pages, which for an unserialized comic is pretty big. The main character lives in Wisconsin, and that state’s cold, unforgiving winters and vast blankets of snow inform much of the book’s black-and-white artwork. The artwork is lovely; simple but strong brushwork that’s realistic enough to ground the characters, but abstract and free enough to lend the story a simple universality. The prose and pictures work together perfectly. Neither would be as effective without the other.

A good deal of the story is told in flashback, so we see the narrator’s childhood and his younger brother. I was tickled by how their relationship evolved throughout the years, closely matching the changes in how my own brother and I have gotten along. The flashback portions also highlight the author’s fundamentalist Christian upbringing, and the crisis in his faith engendered by first love.

This is probably likely to be one of the book’s most contentious points, and it’s not one that can be brushed away, as fundamental Christianity is integral to the fabric of the author’s family, society and story. The book is far from anti-religious; though the author’s once unflappable faith is shaken, it’s never completely broken. Some readers are likely to find these themes offensive and viscerally reject the book. But, having had a similar crisis of faith myself, I found this to be the most inspiring part of the book’s message. The question, really, is: if we can’t be certain that God exists, how can our lives hope to have meaning? The answer is: love. That answer may seem clichéd, and it might not seem like much to sustain 600 pages. But it’s an important theme, beautifully handled, fantastically explored, and by the end of the story, clearly and obviously true. I might even argue that Blankets itself is proof meaning can arise from worldly things and acts of love.

The one criticism most commonly leveled at the book is that the girl in the relationship is overly idealized. This, to me, misses the point most impressively. Blankets is only quasi-autobiographical. This means it’s also quasi-fictional, and liberties have been taken with the reality of things. More importantly, this is a story about first love, a state-of-mind not famed for its objectivity. Reading Blankets isn’t like hearing your friend tell you about how he fell in love, with his later breakup, bitterness, cooling off, and years of reflection coloring the story. No, Blankets is the real stuff, pure and uncut. Reading Blankets makes you feel what it was like when you fell in love for the first time.

Last year, the book won just about every major comics award given and received uncountable heaps of critical acclaim. So what! Years from now, when its awards and publication and quasi-autobiographicalness are long forgotten, Blankets will still be remembered and read and loved and treasured by readers finding it for the first time. Because Blankets is good and it is true. More than true; transcendent. It receives my utmost highest recommendation for anything.

I updated the main index with this information, but it’s worth mentioning again: yukihime.com’s updates are available as a LiveJournal Feed. Please note that I don’t read comments posted to the feed, so if you subscribe, please come back to the main site for feedback.

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about recent media; my classes were mysteriously cancelled today, so it’s as good a time as any to get caught up.

Super Mario Land 2: The Six Golden Coins: I’d somehow missed this one back in the day, and I used a recent trip to Akihabara as a chance to get caught up. It’s quite fun and has remarkably good graphics for the original Game Boy. The rabbit ears are also a super-keen way to flap around stages. It’s very short and rather easy; not a slight, necessarily, but definitely true. As with Metroid II, the large size of the player character on the Game Boy screen means that only a small fraction of the environment is visible at any time and that blind jumps are manifold. I felt the increased graphical strain on the system gives the whole thing a loose, haphazard feel, as if the backgrounds are in danger of breaking into garbled nonsense at any moment. Ultimately, I prefer the original Super Mario Land, with its hyper-detailed, miniature graphics and terrible difficulty curve. The original feels like a Mario adventure designed and balanced for the Game Boy from the ground up, while the sequel feels like an HK pirate port of Super Mario Bros. 3.

24: Season One: It’s possible that you haven’t seen this yet, so I’ll stay extraordinarily vague. My feelings about the show closely match Brian and Christy’s: 24 is “sometimes stupid, never boring.” There was only one plot point that had me slapping my head in frustration, and it was resolved within 2-3 episodes. Most of the “stupidity” was related to convenient story-related timings; understandably, everyone in the world of 24 is super-obsessed with time. (“This important event will happen during the next 40 minutes!!” exclaims a character 20 minutes after the hour.) Every “stupid” plot device is counterbalanced by three clever ones, however, and Jack Bauer does something at least once per hour that makes me giggle at his audacity. Kiefer Sutherland absolutely makes the show. He’s less “a cop on the edge” and more “a cop in total freefall.” He doesn’t “play by his own rules” so much as “threaten to kill everybody to get what he needs.” Without him, you’d have a well-plotted, high-concept TV series; with him, you have a well-plotted, high-concept TV series that kicks total ass. Plus, his name mean you can say things like “It’s time for an hour of Bauer Power!” Or you can do your best Altered Beast impression and exclaim, “BAUER UP!” Or you might note that the Counter Terrorism Unit puts together “Bauerpoint Presentations” on their “Bauer Mac G5s.” Or you could shoot me.

The Golem’s Mighty Swing by James Sturm: A critically-acclaimed graphic novel about “The Stars of David,” a traveling Jewish baseball team during the 1920’s playing exhibition games and struggling to make ends meet, and the golem they manufacture to build interest in their games. It’s very good, with short, crisp, and understated writing, exciting baseball action, and simple artwork in muted tones. It’s a well-told, interesting story, that’s more about baseball and the experience of getting by in America than the Plight of the Oppressed Minority^tm. I feel sorry for Oppressed Minorities, I really do, but tend to avoid that genre as it overlaps often with my arch-nemesis: the Woeful Tale of the Autobiographical Narrator. I know that minorities have it tough; I know that creative types are misunderstood by the massesc. I don’t want to read things I already know. Fortunately, The Golem’s Mighty Swing has top-quality writing, setting, and characterization to back up the narrative framework.

Whiteout by Greg Rucka: A female U.S. Marshal has to solve a murder at an Antarctic station. When it comes to hard-boiled crime/spy thrillers, Rucka’s the man, and Steve Lieber’s black-and-white artwork captures the sub-zero setting perfectly. I think Rucka’s later work on Queen and Country is more complex and nuanced, but his first graphic novel is still good stuff.

Everything and More: A Compact History of ∞ by David Foster Wallace: The title of this book is a lie; at 300 pages, this history can only be considered “compact” in comparison to the transfinite. Though intended to be a “popular” science book, the writing – by Infinite Jest author David Foster Wallace – is in his typical style: dense, difficult, convoluted, and packed with acronyms and footnotes. However, like his fiction, it is also inspired in its word choice and construction, constantly interestingly dicursive, and frequently uproariously funny in layered and complex ways. This is the only mathematical scientific history to keep me in stitches. Take, for example, this illustration of a logical fallacy: “1. Curiosity killed the cat. 2. The World’s Largest Ball of Twine is a curiosity. 3. The World’s Largest Ball of Twine killed the cat.”

What I found most interesting was that the difficulty of infinity, historically speaking, has been not mathematical but philosophical. The idea of infinity was proposed by the Greeks thousands of years ago, but quickly hushed away as inconvenient and nonsensical. The Church played its role in suppressing it, too; after all, since God was infinite, nothing else could be. The primary question facing both mathematicians and philosophers has been: does infinity exist? As a real, actual thing, not just a mathematically useful concept of arbitrary largeness. Or is infinity a myth, like unicorns: a man-made idea that can be understood and visualized, but can’t be found in the universe itself?

One important warning: this book’s not for the mathematically squeamish; though it’s meant for general readers, Wallace sets the bar a bit high. It’s advisable to have at least a passing familiarity with calculus in order to grok some of the middle sections; while you don’t have to do any calculus, you should be able to read words like “limit,” “integral,” “series,” and “function” without blanching. Difficult as it was, however, I’m glad he kept the mathematics in. Without it, it would just be a series of names and personalities. The math is necessary to understand why, historically, an understanding of infinity gradually became necessary – not just convenient or interesting, but required as a fundamental underpinning for all of mathematics. It’s a tough book, but a rewarding one as well.

Test results for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, 2-kyuu level, arrived today.

I passed.

Thank God. I came out of the test unsure if I passed, but knowing that it wasn’t impossible. It turns out it was just about as close to the wire as I had hoped/feared: my final score was 246/400 points; I averaged about 75% on the Grammar/Listening parts (200 total points), and about 50% on the reading part (200 total points, and criminally brutal). A passing grade on the test is 60%, or 240/400 points. With about 140 questions on the test, I figure I must have had at least one, maybe two questions of leeway. In any case: passing is passing – and I passed!

In celebration, I picked up a Famicom SP and Famicom Mini versions of Super Mario Bros. / Legend of Zelda. Good day!

I don’t have time to update my blog today, so please imagine it’s 1974 and you’re fat.

(I would have mentioned this in the last update, but I had no way to resize graphics or upload files. I still can’t resize graphics, but I’m also impatient.)

My Metroid Fusion time was most excellent! It’s not record-shattering, by any means, but it’s definitely a personal best for a Metroid game. Bring on Zero Mission!